Exploring the Ozark hills

When it was the wrong season for squirrels and rabbits and the fish were not biting (the “dog days of August”), one of our favorite activities was sampling roaming the countryside “exploring.” Without hardly realizing it, we picked up a lot of woods lore that way.  There was no tree, bird, insect, or varmint that we could not identify.

We learned self-sufficiency, too.  We could leave home right after breakfast on a free day carrying nothing but our fishing lines, a few kitchen matches, and a small packet of salt in the watch pocket of our bib overalls.  Sometimes we would take the twenty-two also.  After a long day in the woods we would come home well fed in time for the evening chores.

It was easy.  We knew everything in the woods that was edible.   We could always swipe a couple of potatoes out of someone’s truck patch along the way and stick one in a back pocket.  Then we might kill a squirrel if we had the rifle or else catch a couple of perch in the creek.  Then all we had to do was build a fire.

high, I would hunker down, rifle cocked and ready, and stay motionless for a few minutes to see if one came out.

If we had a aquirrel, we would gut and skin it then roast it on a spit over the coals.  If we had a fish, we would find a bed of good grey clay, gut the fish, wrap them in clay, and put those also in the coals.  When the clay dried and cracked open we raked them out of the ashes.  The scales and skin came off when we peeled away the clay and presto, a little salt and we had lunch.

One skill that roaming the countryside and, in particular, hunting squirrels taught us was the ability to move silently through the woods and brush.  Squirrels are nervous, flighty little creatures and any strange sound will send them scurrying to cover in a next or a den tree.

There are two ways to hunt squirrels.  One was to find an area of the woods where you had seen squirrels, pick out a comfortable spot on a log or against a tree, then simply sit and be quiet and motionless until the squirrels started moving about.  The other way was to drift silently along through the tick woods keeping a sharp eye out for squirrels darting up a tree or along a branch.  If you stand still, a squirrel will stop and peer at you.  When you see his eye, let him have it. 

I personally preferred the latter method although if I spotted a promising den tree (a hollow tree with a hole up high that was worn smooth around the edges) or a tree with a squirrel’s nest up

We practiced that skill both while hunting and while sneaking up on each other until, our bare feet noiseless on the woodland floor, we could move as silently as an Indian is reputed to be able to do without disturbing the branches and sparse undergrowth through which we moved.  It became second nature to pick the best route and avoid setting a foot down on a dry twig that might snap.

The ability came in handy at other times, too.  I recall one time that I had taken little brother Rex with me to the “Big Rock Hole” on Maze Creek to fish and to practice in the woods.  I got lucky and caught the largest fish I had ever seen come out of Maze Creek.  It looked like a chub, but must have been ten or more inches long.

After catching the fish, I decided to go home by way of Grandpa’s store figuring to show off my fish and that maybe he would give us each a bottle of strawberry or grape NeHi pop since it was a very hot afternoon.

About halfway to the road we (Rex trailing along behind) came around a bend and were suddenly face to face with two strange men coming along the path.  I knew they were not locals.  They were wearing pants with belts instead of overalls and they carried fancy rods and reels.  We in North Morgan Township were more than a bit reserved with, and maybe a bit distrustful of, “strangers.”  That meant anyone who came from more than four or five miles away.

The men halted and admired my “big” fish.  One of them said to the other, “See, I told you there were some nice fish in Maze Creek, Jake.”  Turning to me he said, “Where did you catch him, boy?”

I jerked the thumb of my free hand over my shoulder, “Back there a ways.”  Rex in the meantime was peering at the strangers from behind me.

“What did you use for bait?”

“Worm.”

“Ain’t much of a talker, are you?” he said.  “Tell you what—we haven’t caught much of anything.  I will give you a dime for that there fish.”

I was still thinking of showing off that fish to Grandpa and taking it home for Mother to cook.  I simply shook my head.

“Oh hell,” he said, “I might even give you a whole quarter.”  He turned to his partner, “Jake, you got a quarter on you?”

There was a small break in the underbrush to my right.  While Jake was feeling in his pockets for a quarter and the other man was watching him, I nudged Rex and faded quietly into the underbrush with my little brother at my heels.  We moved a few yards then knelt down well concealed.  I put a finger to my lips for Rex to be quiet.

We could hear the mean clearly in the still, warm air.  One of them exclaimed, “What the hell!  Where did they go?!”

“Aw,” the other answered, “these hill kids are shy as barn cats—one minute you see them, the next you don’t.  Guess he didn’t want to sell that there fish.”

