Monday, September 21, 2009

Henrietta was actually Henry

     It was a beautiful spring day early in the morning. Just right for branding pigs. In the pasture were assorted shelters for the animals. In a small pen was a group of hogs that had given birth to several pigs. Today they were old enough for grandpa and his helpers to go in and cut brand notches in the pig ears. As you can imagine there was a lot of squealing pigs and excited sows around. Being a small child I thought those pigs were just needing to be picked up. So I did. Big big mistake. When I scooped him up, he squealed like I had cut off more than his ears. The mama sow was just a few feet away and made a bee-line for me with her teeth a clacking and stomping her feet. All the color drained from my face and settled in my lower end as a brown spot. Lucky for me, grandpa was closer than the the sow and he reached down and plucked me out of there.
     Now fast forward 53 years and meet Henry. He was an escaped pig from my trapper neighbor. He would trap hogs for the state, collect the money, turn the hogs loose, and trap them all over again. When we first noticed Henry we called him Henrietta. As he got older and bigger we could see our mistake and shortened his name to Henry. He was wild as a jack rabbit, but he loved our horses and actually bedded down in the roll of hay while they were eating. I knew that the neighbors thought he was my hog and as long as he stayed in the pasture he was ok. When I awoke one morning and saw Sheila's flower bed plowed up I knew Henry had to leave town. With neighbors on two sides I was afraid to just shoot at him anywhere. Plan #1 was to pull the truck down to the barn at 10:00 and wait for him to show up.   At a little after ten, I pulled the truck just outside the barn.  This was highly unusual for me and the horses were nervous.  After a few minutes they settled down and went back into the stalls.  I sat there for what seemed an eternity.  I should have known better than to drink all that coffee.  It kept me awake, but my bladder was stretched to the max.  I could not get out or I would scare the hog away.  So I sat there in agony for a while longer.  The radio was calling in some good old tunes, but I had the volume down low, so as not to scare Henry.  Twelve o'clock came and went with no sign of Henry.  I had the light on at the rear of the barn so that I could see him come in from the woods and he would not be able to see me.  That did not work out very well.  By three a m I was in misery, but could not give up now.  Surely he would be here any moment.  After all, I was being as quiet as possible.  The horses smorted, snored and farted all night, but not a sound from Henry.  Where is that hog?
     When the sun came up I saw him asleep beside the horses. He had been sleeping all night while I was just sitting there. When I shot at him with my 45 he could not keep up with the horses.  I just knew that the barn was torn to hell and back.
     For plan #2, I borrowed a friends trap and baited it with sour corn. It took several weeks to coax him into the trap and then he would eat all around the trigger without tripping it. Frustrated Sheila put a mirror at the back of the trap and covered the back of that with bushes, and I piled brush around the trigger. That night when he saw his reflection in the mirror, he thought that was the prettiest pig he had ever seen, and tripped the trigger.
When I got out there that morning he was asleep. One of the pins did not latch when the gate came down. I eased over real quiet like to push it in. That 300 lb hog woke up, lunged at me like lightening, clacking his tusks and grunting like a freight train. In 53 years that brown spot still worked the same. When my son-in-law came over that afternoon I asked him to latch the pin. First time in ten years he was speechless. His face was white too.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Dirt Road

 Charles, go to Mr. Boonie's and get me a 5 lb. bag of flour. With these words I knew that grandpa had forgotten to to get it at Pat Tice's grocery store in Midland City. I don't remember the year, but the farm to market road paving project did not start until 1957 or 58 and the road was still dirt. Grannie was a kind soul, but was quick to lose her temper and I was glad this time it was aimed at grandpa. She was "hard of hearing"(completely deaf) so when I stayed with her, which was most of the time, I had to entertain myself and my imagination was pretty active.

This was my first outing by myself and I was grown ..I was a man. Boonie's was about a mile away and I had to walk. It was mostly sand beds and hot, the sand beds were hard to walk in and there was a steep hill about 3/4 of the way there. All the sand had washed to the bottom of the hill and the dirt on the hill was hard red clay.

Since I was off on an adventure I did not notice the clay on the way, but I was getting tired on the way back. All the road was open on both sides until you got to the fall of the hill. Woods were on both sides with big oaks spreading over the road making a tunnel going down to the bottom and the closer to the bottom the darker and colder it became. By the time I reached the bottom it was so oppressive that I could hardly stand.
Where the stream went under the road, the dirt was cracked and I could see the smoke and brimstone and smell the sulfur from hell coming out of the cracks and the cries of the tormented souls came wafting up out of the bottomless pit. If I go across, the dirt will give way and I will fall to my doom. I had to get home so I tiptoed ever so lightly over the cracked clay. Almost over and I felt it......the devil had grabbed my ankle, I could feel his hot bony grip with his long fingernails wrapped around my skinny leg. I kicked, screamed, messed my pants, and called for Jesus to save me. That did it, the grip was loosed, the skies cleared up, the cracks in the ground were sealed and I was almost home.
      As I rounded the curve with the fence post on each side of the ditch, I could see granny out in the yard.  I thought that she was looking for me.  That old crow was sitting on top of the fence post,pulling back on that cigar with a smug look in his eye.  "Almost didn't make it did you boy?"  Before I could answer him, feathers flew from his chest and he looked at me with a sorrowful expression, before he fell dead, to the ground  Just then I heard the crack of the 22 rifle.  Granny said with a satisfied voice,  "That old crow has been worrying my chickens to death. I think he worked for Satan".  You do not know how true that is, granny.  Looking back now I know that I was saved then, long before I walked the aisle at Wiggins Church. True story.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Full Moon

Sheila and I were riding our bikes around the ponds this afternoon to exercise the dogs, not us. There was a coolness in the air and a full moon rising over in the east, just clearing the top of the trees. All at once I was taken back about 50 years to that night in early September. Peanuts had been picked and the cotton was beginning to bust. Peanuts were picked with a mechanical picker, but most cotton was still picked by hand. It was the weekend, school was out, I had no bills, no interest in girls, no concern over how I was to make a living and no cares to cause me any worry. Now you know how my mood was when Benny and I and the two Nowell boys were to camp out that night. Maybe we were spending the night with them and just did not go to bed that night.
We started out that night playing in the barn loft, jumping from the rafters turning a flip and landing in the trailer full of cotton. We really packed that cotton into a bale before we were done. By the time we tired of that, everyone else had gone to bed for the night, so we headed out to the fields. The light from the moon was bright enough to see how to maneuver around without fear of stumbling into anything. The air was crisp without much moisture and you could see for miles around. We were running around yelling and hollering like a bunch of drunk red neck teenagers at a Bama Jam concert. The only problem was a deserted house on the edge of their cotton field that had been the scene of a murder. we went in to look at the blood on the walls. Thats what Ronnie and Wayne told us, but I think they were messing with us. It looked like red paint to me, but we were still excited and wondering if the ghost of the departed was to jump us at any minute. Some one moaned and we hauled **s.
The next morning Mr. Bounie McKay was at his store when we came in. When he found out that it was us screaming all night he was fit to be tied. We did not know that the cool crisp air would carry sound forever. It's a wonder he did not call the sheriff. He must not have told on us because we never did get into trouble for all that fun.