How I Got My Ph.D., Or Working Smarter In The Chickee Business
May 1, 1998

I'm telling you folks one thing and then I'm gonna shut up. Chickee building is hard work! Look at me when I say that. Hard work. Case closed. What follows is a little story about how old Raiford learned that lesson and became a Ph.D in the process. Pay attention. There may be a test.

My schooling began in the heat. Florida summer months. Sweat from your chin burning your toes when it drips on your feet. Dogs fighting to the death over your shadow.

My father, ol' Alcatraz Starke, loved it hot. He used to say, "Raiford, son, I love the heat. Makes my colon kenny." The term "kenny" being an emergency room expression my dad learned prior to being kicked out of medical school: the heat made his large intestine "kenny" - sweat from the inside - and that somehow felt good to him. "As a child, I said 'Dad, your colon can kenny all it wants, I'm gonna become a writer so I don't have to work in the sun!'"

Well, I became a guitar player, instead. But, I still needed a day job from time to time and that's how I came to earn my chickee degree

First thing you have to do when building chickees is gather the raw materials. That means cypress tree hunting, which is actually an old Florida Indian sport. And where do you hunt cypress trees? Why, you go to the swamp, of course. For us, that meant the swamp on the Big Cypress Reservation, where you can get all the cypress trees you want. But, there's a trick or two to anything, and Raiford was - at this time - as dumb as a cypress knee.

A tough Seminole guy named Joe Don (who was one of the bigger guys on the crew - almost as tall as me) and a short Seminole guy named Jeremiah (came up to about my waist) and myself were carrying this 20-foot fresh-cut cypress log through the swamp to load on a truck. I had the front end on my right shoulder, Jeremiah had the middle, and Joe Don had the back end. About halfway to the truck the weight was becoming unbearable, my knees were starting to buckle. "We gotta stop. I can't take it any more," I groaned.

I could hear Jeremiah laughing, " Don't give up now Raiford. We're more than half-way there."

I struggled forward, summoning that little rat that runs around in the cage inside my guts to move his legs a bit faster. The rat gave me ten more feet before it died and I began to feint: "That's it guys, I gotta take a break. I'm at the end of my spunk cycle."

"I don't think I can hang on either," I heard behind me and like Linda Blair in The Exorcist my head spun around just in time to see Jeremiah hanging from the middle of the log, his feet dancin' in the air like Bo Jangles. "Yep," Jeremiah said after he had laughed up a sweat and was reaching for the Gatorade bottle. "If you want to last in the chickee business Raiford, you got to learn to work smart!"

The rest of the day I worked smart. I avoided the front end of logs the way a poser avoids a chain saw and soon we moved onto getting the sticks peeled and the palm fronds happening, all under the watchful eye of our foreman Bryan, who watched our labor with the same detached concern as that nasty guard in Cool Hand Luke. "Movin' another 20-footer boss."

Bryan never flinched behind his dark shades and starched shirt, although from time to time he'd roll down the window of the air-conditioned cab to reminded us that he was in fact doing the important work which meant calculating exactly how much material was needed to complete the job.

In reality, he was right. It's vital that you calculate the logs precisely. You see, the trick is to make sure there are enough materials, because some of these jobs were far away from the swamp supply, and if you don't plan ahead . . . well . . . you can get yourself in a snoot full of trouble We were to learn exactly how important in step two of my education.

We had been hired to build a small chickee village on the campus of Brevard Community College in Cocoa.

About halfway through this high profile job, we were erecting the frame for the largest chickee in the village, when Bryan, while checking his calculations, told us that we had failed to anticipate what he had meant to say, and we still needed two more 30-foot cypress logs. Well, we didn't have them, and the one place we knew we could get them was back in Big Cypress, which was a four-hour drive away.

Now folks, you've got to understand that in the chickee-building business, time is money; and for us to waste well over eight hours time just to get a couple of logs was completely out of the question. And so . . . a-hunting we did go .

We drove for about an hour around the country back roads, through the St. Johns River valley's fruited plains, searching for just the right patch of cypress. In the back of my head, I was wondering what we were going to do when we found it. I mean, this was all someone else's property. Wasn't it?

I mentioned that to Joe Don and he glared at me: "Man, this whole state is our land. We never signed a treaty! In fact, where's your passport, dude?"

Suddenly, Bryan screeched the truck to a halt. He put his hand up in the international symbol for "You guys shut up!" Slowly, he stepped out of the cab and looked both ways, pulling his sunglasses down a notch to peer into the long distance. I noticed a barbed-wire fence and, behind it, a small group of tall cypress trees.

Bryan turned, clicked his heels together and gave a double-thumbs up - the international symbol for "Get the chain saw, cut through the barb wire, cut down two of those trees and haul 'em back over here to the truck so we can get out of here fast."

