Lying, and the Benefits Thereof

My teachers didn’t really approve of me working after school at Dad and Grandpa’s pool hall. One of the older lady teachers said I was spending too much of my time in that pool hall with a bunch of aging prevaricators. I told Ol’ Bill what she said and he and Ol’ Jim both really got upset by that. I was surprised they took it so hard. Doc Dykes, the chiropractor, told them it just meant they were a bunch of old liars, and that was something of a relief to Ol’ Bill. ‘Prevaricator’ sounded bad, like maybe he was some kind of weirdo. He’d own up to an occasional lie, or at least an exaggeration.

But all the Front Bench Regulars there in the pool hall would have preferred not to be called liars. It is not exactly a lie if you say you remember catching a 50-pound catfish years back if it only weighed 42 pounds. That, claimed Ol’ Jim, was simply a product of not remembering clearly, and as acceptable as saying you had five dollars even if you actually only had four and a pocket full of change. Because who ever knows how much change you have in your pocket? However, he said, if you actual said you had caught a 50-pound catfish and it was only 10 or 20 pounds, that was an outright lie and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Virgil Halstead came right out and admitted he lied almost every day…to his wife! But then, amongst the married men, who didn’t? My dad, the most honest and upright man I ever met, told my Mom he had borrowed a trolling motor to run our johnboat when he had actually paid 30 dollars for it. Dad said the Bible stated ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ so he maintained that he had to lie about that trolling motor to maintain the peace. If Mom found out he paid that much for it there would have been no peace in our home for awhile!

Sometimes if you say things that are downright absolutely the truth, NO ONE will believe you. For example, I saw a flying saucer when I was 13 years old! It sounds like a bald-faced lie, because you are thinking of a spacecraft filled with little green men. But what actually happened was, Mom threw one at dad! It sailed across the room and narrowly missed him when he ducked, tearing a chunk out of the wallpaper.

I think I have written about all of this before, and I have given a great deal of thought about whether or not we will all be hanging our heads in front of St. Peter someday recalling some of the lies we told in our lives. But Preacher Lampkin put it all in perspective for me one summer evening in the pool hall when it was just the two of us and all the Front Bench Regulars had gone home.

He said the commandment in the Bible stated, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” He said what that meant was no man should be a witness against another in a false manner. For instance, if you really didn’t like some kid in school and you told the teacher you saw him stick his chewed gum under the desktop when he actually didn’t do anything of the sort, that was ‘bearing false witness’.

Years later it dawned upon me that in court when you have to hold up your hand and ‘swear to tell the truth so help you God’, that the really bad people, the no-gooders and the worthless, had no reason to ever tell the truth. The truth might render them guilty! Only the good people who actually believe in those Ten Commandments are bound by such an oath. What a disadvantage that gives honest people. If the judge is a no-account himself, as more and more of them are getting to be, a truthful man seeking fairness is really up the creek. Knowing that, it is understandable why so often good people are run over and bullied by the bad.

I think maybe God treasures women above men for several reasons and truthfulness must be amongst them. In general I think the ladies are a little more inclined to be truthful, especially when they get older. In the Bible it says that a good woman’s value is far above rubies. There is not one statement anywhere about a good man having any value at all! I wish I knew where to go with all this. Sometimes when I start writing I have a point to make and then in short order I forget what it is. And that’s the honest-to- goodness truth.

It is also the truth that you might enjoy reading one of my books or magazines. You can see them on a website…larrydablemont.com. There are 11 books and more than 100 magazines we call the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal.

One of my readers told me recently that he thought my newspaper column last year about how I love to eat the buds of those orange day-lilies, which are thicker in the summer than thorns on a locust, was all a tongue in cheek effort to try to get gullible folks to do something silly. But people, I am as serious as three-day blizzard when I say that those buds, cut just before they bloom, are delicious.

He remembered the column I wrote telling folks I had envelopes filled with nearly invisible morel mushroom seeds for sale for a five dollars each and the one where I said that raw gizzard shad soaked in catsup tasted just like sardines. I regret those feeble attempts at humor but that’s the truth about day-lily buds. Sautee them like asparagus or roll them in eggs and flour and fry them and you will be amazed how good they are. In fact they have been called ‘poor man’s asparagus’. They grow all over my place here on Lightnin’ Ridge and I like them so much that hardly any ever get to bloom! Don’t take my word for it, ask someone who is honest and trustworthy!