Well Mama said that sounded like a good idea to her too, because she had some new sweet potatoes that she had just gotten out of the root cellar to bake with it. And they both agreed that a baked possum with sweet potatoes and cornbread dressing really sounded good.
It was late fall and the weather was quite cold already, so Daddy bundled up in one of his heaviest coats, and pulled a toboggan hat down over his ears, and put his regular hat on over the top of it.
Dad’s rational mind said "If that thing goes through that fog that means it has weight, and if it has weight it’s not a spook," but another thought said, "if it flies over the top of that fog I’m out of here! The dog can fend for himself!" But when it hit the fog it sank almost out of sight, and when it came up to higher ground it was still coming straight on. Dad cocked his rifle and began raising it to his shoulder. Then the darndest thing happened! The spooky object literally fell out of the air, into a big white blob on the ground, and guess what, there stood Dad’s hunting buddy, Old Boot with his tongue hanging out about a foot. Daddy said, "Boot, what have you got there?" He had caught the biggest possum in the whole forest; it was as white as snow, and he was carrying it back to Dad.
Now that really tickled Mama, to think that Dad the spook eliminator, had gotten haunted by a mere possum! But when she went outside to see it, she was astounded at how huge it was. She said " My lands, I don’t know if I have a roaster pan big enough to bake that monster in or not." Then Dad said, "Well me and Old Boot have full confidence that you’ll find a way to remedy the situation, so we’re gonna leave it in your competent hands." Then with a big grin on his face, he said "After all, we did go out there in the dark, with the buggers, and bring him back!" Well, Mama was successful. She stuffed that big critter with her delicious cornbread dressing, and baked him to a golden brown. Accompanied by a half dozen delicious homegrown sweet potatoes, it was a feast fit for kings. There was leftover possum and dressing for days, and even Old Boot got his share He really seemed partial though, to Mama’s cornbread dressing, he would gobble up every last crumb of dressing first, then attack the baked possum. Actually though he didn’t ever learn to like baked sweet potatoes, he would always leave them in his bowl.
Daddy had to make a special board to cure the big possum’s hide on. When the fur buyer saw it he said, "Dave what do you have here? That can’t be a possum, it’s as big as a sheep." Then Dad told him the story how Old Boot had bagged this big critter on his very first hunt, and scared the pants off of him by carrying it back. He said to Dad "I don’t know if I can sell a white possum hide, as big as a sheep or not, but the story is worth at least three dollars; I’ll take the gamble." Dad and Mom both agreed that three day’s food, and three dollars wasn’t too bad for Old Boots first hunt! If people wanted entertainment, it had to be something they could do for themselves, and without a doubt, the telling of stories and tall tales was one of the best. Knowing that Grandma was a world class storyteller, you have to believe that Daddy had heard lots of spooky tales in his life. But for one reason or another, he had pretty much rejected the whole thing as a bunch of bunk. One might think of him as the original ghost buster, because whenever he had an opportunity he would try to expose the spirits, as spoofs, instead of spooks.
One such incident of Dad’s Ghost Busting, took place at the old Skinner house.
His mouth was already watering, because he knew that Mother had sent him some of that good breakfast sausage, stuffed inside three or four of her buttermilk biscuits. He had a lunch fit for a king. He had just taken his first big bite, when he heard a very noisy thump come from the inside of the old house. He slowed down his chewing just a little, so he could hear better. Sure enough there it was again, a very distinct thumping sound, then some kind of a dragging noise, like someone walking dragging one leg. Well now he thought, as he resumed eating his lunch, that sure wasn’t the old oak tree rubbing against the house! There’s absolutely no breeze, although I wish there was, and it definitely wasn’t my imagination. As he sat there slowly eating his lunch he was trying hard to remain an unbeliever, a man of rational thought. But as the ghostly noises continued he had to admit that somewhere inside his psyche, there was a little bit of chicken, trying to come out; the short hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to stand up! Hey, he thought to himself, " I’m not afraid of no spook. I’ll just eat my lunch like nothing’s happening! And in my own good time I’ll check it out, that’s all there is to it." Well, the longer he sat there and listened to all of that spooky racket, the faster he noticed he was eating. Suddenly he became aware that he was starting to let this thing get under his skin. So he figured that he had better check it out now before he got any worse spooked!
As his eyes began to get accustomed to the dark, he was astounded at what he was seeing; he could distinguish five white objects which seemed to be floating, about a foot above the floor, and yes, they were making the ghostly noises, as they mingled and moved around the room. He stood in awe, at what seemed to be a verifiable scene of the spirit world. But as he continued peering intently into the darkness, suddenly a sly smile came across his face, and he knew he had the answer to the old Skinner house puzzle! Now you ghosts, he thought it’s payback time, lets see who’s going to scare whom. And at the top of his lungs he yelled, " HEY YOU SPOOKS. " In about one quarter of a second flat the white shadows flew through the wall and were gone, leaving only their offensive odor behind. With a big smile all over his face, and feeling totally vindicated, Dad gently closed the access door and began climbing down the beat up old ladder. First he thought that he would take the ladder back out into the yard, but on second thought, decided to leave it where it was, just in case some other pilgrim came along and decided to check out all the ghostly noises coming from the old house. At least they would have an easier time of it than he had, he thought. As he slipped out for the last time through the back door, he mused at how much different he felt now, than when he had first entered. He had to admit he was a bit shaky. He gently pulled the ancient door closed and went back to finish his lunch. "Well," he said, "Now maybe I can eat the rest of my lunch in peace!"
That evening at the dinner table, Dad began to tell the family about his day, and how he had formally met the spooks at the old Skinner house. And of course everyone was interested in hearing the latest ghost story. He said that when he first saw the shadowy white things floating around the room, he really didn’t know, just what to make of it all.
Mother also used cream regularly in her cooking, but she would always leave just enough to give the sweetmilk a wonderful creamy flavor. It was so delicious to drink. We also drank a lot of buttermilk. The cream that mother would skim off was placed in the butter churn and left until it had clabbered. Then the wooden dash would be placed into the churn with the handle sticking up through the hole in the lid. The clabbered milk was then turned transformed into buttermilk and butter, by a rigorous up and down motion, which would take about twenty minutes or so, according to how vigorous the churn operator felt. Mother used milk and cream also to make her awesome breakfast gravy. She would put her grease into the skillet first, and heat it up until it was good and hot, then sprinkle flour into the grease while stirring vigorously, and when the flour and grease mixture was just at the right consistency, she would begin to add the creamy milk, continuing to stir as the mixture thickened and finished cooking. It is unbelievable that a mixture so simple could be so delicious. The buttermilk was used in Mothers morning biscuit recipe also. I can still remember that large wooden bowl that she used in preparing her biscuits. As a child, with my elbows on the table next to her, I would watch in amazement, as she would go about her biscuit making process. She would have a lot of flower in the big wooden bowl, and then she would start to add different things to the middle area. She would begin flipping flower around with her fingers, and adding this and that, and before long there would be a big lump of fresh dough ready to be pinched into individual biscuits and put in the oven. Soon the delicious aroma of baking bread would fill the house, and everyone’s mouth would be watering, anxiously awaiting breakfast. With the hard part over, mother would fry some fresh eggs from her hen house, and whatever meat she was going to serve, such as home cured sausage, ham or salt pork, and breakfast was served. With a goodly portion of mother’s biscuits and gravy, and a hunk of fresh fried meat in your tummy, a person had the strength to do a good hard day’s work.
Pork was the kind of meat that I remember most .
Most modern folks think that possum is just something that gets run over on the road. But in reality they’re one of the finest tasting meats on the planet, especially after they have fed on wild persimmons for a few weeks. In the late fall after three or four frosts have hit them, the wild persimmons become so deliciously filled with sugar that; possums, raccoons and anything, or anyone, with a sweet tooth, will be literally drawn to them. That’s the time to eat possum. They become very fat and tasty in that time of year. Raccoon on the other hand, is a very rank wild tasting meat. I never liked it much, although the family ate it quite a bit, especially in trapping season, when they were being caught regularly in the traps. My folks hated to waste good food.
Most of our fish consumption was done in the summertime, because the weather in the wintertime could be atrocious. Usually the rivers were frozen over, or swollen and muddy, which in either case pretty much stops most fishing. Sometimes people would try to catch catfish by using trotlines, or set hooks, which could be left for a few days at a time. But for the most part, fishing was a summertime activity. There is really a large variety of fish in Arkansas, and we ate them all, at one time or another. Here is a list of some of them: bream or bluegill, crappie, eastern sunfish, greenbeared sunfish, punkinseed
sunfish, rockbass, large mouth bass, small mouth bass, Buffalo fish, red horse suckers, drum, bowfin; also called scaly cat (because it has whiskers like a catfish, but also has scales) eels, needlenose gars, alligator gars, and catfish of many varieties; (some weighing up to eighty or one hundred pounds.)
You really had to rip the line through the water, to be able to successfully penetrate the tough skin of the fish, with the large grab hooks. Plus one had to use a large weight, of about a pound or more to keep the hooks on the bottom. You had to have a pole with some real guts, to land an eighty or hundred pound paddlefish in the swift water. My family left Arkansas some years before this type of fishing started, darn it. But I did get to see a big paddle fish taken in a net once, after he had just about destroyed a huge seine that belonged to the fish and game commission. Here’s the story.
It had been known for weeks, that the fish and game commission wanted volunteers to help seine the spillway of the Blue Mountain Dam. The fish were to be donated to the Booneville tuberculosis sanitarium a local hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis. I had the date well burned into my mind, and just to make sure that Dad didn’t forget, I had been bugging him regularly to go help. Now I really wasn’t as civic minded as all that at eight years old, I just wanted to go see how it was done, (it was something new) and of course, I wanted to eat all the deep-fried golden brown fish I wanted at the fish fry afterward. Finally the date arrived and I was as fidgety as an ant on a hot rock, wondering if I was going to get to go or not!
They had gone only a few yards, when the big fish hit the seine again, but this time from the rear, and knocked about half the guys down. Well the seine crew was really starting to getting frustrated; wondering what was going on, because this just wasn’t supposed to be happening. One of the crew said "I think this fish is just playing a game with us," then another one piped up, "well maybe he just don’t want us to take all his friends away!" About that time the Ranger told them to pull the big seine in and take the fish out of it; he wanted to check it out for damage. When the guys finished pulling the seine into the shore and removed all the fish, there were two huge holes right through the middle, about the size of a big nail keg. The Rangers agreed that the big seine was going to be totally ruined by this one rogue fish unless they somehow took him out of action. So they brought out what they called a trammel net. I had never heard the word before, and never again, but I believe it was the equivalent of a gill net, which is designed to entangle the fish, so it can’t escape.
