Hey, how yall doing? My name is Enoch Jones, I'm the Mayor of Nomocotton, Texas and my wife Junie done asked me to talk to yall. She wanted me to tell yall about the time Big Bobby Bullen dropped by the school to set the school teacher straight. Now, yall know Big Bobby he is 6 ft 5inches tall and weighs close to four hundred pounds and that old man can look as mean as a rattlesnake with false teeth when he gets a mind too. Now it was back in 1946 or 47 right after the big war ended, I was in ninth grade back then for the first time. Our shop teacher was an itty bitty feller named Hobart Houge.

One night Big Bobby and Hiram Trawick were down at German John's dranking some of that stuff he hides behind the counter. Old Hobart came in and asked Doug Abrahamson (he owned German John's back then) for the tools he'd ordered for the school shop. Now I don't know all the particulers but for some reason old Hiram bet Mr Houge that Big Bobby could teach his class a lot better than he could. I don't wanna say anything nasty about Hobart Houge but that boy had a temper like a banker who just lost a dollar. Hobart took to jumping up and down and screaming like a Baptist Preacher at a beer bust. He looked at Hiram and said "I tell you what, I'll bet you the title to my brand new Packard against a year of you two clowns sweeping out the shop everyday that Big Bobby couldn't teach my class nothing more than how to look like a fool."

Well the long and short of it was Big Bobby and Hiram showed up the next Monday morning with their tool belts and about a hundred pounds of lumber. They had hammers and nails and sand paper and vice's and all kinds of neat stuff. They passed that wood out to us boys and we spent a week sawin and hammerin and sandpapering and glueing while them two walked us through every step. They was like two mother hens with only one chick to share.

I wanna tell you right now when that week was over us boys were Pure Dee relieved. We had built 24 of the ugliest, badly built, rickety bookshelves you ever saw in your life. I mean these things were so bad Old Man Turnershaw wouldn't even sell them in his junk shop. When we was done, Big Bobby pulled out one of them high dollar big fat Ceegars and said "There you go Hobart, Whatcha got to say about that?"

Mr. Houge had spent the whole week walking around grinning and shaking his head. He looked at Big Bobby and said "Bullen I teach metal shop. I like my room swept out everyady at Four o'clock."