Classic!! Still waiting for more.

Entertainment is what I call it...Entertainment!

I just read this entire thread for the first time, and all I can say is

It's amazing how this 2 year old story has yet to reach the end, but dammit I still want to read more! B.M., please, carry on...

I'm so intrigued by the history of the mudmotor.

Ok so where were we?

hell I don't know but keep going....

I can only say that you Sir BM, are the best writer I have ever read and I have stayed riveted to your story gasping for more like my air tank just ran out. If you feel like adding more, I would very much appreciate reading it. This is off the top dude.

Curl

bump....

I was wondering about Aintry the other day

Im wondering how the asian short tail with reverse fits into this.........

Lol

I read enough while getting my doctorate in petroleum geology (especially paleo class) that I vowed to cut reading to a minimum of "only having too", or "something interesting" or "positive only" content. Media text has ruined most topics and other folks try to post negative all the time. The stuff BM places here is enjoyment.

Curl

I was just messin with you Curtail

So Mmayes had won a trip to the Bahamas from one of them scratch off things that car dealerships put in the newspaper. He asked me if I wanted to go and even though I didn't want to leave my dog Tibby at the house alone for fear that she might eat my rooster I decided I would because I had heard that they had good beer and pretty beaches down that way.
It wasn't a bad flight from Ft Lauderdale and when we landed on the crushed shell strip the air was warm and wet....you could feel the tropics in every breath. Cudgee our host met us in an old lincoln town car and ferried us out to the fish camp where we'd be stayin for the next few days of relaxation. It was a neat place right out on a bay with pretty water a good breeze. Cudgee fetched us some warm beer and we sat in a grass hut and watched the fishin boats come in. After several beers we eased up to the main house for supper and they had two things on the menu...fried conch and fried grouper....you could get the plate or sandwich with either. I had the grouper as I would for the rest of my trip because some advice I had got by an old navy man when I was doing fleet duty as a marine, " never trust the conch in a strange place...thats what my mamma always said when I asked about my daddy". I still laugh thinkin about that old toothless sailer smokin a pipe and smackin his lips.
We rolled out the next day and had grits and mango juice when Cudgee walked up and asked us if we wanted to go " feeeeshin Mon". It was kind of weird hearin him talk because of the clean english that he spoke even with his weird accent. He was black....very black and his white teeth shone like piano keys when I asked what kind of fishin he was talkin about and he said," DE BOANS Mon we goin after da boans.....an you aw gonna luv it". So this is how me and Mmayes got turned on to our lifelong addiction to fishin for the bonefish..................since that day on we have been consumed with two things besides gamblin and business.....them two things are mudmotors and casting to the bones...............................................................................................................

I'm addicted....

It's nice to put my eyes on the literature of B.M. Barrelcooker once more. It's like seeing a person that once was a dear friend from years before in a walmart. At first theres the awkwardness of making small talk to feel out if they are still the same person they used to be. But it's a warm feeling when hours later your still in the store reminising on the adolescent years and the hell yall caused the parents. It leaves a satisfaction deep inside now knowing that your wayward friend still keeps the memories of a youth yall shared together. On the the way home from the store you sit a little taller in the seat and ride in silence with the memories going through your mind as if they were on a movie reel. Then as you lay down to rest that night when a smirk comes across your face, knowing time is never on your side but the stories of ones youth can go on for ages.
B.M. its nice to keep up on the story so please continue to drop by every once in awhile to touch base with the updates of the story we have all grown to enjoy.

Aintry has dueling banjos and, now, literarians.

Greatness !!!!!!

.. This is no shit, Last week me and Mmayes was in Aruba. I was working on a deal. The Petro-China guys have made a real serious offer on the Lago refinery that is held by Valero . This is a BIG deal for any of you that know the oil industry . I have had quite a bit of dealings with the chineese and so some friends of mine invited me along to negotiate and make small talk with the execs from that side of the world. Mostly they wanted to talk about American basketball(which I know nothing about) and the odds on different casino games, I gave them some pointers and sat thru several nights of three-card poker stomp downs by the house. Mmayes slipped off and did some bonefishing and apparently did Pretty good....unless he is lying.