The guys put the big net clear across the spillway and tied its ropes to the bushes along the bank. In about twenty minutes or so the big net started bucking like a young bronco. It was plain to see that they had caught a very big critter! The guys got back into the water and started pulling the big net in. It was bucking and thrashing, and I could hardly wait to see what kind of critter had ripped up the big seine. Closer and closer they came to the bank; all the onlookers, me included pressed in closer to the action to see what type of creature would appear. Then, with one more mighty heave, there was a huge paddlefish hauled out onto the bank, along with about a twenty pound buffalo fish, and a few other species. He would probably have weighed eighty to a hundred pounds. He looked just like a shark or some other large salt water species, with smooth steel blue skin, and a hard bony paddle, fourteen to sixteen inches long and four inches wide, on his nose. I had never seen a big paddlefish before, and I had never been to a community fish fry. It was such a grand adventure, and a day I’ll never forget! Fishing in Arkansas was a real thrill; you never knew what you were going to catch. All the fish that were there were part of our food source, and I really enjoyed summertime, because it was the time to fish!
Sometimes local names for certain types of fish can really be confusing to people who don’t live in the area. For instance what I know now to be a large mouth bass, oddly enough was called a trout, in our area of Arkansas.
And what I know now to be a bluegill sunfish was called a bream perch. I remember one time Daddy and I had been fishing down near the Killian spring, on Sugar Creek, and we were walking home carrying a nice string of bluegills, when we met an outoftowner type person along the way. (He had to be from out of town if Daddy didn’t know him!) We stopped and talked a little while, then he commented on what a nice string of bluegills we had caught. Well Dad quickly corrected him, saying, "these here are bream perch!" Well the other fellow assured Dad that they were bluegill sunfish, because he knew the species well. Then Dad said, (with just a tiny bit of frustration in his voice), that he had lived here all his life, and he damn well knew, what a bream perch was! Well the outoftowner suddenly saw that he had better relent, even though technically he knew he was correct. Bream perch, is a nickname still used today, in many southern states for bluegill sunfish. The word perch refers to a family of fishes all its own, with many, many species, which does not include bream, or sunfish. I didn’t know for years into the future that the old fellow was right. But when a person is raised calling a bass a trout, and a blue gill sunfish a bream perch that is his truth whether he is technically correct or not makes no difference, and an outsider can get his head scuttled real easy by trying to enlighten him!
There were very few deer left in Arkansas when I was a kid, so deer meat wasn’t an option. Dad and some of his friends would even go out at night using high-powered lights to try to kill deer, but I can’t remember them ever bringing one home. But I do remember them coming home one night telling about finding a spook out there in the woods. It made all kinds of noise, shook the bushes, walked through the dry leaves, and brush, and they could follow it with their lights by watching the bushes move, but could never see it. It really blew them away! They found it on several occasions, always in the same place. But that was one spook Dad could never explain.
First we had to gather up all the things we would need to do the job: a two man crosscut saw, two or three axes, a #2 two wash tub, home- made face protectors, smoke device and bellows, and the secret weapon, a small piece of lint cotton. Now we were ready to go get us some honey. When we arrived at the chosen water hole, we would observe the bees to see which direction most of them were coming from. When the direction was decided upon, then we would simply catch a bee that had come from that direction, and proceed to do our sneaky little trick on him. Now we would take out the little piece of cotton we had brought from home, and pull off a tiny piece of lint, about half an inch long, and very, very thin. We would place the piece of lint cotton on the back of one hind leg of the bee, which conveniently had little jiggers to hold it firmly in place. After being released the bee would take off straight back to his hive, with his flying speed affected just enough to allow a person to run along behind him.
The bee is highly visible with the white lint cotton shining in the sunlight. After the tree was located, then the decision had to be made whether it would be profitable to cut it or not. If it was a small tree with very little space for honey to be stored inside of it, then it would be rejected. If on the other hand it was a large older tree, with a big trunk where lots of honey could be stored inside of it, it was a go. Some people think that a wild beehive is like a paper hornet’s nest that hangs on the outside of a tree, but honey bees make their hive in a cavity inside the trunk of a tree. Sometimes there will be half a washtub full of honey in a single tree. Now that the decision had been made, all the paraphernalia that had been brought to do the job had to be transferred to the site. That is when the serious work began. First the two-man saw was used to almost saw the tree down; then before it actually falls the guys stop and get into their protective gear, which consists of a small flour sack with a piece of screen wire of about six by six inches square sewn into the front to see through.
The loss is very minimal since the whole bee hive probably couldn’t eat more than a half a pound, and it does so much more good to let them eat all they will. Some hives will have as much as fifty lbs. or more of honeycombs. About now the tools would be brought out, and the serious business of getting the honey out would begin. Most of the time, the saw is used to cut into the cavity at each end, where the honey is most likely to be, then the axes were used to chop out the middle portion, to expose the honey comb. Now came the part that I liked the best. The big wash tub would be brought to the tree, and the guys would start removing the honey. Older honey would be brown colored, but the new stuff would be nice and white. That’s the kind that’s the best, or maybe it just looks best! At any rate, about then, I would be yelling for someone to bring me a piece of the new honeycomb. After we had eaten all the honey our stomach could possibly accept, it was time to pack up and go home, It was truly a fine game, to be played with family and friends on a warm summer day. Some times we would get a little extra entertainment, when one of the guys got a bee in his bonnet, or up his britches leg! But for the most part it was just a nice day’s outing, with a sweet bonus, because we got to take the delicious honey home and eat it. When the weather was bad for weeks at a time, and one could scarcely be outside at all, you could have a nice hunk of honeycomb, and think about that lovely day in the summer, and all the fun that you had with your friends. Nowadays, honey isn’t near as much fun. It comes in neat little jars, right off the store shelf. There just isn’t any of the feeling that I used to get, when the word honey was mentioned. It’s a little bit hard to understand how people go through life never knowing the simple pleasures of feeling like, "I did it myself, I actually went out there and did it!" The pleasures of living close to the land can never be felt by millions of people, who live in great cities throughout the world; somehow I think those of us who thought we were poor, were actually the richest of all. Then just as he was about ready to go home, a group of fellows that he knew from Booneville, (about ten miles away) showed up in a pickup truck with a boat in the back. They were a boisterous bunch, yelling, laughing, and having a real good time. There were four of them packed into the cab of the truck, and it wasn’t hard to see that their fun was being amplified by the half quart of moonshine liquor, that was missing from the jar they were passing around. They spotted Dad immediately and began walking down towards him, everybody talking at once.
"How’s the fishing, how many fish have you caught, what are you using for bait etc?" Dad talked to them for awhile answering all their questions about his fishing day. Then he told them that he was just about ready to give it up and go home, but he would be glad to give them a hand launching their boat before he left if they needed it.
They wanted to see, how this modern fishing marvel worked. Everyone was surprised at how far the big lure flew out into the river. But right on the end of the cast the handle of the reel, which had to spin backwards for the line to come off, smacked Kelly right on the end of the thumb! Well, he almost dropped the pole, then uttered a few choice expletives because he was in considerable pain, and finally recovered and began to retrieve the lure. One of the guys said, "Kelly we was wonderin, why people called them reels, thumb busters, now I think we understand!" Kelly said, "You dumb savages, culture is something you’ll never understand!"
When we started preparing for a fishing trip, we began by trying to find enough fishing gear to accommodate every one who wanted to go. Usually there was a small box that held what fishing tackle there was. Each time the hooks, lines, bombers, and sinkers, were used, what we didn’t loose on the trip was returned to the box for safekeeping. Here’s what you probably would have seen, when you looked into the box. There would be five or six small bundles of green or white linen line, usually wound up on a pieces of bamboo about three inches long. That was the last three inches off the tip of your last bamboo-fishing pole. We simply broke off the tip of the pole, to wind the fishing line up on. Bamboo was very plentiful. Next you would see a couple of old used toothpaste tubes, which had been cut open and washed out.
A lot of good corks met their end, and failed to become bobbers during this process. To put them on your line you would simply slide your line firmly into the slit, and draw it up to the depth you wanted to fish. Then last but not least, you would see several sizes of fishhooks. (perch hooks we called them.) Hooks were the single item that we actually were forced to buy. I am sure there were places in town where one could have bought nice new tackle, but what we had suited us just fine, we were pretty much self contained.
After everyone had gotten his fishing setup, or enough parts to make one, the next item on the list was bait. On the top of the list was red wasp larva, but there were many other forms of local creatures which if you could find them, were also very good bait, some of them were: red worms, grub worms, grasshoppers, crawdads, wood worms, (which were gotten by tearing rotten logs apart. I think they were probably the same things we know as mealworms nowadays.) Minnows of many kinds were also used, mostly to catch carnivorous fish like bass, crappie, warmouth perch, catfish, etc. Anyhow the bait that my Dad liked to use most, was the larva of the red wasp. You simply pulled the little paper cap off of each larva’s individual cell as you needed bait, and extracted it from it’s hole by using your finger nails to tug gently on its head, it was dynamite on sunfish! The larva that were large, but still in the worm stage. Stayed on the hook much better. When they changed into the pupa stage and started turning into a wasp, they became so delicate they were very hard to keep on the hook. If you were just going fishing for a little while, it was pretty easy to knock two or three small wasp nests with just a long bamboo pole without getting stung. But if you were getting enough bait for a good days fishing for five or more people, you had to get some serious bait. Being the ravenous fishing enthusiast that I was, I was always planning ahead! I usually had the nests all scoped out long before they were needed. A large wasp nest could be six inches across, and covered with two or three hundred vile tempered red wasps, that would sting you at the drop of a hat. Their nest is made out of wood pulp, chewed off of fence posts and other wooden objects, and mixed with wasp saliva to create a type of papermache. I believe the correct name for this type of wasp, is probably paper wasps. But at any rate it really did me good to see them get what they had coming to them, when that big wad of flaming corn shucks tied on a long bamboo pole suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and burned all their wings off.
Audrey got stung three or four times, but her heroic efforts probably saved her little brother’s life. All in all though, there was a certain magic about the whole process. A little fear, a little intrigue, and lots of adventure! There was a nice toasty smell about the wasp nests, after we had burned them out and collected them that I liked. Somehow it seemed to embody the whole pleasant process of going fishing in the summer time, with all its wonderful memories and feeling, rolled up into a smell. It’s one of those things you just can’t explain.
