Hush puppies in heaven

I COMPLAINED that nobody has a fish fry anymore when I’m home in Esto, our traditional excuse for getting together with kinfolks and neighbors. My stepbrother Wayne said he still fished — just come on by on Saturday night. And so we did.

Wayne fries fish — plus French fries and hush puppies, of course — out under the barn in his back yard. It’s just up the Old Esto Road and across the state line in Black, Alabama. He invited some of his buddies from the Black Volunteer Fire Department, too, and we had a feast.

After we’d eaten, one of the firemen edged over to ask, “So you live in San Francisco?” Uh-oh, I thought, here we go with the gays again. But the bogeyman had changed. He fairly hissed: “Isn’t that where Nancy Pelosi is from?”

Wayne’s wife Lynne suggested a photo and slyly posed us in front of an Alabama banner with the stars and bars. “Show that to Nancy Pelosi,” said Wayne.

That was in 2018. Wayne promised there’d be more fish to fry when I made it home again. When I finally got back last fall, he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, the same fate that befell his father, Bill Henderson, my stepfather, after a lifetime of smoking. Bill insisted as he was dying that smoking had nothing to do with his medical problems and that if he had it all to do over, “I’d smoke ’em all again.” I asked Wayne if he felt the same. “I’d smoke one right now from here out to the highway,” he said as we sat on his front porch watching the sun set.

Our sister Cindi called to say that Wayne died this afternoon. I will miss him, and his hush puppies, and the way we managed to keep a connection despite the great distance between us.

OBITUARY: Wayne Edward Henderson (1950-2024)