We got together one night in an oil executives suite at the Marriott and over a bottle of dry gin and two servings of peacan pie and vanilla ice cream re-told the story about the no-count scumbag attorney that G-man had hired to try to sue us for patten infringement while working on project X. We were whoopin it up and the Chineese oil guys didn't know what to think about our story or the way we told it.

You see G-man hired Larry Flints former scumbag attorney Larry Lawrence out of cincinatti and Larry was dead set on making a buck off us west-ky coonasses. He called us up to his fancy riverfront office building in Cincinatti and made us give a deposition about our involvement in project"x" and wanted details about what we were doing and how we were doin it. Well Mmayes got out of the boardroom and came out with a smug grin," good luck " , he said as he winked and I opened the door and walked in. I sat down and even though it is like a blurr I remember feeling about the same as I did in the principals office in third grade when I first blurted out the "f" word in front of the whole class.(I took my licks and went back to class with a smile). I did the same thing for all them smartass well dressed yankee lawyers.
When we got in Mmayes jeep to drive home he lit a marlboro and smiled. I said,"man I feel like I been dragged over the coals" Mmayes just grinned. I said," didn't bother you ?". He looked at me with that great big stupid smile and spoke as he exhaled the marlboro smoke," BM....you must not of saw it...You must have gotten bit by the bull they was feedin ya". I said ,"see what? ...I didn't see nothin but a bunch of smartasses in suits!" all I could remember was a great big fancy table and a bunch of college lookin dudes in nice clothes lookin at me askin stupid questions....except Larry Lawrence...he was wearring cowboy boots with a sport coat and propped his feet on the table and picked his teeth like a real smartass when they was askin me questions.
Mmayes took another draw and said," The river BM...did you see thaat big ole pretty Ohio river?" I saw it but I didn't pay attention. "why could you see the river BM?.....did you notice the glass? ,,,The Whole fucking building is made of glass!! it is one big window looking at the river!!!" I said,"I didn't notice man but whats the big deal about that? He has a good veiw of the river and can whatch the barges?"
MMayes said,"its a nice building with a good view but it belongs to an asshole attorney and he is suing us for no reason and I'm gonna make him pay."

It was a moonless night and the canoe fit pretty good into the little rusty toyota pickup that we had got for 560.00 at the used car lot on the Kentucky side of the river. The aluminum canoe slid easily out of the bed and into the water. Mmayes was blacked out with duck commander facepaint and I handed him the twenty pound bag of ball bearings and two gammo wristrocket super slingshots and a paddle. He said," I'll see you in 5 hours at the ramp just above the dam. don't act funny and don't talk to noone" . I grinned and pushed him into the dark. He spit some fresh skoal into the foggy Ohio river and drifted away. And that my friends is how a house made of glass comes crumbling down.
And nobody danced or shouted for joy...nobody even said a peep. The canoe is at the bottom of the river and Me and Mmayes glidied into Aintry the next evening in a rusty little pickup truck without saying a word. We parked it in the barn behind the trailer and said goodnight. It's the Aintry way.

Yeesss

ahhh....the Aintry way

Lol...ball bearings and a sling shot!!! Awesome!!!

Im gonna copy these and put them in a pamphlet....next time someones calls us a bunch of dumb rednecks for going on mud runs im gonna hand it to them and say that at least we are literate rednecks

Loves me some Aintry ways ......

