Memoirs of Hoyt Walker...My First Remembrances

Minnows...Crawdads... Water Moccasins

Hoyt Gets Mad or THE BUTCHER KNIFE INCIDENT

Stuck In The Barn & the Purple Plums

Billy Walker Master Cattle Driver

My First Lesson In Cotton Picking

The Pup

Memories of Cousin Steve Walker

Minnows...Crawdads...Water Moccasins

My name is Hoyt Walker. I was born in the state of Arkansas on June the 6th in 1937. The world I knew then was a very different place than it is now. That was a time of family, horses, cows, mules, wagons and dirt roads. My first remembrances began when we lived on a farm called the Benny Coolie place.

I was about four years old, the youngest of the family, and dad and mom were in their thirties. It seemed like our family was a lot larger than it really was, because we had a lot of cousins and they really liked to stay at uncle Dave and aunt Deller`s house, because they knew that they would be fed and taken care of. Times were very hard, even for strong families like ours, but it seemed like mother could always find enough food for one more mouth!

My sister La Vada was the oldest of the Walker kids, followed by my brother George, sister Audrey, sister Dorothy, sister Nelly and me. Our parents were sharecroppers, which meant someone who planted, raised and harvested a crop, (usually cotton ) on someone else's land, for a share of the meager profit. Share cropping was a sorry way to have to live, but thousands of families survived in that manner, never knowing that they were dirt poor. But that's how life was, the family was everything. Like all little boys I wasn't aware that there were any problems, so I went on with the adventures of life, usually assisted by my cousins Billy and Don Walker.

Billy was about six years old at that time, and Don was about four like me. Billy was my hero and whatever he did, Don and I were totally compelled to do also. We could be found most of the time at our favorite hangout down on the creek, catching minnows and crawdads, and making little ponds to put them in. There was one of those times that we were catching critters that almost ended in disaster. The day before, we had put some minnows in a little pool, and I was really proud that I got to the pool first.

There was a covering of leaves over the pool, so I put my arms around the whole thing and dragged the contents out wiggling and squirming, only to find that I had two water moccasins in my arms. I was really lucky that the snakes were just as scared as I was. When I saw what I had I fell backwards screaming and kicking and the snakes beat a hasty retreat into the under brush!! That experience was really tough on my critter catching, I really kept my eye peeled for snakes from then on. Needless to say my critters were gone, the snakes had eaten them!

My memory from that time isn't the greatest because at four years old I was just beginning to have memorable experiences, and things that really stuck in my mind are what I remember best. One of the things that I really remember well was an incident of paper doll cutting. Nellie and Dorothy were cutting pictures out of a catalog and calling them paper dolls. Being an ornery little boy, and also feeling kinda left out, I was giving the girls quite a problem with their doll-cutting program. About that time one of the paper dolls fell out of the girls hands and went fluttering to the floor, instantly I saw a chance to get me a doll. But before I go any farther I would like to describe the scene. It was early morning and there was a nice hot fire in the old potbellied stove. The girls were sitting in kitchen chairs right up close to the stove, because the old house hadn't had time to warm up yet.

We were still in our sleeping clothes, which for me meant a one-piece coverall type pajama. Now if you've ever seen that type of pajamas, you already know that the little back potty door is practically impossible to keep shut. Well I really wanted that doll bad, so in my haste to grab me a paper doll, I stooped over and true to form the door to my pj's were down. ( Wow ) My poor little fanny touched that red-hot stove!!

It`s a good thing I didn`t know any cuss words then or I would really have gotten my self into trouble. Instead I went screaming around the room at the speed of light with the girls trying to capture me. I still remember the searing pain and that quarter sized burn on my rear to this day.

Hoyt Losses His Cool or The BUTCHER Knife Incident

One morning at the breakfast table, I was still lingering over a biscuit with butter and sorghum molasses on it, and I had no concept of what was about to transpire. I don’t remember if I had gotten up late or what, but everyone else had finished and left, and I was sitting at the table all alone. I would assume that Mom and Dad had already gone to the field to work and had left Nelly and Dorothy to baby sit me and clean up the breakfast dishes. Well, It seemed that I was in some way, holding up their process, because Dorothy told me that if I didn’t get out of the kitchen she was going to wash my face with the dishrag. I actually wasn’t in the way, but since mother wasn’t there to protect her baby boy, the girls especially Dorothy wanted to show me that she was in charge, and I had to mind her, today. Well, since I had never had to be in a hurry to eat before, I kept right on eating at my own pace. What happened next caught me totally off guard.

