Each of the articles below were published in the April 3, 2013 issue of Arkansas Weekly:
Mountain Oyster Fry to be Held Friday
The Independence County Bovine Association Leaders
Ltd. at Southside (ICBALLS) will be holding its third annual Mountain Oyster
Fry and Toss, Friday, April 5, at the W.R.D. Entertainment parking lot, 920
Harrison St. in Batesville.
Charlton Rake, president of the ICBALLS chapter, told Arkansas Weekly that this year’s fry and
toss will feature some of the largest mountain oysters available.
“We’re really excited about the size of the oysters
this year,” said Rake. “They’re huge and a little hard to handle when wet, so
that will definitely make the toss much more exciting than in past years. And
of course, everybody loves the taste of some delicious, big mountain oysters. I
don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to batter ‘em up, toss ‘em in the fryer,
and chow down on some of the best mountain oysters in the county!”
The toss is always a thrilling event, drawing hundreds
of eager contestants to the area, battling it out to see who can throw a raw
mountain oyster the farthest. Vurl “Buddy” Reeves, 84, of Batesville is the
current ICBALLS champion, and he told Arkansas
Weekly, he has no plans to give up his title.
“I plan on winnin’,” said Reeves. “See, I have
perfected a technique of cupping the oysters just right before I throw them.
That makes a good long arch if they’re tossed just right. Plus, you gotta treat
these things as if they was your own, you savvy?”
The oysters will be served at 11 a.m. with the toss
beginning at 3 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 kids, and kids 12 and under
are free. Counseling will be available for first-time attendees and children.
Spectators of the toss are advised to wear helmets and safety goggles after
2011’s tragedy where four kids were injured after being hit with errant oysters
from that year’s ICBALLS Visually Imparied Team.
For more information, go to ICBALLS on Facebook.
***
Area Man Selling Big Catch!
Clem Jennings, 44, is the first to tell you he’s no
relation to Waylon Jennings, the famous country singer and songwriter.
“But, just like Waylon,” says Clem, “I’ve always been
crazy.”
Clem, an area podiatrist’s assistant, is also a part
time fisherman looking for a change.
“Every morning, I go catfishin’,” says Clem, “and I’ve
eaten a ton of catfish. But catfish gets a little old after a while, so I
started puttin’ all the catfish I done caught in some fifty pound bags I get
from the textile store. So, over the past three months, I done put all them
catfish in these here bags, and they done been piled up in my garage.”
Besides losing the taste for catfish, Clem had also
grown bored.
“Ever since I lost my dear wife, Francine, in a tragic
gun cleaning incident that was ultimately judged to be an accident by
authorities -- thank goodness,” says Clem with a relieved chuckle, “I decided
to start looking for another long term relationship. So, I got on the
intranets, and my new bride, Katrynia, should be UPS-ed here from eastern
Russia by next Tuesday. I done got to get my garage cleaned up, so I’m selling
these bags of catfish for $50 a piece -- first come, first serve.”
Though some might be concerned that leftover bags of
rotting catfish could be a health issue, Clem says that judging by the smell,
the recent cold weather has kept the fish fairly preserved.
“Just put lots of Tabasco on ‘em after you fry’ em,
and they’ll taste like they just came from the quik mart,” says Clem.
Clem says he’ll be taking orders until Sunday, and
after that, he’s decided to donate the remaining fish to local rest homes.
“So, call (870) 793-4196, ext. 35, and place your
order,” says Clem. “And they gonna need to hurry pickin’ up their bags because
I gotta sign for Katrynia when she done gets here. I don’t know how many holes
they put in her box, and she’s probably gonna be ready for her new cot out in
the garage!”
***
Panda Hunt Scheduled for Saturday
Kids of all ages are invited to this year’s Oil Trough
Panda Hunt, Saturday, April 6, at the Junior Samples State Park, just off
Turnip Breath Road. Grandma Burt’s Famous Panda Pies will be available for
hunters and their families as well as panda face painting for the kids and kids
at heart.
Ernie Glubstone with the Arkansas State Game and Fish
Commission says this year’s panda release will feature at least four pandas
captured from the Qinling Mountains in southern Shaanxi Province, China.
