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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

His temper unabated following the incident with twins Samuel and Damuel, Mr. Jake would drive on down the road a little further and stop again. He would preach hellfire-and-brimstone some more until he exhausted himself, then he would start up the bus again, drive a little further, stop again, preach some more, and this routine would continue until most of the students had been delivered to their homes and the bus was almost empty. While he was throwing his temper tantrums, everyone would sit quietly and listen attentively, for, familiar as we were with his harmless remonstrations, I never, ever saw a student defy Mr. Jake to his face. As soon as he had sat down and started the bus on down the road, however, everyone instantly returned to their previous behavior. Nothing changed!
There was never any danger that Mr. Jake would speak to our parents about our behavior on the school bus, for he never had anything but praise for his students when speaking to our parents. He was a consummate politician when it came to schmoozing parents. Mr. Jake employed a practice common among many parents in that era. While lavishing others with flattery and praise, he would often compare other people’s children to his own who, in his opinion, were completely worthless. There seemed to be some secret parental code in those days that a man should never brag on his own children.
“Brother Albritton,” he would say to my father (Mr. Jake addressed everybody as brother or sister). “Brother Albritton, them chil’urn of yours are the best behaved students on my bus. They never give me any problem. Yessiree, Brother Albritton, you have some the smartest, best looking chil’urn in the whole community. I just wish I had some chil’urn like those boys of yours. Them young’uns of mine ain’t got the sense God give a billy goat. They’re just about worthless. I guess they got it from their Mama. That woman ain’t got a lick o’sense!”
On occasion, the school bus would slip into the ditch on a rainy day when the clay-based dirt roads of Nokomis became extremely slippery. At those times, Mr. Jake would give a performance that was cringe-worthy.
“DEE WAYNE,” he would yell, “RUN TO THE HOUSE AND GIT THE TRACTOR AND SOME CHAINS AND GIT BACK OVER HERE AS FAST AS YOU CAN!”
DeWayne would immediately strike out lickity-split across the field or through the woods to get the tractor and the chains.
“PAUL! PAUL, GIT OFF THAT BUS AND GIT OUT HERE! RUN OVER TO THE BARN AND GIT THE PICKUP AND GIT BACK OVER HERE WITH IT!”
Paul would likely start out across the pasture at a walk or a jog and Mr. Jake would holler, “BOY, YOU BETTER GIT THE LEAD OUT BEFORE I PUT SOME LEATHER ON THAT BUTT!”
Whereupon, Paul would suddenly burst into passing gear and disappear into the woods. Though most of the children who regularly rode Mr. Jake’s bus saw some humor in his familiar antics and tirades because we felt insulated from the results of his wrath, we all knew that DeWayne and Paul did not see anything funny about their father’s behavior. Though he was a short man to the rest of the world, to his children Mr. Jake was ten feet tall. When he said “FROG!” they started hopping!
While Mr. Jake waited impatiently for the boys to get back with the tools he needed to get the big bus out of the slushy ditch, he would rant and rave about how no-account his family was. “If that ignorant wife of mine had any sense she would learn how to drive a tractor and she could maybe help out sometimes. That sorry, lazy woman ain’t worth shootin’. Oh how God has cursed me with the stupidest young’uns in the world. How come I couldn’t have had some smart young’uns, like Brother Peters’ young’uns or Brother Reese’s young’uns?” And Mr. Jake would go on and on until he finally got the bus going again.
The next morning, when he started picking up the children for the trip back to school, he would most likely be in an entirely different mood. He’d be quoting scriptures from the bible and preaching to himself as he drove along all the way to school.
“OH HOW MIGHTY IS THE LORD!” he would declare. “HE HAS BLESSED ME WITH THE MOST WONDERFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD. HE TOOK A RIB FROM ADAM AND HE MADE WOMAN. WHAT A WONDERFUL THING A GOOD WIFE IS! THE LORD HAS BEEN MIGHTY GOOD TO ME. YESSIREE BOB, MIGHTY GOOD!”
Mr. Jake was basically a deeply religious man who was always committed to helping his neighbors and lending his support to community, church and school projects. Like many parents of that generation, he was a stern, no-nonsense father who believed in the biblical admonition “spare the rod and spoil the child.” His self-deprecating affectations and exaggerated adulation of all others outside his own family notwithstanding, I do believe that Mr. Jake had every confidence that, in spite of his lack of formal education, he was really smarter than most other people. I also believe that he knew in his heart that his own children were examples to be proud of. I did not, however, come to this conclusion until many years later, when I was about 30 years of age. Peas and potlicker! After high school, Mr. Jake’s youngest son, Paul, went off to college and became a school teacher. By the mid-seventies Paul had worked his way up to principal of a junior high school in a neighboring town. Following my discharge from the military service I took a job selling life insurance, and in the course of my sales travels, I occasionally stopped by the school where Paul worked to visit with him. During one of these visits Paul and I got into a discussion of his father and all the land that Mr. Jake owned. Thinking that this might be a good sales opportunity, I suggested to Paul that Mr. Jake’s estate might one day incur a significant estate tax liability and that many people dealt with this problem by purchasing life insurance. Paul said, “That’s a good point, Lloyd. You ought to go by and talk to Daddy about that sometime.”
Paul told me that he would be helping Mr. Jake out on the farm the following weekend and we agreed that this might be a good time for me to stop by to discuss my life insurance idea. And so I did. It was just after dark on a cold cloudy Saturday evening as I drove into Mr. Jake’s yard and walked up onto his front porch to knock on the door. He invited me in with much ado and insisted that I join the family for supper.
I will never forget the evening I tried to sell some life insurance to Mr. Jake Hollingsworth. I found out that he did not believe in life insurance and he despised all life insurance salesmen. Fortunately, I made a clean getaway without injury. Stay tuned next week for the final installment of my story of Mr. Jake Hollingsworth, one of my favorite characters in my life.