Introduction
Ol’ Hermit Joe: Is the non-fictional story of a man who lived alone in the woods. His name was Joe, to all who ventured back into the thick woods where he lived and became his friend, he was known to them as “Hermit Joe.”
There was no such of a thing as passing by Joe’s place, for he had no place, he literally lived in the woods off of Old Eighth Street Road and Whippoorwill Road. You had to park your vehicle up on the public road and walk through the woods, and suddenly you would happen upon Joe, crouched down by a fire and some rocks, preparing a meal he had put together from the land.
Come along with me and get to know this man of no modern means, and of little concern for what lay outside of his woods, except for the friends he made in life.
Come and get to know, Ol’ Hermit Joe.
J. Lewis Dean Back right after I graduated high school in 1979, I had a friend of mine, I called us concert friends. Cause that’s basically what we were. We never really hung out together much except for going to rock concerts over in Jackson, Mississippi. My friend’s name is Rodney White. Rodney and I used to go to some of the concerts together and we’d have a lot of fun doing that.
One day Rodney and I were talking about all sorts of things, and even talking about the tale of the “White Thing” , a kind of Bigfoot-like creature that used to roam in the local woods here. Rodney also brought up the notion of old hermits living in the woods. Some of them could be old outlaws living wild in the woods to avoid going to prison, or just got tired of the way life’s struggles were and decided to walk away from it all one day and live life free like an animal in the woods.
Then Rodney told me he knew of such a man. A man that had kind of gotten tired of the struggles of life, and had retreated to the woods to live out his days in true freedom and peace from the rest of the world’s hustle and bustle. His name was Joe, “Hermit Joe” as most folks had called him. They called him Hermit Joe, because that’s what he was, a hermit that lived in the middle of the woods with no house, no shelter except for what he had thrown together around a large oak tree, that I ever saw.
Several times Rodney would tell me of Hermit Joe, and how he had stopped and visited him earlier that day. He said Joe always smiled and was very happy to see him and always remembered his name no matter how much time passed between visits. So after listening to so many stories about Hermit Joe, I decided I would love to meet this man myself, and say hello to him. I asked Rodney, “Hey the next time you’re going to visit Hermit Joe, can I go along with you?” “Sure.” Rodney said, “We’ll go this coming Saturday if you want?” I said; “Absolutely, I will be ready.” I was excited, finally getting to go and see the man I had heard so much about. I do believe it was on a Sunday afternoon that Rodney and I were talking that day, so I had a whole week to wait until I would be meeting Hermit Joe. I was very excited, and the waiting just made it worse. Many things ran through my mind about Joe all week long. Things like what would make a man just retreat to the wilderness like that? Was it a breakdown of some sort? Did he just get tired of witnessing the decline of moral value in people? Was it because of some tragedy that may have happened to his family or in his family? And the ever so intense thought, was he some kind of big fugitive on the hideout from the law enforcement? All questions that crossed my mind, but yet they were questions that I could not answer, for I had no answer to them, due to the lack of information I had concerning him.
It seemed that the days between Sunday and Saturday just dragged on by slowly, as slow as they possibly could. I had actually begun to wonder if Saturday would ever arrive. I went to work every morning at my job and on the way there and back, I had to drive very near the woods where Joseph lived, and each time I would look at those thick woods hoping to maybe get a glance at him, but it never happened. I don’t think Joe ventured too close to the edge of the wilderness or near the public road where he could be seen or encountered by people. Instead he just stayed back in the thick and let the world around him roll on by without himself being a part of it.
There were many rumors about Hermit Joe and why he had become a hermit as he was. One rumor was that Joe was a very wealthy man, he had made his fortune in developing some type of heavy construction machine, but I do not know what machine that was to have been. Another rumor was that Joe had a family, a wife and children, and they had been killed in a terrible automobile accident and Joe survived, and the grief was so strong that he recuse himself from the world around him and eventually ended up living in the woods.
Some people also said that Joe had been born very poor, and that as a result he had received no formal education at all, and his birth family pretty much lived the way he did, reclusive and hermit like, and that is how he ended up living this way. Some people also said that Joe was a Vietnam Veteran, who just came home from the war kind of confused mentally, as many soldiers did from that hellish war, and that he turned to those woods as a way of life for him. The same type of lifestyle he had been so used to during his times as a soldier in the battles in the jungles of Vietnam. All of these rumors and more, but not a shred of evidence to indicate which one, if any were true at all.