After we got our tackle and our bait, we headed down to the creek. The next part of the fishing process was to choose yourself a fishing pole. The creek banks were literally groves of bamboo, and with the right understanding of what was needed, you could pick yourself the perfect fishing pole: It had to be dry, so it wouldn’t be to heavy, it couldn’t be to long, or to short, too whippy or to stiff. In other words, it had to fit you personally. Running through the bamboo grove hunting the perfect pole, was just another part of the fishing process. Finally when we had found it, we would call Daddy to come with his pocketknife and cut it down for us. After He had trimmed it up we would take our fishing line out of our pocket, and attach it to the pole. The line would first be tied to the pole very carefully about two feet back from the tip. This was insurance against catching a whopper and having him break off the end of our pole and get away. Then it would be wound around the pole a couple of times as we brought it out to the end to secure it. Three or four half hitches were usually plenty good to do the job. Now we were ready for the main ingredient a nice gob of wasp larva, and we were ready to fish! Sunfish usually hang out around cover: such as bushes, dead trees, and drifts, which protects them against predators (Drifts are wood materials floating on top of the water, which can be only a few square feet or as big as a house floor.) Drifts will usually be found in slow water where fish like to linger, because they don’t have to fight the current. Knowing where they hang out gives the fisherman a much better chance of eating fresh fish for supper instead of leftovers. But sunfish such as bluegills, and rockbass, can get very hefty themselves, sometimes weighing two or three pounds. ( Rock Bass, were called goggle eyed perch) At this stage they become very predatory themselves, but no sunfish no matter how big he gets can resist a nice gob of wasp larva.
I couldn’t have been more than about four or five years old, so I really didn’t know just how to do this fishing thing, but I was very eager to learn. Daddy caught a nice string of brem perch, and I caught my very first fish ever a little brem about three inches long. I let it go, because Daddy said "He needs to grow up some, then we’ll catch him again, when he gets bigger." That sounded very logical to me even being as young as I was. I knew that little perch, was just the beginning of something much bigger, and I had broken the ice! We had about a three mile walk back home to the Killian place, and I remember Dad looking down at the nice string of fish he was carrying and said, "Well, we didn’t do too bad this time, but when the cotton’s laid by we’ll come down and harelip em again." I didn’t have a clue as to what harelip em meant, but I knew it meant to go fishing again, and that was good enough for me!
One of the most memorable fishing trips that I can remember was on the Fourth of July, nineteen and forty five, after our celebration was over. I’m going to tell you all about it, but first, I’d like to tell you some of the festivity preparation, that took place the day before. Dad, George, and Alvin, decided we needed a couple of nice watermelons to help with our Fourth of July celebration, so we got a couple of toe sacks, (burlap bags) and went down to my uncle’s house, (Mama’s Brother, I believe his name was Uncle Tommy Wilkins) because we knew he had a melon patch and we wanted to buy some from him. When we arrived, we went up to his house and found him sitting out on the front porch. We exchanged the regular greetings; we talked a little while, then told him that we wanted to buy some melons. He said we could have all the melons we wanted for nothing, but Dad and the boys insisted on paying him anyhow. He picked his old hat up off the porch, and put it on his shiny baldhead; then he led the way out back to the melon patch. There were about two acres of the most gigantic watermelons we had ever seen. We couldn’t believe how big they were! My Uncle said, "There they are, get what you want." We choose two nice ones, and got out our bags. Well, neither of the melons would go into the burlap bags; in fact it took two very hefty young men on each melon to carry them to the car. Dad estimated they would weigh close to a hundred pounds each. The average man just couldn’t grip one of those big round melons, good enough to carry it. They were the largest melons that I have ever seen, and at this writing it has been about fifty-five years. Well, we had a new washtub half full of fresh lemonade, with big hunks of chipped ice floating around in it, two huge watermelons, and all the other fine foods that mother and the girls had fixed for the occasion, What more could a person want out of a Fourth of July celebration? Yeah, you guessed it a real good fishing trip!
Well after we had eaten so much watermelon, and drank so much lemonade we couldn’t possibly hold anymore; our thoughts turned back to the fishing trip that we had been planning. We had already burned out five nice big wasp nests for bait, so all there was left to do was load the boat onto the wagon, hook up Old Kate and Old blue, the family’s mules and go fishing! Dad’s big homemade boat would carry about six people, or two people and a lot of equipment. He and George used it regularly in their mink trapping process. We launched at the Killian Spring and paddled down the creek, to a huge drift we knew about. This drift was the most productive place, that I can remember fishing in Arkansas. We all got our fishing tackle ready to go; since the wasp nests were all up in the front of the boat, the other guys had already been baiting up. I asked for someone to pass me a wasp nest, because I knew there were plenty for each of us to have one.
Well everybody had to get his hooks out of the water again Dad burnit! "My God I thought this don’t seem fair to me! Surely I’m going to get to fish sometime!" Well finally I got my rig in the water, after Alvin landed his monster perch. They were both about the same size huge! Then a few minutes passed without any action, and I had let my attention drift off of my bobber, and I was drooling over the whoppers, that the other guys had caught; they were still flopping around in the bottom of the boat. Then Daddy said "Hoyt, I think you had better jerk!" Quickly I scanned the water for my bobber, but it was nowhere to be seen! Just then my pole began to bend under the weight of the fish, and I finally felt what it was like, to catch a giant bluegill. Around and around the boat he went, with me pulling up on him as hard as the pole would allow. Daddy said, "Keep a tight line on him Hoyt; don’t give him any slack, or he will get away!" "Get away," I thought, " I don’t want him to get away, I want this fish more than I have ever wanted anything in my whole life," I thought! "I’ve just got to land him". Then on about his third trip around and under the boat I felt him weakening. "Yes," I thought, "I am going to land him!" Shortly after that I was able to lift him into the boat; My pole was bent almost to the breaking point just lifting his weight. I had landed my first really big bluegill. He was even bigger than the other two the boys had caught. He looked so strange. His head was the same size as a regular bluegill, but his body had gotten large and sort of squashed out around his head. His body was three times too large for his head. But I didn’t care that he looked a little strange, he was mine! We sat in the same place all afternoon catching those giant perch. That was my very first really good fishing trip, and it instilled a fire in me for fishing that is still raging today fifty-five years later.
The selling and preparing went on for about two weeks or more, and everything was moving mostly in the right direction. Only one major problem remained, what to do with the chickens. In the summertime they always ran loose, and they roosted anywhere, and everywhere, there was no one place where we could hope to catch them all. On one of the last days we spent at the Luther Place, I remember being out in the back yard. It was a bright, sunny morning, and the chicken flock was just as contented as they could be. A new mother was digging and clucking to about a dozen teeny new babies, others were chasing grasshoppers, and the Old Rooster, was watching over the whole flock to see that no chicken hawk got too close, without him giving out his hawk alert warning! They were going on with life as usual, not knowing what was shortly to come. The old barn stood stark and empty: no hay, no corn, no peanut plants with the peanuts still attached, hung up to dry inside its walls, it all perished in the drought. And the stirring absence, of lively animals which had given the old barn it’s character, all were missing!
Then Mother said "Well, we’ve got to do something, they’re all right now, but come winter they would all freeze, or starve to death, and the varmints would finish the job! At that instant, I knew we had to catch all those hundred and twenty five wild chickens, and find them a new home, I didn’t want to see them die. Then being fully aroused from my nostalgia, trip my brain started working again; I said "Daddy, I think Old Trailer would catch these chickens just as easy as pie." He said, "Yeah, but he would probably kill two thirds of them too.”
I said if we would first catch one, and pet it right in front of Old Trailer, then turn it loose and have him re-catch it, I think he would get the idea; we don’t want him to hurt them, just catch them. Dad said, "If it were only that simple!" "Well," I said we can soon find out." I hollered for Old Trailer, and he came blazing around the house, all revved up thinking he was going to get to go hunting. Now, came the grand experiment, and all those chicken’s lives depended on it. Mama got out some cornbread and crumbled it up; soon lots of chickens were all around her.
"I swear, that dog is more intelligent than a lot of people I know," Daddy said, with a grin. Well that tickled me real good; we all felt great at what Trailer had accomplished. We gave him a real good petting, to show him that we approved of what he had done. We started catching chickens at about ten o’clock, and by about three, Old Trailer had caught one hundred and twenty four chickens without injuring a single one. About then, we thought we owned the greatest dog alive. He not only was a top-notch squirrel, mink, rabbit, possum, raccoon, cow and hotdog; he was also, a whale of a chicken dog too. But there was one remaining Banty Rooster, and he could fly like an eagle. It looked so strange, all the chickens sitting around in cages waiting to be moved. ( except one that is ) But a few hours, ago, it had looked and felt totally hopeless. Well the Banty Rooster was setting in the top of a forty-foot tall pine tree, and for awhile we didn’t know if we would ever get him down. Finally, Dad decided that our only hope was to throw rocks at him, and try to make him fly, but hope not to kill him in the process. Pretty soon the little rooster decided he had, had enough, he flew out of the pine tree and headed toward open pastureland. That was a bad mistake, because as fast as he could fly, Trailer was able to run right along under him. He had to come down somewhere, and that somewhere was about a quarter mile down the hill where Trailer immediately nailed him. Dad got there as quick as he could and took the little rooster, but Mom and I could tell the news wasn’t good. As soon as Dad looked him over he began ringing his neck. Old Trailer had built up too much adrenaline; he squashed the last one’s head. We went to bed that night feeling a whole lot better. What seemed like an un-solvable problem that was really wearing on Mom and Dad’s mind turned out to be, but a day’s sport for Old Trailer, Superdog! My Folks arranged with a neighbor to come over and get the crates of chickens, since we no longer had any way to move them. I don’t know if they received anything for them or not, but at least the chicken matter was finally closed.
He assured me that the bridge wasn’t moving; it was just the water moving under it that made it look that way. Then he told me about a notorious bootlegger named Al Cappone that had a huge moonshine still just down the river from where we were standing, on a big island in the middle of the river, but the revenuers had busted it up a few years back and sent Al to Alcatraz. I thought "Dad I didn’t know any of those people, I just want to get off of this darn bridge! I know its moving!" Well, you can be sure I felt much better when that big army truck was safely across that river. We were now in Oklahoma, and Arkansas the place of all my childhood memories was hour by hour being left behind. We left a lot of ourselves behind a too! Grandma Walker totally blind and helpless didn’t want to leave the land where she had grown up and raised her family; she stayed with Uncle John and Aunt Lillie. She had been part of our household as long as I could remember. I will always remember her as the grand old storyteller, who entertained us so many times with her tall tales.
We went back some months later to her funeral, at the Lickcreek schoolhouse where the Walker kids had attended school, and said our last good-byes. My Uncle Ike, Dads younger brother, took us there and back in his pickup truck.
Well, I had my family, and my Trailer Dog and we were off on a grand new adventure. All the trauma of up rooting our whole way of life, with all it’s hitches and setbacks was finally behind us. I only remember a very few things about the trip, but the one that sticks in my mind the best is a restroom stop, and a gas fill-up. We were in Muskogee Oklahoma, and Johnny had pulled in to get fuel. We all, of course, needed to go to the bathroom, and after I had gone I took Trailer out on a rope and let him relieve himself. When I came back to the truck, Johnny and Dad were already in the cab, so I asked if Trailer and I could ride up front. They said we could, so we climbed in and Johnny got the big truck back on the road. We were about fifteen minutes away from the gas station when Dad said "Hoyt did you see your mother and the girls get back in the truck?" I said "No I was out letting Old Trailer pee; I just figured they were already in. Dad said, "Well, just to make sure I think we had better check. It wouldn’t be to much fun if we got there without our biscuit maker!" Johnny pulled the truck off the road, and I jumped out and ran back to the rear of the truck. There was no one there! I ran back to the cab and said Daddy there not in there! "All right", Johnny said, "We’ll just turn around and go back, it’s a good thing we decided to check on them." Dad said "Man, we better quit talking so much, and get our mind on what we’re supposed to be doing! Well, they were right where we left them, and boy, were they glad to see us coming back!
