Written By:   Birl Brown

(In memory of “Uncle Bob”  Clayton ,182? – 1925-6)

         When time was younger and less fleeting

And most roads remained unskinned,

There were Chinaberries cheating

In the shaded glades they fend,

Multiplying madly to hog the open glade,

They were purposeful in meeting

All requirements with their shade.

In the Spring their ammunition

Gave the lads’ popguns’ fruition,

Smelled all sweetness, when Spring greeting,

And were foulest in the Fall.

“Uncle Bob” was black; was born a slave, and blind.

He harbored in his fingers a knack for caning chairs,

Was most adept at teaching, and to little kids was kind,

Although he could neither read nor write

His wit was keenly sharp and bright –

His manners moved to stem imagined fears.

By our voice he knew us, throughout unnumbered years.

He’d often bring us little kids a stick of sugar cane

And tell us that the sweeter joints were always near the base.

We loved him for the man he was: That is what endears.

His knife was sharp in carving and he’d frequently explain

The lore the lads most likely wished him to retrace.

One project he was good at was hollowing out a limb

Pushing out the pithy part of a piece of pipey reed

To leave a hole “small finger-size” within the finished trim

He then would carve a plunger to fit the hole in need

And placed - in either end of it - a chinaberry plug;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

One, the plunger pushed in, the other it popped out,

One only had to aim it, and keep his smiling smug

And that chunk of chinaberry would a pesky Jaybird rout!