The Man in the Moon by Doug Briscoe

I've known for over 49 years, with a sure and certain knowledge, that there really is a Man in the Moon.

I watched the Moon landings back in 1969, but I knew they wouldn't see him.
He's there, all right, but you've got to know how to look for him. I learned to do this in 1954...

I was almost seven, and I'd sit on my Grandpa's lap out in the back yard, when the mosquitoes weren't too bad...

He had a big wooden chair...I think they call them Adirondack chairs now....that we would sit in together and look at that big yellow Moon thru his old binoculars...

When the clouds were cooperative, we could see that Old Man and marvel at how good he looked.....

I swear, sometimes he even winked at us...

When we got tired of looking at the Moon, Papa would tell me stories of his early days. He was from Indiana, and his boyhood was like reading Huck Finn...I never got tired of his tales..

As I grew older, Papa and I discovered many wonderful things together.
He was a great fisherman from the days when good fish were plentiful. But he was always ready for just the two of us to get a leaky old rowboat and go down some river and fish....his smile was as big as his heart when I'd catch one...

I loved every minute of it.

As I grew older still, Papa shared a bit more earthy knowledge with me...
He had an occasional taste for the spirits...saying he was a 'drinker' would stretch the point...but he did enjoy a drop or two of Old Hickory from time to time and he knew which end of a Pearl beer to open...

Our county was 'dry'....meaning no hard liquor could be sold...so we made a trip every so often to the county line.

Papa had a friend that owned a liquor store there....Oscar..

We always went there..they had been good friends for many years.
It was a small store, just a shack, really, out in the middle of nowhere..
I'd drink a Coke and they'd talk..

I liked going there...but then, I liked going anywhere with my Papa...

Oscar had a $.50 cent piece welded to a bolt thru his wooden floor....he got the greatest joy watching people drop something and try to discreetly pick up that old worn half dollar...

Papa also showed me what a 'cock fight' was...we went to a few down in the Brazos River bottoms....illegal, of course...exciting, maybe brutal..but the best life experience a boy could have...

I saw knife fights between men over some grudge or wager...

I tasted syrup made from sugar cane cooked in a long trough over a wood fire...

And I learned that respect among men is earned, not given...

I still have tha old pair of binoculars...the leather straps have fallen off long ago and you can hardly see thru them...

But, maybe someday, I can use them to show my grandsons how to look for that Old Man in the Moon...

The best place is out in the back yard....in a big wooden chair....

When the mosquitoes aren't too bad...