Papa Roy Rhea Tribute
Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 6:50 pmPer the website, you already know Papa Roy passed away from this world and into heaven on April 25, 2009.
Here is the original post regarding his passing on the website:
http://muleycomix.blogspot.com/2009/04/ ... -2009.html
Here is the new website post:
And now...I'd like to begin with something I got from a contact, Ms. Sandy:
Kevin, first of all, so sorry about your Granddad. I'm envious you got to have one, both of mine died before I was born. No need to apologize and hope you're okay. I'll share a story my Grandmother told me when I was about 4 years old. I was staying with her in Bolivar, TN and she lived on the main highway in town. A truck hit a dog and killed it and it was my first experience with knowing what death means. I crawled into her lap and cried I didn't want her or my parents to ever die. She said that all those we love and lose become part of our shadow so that they are always with us. To this day whenever I catch a glimpse of my shadow I know that she and my Dad and my best friend I lost in 95 are there and it makes me smile. Hope someday your shadow makes you smile too.
I can think back to many years’ worth of learning and fun with Papa Roy and Granny Ethel. I was never scolded or punished by them. I always did everything I could hoping to be their #1 (as did several other grandkids). To have Papa Roy and Granny Ethel be pleased was a great gift, indeed.
Whenever I could, I wanted to be at their house. Not just because the food was the best ever but because I loved them and they let me be loved, too. I knew that when I was with Papa Roy and Granny Ethel, the world was okay after all.
One thing that folks don’t know about me is that when I wake up in the mornings as soon as my brain begins working and my eyes open, the first thoughts are of dread and anxiety for the day. I fear everything that the day has in store for me. At night, after the day has gone by and I’m laying there attempting to go to sleep (a hard task for me as I hate sleep), I think back on the day and realize that the day wasn’t so bad after all. But, like anyone, I do have bad days and on those bad days I could call Papa Roy and Granny Ethel and ask either of them if I would be okay. Until Granny couldn’t get on the phone anymore she would say I would be fine; until the week before he died Papa Roy would tell me, “Sure, son, you’re going to be okay.” And I would be.
I may remember some more later, but for now I’m sharing a few memories about Papa Roy, many which include Granny Ethel, below. I hope they’re fun and funny.
==============
I can recall being a kid and Papa and Granny watching The Muppet Show with me on TV, pretty amazed at how the characters worked on the show. All through my life they would seem amazed that I could take this limp piece of fur and felt and foam and make it move and talk. I would bring my projects (for puppetry, cartooning or painting) to Papa’s house and sit as close to him as possible to let him watch me work. His TV would be on, but he would watch me do my work and ask me questions, interested in what I was doing. This always made me feel good that someone cared to pay attention to me.
Granny and I were in the living room. I was playing on the floor, she was watching TV. She says, “Go check on your Papa.” I said, “Okay,” so I got up and looked out the door toward the barn and didn’t see him, then I looked out the window of the house to the gas tank and saw him leaning against it, he was doing something but I wasn’t sure what it was. I’d see him raise his hand and then drop back down, and there was something in his hand. “It looks like he’s beating at something, Granny,” I said. She perked up, “Well, go see what it is.” So, I went outside and walked toward the tank. “Whatcha doin’, Papa?” He looked at me, holding about a 2-feet long piece of rubber hose that at the ‘hitting’ end had the metal piece for the faucet still on it. Then, throwing that down, he reached over and got a little 3 pronged pitch fork, stabbed down with it, and raised about a 3-feet long snake in the air. He’d always told me, “The only good snake is a dead snake!” And, apparently, he found a way to make this snake “good.” I, of course, freaked out and ran back in the house, he carried it to my Uncle Don’s to show them his kill.
I remember some of the things he said as I grew up, and only one of them I use myself:
When people would come by to visit, he’d step to the door and greet them as they opened the car doors, “Get out, and come in!”
When he’d pretend to be angry at someone, he would say, “I’m gonna cloud up and rain all over you!”
I remember one morning we were sitting down to breakfast, and Papa Roy had made me some hot chocolate. I reached for it and he said, “Be careful, son, it’s hot!” I began to slurp it back anyway, and then it exploded from my face as I immediately spit it across the table. “I said it was hot.”