Finally Saturday morning arrived and sure enough Rodney called me on the phone like we had talked about. Within a few minutes we were on our way to Joe’s.
It only took us about fifteen or twenty minutes to arrive at the location where we would park the car to walk on into Joe’s camp. We got out of the car, and I have to admit, I began to get a little nervous at this point, for it was my first time to go and meet the man that lived in the woods. Rodney and I began walking up this primitive pathway through some very thick brush, and woods, and within a couple of hundred yards, suddenly we happened upon Joe. He was crouched down in the pathway, had a small fire going and was eating something.
He looked up and saw Rodney and I, and he immediately said; “Hey Rodney How Have You Been Son?” Rodney spoke kindly back to him telling him that he had been just fine and asked Joe how he had been? Joe replied; ” I’ve been great Rodney, just great.” Joe had a few goats back there on the property, they were his goats but they just kind of roamed wild there. Rodney asked Joe; ” What’s that you’re eating there Joe?” Joe replied; “It’s a baby goat Rodney, it was three days old and something killed it, I’m thinking a wolf.
But I didn’t do too bad on it, it was only three days old and I got three meals off of it.” Joe had eaten all of the meat from the goat and was now sitting there crushing the very cooked bones with two stones and eating the marrow from inside them for more nutrition. When I saw this although it made me kind of queasy, I knew right away this man had some knowledge of survival. Joe looked up at me for a brief second and then asked Rodney; “Who is your friend there you brought with you Rodney?”
Rodney smiled and said; ” I’m sorry Joe, this is my buddy Jeff, he and I went to high school together and we go to concerts together, I was telling him about you and he wanted to meet you himself.” Joe looked up at me and smiled through his big beard and said; “Hello Jeff, it is very nice to meet you son, you have a good friend there in Rodney, I think a lot of him, so any friend of Rodney’s is a friend of mine too.” Of course I thanked him and told him it was very nice to finally meet him. It was clear within seconds of meeting him, that this was far from the poor uneducated man rumor I had heard previously.
This man was very well spoken and pronounced his words excellently, he was indeed educated. Not far from his camp, maybe fifty yards away, I noticed some old camp like bunkhouses and a lake. I asked Joe what those were? He told me that this used to be some kind of summer camp or something for people and kids, those bunk houses are where they would stay. I asked Joe if he ever stayed in them, and he said no he didn’t ever go in them much at all. He said all of that belongs to the lawyer that now owns all of this land. I pretty much stay right here where I am at now. I looked at his camp, which mainly consisted of a few sheets of tin roofing nailed to an oak tree, along with some supplies laid around, like an axe, a machete and other tools needed in the wilderness.
I could also tell from Joe’s voice, that he was certainly not a born and raised Mississippian. He had more of a northern tone to his voice. It was rumored that he was in fact from the north. But a more reliable source said he was from California. So I think it is safer to go with the California report rather than the other rumors. But one rumor I can completely put to rest right here and now, is that Joe was certainly not some criminal hiding out in the woods from the long arm of the law. Joe didn’t have a mean bone in his body. The man was as nice as he could be.
I visited Joe a few times, twice with Rodney and a couple of more times on my own. I was so surprised a few months after that first visit I went on with Rodney, that the next time Rodney and I entered Joe’s primitive camp, the first words from Joe’s mouth were; ” Hi Rodney and Jeff, welcome back my friends.” I was astonished that after one brief visit months prior, that Joe immediately recognized me and was able to immediately remember my name.
For I had been such an insignificant guest on that first visit, but remember he did. Just sitting or standing around talking with Joe back there in those woods would blow your mind. You would find yourself hanging on to every intelligently spoken and eloquently pronounced word. You would find yourself knowing you were talking with a well educated man, possibly and most likely even more educated than yourself, yet he lived so primitively, it would leave you wondering why?
One day while visiting Joe on my own, I was standing around talking with him, and finally I got up the nerve to ask him, ” Joe you seem so intelligent and well spoken, why is it that you choose to live this way?” Joe looked at me and smiled and said; “Live what way Jeff? What do you mean by that? You mean why do I live alone in the forest? Why am I Hermit Joe as so many refer to me as? I smiled back at him and said; ” Well yeah Joe, why?” He laughed and pulled at his long matted beard and said; ” The way you say it Jeff “Why do you live like this” seems to indicate to me that you see something odd or wrong with the way that I choose to live.”