I've spent the last two hours and 38% of my phone battry reading this. I'm glad no one has died at the hospital on the count of me being wrapped up in this tale of American heroes.

it has had me by the seat since i stumbled on it a while ago. good stuff

I met Mmayes at a Highschool football game. I knew who he was from shop class but he was a senior and I was a freshman so class rules dictated that I really couldn't talk to him. Anyway I had to leak so I got up out of the stands and walked toward the fieldhouse where the restrooms were located. As much as I hated it I had to walk right square in front of the band...I don't know about ya'll but I always hated the marching band. It was full of all sorts of misfits and power hungry geeks and they just gave me the creeps with them big puffy uniforms and funny feather-plume hats.
About the time I got in front of them one jerk blasts a loud note and pops me in the side of the head with a trombone thing. It startled me and kind of hurt so I grabbed it and thrust it right back into the guy. Themouth peice popped him right in the mouth and made his lower lip blead and gave him a big purple upper lip bruise that looked much like a kool-aid mustache. I laughed as he grimmaced in shock and started to walk away. Problem was that this big ole boy shoulda been playin football hisself(because he was a giant) but either his grades or his momma wouldn't let him so he was stuck in the band and he was clearly frustrated and lookin to cause trouble. I was a little freshman and an easy target.
So the next thing I know the band nerd hits me across the head from behind and I stumble to the ground. As I hit the dust I reached into my boot for my ever present 22 pistol that I kept for snakes and the odd shot I got at a coon from time to time when I was burning the trash out by the barn. I reached but it wasn't there . I had replaced it with a pint of bourbon for the big football game.( I never suspected that I would need a pistol to fend off a rabid band nerd at a football game but knew quite well that a toot or two of the good stuff would be welcome on a cool fall night watchin the boys pass the pigskin around). So I'm layin on the ground pointin a half empty whisky pint at a fairly pissed off band gorilla and he is getting ready to smash my head in with a baratone or a suzaphone or somethin and then I hear a real cool confident voice say," Now wait a gawddam minute there JuJu".
I reckognized that voice. It was Mayes from shop class. They always had a M. in front of it but even to this day I don't know what the M. stands for. " Now JuJu that boy right there is BM and he is a good boy. Hell he sweeps the shop floor for Mr. Lowery every day for extra credit and they say he is a good welder. " Mmayes says as he walks over to survey the situation. " Mudder fudder slapped my horn and dam near knocked my gawldamed teef out", says JuJu. Mmayes looks at me and winks," Hell JuJu I wouldn't let anyone know it...little ole fella like this pushin you around....I beleive I'd be embarrassed." "now JuJu you get on back up there with your band friends and leave the kids alone"

I was might tickled to get out of the jam and stuck my hand out," MmmmMayes??? ,I'm B.M...B.M. Barrelcooker and I sure am glad you showed up just now." Mmayes spit on the ground and laughed ," I know who you are B.M. you don't remember me but we used to throw rocks and race turtle across the gravel road down there at old man Baggetts' farm when our Daddy's was cuttin tobacco and my mamma did the Baggett families wash. That was back before the old farmer hanged himself and his kids sold the farm...back when Aintry was still proud of our plantation past". He talked shit like that All the time and back then I didn't really understand it because I didn't know much about history............hell back then I didn't know much about nothin." "Anyhow B.M. you need to stay away from JuJu and the whole band for that matter. Them boys is bad news" , He looked at me hard like he had somethin else to say. "oh their just band nerds..they can't hurt me " ,I said kind of tough like. Mmayes looked at me real hard and said," No them boys might have killed you....they are bored and mean and mad that they are in band...they are liked caged lions and they are lookin for a fight................and on top of that about half of them are on acid." "acid?",I said," like LSD?...where did they get that around here?". ( I was very niave ...after all it was still the seventies and a little known fact is that some of the finest blotter acid ever produced came from a hillbilly chemist that called rural kentucky home but thats a different story altogether) Mmayes says," who cares where they got it....but they got it and that shit makes people crazy and they do crazy shit like kill freshmen when they do it....so stay away from them . Come on I'll buy you a coke."

