That year was also when he and Gene learned to play the guitar. He still minded his sirs and ma’ams, but he wouldn’t answer to a name handed down from a granddaddy he never knew over a name that was all his own. “John Verret, there’s wooden spoon here enough for another backside” -īy the time Snafu was ten, he only answered to Merriell from adults, and not always then. Maud stopped him before he could explain. “Merriell Shelton, you’re just one big snafu waiting to happen.” When it came to light that becoming blood brothers was indeed Merriell’s idea, Gene’s second-cousin John Verret gave Merriell the nickname by which he would later come to be know. They hadn’t caught a thing, but they did have a bucket of live bait to show for their trouble.Īt the tender age of six, back when Gene was still calling them “Gene Woe and Mewwieww Shewton,“ the two boys decided on their fraternity, sealing the bond with Gene‘s daddy‘s pocket knife and two drops of blood, for which Maud Roe wore their behinds out and threatened to call Merriell’s mama. They weren’t but five, but somehow they’d managed to walk four miles there and back to the nearest body of water, and they were home at six when Johnny Gaspard from down the street knocked on the door, concerned for the dirty little boys sleeping outside on a July morning, covered ankle to neck in mud and mosquito bites. Their mamas loved to tell the story of the time that they sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night to fish, and the paper boy found them in the morning, both clutching a cane pole and wearing nothing but Batman underwear, sacked out on the swings on either end of the Roes’ porch. They were precocious children on their own, but together they were pure hellions. When their mamas came to carry them home that afternoon, they found their boys sitting on the sidewalk, singing a garbled version of “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,“ both of them trying to run over the other’s hand with a miniature John Deere. Francis’s, and they sat side by side on the sharing carpet, playing with the toy tractors Gene had brought in his pockets.
The two recognized each other from Sunday school at St. Merriell was, as of his first day of preschool, an only child. Eugene Roe had several brothers, but he loved Merriell Shelton the best.Īs the oldest, Gene was used to other children, but not children his own age.
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