I knew Winkie, Buford, and the Perfessor very well, and had first hand knowledge of their adventures at Petry Bridge. However, fifty or more years have come and gone since then, so my memory of the events may have lapsed…in some cases, I will fill the gaps with prevarication. I will not, and in many instances cannot, account for what is fact or fiction. I hope, on the one hand, this will compensate for the erratic tendencies of my mind…and, more importantly, preserve deniability for the innocent, and the guilty.
You should know, first of all, that these are not the boys’ real names, although family and friends who knew them then, will remember the monikers…which were more frequently used than the names their mothers gave them. I don’t know when or how Winkie came by his nickname. If I told you that I know it was first applied by his older sister (it’s the sort of thing older sisters do), I would be lying…but I do suspect it. As I recall, Winkie was also the name of a character, a devious pet monkey, in the first grade reading books of that time…and Winkie did have this impish quality about him, especially when the boys were younger. The trill of his boyish laughter would send the herons aflittering from their perch in the trees along the bayou.
I do know how Buford was so designated. For as long as I had been acquainted with him, he had been called BB, I think because for most of his early boyhood he was the baby (BB) of the family. I don’t know if his mother ever called him anything else (I distinctly remember his father addressing him, very directly, by his given name), but to his older brothers and his cousins he became simply B. That was extrapolated to Buford by Winkie, his cousin (did I mention all the boys were cousins?), and by Winkie’s older brother.
The Perfessor was so named by his cousins, perhaps in derision, but certainly with affection, upon hearing Grandma Venie say, on multiple occasions, that he was going to be a preacher or professor someday. This was the grandmother’s wishful thinking, but a prognostication supported, in the cousins’ thinking, by the fact that the Perfessor almost always had his nose buried in a book, whether it was “Beanie and Cecil the Sea-sick Sea Serpent” or the Yearbook of Agriculture. In those days, the boy appeared less likely to become a preacher; hence, Perfessor.
Winkie and Buford lived at Petry Bridge, which could scarcely be called a community. Half a dozen or so homes were scattered about the rice fields on either side of Petry Bridge, which spanned Bayou Queue de Tortue, the meandering demarcation between Acadia Parish and Vermilion Parish. Buford and his family lived just north of the bridge, in Acadia; Winkie, to the south, in Vermilion. Several generations of the Petry clan had homes and farms south of the bayou. An earlier member of the family had petitioned for the bridge, which when built was given, however informally, his name: Petry Bridge. All three of the boys were Petry blood relatives, by their mothers or their father.
The Perfessor lived in city of Crowley, on the Acadia side of the bayou, but removed by 15 miles or so from Petry Bridge. However, from his earliest memory, he spent many a weekend and much of his summers in the country. He was the tenderfoot of the trio, in the literal and experiential sense, a fact the cousins delighted in pointing out to him. The roads on both sides of the bridge, in those days, were gravel on hard yellow clay. Boys went barefoot in the country, especially in summer, so getting from one place to another, or “going ‘cross the bayou”, as the boys were wont to do, perhaps several times a day, involved walking on hot rocks…not a problem for country boys who had evolved, developed a callous sole on the bottoms of their feet, but a trial for the tenderfoot.
“I’m going ‘cross the bayou” was the common announcement when one or more of the boys set out to meet their cohorts. Parents were not alarmed, because there were watchful aunts on both sides of the bayou; the singular, predictable caution was, “Don’t play on the bridge”…a caution lost on the boys. The Perfessor did have some early trepidation about the bridge, which in those days was heavy creosote-soaked planks, with perhaps an inch of space between them; he had to overcome the fear that, if he could see through the cracks to the murky water below, he might also, somehow, fall through the cracks. Then there was the prospect of a car or truck mounting the bridge while the boys were crossing, which required that the boys run to the opposite end of the bridge (avoiding the cracks) or to step the outer edge of the bridge, which had no sideraila…a precarious position to be in because the heavy vehicle rumbling over the pliable planks threatened to launch the boys into the air and plunge them into the bayou…or so it seemed.
As it happened, Winkie, Buford, and the Perfessor were able to negotiate the bridge many times, without mishap, except for the occasional splinter, or a toe stubbed on the head of a loosened spike. While they spent many hours loitering there, hurling rocks at the nonchalant turtles in the muddy water (Bayou Queue de Tortue: Turtle Tail Bayou), most of their adventures occurred along the banks of the bayou, in the rice fields and barn lots on either side, or in the woods that skirted the waterway…heavy woods with moss- laden trees and strewn with think vines, many a dark cul-de-sac, faintly discernable trails…a boys world of enchantment. And therein lie the tales…which are to follow. [02-09-12)
