The Very First Gentlemen Callers Story Ever!

Imagine my surprise when I heard a knock on the door at one o’clock on the first Thursday morning I was in town.

Now, imagine how much more surprised I was when I answered the knock and found Jim “The Cheese Burglar” Gilbert standing there straddling his bike and holding a blue elastic hair band out toward me.

“You forgot this,” he mumbled. “I figured you’d need it to keep that scraggly hair out of your eyes while you’re making ALL YOUR NEW FRIENDS!!!!”

Then he apologized for playing Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” every time I went to see him when I lived in Alabama since it was so clear that the song scared me.

I asked him to come in, but he said he had to be in Fairhope by Saturday morning, or Sonny would skin him alive. Then he put the cutlass back between his teeth, adjusted his black eye patch and pedaled away, using one hand to tighten the knot securing the red bandana around his head.

Boy, was my mom ever furious when she found out Jim had been here and that I hadn’t got her out of bed. “I just love that boy,” she must have said seventy times during the next few days, in response to absolutely nothing.

You should make it a point to check out Jim’s story, “Prelude to UFO Invasion” from his work in progress, The Downwindies. The story was published in the Mobile Register on Sunday, the 24th of September. Jim sent a copy to us, and, not surprisingly, my mom loved the story, as well as the companion article about Jim by old “Long John Silver” Sledge.

Obviously, it’s just a matter of time before Jim finishes his book and finds an agent to peddle it around to the Big Houses. No doubt this agent will command a princely sum for the rights to Jim’s work. After he buys *** ******* a tiara and moves into a three-room apartment, he can help me publish my own book. Keep reminding him of this every chance you get, or it’ll just slip his mind like a wedding band off the hand of some lonely woman.

Sure. He loves me now, but how long will he love me after he knows he can have red beans Anne Rice for lunch whenever the mood strikes him?

Below is a pre-publication review of Jim’s novel.

JIM GILBERT'S THE DOWNWINDIES
REVIEWED BY FORREST GUMP

Now this Jim Gilbert, he done gone and wrote hisself a SCARY book just like Mr. Warshinton Irvin has wrote in the past about that witch with the long beard that took over the town of Sleepy Hollow and made them little chirren chop off they mama and daddy’s heads and blame the poor ole clowny-schoolteacher who’s a-scared of his own shadow, Jim White. Mr. Jim Gilbert done wrote a scarier story than THAT!

Forrest Gump Winston Groom

The Downwindies is about these people that get theyselfs mixed up with some kooky fellers out in the desert makin A-bombs and H-bombs and maybe some XYZ-bombs. They is a couple of lovely ladies on the case and they is calt Chicken Sheets and Stack-Eye Roberts and they can shore stir up they own trouble even when they ain’t lookin for them DOWN WINDIES that got the clues they need to figger out when them loopy fellers in the desert gonna set off they bombs and wipe out the planet. After a while, you cain’t tell which carcters is SCARIER, them ding-a-ling desert doctors, or the people sposed to be savin the world from ’em.

After readin fer a spell, ye kindly get to rootin for whoever’s sayin the funniest jokes.

In the end, when it looks like them scientists gonna blow up the WORLD, Mr. Hank Burch come along and save the day. That was my FAVURT part, I near shit myself I was so excited when old Mr. Hank come in and tole them fellers they wasn’t gonna blow up the PLANET on account of he had orders from MISS MARY MULLINS to stop ’em with ray guns and a log-rollin contest before quittin time at the office.

Forrest Gump DVD

All them words in them stories which Mr. Jim Gilbert wrote don’t hold nothin nex to them 8 pages of STARTLIN PHOTOS stuck right there in the middle of the book. I was near kilt outright and hadda sleep with a light on for weeks when I seen that pitcher of Miss Betty Joe and ole William Gay dressed in white hobgoblin sheets outside Mayor Nix’s house on Flag Day, 1978. (Unnerneath the pitcher it says it’s Miss Jeannette Ruffles and Martin Lanaux in them ghoulie costumes, but I’d know ole Betty Joe and William Gay ANYWHERES and that pitcher was them two, I tell you.)

I never knowed a scary book could be so funny but deed honest when I started lookin at the pitchers in this book by Mr. Jim Gilbert, I like to fell out my CHAIR I was bustin such a gut over it on account I like to get goose-pimple SCARED so’s I start LAUGHIN an’ SCREAMIN.

Forrest Gump Soundtrack

I give it to po’ ole Winston but he got to cryin and sayin he weren’t NEVER gonna get no nommernation for no Wurlitzer prize again and Miss Anne Clinton hafta squirt him with a seltzer bottle jus like ever time he get that way.

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