Greetings, friends, it’s Friday!
Time to make stories for Monday!

How was your Christmas?  Hopefully full of laughter, heart and joy.
Mine sure was.

Without further ado –

PRESENTING 5 Friday.

BEGINNING WITH:

JERRY CLOWER’S STORY
“Little Dogs and Big Dogs”
Jerry Clower never fails to both amuse and bring heartfelt warmth in his writings.

MADE YA SMILE COMICS
By some of the best syndicated cartoonist in the business.

QUICK QUESTION
Have I ever built a snowman?
Yes.  Many.
It was just something we naturally did (as kids in our neighborhoods) growing up in Montana when snow was everywhere for months at a time.  ha
Winter recreation in the front yard!
A group of kids on a fun afternoon task.
And then there were votes, after rolling the three — big snow balls and stacking them one on top of the other — figuring out how we’d decorate/dress “it” to give it its unique personality.  ha
Wish I had pics other than the ones in my memory bank.
Would I want to build a snowman again?
Absolutely!

THE LEAST SUCCESSFUL OIL DRILLERS
I know not if the story is true — but matters not.
It’s still a fun tale.

RECIPE (!)
WHITE BEAN AND SAUSAGE SOUP
Get ready to send a kiss to the sky after one spoonful of this delicious soup.

THANKS ALL
For being here + sharing + engaging.
We are grateful.

Ready?
Set.
Here we go.

LITTLE DOGS AND BIG DOGS
BY JERRY CLOWER

I was raised by a pack of hounds.  Time does not permit for me to name off each one of them and tell a little about each one of them, but I want you to know that everybody referred to that pack of dogs over there at them Clowers’ house.  Why, I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them pack of dogs, because they put meat on the table.

Old Brummy – huge, great big, black and tan hound — had a deep voice.

When he barked, he just jarred the ground.

Little Red — fine little old dog.

Little Red never would fight but she’d always get the fight started.  Ain’t you seen them little dogs, that all they done was wake up them big dogs?

I’ve seen a “huge-mongous,” bad, vicious dog laying on the front porch asleep, and me come walking up the walk, and that big old bad dog don’t even know I’m there.  But a dog big up as your fist will jump up and go yelling and hollering and run out there to you scared to do anything.  But that little old bitty squealing dog wakes up that old bad dog and he comes and bites your leg.

Old Jennie was a possum dog.

I mean she didn’t have no teeth, and in later years I’ve seen her gum a possum to death.  Yes, gum him to death!  And Old Tory and Old Big Red.

The awfullest catastrophic dog fight I ever encountered I saw one day with that pack of hounds.  I fed them some boiled okra – good old slick, slimy, boiled okra.  If you boil that okra, it’ll slick up and rope up good now.  I eat so much boiled okra when I was a boy I never could keep my socks up.

One day me and my brother, Sonny, come in.  We’d been plowing that morning and we come in for dinner.

Mama had done cooked up a big pot of that boiled okra.

We sat and eat a bait of it.

When we got ready to go back to the field, Mama said, “Boys, them dogs ain’t been fed.  We don’t have nothing here for them but what’s left in that bowl of okra.  Jerry, take the rest of that bowl of okra and go out there and dump it in the dog pan.”

I picked it up and I walked real careful — I didn’t want it to slime over on my hands.  I went out there in the back yard and I dumped it in the dog pan.

Ole Brummy — great big, thunder-barking Brummy just — slurp! — sucked it down.  It went so fast he thought the other dog got it, and he jumped on him.

That’s the truth!  Them dogs fought the rest of the evening, and didn’t but one dog know what they was fighting about.

~ Jerry Clower, copyright 1992
STORIES FROM HOME
reprinted with permission University Press Mississippi