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W. C. Fields
Fields leaned forward and said to Grady, "Pull up beside the first ditch you see."
The minister's narrative had reached a point where a roustabout had pawned his small daughter's shoes to raise money for a drink when Grady slammed on the brakes. "Aus! Aus!" Fields began to cry, harking back to his German period, and he kicked the minister into the ditch. Then he opened his trunk, removed an unopened bottle of gin, and tossed it down beside him. "There's my Number Three," he yelled. "Called 'How to Keep Warm in a Ditch.' "
Grady drove on. Fields told him afterward that he'd suspected the minister might be a Methodist. He'd had a lot of trouble with Methodists, he said, but he refused to describe it in detail.
Fields loved to motor through the South. He admired the Southern customs and traditions. He had a story, which shifted from month to month, about a terrible fight he got into with a crossing watchman. "I was on my way to Homosassa, Florida,' he would say, dwelling lovingly on the name. ("That was probably a lie right there," Grady says. "He just liked the name Homosassa. He managed to ring it in every time he mentioned Florida.") Fields said he was en route to Homosassa on a fishing expedition and, on a back road, came on a blocked railroad crossing — a spur line grown up with weeds. There was a shack about twenty yards down the track. He stopped, and a watchman strolled up leisurely.
"You expecting a train?" Fields asked.
"Why, no," said the watchman, knocking the tops off some weeds with a stick. "I can't rightly say that I am."
"Not expecting one, hey?" said Fields.
"No. We only get a train along here on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
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