Uncle Muddy had just finished telling us a story about him and some ignoramus kids who hit his pickup with a shopping cart the other day at the grocery store. So he played a trick on them like their car was messed up and pretended to fix it. Only he let them mess it up and they thought he helped them. He just got through saying he had another one, so I will let him continue.

“Y’all think fooling with a broken grocery cart slamming into the side of my old pickup is tough,” Uncle Muddy said, his voice dropping an octave as he got a fresh beer and set the empty can down on the table. The joking grin he had a minute ago was completely gone.

“Let me tell you about real spine. Let me tell you about my daddy, your great grandfather Big Daddy.”

Me and Shady stopped fiddling with the Uno cards. When Muddy got that look in his eye, you listened. Even Double Mamaw went quiet, her expression softening into something like fierce pride.

“It was the dead of winter back in the early seventies,” Muddy said, looking straight into the shadows of the room. “Hardships was thick, thicker than usual. Money was tighter than a rusted bolt, and the power company was really threatening to pull the plug on the whole house. Now, another feller might would have sat in the dark and shivered. Not Big Daddy. He walked right outside into the freezing air, cut the company seal clean off, and jammed that electric meter right back in place.”

Shady gasped a little. “He stole the lights, wow?!” “Yep son that is exactly what he done.”

“He did what he had to do to keep his babies warm, us that is mother and Charlene and me,” Muddy spoke gravely, dead serious. “He did it a time or two. But his buddy Dan—the local power lineman who drove the big service truck—found out. Dan came by and told him he was gonna have to isolate the power right up at the pole, if’n he didn’t quit cutting that seal. Big Daddy looked that power man dead in the eye and said, ‘Dan, I just started a new job. I don’t get a check till next Friday. Give me a week, if you would for a friend.’ But Dan said his hands were tied. He said he was gonna take that long fiberglass hot-stick and pull the fuse right off the cross arm.”

Muddy leaned forward, his hands gripping the arms of his chair.

“Big Daddy didn’t beg. He just gave his word, and his word was bond and law. He told Dan, ‘Don’t let me catch you up on that pole, and don’t you dare touch that fuse, or I will shoot you as soon as you touch the fuse on that cross arm, so help me God.’

Well, Dan didn’t listen. A little later, that big utility truck pulls up to the ditch. Dan and another service tech get out, and they start extending that long fiberglass yellow hot stick up toward the wires, aiming to cut it off to where Big Daddy couldn’t get to it.

Right then, the front door of the house flies open. Out steps Big Daddy. He didn’t say a word at first. He just raised a loaded 12-gauge pump shotgun, racked the slide—CHCK-CHCK—and let that steel sound do the talking. He had it pointed right at Dan and that young assistant that was with him. The assistant froze like he had seen the devil himself and Dan cleared his throat all nervous like.

He looked up at Dan and said, ‘Put the blankety blank pole back on the truck and get the h— out of here.’”

The porch was dead silent. Even the crickets seemed to have stopped.

“Dan looked shocked,” Muddy continued, a faint, respectful smile touching his lips. “He tried to half-grin it off. He said, ‘Brother man, you ain’t gonna shoot me, are you?’ And Big Daddy told him, in a tone as deadly as ice and fire, ‘If you cut that power off at the pole, I will blow you away.’

He was a Vietnam war vet, boys. He’d seen the worst this world had to offer, and he feared nothing. Dan looked at that barrel, looked at Big Daddy’s eyes, and he knew. He put the pole back on the truck and drove away. Nobody called the law. Nobody came back. And when next Friday rolled around? Big Daddy marched proudly right into that dang office and paid every single dime he owed, catch-up and all. Because he didn’t lie, and he didn’t play.”

Uncle Muddy picked his beer back up, his hand steady as a rock.

“So when you see these young’uns today crying about this or that or the other, you remember what real men were made of. Men who stood their ground for their family.”

Double Mamaw wiped a stray tear from her eye, nodding slowly. “That was him,” she whispered. “That was exactly him.”

Shady asked Uncle Muddy, “Do you think our granddaddy would have actually kilt that man Uncle Muddy?”

Uncle Muddy replied, “Son I am certain my daddy would have shot that man stone cold graveyard dead and never gave it a second thought.”

Shady looked alarmed, and Double Mamaw just nodded her head in agreement, with a tear in her eye. “Yeah he shore loved us and them kids, yessir he shore did.” Her voice trailed off with a slight mumble, as if she was remembering other times and places, and other things Big Daddy did that made her love him.

Love of family will make a feller do some strange things, it shore will.