Syrup Man at Midnight

© 2005 Sam Crenshaw

by Sam Crenshaw

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It was plenty dark—nearly midnight—and scary in the deserted deep piney woods of southeast Georgia. We were returning from a visit with family in Jacksonville, Florida. What was about to happen would not have taken place had we stopped on our way south, but we decided that we wanted to press on. After all, we could stop on the way back home to get our favorite syrup from the man in a place called Tyree, located half-way between Waycross and Jacksonville.

We first discovered the old man and his mule beside the four-lane highway—a road that covers nearly eighty miles from the land of the Okefenokee Swamp to north Florida—a few years earlier. He didn’t talk much, and he probably thought we were tourists with dumb questions that he had heard countless times. He was urging his old brown mule in circles, a crude but workable way to grind cane for the purpose of making syrup, no doubt a monotonous job for both man and mule.

Only a few yards from the highway, his syrup-making operation attracted a lot of attention—not a bad form of advertising. Forty yards or so further back on the property, behind a cluster of scrub trees, I observed an old run-down mobile home.

The old man, who had a wad of tobacco in his jaw, was dressed in faded overalls. Pulled low on his forehead was a grease-stained felt hat, the front bill bent forward to shade his eyes from the brightness of the sun.

"Howdy," I offered. "How you doing?" The old man grunted, "Awright! How y’all?" "We’re doing just fine," I said. "Say! What you and that mule doing?" He seemed to eye me suspiciously. "We grinding cane to make syrup. You wanna buy some?" he asked. "Sure! Is it the old-fashioned thick syrup?" "Yep." "How much you asking for it?" "Two dollars a bottle." "We’ll take two bottles."

When he brought it out, we noticed there was no label, but then he wasn’t selling labels—just good syrup. Each time we went to visit Sheila’s mother in Jacksonville, we made it a point to stop for syrup on the way home. But on one occasion, we were very late, and it was extremely dark at the old man’s place. I was reluctant to stop. My courageous wife said, "Just pull off and blow the horn like always."

"Honey," I said, "it has always been daylight before. It’s close to midnight." "Well, just see if they will come out." "He may come out with a shotgun!"

She insisted! I told her I only had four dollars to cover two bottles. I added my instructions for her to yell out so he wouldn’t be as intimidated by the voice of a woman. After blowing the horn a few times, a voice came from behind the trees. "What’cha want?" It was the voice of a woman. Sheila called out that we would like to buy some syrup.

"How many bottles you want?" "A case!" I choked! "I don’t have enough money for that much," I whispered menacingly. She then revealed to me that she had money to cover our purchase. In my imagination, it was clear that the old man had his shotgun trained on us from behind the trees. Still shaking, I drove for miles in stifled silence. You talk about a communication gap!