Another morning, Papa and I were already at the table and, although she wouldn’t really cuss, Granny did something in the kitchen and we heard her say, “Sh’t!” “In the kitchen?!” Papa Roy asked, stopping eating. I cracked up.
Saturday mornings, Papa would eat breakfast and then go outside to work and I would control the TV. Granny would clean up the dishes and then come watch cartoons with me. Fat Albert would come on and I wanted to watch him so bad, but Memphis Wrestling (we call “rasslin’”) came on at the same time and Granny would send me out to get Papa. Once, I was going to pretend to not be able to find him to watch Fat Albert, but as I stepped outside I saw him coming to the house from the barn, went back in the house and said, “Here he comes.” I don’t know why I didn’t want to watch a bunch of grown, half-naked sweaty men bumping into each other and slinging each other on the ground (maybe that’s why I didn’t want to watch?), but what I did enjoy was watching Papa and Granny. They took it so seriously--loved the good guys, hated the bad guys, and both would chew on their gum like crazy! Their jaws would gum-gum-gum so fast it was amazing, the more the excitement the faster the chew. Then, when someone would be raised in the air to be pile-drived or thrown on their back, the chewing would stop in anticipation and then “BAM!” as the wrestler hit the mat, and the chewing would begin again. Gum-gum-gum, “ding ding” the match was over, and the commentators would say their bit. During commercials, Papa and Granny would discuss the match, “What he should’a done was gone up behind him and grabbed him by his neck and sleeper holded him.” Granny would say, “I can’t believe they don’t get hurt more, bless their hearts,” and then she’d get right back into the match when they came back on.
Papa Roy and I were headed to the grocery store and Granny Ethel says, “And don’t forget to get donuts.” Papa turned around, playing as usual, “Door knobs?” “Do-nuts,” she said, “do-nuts!”
Papa’s jokes could irritate Granny some, as she once said to me after he went outside, waving her fist in the air, “Oh, that green man makes me want to mash his mouth!” He did have hi-jinks and jokes on Granny pretty often.
Papa was my very best friend. We would joke, tease, and play all the time. We were in the kitchen and were goofing off (one of many times) while Granny was trying to get the bread and food together to make sandwiches. To be sure the sandwich bread was still good, she had two slices, one on either side of her nose. Well, Papa and I got a little louder and a little louder and she yelled, “Well, quiet! I’m trying to smell the bread!” She turned around, realizing what she’d said and began laughing. Papa and I began laughing, too, and went in the dining room to continue our foolishness.
During one family get together, one of the cooks had a pie pan out with flour in it preparing to put something in it to be breaded for frying. I had already seen it and was about to leave when Papa walked up. “What’s this?” He asked. I looked at it and said, “Powdered sugar, have some.” “That ain’t powdered sugar, it’s flour.” I said, “No, it’s sugar for sure.” He looked at me, “Eat some, then.” I guess he forgot he taught me how to be a smarty, so I reached down and did a backwards pinch (fingers went into the flour together, then I spread them apart making it look like it’d been pinched) and then lifted the non-sugar (which didn’t exist in my fingers) to my mouth and pretended to eat some. Then, for good measure, I did it again. “Oh,” he said, getting a nice big pinch of the powdery flour from the pan and putting it in his mouth, making a face, then spitting it out, “This sugar tastes like biscuit mix.” He knew it was flour the whole time. IF I got this joke over on him, it would be the only one. Otherwise, he gave me a free point in our games.
Oh, and speaking of games: I let him win one game against me in checkers; he won all the rest!
Papa Roy knew that I was always studying the paranormal. He knew I believed in ghosts and, well anything supernatural he knew I wouldn’t discredit. One night, I was drawing on the floor and he says, “Son, I need to tell you something but don’t tell anybody.” “Okay,” I said, and here I go making a liar of myself to him. “I woke up one morning about 3 or 4 o’clock and sat in this chair looking out the window. Then, I seen a bunch of lights up in the sky flying around. Son, I think it might’ve been some of them MFO’s.” I was processing the words and asked, “MFOs? Oh, you mean UFOs?” He said, “Whatever they call them things aliens fly around in.”