Mmayes tutored me on the ways of the world from then til the end of the school year. I did some welding for him and even worked for his Daddy some that summer bushhoggin and mendin fence. He did a lot of reading about different suff and always told me about the stuff he was reading...always told me that there was a great big world out there and that I'd never see it if I din't ever look past that Aintry swamp. I guess he was right but I didn't think much about it back in those days. He went off to school and I stayed back and worked on the farm and chased the girls a little and shot a lot of ducks......and made a homemade leather holster for my pistol that I could wear inside my belt.

Things were so much slower those days ,not just in Aintry but everywhere. Mmayes came back from time to time but it seemed like years between his visits and his stories from"out there" never seemed real....He was living the real life and we were all just stuck on Aintry time.

Leather holster for inside your belt !! For the bottle or pistol??

........Mmayes hadn't been to China in a while but said he met Mr. Wang on an Alaska Glacier cruise and they hit it off while sampling the smoked salmon vodka shots during intermision of the Lumberjack challenge show in Skagway. Wang had noticed his dog mushing skills earlier when they were up on the glacier. Not many folks know it but Mmayes had honed is dog handlin skills in Northern Minnesota back in his Navy days when he went home for an extended leave with a Nurse named Pam. They had holed up for the winter in a small shack near the Canadian border. She taught him a little about Yoga and he shared Nuclear physics and Ju-jitt-su with her and he only left her side every three or for days when he mushed the sled team on a 130 mile round trip to town to re-stock the shack with the only "kentucky bourbon" he could find in the Great White North...Jim Beam. It was a long winter and he got pretty dang good at mushin them pups.
Eventually the weather started to warm and one day as they practiced the martial arts outside in the mud Pam caught Mmayes upside the head with a left footed roundhouse . He got pissed and let all the dogs loose and left her tied to a tree in front of the shack for the mosquitoes to ravage as he hitchhiked back to town to continue the interesting journey that was just a normal life to him.

Mmayes invited Mr. Wang to come down to Asheville to meet me so we could work out a trade. I had been helpin some old buddies out that were starting a craft brewery and weren't quite sure how to keep a steady flame on the pots. Black Willie and his cousin Lenny had showed me how to do that back at Aintry when they was cookin whiskey under the tin shed back in the west end of the swamp. They had made several good runs until one of Mr. Chesters Land surveyors was shootin a line and stumbled upon the oak barrels all racked up there lettin the sun swell them up and mellow that sweet savory goldwater that they held inside. We had to give Mr. Chester three or four barrels of the good stuff and clear the still off his land in less than a week. It sure was tough draggin all that stuff out of that swamp and settin back up in the barn on the far side of the bean feild by the slough at Aintry....but I have to say I have grown pretty fond of the new location....right behind my trailer.

Anyway, when I met Mr. Wang in Asheville he told me about his Nephew that was racing longshaft mudmotors back in Tiawan. They had just started gear reductions and such and had had limited success. He said if we could get him a truck oad of unbonded Jim Beam to the railyard in Knoxville that he would have his Nephew meet us and personally breif us for a week or two about everything he knew about mudmotors. Dam guy didn't know how far in he set the hook on that one. I'm kind of curious about things but Mmayes is totally obseesive about this mechanical stuff and religous about is passion for mudmotors and his quest for project "x".

Well Booker Noe (Jim Beams grandson and master distiller) Had a buddy Named Roby that was a taste tester for all Beam brands. And Roby could drink bourbon all day long and still whistle dixie but the boy couldn't have one beer without gettin loopy. Sooo.............. Black Willie just gave him a cold miller light while they was playin rook at the bowling alley one night and next thing ya know we gots a tractor trailer load of the good stuff headed to Knoxville and Phong Dong Wang is headed to Aintry for two weeks to help with project "x"....................to be continued

Thanks BM that was a nice lil fix

I watched Deliverence again the other day. No one knows how to create tension with so little dialogue and shot framing anymore like they did back then. Good stuff!

Nice, Im finally starting to see in between the lines, especially on what I was talking about in PM

ahh yes. needed something to go on.