Dorothy made good on her threat, and thoroughly washed my little molasses covered face with a warm dishrag. I can still remember the smell of that dishrag as it rubbed dishwater up my nose and into my mouth! I was devastated; that was the first time that I had ever been wrongfully attacked, and Mother, my protector, wasn’t there to adjust the situation. At first I puckered up my fat little face to cry, but since my support system was gone; I realized it would be total waste of good tears, I was on my own for the very first time! I had a feeling of being absolutely helpless against over powering odds. What I needed was an equalizer I surmised, some way to adjust the situation; then I saw it, the kitchen butcher knife! Well, as my hand extended to pick up the knife, I was looking Dorothy right in the eye; at that instant I knew I was on the right track, because a look of sheer panic replaced the smug look of authority she had been wearing!

I knew that I wasn’t going to touch her with that butcher knife, but she didn’t, so I figured I was going to scare the heck out her for washing my face, plus get some respect at the same time. Around and around the table we went with Dorothy screaming her brains out, and me feeling better every lap! On about the fifth lap I figured I had pushed my luck just as far as I could, so just to show how tough I really was I laid the butcher knife on the table by my plate and sat down and finished my biscuit. Needless to say, I didn’t have any more complaints, except Dorothy threatening to tell Mama on me for trying to kill her! Of course, in my heart, I never meant to harm her in any way, she was my big sister, and I loved her dearly. But I felt that even the rights of little people needed to be respected, and in my own way, I had demanded it. Why I didn’t get my butt dusted over that episode I’ll never know. It was probably because Dorothy knew she was out of line, by washing my face with the dishrag to begin with, and that mother would have given her a tuning up instead of me. Anyhow, as a result of that little incident I got a lot more respect around the house from then on!

Stuck In The Barn & The Purple Plums

Billy Walker...Master Cattle Driver

One morning, Billy, Don, and I were looking for something to do, so Billy said lets go out and look at the cows. Well, that didn’t suit me at all because Mama and Daddy had told us to stay strictly away from the cattle herd, especially the big Hereford bull; he was very dangerous and could kill us with no problem they said! The house was right out in the middle of the pasture, and there were no fences to keep the cattle away from the house, so the folks had taught us to have total respect for them at all times. Well, Billy evidently had been around cattle before, because he showed absolutely no fear and kept right on right walking out towards the herd. Don and I stayed back by the house, because we knew that if the cattle didn’t do him in, Mom and Dad would certainly beat the tar out of him if they saw him messing around the cows. Billy kept right on approaching the herd, and I was thinking oh please, please come back Bill. Not only didn’t he come back, but also he went right up to the herd and started hollering and waving his arms.

Oh My God, my heart fell right into my shoes, now they’re going to kill him for certain I thought! But to mine and Don’ surprise, not only did they not kill him; they were actually starting to move away from him, and there for an instant I started to have hope that he might escape with his life. But escape wasn’t what he wanted, because he began running around to the other side and turning them back towards the house. Good grief I thought, what is he doing? Get out of there while you can Bill! But in a few seconds his motives became apparent. Here came a herd of about thirty cows and one very unpredictable Hereford bull, being driven by a five-year-old child with a stick in his hand. Right past the house he brought them, just as nonchalant as could be. At that moment Billy took on a larger than life image to me. I had never witnessed someone do something so bold and outrageous for no other reason than to say, I knew I could do it, so I did!

My First Lesson in Cotton Picking

My first lesson at the cotton patch, was "how not to pick cotton "! I was somewhat reluctantly being taught how my parents made their living. To keep me occupied, they would let me ride on their cottonsack, or tell me what a hard worker I was, as I picked little piles of cotton, and placed them in the middle of the row. But as the temperature soared and the day dragged on, I was getting more than a just little bit agitated. I was hot and thirsty, and sweat and flies were getting into my eyes, and my little fingers were sore from putting them into the old stickery cotton boles!

To try and get me back into the cotton picking mood again, daddy said, " Hoyt if you want that tricycle I promised you when I go to Fort Smith, you had better get up that cotton row, and start knocking out some cotton!" Well daddy really didn’t think very hard on his choice of words, and he really didn’t know just how tired of the whole thing I really was. As I reluctantly made my way up through the tall cotton stalks, I was mulling the whole thing over. There has to be a faster way to get cotton out of the cotton burs than the way we are doing it, and daddy did say to "knock it out."

So I found myself just the right stick, and a spot where the cotton was just the right height, and I proceeded to change the rules on cotton harvesting. As I thrashed and beat the cotton out onto the ground, on an area about the size of a house, I theorized, that this, is a much faster way to remove the cotton from the boles, and you don’t get your fingers all sore and scratched up!

I was quite proud of my progressive thinking. But just about then, dad and mom got up to where they could see where I had done my job, and “Wow” did things heat up fast. Needless to say, they were “totally flabbergasted." Dad was just about to get around to thrashing my but with a cotton stalk, when mother broke into the melee, and said, " Now you need to remember just what you told him to do, because he did, just what you told him, he knocked out some cotton."