Let me tell you the joke on Papa and Granny that, years later, became a joke on my cousin Debra:
Back when Granny wasn’t feeling too good and just before she got bed-ridden, she was forgetful. She would ask Papa Roy several times a day if he’d been to the mailbox and each time he’d get a little more irritated as he’d already answered the question. Finally, he turned around in his chair and snapped at her, “Yes, Ethel, yes! I have been to the mail box. You know it. I said we didn’t get nothing and I have been!” I felt a little sorry for her and looked up, saying, “You can forget how often you ask if he’s been to the mailbox, but if you ever look at me and say ‘who are you?’ I’m gonna cryyyyyy!” They both laughed, and from then on when we’d see each other we’d do our greetings, hugs, and say, “Who are you?”
Well, Papa Roy got really sick and was sitting in his chair in the living room. I think it was after he’d been in a terrible vehicle accident where a Barber’s Milk Truck (their attorneys really screwed the good country folk they hurt over) went plowing through a line of stopped cars. Papa had seen the truck coming in the rearview mirror and it was not going to stop. Just as it hit the first vehicle in the line, he cut his wheel to the right so that when the 3 cars behind him piled up against the back of his truck it made his truck move to the right and down the embankment on the side of the road. His stomach hit the steering wheel hard, and that’s why I think he was sick.
Anyway, my cousin Debra came over to see him and check on him and as she walked in the door he looks up and says, “Who are you?” Unaware of our joke, she ran to the kitchen and called my Aunt Janet, “You have to get down here! Papa’s so sick that he’s delirious. When I came in the door, he didn’t even know who I was!”
Debra used to live in a trailer at the bottom of the hill. One day, Papa and I were sitting on the front porch of his house and Debra’s daughter, Chasity, was walking up the hill. Papa yells down, “You got two calves behind ya.” Keep in mind: We’re in the country, so she looks behind her and then keeps walking up the hill. He gives her a few good seconds and says, “You still got two calves behind ya.” She looks again, stops, and stares up the hill at us. “Nu-uh!” She began walking again, “There’re two calves behind ya, look at ‘em.” She looked back, stopped with her hands on her hips, and looked up at us, then walked up to the front porch. “C’mere,” he told her, taking her arm and pointing at the back, lower part of her legs. “One calf, two calf. You got two calves behind ya.”
Papa Roy collected cans for a hobby to make a few extra dollars. Everyone I knew saved cans for him because we didn’t want him wandering off on the side roads to collect cans, falling down in a ditch and getting hurt. I wasn’t worried about people bothering him (he had his pistol in his pocket), but I was worried about snakes or weather or, like I said, him falling down in a ditch. I remember one time he was going across a bridge near his house and he slammed on his brakes, “Get down in there and get that bag of cans for me.” “Sir?!” How on earth would he know there were cans down there. Being who I am and who he is, I was glad to do whatever he asked of me. Sure enough, as I looked over the side of the bridge there were two bags of cans down there! So, I went down to get them but they were covered in maggots. Nearly vomiting I yelled up, “They’re covered in maggots.” “Okay, we’ll clean ‘em off!” I found a stick and poked it through the bags to carry them up the bank to the bridge. He was serious about collecting those cans! Once, he had waist-high ‘toe-sacks FULL of crushed cans, about 8 or 10 bags, in his shed. He was a hard worker, even when it came down to cans. One of my friends, Lin, shared the same sentiment as mine, “Every time I see overalls or an empty can I’ll think of Papa Roy.”
Papa Roy was well-known for his overalls. It was the heat of summer, at the Memphis BBQ Festival, and my Uncle Bobby had all of us on his pontoon and drove up the Mississippi River from President’s Island to the cobblestones, parked the boat, and we went into Tom Lee Park for some BBQ. We were all sweating wearing our T-shirts and shorts; but, Papa Roy had on his work shoes, socks, overalls, long-sleeve shirt (I never saw him in short sleeves except the t-shirt he wore to bed and wore under his long-sleeve shirt) and cap. Hardly any sweat came off him, and people would walk by and see him, “Look at him, he’s gotta be hot!” I would keep checking on him, “I’m fine son, this ain’t heat!”
