Missy still isn’t sure what my aunt Jan saw in her.
Missy: What did Jan see in me at nine years old? Well, you’ll have to ask her about that. She was the only teacher in my academic history from whom I ever received a smack. She announced a rule to the class one day that no one could touch anyone else’s possessions at any time (due to a recent rash of kids messing with other people’s stuff). The next day, I moved some papers around on one of my classmates’ desks before school, and he tattled on me. Because of her newly pronounced rule, she took me to the girls’ bathroom and gave me a whack on the rear. At the time, I certainly would have never thought she had picked me out to marry her nephew!
The thing that really stood out about Missy was her independence, which is probably still her strongest characteristic today. She took so much abuse from her friends for dating me. She would often tell me stories about being asked why she was dating a redneck, backwoods hillbilly.
Missy: Jase did not fit the mold of the boys I was used to dating. Granted, I did not date very often, but I had been in an off-and-on relationship with a football player for over a year. The reason we would keep breaking up was because I wouldn’t go further than a kiss with him. After a little while, he would come back, turn on his charm, and we would get back together. And the cycle would continue. October of 1987 was during one of these breakups. Once I went out with Jase, he was the only boy I thought about. When my old boyfriend came back around again and tried to convince me to get back together, I just wasn’t interested anymore. My friends knew how I had always felt about him and couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t try again, instead of dating this “hick from West Monroe.” I told them I just couldn’t explain it. I was moving on and was so much happier. My good friends trusted my judgment and grew to like Jase, but the boys at school pretty much had one another’s backs and gave me much grief. What did I care? I didn’t know what smitten was until Jase. I was smote!
After high school, Missy attended the University of Louisiana–Monroe and was singing in the choir. She invited me to come listen to her sing in a concert. I had a fast-pitch softball game that night and went straight to the concert hall after my game. I was covered in dirt from head to toe, and although I didn’t yet have a full beard, I hadn’t shaved in several days. When I walked in, everybody else was spiffed up, wearing dresses and suits and ties. People were looking at me like, “Who is this ham?” I sat down and listened to the concert. They were singing songs that weren’t even in English, and I thought it was terrible. But Missy was one of the best singers onstage, and I knew how much singing meant to her.
After the concert, Missy walked up to me and kissed me. I could feel eyeballs burning holes through me. I could sense everyone around us stopping and thinking, What in the world is she doing with that guy? It’s a feeling I’ve had many times since that night. But Missy never seemed to care what others thought about us. It didn’t bother her. However, it was difficult for me to believe that she would stay with me for the long haul when most people in her life were asking her why she was dating me. For both of us, it was always about our love for God and each other.
One of my many weaknesses as a young man was jealousy. I wasn’t a very trusting person until I was about twenty-five years old. I had definitely been influenced negatively as a kid because my dad had trust issues, and friends and family members who had problems in their relationships had also soured me. I had a rule that if you were with me, you shouldn’t even be alone with another guy. Since I didn’t attend Missy’s school, I didn’t know if she was seeing other people or talking to other guys. While I was sharing my faith with the people on my list, I encountered this guy who was really quiet. He attended school with Missy at Ouachita Christian School. I shared the Gospel with him and baptized him.
“Hey, I want you to do me a favor,” I told him. “Do you know Missy West?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen her around,” he said.
“I want you to watch her at school and let me know what’s going on,” I said.
Well, this guy was so quiet that I forgot about asking him to spy on my girlfriend. A few months later, I saw him at youth church.
“Do you want to hear my report?” he asked me.
I could feel the blood rushing out of my body. He had a notebook in his hands, and I didn’t like the way his body language looked. He acted like something bad was going on, so I figured my relationship with Missy was about to end. But his reports didn’t reveal anything bad, and Missy was being very loyal. To my surprise, he had never seen her alone with another guy.
When I was about twenty-five, I made a decision to be my own man. I decided I wasn’t going to worry about things that were out of my control or allow other people’s bad decisions to affect my life. It was that simple. I put jealousy to death, and one of the reasons was what I found in 1 Corinthians 13:7, which says that love always trusts. Of course, when Missy found out about my clandestine snooping years later, she wasn’t happy. It was hard for her to believe that I had really changed just because I made the decision to overcome my mistrustful tendencies. I believe it was because the Lord was working in me that I was able to make the change.
The year after I graduated from high school, I immediately went to work with my dad running a crawfish farm on our land. I got free room and board and a little gas money. The greatest benefit was getting to eat crawfish every day, but you talk about a hard way to make a dollar! We had about five hundred crawfish traps spread across our property, and we figured out that fresh bait was better than the artificial bait you could buy in bags. So we would catch fish from the river and use the trash fish for bait. We would wake up well before daylight and run the fishnets. We would send the good fish to the market, chop up the rest for bait, and then it was off to the crawfish nets.