Well that, stopped the anger, and the talk of me getting thrashed, and they both started laughing and talking about what a mess they had to clean up, and all was forgiven. I still didn’t understand why they didn’t like my job, but by the time I had to help them clean up the mess, I realized that getting the cotton out of the boles was only half of the problem, getting it into the sack was the other one!

About that time daddy said the words that I had been waiting to hear all day. “ Lets go home,” and suddenly I didn’t feel tired at all, and I jubilantly led the way, home running along out in front. “ Needless to say I never did learn to like to pick cotton”.

Hoyts Memoirs…The Pup

The Killian, or Killuns place as my folks called it, was the second place that we lived when I was little. I was about five years old at the time. That was also the time that I found my very first love. The family had always had a dog that Dad and my brother George used for hunting, his name was Old Blue. Old Blue was a large dog, and even though I liked him, he never paid much attention to me, a five-year-old kid. He was a man’s dog, and that’s just how it was and I accepted it. But what I didn’t know, was that Old Blue had sired a litter of puppies just down the lane, and one of them was destined to change my life. Uncle John, my Dad’s brother, had a female dog that had just given birth; it was pretty obvious who the father was, because one of them was the spitting image of Old Blue.

On a wintry morning when the puppies were about two weeks old, Daddy was just returning from a visit with Uncle John and Aunt Lillie, and I could tell that he was hiding something under his coat. It was wiggling, and making little grunting noises, like a puppy with a very full tummy. Then Dad opened his coat, and there he was, a carbon copy of Old Blue, only he was little like me! When Daddy handed me that wiggly black and white puppy, my heart fell on the floor; it was love at first sight. Daddy knew that Old Blue was getting up in age, and would some day need to be replaced with a younger dog. But at that moment Daddy’s thoughts for the future meant nothing to me; this was my pup, and I wasn’t going to let anyone forget it! I named him Old Trailer.

That dog became the encompassing factor of my life, he was my pal, my confidant, my getting into trouble specialist. Trailer was a hunter from the beginning, and where he went, that’s where I went! It was soon apparent that Old Trailer had a marvelous nose! Even as a small pup, he would find things that would totally delight his little master. Like a baby cottontail rabbit, hiding in the tall grass, or a nest of newborn mice out in the hay barn. To make a long story short, this puppy became the focus of my life. Old Trailer was the last thought I had before going to sleep, and the first thought I had on awaking. As soon as my eyes were open, we were up and at it again.

It had to drive Mother crazy. I can almost hear her now, asking my sisters if they had seen Hoyt and the pup. One might say, "I saw them down by the pigpen about an hour ago." Then someone else would say, "well they’re not there now; I saw them heading down towards the creek, they’re probably down there catching frogs or something." It is obvious that Mother had to have a secret weapon to stay in control of the situation, and looking back on the experience now, I realize what it was. She would send the pup off without feeding him, and when she got ready to check up on us, in a couple of hours, all she had to do was call the pup. His hearing was a probably about a hundred times better than mine, plus he was hungry, and that gave Mother all the edge that she needed.

It didn’t matter what kind of an exciting program we were in, or how much fun we were having. When Old Trailer heard Mama’s call he was gone! He was up the hill like a rifle shot, leaving me standing there wondering what could possibly be so important to end a good frog hunt. Unfortunately, puppies grow up much faster than little boys, and by the time Old Trailer was six months old he was already an accomplished hunter, going with Dad and George hunting and mink trapping, places I was too young to go, darnit! But when Dad and George weren’t hunting, Trailer and I would take up where we left off., and our frog hunting forays became forays out into the forest, where the real fun was!

I bet he thought he really had to lower himself, to hunt with a child, him being a professional hunter an all. But he was my very best friend and nothing could ever change that!

I remember one of those excursions really well. Trailer and I were down on the creek in hot persuit of a young possum, which had barely escaped into a hole in the ground. Trailer was so excited, that he was barking, and whining, and digging with with all his might; he was already about two feet back in the hole. He just knew that possum was as good as ours, and I was of the same opinion.

But then something went drastically wrong! Old Trailor started hollering in extreme pain, and came backing out of the hole! He was pawing at his mouth, and yelling at the top of his lungs, and there was lots of blood coming from somewhere. At first I thought that the possum had bitten him through the nose, and that was causing the blood. But knowing Trailer like I did, I knew, that being bitten, would only have made him more determined, and caused him to dig harder!

Something was bad wrong with my dog! So I did the only thing I knew, although he weighed half as much as I did, I grabbed him up in my arms and headed for home! I had carried him at least a quarter of a mile up a steep hill when I saw Dad running to meet us. We must have given Daddy quite a scare! We were both covered in blood; Trailer was still yelling every other breath, and I was bawling my heart out because I thought my dog was dying. I was so tired, I barely had enough strength left to tell Dad what had happened, then I collapsed on the ground.