....................So Phong Wong (we call him PW for short..and will refer to him as PW from here on out...not to be confused with P. W. of Illowa/phowler boat fame but PW as in Phong Wong the ingenius asian man). Showed up at the Nashville Grey hound station on the 5th of September that year and called Mmayes collect. We got my cousin Dewayne to pick him up and hold him til Curtis could get the alternator back in his truck and go get him. Poor boy couldn't talk much english but he did pretty good with pointing and grunting at first. He knew exactly what we were wanting to do with gear reductions and even suggested a simple belt drive but me and Mmayes couldn't get it to work out on paper. I had trouble with the measurements and Mmayes couldn't get the coefficient of transfer right. So we felt that gears was the way to go. Apparently somebody else was thinkin gears too but that is a whole nother story that I don't have time for right now.

P W was a heck of a guy. He soon developed a penchant for cheap bourbon (which is in high supply at Aintry) and diet right cola . Mmayeses buddy Lester is the local RC cola guy and we kept a big cooler of diet right and big red iced down almost til thanksgiving every year. He smoked marlboros and winstons like crazy and didn't mind the sticky humid air at all. We would sit out in front of the trailer some nights as the sun set and have a few drinks while Black Willie's kids swang in the tire swing. It was a real nice peaceful feeling to see the red sun easing over the trees thru the haze as the cicadids buzzed and the bats dove overhead and the wet coolness of an Aintry autumn night settled in.
We made a fire one night and cooked hot dogs on sticks and Mmayes made kind of a toast or proclomation or something and stood up by the fire and said." PW gawlddang it. we love you boy and we love havin you here. You are like us but different. You can stay as long as you want and if your here next week when teal season comes in..........we gonna take you huntin." I couldn't beleive my ears. Nobody but locals ever got to hunt at Aintry and here was Mmayes invitin this foreign dude that couldn't even talk like us.....but we liked him a bunch and let it slide. I kinda liked him hangin around , He sucked at throwin dice but really liked to play.

Opening day was typical. It was humid as all get out but the september air had cooled some so the dew was heavy and that moistness just made everything hang in the air for twice as long as usual. It is about this time of year that the snakes start thinking about heading to the den and get a little meaner than usual so we had to be careful. We kept a watchful eye as we eased thru the dark woods for the lillte hole in the back of the ash woods. It was full of buckwheat and wild millet so we knew that the teal and woodies would show up like usual for their pre-migration feast as they fattened up for later travels.

We got set up against a log and waited for the daylight to come. I could hear Mmayes coaching PW but the funniest thing was hearin Black Willie and Tyrone doin accapella elvis tunes for thirty minutes or so...they are ignorant as hell and can't hardly talk but them boys can sing like there is no tomorrow.

After a while it breaks light and we are anticipating good flight once the fog burns off. I look over at Tyrone and he is lipping the words to "hunk a hunk of burnin love" and I smile and chuckle to myself. Just then I hear mmayes whisper,"pppppshhhtttt............ya'll be cool..........they swimmin in on us" and I can see a wake out in the hole. I'm trying to get my focus on what is there an all of a sudden it;s BLOOM....BLOOM....BLOOM...,"I got wron ....I got wron"

"Dad Blame it ", I yell ,"Mmayes what the heck is goin on ?" . He says," PW got excited and shot them on the water"

I holler back at Mmayes ,"tell him to at least wait til they take to the air"

and through the commotion I hear ol PW real sheepishly ask Mmayes," Can they Fry?"

We had a good chuckle and the rest of the morning was a real hoot. We cleaned the teal and put them on the trash barrel with a couple dozen squirrels and had us a dam fine Aintry feast the rest of the day.............even had a fine craps shoot that evening and ol PW hit three points in a row. Seems like he got acustomed to Aintry pretty dang quick. Anybody would............there ain't no place in the world as comfortable as Aintry.