We settled on a farm that was about four or five miles from a town called Fairfax. An Indian man named George Boone owned the farm. There were several buildings on the place, but they were all occupied except a little one-room house of about two hundred sq. feet. (the equivalent of a room of ten feet by twenty feet.) It was a good thing we didn’t have many worldly possessions left, or we definitely would not have fit into that little house.
Then there was the cliffs, down in the woodlands where there were all kinds of critters that were just waiting for a close encounter with Trailer, my twenty- two rifle and me. The cliffs were a region of dense woodlands that ran for miles. They were the middle separation between the upper prairie lands and the lower bottomlands that were used for farming. It appeared that some giant earth quake had dropped the level of the land from the height of the prairie about a thousand feet and formed the bottoms. Then over time the walls had eroded to a very downhill drop that was quite walkable, and all covered in forest. I had been doing lots of regular fishing with a willow pole and line, ( there wasn’t any bamboo on the pond) and I had caught lots of bluegill and the occasional small bass, but I hadn’t caught very many catfish! So knowing that catfish bite the best at night, and being the enterprising fisherman I was, I began setting out hooks tied to flotation devices, and leaving them out over night.
Old Trailer could see the can moving, and every time it moved his ears would really perk up. That was a firm clue that he was interested. It didn’t take a genius to see that this was the time to get him involved in my program. I quickly picked up a couple of small rocks and threw them at the can. That really spooked the fish, and it took off, pulling the can under for about ten seconds; all Trailer needed at that point was the word from me! "Get him Trailer" I yelled, and away he went off into a brand new adventure. He jumped about six or eight feet out into the lake and went after that can with a vengeance. Well, that catfish knew there was something chasing him because he took off for other parts. He swam out towards the center of the pond, and at times he would pull the can completely under, only to appear again in another spot. But Trailer would not be denied; he kept after that can until finally the catfish let him get a little too close.
I loved him the first time I ever laid eyes on him, as a squirming fat puppy, and He had fulfilled all my fondest wishes, He was my soulmate! Trailer and I provided the family with all the fish it needed, and had a total blast doing it.
The night can fishing was very productive, and Trailer and I both loved doing it, but we also liked fishing in the daytime. One time in particular that we were down at the pond, I was fishing off the top of a large boulder that sat right in the edge of the water. Old Trailer was hunting snakes over on the other side of the lake. He would kill every snake he found. He had killed literally hundreds, and he had never been bitten. He was so fast they really didn’t have a chance. If Trailer saw it, you could count it as a dead snake unless it did a major disappearing trick. He would purposely get within its strike range for an instant, then as the snake would strike, Trailer would already be back out of range waiting for it, and as the snake laid itself out full length for a millisecond, Trailer would grab it right in the middle. He would begin slinging the snake so rapidly, back and forth, that lots of times the head would actually snap off.
Down the other side of the pond he streaked, and fifty yards across the face of the dam, then in an instant he came blistering up to where I was fishing. The big snake was just about to make landfall. I jumped down off the big boulder and began pointing and running towards the snake. The moccasin didn’t have a prayer, he was still in swim mode when Trailer nailed him, and he didn’t even get the usual first strike, because Trailer didn’t give him a chance to coil up. He was about four feet long and as big around as a man’s forearm. Scratch one more deadly snake in Trailer land! It was such an honor to be able to watch a snake master at work!
"Now that the snake hunt is over, I thought, I’m going to get back to my fishing." I climbed back up onto the big boulder and retrieved my willow-fishing pole, at the same time thinking how much I missed those good bamboo poles we used to have in Arkansas. Well, at least I thought I’ve got a really fine fishing rig. I had a brand new hook and line setup, sporting a beautiful green and yellow bobber. I had bought it a few days earlier at the hardware store in Fairfax. As far as I can remember it was the first new setup I had ever owned.
I got my can of redworms out and laid three of the biggest ones out on the rock, thinking I’ll put on a really big bait and who knows, I just might get lucky and hook him again! As I swung the hook back to re-bait it, a little piece of something fell onto the rock beside me. Well, I picked it up to examine it, and it was a little piece of cork material, and on closer examination I noticed it had a tiny bit of green and yellow paint on it. That’s odd I thought, that’s the same color as my bobber, Oh my God, half of my beautiful new bobber is missing! How could that have happened? Then I looked down at my hook, and it still had all the bait on it. What is going on here I thought, this has never happened to me before! Finally I got my Okie logic working, and decided that whatever It was; it was more interested in my bobber than it was my bait. I did not have a clue as to what I was dealing with, but it was something I had never before encountered! Well I went ahead and re-baited my hook with the three big worms I had laid out, and dropped my rig back into the water.
By that time, man, the adrenaline was really pumping, and I was ready for battle! He was about a twenty five or thirty pound alligator snapping turtle, I could tell by his head, and for about thirty seconds I was holding my own, but then the inevitable happened, no bobber is indestructible, he ripped off the rest of it, and was gone! Well at least I’ll have a good story to tell about the one that got away, I thought, as I stood there on top of that big rock shaking with excitement! All in all, it had been a great day, Trailer and I had caught four nice catfish on our cans, Trailer killed a huge water moccasin, I had caught six nice bluegill, and played games with a twenty or thirty pound snapping turtle, not a bad day at all. That old turtle added an air of mystery and suspense to my fishing from then own. I always thought that we would tangle again, but even though we didn’t, just knowing he was there, always made me feel good. He had sort of let me know, in no uncertain terms, that this pond was his, and I fished there at my own risk! Sometimes I wondered if Old Trailer was in danger, when he was retrieving catfish cans, but nothing ever happened, thank goodness.
"Hey, I said to my self that thing really looks alive!" Boy, I thought, I sure hope Mama doesn’t come along first, or I am certain to get my butt tanned with a peach tree limb." If I am really lucky though, the girls will be out in front of Mama, and I will just scare the tar out of them before mama gets there! "Yeah, I thought that’s a great plan".
Well, I already knew the fish weren’t biting, but I had to have a reason to hang around, so I went around to my favorite fishing rock and chucked in a line. Also it was the best vantage point from which to watch my little plan take shape. I really hated my replacement bobber; I had to resort to wine bottle cork that I found in the farm trash. Oh well I thought, at least there wont be any thing trying to eat it. I was really starting to get bored, because absolutely nothing was happening, when suddenly I heard voices. A ha, I thought now the fun begins. Just as I had hoped Nelly and Dorothy were quite a ways out in front, laughing, and chatting, with Mama bringing up the rear. Perfect I thought just perfect! Nelly was the first one to get to the step-down, and I had my eyes just about crossed, trying to watch, while appearing to be fishing.
But soon it was forgiven and forgotten.
Down in the edge of the bottomland, nestled back in the cliffs lived a very interesting old man named Mr.Cook. Mr. Cook lived in a cardboard shack just big enough for a small bed, a stove, and very little else. He was probably about eighty years old at the time. He would tell Dad and me interesting stories about the area from years gone by. He used to work for the Indians, after they had become oil rich. He said they had no concept of money, and they would give their kids bags of coins as play things. He said everywhere the kids played was a literal goldmine, as soon as they lost all they had, the parents would give them more. He told Dad and I, that he made more money following the kids around than he did working. He also hunted and trapped for them. He said they liked skunks to eat better than any other kind of meat, and they gave him six dollars each, which was a whole bunch of money back then! There was a gorgeous mansion that we could see from up on the high prairie where we lived, that he said the government or the oil company, had built for the old Indian that he worked for. It was down in the deep forest of the cliff region. It was like something you would expect to see in the English countryside. A very big mansion surrounded by acres and acres of lawns, it was an awesome place. Mister Cook said that the old chief wouldn’t live in it, he lived in a teepee for years along side the house. I suppose at some time or other he gave up the tee pee, or maybe he took the teepee inside the mansion, who knows? At any rate those Indians weren’t hurting for cash, they owned thousands of acres around their mansion.
One day in the wintertime Dad said that we ought to look in on Mister Cook and see how he was getting along. There was a big snow on the ground and Daddy thought the old man might need help of some kind. Dad knocked on the cardboard shack and said Hey Mister. Cook are you O.K.? Mister Cook hollered weakly back at Dad, and told him to come on in. He said he had been sick, and he was still really weak, but he felt better today. Dad asked if he needed anything, or any help. He said that he would appreciate it if we would see how his old game cock was doing, He thought he might even be dead, or gone, because he hadn’t crowed for two mornings.
He said that something had caught him, because he had heard the old rooster squawking when it happened. Mister cook had about a dozen game hens, and a beautiful Claret cock that ran loose in the forest. Well, Dad and I hadn’t walked but a little ways through the snowy woods, until we heard the chickens. They were all scratching under a big dead log hunting for insects. And there right in the center of the group was the old gamecock. His head was somewhat bloody but other than that he seemed to be in good shape. He was definitely on duty and in control. Dad and I separated and walked around until we found where he had been caught. Three separate times the old rooster had been caught by a large bobcat, but had managed to get away each time. Dad said, "That is incredible." We went back and told Mister Cook that his chickens plus his rooster were doing just fine. Dad said that’s one tough old rooster you’ve got, he got caught three times, and he’s still alive and well. The old man thanked us and we promised to keep checking in on him now and then. It was only a short time from then that Daddy found him dead in his bed. I felt that a piece of history had been lost, because I loved hearing his stories so much. The weather was really terrible that winter, and we were pretty much trapped in the house, we used a coal heating stove to warm the old house as best we could. There was no way we could even get out to go to school; (goodie) I hated that big city school anyhow! The old house was all one room, about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. The heater was down in one end of the building, and Mom, Nelly, Dorothy and myself were camping down close to it to stay warm. Mother and the girls were doing girl stuff to keep from going out of their minds, Old Trailer was asleep over in the corner, and Dad Had gone over to visit one of the neighbors, so I was left pretty much to my own devices to keep my sanity. Well, I was running a little experiment on a new batch of bazooka bubble gum that I had bought a few days back. I was curious to know just what one full package was capable of doing. Bazooka came in a five-chew stick with little indentations where each chew could be broken off separately. I had started off with one single chew then graduated up slowly until I had a full stick in my mouth.
