Bull Remembered

As a young man of 15, my father and his friend Bill Maute were given tuxedoes from the McWilliams sister, whose brother had died early in the war at Guadalcanal.  Since so many young men were already at war, they got invited to many different functions.  The two young men rode to balls and dances up and down the Delta in their tuxedoes, traveling by Trailways bus to each location.

Imagine two skinny boys dressed to the nines in a hot, crowded local bus, traveling the dusty byways of Mississippi in 1942.

My father told me about a mother and son pair of addicts, addicted to paregoric, who travelled the hot and dusty backroads of Mississippi.  They had a prescription, which they would present to druggists in the small towns along the way, scoring bottles as they went.