Dad had evidently seen this type of thing happen before, or just being a grownup he knew what was wrong, because he immediately reached back into Old Trailer’s mouth and jerked out the problem. In Trailer’s zeal to get the possum he had bitten through a tree root of about half an inch thicknes, and it had wedged into the back part of his throat. In his panic, trying to dislodge the object with his feet, his toenails had lacerated his tongue, and that was where most of the blood was comming from. Upon having the root removed, Trailer was back to his old self, and he began running circles around Dad and me, as if to say, "oh thank you thank you, I thought I was a goner!"

As I sat there on the ground trying to get my strength back, I remember thinking what a lucky little boy I was, not only to have the worlds greatest hunting dog, but to also have the world’s wisest father, one that knows just what to do when a little boy and his dog gets into big trouble. Trailer was just like nothing had ever happened, and he kept trying to entice me to get up and go hunting again. He would run over to the edge of the hill in the direction where we had come up, as if to say, "come on, that possum is still down there in that hole, lets go get him!" But for once I had to decline the offer, because all that I wanted to do now was rest. But tomorrow, I thought, is another day, and we’ll give him heck again!

There were a real variety of animals in our area. There were two types of squirrels: a red or fox squirrel, and a grey squirrel, and both were very good eating. There were lots of cottontail rabbits, and a much larger variety, called a swamp rabbit. I think I liked rabbit just a little better than squirrel, but both were delicious, when fried good and brown. There were also: possum, coons, fox, bobcat, skunk, mink and many other animals that I would hear Dad and George talk about, and I would get so excited I would just about jump out of my skin! At that time I was only able to relive Dad and George’s excitement as we would sit around the fireplace in the evening, and they relived the highlights of the day’s hunt.

But what really made those re-run hunts special to me was that I could be petting my hero dog, and listening at the same time! And a lot of the excitement, was about "Old Trailer," and how he had the best nose of any dog they had ever seen, and how he didn’t need to use his nose to trail an animal down! He would just put his nose in the air, and take the shortest route to where the animal was at that point in time. They said that was called "wind hunting," and that Old Trailer was the only dog they had ever seen that could do it! At the end of one of those sessions I would feel like I was nine feet tall, and six feet wide. I was hooked so bad it was unreal! I could hardly wait for the next hunt!

In the wintertime Dad and my brotherGeorge, who at that time was about seventeen or eighteen years old, would trap for mink, and for the most part that would be our wintertime survival money. The mink skins (or pelts) were worth a considerable amount of money. A small female skin was worth about twelve dollars, and a large male could be worth as much as thirty-five dollars. To my family that was a small fortune, because at that time, which was about nineteen and forty-three, if you could find work which you usually couldn’t, it paid about one dollar a day, not an hour, a day! So when one of the large male mink was sold, it was like a month’s wages.

The reason that the pelts were worth so much was, that they were used to make fur coats for wealthy ladies whom lived in a totally different world than we did. I would watch as Dad and George would skin the wild game that they would bring home. Mink were by far the most difficult animals to catch, and by trapping for them one would in, essence, catch every type of game in the area. For example, I remember one such catch that George made; he had two mink, a rabbit, two ducks and a raccoon.

Well the rabbit ducks, and yes, even the raccoon, became delicious food, under mother’s skillful woodsy hands, and the mink provided probably fifty dollars in cash money; not a bad days work! And that was only one trapper, I don’t recall what Dad caught. Of course there were times that weren’t as productive, but it sure beat what most people in our area had in the wintertime. There was a process that one had to do, to make the mink skins ready to sell.

They had to be carefully skinned so they had no holes or near holes, such as where the knife would almost cut through the skin. And all fat had to be removed. Then it had to be pulled over a thin board that would stretch it to its maximum, and allowed to dry thoroughly. Any imperfection would lessen the value. There was also a market for several other kind of pelts, such as: Possum, coon, skunk, and fox. The best I remember those, skins sold from about two to five dollars each; according to how large they were, how well they had been taken care of, and how prime the condition of the pelt.

The colder the weather gets the more dense the hair of an animal becomes, therefore the more prime the condition of the pelt. So a trapper could figure to make his best money in the coldest part of the winter. But it was also the toughest time to trap. We knew people who made a fair amount of money trapping that could never catch a mink. It took a very clever trapper to consecutively bring home mink.

I remember an amusing situation, which really wasn’t very funny at the time. My brother in law Alvin Rankins had trapped all season trying to catch a mink, and we were all hoping that on the last day of the season he would score. But when he came home he said, "Well Dave, I guess I’m just not a mink trapper." Then Dad said, " Hey Alvin don’t get too discouraged; this is a hard game to learn, maybe next year, me and George can give you a little more help!” Then Alvin started laughing, and he said, "No I don’t think so!"

