Road Apples by Tim Sanders
June 21, 2010
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The melodious, odious ode Bushrod Gentry Leibowitz loved karaoke, and frequented various karaoke bars in the greater Mobile area. Perhaps because of his middle name, which also happened to be his mother’s maiden name, he was an enthusiastic fan of Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit, “Ode to Billy Joe.” That song, he felt, was the quintessential American ballad, combining romance and pathos with a very intriguing sense of mystery. (He was also intrigued by the mysterious lost recipe for the cake left out in the rain by Richard Harris in “MacArthur Park,” if that tells you anything.) Shortly after the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, Bushrod was inspired to write the following: Ode to Sally Jo It was the third of June on the breezy shores of Mobile Bay, I was out shuckin’ oysters with my sister gettin’ in the way. So at dinner time we quit and headed back to the house to eat, And Mama hollered from the deck, “Wipe them nasty tarballs off your feet.” Then she said, “I got an email from your second cousin Midge, She said Sally Jo McAllister jumped off the Dauphin Island Bridge.” Papa said to Mama as he passed the gumbo ‘cross the table, “Sally she weren’t no Alfred Einstein, pass the crab cakes if you’re able. There’s oil gummin’ up the outboard and I don’t know where it’s comin’ from.” And Mama said “Irregardless there’s no need to call the poor girl dumb. I hear they’ll put a toll booth on that crowded bridge most any day. Maybe that’s why Sally Jo she took a header into Mobile Bay.” Sister said she recollected how Sally Jo and her and Nell, Said some bad words to Mama and she whupped ‘em all and made ‘em yell. And weren’t it a cryin’ shame how Sally Jo couldn’t never seem to keep a man, “And not to change the subject, but pass the cornbread when you can. I seen her at WalMart yesterday holding hands with Betty Lou.” And then Papa coughed and honked and got a gob of gumbo on his shoe. Mama said to me, “Boy, you pass this napkin to your Paw. The shrimp’s kinda oily but he’s got a piece stuck in his craw. And not to change the subject, but Reverent Struthers went on Facebook today Said his colitis was much better, praise the Lord, and by the way, He seen a boy with a mullet just like yours on Dauphin Island Bridge the other day, And him and Sally Jo threw a mysterious, unnamed object into Mobile Bay. Three months have come and gone since Sally Jo she jumped into the Bay They got her out and drained her, but she still spits up a quart of oil a day. Papa laughs and says he always knew that girl was crude and unrefined And now Mama swats imaginary flies, I think she’s lost her mind. And me, I spend my time pickin’ greasy oysters from the water’s edge, And throwin’ ‘em into that nasty oil slick off the Dauphin Island Bridge. Bushrod finished his masterpiece in two weeks, and claimed it would have been done in half the time if he’d only come up with something other than “moisture” to rhyme with “oyster.” He had a day job at a full service Exxon station, so when he performed his song at various karaoke bars, he always made a point of offering a case of 10-W-30 Pennzoil, a free lube job and tire rotation to anyone who could correctly identify the “mysterious, unnamed object” thrown into Mobile Bay. It was that mysterious object which he felt was his key to karaoke immortality. But the mystery generated very little interest. One bar patron did opine that it was a cardboard box full of old “Obama: Hope and Change” bumper stickers, and another felt it had to be a CD containing incontrovertible proof that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were personally responsible for the Horizon oil rig explosion, Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the Twin Towers in Manhattan, and the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. There were four or five votes for “that BP executive guy’s favorite bowler hat, with his head inside,” and of course the usual drunken references to “a load of horsefeathers,” “a barf bag full of bad scallops,” and more than a few suggestions that if there were any justice in this world and a God in Heaven, the mysterious object would have been a karaoke machine. But there were no winners. One evening at Aunt Lydia’s House of Karaoke and Steamed Clams, a mob of irate octogenarians removed Bushrod and his air guitar from the stage halfway through the second stanza of his masterpiece. They deposited him unceremoniously in the parking lot, where he was found several hours later lying on his back, his torso crisscrossed with power scooter tracks. He died the following morning, and unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the identity of the “mysterious, unnamed object” tossed so casually off the Dauphin Island Bridge died with him. [UPDATE: Mobile authorities ruled the Bushrod Gentry Leibowitz death “justifiable homicide,” and no charges were filed.] |