There are some distant relatives of the Hodaggs that we don't talk about much. It greatly affects Uncle Bersie's blood pressure and overall general mood when he thinks of them. You see Bersie's first cousin Zelda Sweet left Coon River Valley back in the early 60s and became a flower child. When she first got her drivers license she would borrow Uncle Bersie's truck and go up on Sand Mountain every Saturday morning during season and bring back a load of watermelon. She would sell them in Montgomery on the Mobile Highway near the Jet Drive-in. She made enough money to buy a Volkswagen microbus and traveled throughout the country following Elvis concerts. After Elvis died she became bored and took up with a fellow who lived in Mellow Valley (Clay County) Alabama. Now if you don't know, Clay is the only county in Alabama that has neither a railroad nor a traffic light. She had three boys, one set of twins that she named Love and Honey and the younger boy she named Passion. Zelda soon became bored and decided to be a nomadic fan of the Grateful Dead. She changed her name to Venus and was in every sense a true to the core Deadhead.
I don't know if you know this or not but one of the last Grateful Dead concerts, before Jerry's soul went to that great mushroom field in the sky on August 11, 1995, was at St Charles, Missouri. All the deadheads stayed at a campsite near Wenzville. A great storm came through and everyone gathered on a deck out of the rain. The deck collapsed and Venus (AKA Zelda) met an untimely end, crushed beneath hundreds of fellow Deadheads. Uncle Bersie, being her only relative with a drivers license, had to go to Missouri and drive her vehicle back to Alabama. The humiliation of having to be seen driving a purple microbus through St Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, and Montgomery has never left Bersie. Sometimes he dreams about it and wakes in a cold sweat.
Love and Honey Sweet did well for themselves. They hauled a few loads of watermelon but didn't have near the luck selling them in Mellow Valley as their mother had done in Montgomery. They finally got good jobs driving dump trucks for the county highway department. Passion, on the other hand, never did well. He was bad to fight, probably something to do with his name (Passion Sweet) and he had lost all his teeth except three. Since everyone called him that, he officially changed his name to Snag Sweet. Had to go the courthouse in Ashland five times to get it finalized. He picked a fight with Cleavon at the Coon River Ranch and Bersie looked him square in the eye and said "Son, you come back and we may not be your friend!"
We hadn't heard from them in a long while and just the other day we got a letter with a picture. Love and Honey's friend Ruth Ann Mizzell had bought a new house and they went over to help her take the wheels off. A long way from the pond at Coon River, the boys decided to do some diving in Ruth Ann's backyard pool. Snag took their picture and they thought we would like to see it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Love and Honey Sweet.....
I don't know if you know this or not but one of the last Grateful Dead concerts, before Jerry's soul went to that great mushroom field in the sky on August 11, 1995, was at St Charles, Missouri. All the deadheads stayed at a campsite near Wenzville. A great storm came through and everyone gathered on a deck out of the rain. The deck collapsed and Venus (AKA Zelda) met an untimely end, crushed beneath hundreds of fellow Deadheads. Uncle Bersie, being her only relative with a drivers license, had to go to Missouri and drive her vehicle back to Alabama. The humiliation of having to be seen driving a purple microbus through St Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, and Montgomery has never left Bersie. Sometimes he dreams about it and wakes in a cold sweat.
Love and Honey Sweet did well for themselves. They hauled a few loads of watermelon but didn't have near the luck selling them in Mellow Valley as their mother had done in Montgomery. They finally got good jobs driving dump trucks for the county highway department. Passion, on the other hand, never did well. He was bad to fight, probably something to do with his name (Passion Sweet) and he had lost all his teeth except three. Since everyone called him that, he officially changed his name to Snag Sweet. Had to go the courthouse in Ashland five times to get it finalized. He picked a fight with Cleavon at the Coon River Ranch and Bersie looked him square in the eye and said "Son, you come back and we may not be your friend!"
We hadn't heard from them in a long while and just the other day we got a letter with a picture. Love and Honey's friend Ruth Ann Mizzell had bought a new house and they went over to help her take the wheels off. A long way from the pond at Coon River, the boys decided to do some diving in Ruth Ann's backyard pool. Snag took their picture and they thought we would like to see it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Love and Honey Sweet.....