Today I suffered the final insult!" Then he told a story of how a cow’s tracks had led right up to what he considered his best set of the year, but then she had stopped, and walked around his trap! So he figured that a person who had trapped all year, and still couldn’t fool a cow, would probably never make a mink trapper, no matter how many lessons he took! Well the cow incident was probably just a coincidence, but it does show how discouraging mink trapping can be to the average possum and raccoon trapper, who wants to up-grade his program.

The mink curing process, the musty smell of the pelts, and the stories that I would hear about it, were enough to drive me crazy, but the worst part was knowing that my dog Trailer, was getting to experience it, and I wasn’t there too, dang it! "Well, I thought, I’ll just do my own trapping."( Ha!) "I’ll show them!" Since Mother and Dad were always having mouse problems, and there were plenty of mousetraps, I decided I would just set out my own trap line! Well, I proved one thing for certain; I had the desire, and the drive, and if given the opportunity, I could be a whiz of a trapper.

Because in about a month’s time, I had caught every mouse in the house! Not only did I trap those little critters with great zeal, but I also pelted them out, carefully removing what little bit of fat they might have, then whittled out little boards with my pocketknife to stretch them on. I had quite a nice collection of mouse furs, if one can think of stinky dried mouse hides as nice! Unfortunate as it was, there was no market, and I had totally trapped out the existing stock, so I eventually had to face reality. I had to find a new job!

After thinking the situation over, I decided I would create a new type of trapping, and knowing that there was a covey of quails which roosted down under the barn, I decided I would catch quails, and we could eat them. That should get me some real praise at the dinner table, when mother would tell everyone that Hoyt had provided the quails for supper. I devised a very rotten little trick, and it worked really well. I would take a grain of dry corn, and gouge out the softer heart area with my pocketknife, and then I would slide it firmly over the little catch on the trigger of the mousetrap.

I would get up very early each morning, and set three or four of my specially baited mousetraps out on the snow, where I thought the quails would see them. Well, I think I caught about every kind of bird that was in the whole area, but those quails were just to darn smart for me. Right about then, I was wishing Steve would come for a visit and give me a little trapping tune-up. I was just about to give up anyway, since I had been trapping unsuccessfully for a whole week, but the last bird I caught really clinched it!

It was a large male red bird, or cardinal, and when I lifted that wire spring off of his neck, he proceeded to teach me a lesson! He latched onto my poor little finger, with his big strong yellow beak, and I was wishing that I was somewhere else, being a nicer little boy than I had been for the last week! I thought I was going to need help, to get him off of me, boy he was mad! Finally, after I had just about peed in my little pants, he let go and flew off! Now I can tell you folks, after that episode, I didn’t want any more bird trapping!

Well, it seemed that Old Trailer had finally decided that mink were what Dad really wanted to catch most, so he started using his special skill of winding to help him catch them. When it all began Dad would come home from his day of trapping, totally perplexed, saying that the dog was really acting weird. He would tell how Trailer would run through the forest with his head up in the air, looking up into the trees, like he was following something that was running on the timber. But since there were no leaves on the trees at all in the winter, it was obvious to Dad that he could have seen anything that might have been up there, and he was pretty sure there wasn’t anything!

What was even more perplexing, was that after he had done his running bit, then he would tree in a hole in the creek bank that dad said a crawdad would have had trouble getting into. For awhile there my whole world went crazy, because it was looking like my hero dog, my best friend had gone off the deep end. And what really made this thing more frightening was that there was a sickness called the running blues that was sometimes a death sentence to a dog if it became severe enough.

Some dogs would totally go out of their heads and start trying to bite everyone, even their own families. Sometimes they would improve for awhile but then go crazy again .In essence, once a dog starts showing signs that he has the running blues he can never be trusted again. This knowledge threatened to destroy my whole world. I just couldn’t think of my friend, my soulmate, having to be destroyed.

But thankfully, just when the darkness seemed to be closing in there came a ray of light. That morning when Dad was starting off to check his traps I overheard him tell mother that he was going to take a shovel along today, and he was going to dig in any hole that Old Trailer treed in to make absolutely sure, he felt Old Trailer deserved that much! Then he would make up his mind about what to do. I think that was the longest day of my young life, waiting to see if my friend and pal, my superdog, would survive the day.

That day seemed like an eternity, because I knew for a fact that if Old Trailer failed the test that Dad would be coming home without him. He was on trial for his very life and he didn’t even know it! At that moment life seemed to me to be so very cruel, and I just didn’t know how to handle it. At first when I saw Dad and George returning from their day’s trapping my stomach sank, and my heart fell into my shoes, my dog was nowhere in sight.