And it wasn’t heat to him. He told me once about working in the pine thickets cutting down trees. There weren’t chain saws, but those two-man saws that you had to work up a rhythm with your co-worker to bring down the trees. He always knew when his co-worker passed out when he’d push in on the saw and it would bow up. The heat was that unbearable! You’re in the pine thickets, so no wind can blow through, the sun beats down on the trees and it becomes a bit of an oven in those trees. He’d work up his appetite in that heat, eating pork and beans and biscuits, and drinking some water that became heated in the jar it was packed in.
When he was 98 years old, Papa Roy (whose belly was quite round and still very tight such that he couldn’t get on the tractor, bend down to turn the key and crank it and then work) would open the shed doors, put the tractor in neutral, and push it out into the driveway. There, leaving it in neutral, he would turn the key, crank the tractor, climb up on it, and go do his work. One day, the gear somehow shifted and when he turned the key, the tractor came on, jutted forward and knocked him down, and came at him. He raised the back wheel over his head as it was about to run over him, and laid on the ground watching this massive machine roll down the hill where it crashed in the ditch. “Go on, dang ya!” he said to the tractor as it rolled down the hill. His injuries from this incident? Two small bruises on the arm he used to lift the tractor’s big wheel over him.
He began using his walking cane at 99 years old. He didn’t want to, everyone made him, so he did it.
At 100 years old, he got his driver’s license renewed. You’ve seen this mentioned on his episode of Mule on the Street.
There are so many memories, but as I type this I realize I’m on page 4 so I’ll stop for now and add more when I can.
Finally, we used to talk about death. Especially after Granny passed away in the early 90’s. He would tell me, “I dream about your Granny. I dream I see her on the top of a hill in a white dress and she’s waving at me to come there; but, I can’t see how to get up there.“ “Please don’t go,“ I asked him selfishly, asking him to please stick around as long as he could. He said, “I’ll do what I can, but that’s something you really can’t help.” I would look at him, “Papa, if you ever die I’ll kill you!” He would laugh at me, “How are you gonna do that?” “You know me,” I would say. “Yeah, I know you,” he replied, “if there’s a way, you’ll find it. Well, how about this: I’ll come back as an old gray mule!”
Of course, folks, I can’t kill him after he’s dead and I refuse to try; but, I’m on the look-out for an old gray mule with blue eyes--if you see him, tell Papa Roy I love him.
Here is the original post regarding his passing on the website:
http://muleycomix.blogspot.com/2009/04/ ... -2009.html
Here is the new website post:
And now...I'd like to begin with something I got from a contact, Ms. Sandy:
Kevin, first of all, so sorry about your Granddad. I'm envious you got to have one, both of mine died before I was born. No need to apologize and hope you're okay. I'll share a story my Grandmother told me when I was about 4 years old. I was staying with her in Bolivar, TN and she lived on the main highway in town. A truck hit a dog and killed it and it was my first experience with knowing what death means. I crawled into her lap and cried I didn't want her or my parents to ever die. She said that all those we love and lose become part of our shadow so that they are always with us. To this day whenever I catch a glimpse of my shadow I know that she and my Dad and my best friend I lost in 95 are there and it makes me smile. Hope someday your shadow makes you smile too.
I can think back to many years’ worth of learning and fun with Papa Roy and Granny Ethel. I was never scolded or punished by them. I always did everything I could hoping to be their #1 (as did several other grandkids). To have Papa Roy and Granny Ethel be pleased was a great gift, indeed.
Whenever I could, I wanted to be at their house. Not just because the food was the best ever but because I loved them and they let me be loved, too. I knew that when I was with Papa Roy and Granny Ethel, the world was okay after all.
One thing that folks don’t know about me is that when I wake up in the mornings as soon as my brain begins working and my eyes open, the first thoughts are of dread and anxiety for the day. I fear everything that the day has in store for me. At night, after the day has gone by and I’m laying there attempting to go to sleep (a hard task for me as I hate sleep), I think back on the day and realize that the day wasn’t so bad after all. But, like anyone, I do have bad days and on those bad days I could call Papa Roy and Granny Ethel and ask either of them if I would be okay. Until Granny couldn’t get on the phone anymore she would say I would be fine; until the week before he died Papa Roy would tell me, “Sure, son, you’re going to be okay.” And I would be.
I may remember some more later, but for now I’m sharing a few memories about Papa Roy, many which include Granny Ethel, below. I hope they’re fun and funny.