I would get right up close to the stove and blow a bubble and when it was getting really big and thin I would back away from the heated part of the house into the cold part and I was really getting some exceptionally large bubbles. This process went on until I had two full sticks, or ten individual chews in my mouth. Now I had huffed, and puffed, and chewed and blown, until I was totally satisfied that I knew exactly what Bazooka Bubble Gum’s capabilities and limitations were. Besides, my jawbones were aching like crazy. So I figured I had gotten all the mileage out of that experiment I could. Well, knowing how freezing cold it was outside I wanted to get rid of my experiment, but let the least amount of cold in that I possibly could. So I got ready with my left hand on the doorknob, and the golf ball sized Bazooka experiment in my right.
Then with a perfectly timed throw I launched it out through the twelve inch opening and slammed the door. "There, I thought,"I didn’t loose a drop of heat!" What happened next really livened things up, and I forgot all about being bored. Because the door jerked open, and there stood my Dad, madder than a wet hen, holding his hand over his ear! Now, Daddy didn’t mince any words about what was on his mind, he blurted out, "Who the hell threw that god damned rock?" And of course, he looked directly at me, since I was the only one near the door. Boy, that caught me totally off guard, and I said, "Uh ah I just threw my gum out!" "Gum hell, Dad replied, that was a god damned rock!" And about that time, he started closing distance between us! "Oh crap, I thought I’ve had it!" For awhile there I thought that bubble gum chewing might prove to be hazardous to my health, but just in the nick of time Mom supported my story. Wow, was I glad she was there. The weather was probably about twenty below zero, and the warm gumball had crystallized instantly when it hit the frigid air, and had whacked Dad right on his half-frozen ear. I knew how bad it had to hurt; so when things settled down a little I told him I was really sorry for hurting him, and I was only trying not to let the heat out of the house. He chuckled a little bit, and said he would never have thought, that a chew of gum could pack such a wallop.
Well, I kind of skipped over, the fact that it was ten chews of gum, and as big as a golf ball; I felt it best not to tempt fate any more that day. Mother got me out of a lot of trouble with Dad when I was growing up, but she was really the one to be afraid of, because she was actually the disciplinarian of the family. Dad sort of had a built in respect that non of us kid ever dared challenge, consequently, he never had to whip any of us that I can ever remember. But mother, was a cat of a different color, she would lay the peach tree tea to your hiney whenever you needed it, and I got my share! But, all in all, she was the sweetest, kindest mother in all the world.
That winter turned out to be the worst that we had ever seen, but also the most beautiful. At the end of the storm there was four to six inches of ice on the ground, and it was as clear as crystal glass. Every tree branch was coated with about a quarter of an inch of ice; small bushes all looked like beautiful Christmas trees, it was so beautiful, but so very dangerous! You could look through the ice on the ground, and see the dry grass six inches down.
The sun came out so bright and beautiful, which even made the scene more gorgeous. Everyone wanted to get out of the house and look around because we had been cooped up in the house for so many days. We found that by cutting up a burlap bag and tying pieces of it on our shoes, we could actually walk around a little, so we could look things over. Our little Guernsey cow had been locked up in the barn for a long time, and Dad thought since it was so pretty and sunny out, he would let her outside for a little sun. She seemed to really be enjoying it; so, Dad left the barn door open where she could go in and out. He figured that she would stay right around the barn where she could walk easily without getting out onto the ice. Well that worked for just long enough to convince Dad that she would be all right, but then she got just a little too far out and down she went, sprawled out on the ice, and slowly sliding downhill. The more she struggled trying to get up the more she slid. We stood there gasping at what was happening. She was sliding half up and half down slowly away from the barn toward the edge of the hill which dropped off very steep about two hundred yards down to the creek. "Oh my gosh, I thought She will never survive if she goes over the hill."
There were lots of big rocks and trees that she would hit, and with the speed she would be going by the time she reached them, she would certainly be badly injured or killed outright. She had slid about twenty yards down the hill, then finally she fell totally off her feet, and came to a stop in a small depression in the ice, only about three or four yards short of disaster. It seemed that when she fell down and got off her hooves it had helped slow her slide. Dad grabbed his chopping ax and flew into action, I know he realized this would be the last chance to save our little cow. Part walking and part sliding on the seat of our pants Dad and I quickly made our way down to where the cow laid on the ice. Dad began to chop the ice with the ax around her where she could stand up, and I held onto the cow to make sure she wouldn’t slide any farther. I had brought her rope from the barn, and as soon as I had it around her neck I began to urge her to stand up.
But anyway Alvin decided he wanted to try to get to town and buy some things that he wanted. About ten o’clock he started walking out, and it was about four or five o’clock that he came limping back. We had all thought that he had gotten down off the high prairie where we lived, to the bottom land and gone on to town, but when he finally got back to the house, he told a much different story! He had gotten to the edge of the cliffs, and thinking he could slide down the middle of the road, (which was of course covered with six inches of ice) he began sliding on the seat of his pants down the hill. The road was fairly narrow and there were several sharp turns that had to be negotiated. It became apparent very quickly that he was not in control of the situation, because he was gaining too much speed with absolutely no way of turning. Consequently, when he arrived at the first curve in the road, ( pardon my French ) he went ass over teakettle right out through the woods at about twenty miles an hour. Alvin knew that he was in a very bad spot. He had taken some really hard licks from bushes and trees before his downhill plunge had halted.
The school in Fairfax was a very large building with multiple floors and different teachers for each classroom. I had never been alone with a room full of strange people in my life, much less being constantly ridiculed and laughed at for the way I talked. Talk about culture shock, it almost destroyed me! The teachers could have cared less if you learned anything or not; they knew I needed help but just didn’t care! It was almost more than a hick child could bear. Consequently, I learned very little while I was there. I hated every minute of it, and found every reason possible not to go. It had to drive my Mother out of her mind trying to keep me in school. It didn’t seem to bother Nelly and Dorothy nearly as much. Being the baby of the family probably had a lot to do with it, but it was as close to a living hell as I’ve ever been in. Teachers who would allow a thing like to happen to a child should be very strongly reprimanded, and given their walking papers!
But there was one part of the school year where I was an outstanding performer, summer vacation! Mother never had to worry about getting me going in the mornings, I was always up with the chickens and out there where the action was. As soon as the ice had melted off the pond Old Trailer and I were after those catfish again.
Also the critters that lived on the cliffs, had to keep a very low profile because, Hoyt the hunter with his twenty-two rifle, and Trailer dog the magnificent, were hot on their trail! One afternoon Dad told me that he had seen a nice covey of quails down in the cliffs near the cotton fields, and wanted to know if I’d like to take a little trip over there and see if we could bag a mess for supper. Well, that was a foolish question; I was always ready to go hunting! Dad got out his old double barreled shotgun and, of course, I got my twenty-two rifle and away we went, with Old Trailer and Old Red out front. Old Red was a dog about three years old that belonged to Harold Hayden step-son of my oldest sister Lavada. She and her husband Rufus were living on the Boone place at that time also. Old Red’s daddy was Old Trailer and his mother was a Redbone hound female. They had become a powerful hunting team that was hard to believe. Well Dad and I finally got down near the area where he had seen the quails, so he asked me to stay back and keep the dogs with me. He thought he knew right where the birds would be; and with the double barreled shotgun he would have a much better chance of getting a mess of quail for supper, if the dogs didn’t flush them before he was ready. So I waited for Daddy to get out of sight, then I took the dogs and went directly into the woods at that point. Old Trailer and Red went off ahead of me a little ways then suddenly they struck a hot trail and started running hard through the woods! I knew instantly that this was a different type of animal than I was used to, because the way they barked was very different from their squirrel and rabbit sounds. A person who hunts with dogs a lot will ultimately be able to identify the type of animal the dogs are after by the sound of their bark and the noises they make. I had never heard these sounds before, needless to say, I was feeling a bit apprehensive as I ran through the woods chasing the two dogs. Pretty soon, they treed the critter down under the hill and I was closing on their position fast! As I rounded a turn around some big boulders there were the two dogs running around a hackberry tree about thirty feet high. And Holy Cow, there was a huge Bob Cat sitting in the top of the tree!
I really had to mentally get hold of my self, and go back to basics. I reasoned that if the cat did bail out the dogs wouldn’t let him get to me. So I took a deep breath and fired! I knew instantly I had made a good shot; I had wounded him badly! As quickly as my shaking hands would allow I inserted another short-range shell and fired again; this time the cat came crashing out of the tree! But what happened next was totally unbelievable, the dogs and I had to do a super double take! The dogs were right on top of the Bobcat when it hit the ground; yet, suddenly there was, no Bobcat to be found. The dogs were going totally crazy, running in circles, and practically snapping at the air. They knew right where that Bobcat should be; yet, there just wasn’t any cat there, period! "Wow, I thought, "What kind of a critter have I shot?" I reloaded and cocked the hammer of my rifle, I didn’t understand what had just happened, so I backed up against a big rock and watched as the dogs hunted for the cat. Suddenly I remembered the Cheshire Cat in the story of Alice in Wonder Land that could become invisible. "That’s highly unlikely I thought, There’s got to be a logical answer to this puzzle, and I’m going to hang around here until I find it." It had been about five minutes since I had shot the Bobcat out of the tree, but still there was no cat. Well, by that time the dogs had started to settle down a little, and I felt like it would probably be safe to have a look around. I remembered expressly where the cat had landed, and somehow I knew he must still be there, but I couldn’t figure how or where. I found a tree branch about ten feet long, and I started probing in the leaves at the exact spot where I knew the cat had hit. "Boy, I wish Dad was here I thought." I suddenly felt something hard like a rock hidden beneath the deep layer of leaves, and as I kept probing I could tell that it was the edge of a large flat rock. I was getting a little braver by then; so, I broke the stick in half and began to get more intense with my investigation. Soon I had exposed the edge of the big flat rock and began methodically probing underneath it. I had the stick back about three or four feet when suddenly I touched something soft, instantly, I knew it was our missing Bobcat. I quickly grabbed Old Trailer and pointed him under the rock; get him Trailer I said, and immediately he leaped back under the rock and dragged out the big cat. He was as dead as a doornail, but Old Trailer and Red went over him thoroughly just to make sure. When he hit the ground his weight had compressed the leaves into the entrance of the cavity. The leaves folded around him and he slid back under the rock. Surface leaves again covered and obscured the opening. If I hadn’t seen it and experienced it personally, it would have been hard to convince me it could really have happened.
