Kids will groan when you tell a story, complaining that they've heard it a hundred times. Then, one day, unaccountably, they'll ask you to tell it again. Go figure.
Here’s more about Jack’s Nest, a bar near
Farmville, Virginia, which I frequented while teaching at Hampden-Sydney
College, fourth oldest college in the United States, and at that time (1980-81)
still an all-male institution of about 800 students.
On one occasion, Jack announced that a corn-eating
contest would be held at the Nest. This
was deeply interesting to me, because I love corn on the cob. I entered, along with 8 or 9 local guys.
On the big night, all of the contestants
sat facing one another on opposite sides of a couple of tables that had been
set up end-to-end, and the corn was brought in and dumped onto the middle of
the table in a huge, steaming stack. As
I began to butter, salt, and pepper an ear of corn, a bell rang, and all the other guys tore
into the pile of cobs and began gnawing off the piping hot kernels like a pack
of vicious dogs.
Assuming that dogs eat corn on the
cob. I think that our dogs would.
In any case, it was incredible how fast those
guys could reduce an ear to a smoldering husk, but the process was clearly
painful, even with a good measure of alcoholic preparation.
Before too long, I may have begun to
understand that the goal was to eat as much corn as possible within a given
time limit. But in my heart I was still
in it for the long haul: greatest ultimate consumption. So, having absorbed the lesson of the hare
and the tortoise, I calmly continued to eat my first ear.
As I began to butter and season my second ear
of corn, I began to appreciate the point of the contest more fully. Now, you might think I would say to myself,
“Oh, gosh, I’ve misunderstood. I’d
better join in the fun and do as the others.”
But I have found that, in life, one must be
true to one’s inner core of values, and I quietly reasoned to myself,
“Wow. This is a great opportunity to eat
a lot of free corn on the cob.” Loyal to
my authentic self, I continued to munch at a leisurely pace.
Unfortunately, the crowd which had tightly
gathered around the table began to notice that, unlike the other competitors, I
wasn’t trying to maximize speedy intake by burning off the roof of my mouth. Incredibly, to them, and also unacceptably, I
was simply eating some corn.
They started to turn on me with a scattering
of gibes and curses—pretty common in conversation at some barrooms—but these criticisms
gradually increased in pace and volume, until at last I felt that more drunks
were shouting at me than were urging on the other competitors. In time, one or two guys in the crowd began
to scream over my shoulders, “Eat corn, you fag!”
Not my greatest moment, perhaps, but not
theirs either, I think.
When the allotted time for the contest had
passed, and everyone had moved over to the bar for celebratory, consoling, or
medicinally cold bottles of Old Milwaukee, I sat alone at the table, finishing
off my fourth or fifth ear of corn.
Sic transit gloria.
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During one month, the Nest buzzed with
anticipation about the up-coming Four County Fair, which I was told was a big
deal, and I should be sure to go.
Especially, I was told with smiles and knowing nods, I should check out
“the hoochie-coochie girls.”
How quaint, I thought. These simple yet somehow engaging yokels.
Naturally, I did in fact go to the Four
County Fair, taking along a cheap camera which I hung on a cord around my neck,
so I could send photos to my stylish friends in the world’s most elegant
cosmopolitan urban centers. For example,
Wichita, Kansas.
Once at the fairgrounds, I meandered
casually among the various amusements—mainly ring-toss and coin-throw games
that you might find at the average PTA fund-raiser. I took lots of pictures of these manifestations
of rustic southern pop culture, and especially of the primitive, primary-colors
artwork festooning the premises.
Eventually I worked my way to the back end
of the fairgrounds, where I found a big tent with a banner announcing
“Hoochie-Coochie Girls.” I had thought that
the gang at Jack’s Nest had been kidding me, but there it was. So I paid and went in, much as an anthropologist
might decide to dwell among a newly discovered Amazonian tribe in order to
document its primitive ways.
Inside, a very large group of men, many in
bib overalls, were standing in front of the stage. Before long, recorded music started up, and
four or five women climbed onstage and began to gyrate to the music in unexpected
yet complicated and interesting ways. Pretty
soon, they were doing so nude.
Not burlesque house “nude.” Not Sally Rand Fan Dance with pasties and
g-string and artful feathers nude. Nude
nude. Right then and there, a couple of
miles outside of Farmville, Virginia, in 1980—years before coeds going wild at
wet T-shirt contests on DVDs, before show-us-your-tits-for-a-string-of-beads,
before instant porn on your iPhone, before teenagers parading around malls in
thongs—young women were totally naked and gyrating in explicit representations
of sexual congress at the Four County Fair.
It was like going to a movie house to see “Meet Me in St. Louis” and
they show “Debby Does Dallas.”
Eventually, some of the dancers invited
physical participation by a couple of members of the audience. I choose my words carefully.
At the end of the show, I think it accurate
to say “dazed and confused,” I left the hoochie-coochie tent—and within four
steps found myself face to face with three of my Hampden-Sydney College students. Heads nodding, we said hello as we passed one
another.
The next morning, when I walked into my
8:00 o’clock class, I was stunned to encounter a roomful of fully awake and widely
grinning late-adolescent schoolboys. Soon,
one of them broke the silence by politely asking, “Get any good pictures,
Doctor Broadhead?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Another of the barmaids at Jack’s Nest was
a chatty young woman in her mid-to-late 20s. In contrast with Pernell’s
sister-in-law, she was very, very white—freckled, but very pale. I
believe the word “blowsy” was coined on her behalf. I guess I probably mean “blouse-y,” in the
sense of zaftig.
In any case, she was very pleasant, and she
and her boyfriend once had me to an early dinner and cards at his dairy farm so
I could see how such an operation worked in south-central Virginia. I think that guy was so strong that he didn’t
need gates in his fences. To get a cow
into another pasture, he’d just pick her up and toss her. Nice folks.
Back at the Nest one afternoon, as I
started to leave while she was tending bar, I said with what I thought was a comical
melodramatic sigh, “Well, I guess I’ll go try to pull together the tattered
shreds of my life.”
“Oh,” she said without a trace of guile,
“Doin’ your laundry?”
