Unsolved Mysteries in the 30123....Yoda is Gone and hey...there's a Ford Tempo hubcap!

There is an old Marshall Tucker Band song called "Stay in the Country," where Toy and Tommy Caldwell espouse the virtues of being from the South in the simplest way they can. The chorus says it all:

"I'll stay in the country,
that's where I was born,
live my life out in Carolina,
that's where I belong."

It reminds me of Cassville. It's weird for us small town Southerners, we can be anywhere and be reminded of home. It could be a song, a sound, a sight, a smell or some event that just takes you back to when you wore torn up jeans, it was OK to get dirty and if your hands smelled like catfish bait, nobody cared. I was in Atlanta the other night walking back to my car and I saw a lonely lightnin' bug (firefly, if you will. It's a lightnin' bug to me) flying by the parking deck. She lit up two or three times, flying slowly off into the night, looking for a place to go. It was one of those moments I was talking about. Instantly, Matt and I were running behind a million of them back home with a Mason jar, trying to catch enough to make a lantern out of it. They would blanket the pasture, there would literally be thousands of them. Those were nights where it was still 80 degrees at 8:00 and there was a constant layer of sweat on you, but you didn't mind. I couldn't help but smile. I could hear Neen yelling halfheartedly, "don't bring them things in this house!!" as she handed us a milkshake.

I've never known how lightnin' bugs light up. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter. I just hope that my future children have the opportunity to catch them one day. I guess it's just one of the Southern "mysteries" that will go on unsolved for yours truly. We are a mysterious bunch, we Southerners. As I've stated numerous times, the South has its own way of life. We are proud of things that others might not be. We put emphasis on things that other cultures ignore. Think about it. Where would you find people who stand around a country store lamenting the disappearance of the carburetor in the modern American vehicle? (Non Southerners, your car probably does not have a carburetor. Don't go around Cassville men and discuss your carburetor, trying to fit in.)  Where would you be able to trade a Rockwaller (Rottweiler) puppy for a drive shaft for a 1987 Dodge Ram? Where would you find people who think that drug dealers should get life in prison, but moonshiners deserved to be left alone? Cassville. That's where.

Cass Grocery spawned many mysteries over the years for me. When you people watch for as long as I did, you often wondered why people do the things they do. You also heard stories and tall tales that were never really proven, but not refuted either. Unanswered questions, oil puddles and cigarette butts, three things that covered the parking lot of Cass Grocery like sand covers the desert. Here are some simple mysteries for you:

#1: Why do people insist on smoking cigarettes while pumping gas? Especially when pumping it into a milk jug, where you have to bend down, thus making the flame even closer to the fumes and CERTAIN DEATH or at least, missing eyebrows. This happened daily. I would watch the heated ashes fall with baited breath, just waiting on a fireball to kill us all. Strangely, it never happened. Not even a small fire.

#2: When playing online lottery (Cash 3, Fantasy 5, Mega Millions, etc.), why do people ask what the numbers were in the last drawing before picking the new numbers? No, really. I've heard people say, "well they drew 53 yesterday, so I'm going with 17 on the power ball this time." What?!? So many people believe there is a science to random drawings. Yeah, as much of a science as trying to figure out Georgia Tech's probability of ever being a good football team. None. They have no chance.

#3: Why did people ever buy Clorox bleach when the generic bleach was $3.00 cheaper? Seriously, I would even encourage them with the lower price and get this: "Nah, I gotta have the Clorox. She'll kill me if I bring anything else home." Bleach is bleach. I'm sure of it. As sure as I am about several other things: a) skating rinks in the South cultivate future fathers of illegitimate children; b) I'm going to lose the pair of sunglasses on my head in the next three days (third pair this year so far) and c) The Outlaws are the second most underrated Southern rock band behind the Marshall Tucker Band.

