Dan "Kenny" Watson

There once was a man who came upon a snake in the road.

(Yeah, I know, you think you’ve heard this one before, but you haven’t.)

It was a hot day, and the poor thing was trying to wiggle across to the other side.

(It’s supposed to be a river that the snake wanted to cross, you say? No, it was not a river. It was a backcountry road in Alabama, and it was hot.)

The man’s daughter was with him and she worried for the snake. Wouldn’t somebody run over it?

(I know – there are versions of that joke where it’s a scorpion or a tarantula, but this was none of those things. This really happened. And it was a copperhead, by the way.)

The man took a forked stick, like he’d seen on Animal Planet or some such show, and pinned the snake’s head to the pavement. He reached down to pick the snake up by the neck when …

Snap!

The stick broke and the snake bit him.

The snake didn’t say, “Didn’t you know I was a snake?” I told you, this is not that joke about the fool who didn’t know better.

This is a true story about my friend Kenny Watson, a friend to anyone who needed help. If copperheads drank beer, he would have shared one with them, too, as I did many nights at the Garage Cafe.

If you ever spent time at the Garage, you probably met Kenny. His brother Jimmy started the place and Kenny helped run it. If you ever got the two of them mixed up, Kenny was the one who smiled.

Kenny died this week, but not of snakebite. (That was decades ago and it only put him in the hospital for a couple of days.)

In the end, it was cancer that got him, and it took him quickly – so quickly that very few of his friends got to say goodbye, me among them.

About three weeks ago, he went to the hospital for pains he couldn’t shake. It was a rare form of leukemia, they said. By the time most folks knew something was wrong, it was too late to say farewell.

The only grace I thought cancer gave its victims was time to say goodbye.

Not this time.

But here’s the thing. I don’t know there was ever a time I ever ran into Kenny when he didn’t greet me with a smile. Nor did I ever leave him with a scowl on his face nor a cross word under his breath.

He loved and lived every day like it was the last, and if you lived like he did, you’d never need one more chance to say bye.

He died on April 1.

That dumb old joke — about the snake who betrays the good Samaritan — is supposed to be a warning: Don’t be a fool.

Kenny showed us there’s something better to be had in a life well-lived — free of bitterness and suspicion, full of love and laughter.

And kindness — even for copperheads.

If you think that’s foolish, then the joke’s on you.