March 03, 2023 | Read Online

Take me back to Buckskin.

My aunt had a memory like a goddamn elephant and she could tell a story like Stephen King.

Cole Schafer
March 03, 2023

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Growing up, my aunt and uncle lived in a small Indiana town called Buckskin.

Despite the photograph up above, it wasn't named after fawn-colored horses but rather the enormous deer population in the area a century or so ago.

They had a house out there perched on so many acres that you had to strain your eyes to see the end of their property line.

On Saturdays and Sundays, my uncle would climb atop his riding lawnmower––it was so slow it would take second place to a horse and buggy in a drag race––and he'd smoke cigarettes and clip away at the grass while the summer sun beat down on him like a pissed-off blacksmith.

It'd take him eight or night hours to lay that razor grass low but by the time he was finished, you could have smacked golf balls off of it. My adolescent self always imagined the patch of grass where he began mowing growing back in full by the time he dumped his very last bag of clippings in the woods for the day.

Years later, my aunt and uncle moved to Evansville, into a house in the suburbs where their lawn was one-hundreth of the size. I shit you not, my uncle would tell me––with a face so straight he could have fooled Daniel Negreanu––that he missed mowing that sea of grass back in Buckskin. He wasn't bluffing.

The bond between an aunt, an uncle and their nephews and nieces isn't one that should ever be taken lightly. Aunts and uncles don't have to play the role of parents and, because of this, they're often times the first "grown-ups" in a child's life to make them feel not like a child but an adult.

My Aunt Kumi and Uncle Chris were always this way to me and I loved them for it.

When my two younger brothers and I would spend the night with them in Buckskin, there were no rules. We'd devour Cosmic Brownies, Zebra Cakes and Twinkies in enormous quantities and then take off into their backyard like a trio of wild horses escaping capture.

They never told me what to do and I can probably only count on one hand the number of times they ever got onto me.

I recall once playing out in Buckskin and stumbling upon a puddle of water that stretched about the length of a basketball court.

The puddle was brimming with fish that the heavy rains the night before had pushed up from one of the nearby ponds and into the field. After quite a bit of flailing around, I managed to get my hands on a chubby little catfish.

I immediately high-tailed up to the house to show my aunt, cupping my catch like it was the blood of Christ.

She was standing on the deck smoking a cigarette in her night gown when she saw me running up with the tiny beast squirming in my hand. My aunt has always been as curious as a cat. When something catches her eye, she furrows her brows like a mechanic taking a bewildered look at the stalled engine of a big rig.

She got a good kick out of my catch, congratulated me and then asked if I was going to put it back where I found it. I said no. To which she asked, "How do you think that makes the fish feel?" Then she just kept smoking her cigarette and looking off into the horizon, like its faint glow held the answer to her question.

I put the fish back.

Sometimes I wonder if parents didn't act more like aunts and uncles to their children––posing questions rather than demanding answers––if their children wouldn't turn out better for it. I imagine that's easier said than done, though.

While my aunt and uncle have long since holstered their cigarettes, they were both smokers for much of my childhood (if you haven't already gathered). There's plenty of bad shit that comes with smoking––shit I don't feel the need to list out here––but I don't think folks speak often enough about its benefits.

I was listening to this interview just the other day with Rick Rubin and he was talking about working with AC/DC. Rubin was saying how when he was producing them, they'd just sit around all day in the studio drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

Rubin would get antsy, point to his watch and the lead guitarist, Angus Young––who was really the heart and soul of the band––would just point to the cigarette in his hand like... What the fuck do you want me to do? I'm smoking? I can't play guitar while I'm smoking?

What Rubin later realized was that AC/DC's genius didn't just come from them "doing" but from them "doing nothing". The band knew they only had 3-4 creative sprints in them a day and so, like a pride of lions, they'd lie around for hours at a time, shooting the shit until inspiration struck. Then, they'd put down their cigarettes, pick up their instruments and hunt.

There's a lot to hate about cigarettes. What's to love, however, is that cigarettes give the smoker an excuse to sit around and do nothing.

Holier-than-thou kale eating fucks like to talk shit about cigarettes––and they have every right to do so because, well, cancer––but sometimes I wonder if humanity isn't worse off spending 12 hours a day staring owl-eyed at their screens.

My aunt and uncle in their country home taught me how to be okay with sitting still, a quality that has been as important to my career as anything.

To be a decent writer, you have to be okay with either writing or doing absolutely nothing. I'm a firm believer that the only way to be creative is to sit around and do nothing until you get bored enough to entertain yourself.

Yesterday, for example, the words weren't coming.

So, I spent about 8 hours sitting around, sipping black coffee and not writing jack shit. I did nothing. I wish I would have had a pack of cigarettes, maybe I would have felt better about doing nothing. But, really, I did absolutely nothing.

That's writing, though. Some days you do nothing. Other days, you do something. But, the only way to do have the days where you do something is to be okay with the days where you doing nothing.

Eventually, my brothers and I would wear ourselves out raising hell in the fields and the woods that surrounded my aunt and uncle's house. We'd shower up and crack open one of the few hundred WWE VHS Cassettes they had in their basement.

After seventy or so suplexes, we'd all pile into their Astro Van––which they used to haul a pair of Dobermann as big as mountain lions to dog shows all over North America––and make the 40-minute drive into town to visit their favorite ice cream shop.

Big Top was the late night hangout for every beautiful fucking freak in Evansville.

Inside, you'd find bikers, truckers, lot lizards, drunks, pimps, the occasional off-duty cop, meth heads––covered in what I thought at the time was chickenpox––and neighborhood kids stopping in for something to eat.

It was heaven on Earth.

They served everything from crinkle cut fries to double cheeseburgers to corn dogs to chicken tenders to every kind of ice cream, any way you could dream it up.

My aunt's order was chocolate swirl served in a styrofoam cup, covered in so much Peanut Brittle Crunch Coat that you could no longer tell that it was ice cream.

While I've since developed a peanut allergy, I've had every dessert from here to Japan and I swear to God its still the best goddamn thing I've ever tasted.

After all our orders were handed out at the counter, we'd pile back into their van and head back to their house, eating ice cream as my aunt and my uncle would tell us stories.

Growing up my aunt had a memory like a goddamn elephant and she could tell a story like Stephen King. She had perfect pacing, making you hang onto every word until you were practically falling out of your seat when she finally arrived at the end.

I'd like to think some of that magic rubbed off on me.

Writing this now, I'm realizing there's a part of me still running around my aunt and uncle's house in Buckskin.

A boy, trying to be a man.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.

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