Running Under the Points

(Eatonton, GA) “What stick a big man in the foots will let a little man run under the points.”

I was driving back from Athens yesterday and stopped in this town to visit the Uncle Remus Museum. I have driven by that museum many times but I finally decided to pull in and check it out. The museum had already closed for the day but the man running the museum let me in and I looked around for a few minutes. I bought a CD and a book.

That CD has been playing in my car ever since. I’ve been listening to such stories as the Laughing Place, The Wonderful Tar Baby and the Briar Patch. I took the book to bed with me last night and will do the same tonight.

I’ve chuckled and smiled a lot remembering these stories.

But they have also caused me to think.

The Uncle Remus stories were read to me and my other classmates on a daily basis during story time at Reynolds Elementary School. That was in the early sixties.

The stories sure do bring back a lot of memories to this writer who is appreciating more and more every day the incredible start he had in life and the amazing people who impacted him.

The books are out of print today because they are not politically correct. I am certain my three boys have never heard of Uncle Remus.

For those of you who have been deprived of these stories, Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton Georgia in 1848. He gathered the dialect tales he heard in his childhood told by a couple of slaves who had the gift of story telling. He also introduced America and the world to the basic patterns and rhythms of southern African American speech. These entertaining stories were translated into 27 languages.

But there is no doubt there is an underlying message in the stories.

Brer Rabbit is the black slaves alter ego and trickster hero and the so-called stronger animals represent the white slave owners. And the message just below the surface is about a violent, predatory world of interracial strife, interclass warfare and assaults on the human spirit.

But for me there is another lesson.

We all deal with obstacles bigger than ourselves. For some it is the death of someone we love, for some it is the agony of divorce or the separation of a friend, for some it is the power of addiction, for some it is financial disaster, for some it is physical illness, for some it is loneliness and depression, and I could go on and on.

On the surface we don’t have a chance against such giants.

But just because something is bigger than us doesn’t mean we will be defeated.

Sorta like Brer Rabbit escaping from Brer Fox in the Briar Patch.

“What stick a big man in the foots will let a little man run under the points”.

Whether that statement is politically correct or not I don’t know.

But I do know this.

Sometimes we just need to run under the points.