Their home and farm had been in the family for many generations and Minerva tried to make it a loving environment but like many families of the time also did not spare the rod to spoil the child. Living in a modest three-room farmhouse Shep didn’t seem to want for much but at the same time didn’t have much. Growing up during the depression children made do and found ways to entertain themselves. Music was a big part of the Shepherd household and Minerva nourished and nurtured their musical enthusiasm, often giving up necessities for the purchase of a musical instrument for one of the boys. Babe Shepherd, Minerva husband did not always agree with that decision but did not put up much of an argument realizing how much music meant to his wife and sons. Music would be the lifeblood of Minerva and her boys for their entire life and a gift that none of them ever took for granted.
Shep along with his older brother Cliff followed in her musical footsteps learning the guitar and mandolin. The three of them comprised "The Shepherd Family Band" one of the best family bluegrass bands around. No self respecting barn raisin’, mountain marriage or hog roast was complete without Minerva and her boys.
Cliff and Shep had a natural gift and the two of them, along with their Mother, were constantly playing gigs all over the Ozark Mountains. With Cliff on guitar, John on the mandolin and Minerva on the fiddle they supplemented the meager income of theirs Father’s back breaking work as a farmer and provided countless hours of entertainment, but to Cliff and Shep sometimes, it lost it’s appeal.
Minerva always kept the boys on her right and for very good reason. Being as popular as they were the family played a lot of gigs and if occasionally a particular gig went a little too late for the boys, as all youngsters do, they would get sleepy. Minerva, having an excellent internal sense of timing could tell if the boys were getting tired because they would slow down as their minds drifted off.
Minerva could play a bright and lively mountain bluegrass song and at the same time when the boys would slow down she had the amusing ability to take her fiddle bow and whack the boys on the head and never miss a beat. With a newly acquired sense of concentration not to mention a swelling knot on the head, the boys were wide awake and playing for fear of another whack on the head from their Mother’s lightening fast fiddle bow.
The patriarch of the family Clifford Franklin Shepherd came by his nickname honestly. His friends called him "Babe" because there was no stronger man in the Ozark Hills. Standing six foot five and a half he towered over his friends. The stories of his strength were legendary throughout the Mountains.
Gordon’s Feed Store where the county bought its grain was also the local hangout for farmers to catch up on gossip and to trade hints on growing crops. Babe was always a favorite topic. "Did you hear about Babe Shepherd?" said one local farmer to the gang while sharing a pot of coffee and a chew one morning around the old potbelly stove.
"My boy works for him part time in the fields and he told me the other day Babe broke a spoke on the wheel of his wagon while headin’ back to the barn with a full load of corn, bumper boards on top and all," the crusty old farmer continued realizing he had the complete attention of the crowd.
"Well sir, my boy said he didn’t want to take time to go back to the house and get a block and tackle so he reaches down with one hand, lifts the wagon axle completely off ‘in the ground and replaces the wheel with other hand and sets the wagon back down." The farmer continued to complete stunned silence, "That load must have been upward of 500 bushel’s of corn. Aint no man alive in these hills besides Babe could a done that, no sir!"
Babe was as kind and gentle as he was strong too. Once while coming home from a long day in the hay field he caught his two boys playing with his prize Civil War muzzleloader. The rifle had been passed down to him from his father-in law, Pillar Daugherty. Pillar had been an orphan and in his younger years had been befriended by General Sterling Price of the Missouri Militia. "Old Pap" as he was known back then because of his fatherly nature to his men had asked the young teenager to ride with them and became a father figure to the young man as well. He had given Pillar the Civil War rifle that he had used to kill seven men in such battles as Wilson’s Creek and Pea Ridge.
Forged in the late 1850’s the rifle was a Harper’s Ferry .58-caliber musket with standard front sight of fixed type and had seven notches on the butt for how many men it had killed during the "War of Northern Aggression!" Pillar had given the rifle to his new son-in-law on the occasion of his daughter Minerva’s marriage to Babe and he treasured it.
Now named "Ole General Price" in honor of its original owner the boys had decided one day that they were going to shoot it and were arguing over who would do the honors when Babe walked up.
"Hey boys, what’s all the commotion about?" he said quietly as he snuck up on the mischievous boys.
"Well sir, we wanted to shoot Ole General Price," the boys sheepishly responded.
