As I have mentioned in previous stories, I was lucky enough to grow up in a beautifully secluded valley near a cold fresh mountain creek named "Bear Creek" in the Ozark Mountains in south central Missouri. I am the fourth generation of my family to have been blessed with that upbringing. However, they say "Idle hands are the devils workshop" and as anyone who has lived in the country knows there is no lack of idle time. I did manage to exact my share of mischievous deeds, but I could never even hold a candle to my father John Shepherd when it came to a devious childhood
From listening to stories my grandmother Minerva Shepherd told me, the boy was the master. He was the Michelangelo of naughty, the DaVinci of disobedience. This is a man whose crowning glory of dirty deeds came his senior year in high in which he took the scent gland from a recently trapped skunk, placed the putrid package in a mason jar and left it on a fence post for weeks until the scent had completely dissipated from the outside of the jar. He then took his little "surprise" to study hall and when no one was looking, removed the lid and slid the jar under the schools radiator. Since it was January the school janitor had the heating system up to full capacity. Needless to say it took about five minutes to empty the whole school out into the parking lot. Decades later, when I went to the same school, that story was still a legend nearly forty years later.
However, one particular incident that took place years earlier has been a favorite family story for generations now and the topic of this tale. To understand the mindset of the time you must realize many families in the Ozark Mountains, during the early to mid 1930’s, made a decent living making and running moonshine and my family was no different. In fact my great uncle Lee was a legendary "Lightning Runner" and was often his own best customer I guess you could say he had a trunk full along with a snoot full!
My grandmother, on the other hand, was your typical strong countrywoman. In true frontier fashion she was as loving as she was strict and raised her two boys John and Cliff to believe in God and respect their elders. She not only expected this kind of behavior but also demanded it. This was a difficult concept for a mischievous 12-year-old boy to wrap his brain around and often was the catalyst for unpredictable behavior.
One day, while playing in the barn, John came across some of uncle Lee’s moonshine he had stashed under the corn crib. Immediately his devious mind shifted into full speed. Sneaking into the kitchen he lifted a few slices of grandmothers fresh baked white bread from the breadbox and quietly crept out the back door. Once behind the relative safety of the barn he took some of the bread slices soaked them in uncle Lee’s shine and tossed them at the chickens that were unsuspectingly milling around looking for bugs. Having been used to getting fed table scraps the old chickens jumped on the bread like a duck on a June bug. All John had to do was find a good hiding spot and enjoy the fun.
After about 10 minutes a few of the smaller Banty chickens started showing some effects by weaving and squawking. One old smashed hen was so intend on catching a grasshopper that she overshot and slammed head first into the side of the wood shed. Before long everywhere you looked there were plastered poultry lying all around the yard. One of grandmother’s prized White Leghorn roosters was so drunk he was lying on his side doing bicycles in the air and squawking wildly. Hearing the commotion Minerva ran out of the house, her kitchen apron covered with flour, looked around the yard at her flock convulsing uncontrollably on the ground and screamed, "Charlie, my chickens all got the limber neck!"
Watching all the hubbub from a secluded hiding spot in a lilac bush, John got to laughing so hard that the whole bush he was hiding in began to shake. This of course was a dead give away as to his location and a clue to his mother that there was more to this situation than meets the eye! By this time my grandfather Charles Shepherd had arrived and saw his wife obviously upset. Being a very strong man, he reached into the bush and yanked the surprised boy out like a cork out of a bottle of wine. The two then lead the impish youth back to the house with such swiftness that maybe every third step of his foot actually touched the ground. This was a clue to John that not all was well in the Shepherd household.
After further investigation, it became painfully obvious that she had been duped by the young scoundrel and began to exact a strict country punishment. Deeming it fitting that he be whipped with a switch from the very lilac bush he hid in, she further humiliated the boy by sending him out to cut his own switch. Unbeknownst to his mother this was exactly what John was hoping for. Once at the bush he selected a long skinny switch and, while on the walk back to the house, he ringed the switch with his pocketknife about every two inches all the way up and down the lilac switch.
As planned, with the first swing of the switch on the boys rear end and it flew into hundreds of little pieces all over the floor. For a few brief moments John and his parents looked at the pieces of wood scattered about the wooded farmhouse floor and deathly silence was so still you could hear a pin drop. For a few seconds, John wasn’t sure if he had amused his parents or dug a bigger hole for himself. But as anticipated the strict but level headed farm couple began to snicker and the moment grew into a full-fledged gut-busting laugh by all three. Charlie and Minerva were so amused and amazed that the boy could be so ingenious as to come up with such a clever plan that they just couldn’t punish him any more. Which was what John had hoped for all along. And who said crime doesn’t pay!
