UNCLE SACK

Delicious Crimes

I decided I should tell you, good readers, how I came to know I was different from other folks.

It was a delicious little crime that did it, the sort that any man with a sweet tooth and a taste for civil disobedience would have a hard time avoidin’. I have lived a long, long life. Folks what read this column know I am now 195 years old. I still don’t know why I never died. I just never got around to it.

I discovered my outlaw traits about 170 years ago with my first wife. She was a good woman and I loved her for all I was worth but she had an iron will. Somethin’ tended to come over me on occasions when she would lay down the law about vittles. I would turn into common criminal.

Now I ain’t talkin’ about runnin’ around or takin’ my hand to her or any o’ that foolishness. My mama had raised me to steer clear of that kind of misery. Nope, I’m talkin’ about those delicious little culinary crimes that a grown man commits when he begins to chafe at the law of the table... crimes he practiced when he was a young boy.

Like most men, one of my favorites was sneakin’ food from the dinner table before anyone sat down. That first wife of mine served a right formal supper and woe to the Philistine what stuck his or her fingers in the food before the blessing. The danger was what made it so exciting.

In those early days, I satisfied myself with petty theft, an occasional slice of tomato out of the green salad, a biscuit off the bottom of a towel-covered bowl. I guess that’s how it all starts, a petty crime here and there and next thing you know, you’re a hardened criminal.

Before long I had taken to raiding the cookie jar and blamin’ it on the kids. I’m ashamed to admit I did such a thing now, but that woman was formidable when her temper was up and I went to some lengths to stay out of her line of fire.

She died before she turned fifty, my first mate, and I took it hard. I didn’t feel like courtin’ nobody else for another ten years.

Then, just after I turned sixty, I met a young woman who was a friend of my daughter. She took a likin’ to me and before long, I was hitched again.

Now this one was a bit more gentle tempered than the first, but she kept a close eye on me and discovered my dark side early on. She used to set traps for me, markin’ the vittles so she would know I run off with ‘em. My other kids was growed up and moved away so I didn’t have nobody to blame it on but my hound dog. This one was too smart to believe old Rex could open the smokehouse door, let alone work out the latch to the larder so I got caught with my fingers in the till more than once.

We had a kind of understandin’, that second wife and me. She never rehabilitated me but I admitted guilt when caught, and most of the time, I stayed out on parole.

It was during that marriage that I figured out somethin’ strange was goin’ on in my old age, that bein’ that I wasn’t havin’ one.

I got to be 70 years old and was still feelin’ full of spit and vinegar. I could tell things was goin’ different for me than it was for the boys and girls I grew up with. They was dyin’ off from old age all around me while I was still workin’ hard in the fields and feelin’ as fit as I had when I was a young man. I had growed out my beard and it kind of disguised my lack of ageing until the time it shoulda turned grey. Then, folks began to look at me strange, like I had made some kinda deal with the devil or somethin’.

Even that second wife of mine was gettin’ a little unsettled. I had never thought about it until then. I just kept on keepin’ on, thankin’ the maker for my good health, never questionin’ why I was still so lively and strong. Then one day, I was pilferin’ some cornbread out of the pantry and she caught me.

She yelled out. “There you are, actin’ just like little boy still in his short breeches!” I looked up right guilty and saw her face change from amused fury to pain. She burst into tears and ran out of the room. When I got her calmed down, she look at me real earnest and asked. “Sack,” she says “I don’t think you have aged a day since we met. Why do you suppose that is so?” She was nearin’ her forties and had begun to slow down some.

At first I didn’t know what she was talkin’ about. I felt older in my head. It was only my body that had stayed young. “I don’t know what you mean, sugar?” I said.

“Look at me Sackfield Brewer. I am becoming an old woman. When we met, you were almost sixty years old. You have children older than me. Now I am a wrinkled old hag and you are still a young man. It isn’t natural!”

I could hear the hurt in her voice. I didn’t know what to say. I stewed over it for weeks, noticin’ for the first time the resentful stares around me. One day, I went to my lawyer and set up my will, makin’ sure she and my kids was takin’ care of...then, without a word, I up and left.

I loved that woman and I knew it would hurt her if I went away, but I couldn’t bear to watch her come to hate me. I knew somethin’ was wrong with me and that the longer I stayed, the more sorrow I would draw onto the ones I cared about.

From then on I wandered, never stayin’ in one place more than thirty or forty years. I got hitched again, even had kids, but after three more marriages, I finally decided the pain weren’t worth the joy. My last wife died in 1929 and I have steered clear of the institution ever since.

Today, I cain’t pilfer food, even from myself, without feelin’ a pang of sadness. The joy has gone out of my delicious crimes. All the small battles that added spice to life with those five women now seem like fond dreams, and when temptation comes upon me, I see the hurt expression of the ones I loved and my appetite goes away.

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