"O.K., so how much powder did you load up?" he inquired thinking this might be a funny story to tell the boys down at the feed store.
"What you had in the pouch," the boys proudly reported, thinking they had done a real good job.
Having almost completely filled the barrel with powder Babe shuttered to think what would have happened if he had not came along when he did because John had won the toss and was fixin’ to pull the trigger.
Staring down at his two pre teen boys and thinking one of then would have not lived to see the next day he said, "I think we better tie it to the well house and tie a string to the trigger."
Being typical brothers the boys argued over who would pull the string from around the corner of the house and Shep won again. The explosion from the muzzleloader could be heard clear over the next ridge by the neighbors in Miller hollow. All that could be seen from the well house was a piece of the roof turning end over end as it disappeared over the hill. Ole General Price was found about twenty yards from the well house with the butt drove into the ground about eight inches but other wise intact, a real testimony to the craftsmanship put into the old civil war weapons.
"Good Lord, what was that?" Minerva yelled as she came out of the house just in time to see her laying hens heading for the brush, "My chickens won’t lay for a month now!"
Shep had always been a mischievous boy. As Minerva was heard saying many times, "That boy has an ornery streak a mile wide and will be the death of me yet." That’s probably why his best friend for life Paul Corbin and he had gotten along from the very minute they met.
Shep and Paul hung out together all the time and even had been known to hire out to other farmers in the valley for a little extra money. One of those farmers who would hire the boys almost every fall to "buck" or haul hay was Henry Hearn whose farm was just up the valley. This very possibly could have been the beginning of their ornery streaks as Henry was the clown master and enjoyed a good prank as much as the next man.
One unusually hot fall day while coming in from the hay fields, Henry invited the boys in for a bite of lunch, which was unusual considering it was widely known throughout the valley that Henry couldn’t boil water without burning it. His wife Silvia was regarded as one of the best cooks in the valley, but she was also a cook at the Scout Camp and was not home.
"Let’s look in the pantry and see if we can scrounge up something to eat," Henry grumbled as he rummaged through the shelves.
"I am sick and tired of looking at these dang old cakes," he protested coming out of the pantry holding a thin white cake wrapped foil that Silvia had brought home from the Scout Camp. "These cakes have been here forever and no one in their right mind is gonna eat ‘em!"
He was right too, as the cakes had sat on the shelf for so long that they had dried out and was now tough as boot leather. The boys watched with wide-eyed amusement as Henry stepped out on the back porch and called their old dog Coaly, named so because of the color of his coat, which was black as coal.
The dog had just arrived on the Hearn’s back porch one day starving and weak. Silvia had fed him and adopted the old dog and grew to love him. Henry, however, couldn’t stand him and the two of them had had a love-hate relationship for years.
"Come here Coaly, here’s a wonderful cake for you…hope you choke on it you old…" his voice trailed away as he drew back and threw the cake as hard as he could into the air as the eager dog impatiently waiting in the yard. Since the cake was so dried out from sitting in the pantry for so long it sailed like a Frisbee and took on an upward arc as it sailed higher and higher up into the air.
Seemingly always hungry, Coaly could hardly control himself just thinking about the soaring cuisine now rapidly falling down from above. He shook in nervous anticipation and ran around in circles while never taking his eyes of the flying prize. No longer able to stand the wait, the old dog decided to meet the culinary treasure in the air and timed his jump just right to greet it as it plummeted down.
Being a dog, Newton’s law meant nothing to the hungry K-9, but his limited intellectual capacity soon took over as he immediately realized this was a mistake for the cake forced itself down Coaly’s throat so far that the old dog could hardly breath. Hacking and coughing and digging at his throat, Coaly now no longer desired the dried out cake and quickly realized his misfortune as he desperately tried to remove the dehydrated monstrosity from his throat.
"Hee hee, stupid ole dog," Henry laughed as he turn around and headed back into the house. Shep and Paul laughed so hard that tears came to their eyes and the rest of the afternoons work in the hay fields seemed to fly by as they regaled the story to each other over and over each time getting a good belly laugh at Coaly’s expense.
