Delta Boys: A guitar strummin’, swamp rockin’, sing-along critter opera.
Episode One
SETTING: Cypress bottom, with Spanish Moss hanging down, and cypress knees rising up. They are the stalactites and stalagmites of the swamp, creating almost a cave like setting in places.
Big River flowed slowly past the piers and warehouses of Shining City and then down into the salty ocean. Johnny Rabbit once lived in Shining City. Why he left, he never exactly said. Some said it was his dreams, for Rabbit was surely a dreamer. He dreamed of perfect things, but awoke to imperfection. So, he left Shining City and went far, far up the River. Deep in the Delta Swamp, on the shores of Lucky Lake, he constructed a bungalow out of driftwood that he gathered from the banks of Big River.
The world outside the Swamp, the cities and big towns, had lost its happiness. A dark cloud was settling over the earth. Like Johnny Rabbit, many others had found refuge way up in the Delta. They had become a community. Some, like the Delta Boys, became close friends. The Delta Boys--- Johnny Rabbit , his best friend Doc Possum, Reddy Foxx, and Ray Raccoon ----loved to hang around Otter Jane’s Coffee Club and Bait Shop on Lucky Lake. They loved the swamp, and their new home, and did all kinds of things together.
One day the Boys went out for a swim. They floated from Lucky Lake down Critter Creek to Big River. As they swam out into the river, an old boat floated by. She was sinking fast. The Boys climbed on. A huge log was sticking through the hull of the boat, and the warm, muddy river was pouring in. No one was aboard, only some big boxes, trunks, and cases marked “Instruments: Handle With Care”. Doc Possum could handle a boat. He had been a riverboat captain in the old days. However, he had let a stranger on his boat, sucker him into a poker game, and he lost his boat. But, in the long run that had turned out well. The stranger, Johnny Rabbit, had convinced him to leave the world of maritime commerce, and return to nature, in the swamp, really an impenetrable river delta, where human trouble rarely reached.
Doc, Rabbit, and Ray Coon managed to manhandle the mysterious cargo ashore, where Foxx, who didn’t like to get wet, helped them beach it, before the boat slipped under the Delta waters.
Inside the trunks and cases they found musical instruments: guitars and drums, horns and banjos and fiddles, which they took to Otter Jane’s Club. Everyone loved Otter Jane, who encouraged the Delta Boys learn to play the instruments and entertain her customers. After awhile the Delta Boys began to sound pretty good. She loved hearing them play and sing, and would bring them coffee as they practiced. In return, they would sweep the floors, patch the roof, and help Jane keep the place up. Sometimes they would just sit on the pier and play checkers or fish with their cane poles. And they always talked about the old life that they had left downriver, what had gone wrong, and why they had come to the swamp.
Coming Soon…Episode 2