“Johnny Maypop ”
by Stumblin' Jimmy Watermelon
ere it is May already, Lord how the time flies. With the ever lengthening daylight, folks are most all out of doors. From yard to yard someone can be found rakin’ lawns, cuttin’ dead limbs or ‘hog rootin’ those flower beds trying to get a jump on summer color. I’m among y’all in that club too, thanks in part to the persistent urging of my ‘other half’, Ghee.
This past Saturday found me on hands and knees, cleaning flower beds neglected all winter. As I pulled at weeds and scratched in fertilizer to feed the calling perennials, my mind took to what it does best, wandering. It was in the midst of transplanting a patch of passionflowers that the seed of this story took sprout.
Like the flower’s years of runnin’ amuck in that open bed, there was a simple point of beginning. Settling each plant in a pot of hopeful containment, I took a moment to thoughtfully ponder how they would look when they filled out. My focus held well thinkin’ about the thick shots of leafs, and images of those large beautiful blossoms entered my head. I was doing o.k. ‘til I got to the fruit. For those of you that may not know, the passionflower bears a round fruit that looks like a green tomato. For the size of it, it’s set on an awfully skinny stem. The Indians called it a ‘maypop” and here’s where I fell into my wandering abyss.
You see along with being the name for that fruit, it is also(down in these parts at least) an adjective of somewhat questionable endearment. So slid my image from plant part into one of an old family friend. Daddy called him “Johnny Maypop” and in hearing such from birth, I did the same.
Standing in field or doorway, most certainly while at the beach in bathing trunks and t-shirt, Johnny, big and round up top with bird stick legs for a stem, struck an unforgettable pose. Once suggested, the image, the moniker and the man were forever melded. In business and formal occasions he was called by his family’s name, and in the company of acquaintances just John, but whenever he walked through our door it was Johnny Maypop. He would always chuckle and shake his head and plop himself down, sprawling out on chair or sofa to share his company with us for a spell.
He and Daddy were good and long time friends. They’d played jokes off of one another since childhood. As I can guess, it wasn’t until they were both grown and married that John developed into his fuller shape and the title took hold. For all he got in that friendly ribbing, Johnny boy, when the opportunity arose, could dole out a heavy dose in an impish fashion all his own.
There was the time, one late fall, he surprised Daddy with a small load of firewood. The first cold night, in much anticipation, we filled the hearth for a roaring fire. Try after try, stoking with paper and kindling, we never could get those logs to light. Turned out the wood was treated with something so it wouldn’t burn! A few days later, who came by with a shake of his head and a little grin?
Another time Daddy, he and I were out on a long automobile drive. I had just gotten my drivers permit and, guardedly had been “given the wheel”. Ol’ Johnny Maypop sat up in the front to keep me company while Daddy took a snooze in the back seat. The road started getting a bit hilly in places and the car, with an automatic transmission, began to creep up in speed on the downward slopes. Uncomfortable enough already with such a responsibility, I found this a bit alarming. Constantly hitting the brake, I began to worry that I would wake him who was now sound asleep in the back. I looked over to Johnny Maypop and trying to seem nonchalant asked, “I wonder if it would slow us enough if I dropped her into low?” Johnny always seemed to have a twinkle in his eyes so I took no special notice. Johnny glanced casually around toward the back seat then back to me and replied, “Well, you could give it a try and find out.”
I wasn’t looking at the speedometer in the particular moment of my decision, but I can safely guess we were traveling around 65 miles an hour. Johnny Maypop was braced and I wished I had noticed. What happened next, I cannot describe without wincing. In an impressive feat of reflex action, Daddy (from a sound sleep mind you) came up off the horizontal seat cushion in the back at the very moment we began our radical reduction of forward velocity. He had his head pulled down from against the car roof’s interior even before that loud barrel-rolling sound from under the hood had commenced. “What the hell was that?” Daddy was bug-eyed. Johnny Maypop just shook his head and chuckled.
Yep, Johnny Maypop, he took his nickname with good humor and all his good, close friends got a taste of his in kind. After that day though, I took to callin’ him, Uncle John. I didn’t get behind the wheel again for a month.
And what’s this all got to do with May? Why, not a thing. It’s just that movin’ those plants got me to wander this way.
