An Interview with Trouser Cloninger of Low Melody Farm by Lad Moore

Interview by Lad Moore, author of "Odie Dodie"

Lad: Good Morning. First tell me the origin of your unusual name.
TC: You mean Trouser? Well, when I was a little tweet, we was cockeyed poor. I slept in one leg of a pair of my Daddy’s overalls-you know, like a sleeping bag. Mama called me the Trouser Boy. Reckon now that’s my name.

Lad: Tell me what you remember most about Low Melody Farm and your childhood.
TC: Daddy believed that a kid oughta have chores, like a list of regular things to do. You couldn’t play or fiddle around until that list got checked off. And you couldn’t cheat-Daddy had a copy of the list in his bib all times.
TC sighs. But mostly it was a good childhood. Full of adventures. I pretty much played by myself. Didn’t like the little Neds-the Townies I mean. I rather play sticks than townie games.

Lad: Sticks? What is that?
TC: Sticks is when you cut a small pole about a yard high. And you find other poles in the woods and they smack each other. The pole that breaks loses. But if you be careful, like pick a persimmon pole, you can whup every other stick.

Lad: Okay, Now about that story you told in the book ‘Odie Dodie’. What do you think the tale about Ferro and the fishes is really all about? Is there a moral or lesson to that story you wanted readers to learn---a special message?
TC: In my head I followed some kind of direction that I wasn’t in control of. It was a dream, but not really a dream. Because I rode that tractor down to Caddo Creek just like the story says. I didn’t make that up.

Lad: But in the tale you tell of sleeping by the Iron Ore Pond and waking up after what was a long rest, reciting the tale of the fishes.
TC: But in that dream it actually happened. I came swooning out of my body. My body was at Iron Ore Pond, and my figment was on the 8-N Tractor, like I said. I was with Ferro and the Fishes on their ride to Progunder.
If you read the story again, you will recognize that it is the Good Book tale of Exodus. The fishes are freed and they follow their new leader. But they forsake him later, and they all die.

Lad: Is that the fate of mankind today?
TC: I look around and I see the merriment and the frolic, and the forgettin’ of the rules. I think that is what happens when things get too good and nobody has a chores list. Also, you surprisingly can learn that the leader is just plain wrong. Yep, leaders sometimes hear the wrong drummer, but there ain’t no one there that can tell them anything, because, well, they are the Deciders.

Lad: But in the end, the faithful fishes all die. Is that what all of us can expect?
TC: 'Spose so. The big Ten-Star General Julius Caesar was the best leader of all the big wars of the Roman World. But even he learned there was a fiddler to be paid.

Lad: And what was that?
TC: There was a simple but trusted scribe that whispered in his ear the warning, that ’All Glory is Fleeting.’ Then look what happened to Rome.

Lad: We could all learn from that. But to sum up, what is the best lesson we can learn from the fate of the fishes at Progunder?
TC: That singing man Bob Dylan had it right. Do you know what he said?

Lad: Not actually.
TC: He wrote these words once: He said, ‘Don’t follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.’
So I trustes, I mostly obeys, and I serves my chores list. But I keep one eye squinted in case the Deciders is wrong.
______

To read more about Trouser and his friends, pick up a copy of Odie Dodie paperback | eBook

It would be a cold day in the storied caves of Hades before anyone got any better at it than Odie Dodie.
When he flashed that smile and touched their hand, long-malnourished moths escaped from tightly clasped wallets.
He sold what everybody wanted …
God’s eternal love and forgiveness: the always special-of-the-day.

Roll up … roll up … for The Very Rev Odie Dodie. God’s worst nightmare!

Lad Moore builds a collection of twenty tales of stark reality, hanging on the wobbly hook of a phony, money grubbing, licentious gospel-peddler, Odie Dodie and his unholy glory bus. He sees his flock as sheep – there for the fleecing.

The sad acceptance by the gullible rogue religion Odie Dodie pitches by the dime make Lad Moore’s interim tales of simple humanity all the more poignant.

Never since Steinbeck and Hemingway has an author written so tightly, entertainingly and honestly about what matters most …

The simple truth!

Excerpt