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Charley "Uncle Bud" Ryland, 3½ m. from Talladega Springs, Alabama
Jack Kytle Editorial Dept.
"UNCLE BUD" RYLAND THE COOSA FISHERMAN.
Below the lush spot where Cedar Creek flows into the Coosa River, at the end of a dim wagon road, Charley "Uncle Bud" Ryland sits on the front porch of his shanty and dreams of the pas--when he is not fishing his trotlines. He has lived through a span of nearly seventy years, and he has learned to be friendly with the water giant. It has sometimes left its banks to sweep his boats downstream, breaking them into splinters with its fury. Once, it almost took away his cabin; but he never berates it. "Durned river's like a man," he philosophizes, "Hit's got t' blow off steam sometimes."
He was sitting beneath the huge oaks that keep his yard in day-long shade when I came upon him. For a moment, he did not recognize me in the shadows of dusk. He rose from his chair and began advancing cautiously. He is blind in one eye, and the other, in his own words, "ain't wuth what it'd cost t' buy 'specks'." But when recognition dawned upon his tanned, deeply lined face, he smiled and came down the path with a stiff-legged trot.
We shook hands silently for a moment, and then he said, "Lord, boy, hit's been a time!"
" Yes," I answered, "it's been six years."
He shook his mop of gray hair slowly. "The years do fly away," he drawled. "Somewhar I've heerd--I don't
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place jest whar--that th' years be like hickory nuts. They fall away fastest after the frosts come."
He stooped and plucked a cluster of cockle-burrs from beside the path, observing, "But the frosts won't come fer a good time yit this year. See how green an' tender they air? I kin allus tell about what the weather's go'nter. be by watching 'em an' th' tree bark. Hit never fails to come out true."
We started up the path to the shanty, but before we arrived at the steps, he walked off to a clump of brush about thirty yards away and reached into its center. Without a word, he withdrew an earthen gallon jug, and then rejoined me. "I imagine," he said in his slow way, "thet th' trip up was tiresome; you'll be needin' a toddy."
"Do you still make your own?" I asked.
" Hit's th' only way I'd drink it," he said. "I never tuk a swig of store-bought whisky yit but what it left me with a bustin' head. Now this hyar corn, hit's good; made on a copper still. I never sell a pint, but I'll make my own as long as I kin git to th' swamps."
The cabin that sat before us on crumbling pillars was only a squat heap of rough pine lumber, thrown together carelessly. It was a dirty gray from the buffetings of many winds, and i t seemed, indeed, that one more good wind would tear it asunder. On the narrow front porch, a zinc water bucket sat on a shelf, with the washpan and a bar of cheap soap nearby. Fish hooks and lines were
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strung from a dozen nails that had been driven into the walls.
Inside the cabin was freshly scrubbed, but it's cleanliness served only to emphasize its bareness. There was one bed made of two-by-four lumber, and covered with a straw mattress. Nearby was a dilapidated cot, covered only by a patchwork quilt of great age. In a corner stood a wood stove that seemed to be yearning t o crumble off its weary legs.
In the other room--smaller than the first and added without much planning to the original structure-a long table, and a bench had been nailed to the wall. A sack of corn meal was on the table, and a bag of coffee rested on a nearby shelf, but no other groceries were in evidence. There were no chairs in either room.
"After a little while," my host said, "1'11 walk over to th' Cravens an' git us some lard. I got plenty cat - fish down thar in th' live box, an' we got all th' meal we need. I'm a bit tard of fish, but I guess you kin stand a bait."
"Tell me, Uncle Bud," I ventured, "do you eat fish all the time?"
"Most of th' time I do," he answered, "though once in a good spell I take a yaller cat into town an' trade hit in fer some canned stuff an' side meat. I do thet when it gits to whar I can't look a durned catfish in th' face."
I said, "Well, we'll make a swap. You feed me fish,
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and I'll feed you some canned meat and loaf bread. I have some down there in the boat."
His lined face beamed.
"Yo're moughty thoughtful," he said at last.
After he had cooked, and we had eaten together, we drew up willow-bottomed chairs on the porch that faced the river. It was night now, and the darkness was like pitch. Crickets were fiddling away in the surrounding forest, and far away a hound dog wailed. Somewnere out in the dark water, a fish came to the surface and rolled over with a resounding splash.
"Sounds like a durned cow turnin' over," Uncle Bud observed, and then he lit his stumpy pipe and tilted his chair back against the wall. It was a never-failing signal that he was ready now to dip his thoughts back into the past.
I asked, "When did you stop keeping your gun in your lap?"
He drew upon his pipe in silence for several moments, and then he gave an indirect answer.
"I don't have t' carry hit no more, son," he said, and then added fervently, "Thank God!"
He went on, "Fer seven years, I was never without a gun on me. I either toted a rifle or a pistol. Fer seven years, I never set down an' et but wnat I kept my back to th' wall, so that I could be facin' th' door. Hit worried me bad. Hit made me sleepless many nights; but I don't have t' worry no more."
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"I remember how you always seemed to be watching out for something, or somebody," I interrupted.
"Yes," he answered, "I was afear'd in them days; I was afear'd that I mought do somethin' that'd send me t' th' chain gang. Hit's an awfully big relief t' know thet all thet business is done with. Sometimes the Good Lord do take trouble away fer a soul. He done hit fer me."
I ventured, "What happened--did some enemy die?"
Ha puffed several times at his pipe.
"Sometimes they die," he slurred.
"Uncle Bud" Ryland vows that he has no complaints to make against life. He can neither read nor write, but he blames his illiteracy upon himself. Unlike many of the hundreds who eke out a bare livelihood along the big river, he does not wish to leave. He has lived here so long that, in his own words, he "has tuk roots." Many times, he has little or nothing to eat. He has only one pair of pants and a couple of blue work shirts, but he does not mind that. He says, "I earn my own way--I allus have; hain't nobody ever had me t' feed."
Sitting there in the darkness, I asked him to tell me about his past life; about the wife and children he had mentioned vaguely; about his views on present conditions in the outside world.
He said, "They ain't nothin' wuth tellin'. I got seven kids, but my wife, she's been dead goin' on twenty years. Six of my kids live in West Virginny. Two is boys, both coal miners; an' my four gals married coal miners. I got one boy thet lives up th' river a piece an'
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