I suddenly wanted to run off somewhere and fall apart; the agony was overwhelming. But just when everything seemed lost, a flash of black and white, come streaking out of the woods, dodging and darting, it was my dog chasing a cottontail rabbit! At that moment, wild horses couldn’t have held me. Suddenly I was running like the wind to meet them, all my pent up emotions flowing out! When I caught up to my dog, he probably thought I was the one who was nuts, because I was laughing crying and hugging him at the same time. That night when supper was over and we were all gathered around the fireplace, the events of the day started to unfold. Dad had left George where his tramline started, and went on about another mile down the river, towards where his traps were. Then suddenly Trailer gave out a little bark, and started running, looking up into the trees. Dad started running as fast as he could, trying to keep up, and desperately trying to see anything that might possibly be running on the timber, but he could see nothing!

After a spirited chase of about two hundred yards, Trailer treed in a small hole in the creek bank about the size of a silver dollar. Dad said he was heart sick, he just knew that nothing of any value could be in a hole that small. But since Old Trailer’s life was at stake, he began to dig, and when he got tired Trailer would take over. In about ten minutes or so they were about three feet back into the mudbank.

Then dad got out his flashlight and shined it back into the darkness of the hole. And to his total surprise he saw a pair of beady red eyes, looking back at him. It was a female mink worth ten to twelve dollars. Dad dispatched it quickly with his 22 rifle, and then finished digging it out. Daddy said for the life of him, he couldn’t understand how that large of a mink got into that small of a hole.

But he knew he had a lot of humble pie to eat! So he just sat down, right there on the creek bank, and began petting Old Trailer, and at the same time telling him what a fine specimen of canine he was. He also told him that he was really sorry for ever doubting him, and that he had his permission to act just as goofy as he wanted to from now on! Being a superdog had almost cost him his life.

During the years to come, anyone that just happened to be at the right place, at the right time, could have told a very strange story, of a weird man, running through the winter woods, chasing a crazy dog, which was apparently looking up in the trees at nothing. But in reality, the weird man, and the crazy dog, were the only ones who knew there was a pot of gold, hidden not, at the end of the rainbow, but in a nearby mud bank, just waiting to be withdrawn.

In the days to come, Old Trailer provided his family with lots of those little twelve dollar mink, and never once did he ask for any more than the scraps from his family’s table. (What a dog!) When they made him they broke the mold! I got to see him do his magic thing only once. Dad and I were on a little fishing trip over on the Logan Eddy. It was a hot summer day, and we were walking along the creek bank to get to a better fishing hole, when Trailer started running and looking at something that Dad and I couldn’t see.

We were right on the edge of the land that our family farmed in cotton. There were no trees, and very little growth of any kind, because it was farmland; therefore it was kept fairly free of vegetation. Well Old Trailer quickly treed under a small tree stump on the edge of the creek bank. Dad figured it was probably a cottontail rabbit, because it was the typical place that you would expect to find one. Although Old Trailer’s noises and body language was continuing to say it’s a mink, it’s a mink!

Dad just knew it had to be something else; it was the middle of the day and ninety degrees or more, and mink are nocturnal creatures which hate the heat, things were just not right! (Wrong) He picked up a small stick, and shoved it back into the hole; to our surprise out dashed a female mink right into Trailer’s waiting jaws. Dad was totally amazed, he said, "well good buddy" you said it was a mink, and I didn’t listen again!" "I’ll try to pay more attention from now on."

Trailer was acting so proud of himself that we didn’t even bother to tell him that the season had been closed for about six months or so. Dad laughed and said, "well, I guess we can just chalk this one up to practice." Dad cured the little pelt, and hid it behind the wall paper of the living room, until the next season..There was quite a severe fine, for taking mink out of season, so nothing was ever mentioned about the little pelt. It just suddenly appeared, the following January when the first batch of pelts were going to market.

When the buyer saw it, he said, "Looks like this ones been around for awhile." Then Dad told him the story of how Old Trailer didn’t realize the season had been closed for about six months, and given the circumstances; he did the best that he possibly could. The buyer said that stranger thing have been known to happen! Then he said that he vaguely remembered another strange incident that once had happened to him, when he was buying furs at this very market.

He said that a feller that looked a lot like Dad had sold him a sheep hide, and told him it was a possum, so nothing surprised him anymore! With a sly grin on his face, he counted out six dollars for the little over due mink pelt. Then as Dad started walking away, the he said, "Hey Walker, get that dog of yours straightened out on his dates; tell him he’s got the right idea, but they need to be a little fresher OK." Dad chuckled as he walked away, placing the fur money in his wallet, and thinking about the easy way the fur buyer had, of making a person feel comfortable. He was a very good man to do business with!

