JUST ANOTHER IGNORANT WHITE MAN

As the BBC put it, Hillary's base in West Virginia is "Uneducated white men...". And one of my favorite resident hillbillys of the state with that dubious distinction, is Savage Lynch's brother- Milawyer. He happened to be in town last night, putting the final touches on his new summer digs at Paradise Pond. Never one's to miss an opportunity to catch up with Milawyer and down a few as the sun sets, my brother Bird and I filled the cooler with beers and headed for the pond.
Milawyer is the namesake of my paternal grandfather, who basically raised his father before WW II. The family ties run deep, so when we get together there's plenty of clanking of bottles, hugs, digs, smirks, guffaws and eventually knife throwing. I'm good at everything but the later. For some reason I was behind the door when they were passing out the knife throwing gene. I not only miss the bullseye, I can't even stick it in the tree. CLANG- CLANG- CLANG- FUCK! Now you may think this is no big deal, but in this crowd knife throwing ability is looked on as something akin to being born without a tail. At first everyone is supportive and trys to help me master the technique. But as the night progresses and my knives clatter into the dust they (and I) give up. I just feel like crawling off and crying.
Look, I've got 3 degrees, can call a turkey in from a mile away, build a house, play guitar, write a song and lecture on the iconoclastic tendency of the Taliban regime in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. Why is it I can't stick that knife? As the night progressed I got drunker, hoping this would help. It didn't. So this morning I'm hungover, the bird's aren't gobbling and I have to go to work. As Milawyer put it. "Thank God the Osterhouts are good looking....cause they sure can't throw a knife." Excuse my tail.