The Bogeyman

You know the old guy who hates kids and never returns the balls that land in his yard? Dennis the Menace had Mr. Wilson. My cousins and I had Old Joe.

A mere cinder block wall separated his yard from my grandparents’, yet it might as well have been the Berlin Wall. He rarely exchanged a word with any of us over the decades. Well, no kind word. Sometimes when the phone rang, Old Joe croaked, “Keep it down over there” before hanging up.

The kindness Old Joe withheld from humanity, he lavished on his property. His yard was a paradise of bounty—fruit trees, vegetable vines and the most gorgeous flower beds. We stood on each other’s shoulders to get a glimpse. He blasted our faces with water from his garden hose.

His animosity was rooted in a narrow driveway adjacent to my grandparents’ property. It led to his back yard. He did not own a car. No one ever visited him. But he defended that measly patch of grass with the ferocity of Davy Crockett defending the Alamo.

When Nona’s roses bloomed on the “driveway” side of the fence, Old Joe beheaded them and tossed the errant pink blossoms onto her side. If so much as an inch of a parked car’s bumper threatened encroachment, Old Joe called a cab to pick him up at his front door and deliver him to his back door just so the cab driver could ask that the offending vehicle be moved. I felt sorry for those long-suffering drivers. One guy had to wait while Old Joe summoned a locksmith to cut off the driveway gate’s lock. It had rusted shut.

Old Joe was a bachelor (imagine that). After my grandparents passed away, my aunt moved into their house. We joked that she and Old Joe might make a love connection. As we shrieked with laughter, the phone rang and a familiar voice snarled, “You got nose trouble over there?” In reply, my aunt hoisted a pair of lacy red underpants onto the clothesline, clearly visible across the fence line. And so the battle waged on.

I last saw Old Joe 30 years ago. I can still see his stooped, and by now frail, figure dragging a cast net in one hand, a croaker sack in the other down the pier at the Broadwater Marina. My mother and aunt, letting bygones be bygones, bade him a pleasant good morning as they cast their crab nets. Old Joe paused, nodded curtly and grunted. He might have said good morning. Or maybe go to hell. Whatever. He got into the ubiquitous yellow cab and was gone.

I hadn’t thought about Old Joe in years He had no friends, no family, no sweetheart. I wonder if it was hard for him sitting down to his solitary meals all those years and hearing our merriment right over the wall he built to keep the world out. Maybe those cantankerous exchanges were his way of joining in the fun.

So, Joe, you old cuss, wherever you wound up in the afterlife, for it’s worth, someone thought about you today. And even smiled at the memory. But , I’m still scared of you. You’d probably like that.

BILOXI BACON

On the rare occasion when you saw Old Joe, he was usually going out to cast for mullet. Mullet aka “Biloxi Bacon” are the fish you often see jumping out of the water around the Mississippi Sound. They travel in schools and are caught with a cast net rather than a fishing line. Personally, I have never particularly cared for this fish so I don’t cook it. Its flesh is just a little too oily for my taste. However, those oils make it an excellent candidate for frying and for smoking, like bacon, hence its nickname.


However, if someone were to deliver a mess of mullet to my door, I’d probably cook it using this recipe from Emeril Lagasse. It sure sounds good.