I immediately let him know that I did not think it was wrong and I did not think it was odd, but more unusual. Joe laughed, ha! ha! “It’s ok Jeff you hadn’t talked yourself into something you feel you need to back away from. I am not offended in the slightest. I have been asked that very same question many times by many different people that venture back here. And my answer is always the same. Back here I have everything I need, there are no stores so
I need no money, no utilities, no phone and no hassle. The lawyer comes by about once or so a month and brings me some provisions that I may need or not need, so I do ok back here, and it’s just the way I like to live for now.”
That was Joe’s signature answer for why he lived back there the way he did.
I suppose he didn’t feel obligated to explain himself or his choices in depth to anyone. But he was always very kind and very gentle with those who took the time to come and visit the man in the woods, myself included. Now granted, some of these people who came to visit Hermit Joe, came just to see the Hermit, so they could say they had seen him. Kind of like when you go to the fair and they have the exhibit of the oddities.
You don’t really want to know you’re the kind of person that would go in there and look, but something just draws you to it in spite of it, and you end up just having to behind the curtains and look at the headless woman, or the two headed goat, I am sure that is why many ventured back into the woods to visit Joe, they wanted to see the hermit, Hermit Joe. I am also sure that Joe, being the intelligent man that he was, knew that was the reason that some of these people were coming to see him. But once you met Joe, the oddity part soon faded and Joe the person came into your only view, and you found yourself talking with a man who treated you with more respect and kindness probably than anyone in your life had before. You became a friend of the man you had always known as; “Hermit Joe.”
Some several months after I got to know Joe, I started dating a girl named Nancy. And after Nancy and I began dating seriously, I decided it was time for her to meet Joe. She had heard of Hermit Joe before, but had never met him before. So I decided that the following Saturday afternoon, I would take her to Joe’s campsite and introduce her to him. A long time buddy of mine named Johnny Gressett also wanted to go with us, for he too had heard the many stories and rumors of Hermit Joe and wanted to meet the man himself.
When Saturday came, Johnny and I drove out to Nancy’s and picked her up and off we went headed for Joe’s camp. We parked the car along the public roadside as usual and we headed up the trail into the woods to Joe’s camp.
Finally we came upon it, and there was Joe, crouched down sitting on his rock fiddling with some food he had scrounged up to eat. Joe greeted us very warmly as always. He looked up, smiled, and said; ” Hello Jeff, how are you doing today my friend? Looks like you brought some new friends with you this time.” I said hello to Joe and told him I was doing fine and that I had brought my girlfriend Nancy and my friend Johnny along with me to meet him.
When I said; ” My girlfriend Nancy.” Joe looked up at Nancy and said; ” Well hello Nancy nice to meet you, and told her she had a nice boyfriend in Jeff.”
Then said; “My, My, Jeff she sure is a pretty one, much prettier than the girl you were here with last weekend.” Then he laughed as did Nancy and Johnny. We stood around back there for about an hour talking with Joe that day, looking at his very primitive shelter and campsite. He was eating one of his chickens that just ran loose in the woods there. He caught it, killed it, and had cooked it on an open fire in his rock fire circle. He was stripping the meat off the bones of it as we stood around there talking to him. And it always seemed to me that Joe liked to point out his resourcefulness.
For he would tell you how many meals he could make for himself out of whatever he was eating. The chicken would allow him two days I believe he said. He showed us around the property a little bit that day, told us more about the campground that used to be there and the lodges that were still standing only maybe fifty yards away. Yet for some reason he would never stay in them, he always slept out under that oak tree on the ground.
After about an hour it was time for us to go, we stood around and said our good-byes to Joe and Nancy and Johnny told him how nice it was to finally meet him. And we headed down the trail back out to what seemed like a whole different world after being in those woods with Joe. Back to society. Just a ten minute drive from the city of Meridian, Mississippi. As we drove back. Johnny, Nancy and myself were talking about Joe. I asked them what they had thought about him? They both were kind of shocked that a man of his obvious intelligence level was living alone like that and was a hermit.
They couldn’t understand the reasoning for it. I suppose no one really could.