We sat silently as we listened to them move on up the path, their voices fading as one of them said, “Downright spooky, that’s what.  I never heard a sound but when I looked around, they just weren’t there!”

That made me feel proud and not mind being called a hill kid because that was the whole idea—to simply vanish into the woods without a sound.

“Whyn’t you sell him that old fish,” Rex asked.  “You could have had a whole quarter and we could have bought a bottle of pop for just a nickel of it!”

“Didn’t want to.  Come on, let’s cut up over the bluff and go home.

Amusements in the Ozarks during the Great Depression

Conrad and Richard going fishing

Youngsters today would be at a loss to amuse themselves without their cellphones, computers, and televisions.  Several years ago some of the first reality programing on television was done by PBS, Frontier House in 2002.  The premise was to place a few families in the “wilderness” where they would have to live like pioneers. I hate reality programing, but watching these families come undone was fascinating.  It certainly showed the disconnect between our roots and our now.  The 1930s Ozarks were not that far from the pioneers.

Our amusements were naive and simple but I do not recall that us kids ever lacked for something interesting to do.  We never heard of Little League and, back in those country hills, there were no Boy Scout Troops.  Richard and I did have a tattered copy of the Boy Scout Manual that we learned a lot of useful things from, but mostly all we lacked was enough time to do all the things we would like to do.  I do not remember ever being bored.

During the hot summer a principal activity was to go to the creek, do some fishing, and have a swim.  There were no game wardens in the hills until later years and our tackle was very simple.  We had seen pictures of rods and reels in the Sears Roebuck wish book but no one had one.  Instead, for a quarter at Grandpa’s store we could buy a complete fishing line.  It was ten or twelve feet of green line, a small sinker, a long-shank hook just right for small catfish and perch, and a cork bobber.  Such a “store bought” fishing line came wound on a little wood frame that fitted very snugly in a back pocket of those bib overalls.

Bait for the little catfish and sunperch in Maze Creek was no problem.  We often dug big worms from the rotting manure pile behind the barn.  An ideal bait can to carry them in was either a Sir Walter Raleigh or Prince Albert empty flat tobacco tin.  That, too, fitted snugly in a back pocket.

If we had not taken time to dig worms or did not find some right away, we could always catch some grasshoppers in the pasture on Bertha Beck’s farm on our way to the creek.  A perfect receptacle for those was that button pocket on the bib of our overalls.  Of course sometime we forgot and left some in there later which did not make Mother very happy when our overalls showed up in the laundry.

Neither was a fishing pole a problem.  Along the creek bank there was lots of underbrush from which we could cut a fairly straight pol seven or eight feet long.  Willow made a good fishin’ pole and there were others that were nice and limber, too.  We always cut a fresh pole each time because a dry pole gets brittle and might break just when you had a big one on.  That was never a problem because in small Maze Creek a “big” catfish might be seven inches long and most of the sunperch were smaller than your hand.  We kept everything we caught even if they were hardly bigger than a pumpkin see.

We would put the fish we caught on a stringer (a switch cut from a bush) and keep them fresh in the water, then carry them proudly home and spend maybe an hour tediously cleaning them.  My mother would roll them in yellow cornmeal and fry them in a black iron skillet.  Some of them hardly made two bites, but they were delicious.

A more major source of meat for the family table, especially in early summer when the young were almost grown, was squirrels and rabbits.  About the time we moved into that little house south of Bona, when I was about eleven and Richard thirteen, Dad bough a little Remington 22-caliber squirrel rifle.  It was a dandy—a slim little single-shot rifle with a rolling block breech and a barrel about thirty-two inches long.  When we used long rifle shells (we used shorts for practice because they were cheaper) that little rifle was remarkably accurate up to forty or fifty years, which was about as far as you could see the eye of a squirrel.

Richard and I both quickly became very proficient with that little rifle.  One of our target practice competitions was to stick a row of kitchen matches in the bark of a down long, then, from fifteen or twenty yards, see who could light the most matches without knocking them out of the log.  The trick was to shoot so that the bullet just missed the head of the match, but came close enough that the air friction would ignite the phosphorous on the tip of the match.

When hunting rabbits with that little twenty-two, we did not feel bad when we hit on in the body.  After all, a rabbit can run pretty fast and it takes a pretty good shot to hit him anywhere on the run.  We never considered using a shotgun for either rabbits or squirrels for three reasons: One, it was not sporting, two the scattered shot spoils some of the meat, and three, we were not allowed to carry Dad’s single-shot 12-guage shotgun until we were older.  Apparently Dad felt that shotguns were too dangerous for youngsters.  If we had accidentally shot ourselves in the foot with the twenty-two it would only make a small hole but a shotgun was potential disaster.