“These are really gonna be prime cuts of panda,” said
Glubstone. “Lean, but tasty. Excellent in fajitas and chili. And the fur will
make for a great stuffed toy panda for your kids, or you can sell it on the
black market and take care of your kids’ college funds.”
All pandas that will be released into the park at 6
a.m. on Saturday have been fed a diet exclusively of organically grown bamboo
and spring water. A shotgun start at 7:30 will let loose hundreds of hunters
from all over Jackson and Independence counties as they spread throughout the
park with their intricately threaded homemade nets and ornate, custom-made
clubs.
Billy Peckinpah, 9, of Batesville, says he’s excited
for his first panda hunt.
“I’m really stoked,” said Billy. “My big brother got
his first panda two years ago, and I’ve watched the video of it over and over.
That thing looked so cute when he realized my brother and his buddies had
surrounded him. The end looks cool in slow motion, too.”
Some nearby residents, however, aren’t too happy with
the longtime hunt.
“It just causes a mess of problems,” said Imelda
Weinstein of Oil Trough. “I mean, first, all these people clog up the roads
with their trucks and four wheelers with pandas strapped across the fronts.
Then, the noise! Oy! Have you ever heard a panda scream? It’s a lot worse than
a panther.”
However, there are others who say this article that
you are currently reading crossed the line of good taste about eleven words in
and never looked back.
“What kind of sick and twisted mind actually thinks
the idea of a panda hunt, where participants are encouraged to go and club a
panda to death, is funny?” asked Geraldine Smucker of New York City. Smucker,
an esteemed jellyologist and blogger specializing in tasteless humor and its
subsequent effect on societal norms and certain tennis elbow, interrupted the
writing of this article about three minutes ago. “Hello! I’m talking to you.
This is a sick and twisted concept for an article, and I really think you
should be ashamed of yourself. You’re probably the wacko who wrote about the
mountain oyster fry, that guy selling bags of rotting catfish and the freak who
wants to ban deer hunting! What kind of childhood did you have to endure in
order to come up with such deranged concepts with absolutely zero regard for
good taste or humor?”
For the record, this reporter had a perfectly normal
childhood: good education, nice family, and except for when they brought out the
snakes, a regular Sunday school and church life.
For more information on the upcoming panda hunt, call
(870) 793-4196, ext. 35.
***
California Transplant Looks to Promote New Way of Life
to Arkansans
Says Ban of Deer and
Duck Hunting Essential to Mother Earth’s Future
Wilkins Benneford looks just like any other
30-year-old male in these parts of Arkansas. He’s tall, a little on the thin
side, but carries his self with an athletic stride and grace. Like many of his
contemporaries, he’s also growing a long, thick beard in the style of the
characters from the popular “reality” television program, Duck Dynasty.
But, whatever you do, don’t bring up the comparison in
conversation with Benneford.
“I loathe everything those backwoods buffoons
represent,” he told a reporter visiting his renovated loft in downtown Newport.
“The Duck Dynasty characters are a blight on so-called ‘Southern Culture.’
They’re almost like a cancer on what the New South should represent. I had thought
progressive Americans were trying to rescue the South -- or whatever you want
to call it -- out of the Stone Age, and here come these hillbilly stereotypes
with their mindless slaughter of some of Mother Earth’s most gracious birds of
flight and their worship and their promotion of the evil American symbol, the
gun. These people are nothing more than savages.”
Benneford, raised in California from a wealthy family
line of landowners, moved to Arkansas after working as a volunteer for the
Obama 2012 campaign. So, his sense of ‘Southern Culture’ might seem invalid to
many area residents.
But Benneford said he was attracted to the area after
he came across the 1995 Arkansas-set film, Sling
Blade, on cable. And after seeing that Billy Bob Thornton-directed and
scripted movie, the longtime Palm Springs resident decided to use his time to,
as he puts it, “…bring Arkansas into, at least, the 20th Century.”
