Ox should look for the Dade Co. cable TV shooter next time

News from my hometown. Someone in the hunting party of state insurance commissioner and Republican candidate for governor John Oxendine was sprayed by pellets from an accidental gunshot in Dade County. Ox and his sons were at a quail hunting preserve which I have never heard of, although to be fair, I haven't lived in Dade in some time. However, if Ox knew my home county at all, he should have known there are plenty of shootists there who could have prevented such an accident.

When cable TV arrived in Dade County around 1978, everyone was talking about it. Then, just a few weeks after it went on, cable TV was gone, snowy pictures for my family and all the other charter subscribers. Some had suspected it was the work of a church group who had lobbied against cable TV because the president of the cable company was Mephistopheles himself. You know the story, Mephistopheles greases the palm of the county commissioner (yes, there was a single commissioner in Dade County at the time, but his palm was never greased. It was slicker than K-Y 24/7). The county commissioner then talks about how Mephy is a fine upstanding member of the community even though Meph openly admits the only reason he wants to bring cable TV to Dade County is so boys don't have to sneak into theaters to see movies with cussing and nekkid women. Meph wins, and we got our cable.

Until, that is, it went out. It was gone for a few days, which felt like decades for a kid who had already become accustomed to watching the hapless Atlanta Braves and the Three Stooges every day (sometimes simultaneously). Then, like the prodigal son, cable was back. The explanation of where it went was given to us on the public access channel, which was a black and white channel where public service announcements on cards were held by hand (I'm not joking) in front of a camera. The announcement held up to the camera several times in the days after our Valhalla returned simply read, "We apologize for your cable TV being out. Someone shot the cable." We later learned from the rumor mill, which is Dade County is 100-percent true, that someone had repeatedly been using the wiring near the cable company's headquarters for target practice until they were finally caught.

So next time Ox is in Dade County, he should ask some locals about the cable TV shooter, and if that guy is still around, everyone in Ox's hunting party will take home a covey of quail or a bevy of squirrels, or whatever it is they are hunting. And if Ox is ever hunting in Covington, Georgia, he should avoid my beloved first cousin as if he were Glenn Richardson on Bourbon Street. Once when we were about 12, my cousin decided it would be a swell idea to hold a pellet gun to his left palm and pull the trigger. He then tried to talk his uncle (my dad) into cutting out the pellet with his pocket knife so his mother (my aunt) wouldn't find out. I will give you three guesses as to whether that line of persuasion worked.