It goes without saying that most parents aren’t going to hand their child a 22 rifle and tell them to go amuse themselves.  And of course, my grandfather had taught his boys how to handle a gun safely. The gun wasn’t a toy, although honing their shooting skills would soon come in handy in preserving my dad’s and uncle’s lives, as it did for some many of the greatest generation.  It also put food on the table.

Life without modern conviences.

As I go about my day, cooking and cleaning I marvel at my grandmother.  At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say how much I admire Eva Lorraine Frieze.  She was a scrupulously clean housekeeper and I don’t know how she did it without running hot water.  Whenever I grumble at having to do down to the basement to do laundry I remind myself that when she was a young mother she had to tote the water, heat it on a woodstove inside or a fire outside, and scrub the clothes and linens on a scrub board, then hang the clothes up and hope they got dry before a thunder or snow storm.  I have hot water on-demand to a nice electric washing machine and a dryer, all inside, albeit in the basement.  Moreover, I don’t have to go outside to a smelly outhouse night or day (although I have on my uncle’s farm), worrying about spiders in the holes! 

Another major difference in life in the Ozarks in those days (and, at one time, everywhere) and the way it is now, was that we lived with almost a complete lack of plumbing.  Almost no one had running water in the house.  There was always a counter in the kitchen that held a water bucket and wash pan.  A towel would be on a nail for rack nearby.  The only water for washing, cooking, doing the dishes, and drinking was what we carried in the water bucket from the well.  I recall that our water bucket was made of oak.  Dad always said that water tasted better out of oak and he had an oak water keg to take out into the fields with him.

When one wanted a drink of water, everyone simply used a long handled dipper that was kept in the bucket.  Of course that was the reason that when someone got sick most likely everyone else in the family were liable to catch it also.  To wash our faces and hands before supper, we just ladled some water into the wash pan and the last one to use it threw it out.  Hot water came from a teakettle always kept on top of the black iron wood-burning cook stove in which a fire was kept up all day usually.

A few houses—like the old home place and that of my Uncle Claud Frieze—had water tanks in the attic that were supplied by a hydraulic ram down in a branch below a spring.  They had pipes coming down to a faucet in the kitchen so that at least there was running cold water and they did not have to tote a bucket from the well.  We, however, just had the bucket.  That was kind of a nuisance for Saturday night baths when it was cold and we had to bathe in a washtub by the kitchen stove.  It also meant that we had to carry and heat a lot of buckets of water on Monday when my mother did the laundry in the washtub with a scrub board.

We managed to stay reasonably clean—at least by the standards of the time.  Mother always made us wash not only the front part of our faces, but also our neck and ears in the evening.  In the summer when we went barefoot all the time, we had to pour a pan of water and wash our feet before we got into bed.

Baths were not always necessary in the summer because, after a day in the dusty fields, we could always pull off our clothes and jump into the horse tank down by the barn.  Otherwise, if we had been swimming in the creek that was as good as having a bath—almost.  It was before the day of deodorants, of course, and I am sure we all usually had some degree of body odor about us.  It was not noticeable, though, unless someone had skunk odor on him or had gotten too dirty around the barn.

Not having plumbing meant that there was no such thing as a bathroom in the house.  Every house had an outhouse somewhere out back.  The outhouse was a small wooden building about five feet square built over a pit away from the well or the house.  Most were two-holers; a large hole for adults and a little one for kids.

Public buildings, such as the church and Bona School, had two outhouses—one for boys and one for girls—that were larger.  At Bona School the boys’ outhouse had four holes because sometime there was more than one of us at a time in there at recess.  I sup[pose the girls’ had four holes also, although I never went in there to see.

A country outhouse was a fine place to sit and think while you did your business when the weather was mild in the spring and fall.  Toilet paper was usually last year’s Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog so, if you had nothing better to think about, you could sit and look at the pictures in the “wish book.”

During the hot summer, however, the outhouse stunk to high heaven even though everyone usually kept a sack of lime in there to throw some in after you did a job.  You were certainly not inclined to linger.  In fact, in good weather it was a lot more comfortable to drop your overalls and squat out behind the barn or the chicken house or else out in the woods.

It was in the winter that the outhouse was a real anathema, especially when it had snowed and was windy.  Never came across an outhouse that was not drafty.  The worst problem was when you had to go at night.  Seems like invariably I would get out there and find that someone had left the door open so that there was a layer of snow on the seat.