“You watch that movie, and you think, ‘My Mother
Earth, people actually live in those squalid, detestable conditions,’” said
Benneford over tofu salad and beet juice at his kitchen table. “You’d think you
were watching some documentary from a third world country. It’s like a
progression of scenes set in ugly dilapidated houses with filthy couches
occupied by fat, flabby out of shape miscreants whose likely idea of a
nutritious vegetable dish is cole slaw.
“Then you had Thornton, playing some inbred village
idiot to this assortment of folks who look like they just stumbled out of the
Hick Mobile. It’s a wonder they didn’t use subtitles with their country speak.
It was all too much. And, I remember thinking, ‘You know I’m an agnostic, but
if there is a God, I think She would be calling me to move to Arkansas, and be
kind of a present day Paul and lead these people to some sense of modern
civility.’”
Benneford said he was once sampling mushrooms
backstage at a Rage Against the Machine concert when he threw a dart on a map
of Arkansas to decide where to locate what he likes to call his “mission.”
“I first hit Camden, but when I drove into that town,
it was as if I had entered a war zone,” he said. “I mean, there wasn’t a decent
sushi place within 75 miles, so I threw the dart again, and came to Newport.”
With his girlfriend, Flower, and his “other life
partner” Darryl, Benneford oversaw a renovation of the loft, including the
painting of a large mural that takes up the main wall.
“The mural is sort of our mission statement, you
know?” said Flower. “Arkansas is thirsting for knowledge and culture that
transcends their current state – which is full of all types of backward
attitudes and feelings not in sync with Mother Earth and her sacred aura. So,
the mural consists of Buddha, the Dali Llama, and Malcolm X pleading with the
stubborn mule – which of course represents Arkansas – to cross the line into
the present day. And then, in a spirit of acceptance and forgiveness, we have
Jerry Sandusky standing behind the three spiritual leaders, his arms open, as
if to say, ‘Come to all of us, including those of us who might be
misunderstood. We still welcome a gracious and willing crossover of Arkansas
into normalcy.’”
Benneford and his group plan to begin developing a
process that would dismantle many longstanding traditions in the state --
traditions, they feel, are antiquated and “unnecessarily rural.” One such
action is to ban all types of recreational hunting, including duck and deer
hunting in Arkansas.
“We’re really excited about this,” said Benneford. “There
is already a team of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union,
sacrificing their precious time to craft a legal action that will effectively
outlaw the depraved acts of ‘hunting’ innocent creatures of Mother Earth. We
also have ties to Rachel Maddow and her team at MSNBC, so the propaganda
delivered will likely shame into the shadows those who want to try to continue
to practice such hunts. And of course, through my connections, we have many
contacts in the Obama administration who have pledged their full support of any
kind of hunting ban.”
Benneford and his team have developed a learning
program aimed at area schools where members of his team will speak to students
to ensure the Arkansas youth will be “educated with their message of tolerance
and modern times.”
“With the new laws our comrades at the ACLU have
pioneered, we’re going to be able to hold these special programs at schools
statewide and speak freely to the kids of Arkansas. We will make them sign
pledges not to hunt as well as to turn in any friends or family who might try
to evade the ban.”
These school events will also allow Benneford and his
“Mother Earth Warriors” to further expose the young minds to other points of
their view, ensuring the students are not “brainwashed” into the same kind of
mindset held by their parents and grandparents.
“We’ll be pushing important things to help these
culturally malnourished kids see the importance of living a lifestyle that is
the exact opposite to the way many of their parents have been raised. We’ll
make sure certain teachings of Abbie Hoffman, Gloria Steinem, and the Koran
will be studied beginning at kindergarten age to properly mold the children’s
thoughts.”
Benneford said he doesn’t expect much flack from
locals because, as he puts it, “the majority of locals can’t read, so they’re
not going to complain about anything, and if they do, they’ll have to answer to
me or Darryl, and we both practice Tai Chi in the morning. I mean, they’ll take
one look at us and walk away if they know what’s good for them.”
At press time, the first “Ban the Hunter” rally was
scheduled to be held at an area elementary school this past Monday, April 1, at
10:30 a.m.
We’ll keep you up to date on the progress of the
Mother Earth Warriors at the following website:
lightenupfolksthisisalateaprilfoolsjoke.com.
