When I was a kid, I’d visit my aunts, uncles, and cousins in the country during the summer. When I say country, I’m talking the deep south, Mississippi, dirt roads (or gravel if you were posh), pet goats, 3-wheelers with front racks to stabilize a rifle and a deer rack in back, Piggly Wiggly stores, etc. — Redneck USA.
I was the city cousin, considered sophisticated and worldly (as much as those terms could possibly apply as a kid), a minor curiosity.
When I was around fifteen years old, I met this kid, Edgar. I think he was about the same age as me. He may have been a second or third cousin, who the hell knows down there, but suddenly I was at the mercy of a country person without a close familiar blood-relative to buffer it. I was officially off-reservation.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked Edgar, but some strange shit goes down out in the country and I’d always had a cousin (they all love me, even Galen, who used to beat the shit out of me and his brother on occasion) to steer me clear of the shit my city-brain might have trouble adapting to on short notice.
So Edgar and I were sitting on the front porch of his house. He asked me ‘Hey, do you like to rap?’ Now, rap was a thing, and I wasn’t completely ignorant of it, but (and forgive me for this, it was simply childish ignorance at a time before I was aware of people starting…
