When I was a kid growing up on the farm down in Nankipooh, there were a few things you had to know about farming and living close with Mother Nature. One thing all farmers know is that Mother Nature can be your enemy sometimes, as well as your friend. The good Lord has provided us with quite a lot of bounty by making us the Shepard’s of his garden, but as you might recall, the garden also has snakes. When you get old enough to be out wandering around on the farm, one of the first things you learn is to watch out for snakes. Now, down in Nankipooh we had quite a few different kinds of snakes, including a few that were downright dangerous. We even came across a Coral S nake once when I was a boy, and after having heard about how quick death comes to those who get bit by one, and then seeing one, it just about scared me to death. Grandpa always said, “If you see a snake, and you ain’t sure what kind he is, go ahead and kill him to be on the safe side”.
One of my chores was to haul out the ashes from the fireplace and tote in fresh firewood, which was an everyday task. We had a woodshed built onto the back side of the chicken house where we stored the dry cured wood for the fireplace. One day when I was about twelve, I went into the woodshed to get an armload of firewood and I happened to look up at the rafters a few feet above my head, and there was Mr. Rattlesnake staring down at me. Well I dropped that firewood and ran to the house and got Grandpa’s 12 gauge double barrel shotgun and ran back to the woodshed and let old Mr. Rattlesnake have both barrels at once.
I blew that snake straight to the Promised Land, but in the course of things, I also sent about half of the roof to the woodshed along with him. When Grandpa came in from the field for dinnertime, he wasn’t real pleased with me having shot away the roof to the wood shed, but I told him, “Grandpa you always told me to kill the snake first, and then investigate afterwards”, and there wasn’t much else he could say after that.
Maybe you didn’t know, but Georgia has more snakes per square mile than any other state, at more than fifteen snakes per square mile, and a lot of them ain’t your friend. Now farmers know that the good snakes are the ones that kill the bad snakes. Farmers don’t kill black snakes because the Black King Snake is the best there is at taking care of the bad ones. Of course he looks a lot like the Black Racer, who is mean, but not poisonous, so they let all of the black snakes alone. Also a friend, is the Georgia Banded King Snake, but he has a problem, in that he looks a lot like a Coral Snake, so a lot of them get killed by mistake.
Our country today is facing a lot of these same problems, just like that old Georgia farmer. There are a lot of snakes out there, especially in one particular part of the world, where some of those snakes want to kill our country. A lot of the bad ones look a lot like the good ones, and you better have somebody in charge who can tell the difference, which we don’t seem to have right now.
Well, Old Bascomb is a farmer who can tell a weed from a bean sprout, and a King Snake from a Coral Snake, and right about now that seems to be pretty important when it comes to protecting our country and keeping it safe. That’s why Old Bascomb is running for President of the Good Old USA, because he can tell the bad ones from the good ones, besides the crops are all in, and the woodshed is full of firewood for the winter.
“Now, that’s the way I see it, and you can tell’um I said so!”
Bascomb Biggers
The Nankipooh Enquirer “Covers the South like Sorghum Syrup”
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