Well, about then even though I was only eleven years old, I felt like I was ten feet tall. It took me about twenty minutes to drag that big cat up to the top of the ridge. It was so big I couldn’t possibly carry it. I knew that Dad would be coming back soon; so, I left the Bobcat out of sight and sat down to wait for him. When he got back he said, "What was that the dogs had treed?" And I nonchalantly said, "A Bobcat." "A Bobcat," he repeated, "Well what happened to it he asked? "I heard you shoot twice." "Oh I killed it," I said, trying to show just as little emotion as I could! "Well, where is it," he asked? Then like the seasoned hunter I was, I pointed the barrel of my rifle towards the Big cat lying under a nearby tree. Daddy walked over to where the Bobcat was laying and began to look it over. "That’s as big a female Bobcat as I have ever seen he said! You’ve probably killed the very cat that attacked Mister Cook’s old rooster. I didn’t do any good, quail hunting, but you’ve sure bagged yourself a trophy there. You go on home with your cat he said; we’ll skin him when I get back. I want to try another quail spot I know. You can sell his hide when we go to Ponca City to the fur market." Boy, that was right down my alley! I had figured that Dad would help me carry it home, but I guess He thought if I was big enough to kill it, I was big enough to get it home. About an hour later totally pooped out I finally dragged the big cat up to the house. I was so proud and wanting to show off my trophy, that I dragged the Bobcat right into the house. Mama and the girls were down at the other end of the house, and for some reason they wouldn’t come and look. So, I decided if they wouldn’t come to look at my cat, I would just take my cat down there, and make them look, after all it isn’t every day an eleven year old kid kills a huge Bobcat. Well I knew that the cat was a little smelly but I didn’t know just how smelly, because as I was dragging it across the floor the cat was leaving a thin but very odoriferous trail of loose cat poop behind him.
Holy Cow, by the time I got close enough for them to see, the odor suddenly caught up with me. Talk about a terrible reception, the house was reeking with the most horrible odor I had ever smelled. All of a sudden I found myself retreating under a barrage of verbal abuse! "How could you bring that stinking thing into the house the girls asked? Don’t you have any brains at all? Now we’ve got to scrub down the whole house!" As usual Mama came to my defense, bless her heart, she told them to back off, that I didn’t do it on purpose. And besides I had asked them to come and look, and they wouldn’t, so it was just as much their fault as it was mine. Well, that sort of made me feel better, but it sure wasn’t the type of reception I had envisioned! Well finally Dad got back and we skinned that stinky old bobcat. By the time we finished, I’d had just about all the Bobcat I could handle for one day. I sold the old cat’s hide in Ponca City for fifty cents, about a month later. That bought me a brand new box of extra long rifle twenty- two shells, I was ready to hunt again!
There were tons of cottontail rabbits and squirrels on the cliffs, and they were a constantly present at our dinner table, along with lots of fish from the lake. I should have been born a mountain man the way I like to hunt and fish. I remember one time in particular that Old Trailer and I had been hunting hard on the cliffs all day and hadn’t had any luck, until in the evening. Then Old Trailer ran a cottontail into a crevice between two big boulders. The rabbit was about three feet back, and I could see him as plain as anything, but I just couldn’t reach him. So I decided to use a method that I had used many times to get rabbits out of holes; it was pretty crude but usually effective.
I cut a green limb about four feet long from a nearby tree. The limb was about an inch in diameter at the base, and at the small end it had two small Y shaped limbs. I cut the two limbs back until the Y was about one half inch on each side. "There, I said a perfect twisting stick for retrieving rabbits and other critters out of holes." The Idea was to twist the Y on the end of the stick up in the fur of the unlucky animal, and if luck was with you, you could drag it close enough to grab it. Well, I must have worked on that poor rabbit for over an hour and every bit of fur except around his head and legs had been twisted off, not just the hair the skin! It seemed like I had a jinx on me or something, because every time I would almost have him where I could reach him; more hair would tear off. I was so sorry for that poor rabbit. Just then I heard Mother calling me, and I knew I couldn’t leave that poor critter in such a mess! I knew that mother was a long way off, but I also knew I had to come back and somehow finish the job. So I took off running toward mother’s voice and I found her about a quarter of a mile away. I quickly explained to her the predicament I had left the poor rabbit in; I asked if she would come back with me for just a little longer. She agreed to come with me, so, I retrieved my twisting stick and with pure blind luck I got him on the very first try. I quickly dispatched the poor critter and we headed home.
Well Old Trailer and Old Red had gotten to be the biggest darn showoffs that you could ever imagine, above the house to the west was a large hill covered in dry prairie grass in the summertime, and we could see it fairly well from our back porch. In the evening when the dogs decided to hunt jackrabbits we would all gather outside and watch them do their spectacular trick.
They had a peculiar habit of running on three legs and it appeared they were just trying to intimidate their adversary. Most dogs, even Old Red couldn’t even threaten them enough to make them put their fourth leg down if they didn’t want to; they were awesome rabbits. But what they didn’t know, was that they were dealing with awesome dogs! Their motto was if you couldn’t beat em - cheat em; so, they put their talents together. On the prairie from the hill I mentioned and for countless miles there wasn’t anything but dry grass about eight or ten inches high. There wasn’t anything that could live out there but jackrabbits and a small band of roving cows we would see every now and then. The two dogs would head up the hill to their staging ground where all the action would begin and end. We could see all the action because it took place less than a quarter of a mile right out in front of us.
Old Boots First Hunt
Dad once told me an interesting story about a young hound dog, that he had gotten in some kind of a trade with a neighbor. I don’t remember the nature of the trade, but I do remember the young dog was taken in the trade as boot. The neighbor didn’t quite have enough money to swing the deal, so he threw the pup in as added value, or boot . At first Dad wasn’t too proud of the old pup, and he was starting to wonder if the neighbor had just gotten rid of a lunkhead at his expense. But in a few days after he had time to evaluate him better, he really began to like him. He named him Old Boot. Well Old Boot was showing real promise of becoming a fine hunting dog, and Dad was really eager to continue his training. So one evening he said to Mama, "The wild persimmons are just at the right stage for possums to feed on; so I think I’ll take the new hound dog down into the woods and check out a few persimmon trees. And maybe, we can catch a couple of big fat ones for you to bake."
Then out the back door he went calling the dog as he headed for the woods.
Well, the young dog was really eager to hunt, and soon they were deep into the forest. Daddy was carrying his twenty-two rifle and a large four-celled flashlight, in which he had just installed four brand new batteries. He really didn’t think that this would be much of a hunt, since he already knew where the best persimmon trees were, he figured that about all there would be to it would be to shine the possum’s eyes, and pop them out of the tree with his twenty-two rifle. But he thought it would be a good lesson for the young dog to at least see what they were hunting for.
It was a cold frosty night, and there was a light ground fog in the low-lying areas of the trail. They had traveled about half a mile towards the persimmon patch, and the old pup was out there doing his thing. Dad could tell that he was hunting in earnest, because now and then he would let out a low bellow, like hound dogs are supposed to do when they’re hunting They were getting pretty close to the first persimmon trees now and Dad was looking really closely at the terrain, trying to figure out where he was in relation to the persimmon trees, that he wanted to check out.
He was shining his light all around the whole area, when suddenly his light went across something about fifty yards down on the trail that stopped him cold. He flashed his light back to it again, and there in the middle of the trail, was what most people would say was a ghost. ( It met all the requirements to be a ghost.) It was about two feet tall, one foot wide, very white, suspended above the ground, and moving quickly in his direction. " Now wait a minute, Dad said to himself, I’ve hunted these woods all my life and I’ve never seen any spooks before, why now?" The object was wobbling from side to side like a kite in a stiff breeze, as well as moving forward! Dad was totally perplexed, he really didn’t know what to think! His rational mind was saying, just stand your ground, there’s a logical explanation for this! And his illogical mind, coupled with hundreds of spook tales he had heard all his life, was saying, let's get the heck out of here before that thing gets any closer! Between him and the spook, there was a low area in the trail about twenty yards away that was covered with a couple of feet of fog .
Daddy had never seen an albino possum with pink eyes before, and he surely had never seen a possum of any kind this large. It was about two or three times bigger than the average possum. "Boot," he said, "You’ve gone and out done your self, on your very first real hunt. And since this is all the possum we really need, why don’t we just take your trophy home, and let the rest of these critters out here get some sleep." So he picked up the huge possum and headed up the trail towards the house, with Old Boot happily leading the way. "Dang, Boot" Daddy said "No wonder you were wobbling back and forth, I don’t see how you carried this critter at all, he’s heavy!" On arriving at the house, Dad told Mama the story of how Old Boot had literally scared the dickens out of him carrying a big white possum. Ghost Buster
Grandma Walker was a fine teller of tall tales: about ghost, goblins, leprechauns and the like. She could scare the pants off of you without half trying. I remember moving away from cracks in the floor, and knotholes in the wall, while she would be telling one of her spook stories. Since spooks are kinda unpredictable I thought, they might just come through a crack and get me! What made her stories have even more impact, was that Grandma was totally blind, her eyeballs were as white as snow. It seemed that in her staring gaze she was looking right into your soul. Well, as most older folks know, there were very few distractions in life back then that could take you away from the every day drudgery of just trying to survive.
I remember seeing the Skinner house as a child. It was a very large rundown old house, of probably six or eight rooms, it appeared very intimidating to me at the time. It sat in the center of a large meadow, which in the summertime was totally dry grass about a foot high. It was a hot summer day, and Daddy had been working in a cotton field fairly close to the Skinner house. When lunchtime came and there was no shade available nearby, he decided to walk over to the Skinner house, and have his lunch under the shade of the old porch. He had heard all kinds of strange stories, about the noises that people had heard coming from the old house, but he figured it was just another figment of someone’s imagination, or the large old oak tree in the back yard rubbing against the house. On arriving, he found himself a nice shady spot, where he could lean back against the wall and opened up his lunch.
It was pretty spooky at first, but as his eyes got better adjusted he could see the rest of the picture, not just the white parts.
There were five young skunks, all about half-grown, and they were having the time of their life, playing with an old cardboard box. At first all he could see was the white parts of their big bushy tails as they moved around the old attic. But as his vision cleared he could see the whole animal. When he yelled and scared the dickens out of them, they all ran into a hole in the wall squirting a lot more stinkum into the room as they left. (Dad the ghost buster had done it again!)
Farm Family
The Walker family was like most other farm families in our area. Life was an everyday challenge, and one had to try to be a step ahead of the game. We usually had plenty to eat but very little cash. And since the center of out family life was built around the kitchen table and the wholesome foods that mother prepared, the family larder was the first thing to be taken care of. Dad and Mom always kept two or three nice milk cows, usually Jerseys or Guernsey, because of the high butterfat content of their milk. Mother used the milk in many ways, in the everyday life of feeding her family. She would allow the milk to set out overnight and cool, and then she would skim off most of the rich cream. Most of it would end up in the butter churn, because the family used a lot of butter and buttermilk.
We occasionally had beef to eat, but I can’t remember our family actually raising cattle for meat. But we always raised three or four hogs per year. The meat could be kept fresh for awhile when the weather was really cold. The old houses back then were like refrigerators in themselves, and all one needed to do was keep the meat in a special box in the back room, away from the stove or fireplace, and it could be used up usually without a problem. Salt pork, which was made from the side meat of the hog, was salted down very heavy, and would last indefinitely; I never really liked it because it was just too salty, but Dad really loved it.
