Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Kenny
Kenny was my first cousin. His mother was my dad’s sister. We moved away when I was little and did not live close to any of my parent’s family. We did visit a lot while my parents were still married. My Aunt Ann moved in with us when I was nine. She found employment and went to Alabama to pick up some of her things. When she returned, she brought her sons Kenny and Scott. I do not know what the adults thought but I always enjoyed having family around. At one point during their visit, we had thirteen people living in a two-bedroom house. The funniest part about this visit was they drove from Talladega to Atlanta with a king snake and an aquarium full of pollywogs. There is no way as an adult that I would allow that. I imagine the smell was unbearable. We put the aquarium on the front porch. My mom probably would not allow it in the house. One day I came home from school and the pollywogs had been dumped out by the outside water spigot. I thought maybe the aquarium had busted during cleaning, but on the porch was the aquarium with a small layer of dirt. Kenny started filling the aquarium with various non-poisonous snakes.
Kenny knew the best places to hunt for snakes and lizards. He is only five years older than I am which made him fourteen. He was like the pied piper from Alabama. There was always an abundance of children that followed him everywhere. I wanted to do everything everyone else was doing so I also tagged along. I do not recall Kenny ever telling any of us we could not participate. Most fourteen-year-old boys do not want little children following them around. Once we were out hunting reptiles, I grabbed a lizard by the tail, and the tail popped off. It totally freaked me out! I thought I had killed it and the tail was still moving. As I was crying, Kenny assured me that it was not dead. He told me it was natural for their tail to come off. It was a survival mechanism, it happened so that the lizard could get away. He told me that the tail would grow back and showed me a lizard, which had a tail that was a different color than its body. Kenny would let the lizards bite his finger and would let them hang there. Kenney explained that I needed to grab the lizards around their middle. I never hunted lizards again, I was too freaked out.
During the summer, we went to visit my mom’s sister. I definitely remember Kenny coming as well. I did not follow them on this occasion and some of the kids went to the creek. It was muddy and unappealing to me. Kenny came back with a snakeskin and asked me if I could sew it into a wristband. I found a strip of denim, measured his wrist and went to work. I heard Kenny telling my Aunt Judy that it was a banded water snake. I stared inspecting the skin. I looked at my cousin Wayne and said, “This is a copperhead skin”. Wayne motioned for me to hush and said that if his mom knew it was venomous she would not allow them to go to the creek any more. Kenny wore that wristband for a long time he never took it off. My Aunt Judy should have known he was lying. Kenny would not have killed a non-venomous snake.
Kenny liked karate and blowing things up with M-80 firecrackers. Kenny passed away January 10, 2018. He lived his life the way he wanted. He was never boring. He will be missed.
By: LaDonna Poole
