Your compiler had a great-uncle he never knew, but dearly wishes he had. His name was Hugh Henderson and he lived in Brooks his entire life, which was from late 1889 until early 1961. Serving as postmaster of Brooks for thirty-seven years (1922-59), he was First World War veteran and a well-known man around town. Uncle Hugh was an extrovert of the first water, a drinker who was sober as a church warden till Saturday night, but who would then cut loose with an exuberance that was not tamable. He was a raucous old galoot who used the return address “I. P. Rainwater, Brooks, Georgia,” on lots of personal correspondence, who could cuss like somebody was handing out money for it, who always had the latest “Little Moron” joke to share, and who once took a small bag of cracked corn to a chitlin’ supper and surreptitiously sprinkled it on the table so participants would think the chitterlings hadn’t been cleaned and stripped properly. To paraphrase the late country singer, Johnny Paycheck (1938-2003), Uncle Hugh was the only hell his mama ever raised. One Saturday night around 1930, Uncle Hugh found his way to a shine shack somewhere out the McIntosh Road in Brooks, where he drank till he could hardly walk. He made his way back along the dark road home, mostly by ditch and gulley, not to mention one firmly-planted fence post he staggered into and busted his nose upon, singing Barney Google (with the goo-goo-googly eyes) the whole way. Uncle Hugh’s…
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