Wild meats were actually my favorites: such as bobwhite quail, cottontail rabbit, gray squirrel, and fox squirrel. These wild meats were exceptionally tasty, especially when fried nice and brown, and served with a big helping of Mother’s wonderful gravy
and hot biscuits. We also ate: possum, raccoon, swamp rabbit, and possibly others that I can’t remember. Swamp rabbit is a cousin of the cottontail, and probably a relative of the northern snowshoe. It was a large rabbit weighing about five or six pounds. Since it was so large it was usually used to make rabbit stew, or rabbit and dumplings. They were very tasty eating. Possum, or opossum is a very good tasting meat also, which was usually baked with yams or sweet potatoes. 
Then someone else might say, "I can easily see why they can’t be caught on hook and line, that broad bill would hit the line first, and move the bait farther away from their mouth." Nets and seines were the only way paddlefish were ever taken. Now there is a season on paddlefish. Since they don’t bite on conventional bait, it is now legal to snag hook them with large treble hooks, when they come up into the concrete spillways of large dams to spawn. Years ago when the season first began, there was no specialized fishing gear available for this type of fishing, and lots of people used a pool que stick, with eyes taped on it, for a fishing pole. They would tape a large flat wind reel to the pole with very strong tape, and fill the reel with super strong line. 
Well that was when things really got exciting. They got about fifteen or twenty men on the big seine, and they were pulling and pushing it right up the middle of the spillway. On each end of the seine there were three guys who were actually pulling most of the weight, and all the others were in back, sort of supporting, and pushing it through the water. In my mind’s eye I was imagining that I could see all those fish swimming up the spillway, trying desperately to get away from that big seine. But what no one, including me, expected was that one of those fish wasn’t running away, he was tired of the game! And at that instant, he hit that big seine like a runaway freight train going in the wrong direction! It knocked three or four of the guys totally down, and they were really struggling to keep their heads above water! Well at that point, everyone just stopped, and waited to see just what was going to happen. Finally everyone got situated again, and once more they started up the spillway.
Sorghum molasses was a barter item. Daddy would help a neighbor who raised sugar cane makes his crop into molasses, and then take his pay in molasses. But the wild honey was gotten free by going out into the forest and collecting it from angry bees, who really didn’t want to give it up. That was one of the fun things that I really liked to be in on, when Dad and Geo., or Dad and some of the neighbor men, would get together to rob a bee tree to get honey for their families. Usually bee trees would be spotted during everyday life, such as, hunting, fishing, or just walking to work through the woods. But in extreme cases when honey was needed, and no bee tree had been located, we had a special little trick that we would use, to find out where the sneaky little bees had stashed their delicious booty. This would usually be done on a warm Sunday mid-afternoon. The guys would talk about where there would most likely be a bee tree. Someone usually would have noticed, that there were lots of bees getting water at a certain spring or waterhole, so that would be the area that we would start in. 
This was used over the top of an old hat to keep the sack from contacting the face and neck, where the bees could sting through and get you. Then it was tucked into the shirt or coat that was worn, and a scarf or towel was wrapped over the top of that around the neck. At this point, someone would have been getting the smoking device ready. It was a bellows for blowing smoke into the hole after the tree was felled. It had a piece of burlap, or some kind of cloth, inside it, that when lighted would give off lots of smoke without flaming. Now the guys would finish cutting the tree down. As soon as it hit the ground the bellows man, would rush up to the opening to the honey hole, and begin pumping smoke into the tree. The smoke convinces the bees that the woods are on fire, and that their honey tree will probably be lost, so they begin to eat as much of the honey as they can; therefore they will have the strength to form another hive somewhere safe. This in turn makes the bees very lethargic and much easier to handle. I suppose they’re a lot like me, when I get my tummy full, the only thing that I can think of is a good long nap. After the smoke has been applied sufficiently, then a wad of rags is stuffed into the entrance hole to keep the groggy bees inside, where they will gobble up more honey and become more docile, before the hive is actually opened. Fishing Adventures
Fishing with pole and line has been around for literally thousands of years, but modern rods, reels, and artificial lures that today’s modern fishermen use, have only been around for a very short span of that time. Dad told me a story of an incident that happened to him, probably around nineteen thirty-five that introduced him for the first time to modern fishing tackle. Fishing - to Dad meant a bamboo pole with a line, hook, sinker, and bobber. Bait - was worms, grasshoppers, grubs, red wasp larvae, minnows, or other natural things, that would attract panfish, such as bream, crappie, rockbass or the occasional largemouth bass, or catfish. But this was the day he was about to be introduced to a whole new concept in fishing. Here’s the story
Dad had been fishing for most of the day down at the Killian Springs on Sugar Creek. 
About that time Kelly piped up; "Well, I seen old Matt Fisher catch one that weighed seven pounds, on the same kind of lure as that, you dumb savages!" After they finally got through harassing him, Kelly got out one of the rod and reels, to show Dad. The pole was made out of split bamboo, and was about seven feet long. The reel was attached about fourteen inches up from the butt of the pole, and filled with heavy linen line. Kelly attached one of the big wooden lures to the line, and started walking down towards the creek bank. The whole crew, including Dad, was right on his heels. 
They were used as weight; I assume they were made mostly out of lead, because they were very heavy and pliable. They would be cut into strips from one half inch, to one inch width, and would be wrapped around the line as weight. It was really easy to use; you could add or subtract weight easily, getting just the right balance to your bobber. We wanted the bobber to set up nice and straight, so we could tell when our bait was suspended right above the bottom, where the fish could see it easily. Then there would be several bottle corks of various sizes, which were used as floats, or bobbers. When you were ready to use one, it would be sliced with a sharp knife from one side to as close to the center as possible, being careful not to bust it in half.
I would go around stomping as many of them as I could, just to get even for all the times that hey had taken unfair advantage of me. Like the time that my sister Audrey, and I were picking black berries having a real good time, and they appeared out of nowhere and attacked me. They stung me nine times, and I never even knew where they came from. I was running around screaming my brains out, with a whole flock of wasps chasing me, and Audrey chasing the wasps and me. After what seemed an eternity, she finally caught me and rolled me on the ground, picking off the wasps with her fingers as she went. They were in my clothes and hair, and were literally sticking to my skin stinging me. She quickly got me out of the area and undressed me down to my skivies, before she got them all off! So you see, I had a vendetta against wasps, and I got even whenever I could.
The average weight though is from one half to one pound each. It is so much fun to drop your rig into a hole in a big drift where there’s going to be action very soon.
Then see your bottle cork bobber, wiggle a couple of times, and go straight down out of sight. You never knew what you were going to catch. There were dozens of types of fish that could be caught, and now we were finally doing it! I can remember feelings from my child hood, that winning the lottery couldn’t possibly match. I suppose it was because life was new and exciting and the cares of the world, yet unknown.
The very first fishing trip that I remember, Dad took me down to the Bentley bottoms, where Sugar Creek made a large bend around the bottomlands. There was a very large drift right next to the bank, where it was easy to fish. 
Soon I was pulling the little paper cap off my first wasp larva, and sliding it onto my hook. The thrill of knowing I was just about to do this thing I had been waiting so long to do, was almost too much! Then just as I was about to lower my rig into the water, George said, "Look out, I’ve got a good one!" And boy he did he was fighting something that really didn’t want to give up. I knew that everybody had to keep their rigs out of the water so they wouldn’t get tangled up with him! About then we could see a huge brem about two feet under the water, fighting as hard as he could to get back to the bottom. But finally he had to give it up, and George lifted him into the boat. He was the biggest bluegill I had ever seen, he would easily weigh two pounds. "My God I thought, I’ve got to get my bait in the water, I want to catch one of those for myself!" Then about the same time I dropped my bait overboard Alvin said, "Look out boys I’ve got one coming your way!" Moving To Oklahoma
In nineteen and forty-six, when I was nine years old, the family started planning to leave Arkansas. There was a terrible drought that year with total crop failure: the cotton, the corn, and the garden, everything that we counted on for survival either burned up or failed to mature. There was always a chance that the mink trapping season could have bailed us out, but I believe Dad and Mom were just so heartsick they didn’t have the strength for another try. There was no feed for the animals, and no garden for us to can up and prepare for the winter, but the loss of the cotton crop was the most devastating of all. They felt they had only one option, sell everything they owned, and try to pull together enough money to try life in another place that might not be so difficult. Dad had a team of fine mules, (Kate and Blue) that he really hated to part with, but there was no choice. We also had other livestock such as: two really nice mares, (that were good saddle horses) three nice jersey milk cows, three or four hogs, and a whole flock of chickens, all as wild as a march hair, they had run loose all their lives.
It appeared so forlorn and desolate, like a relic of some forgotten past. A deep stirring of searing emotion was suddenly ripping it’s way through my young mind. and it was saying loud and clear, "This is home what are we doing?" And for the first time in my life I felt a terrible nostalgic loneliness, It was as if the Luther Place as an entity was crying out to me saying, "Please I don’t want you to leave! Haven’t I been good to you? Remember your fishing holes down along my creeks! And your hunting places, remember where Old Trailer got the root in his throat! And the chickens, can’t you see they’re happy here, please don’t take them away! Right then, Mother and Dad walked up behind me and broke the spell. I had never felt homesickness before, it was so awful! Daddy was saying to Mom "How are we ever going to catch a hundred and twenty five wild chickens? I don’t know of any way to do it." For an instant there I felt exhilaration and I thought; "maybe- maybe we could, just leave them, maybe they would be all right!" 
With one quick little grab she snagged us a chicken to start our experiment. Mother began stroking the chicken like she was petting it, with Old Trailer looking on. Then she moved it closer and let Trailer smell of it, well; he immediately acted like he was going to bite it! Mom swatted him a little, and told him "No." Then she started petting the chicken again, and again, held it close to Trailer, soon he would no longer attempt to bite it. At this point, we felt that we had done all we could, it was now or never. We walked out where there were no other chickens close by, and Mother let it go. I let the chicken get about twenty feet away, then I released Trailer, and said catch it Trailer. He stood there for a second, then looked back at me as if to say "Are you serious." Then I pointed again and said, "Get it Trailer." In a flash he caught that chicken, and was holding it down with his mouth and paws. Dad went over and took the chicken from Trailer and checked it over thoroughly. There wasn’t even the slightest bruise. 
Dad had made an arrangement with one of his friends, Johnny Graham, to move us to Fairfax Oklahoma in one very large load. Johnny owned a large six by six army truck, and I believe he charged us three hundred dollars for the job. I’m not sure, but I think it was about four hundred miles, one way, to our destination. I remember we crossed the border at Fort Smith Arkansas. The Arkansas River separates Arkansas and Oklahoma. I remember being a bit apprehensive about crossing that long bridge in such a big truck. A few months earlier Daddy had brought me out on the bridge as kind of a sight seeing tour, and I wasn’t really comfortable with the whole thing. He was telling me things that he could remember about Fort Smith in its wilder days. Like when the notorious Bell Star was still doing business there, he had seen her big sign many times. She had a very large bell painted on her building with a big star under it. I kept telling Dad that the bridge was moving, and I wanted to go back.
