P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

THE SECRET DIARIES OF BROTHER JEREMIAH

I was readin’ in the Good Book the other day — me and my missus — and I got myself to that story in the book of Matthew. Along around chapter 13, I think it was, and old #13 wasn’t never unlucky for me, Jeremiah Clampett. Although I must say, those folks who put our family story on the TV never did get it right. But right where I get to that business about the farm hand who finds a big pot of treasure in a field, I slap that Bible down and I say to Mayella Sue — that’s my little woman — “Wife,” I says, “that there’s MY story! I’ll be a skinned coon if that ain’t exactly how it happened to me and Brother Jed.”

Now, folks, you all know how that song goes. A Mr. Paul Henning made himself a few dollars offen that tune, I must say. But it goes along like, “Come ‘n listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed. Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed.” Well, that was sure enough true . . . for both Jed AND me. We were so far out in the woods that roads got littler and littler and finally just ran up trees. And sometimes supper was up IN that tree. But that business of Jed shooting at some food, and having oil come out — you remember: “bubblin’ crude” — didn’t happen that way a’ tall. But you just hush for a spell, and I’ll tell you how it really came to be.

See, Jed and I had our little 40 acres right next to each other. Truth be told, he had about 25, and me 15. Him bein’ the big brother. And most of the time, we got along just dandy-good, ‘cept when that nephew boy o’ ours, Jethro, got into trouble. Boy was the dumbest excuse for a human bein’ I ever did see. He was a few mules short of a pack, if you take my meanin’. But me and Jed, we were in one of our not-speakin’ spells that summer. It got to the point where I had to watch out lessen Granny would take a shotgun to me just lettin’ my shadow land on their blessed property.

Well, anyhows, one day our little pet goat, Buzzard, jumped the fence over onto Jed’s place. So, after makin’ sure Granny and Elly Mae aren’t within range, I mosey on over the fence and aim to fetch him back.

And all at once, right next to Jed’s old persimmon tree, I step down and say to myself, “Boy, this soil here is softer ‘n that brain of Jethro’s if I do say so myself.” Real wet and soggy-like. Fact is, I pretty near sank down to my ankles in the goo and ruined my six-dollar boots I got down at Woolworth’s. “What in tarnation is big-brother Jed doin’ with this piece of worthless dirt?” I says to myself.

Well, sir, didn’t take me but two shakes of a lamb’s tail to put two and two together and figure me out that Jed Clampett, my own flesh and blood, is sitting himself on a oil well deluxe. I mean, that soggy ground was a dead giveaway. Don’t know how he missed it. But I stamped around there, still watchin’ out for Granny, and pretty soon said to myself, “Boy, there’s enough black gold here to fill Turtle Lake two, three times at least.”

So I go back home and I’m so excited I can’t hardly chew my corn at lunch. Mayella Sue thinks I’ve got me a case of the vapors or somethin’, keeps hoverin’ over me like a vulture on a church steeple. “You look like you seen an apparition,” she tells me. And I’ve got my mind hummin’ away, thinking how I can get that soggy land away from Jed.

Well, sir, let me tell you, I played it as cool as Granny’s huckleberry ice cream, which was about the only edible thing that woman ever made. But I went on over to Jed’s that very night and said to him, “Brother of mine, it’s time you and me buried the hatchet. I’m right ashamed of the feudin’ I started. Want you to forgive me and let bygones be bygones.” I about bygoned myself to death, tellin’ him how much I loved him. Then, when he got all misty-eyed, I said to him, “But now I got a favor to ask, Jeddy-boy.”

“What?” he says.

“That corner piece of land,” I tell him. “That corner that tucks into my 15 acres.”

“Yes, sir,” he says. “What of it?”
“Why don’t you sell it to me?” I sez. “All these years it’s been Jed 25, and Jeremiah just 15. Now, I don’t mind, and Mayella Sue don’t mind neither. But that corner runs into my property, and means our fences are all crooked over there. You sell me two acres, that makes it Jed 23, and little brother’d have 17. Plus” — now this was hard to get out, but I said it without chokin’ — “I give you any amount you ask. Name your price.”

Well, he gets a look on him like a calf that had three suppers in one evening. “That old spot by the persimmon tree?”

“The very one,” I tell him. “Sell me them two acres and I’ll go to meet my Maker a happy man. Amen.”

