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I can’t write this column correctly because I can’t give my proof.

The Source

I can’t write this column correctly because I can’t give my proof. A proper column, whether a rabid diatribe or a humorous fluff piece should have at least a hint of proof, either factual or anecdotal. I can’t provide either because this is a nice little newspaper and you are probably a nice person. I hope you are. I’m talking about profanity. Unlike George Carlin when he talked about the Seven Words You Can’t Say then proceeded to tell us what they were, it’s difficult to discuss profanity without being…well…profane. I’m not talking about common, everyday profanity…the kind you now hear even in prime time, in some commercials, and on pre-school playgrounds. I’m thinking instead of profound profanity. Prosaic profanity. Blasphemy as an art form. You just don’t hear really good cussing any longer. Used to be you had to reach a certain age and stature to be allowed to juggle genuine cussing. Nowadays anybody can use these words and as a result they’ve lost the really profound position they once held. The art has gone out of it. My Grandpa Homer used to run a feed store. Wayne Feeds of Perry. I never saw him sell that much feed but the real asset of the shop was to provide a place for the town loafers to congregate each morning and afternoon. The place had a genuine and hard-working pot-bellied stove surrounded by an eclectic assortment of old sofas, easy chairs, straight-backs, and rockers. Mayberry on steroids. Grandpa had a glassed counter containing such delicacies as out-of-date Snickers bars, ancient Juicy Fruit gum, pipe cleaners, pocketknives and those awful tasting Sen-Sen’s. They still make them. Nobody buys them, but they still make them. Behind the counter and ancient cash register was the iconic picture of General George Custer making his last stand against Sitting Bull. Lots of blood and dead horses, just the thing to appeal to a 10-year-old’s sense of adventure. But the real adventure…the real education occurred every afternoon when I’d visit Grandpa’s feed store after school just as the loafers had taken their accustomed seats. Some churches today joke about their unmentioned but definitely assigned seating. Grandpa’s store had just such a pecking order. When you died everyone moved a seat closer to the fire. And you should have heard those old guys cuss. It was spectacular! Okay, it was profane and sinful and no doubt harmful to my early growth patterns, but damn…it was beautiful! A fellow whom I’ll call Floyd (since that was his name) could string profanities together like a filament of delicate lace, each vulgarity carefully chosen and practiced by years of cussing. They were nearly all adjectives designed to desecrate a particular noun and I think this may have been why I eventually became an English teacher. Floyd knew his sentence construction. His language was vivid! You paid attention! Floyd could put profanities together that had never before been joined and the result rivaled Picasso’s combing various color mediums in his Spanish studio. Cecil could spew forth a colorful barrage of swear words without taking so much as a single breath. Where Floyd belonged to the more thoughtfully profane school, Cecil was a speed-cusser. Of course no one ever understood Cecil completely since one half of his mouth had been grafted over by a not-particularly-skilled plastic surgeon to cover a cancer scar, but I think that the smaller opening acted like the pinched end of a garden hose that increases the velocity of the flow. Russell made up in volume what he lacked in imagination. A tall man who I think was born and died in the same pair of coveralls, he’d lean against the pile of kindling and absolutely shake the walls with his abominations. Russell was the first real orator I ever knew, although his subject matter usually involved comparisons to various parts of farm animals. To my family’s credit I guess, Grandpa Homer was the least proficient of the cussers. His function as host was to chuckle appreciatively at the oratory of the others. I really wish I could have provided the verbatim proof that this column needs…the actual flights of profane prose that used to be a part of our everyday fabric. Well, maybe I don’t. The old boys of the feed store are gone and like a family relic with too many good memories, I hate to see it dragged out again.