I once had a cousin named Samuel Ribbling. We all called him “Toad”, because of an episode that happened when we were all 12. First off and most import, you need to know that my cousin Toad had the functioning intellect of chicken gravy. Somewhat lumpy and questionable to the content.
The name christening occurred when six of us went skinny dipping at Norton pond where the street runoff emptied from Boulevard and Sykes Ave. We tossed our ragged jeans and assorted loco tee-shirts up under a pine tree and then plunged into the murky and tar scented water……it was great!
After a while, our eyes got to burning and our hair became nappy from filtering all the sediment that floated in the pond. At this point, we got out and pulled on our duds. My cousin had to wear overalls to accommodate his large size. Aunt Teresa used to say that Toad was big boned and still toted some of his baby fat. Truth was, Toad was a lard ass that had to wear lard ass clothes. Wer’t no shame in it, it’s just the way it was. Anyway……Toad was getting dressed when he witnessed a fat amphibian leaping round the pond in pursuit of assorted insecti.
Toad loved catching frogs, toads, lizards and unfanged snakes. He’d carry em round all day in his pockets and studied em till supper time and then set em free if they survived. Well, my cousin took off after this big toad and soon had him hostage in the back pocket of his overalls. His front pockets were full of pecans we had scooped up earlier on the side of the road.
After we left the pond we trekked over to the old abandoned sugar mill where a dead dog was. We found it about three days earlier and wanted to see how much of it was left after the maggots took over…..nature’s morticians.
After we poked it a few times, we finally headed back to my house and sat on the front porch and drank Kool-Aid. While we were sitting there and telling dirty jokes, I looked over at Toad and asked him to let us see his new toad. My cousin reached in his front pocket and froze with his eye’s bugging out like when your not sure bout a fart. He pulled out a handful of pecans and said, “Dang!” My cousin was Southern Baptist and careful bout cursing. We were silent for a sec and then finally realized that lard ass was sitting on the poor creature in his back pocket. We howled!
“Let’s see it!” everbody started yelping. Seems a smashed toad was more interesting than just a regular hop around toad. Well, my cousin was upset cause he still had to wear those overalls for two more days fore my Aunt Teresa would suppose to wash em and toad guts could get bad after just a few hours. From that point on his name was ‘Toad’.
The short of this story is, even years and children and grandchildren later, we still referred to him by his childhood nickname. Samuel James Ribbling passed away from cancer in 2006 at the age of 61. My aunt Teresa crossed the Jordon in 2009 at the age of 83. Three plots down from her grave was her son’s Samuel. During her funeral, a few of my old swimming hole buddies and I walked over to pay our respects to him. Laying next to his grave stone was a porcelain planter in the shape of a toad with the word ‘Grandpa’ hand painted on it’s back.
I truly miss that old lard ass.