Well, Jed knows how to drive a hard bargain, even with his own kinfolk. He didn’t take but two bites of huckleberry ice cream before sayin’ to me, “Six hundred dollars.”

“Six hundred?” I act to be surprised even though my heart is just poundin’ away. “Now, Jed, that’s for the whole two acres. Right? Six hundred twice would be highway robbery without the guns.”

And my older brother saw his opening right there. Fact, I think what I said put it in his head. “‘Course I meant six hundred per acre,” he said. “Six for one, and a grand plus two for the whole thing. ‘Course, if you don’t want it . . .”

Well, I pretended to gasp and swaller my tongue and let my eyes stick out like June bugs. But when I said okay, it was a deal, he gave me a look like he’d just taken me on a one-way ride to Fool’s Market. “Well, dogie,” he said, like you’ve always seen on them TV shows. And I thought, “You’re the dogie goin’ to stay on the farm. It’s Little Brother who’s goin’ to be sellin’ out and movin’ to Beverly. Hills, that is.”

But first I had to get me a stash of twelve hundred dollars. Mayella Sue and I had just a hundred and fifty of egg money we’d put in a tomato can out back. So I started rustlin’ and hustlin’. We had three cows, I sold two of ‘em. Five goats, I auctioned off four. And when I was still short four hundred, I went right into town and sold the Studebaker. Didn’t get but $375 for it, and had to hitchhike home, but I knew I could borrow $25 from Cousin Lester, and sure enough, I went over to Jed’s that very night with the whole whoppin’ twelve hundred bucks in the pocket of my overalls. He signed the paper to the two acres, grunting and chuckling to himself like he’d just jumped me four times in checkers.

So the land was mine. My wife thought I’d gone clean daft out of my head: no cows, no chickens, no car. Just two more acres of scrub brush, dirt, and a dead persimmon tree. And by the way, just one more little detail. I had me an oil well, which, as you all know, I up and fetched off to the O.K. Oil Company over in Tulsa. They collected them some samples, and then, pretty as you please, gave me the total sum of twenty-five million dollars. Yes sir. Mr. John Brewster shook my hand, called me Mr. Clampett, how do you do, and handed over the check hisself. Twenty-five million dollars. You can buy yourself a whole lot of huckleberry ice cream, I told Granny, as she screamed and cursed about how it was the most dad-blasted betrayal she’d ever heard of in her entire life.

So we moved right out of there and got us a mansion at 516 Crestview Drive, Beverly Hills. They didn’t add the 90210 till later, but the surroundings were just the same, believe you me. Swimmin’ pools, movie stars. And Mr. Milburn Drysdale of the Merchant Bank of B.H. livin’ right next door to us.

Well, I was like a hog in heaven ‘cept for one thing. I felt real low about what I’d done to my brother Jed. I mean, twenty-five million minus a thousand two is a whole lot of stealin’. Some nights I couldn’t sleep even in them satin sheets the maid always put there in the master bedroom suite. My conscience was bitin’ me like a flock of March mosquitos. And I finally says to Mayella Sue — or, as the hired help here call her, Yes, Ma’am, Mrs. Clampett — “What say we telegraph old Jed and his family, and give them back half that Texas tea money? There’s enough black gold here for them and us too.” And danged if she didn’t say yes, that’d be all right. She reckoned she could squeak by on twelve-and-a-half million dollars if she had to.

So Jed and all his kin came out to Californy too — in that truck you seen on your TV sets. Moved in right next to us at five EIGHTEEN Crestview. That’s the right address, by the way; you can look it up on Elly Mae’s trivia web site if you got a scratchin’ urge to do so.

So I was at peace in my mind again. Jed gave me a big hug and ‘bout the biggest, “Well, dogie” I ever heard when he saw the size of his new swimmin’ hole. Granny fired up the stove and made some possum stew, and Jethro started right in with his Hollywood adventures, wantin’ to be a movie director and a double-aught spy and all the other tomfool things you saw in nine seasons of Filmways Presentations plus reruns on Nick at Night.

So it’s just like Reverend Scooter used to say in Bug Tussle back home. That diggin’-fer-treasure-an’-hidin’-it-back-up story’s in the Bible fer sure, but so is that bit about doin’ unto others. Amen, and pass the collection plate, ‘cause the Clampett brothers got more ‘n egg money to put in now.