From The Road-The East side of the sign has been wind rubbed to a white on red pastel blur. The West side facing the lake, still proclaims to the world "Bill's Bar-B-Q."
Mr Bill turns 96 today and it's his 75th wedding anniversary. From his frame and screen barbecue shack(he calls it the pit), Mr Bill looks out on a blue, fall sky wrapped around a hardwood forest. Just across the highway still marks the house where he was born.
"That's the family place," Mr Bill says. "The house over there that's blown down." There is no other way to say it, the house has blown down, what must have been a fine, rambling, wood frame house fallen in on itself like a smashed orange crate.
"I shared that house with my wife for 60 years," he said as he tended his hickory log fire and greeted a couple parked a few feet from the shack's screen door.
A man and woman from New Orleans, just passing by and was told of Mr Bill's fare and had to give it a try. The woman heard us talking about his anniversary and she wanted to know how his wife could have stayed married to him for so long. He looked at her with a grin and quipped, "She must have been crazy."
Mr Bill placed a stack of ribs in front of the women and I heard him telling her male companion, "Beauty before age." I think the gentleman got offended. Mr Bill looked at me, smiled and said, "I was born ugly, I enjoy it."
Between customers, he swats flies and plays solitaire on a lap board. His cards looked as though they had been dropped by the Spaniards. "Naw, they are two months old." He said.
Said he met Ms. Lender at church, not a place regularly attended even then, but regular enough to meet his bride. Together they raised seven children, nineteen grandchildren and to many great to count. Gave all his grandkids a hundred dollar bill when they finished high school.
Folks from these parts know Mr Bill as one of the areas oldest and most revered story tellers. He denied that of course, but only long enough to zap the Folger's coffee can by his chair. Wiping his mouth, he happily launched into a story or two. After finishing one of his tales he smiled showing two rows of his worn teeth and said, "I might lie a bit to make a story interesting, but I don't cheat no one, especially out of a good story."
Speaking of a good story, Mr Bill got up and headed toward his pit, passing an old Zenith radio, that judging by the layer of grease had been on the job for awhile. It was blaring out one of George Straits latest ditties. If he heard the song, he didn't say, for he had much work to do. After all, there's a party today.
As,I departed I heard him say, "Stir around, don't sit to much, it works against you."
Happy life my dear grandfather... His name is William Clarence
Doc