See, those were simple things that happened every day. There are literally thousands of these mysteries. There were more pervasive mysteries, such as:

#1: Why do all disabled people (the fake kind, not the truly disabled) only drink Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew? I guess sitting around all day, doing nothing, makes you tired and you need a pick-me-up with enough sugar to send yourself into a diabetic coma? Bring it on, the Coke and Pepsi salesmen thank you for your patronage and blatant disregard for your health. They need to include "drinking Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew with reckless abandon" in the symptom list for fibromyalgia, COPD, carpal tunnel syndrome and the 73 new kinds of fake autism that exist now.

#2: Why do men who drive diesel trucks insist on backing into their parking spot? Never gotten a straight answer here. They also like to park near one another as well, like pretty maids all in a row (except they have oversized tires, a "CAT" tag on the front and dual gas tanks). I don't have a problem with this, I just have yet to understand it.

#3: Why didn't somebody from Cassville step up and do something drastic to stop the remake of The Dukes of Hazzard or Talladega Nights? These movies are horrific, inaccurate, and unworthy of a single Southern eye transfixing itself upon them. I walked out of the Dukes of Hazzard before it ended. I turned off Talladega Nights about 45 minutes in. Every Cassville native and true Southerner must band together and eliminate these travesties of modern film-making immediately.

Sorry, I had to go on some tangents there. I hate those movies, seriously. Just like I hate Kenny Chesney's music after 2001, the disappearance of Cadbury Creme Eggs after April and any beer made by Coors. Other mysteries spawned from Cassville-specific events that have yet to be properly addressed:

#1: What happened to Yoda? Nobody knows. She just disappeared one day. Dad and I came up some theories: a) She died and was reincarnated as an eternal lit cigarette laying in the store's parking lot; b) the alien race that killed the dinosaurs realized they left her behind; c) she transformed into the younger, Italian version of herself and you now know her as "Snooki." Seriously, when Snooki is hungover, you can see the resemblance. If she asks for a "dip of niller" on the boardwalk of the Jersey Shore, then you will know.

#2: How long did Dad drive his truck before he realized we had affixed a Toyota Camry hubcap to his front passenger rim? For some reason, the store was a magnet for wayward hubcaps. Every morning, we would open up and a stray plastic/fiberglass beauty would be laying in the parking lot. We often would attach a sign to it with "$5.00 or best offer" and leave it on the bench. It would promptly be stolen by somebody from the trailer park. (free frisbee/TV tray for them youngins) The aforementioned Toyota Camry hubcap was laying by the payphones one morning, I think around 1994-1995. Dad had a truck we called "Ol Blue." It was a long bed Chevrolet 1500 with a 400 cu. inch engine. Needless to say, that truck, with its weightless bed and unnecessarily huge engine, could "get on it" something fierce. Since it was a work truck, nobody ever rode shotgun much, that hubcap went unnoticed for at least two weeks. He never said a word about it. (Dad, if you read this and you found the hubcap, sorry...it was me.)

#3: Why were all those really nervous, scratchy people buying Sudafed, copper brushes and Drano from 2001-2006? LOL. Riiiiiiggghhht.

Those are just a few mysteries that I have yet to clear up. I could list hundreds of these and I'll probably do another installment from time to time. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out a couple of outside-of-Cassville mysteries:

#1: I watch the Walking Dead because it takes place in Georgia. I'm dying to know this...what did Dr. Jenner whisper to Rick Grimes in the CDC before it exploded?? My best guesses:

"Everyone is already infected."

"I'm what Willis was talking about."

"I think LL Cool J is one of the most underrated rappers of all time. Jingling Baby may be his best song, but Who Do You Love???? That's a classic."

See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LkHAmnKvcM

#2: Why do people at Starbucks use up ALL of the 1/2 and 1/2 and just leave the empty bottle? By God, at Cass Grocery, that wouldn't happen. My customers would just walk to the cabinet and get a new container out themselves, then say "hey, I get a discount for all this heavy liftin', right?" I miss those people. Even Yoda.