==============
I can recall being a kid and Papa and Granny watching The Muppet Show with me on TV, pretty amazed at how the characters worked on the show. All through my life they would seem amazed that I could take this limp piece of fur and felt and foam and make it move and talk. I would bring my projects (for puppetry, cartooning or painting) to Papa’s house and sit as close to him as possible to let him watch me work. His TV would be on, but he would watch me do my work and ask me questions, interested in what I was doing. This always made me feel good that someone cared to pay attention to me.
Granny and I were in the living room. I was playing on the floor, she was watching TV. She says, “Go check on your Papa.” I said, “Okay,” so I got up and looked out the door toward the barn and didn’t see him, then I looked out the window of the house to the gas tank and saw him leaning against it, he was doing something but I wasn’t sure what it was. I’d see him raise his hand and then drop back down, and there was something in his hand. “It looks like he’s beating at something, Granny,” I said. She perked up, “Well, go see what it is.” So, I went outside and walked toward the tank. “Whatcha doin’, Papa?” He looked at me, holding about a 2-feet long piece of rubber hose that at the ‘hitting’ end had the metal piece for the faucet still on it. Then, throwing that down, he reached over and got a little 3 pronged pitch fork, stabbed down with it, and raised about a 3-feet long snake in the air. He’d always told me, “The only good snake is a dead snake!” And, apparently, he found a way to make this snake “good.” I, of course, freaked out and ran back in the house, he carried it to my Uncle Don’s to show them his kill.
I remember some of the things he said as I grew up, and only one of them I use myself:
When people would come by to visit, he’d step to the door and greet them as they opened the car doors, “Get out, and come in!”
When he’d pretend to be angry at someone, he would say, “I’m gonna cloud up and rain all over you!”
I remember one morning we were sitting down to breakfast, and Papa Roy had made me some hot chocolate. I reached for it and he said, “Be careful, son, it’s hot!” I began to slurp it back anyway, and then it exploded from my face as I immediately spit it across the table. “I said it was hot.”
Another morning, Papa and I were already at the table and, although she wouldn’t really cuss, Granny did something in the kitchen and we heard her say, “Sh’t!” “In the kitchen?!” Papa Roy asked, stopping eating. I cracked up.
Saturday mornings, Papa would eat breakfast and then go outside to work and I would control the TV. Granny would clean up the dishes and then come watch cartoons with me. Fat Albert would come on and I wanted to watch him so bad, but Memphis Wrestling (we call “rasslin’”) came on at the same time and Granny would send me out to get Papa. Once, I was going to pretend to not be able to find him to watch Fat Albert, but as I stepped outside I saw him coming to the house from the barn, went back in the house and said, “Here he comes.” I don’t know why I didn’t want to watch a bunch of grown, half-naked sweaty men bumping into each other and slinging each other on the ground (maybe that’s why I didn’t want to watch?), but what I did enjoy was watching Papa and Granny. They took it so seriously--loved the good guys, hated the bad guys, and both would chew on their gum like crazy! Their jaws would gum-gum-gum so fast it was amazing, the more the excitement the faster the chew. Then, when someone would be raised in the air to be pile-drived or thrown on their back, the chewing would stop in anticipation and then “BAM!” as the wrestler hit the mat, and the chewing would begin again. Gum-gum-gum, “ding ding” the match was over, and the commentators would say their bit. During commercials, Papa and Granny would discuss the match, “What he should’a done was gone up behind him and grabbed him by his neck and sleeper holded him.” Granny would say, “I can’t believe they don’t get hurt more, bless their hearts,” and then she’d get right back into the match when they came back on.
Papa Roy and I were headed to the grocery store and Granny Ethel says, “And don’t forget to get donuts.” Papa turned around, playing as usual, “Door knobs?” “Do-nuts,” she said, “do-nuts!”
Papa’s jokes could irritate Granny some, as she once said to me after he went outside, waving her fist in the air, “Oh, that green man makes me want to mash his mouth!” He did have hi-jinks and jokes on Granny pretty often.
