Anyway, David Earl was in Jackson week before last. Somehow, he got invited to a gravel pit owner’s convention. Can you imagine Yankees call digging in a gravel pit “mining?”

Now, David Earl isn’t really in the gravel pit business. He drives a dump truck for his brother Robert Gene. Robert Gene owns the gravel pit, we think, but we’ve never seen the deed.

David Earl was in awe. He was amazed. He wandered around the convention hall for about an hour. He looked at the new bulldozers, climbed up on the earth scrapers, checked the oil in the dump trucks, and so on. Most importantly, he realized salesmen were giving away all those yardsticks, baseball caps, pocket knives, flashlights and ball point pens. All he had to do was ask and they gave him a trinket or two.

Then he discovered the beer truck.

Picture this, if you can. David Earl, was dressed up. He was decked out in his starched and ironed bib overalls, a clean white t-shirt, a pair of lizard skin cowboy boots and a new baseball cap. After about an hour of touring and advising the salesmen about how to improve their product, he had two heavy sacks of give away junk in one hand and a plastic coke bottle with the top half cut off in the other hand. He used it as a spit cup.

He turned the corner and there it was. Bright as Day! It was red, white and blue with a lot of Chrome. A Bud Light Draft Beer truck was parked there, gleaming in the light, waiting for David Earl. Giving away all the free beer a man could want. The truck was something you don’t see often in Mississippi. It had come up from Louisiana. You know they live by different rules down there, when it comes to drinking. The truck was full of beer and had little chrome spigots sticking out the side. That’s Heaven for a thirsty man and David Earl was thirsty. David Earl’s only decision was what to put down first, the spit cup or the two bags of goodies. But, there was no doubt about it, one had to go to the ground.

Within seconds he was within an arm’s reach of a stack of plastic cups and a truck full of beer. Never mind the smiling salesman standing nearby.

About an hour and a half later or when time became irrelevant, David Earl realized that he needed to get rid of the older beer, so he could drink more new beer. David Earl’s vision had gone from single to double. The earth started moving with every step. He was mellow!

Of course, by that time, he was also close to ten feet tall and more bullet proof than Superman. And, we’re not even going to talk about how intelligent he had become, especially in the presence of heavy equipment salesmen. He was an expert in several different areas. He had already explained how some of those college educated folks didn’t know squat about digging gravel out of the ground and hauling it around Mississippi.

Nature started calling and he felt the need. He put a half empty glass down and headed off for the bathroom!

We don’t know what really happened in that bathroom that day. David Earl’s mental tape recorder malfunctioned under the stress of trying to empty a truck load of beer one glass at a time. The best he could tell me was that he found the bathroom, down the hall and over near the corner, maybe. He walked in, looking for a urinal. There was none to be found, only 4 or 5 stalls. Yes, he was in sort of a hurry. Maybe the equal rights people stopped putting urinals in bathrooms. He didn’t think about that too long.

No problem, he thinks he thought. And, the urge to get rid of the beer was reaching the overwhelming level.

So, being in a great hurry and within the privacy and safety of a bathroom, he reaches down and unzips his fly and prepares to relieve himself, all the while, as he finds a stall, pushes the door open and takes two steps forward.