MOULTRIE — About once a week I get an offer for a “psychic” reading. These are not local addresses so I’m wondering now if you can do this kind of mumbo jumbo over the phone or even by email. I just don’t keep up with this kind of stuff.

Of course I don’t respond to any of these offers. I don’t buy into clairvoyance or other types of hokus pokus. It would run counter to me having made good grades in college physics. Well, when I say I made good grades, what I really mean is I passed the course. I never had a big problem with basic math. My issues with math began when they involved the alphabet.

 That aside, I really think promoting psychic readings via emails is rather silly. They either believe they can metaphorically “beam me up” in that context or they expect me to travel to their locations. If I believed in psychic readings, I would support the local soothsayers. Almost every community has one or two.

As a matter of novelty, I got my palm read at a carnival many years ago. It was purely entertainment. The woman doing the reading traced the lines in my hand and told me what they meant. “This one,” she said, “means something good looms in your future.” I hated to interrupt her spiel, but I advised her that the line she was reading at that moment was where I got a treble hook caught in my hand while trying to unhook a bass. I wasn’t born with that line. She implied it was still a valid reading. I guess lines carry some sooth regardless of how they got there.

She would not be more specific about “something good,” which I felt in my case was like stating the obvious. I knew mama was going to fry chicken the next day for dinner. That was something very good. Even the fact that my car had been cranking on a regular basis was “something good,” though I always tried to park on a hill in case I had to push it off. While my friends wanted a straight shift because of a macho complex, my thoughts were a lot more basic and pragmatic. Just get me from Point A to Point B.

As a youngster, I heard all sorts of stories about psychics from the old timers. There was a story about an elderly lady in the community who could help people find stuff they had lost. And there were reports of her successes. One person had lost a watch, and supposedly it was recovered through her visions. And another regained a missing cow the same way. Now these stories were handed down to me so I would not pretend to vouch for any of them. Just folklore.

I also heard about a “water witch.” This person would walk around with a forked willow branch known as a “divining rod” and tell you where to dig your well. Supposedly the presence of water would cause the willow branch to point downward. My thought was that arthritis might do the same thing.

So if water would cause that to happen to a willow branch, it would seem that all the willows along the creek bank would be stripped of limbs and foliage as they bowed to the currents.

Also I thought this process was strange because back in those days, it seems the well was always at one end of the back porch. Wonder how a forked stick factored into that?  And my experience was that about anywhere you dug in South Georgia, the hole would produce water at some level. Maybe this procedure was more applicable out west.

So in closing, I’m curious about a couple of things. If these people are really psychic, they should have known I wasn’t buying their product. And I’ve never read a headline that says, “Psychic wins lottery!” Go figure.

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)