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AL-43

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 trot-
lines. 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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