Papa was my very best friend. We would joke, tease, and play all the time. We were in the kitchen and were goofing off (one of many times) while Granny was trying to get the bread and food together to make sandwiches. To be sure the sandwich bread was still good, she had two slices, one on either side of her nose. Well, Papa and I got a little louder and a little louder and she yelled, “Well, quiet! I’m trying to smell the bread!” She turned around, realizing what she’d said and began laughing. Papa and I began laughing, too, and went in the dining room to continue our foolishness.
During one family get together, one of the cooks had a pie pan out with flour in it preparing to put something in it to be breaded for frying. I had already seen it and was about to leave when Papa walked up. “What’s this?” He asked. I looked at it and said, “Powdered sugar, have some.” “That ain’t powdered sugar, it’s flour.” I said, “No, it’s sugar for sure.” He looked at me, “Eat some, then.” I guess he forgot he taught me how to be a smarty, so I reached down and did a backwards pinch (fingers went into the flour together, then I spread them apart making it look like it’d been pinched) and then lifted the non-sugar (which didn’t exist in my fingers) to my mouth and pretended to eat some. Then, for good measure, I did it again. “Oh,” he said, getting a nice big pinch of the powdery flour from the pan and putting it in his mouth, making a face, then spitting it out, “This sugar tastes like biscuit mix.” He knew it was flour the whole time. IF I got this joke over on him, it would be the only one. Otherwise, he gave me a free point in our games.
Oh, and speaking of games: I let him win one game against me in checkers; he won all the rest!
Papa Roy knew that I was always studying the paranormal. He knew I believed in ghosts and, well anything supernatural he knew I wouldn’t discredit. One night, I was drawing on the floor and he says, “Son, I need to tell you something but don’t tell anybody.” “Okay,” I said, and here I go making a liar of myself to him. “I woke up one morning about 3 or 4 o’clock and sat in this chair looking out the window. Then, I seen a bunch of lights up in the sky flying around. Son, I think it might’ve been some of them MFO’s.” I was processing the words and asked, “MFOs? Oh, you mean UFOs?” He said, “Whatever they call them things aliens fly around in.”
Let me tell you the joke on Papa and Granny that, years later, became a joke on my cousin Debra:
Back when Granny wasn’t feeling too good and just before she got bed-ridden, she was forgetful. She would ask Papa Roy several times a day if he’d been to the mailbox and each time he’d get a little more irritated as he’d already answered the question. Finally, he turned around in his chair and snapped at her, “Yes, Ethel, yes! I have been to the mail box. You know it. I said we didn’t get nothing and I have been!” I felt a little sorry for her and looked up, saying, “You can forget how often you ask if he’s been to the mailbox, but if you ever look at me and say ‘who are you?’ I’m gonna cryyyyyy!” They both laughed, and from then on when we’d see each other we’d do our greetings, hugs, and say, “Who are you?”
Well, Papa Roy got really sick and was sitting in his chair in the living room. I think it was after he’d been in a terrible vehicle accident where a Barber’s Milk Truck (their attorneys really screwed the good country folk they hurt over) went plowing through a line of stopped cars. Papa had seen the truck coming in the rearview mirror and it was not going to stop. Just as it hit the first vehicle in the line, he cut his wheel to the right so that when the 3 cars behind him piled up against the back of his truck it made his truck move to the right and down the embankment on the side of the road. His stomach hit the steering wheel hard, and that’s why I think he was sick.
Anyway, my cousin Debra came over to see him and check on him and as she walked in the door he looks up and says, “Who are you?” Unaware of our joke, she ran to the kitchen and called my Aunt Janet, “You have to get down here! Papa’s so sick that he’s delirious. When I came in the door, he didn’t even know who I was!”
Debra used to live in a trailer at the bottom of the hill. One day, Papa and I were sitting on the front porch of his house and Debra’s daughter, Chasity, was walking up the hill. Papa yells down, “You got two calves behind ya.” Keep in mind: We’re in the country, so she looks behind her and then keeps walking up the hill. He gives her a few good seconds and says, “You still got two calves behind ya.” She looks again, stops, and stares up the hill at us. “Nu-uh!” She began walking again, “There’re two calves behind ya, look at ‘em.” She looked back, stopped with her hands on her hips, and looked up at us, then walked up to the front porch. “C’mere,” he told her, taking her arm and pointing at the back, lower part of her legs. “One calf, two calf. You got two calves behind ya.”