It was a mystery that I think many, many people tried to figure out, but never could. I went back a few times to visit Joe after that. And always found him to be the same, nice as can be. Always crouched down busy doing something, whether it was fixing food, working on or with a tool or making some kind of tool or trap.
Nancy and I got married on October 3rd, 1984. And I took a job that kept me very busy with little time to do anything but work. So I didn’t get out to see
Joe for a few more years, and I didn’t like that. For I liked the man a lot and enjoyed talking with him. But one day I had some time on my hands during the week and decided I would ride out to Joe’s place and see how he was doing. When I got there, I noticed immediately that the trail did not look like it had been walked in some time, for it was grown up in some weeds. But on the way back there I went anyway. When I arrived at his camp. Joe wasn’t there. I could see his camp, and his shelter, but no Joe. I stood around a minute and then I called out for Joe, but no one responded. Joe was not there.
As I came out of the woods back to my car, I was met by a local resident and he said, “Son, are ya looking for Joe?” I said; ” Yes sir I am.” He said; “Well I am sorry to tell you son, Joe isn’t back there anymore, Joe got sick and in a rest home in Meridian.” I was at the very least shocked to hear that Joe had fallen ill, for he seemed like a man that could overcome anything and everything, he was a man who had apparently in his life had done just that. The man then told me, ” Joe has cancer and got down pretty sick and they had to take him from those woods to the nursing center where they could care for him properly, even though the cancer was diagnosed to be terminal because Joe had refused to accept any treatments for it.”
That was it, the woods there off Whippoorwill Road just had a hollowness about them after that. Joe was no longer in there giving them the personality that they once held for all who knew Joe. I went home and told my wife that Joe was no longer in the woods, the days of Hermit Joe were gone, that he had gotten sick and they took him to the hospital where it was found out that he had cancer. He didn’t want to be treated for it, and therefore he had to be placed in a nursing facility so they could care for him during the bad times that come with a devastating disease such as cancer. They said the cancer was in his brain. And had affected him greatly, that he could not remember much of anything most of the time.
I remember one time as we drove past the nursing center where Joe was staying. I saw Joe standing outside. The nursing center was right smack downtown, Joe was surrounded by the city. He was looking around at it all too, it looked like he was taking it all in. Standing on cement, not surrounded by trees and bushes, and sleeping in a well made bed instead of the cool soil of the ground. I smiled and said; ” Hey yall there’s Joe!”
Then I thought about all the luxuries of life he was now experiencing,
such as the cement, the few trees, and the well made bed to sleep in and air conditioning and heat, and a restroom to use. Then I thought silently for a moment, and knew deep within my heart, where Joe would be right now if he had the choice, for he would be kicked back under that old primitive shelter of his, lying on his back looking up at the stars in the dark night sky, seeing the marvels made only by God in Heaven, before he closed his eyes to sleep and dream about the things he dreamt of.
Then I looked at Joe’s face, his eyes, I needed to see if the light was still in them, and I smiled because it was. I could see that even though they had removed him from his wilderness, the man within still lived on. One day while passing by there and seeing Joe standing around outside, I almost stopped and got out of the car to say hello to him. But I didn’t do it, I was afraid with his condition he would not know me, and I knew what that would do to a man like Joe, and I knew what it would do to me. So I just waved, blew my horn and kept on driving. I wish I had stopped just once.
Soon after that, I heard the word that Joe’s condition had finally caught up
to him. He had lost the battle with the cancer and was gone from our world for good. I know not where he was laid to rest, I imagine his body was sent back
to wherever he originally came from. Wherever he is buried, I wish one time, I could go by and just say Hello to the man who always knew me and was kind to this stranger that I was.
It wasn’t long after Joe’s passing, that I was in town somewhere, I think it was the mall, and low and behold I saw someone wearing a tee shirt, and on that tee shirt it had a drawing of a man crouched down sitting on a rock, fiddling with food, that man was Joe. And on this tee shirt were the words. Hermit Joe’s Always And Forever Missed.
As soon as I saw that shirt I smiled from ear to ear, Joe the old hermit in the woods, had become an icon and never even knew it, or maybe he did. Today.
I talked with the now sheriff of Lauderdale County, the county in which Joe’s woods were located. And he kind of put to rest a lot of the old rumors that still to this day float around about who old Joe was. He was not a fugitive hiding from justice, and he was not someone from the mafia in witness protection.