Steve Walker Master Trapper

Daddy wasn’t always a mink trapper; there was a time when even though there were thousands of dollars worth of mink close by, he didn’t have a clue as to how to catch them. His big break came out of the blue, from a most unlikely source. Dad’s first cousin Steve Walker usually paid about two visits a year to our house. He would usually stay from two weeks to a month. Steve was a different type of person. Even though he did the same things that other people did, he just never seemed to get dirty, He could pick cotton, chop cotton, and a myriad other things, and never seem to get soiled, or show the usual wear and tear that most other people did. Some folks thought he was a professional moocher, because of the fastidious way he dressed. But he was far from it; he was a true gentleman that paid his way every day he was among us.

His usual attire was a nice suit of clothes complete with white shirt and tie, and a grey felt hat. But the biggest secret that Steve Walker had was that he was a master mink trapper; yet he had never mentioned it. On one of his visits to the Walker household, Steve apparently noticed the lean lifestyle through the winter months. He also knew that share cropping was a meager life at the very best. My folks usually even had to borrow money at the bank against the next crop to buy seed. Well, taking in the situation, Steve decided that he would try to make a mink trapper out of Dad. One cold winter morning as everyone was standing around the potbellied stove warming up, Steve asked Dad if he had ever seen any mink sign around the creeks and streams in the area. Dad said he had seen what he thought were mink tracks, but he wasn’t sure.

So, Steve said, "How about after breakfast, we take a little stroll down on the creek, and let me have a look around; there just might be a chance we can fix you up with a cold weather occupation, that will pay better than share cropping." Dad said that he would certainly appreciate the favor, and off they went on a short excursion that was to change all our lives. Steve found plenty of mink sign; so he told Dad they would need two dozen Blake and Lamb no.2 steel traps, and they would be in business. Steve set about teaching Dad how to trap mink. Not only how to set the traps on good mink trails, and conceal them discretely, but most importantly, how to make small changes in the mink’s natural domain, that would cause him to go out of his way to get into your trap.

Mink are very sensitive, touchy creatures. They are so in tune with their natural environment, that any change will immediately be cause for alarm! A trapper who is wise enough to study and learn all his little quirks and nuances can use this sensitivity against the mink. Generations of mink can spend their entire lives living near people, on creeks and rivers, and never be seen, because they are a nocturnal animal. Move a leaf, or lay a small stick across his path to disturb his usual route and you can guide him wherever you want him to go.

By placing a small twig in just the right place, like it has fallen there naturally, you can make the mink jump over it, and by having your trap set right where he has to land, his whole weight will hit right on the petal of your trap, insuring a firm catch. But under no circumstances can any human scent be left behind, or you will never catch a mink. Hip boots were a must, because the trapper needed to stand in the water when making his set, leaving no sign that he was even there. Also Steve taught Dad how to brew his own stinky fish juice to attract mink. One drop was all that was needed. This lure worked on both males and females, but the one that was the most effective, caught only males.

It was female musk, which was delicately collected from the scent glands of female mink that had been caught. Mink trapping is a highly skilled art, and few there are that ever master it. Under Steve’s masterful guidance, both Dad and George obtained a very high degree of skill in the art. It was like a miracle dropped into our lap. When knowing all the variables and the trickery it takes to catch a mink, it’s easy to understand how frustrated people who didn’t have the technology could become, and why Steve’s information was so valuable.

I have heard Daddy tell the story of his first year’s trapping, so many times that I couldn’t possibly count them! But I really never understood the significance of what he was saying until I was an adult. He would say, "After the trapping season was over, I had all our Christmas bought, and still had money in my pocket." In my estimation, that was the first time in Dad and Mom’s married life, that had ever happened! What a change Steve’s knowledge had made to our family. Instead of drearily waiting for next years meager sharecropping money to try and bail us out, the Walker family was actually living decently through the hardest part of the year.

The gift of helping someone to be able to help himself in such a glorious manner must have put a mighty glow in Steve Walker’s heart! Though at this writing ( 9/17/ 2000 ) he has been gone for approximately forty eight years, he still is not forgotten, because "I remember." There were people in our area that wanted to cash in on the mink fur market so bad, that they would literally go to any lengths to learn how to do it. These people would follow Dad and George all season trying to find their traps to see how mink trapping was done. There was one family of about five or six grown boys called the Lloyds that were really hostile.

They thought because they had lived along the creek all their lives, that all those mink belonged to them. They didn’t have the technology to catch anything but possum, coon, fox and the like, and when they saw Dad and George selling lots of mink furs at the fur market, it really fired their boiler. They would get up real early in the morning, and since they lived close to the creek, they would literally run the Walker’s traps before they could get there. When the Lloyds would find a trap with a mink in it, they would take the mink, trap and all! And when the Walkers arrived all they would find would be a lot of Lloyd footprints. Dad would come home sometimes so mad that he would just about flip out.

He would say something like, "Well I finally caught that big boar mink down by the spring hole, and those damn Lloyds stole it. I’ve just about had all of those bastards I can stand." Time after time Dad and George would watch the Lloyds selling mink furs that were stolen from them.