Papa Roy collected cans for a hobby to make a few extra dollars. Everyone I knew saved cans for him because we didn’t want him wandering off on the side roads to collect cans, falling down in a ditch and getting hurt. I wasn’t worried about people bothering him (he had his pistol in his pocket), but I was worried about snakes or weather or, like I said, him falling down in a ditch. I remember one time he was going across a bridge near his house and he slammed on his brakes, “Get down in there and get that bag of cans for me.” “Sir?!” How on earth would he know there were cans down there. Being who I am and who he is, I was glad to do whatever he asked of me. Sure enough, as I looked over the side of the bridge there were two bags of cans down there! So, I went down to get them but they were covered in maggots. Nearly vomiting I yelled up, “They’re covered in maggots.” “Okay, we’ll clean ‘em off!” I found a stick and poked it through the bags to carry them up the bank to the bridge. He was serious about collecting those cans! Once, he had waist-high ‘toe-sacks FULL of crushed cans, about 8 or 10 bags, in his shed. He was a hard worker, even when it came down to cans. One of my friends, Lin, shared the same sentiment as mine, “Every time I see overalls or an empty can I’ll think of Papa Roy.”
Papa Roy was well-known for his overalls. It was the heat of summer, at the Memphis BBQ Festival, and my Uncle Bobby had all of us on his pontoon and drove up the Mississippi River from President’s Island to the cobblestones, parked the boat, and we went into Tom Lee Park for some BBQ. We were all sweating wearing our T-shirts and shorts; but, Papa Roy had on his work shoes, socks, overalls, long-sleeve shirt (I never saw him in short sleeves except the t-shirt he wore to bed and wore under his long-sleeve shirt) and cap. Hardly any sweat came off him, and people would walk by and see him, “Look at him, he’s gotta be hot!” I would keep checking on him, “I’m fine son, this ain’t heat!”
And it wasn’t heat to him. He told me once about working in the pine thickets cutting down trees. There weren’t chain saws, but those two-man saws that you had to work up a rhythm with your co-worker to bring down the trees. He always knew when his co-worker passed out when he’d push in on the saw and it would bow up. The heat was that unbearable! You’re in the pine thickets, so no wind can blow through, the sun beats down on the trees and it becomes a bit of an oven in those trees. He’d work up his appetite in that heat, eating pork and beans and biscuits, and drinking some water that became heated in the jar it was packed in.
When he was 98 years old, Papa Roy (whose belly was quite round and still very tight such that he couldn’t get on the tractor, bend down to turn the key and crank it and then work) would open the shed doors, put the tractor in neutral, and push it out into the driveway. There, leaving it in neutral, he would turn the key, crank the tractor, climb up on it, and go do his work. One day, the gear somehow shifted and when he turned the key, the tractor came on, jutted forward and knocked him down, and came at him. He raised the back wheel over his head as it was about to run over him, and laid on the ground watching this massive machine roll down the hill where it crashed in the ditch. “Go on, dang ya!” he said to the tractor as it rolled down the hill. His injuries from this incident? Two small bruises on the arm he used to lift the tractor’s big wheel over him.
He began using his walking cane at 99 years old. He didn’t want to, everyone made him, so he did it.
At 100 years old, he got his driver’s license renewed. You’ve seen this mentioned on his episode of Mule on the Street.
There are so many memories, but as I type this I realize I’m on page 4 so I’ll stop for now and add more when I can.
Finally, we used to talk about death. Especially after Granny passed away in the early 90’s. He would tell me, “I dream about your Granny. I dream I see her on the top of a hill in a white dress and she’s waving at me to come there; but, I can’t see how to get up there.“ “Please don’t go,“ I asked him selfishly, asking him to please stick around as long as he could. He said, “I’ll do what I can, but that’s something you really can’t help.” I would look at him, “Papa, if you ever die I’ll kill you!” He would laugh at me, “How are you gonna do that?” “You know me,” I would say. “Yeah, I know you,” he replied, “if there’s a way, you’ll find it. Well, how about this: I’ll come back as an old gray mule!”
Of course, folks, I can’t kill him after he’s dead and I refuse to try; but, I’m on the look-out for an old gray mule with blue eyes--if you see him, tell Papa Roy I love him.