We barely had enough room to eat and sleep. We must have lived in those cramped conditions for close to a year. Then a larger house became available which was still one room, but it was about one thousand square feet, and that was plenty of room for us to have a little space to ourselves. Well, by that time we were starting to feel like we were actually a part of something again. We weren’t just a migrant family squashed into barely enough space to survive. We were living in the best house on the property. Dad and Mom were getting back into share cropping again; they had made a crop arrangement with Mr. Boone, and they were looking forward to planting a cotton crop the next spring down in the bottom lands. It was a tough way to survive, but at least it was something they understood and felt comfortable with.
Well, Old Trailer and I hadn’t been wasting any time. When I wasn’t working with the family, or going to school we were either down on the farm pond fishing, or down in the woodlands hunting . About a hundred yards from the house there was a really nice fishing pond, and it was just full of bullhead catfish, (about a pound each) largemouth bass, and bluegill sunfish, just begging to be caught!
There were metal beer cans being made back then, that were made in the shape of a bottle, with a short neck that took a regular bottle cap. Well, by corking up the open neck, they were exactly perfect for my purpose. I would put a small hook on a line about three feet long, and bait it with worms, grasshoppers, small frogs, crawdad tails, or what ever was handy; then tie the line firmly around the neck and chuck it out in the middle of the pond. Wow, my catfishing program really got hot; I was catching three or four a night. I was supplying the family with lots of fresh fish, and getting lots of praise also. I had a win, win situation going, and I was really enjoying it. The only problem I was having was retrieving the cans when they got fish on them. Finally after much contemplation I decided I had the answer; I just had to convince Old Trailer that he should help me with my problem. One early morning Trailer and I went down to the lake, and there was one of our cans that had a catfish on it right up close to the bank.
At first Trailer was trying to bite the can and hold onto it, but finally he made a lucky grab and caught hold of the line Then he knew he had hit pay dirt, he could feel the fish fighting back! Trailer was one pooped pup as he came swimming up to the bank dragging that catfish behind him. He had chased that darned catfish all over the lake. At that moment I felt such great love and admiration for my new fishing partner, he was just what the doctor ordered! He immediately began shaking the water out of his coat like a wet dog always does, then he came back and took a quick look and a sniff or two at our first partnership catfish. As wet and cold as he was I knelt down and began to hug and pet him, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t have a tear or two in my eyes! I thought of what Dad had said when Trailer had caught the first chicken back in Arkansas without harming it. He said, "This dog is more intelligent than a lot of people I know!" And without a doubt he was right; if the situation was explained to him in terms that he could understand he could fill just about any space. But the biggest space that he would ever fill in his life, was the vacancy in a little boy’s heart.
On one occasion he slung the snake’s tongue out, and it flew about fifteen feet and hit my brother in- law Alvin on the back of the hand. Well, from my lofty perch on top of the big boulder, I could tell from his body language that Old Trailer was closing in on a snake in the tulles on the other side of the lake. All of a sudden He started barking, whining, and making all kind of excited noises. As I began to look closer I spotted a water moccasin that had barely escaped into the water and was swimming across towards me. Trailer was going crazy; he wanted that snake bad!
The snake was just about half way across the pond, and headed straight to where I was fishing. So I began calling Trailer really intensely, I figured if I could get him around to my side quick enough he could still put the bite on that big critter! At first he didn’t respond, but then he must have figured out what I had in mind. Suddenly he left that tulle patch like a bullet.
It came wound up on a little green wooden frame, it was a hook, line, sinker, and bobber combination, I was really proud of it. Well, I fished for about another hour and had caught four or five bluegills, but the action had noticeably tapered off. The sun was really starting to get warm and I had gotten so comfortable I was beginning to doze off now and then. That went on for about thirty minutes or so, then suddenly there was a huge splash right by my robber and I woke up with something trying to take my fishing pole away from me. It was pulling so hard I was having trouble staying on top of the rock! "Wow, I thought this has got to be a huge catfish." The water was heaving and churning down at the base of the rock, and I was already having visions of how I was going to tell the story! Well, I was a little premature on that, because about then me and my would-be trophy at the other end of the green linen line, were suddenly detached. I almost fell off the other side of rock when he let go. "Rats, I said to myself, I just can’t believe I lost him; that was the biggest fish I’ve ever caught, why did he have to get away?" "Well, anyhow I thought I might as well bait up and try it again."
Well, the weight of three redworms was almost too much for my poor mutilated bobber, it could barely stay a float. It had been so bright and beautiful before, floating around so proud, now it looked beat up and ugly with half of it chomped off. As I watched it there dejectedly floating around, suddenly it seemed like there was a large black round shape about half the size of a washtub rising up from the bottom right under it! "Oh my God I thought, what is that! As sure as God made little green apples, I said to myself, that thing is alive! and whatever it is it’s what chewed up my beautiful bobber! All of a sudden the short hair on the back of my neck was starting to stand up. Should I get what’s left of my bobber out of there, or should I leave it and see what’s going to happen! I knew there was only one answer; me and whatever that was, was about to go to battle again! As I watched, that big black form came right up under my bobber and stopped, suddenly a huge turtle’s head half again as big as a man’s fist, reached up and took hold of what was left of my poor old bobber.
The following day Trailer and I came down to the lake early, and ran all our catfish cans and rebaited the ones that needed it. Trailer made his usual snake hunting rounds, and I tried fishing at my favorite spots, but the denizens of the pond didn’t seem to be cooperating, we just couldn’t get anything going. Old Trailer was over checking the dead water moccasin out that he had killed the day before, when suddenly I had a brainstorm. Today was Sunday, and Mother, Nelly, and Dorothy had walked into Fairfax to go to church. When they come back I reasoned, they will certainly be coming along the trail over the top of the dam at the end of the lake. Now if I take the dead snake and coil it up, then prop up its head just right, It will look alive, and it will scare the dickens out of them! I took the snake down to the spillway of the dam to where there was about a three-foot concrete step-down that they would have to negotiate to get across to the other side. Then I proceeded with my devious little plan; I coiled the dead snake up right at the bottom of the concrete step-down, then I took a forked stick and propped up it’s head.
Well, Nelly had already stepped off before she spotted the snake, and for an instant there she looked like she was walking in the air and screaming at the same time. I was just about peeing my pants with glee. It’s payback time, I thought, for all the times the girls lorded it over me! Well, eventually everything that goes up must come down. Nelly either stepped on the snake, or very nearly did, and as soon as Dorothy and Mama saw what had happened, suddenly all eyes were fixed on me! And there I was half way up the lake innocently fishing, minding my own business. Boy, if looks could kill I would have been barbecued in an instant! The girls were both trying to get Mama to beat me half to death, and I know that Mama had to make a half hearted attempt at justice for them, but I think deep down inside she realized that little boys have to be a little bit mischievous now and then, because all she did was shame me a little for treating my sisters mean like that! Well that made it even better, because the girls were steaming mad and I got clean away with my little prank. I felt cocky for at least a month after that, but I kept my eyes peeled for awhile just in case there might be some payback coming my way! 
She was really shaky, but as soon as she stepped on the ice where Dad had chopped, she began to settle down. Well, things were pretty much back in control now; Dad had about fifty feet of the ice chopped, and the little cow and I were waiting patiently for him to finish. Then Dad said, "O.K. Hoyt, bring her up." I walked the little Guernsey back to the safety of the barn, and she seemed very glad to be there. She had narrowly escaped a violent death down among the trees and rocks of the creek area. We gave her some extra hay and a little molasses milking feed to try to make her feel safe and cared for. It was really starting to get cold by that time, and all the family gathered around the heating stove to warm up and talk about the day. Things had ended well, and we had gotten to see the sun for awhile, and marvel at one of natures most beautiful but deadly weather wonders, all was well with the Walker family. That night was clear as a bell and bone busting cold, and we awoke to another beautiful sunny day. My sister Audrey and brother in-law Alvin were also trapped in the ice with us. I can’t remember if they were only visiting or if they were actually living there for awhile too.
He was a hundred yards down the hill bruised and battered all over, and no one knew he was in trouble! He knew his life hung in the balance of fate, If he could not get back to the house, he would certainly not survive the night. For awhile there, he really didn’t know the extent of his injuries. He ended up in the center of a big shrub like bush, but at least he was thankful to be stopped. He said that he had hit a tree with his left leg right after entering the woods and it was hurting some, but he decided he was just battered and bruised but nothing broken. He spent all the rest of the day getting back home, and man, was he glad to be there!
Oklahoma had a lot of things I really enjoyed, like good hunting and fishing, but it also had something I dearly hated, a city school. The only kind of school I had ever known was all in one room, where a kindly old gentleman named Mister Roberts had taught all eight grades.
Talk about a little boy getting nervous; it was more like paranoia! The big cat was sitting in plain sight, feeling very vulnerable, and his body language was saying "I’m going to bail out of this tree and kick the tar out of those dogs and anything or anyone else that gets in my way!" Well, I had always been taught never to load a gun until I was ready to use it; now I was wondering, at this critical moment, if that was a good policy or not! I was so nervous I was really having trouble functioning. My pocket was half full of loose shells, shorts, longs, and extra longs. I reached in, two different times, and all I came up with was a handful of shorts, not a long or long rifle in sight! Well, I thought one more try; guess what, another hand full of shorts. I decided under the circumstances, with the situation likely to change at any moment I had to shoot that Bobcat now! I finally got one of the short-range bullets into the chamber and closed the breech. As I pointed the gun at the cat, the barrel looked like a wet noodle, I was shaking so badly I couldn’t aim well enough to shoot!.
They had been resting in the shade all afternoon escaping from the summer heat, and in the cool of the evening they would be all full of energy and ready to hunt. Old Red was a long bodied dog, which was a throw back to his Redbone hound mother, but had the guts and grit of Old Trailer his dad. Red weighed about sixty pounds and could run fairly fast for long distances, while Old Trailer weighed about thirty five or forty pounds; he was fast for a short distance but couldn’t hang in with Red on long distances runs. Put them together though and they made the darndest combination I have ever seen. What one lacked the other made up, they were a real team. The Jackrabbits, on the other hand, were the largest and fastest that I have ever seen anywhere. They were twice as large as the largest jacks I have ever seen to date. When you would see one hopping around up on the hill you would swear it had to be a baby burro or something. The ears were about eight inches long, and the rabbit would have weighed ten or twelve pounds; they were huge!On to Next Page of Memoirs by Hoyt Walker(click here)
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