We had a boat that was like a crawfish processing station. There was a table in the middle of the boat and it had a hole in the middle of it. We’d dump the trap into the boat and then sort the crawfish, tossing the old bait and other creatures through the hole. Usually, one out of every five traps had a snake in it—and one out of every ten snakes could kill you! After a while, we got good at spotting the venomous snakes in a trap, and that’s the only thing that halted production—stopping to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin! The traps were spaced far enough apart that by the time you finished cleaning out one trap and filling it with bait again, you’d arrive at the next trap. By the end of the day, you were knee-deep in nonvenomous snakes and a lot of filth! Really, the worst part of operating a crawfish farm was that after about a month of fish fins poking you and crawfish pinching you, you’d have a bad case of blood poisoning. My hands would swell up, streaks would go up my arms, and I would end up in the hospital every few weeks.
But the money for the family was good, and we were eating crawfish every day. We figured out how to cook crawfish a hundred and one different ways. We were like Bubba from Forrest Gump—we fried them, stewed them, boiled them, and they were all good. It’s hard to mess up a crawfish. The worst thing you can do to crawfish is freeze them. Even though they’ll still be edible, they’ll lose their taste. I told you earlier that I’ve never mounted an animal in my life, but I wish we’d mounted the biggest crawfish we ever caught. We had a crawfish that was twice the size of any other crawfish I’d ever seen. It was as big as a lobster, and like an idiot, I ate him!
When crawfish weren’t in season, I made money by roofing houses, guiding duck hunts, and cutting firewood with my friend Mike Williams. When Mike was a kid, his dad made him cut firewood for a living. In my opinion, he became the greatest lumberjack in Louisiana and perhaps the USA. Mike was as wide as a hundred-year-old oak and just as tall! He was a firewood-cutting machine! I teamed up with him and we were probably cutting and stacking six to eight cords of firewood a day. I’m talking about cutting down trees, sawing and splitting them up, and delivering them to customers! Fortunately, Mike was faster with an ax than I was with a chain saw.
At the tim
e, I was driving a 1970 Ford truck that I’d bought for a thousand bucks. In my world, if a vehicle runs and has air in its tires, then it’s worth a thousand dollars! The price never changes. I abused that truck for several years, only to sell it for a thousand bucks for an upgrade. It had a rebuilt hot rod engine and was fast! When we cut firewood in the rain, my truck would slide all over dirt roads and occasionally bounce off trees, so both of the truck’s sides were badly dented. After a while, I couldn’t open either door. It was real-life Dukes of Hazzard!
I remember the first time Missy approached the door and tried to open it. I told her the door wouldn’t open, and she started to go around to the other side. I informed her that the other door didn’t open, either. As she looked at me with a blank stare, I said, “Rule number one: if you want to go with me, you’ve got to crawl through the window.”
On our second date, I picked up Missy at her house and told her we had to make a pit stop to pick up crawfish bait at the fish market. We’d figured out a way to speed up the process by using the fish market’s gutbuckets instead of running nets ourselves. Through trial and error, we determined that the best crawfish bait was buffalo-fish heads. Unfortunately, when I pulled up to the market to get the garbage cans full of fish heads, I realized they had been outside for a couple of days. It was a warm day, and I could tell from the buzzing of hundreds of flies it was going to be nasty! I knew it was going to be the ultimate test of our relationship. The tubs were too heavy for one man to carry, so I told Missy, “I’m going to need your help on this.” She crawled out the window, and I led her to the trash cans filled with buffalo heads waiting for us. Like an idiot, the first thing she did was open the lid of a trash can. Immediately, she started gagging and dry-heaving in the parking lot.
“Rule number two,” I said. “Never pop the lid on a trash can.”
Much to my surprise, Missy regained her composure and helped me load the trash cans into the back of my truck. Right then, I realized our relationship might work out. She was climbing through windows and hauling fish heads.
A few months into our relationship, we had a campout down at my dad’s place. There were a lot of people from church, and we played games and fished into the night. We all gathered around a huge campfire, ate dinner, and sang songs together. Missy was clinging all over me, mainly because she was scared of everything flying in the air or crawling on the ground. It was one of those nights when you feel closer to God and everyone else because of the setting and the ambience—despite the bug activity. That was the first time we said “I love you” to each other. Now, there is still an ongoing debate as to who said it first. I remember clearly that she whispered, “I love you,” and then I responded. She is convinced that I said it first, but she was under the influence of bug paranoia. I believe her condition affected her memory.
Missy and I became best friends, and soon after our first year together I decided to propose to her. It was a bit of a silly proposal. It was shortly before Christmas Day 1988, and I bought her a potted plant for her present. I know, I know, but let me finish. The plan was to put her engagement ring in the dirt (which I did) and make her dig to find it (which I forced her to do). I was then going to give a speech saying, “Sometimes in life you have to get your hands dirty and work hard to achieve something that grows to be wonderful.” I got the idea from Matthew 13, where Jesus gave the Parable of the Sower. I don’t know if it was the digging through the dirt to find the ring or my speech, but she looked dazed and confused. So I sort of popped the question: “You’re going to marry me, aren’t you?” She eventually said yes (whew!), and I thought everything was great.
