The Liars Club at Wyant’s Store

It was raining very hard and it was still dark at 7:30 a.m. Oct. 12 as the Liars Club assembled for its daily morning meeting at Wyant’s Store in White Hall.

“The other liars haven’t showed yet because they are out cutting hay,” said Elbert Dale, de facto president of the group and therefore, at least honorifically, the top liar.

He mentioned the brass geodetic marker planted in the concrete on the front porch by the U.S. Geological Survey. “There’s 10 of those in western Albemarle. They’re in Crozet and Free Union, too.” Wyant’s marker, installed in 1929, declares the spot to be at Lat 38 07 04.17 and Long 78 39 41.88. That’s one truth where the club tags base.

The morning crowd had come in, looking to warm up. Jack Clark, David and Gale Wyant and Billy James were all holding coffees. Most folks go for either the sausage biscuit or the tenderloin one.

In the Air Force Dale was in a photo-mapping unit. “We could measure a 600-mile line with 12 inches of accuracy even before we could put up satellites,” he said. He put in 20 years and came home and worked for Con Agra maintaining refrigeration systems. He’s very handy with machines. After the club meeting he was going to B&B Cleaners to repair a commercial dryer. He still does welding.

“I’ve never asked for a job in my life,” Dale asserted. “I’ve loved every one I’ve had and I’ve retired three times.”

Eddie Shifflett, considered the unofficial vice president, sat down with his coffee at one end of the tables that sit in soft light under a low shed roof. Shifflett has Penny Creek Farm in Free Union. Against the wall were cases of sodas and motor oil. On the beam above the table was a sign posted: “Hunters, fishermen and other liars gather here.” A sign propped up on a shelf by them read, “Laugh when you can, apologize when you should, and let go of the things you can’t change.”

Charles Steppe, farm manager at Fox Ridge Farm in Free Union, came over to greet the club. He had gone for the tenderloin this time. He told store owner Larry Wyant that he thought that that biscuit should come with a fried egg on it. “The farmers are all here,” he observed. He said he was going to be cleaning a horse barn next.

Larry Abell was sipping a lemonade soda. He had cattle to feed, but you just had to come in from the weather. “He’s got a lot of [poop],” Abell told the club, gesturing at Steppe. “And that ain’t no lie.”

“Here’s old hop-along,” declared Dale affectionately as Goldie Baber approached the table, peeling off his wet rain shell and a Cavaliers hat. His son Billy, a star at Western in basketball and football, played at U.Va. and went on to be a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs. He married a girl from Western, and they have a family and a sporting goods store in KC.

The club is sort of proud of the fact that they cover the armed services between them. Shifflett was Army. Baber had been in the Navy in submarines.

“He’s not too smart,” Dale said of Baber. “He stayed underwater too long.”

Al Francis, who once maintained the heating systems in county schools and is known today as a stone sculptor, drew up a chair. “I got drafted into the club,” he said. “Nobody is official.” The club has been meeting “for years” they agreed, but no one could remember how many.

“There’s been a lot of baloney served here,” said Jack Clark, standing apart from the table.

“We tell true stories, but they don’t believe them,” answered Dale.

“This is the wrong place to learn a fact,” warned Jay Ragsdale, Abell’s son-in-law.

“He’s truthful,” rejoined Dale with a complimentary tone.

The club all clammed up at the idea they would repeat the most outrageous story that had ever been told at the club. Nope. They had nothing to say. Then someone mentioned aliens. But they thought better of it.

Shifflett, to change directions, told the story of his lab puppy who had chased a rabbit into the chattering knives of a sickle-bar mower and lost a rear paw. “The vet said to put him down. I couldn’t do it,” he said. Shifflett took the dog to a vet hospital in Leesburg and the puppy ended up with a prosthetic foot that Dale made on a lathe. The whole recovery from the amputation cost a fortune. “He’s been limping for three years now and he’s worn out five shoes,” said Shifflett. “You wouldn’t know he’s handicapped though. He still follows the mower. He just jumped when he saw that rabbit.”

That brought up coyotes around Free Union. “They are the smartest animal,” contended Shifflett. “They watch me mow hay and they come out of the woods when they hear the tractor coming. They wait for rabbits to run out.”

“I skinned one and put the hide on a board,” said Dale.

“I did the same thing,” said Baber. “My dad told me don’t set a trap if you’re not going to check it every morning.”

Dale was raised in Wise County, as was Baber’s wife. “Be careful what you say. Everybody is kin to everybody,” Baber warned. He said he had once referred to a fellow as “the dumbest bastard I’ve ever run into,” only to discover that he was talking to the man’s brother-in-law. “That was the start of me being careful,” said Baber.

But not careful enough. He went on to tell about the time he hired a man to paint his house and in the course of talking with him mentioned that he thought a particular woman “was ugly as sin.”

“Well,” said Baber forlornly, “that was his sister. You could have bought me for a penny. I was so embarrassed.”

Everybody laughed about it. Baber felt better because he had owned up to it for the umpteenth time. He’s all the way to careful now about talking about people. That still leaves some open range for talk at the liars club.

Conversation turned to people whose “butt crack” shows above their britches and how you don’t want to see that, such as when you have to stop to pump gas in your car.

“The liars club is wonderful because you get your morale built up,” said Francis. “Everything I need to know about White Hall I learned here at Wyant’s. If you can tell something that true and everybody believes it’s a lie, that’s just as good.”

Francis was a navy pilot in World War II. Recently he had a retina reattached. He described as “like spot welding.”

“Doctor told me,” Dale said, “if you see more than a dozen of those floaters in your eye to get to the doctor immediately or you could go blind.”

No one wanted to say any more on floaters.

Dale told how Vince Lombardi drove through Southwest Virginia looking for football players. “He would stop men who were plowing to get directions and if they lifted the plow to point, Lombardi would recruit him.” Dale was of the view that many boys in Southwest could have pointed that way.

That got them telling about how they had to work coal stoves and ride horses to school and how the consolation for that was really good cornbread.

Bell Steppe came in the store and called on the club. “Those men are good,” he said, gesturing to separate out Dale. “That one, he’s bad company. He’s comical.”

“The one I can’t believe is how you can pump up tires on a vehicle while it’s moving,” said Francis.

“It’s true on military vehicles,” asserted  Dale. “Air goes in through the axle. You know anything that costs money the government will buy it.”

“We’re no-holds-barred,” said Dale about club etiquette. “But we don’t play practical jokes. That’s no good. And politics is a taboo subject.”

“That’s a damn lie,” said Shifflett promptly.

“I’ll agree with you if you’re right,” protested Dale. “Eddie is one of the nicest friends you’ll ever have,” said Dale, patting Shifflett’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” said Eddie.

The Occupy Wall Street protest came up. “The d*mn rich people got all the money,” said one. “Eighty percent of the money is in 10 percent of the people.” They also agreed the federal government is wasting time and not addressing the country’s problems.

“Our main subject is what’s going on around here every day,” said Shifflett “And what the price of cattle is.”

“It’s like telling stories around the dinner table,” Dale said. “But people don’t do that any more. If somebody gets heated, we change the subject.”

Their coffee cups were drained and it was time to go work.

“Be good! Be good!” they said to each other in parting.

“They are gossiping and telling lies,” observed Larry Wyant as they left the store. “They lie when they say they don’t talk politics or farming.”

And there will be more of it when they meet again tomorrow.