They would know exactly how many and what sex the mink were that the Lloyds were going to sell. The ones they sold were always the mink furs that we were missing, as well as the traps that caught them! The Lloyds would bring out a whole raft of pelts: possum, coon, fox etc., then right on the tail end, they would bring the stolen mink hides out.

The mink furs that they had stolen from the Walkers, were worth more than all of their other furs combined. There were times that it looked like a feud of the Hatfield and McCoy variety was eminent. Dad, George, and the Lloyds, all carried rifles when they were out trapping or in the Lloyds case thieving. It seemed eminent, that someone, sometime, was going to loose his cool, and take a potshot at the other side. There were many times, when Dad and George would have a thirty minute set already, completed, only to spot one of the Lloyd boys watching them from out of the cane break. There was no choice but to abort the set.

It became a very scary, high stakes game of hide and seeks, and the Lloyds were very crude backwoods folks that had absolutely no scruples. But they had just about pushed the Walkers as far as they were going to be pushed; they were getting madder and smarter! So Dad and George got their thinking caps on, and they came to the conclusion, that anyone who could out smart a mink, should easily be able to fool a bunch of backwoods clods, like the Lloyd brothers! Steve had taught both the wet set, and the dry set, in his training lessons, plus the merits and the problems of both.

Dad and George had known for sometimes that the mink which were being stolen, were the ones that had been caught in dry sets, but not all were, being stolen, probably only about half. That was still quite a bit of money to give up! So it was really a hard decision to make! But in the end both Dad and George agreed, that to out-fox the Lloyds it would be worth it. Besides they knew that in time every mink on the creek could be taken near the water, where it could be caught and concealed.

Dry sets were just too risky. Not only did they fool the Lloyds, but they also found that they were getting lots of mink that were very lightly caught which ordinarily would have gotten away, except now, they were quickly drowned by the weight of the trap. The wet set had solved more than one problem: it faked out the Lloyds, gave the Walkers a higher percentage of retained mink, and it was also much more humane. It is a mink’s nature to dive into the water when it senses danger, and by using the mink’s own weakness, Dad and George had scored a major victory. They perfected the wet set to such a degree that no one could tell that a mink had been caught at any certain spot.

Sometimes even they had difficulty finding where their mink was. For starters they wore hipboots, and would make every set while standing in the water so no tracks were left. Then the lead wire to the trap would be secured as deeply under water as possible to a rock, a tree root, or a wooden stake driven into the creek mud. When the Lloyds were making their early morning thieving rounds, there was nothing to alert them that there was a twenty or thirty dollar mink to be had; they would pass right by never suspecting a thing. It must have been terribly frustrating to them, that only the Walkers who had set the trap knew how to collect the prize!

They only had the technology to steal it! Suddenly the mink fur business was booming, for the Walkers that is. At the market the Lloyds would be selling their possum, coon and skunk hides, but the big difference came at the end, they had no mink skins to sell! Now came the real burn, as they watched the Walkers bring that big pile of mink furs out. There were some real nasty looks originating on the Lloyd side of the table aimed at the Walkers, but that was just the icing on the cake for Dad and George; they were loving every minute of it. They would be smiling from ear to ear as the fur buyer counted out that big stack of twenty dollar bills. They had the Lloyds boys by the short hairs, and they loved it.

I was about seven years old when the family moved from the Killian place to the Luther place. It was only about three-quarters of a mile down the hill and across the road from where we had lived for the past three years. I liked it much better though, because a nice creek bordered it, for Old Trailer and me to hunt and fish on. I can well remember asking Mother to make me a fishing line so I could go down on the creek fishing. She would take out her sewing basket and get out a spool of thread. Then she would measure off about four to five feet, which was just about the length a line needed to be, then double it, or triple it, according to the strength needed.

She would lightly twist it a few times, then use a lump of bees wax to give the line a good waxing to hold it together. Now came the important parts: a small perch hook, a bottle cork for a float, and a piece of old tooth paste tube which in those days was mostly lead. Then we would wrap it around the line for a sinker, and presto, I was ready to fish. It seemed like magic to me! I could cut me a bamboo pole down on the creek, and Old Trailer and I could dig some red worms out in the field, and then we were in business. Soon we were down on the creek doing our thing.

Watching that bottle cork go down, and feeling Mama’s homemade line and perch hook come up against the lips of a big bream sunfish, is a feeling I will never forget. It gave me a total feeling of completeness and belonging. I felt I was doing exactly what a little boy should do, and I had the caring and love of my whole family behind me saying, "catch those perch Hoyt," and I did! When I would get home with my catch, Mother would get out a pan, two large tablespoons, (which made great scalers,) and a paring knife. Soon those bream were ready for lunch. There’s nothing more satisfying in life, than for the hunter, or the fisherman to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

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