Paul Corbin’s upbringing was not the loving family life that Shep had enjoyed growing up in Bear Creek valley. That’s most likely why Paul hung out at Shep’s house from an early age. His family life was brutal to say the least. With an abusing drunk for a Father and a prostitute Mother, Paul seldom wanted to go home. For Minerva she accepted Paul as one of her own and treated him as such whenever he came around, which was a great deal.
All Paul had to look forward to when he went home was a beating by his Father if he "stepped out of line" who in his drunken state made excuses to beat Paul for almost anything he did. The only affection he received was from his Mother and even that had ulterior motives involved. From an early age he thought soda tasted like whiskey because his Mother would feed it to him in an effort to get the lad inebriated so she could "entertain" her men friends. With Paul passed out in bed she could apply her trade without her "young-un" tagging underfoot. So it is no wonder that alcohol would be a monkey on his back for the rest of his life and one that would eventually be his undoing.
As teenagers the introduction of the automobile to the young men was like throwing gasoline on a fire. If Babe and Minerva had ever learned of half the things Paul and Shep got into they would have skinned the boys alive.
Paul usually drove his ‘37 Coupe at alarming rates of speed, which was amazing considering the shape the old coupe was in, and considering the fact that rubber was a precious commodity in the Ozark hills at that time. Paul had many times joked that he owned the only 18-wheeler in the county with only four wheels on the ground. He kept the trunk and backseat loaded with spare tires, any of which barely had enough rubber on them to hold air and some actually had tubes patches over other patches. He would have to change a flat almost anytime he went somewhere and soon became a pro at it being able to complete the task in record time and be back on the road.
Once while coming home from a bar in a neighboring town he had been driving the twisting and turning country back road way to fast. Completely liquored up he proceeded to bury his Coupe deep into the side of a barn.
"You should have seen it Shep," Paul enlighten his buddy about the nights events, "that dang barn left the field jumped right out in front of me!"
The County Sheriff being a friend of Babe’s and knowing his unfortunate family life had brought the boy there to sleep it off. The next day the Shepherd family got an unusual and welcomed trip into Osceola to take Paul back home. In the back of Babe’s old ‘35 Chevy flatbed Paul regaled Shep and his older brother Cliff further with his run in with the jumping barn.
The family seldom went into Osceola because the 7-mile journey through the rough hard rock ridges of the Ozark Mountains was hard on Babe’s old farm truck. The motor of the old truck was not much more powerful than today’s ATV’s and that made the trip a long and arduous one. When the truck came to a steep climb Babe turned around to back up the rough dirt and rock ridges because it was easier for the old rear wheel drive truck to pull up a hill than to push.
Once at the top the old truck was about to boil away and Minerva got out a picnic basket full of fried chicken, cole slaw and iced tea and the family enjoyed the meal while the old truck cooled down before continuing the trip into town.
"So what did you do when Sheriff Collins got there?" Shep asked his buddy while stuffin’ fried chicken in his mouth.
"Well, I offered him a drink," he half heartedly joked, "what was I suppose to do? I think he’d a took it too if he hadn’t been on duty!"
To the townspeople of Osceola that was the beginning of a bad boy looser reputation Paul would never live down until the day he died. For Shep though he saw the good in Paul as any true friend always does. They had many things in common with music being the biggest thing. Paul was an excellent guitarist if had the right amount of liquor in him. Too little and he played reserved and mechanical. Too much and he played sloppy. So for many gigs the boys would play together in the years to come the trick for Shep was to get the right amount of booze in him and he was the best guitarist in the whole county.
Shep was always a good influence on Paul and managed to keep him out of more trouble than he did but eventually when the two boys headed off to war Shep would not be there to protect his friend. Because of this there experiences took drastically different fates.
For Minerva seeing her boy heading off to war was a mother’s greatest nightmare. "You be sure to take care of my boy and come back home in one piece. We need our star mandolin player," she teased trying to hide her fear from her son.
"You go over there and give them Germans hell’ you hear boy?" Babe said trying his best not to show what he felt deep down inside. All he wanted to do was hold his boy tightly and not let him go into harms way. He cold not do that though, because that was not expected out of the men of his generation.
John, trying his best to act bravely as his Father towered over him said, "Yes sir, Dad we sure will!"
Years later John would reflect on that statement and laugh by saying, "We went over there expecting to kick the Germans butt and be home by Christmas. But they did something we didn’t expect…they shot back!"