He may well have been a soldier at one time.
But the one thing that was true of Joe, was that he was indeed a man of great monetary wealth, which he didn’t really care about though. He had lost some people that he loved in life, but as to what drove him to make the decision to become a hermit, Hermit Joe? No one knows, or if they do, they aren’t saying.
I guess it’s really no one’s business why Joe chose to live the way he did, and the focus shouldn’t be on that. We, the ones who knew him, should just be able to count ourselves as being blessed to have known him and to have had him call us his friend. Every now and then I still take the drive down Old 8th Street Road and Whippoorwill Road, and as I pass by the location of where Ol’ Hermit Joe lived in those woods, he always comes in to my mind. I can see him smiling that smile, crouched over that fire preparing himself some kind of meal and always being polite and offering you some of whatever he had. But most of all, I remember the kindness this simple yet wealthy man showed to all who ventured in.
As I sit here in the modern comforts of my big brick home writing this story
of Joe and his woods. I wonder if somewhere, up there in Heaven, God has a special track of woods, and in those woods, is Joe sitting there crouched on a rock, living the way he was happiest, but surrounded by those he loved and lost. Hermit Joe no more, instead the circle is complete, Hermit Joe, now just Joseph, a child of God, called home to peace.
Why Don’t People Care When It Doesn’t Affect Them?
As I sat down to write one of my latest pieces on domestic violence, my buddy turned to me and snidely asked “Why do you care so much about domestic violence — you’ve never been beaten, right?”. “Right”, I replied as I continued typing. As I focused on the screen in front of me, my thoughts wandered into this question, this elephant in the worldwide room.
Why don’t we care about things that don’t affect us?
Well, maybe the bigger question is “Why do we ignore other people’s problems?” We are humans.
We are social animals that seek companionship and interaction with others
of our kind. At the deepest root of this is the idea that if another of our kind is being hurt or killed, it directly affects our ability to interact with that other being. One cannot interact with another human who is dead. Of course, one can interact with another human who is being hurt, but I can guarantee you that it won’t be a fun interaction.
Ratchet up the concept a few notches, and we come to dealing with (or ignoring) other people’s problems. Gun violence, theft, drug crimes, domestic abuse, child abuse, and any other “bad” thing you can think of, probably affects a person that you know, either directly or indirectly. As such, we are all victims of this bad stuff at some level. But apparently we are too busy with our days, our jobs, our smartphones and our apps, to even take a second to care about another human being’s issues.
In other words “it sucks to be you”.
What the hell kind of society do we have when we see fellow humans suffering, and all we can come up with is “it sucks to be you”? We see folks in car accidents, we see elderly folks slowly crossing a busy street, we see someone with a flat tire, we see someone littering, we see a man beating his wife in their car, and all we do is move on. It sucks to be you — right?
But in a flash, if WE are the person in any of those situations, then all of the sudden we look around wondering why human beings around us are going around us, instead of stopping to help. Now you are the “you” in “it sucks to be you,”. Of course, a friend or relative is only a phone call away right? Have you ever tried to call friends or relatives to help you move? Good luck.
The point here is that I care about what happens to other human beings
(and so should any of you) because I know that life throws us curve balls on occasion. Wild pitches that stress and confuse us, leaving us asking ourselves
if anyone cares about others anymore. It reminds me of another cold societal phrase — “every man for himself”. The idea speaks to the notion that if one of us has to suffer, it ain’t gonna be me.
Man, that’s cold. Reality, but cold nonetheless.
I have two kids just getting into their 20’s. Each in college, and generally good people. What I don’t want for them is a world where you have to look out solely for yourself, because nobody else gives a damn.
It’s reassuring that when I see car accidents or elderly people crossing the street, I still see a few random people getting out of their cars, and for a moment, out of their own lives, to help another human being.
We still have hope.
As a fellow human being, I would look to you, any of you, to be human once
in a while. To take some time to care about what other humans go through.
To understand how other human beings suffer. To feel that other human beings could use your help, or at least benefit from you caring and giving a damn.
Every bad thing that happens in society is usually caused by a human being.
There’s no reason why another human being can’t help to solve those problems.
Why don’t people care, when it doesn’t affect them? Maybe people ought to start.
… Because one of these days, the person needing help, or just some caring,
will be you. That’s why I care…
