Road Apples by Tim Sanders
March 21, 2011

Mannerly men who stare at goats and vice-versa


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Everyone knows that there are thousands of cultures spread across the globe, and that each culture has its own rules of etiquette. In some primitive societies, for example, it is obligatory for dinner guests to loosen their loincloths, throw back their arms and belch and toot heartily at the table to show their appreciation for a satisfying meal. But since the Mannerly Man Institute is located here in northeastern Alabama, not in Mississippi, we will confine our answers to questions pertaining to local etiquette.


Q: Lyle he said he seen a movie starring George Looney which was called “Men Who Stare at Goats,” and he said that in this movie which was a true story George Looney he could sit and stare at a goat until the goat fell over dead because Looney’s mind was way more powerful than a goat’s. Lyle he said there was other stuff in the movie too, but that the goat things was the important part.

So anyhow Lyle and me and Norris and LeGrant we all got to talking and decided to give it a try. We got us all three of Aunt Sheila’s goats and her old Jersey milk cow and put them in a pen out behind her barn and we got us four milking stools and each one of us picked a goat and sat down in front of it and went to staring and thinking very deep on first one thing and then another. Except for LeGrant, who only had the cow. We agreed not to think them to death, since Aunt Sheila was very careful about her livestock and would make us pay through the nose, so instead we worked on just making our goats fall over and lose their minds for awhile.

So anyhow Lyle he went to work on a pygmy goat name of Frank and they got to staring at each other very strong, and since our goats and LeGrant’s cow wasn’t paying much attention to us anyway, we left them alone and went to cheering for Lyle.

He would stare at old Frank and take a chaw of Skoal and Frank he’d stare right back and eat some grass and back and forth they stared until Lyle he kind of got strangled on his tobacco juice and fell off his milking stool. We got him up and cleaned him off, but he didn’t want to stare no more. So LeGrant said we ort to give him a shot at that goat, and he sit himself down and stared for nearly an hour and then he got dizzy and said he thought he was having a seizure. I stared at mine, but it didn’t work out neither due to the fact that it was a cashmere goat and they have a very short detention span.

Mine didn’t outstare me, but it did butt me off my stool. Norris he said maybe we had the wrong kinds of goats, and said he knew for certain that if we could find him a dominicker chicken and lay him on his back on a fence post, he could hypnotize it by touching its beak with just one finger.

So my question is, what did we do wrong and why wouldn’t our goats fall over like George Looney’s did?

A: That is because George Looney was a highly trained Hollywood movie actor and the goat was a highly trained Hollywood movie goat. You and the boys may want to take Norris’s advice and start out with chickens and work your way up.


Q: Me and Denise we don’t care to take the children over to see my Momma no more because of Earl. Earl makes them nervous. And to tell you the truth, he makes me and Denise a little edgy, too. We know she needs companionship, but we was thinking how about if she was to put Earl out on the back porch until we was to leave? How should we bring that up and not hurt her feelings?

A: And is Earl your mother’s new boyfriend?


Q: Goodness no! She ain’t looked at another man since Daddy bought the farm, as they say. Earl’s her cat.

A: Does Earl hiss, and slap at the children?


Q: Nossir. He just sits on the coffee table and looks at ‘em. Earl he died last October when he was 24. Momma she took him to Cousin Norton, who is a part-time pachydermist over in Piedmont, and he cleaned him out and packed and stuffed him for her. His eyes is genuine cat’s eye agates. By which I mean Earl’s, not Norton’s. But they don’t line up right. One of them looks straight ahead and all the time the other one looks up as though old Earl had spied a fly on the ceiling. Earl he never was what you’d call an attractive cat, and by the time he died there was a lot of mange, so his coat looks pretty rough. And when she told Norton to make him smile, that smile only made him look angry, somehow. The last time we was there little Geneva she seen him and took a magazine and knocked him off the coffee table, which scared little Howell half to death. The children all agree they don’t want to see Earl ever again, so how do we go about talking to Momma about him without hurting her feelings? I remember the awful fuss she put up about Daddy, and I don’t want to go through that again.

A: Uh ... just out of curiosity, where is your late father?


Q: He’s out on a shelf in the garage. In a coffee can. She wouldn’t never of had him stuffed. She said he wouldn’t go with none of her living room furniture. So what should we do about Earl?

A: Some day while your mother is out shopping for mothballs, the mannerly thing to do would be to sneak into the house and liberate Earl. Take him to the county dump, where he can roam free. I’m sure he’ll enjoy scaring the rats.


Please send your questions to the Mannerly Man Campus in Gaylesville, Alabama. No street address is required.