A few days later, she asked me if I’d asked her dad for his blessing. I was not familiar with this custom or tradition, which led to a pretty heated argument about people who are raised in a barn or down on a riverbank. She finally convinced me that it was a formality that was a prerequisite for our marriage, so I decided to go along with it. I arrived one night at her dad’s house and asked if I could talk with him. I told him about the potted plant and the proposal to his daughter, and he pretty much had the same bewildered look on his face that she’d had. He answered quite politely by saying no. “I think you should wait a bit, like maybe a couple of years,” he said. I wasn’t prepared for that response. I didn’t handle it well. I don’t remember all the details of what was said next because I was uncomfortable and angry. I do remember saying, “Well, you are a preacher so I am going to give you some scripture.” I quoted 1 Corinthians 7:9, which says: “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.” That didn’t go over very well. I informed him that I’d treated his daughter with respect and he still wouldn’t budge. I then told him we were going to get married with him or without him, and I left in a huff.
Over the next few days, I did a lot of soul-searching and Missy did a lot of crying. I finally decided that it was time for me to become a man. Genesis 2:24 says: “For this reason [creation of a woman] a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” God is the architect of marriage, and I’d decided that my family would have God as its foundation. It was time for me to leave and cleave, as they say. My dad told me once that my mom would cuddle us when we were in his nest, but there would be a day when it would be his job to kick me out. He didn’t have to kick me out, nor did he have to ask me, “Who’s a man?” Through prayer and patience, Missy’s parents eventually came around, and we were more than ready to make our own nest.
7
STRANGE CREATURES
APPRECIATING FROGS AND WOMEN
He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.
—PROVERBS 18:22
My absolute favorite thing in the world to do is frog hunting, and my favorite things to eat are fried frog legs. I’ve found that frogs are some of the strangest creatures on earth. Did you know frogs absorb water through their skin, so they don’t need to drink? Frogs can lay as many as four thousand eggs at once, and in one species of frog, the male takes its mate’s eggs into its mouth as soon as they show signs of life and keeps them there until they emerge as fully grown froglets! Some frogs can jump up to twenty times their own body length in a single leap, and frog bones form a new ring every year when the frog hibernates, just like a tree. Scientists count the rings to determine the age of a frog. When God created frogs, He made an exotic delicacy.
This might be a surprise to some people, but I like hunting frogs more than I like shooting ducks. A lot of people prefer frog gigging, but I’ve always used only my hands to catch frogs. In frog gigging, people use a four-or-five-tined gig to stab the frogs. I choose not to use a gig because a glancing blow can injure a frog without its being caught. I prefer “hand-to-frog” combat, which allows me to catch it—or it gets away for another try. I rarely miss one. When I go frog-hunting, not only do I try to think like a frog so I can find its hiding place, but I also physically act like a frog so I can catch it. If the frog jumps as I try to catch it, I jump along with it, no matter what I might be jumping into. I think it’s much more effective and way more fun than using a gig.
My buddy Mike Williams, the lumberjack, was my partner in crime when it came to frog hunting. He scouted the best frog-hunting holes around West Monroe and even made maps. We frog-hunted most ditches, creeks, rivers, bayous, and, yes, golf courses in North Louisiana. I feel bad to this day about all of Mike’s equipment that I totally destroyed while pursuing frogs. I viewed it as collateral damage for being the best frog hunter you could possibly be. Mike always seemed to find a way to forgive me, and every time I thought I had lost him as a friend, he would come pulling up in my yard with a new rig. Mike thought frogs were so delicious he wanted to travel to Africa because he read that’s where the biggest bullfrogs in the world are. He was actually right—the goliath frog from Cameroon in West Africa grows to be one foot long. Its legs would look like king crab legs in a frying pan! We seriously discussed going but never did. Of course, we�
��re not dead yet.
Mike discovered that the best bullfrogs in West Monroe were located in a pond on the fourteenth fairway of a private golf course. He cased the place for weeks from an adjacent neighborhood, and we waited for a stormy night. We figured no one would be out and about during a storm, and we didn’t want to get caught on this swanky golf course. Our best route to the pond was parking at the end of a street on the edge of the neighborhood and carrying the boat by hand onto the golf course. The stormy night finally came and we parked my truck, got on each end of the boat, and made our way through cane thickets during a nasty thunderstorm. There was lightning and thunder as we made our way across the golf course, running with the boat and flashlights. The best way to catch a frog is to shine a flashlight in its eyes, which kind of stuns it, and then grab it quickly before the frog realizes what happened. We caught seventy-five frogs that night! We left our ice chest in the truck, so I was putting frogs in my socks and the pockets of my pants and shirt.
When we couldn’t carry any more frogs, we made our way back to my truck. As soon as we arrived, police cars came from every direction. A homeowner in the neighborhood must have seen my truck and feared we were burglars. As the police questioned us, they must have thought Mike was drunk, because he couldn’t stop laughing. They kept asking me what we’d been drinking and smoking and where it was. When a policeman shined a light on my shirt, I figured out what Mike was giggling about. I forgot I’d stuffed a frog into the front pocket of my shirt and buttoned it. Its legs were sticking out of my pocket and it looked like it was wearing a diaper! The police let us go but warned us to never sneak back onto the golf course because it was trespassing. We probably went back three or four times by a different route and never were caught.
Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl Page 8
