The Huck Finn-ing of Hacksaw Jim Duggan

Chapter the First

You don’t know about me without you having heard about my good friend, Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Jim and me, we was two peas in a pod growing up. I reckon we spent most our time together, just floating down the river and talking 'bout our favorite lengths of wood and such.

Even when he made it big in the WWF, what with his wrestling and his ‘HOOOO-ing’ and the like, there weren’t a time when a body couldn’t find him with me come summer. Sometimes at night we’d just spend hours chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” over and over till Miss Watson or the Judge would holler over and tell us to quiet up or we’d wake the dead. By-and-by we’d stop a-carrying on, but never once did we wake no body at all. I didn’t mind, but Jim always said it was a right shame that the dead weren’t patriotic.

I reckon I always known that Jim would be a wrestler. We’d be fishing or eating or something such like, when all of a sudden he’d start flapping like a bird and puffing his cheeks out awful hard. That was his wrestling mood, and there warn’t nothing nobody could do once that rascality come upon him. Then he’d clothesline the Widow Douglas or three-point stance himself into a tree. Jim was always doing dangersome stuff, even when there weren’t no cause. Like when he’d stick his thumb under his armpit and then fixed to make himself a sandwich. If that weren’t hygienically unsound that I don’t know what was. Still, me and him were friends, like I said before.

Course I’ll never forget the day when Jim left for the WWF. We were waving flags in t’other faces – this being a Tuesday and all - when here comes this slack faced man ambling into town and asking who wants to join his “slobber-knocker” up North. Why Jim was so excited that he done nearly cried himself right then and there, seeing as he most always wanted to slobber-knock. So Slack Face signed him up for all the corn pone Jim could eat, which is none of my business but I reckon a bad idea, what with Jim eating pone like throwing it down a well. I was mighty sad to see Jim go, but I did my best and gave him a thumbs up as they loaded him into his cage. By and by Aunt Sally made me some lunch, and that was mostly the day.

And as for his name? Why townsfolk started calling him Hacksaw after his first wrestling match. Hit a man awfully hard with an old hacksaw. Thought it would look good on TV. Right full in the face. After that, the name Hacksaw just stuck, though that wily Slack Face kept switching the saws for 2x4s ‘fore the next match. Blame it if ole Jim was too retarded, he couldn’t tell the difference.