Peenie Wallie: Ron Barham

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July 22, 2008

Ron Barham

Regrettably, I learned of Ron Barham's passing today from my brother. Ron was a mentor to me growing up - almost like a second father. I can't count the number of times we went hunting together. I tell my daughter stories about him frequently, and seldom do I get in the truck that I don't think about our crazy hunting trips through the backwoods of Mississippi.

Ron and his brother Otha passed through Colorado on an Elk hunt last October, and stayed with me for a night. Was great to see Ron again after many years, and finally meet his brother. He left his shirt here...I still have it hanging by the door, as you never knew when he would turn up and I wanted to have it ready for him when he came back.

Brother and I spent a long time tonight catching up on old stories about Ron...tales of his old Jeep and afternoon squirrel hunts and turkeys shoots and beaver soup. Ronald J Barham will be greatly missed.

http://www.meridianstar.com/archivesearch/local_story_204004045.html

Services for the Rev. Ron Barham will be held Friday at 1:30 p.m. at Poplar Springs Drive United Methodist Church. Burial will be in Meridian Memorial Park Cemetery. Robert Barham Family Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Rev. Barham, 65, of Collinsville, died Sunday, July 20, 2008, at Jeff Anderson Regional Medical Center.

Visitation will be Friday from 8:30 a.m.- 11:30 a.m. at the church.

Update: More comments and remembrances of Ron Barham from his nephew posted here. It's nice to see comments and feedback from other people, like this...it jarred my memory of his propensity to carry around two dollar bills and hand them out at opportune times. Also of his prayers which were always amusing and human, but never sacrilegious.

Some of Ron's funny quirks were that, when driving down the backroads of Mississippi, in the straight-a-ways, where it was safe, if no one was coming the other way, he'd occasionally drive in the wrong lane intentionally.

He'd act like he was driving faster than he was, by vocalizing the sound of a racing car engine and spin his hands melodromatically over the steering wheel, as though the curve were too sharp or his speed to fast. All just for show of course.

Whenever we passed a cow or a horse, he'd honk his horn and say "hey cow" or "hey horse".

During deer-hunting season, we'd be driving down the road and he'd produce a bag of meat scraps, probably scavenged from a local butcher, and toss the scraps out the window as we drove down the road.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"People deer hunt with dogs and their dogs get lost. This gives them something to eat so they don't go hungry."

I took the liberty of adopting a few of Ron's quirks and creating a fictitious character known as "Turbo Spankenhopper". And now, whenever the kids climb into my truck, they invariably demand that "Turbo" drive the truck instead of me and they squeal with delight as we drive through the mountains.

Update 2: I remembered some things about Ron that I'd forgotten. One thing was that, when we went canoeing on the Strong River in Mississippi, people would inevitably ask us "where'd y'all put in at?" and Ron would invariably shout back that we put in at "Gnome, Alaska", a place I'd never heard of, on the other side of the continental divide.

Whenever we killed any game, if anyone ever asked where the game was killed, he'd invariably answer "on the other side of the river", which was just a way of giving them an answer that shut them up, but was basically complete B.S.

He also had a peculair tendency to break out into an opera song with the lyrics that always began with "NO MORE RICE KREEEESPEEEES..." at the top of his lungs. Only now do I realize that this was from the classic Rice Krispy commercial (Vespi) than ran when I was too young to remember it.

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