My friend Carolyn Roth Sutton moved a while back to Alabama. Probably moving into that state isn’t nearly as common as moving out of it is – she and her husband Jim went there to be closer to his family.
Now Carolyn, whom I’ve known since boarding school – her pop was principal of the boarding school to which my parents sentenced me – is a pretty good picker. And her husband plays bass.
What she tells me is that whenever folks gather in a back yard there for a bit of music, they always keep a long-handled hoe handy.
It seems that for whatever reason, snakes are attracted to the thump of a string bass. Play the bass, a bunch of rattlesnakes come calling. Just what you need, right?
She says when that happens, people kill 'em, skin 'em, cook 'em and eat 'em. But I think that rattlesnake is a delicacy I can do without.
Seems like a pretty good reason, to me, to avoid the bass, avoid back yards, and avoid Alabama altogether. But what do I know?
-JFT
