Bear

(Told at the big tacky Marietta Diner where the perky little waitress asked us if we were out without our wives and we said yes. I made up Leroy's name.)

Stinker and Leroy went to the Bear Place outside Kings Mountain (the place with the monument and the bear out front).

The man said, "The bear died."

Stinker said , "I'll go get you another bear."

He and Leroy got in Stinker's white Cadillac convertible and went to this place in the mountains near Tow River where Stinker knew they had bears.

(It was probably the place where I went with Bill and Loretta and Mimi in 1960 in my father's white 57 Chevrolet. I have a picture of a bear drinking a Coke. Then we went to the cabin and Mimi lay down and got lipstick on a pillow and wouldn't let me near her. Mimi's father ran the Stice Shoals dam.)

The man told Stinker, "This bear will be all right so long as you give him Cokes. He wants Cokes."

Stinker said, "OK".

They got in the Cadillac convertible. Stinker and Leroy sat up front and the bear sat in the back drinking his Coke. (There might have been somebody else along sitting in the back to hold the Coke for the bear.)

Things went all right until they ran out of Coke. (This bear was a sugar fiend. There was another bear who liked beer and was a drunk.)

With his first swipe, the bear tore a hole in the top of the Cadillac. Stinker and Leroy ran out and the bear finished tearing up the inside of the car.

I don't know what happened. Maybe the bear ran off. I don't know if Stinker carried a gun but it would have been in the glove compartment. Bob thinks the story is probably true, that is father saw the Cadillac, how it got messed up by the bear.