Within five minutes, we had two 30-something-foot logs being winched onto the back of our truck. Suddenly, just as we finished, a cloud of dust blew toward us down the road and out of the sand storm shot a gunracked, dented fendered, deer blood-stained, one hub cab missin' pickup truck. The truck stopped and a big burly cracker-looking gent with a cowboy hat gets out and slowly walks towards us, twirling his keys. I could see a bumper sticker on the back of the truck that said: "My Son Beat Up Your Honor Student."

"What do you boys think you're doin'?"

We all looked towards Bryan. Twirling his own keys, Bryan approached the man. Both of 'em had hands on their hips. Good lord, I thought, there is gonna be a shoot out here! Slowly they walked towards each other until Bryan was only a few inches from the man's face. Bryan spit his gum into the ground, stepped on it and mushed it into the dirt. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it expertly by flipping a lighter with one hand . . . then fell to the ground sobbing profusely:

"Please sir, please sir, oh please sir, don't have us arrested. We'll gladly pay you amply for the trees we cut down."

"You're gonna have to tell that to Zed." And with that, here comes another gunrack equipped pickup truck driven by another cracker with a cowboy hat, followed by a sheriff deputy's car. "That's Zed," the old cracker said, pointing to the second pickup truck.

"Well helllll," said Zed, who was the ranch owner, "looks like the spider caught a few flies. What's been going on here Maynard?"

" I just caught these boys trespassing and stealin' a couple of cypress trees, boss."

"Is that so?" said Zed, the hair all red on the back of his freckly neck. "My, my, my. Would you boys mind telling me who you are, and what you're doing here?"

Joe Don was first to speak: "You see sir, we're Indians and this land technically belongs to us because we were here first . . ."

Zed looked at Maynard and they both looked at the deputy. All three broke out in big Cheshire Cat type grins and began laughing that scary kind of laugh that old men laugh when they are about to butcher a hog.

Bryan spoke next: "Please don't take me to jail, sir, I've got a wife and five kids . . ."

Toward the back of our truck, I noticed Jeremiah talking on Bryan's cell phone. Jeremiah, who obviously had learned how to work smark, walked up and handed the phone to Zed. "Mr. Patrick Smith wants to talk with you, sir." Zed took the phone, confused, and began to talk: "Pat. That you. I'll be a ring-tailed lemur. How you be, man? We ain't killed any pigs lately, have we. When you gone come out here hunting', boy?"

Though I didn't know it at the time, Patrick Smith was the director of public relations at Brevard Community College - the guy who hired us build the chickee village in the first place. He also wrote a couple fantastic books and is a real hero to the folks in these parts.

"My Gawd, a cultural ex-ib-it? With my trees? Why I'd be proud, Pat . . ." The more they talked, the calmer I felt. Bryan got up finally, and brushed the dirt off his knees. When Zed hung up, he looked at Maynard and the deputy, cocked his elbow one way and flicked his wrist toward the right - the international symbol for "These boys are all right, You guys can go."

Zed went around and shook all of our hands, proudly. He even agreed, when Joe Don asked him, to write a letter of apology to the Tribe for even objecting to us stealing his cypress trees.

We drove back to Cocoa, finished the job, and came back " home" to the Chief's old camp in Big Cypress to celebrate. We found the Chief puffing on a cigar, poking a fork into some ugly garfish and wanting to know how things went.

As Bryan had paid us all an extra $20 each not to mention the "incident" to the Chief, no one would say anything. Joe Don winked at me - the international symbol for "Say something Raiford."

"Uh . . . We . . .uh . . . got 'em up. Yes we did. They look real good. Pat Smith was happy. Met a lot of nice people. Goll-lll-leee Chief, we did it. It was cool . . ."

The Chief looked at my sweat streaked body long and hard. He knew. Somehow he knew. But, he nodded. He was pleased. In fact, he gave me my first degree on the spot. "Congratulations Raiford!" he finally boomed, "you just earned your BS degree and it won't be long before you graduate and get your Ph.D!"

And then he looked at me and laughed: "That stands for Post Hole Digger!"

Everyone fell to the ground laughing. They laughed so hard, the garfish started flipping around on the grill in fear.

And that's how old Raiford earned his degree in chickee construction. One day on the job, I had an honest day's education -- nearly -- and had learned a few tricks of the trade. Now, here I was rolling on the ground laughing at the thought that I might someday earn a Ph.D, all the time thinking as hard as this here chickee building is, there can't be much worse a man can face.

But, that was before the Chief finished cooking and got around to serving us his special gar fish barbecue. I'm telling you folks one thing and then I'm gonna shut up. Eating gar fish while keeping a smile on your face is hard work and if you don't have a colon kenny when you start, you sure will when you're finished. Look at me when I say that. Hard work. Case closed.

-- Raiford Starke is a columnist for the Seminole Tribune.

© May 1, 1998, The Seminole Tribune