By Jack, July 19, 2014 — As I remember the story, it began with Herman telling it. Herman and the children were in the bus headed for Bernice, Louisiana to play a football game. Herman decided he would tell the story about his brother-in-law whose name I didn’t know – but let’s call him Steve.
Herman and Steve had gone a long ways from home and went far away from where they were supposed to be going. Not only did they get lost, but they got hungry as well. So, Herman started to think up ways to get something to eat. Herman said to Steve, “I’ll tell you what. Act dumb and I will dictate what you say to me.” So one of the people Steve and Herman tried it on was this widow. Steve and Herman went to this widow’s back-door and when the widow answered the door, Steve started acting dumb and the widow let them in. The lady said “I tell you what. Go ahead and split me a lot of wood and I’ll feed you boys.” And that’s what she did, when they got through cuttin’ the wood, splittin’ the wood and stackin’ it up real nice for her. Steve couldn’t talk, he was just making a lot of noise. The woman had a hard time understanding what he was saying because he was acting dumb. When they got through washing up and everything, Herman had Steve sit next to him so that he could serve Steve. The lady had some nice greens and some really nice fried chicken, real pretty. And Herman served Steve everything but the fried chicken. And Steve hurried up and ate everything on the plate, because he figured that Herman would give him some fried chicken then. But when he hurried up and ate, Herman said “Mam, Steve sure loved your greens and he’s crazy about your cornbread.” So Herman started serving Steve some more greens and some more cornbread. Steve was murmuring to Herman. “He sure loved your cornbread, and you cooked some mighty good greens.” Every time he ate up that cornbread and those greens he was thinking that maybe then Herman would finally serve him some of that fried chicken. After a while, Steve got tired of that stuff – acting dumb – and Herman was getting ready to give him some more greens and Steve broke the code, he said “WAIT A MINUTE! Darn it with those greens, give me some of that fried chicken!”
Herman had everybody on the bus, just dying laughing. As a matter of fact, the guy that was driving the bus – he got paid to drive the bus but he was a high school boy- he almost rode us off the road there. Right today, I still think about that.