This Thanksgiving story began 70 years ago. Every boy should be so lucky. When I was 6 years old, he was more than my uncle. He was my hero.
Uncles are men who can span any generation to become a boy’s best friend, too. Our bond began as soon as I could walk and talk. Given the opportunity, I was his shadow.
The 175 miles that separated us helped to build excitement when I boarded the Trailways bus headed his way. Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring breaks and summertime, I wanted to be with him.
The life of Billy Vines centered on family, church, friends, horses, tractors, boats, bird dogs and the great outdoors. If a particular hunting or fishing season wasn’t in, that didn’t really matter. We could spend hours either rocking and talking on the screen porch or rambling on dirt roads.
Uncle Billy delighted in spinning yarns of foxes and bobcats that stalked my grandmother’s farm. The wider my eyes grew, the more he spiced up his stories. And best of all, he always had time to listen and answer my barrage of questions.
He instilled in me a deep love and respect for wildlife and the outdoors. Long before I could tote a gun, I trailed him and his bird dogs. I have never forgotten the first time I saw an English setter curled in a picture-perfect point.
My mother’s younger brother gave me my one and only bite out of a plug of Bull of the Woods chewing tobacco. He almost fell out of the boat belly-laughing as I tried to drink the Flint River dry.
Billy Vines was an overgrown farm boy who forfeited an opportunity to play college football so that he could save the family’s farm after his dad died. He was a bruising fullback and linebacker who would have been a teammate of Vince Dooley at the university now called Auburn. Uncle Billy’s grandchildren called him Bull.
Life did not always deal Uncle Billy a lucky hand. But his deep faith, hard work and a healthy dose of humor helped him glide over life’s rough edges.
A boy and his uncle need little more than a few hours in a cool creek to appreciate life’s simple pleasures. Uncle Billy taught me to swim in the Ichawaynochaway Creek on Robert W. Woodruff’s Baker County plantation. Today I can walk to that spot below the steel-cage bridge near the country store that his daddy and mother operated for the Coca-Cola baron during World War II.
Uncle Billy gave me a crash course in the farm life. He taught me how to ride a horse, milk a cow and catch a pig. Once, I helped him and his brother Joe (my Uncle Bubba) dig a pit, stretch field wire across the hole and slow-cook a splayed hog over white-hot hickory coals. I’ve been hooked on barbecue ever since.
Nanny’s younger son inherited her penchant for pranks. He was full of playful devilment, as in the time he told me to gather eggs. “Be sure to get those from the hen boxes that are nailed to the side of the barn.” That’s when I learned the meaning of “mad as a wet setting hen.” When a ball of feathers flew into my face, I stumbled backwards into the cow trough. And of course, Uncle Billy was there—guffawing—to pull me out.
He taught me to drive an old Army Jeep. From there, I graduated to a sloped-back 1950 Chevy. And when our children were young, I jumped at the chance to buy Preacher Thornton’s 1949 Willys. Alan, Emily and Eric—and their children, too—got early lessons on how to press the clutch and shift gears.
Summertime in Baker County meant that I could take my shoes off. And Uncle Billy paid a dollar for barber Alex Curles to cut my hair so that I wouldn’t need another trim until school started.
Two summers, I lived with Uncle Billy and Aunt Edith and their daughters, Vicky and Beverly. For $3 per day, I worked in the tobacco patches of C.B. Cox’s Riverview Plantation. C.B.’s son and my lifelong friend, Cader, and I still reminisce about those “bakker-patch” days. My uncle insisted on working hard, saving your money, making time to play and being in church on Sunday.
This week, we celebrate Thanksgiving. I know that I have been blessed beyond measure. I have few regrets. One sadness is that our eight grandchildren did not have the opportunity to sit around a campfire or paddle a boat with their great-great-uncle Billy Vines. He died on July 17, 2003.
But when our family joins hands to thank God for our cornucopia of blessings, I know my boyhood hero’s spirit will be with us, deep in the woods.
Won’t you, Uncle Billy?
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