Outhouses were fair game when Halloween came around.  In those days we did not know anything about “trick or treat.”  It was simply a time when evil spirits were supposed to be out and about.  All we thought of were tricks to pull on people.  Tipping over outhouses was a favorite, if not hallowed, Halloween trick.  Our ambition was to tip over an outhouse onto the door with someone inside so they could not get out.  We never managed it.  I think everyone knew that outhouses were fair game on Halloween so no one would go inside one after dark that evening. 

Look tomorrow for more amusements.

Ozark dress in the Great Depression

Chapter 5

Ozark Amusements

 

Family gathering in the '30 in Bona.  Conrad Frieze is third from the right in front.  Richard is fourth and little brother Rex is in the cap and shorts on the end in front, looking like Buster Brown.

Dave and I recently chatted about the government assistance during the Great Depression and also during our lifetimes.  I understand that the coupon books of “food stamps” that I had as a single struggling mother were probably meant to embarrass recipients—make you want to get off them.  I certainly was uncomfortable tearing out those coupons at the checkout counter in front of a line of people, but I had children to feed and I believed it wouldn’t be forever.  Now of course, SNAP has EBT cards meant to look like a debit card and cause less humiliation.  I am not here to debate the pros and cons of shaming adults, but I am irritated as hell that the American government thought it was appropriate during the Great Depression to give innocent children overalls to wear that had been dyed brown so that the entire community, most particularly their classmates, would know that their family was on Relief.  The United States government shamed itself in humiliating children who had no power over the situation of their lives or the economy.  During Hard Times, as it was called, neither did their parents.

Conrad age 12 in stripped overalls.

A major difference in the days of the 1930s in the Ozark hills and the modern world of today was our clothing.  Bib overalls were the normal attire for most all males for some very good reason.  First of all, bib overalls were the most versatile and comfortable working garment ever invented.  Secon, and very important in those days of Hard Times, they were cheap and very durable.

Today, most outdoors-working men and boys usually wear blue denim jeans or dungarees except on farms where the old bib overalls can still be found.  Jeans and dungarees are great but they do require a belt to keep them up.  Bib overalls had their own galluses, were loose and comfortable, and they have myriad pockets that are very useful.

Typical Ozark men's dress, even into the forties.  Pictured here are Willie and John Blankenship, the author's great-uncles.

Bib overalls were usually made of dark blue denim but they also came in blue and white striped denim.  Most of us wore blue because the striped ones showed dirt more—and we often had plenty of that on us not to speak of cow manure and other things.  In the early days of the Roosevelt administration during the Hard Times of the 1930s, the overalls that were handed out to people on Relief were the striped kind but that had been dyed brown so you could always tell that someone was on Relief.  Fortunately, our father was a proud and independent man who never took charity so we boys never had to wear Relief overalls.  Of course our overalls were usually faded and patched at the knees but Mother always saw to it that we went off to school in clean overalls and shirt and we never minded patches—everyone wore patched overalls.

Those bib overalls were worn the year around.  In summer we often wore them without any underwear.  In the winter we wore drop-seat long johns under them.  Our shirts were usually blue hickory shirts for everyday wear and maybe a white shirt for Sunday when we went to church.  We usually had regular was pants with a belt to wear to church or when we went to Greenfield for something like the Fourth of July picnic but many times I have gone to church in a clean pair of fairly new bib overalls.  I do not believe the Lord minded one bit.

There were some other articles of clothing that were typical in those days in the Ozarks.  When you look at the old photographs it is evident that we were a transition generation from the pioneer days of horse and buggy to a more modern world of automobiles and up-to-date clothing.  Many of the older folks clung to garb that was right out of the Civil War era.

The older ladies still wore dresses that came down to their ankles.  My Grandmother Stanley had progressed to shorter dresses (although I remember her well in ankle-length dress and apron), but I do not ever recall seeing Aunt Lizzie Asbell in anything but ankle-length dress and apron over high buttoned shoes.  “Aunt Lizzie” was actually my great-aunt because she was Grandma Stanley’s sister.

One article that was still in common use can now be found only in a museum.  It was a ladies’ (or girls’) sunbonnet called a “poke bonnet.”  Almost all females wore them in the summer.  They were made from material left over from making dresses or aprons and were stiffened with strips of cardboard.  The poke bonnets (called that because they resembled a paper bag or “poke”) had a pouf of material at the back to accommodate hair usually braided and wound into a bun on the back of the head.  There was also a sort of skirt to protect the nape of the neck.  A poke bonnet was a very effective sunshade, but was a bit disconcerting because from any distance at all you could not tell what woman it was.  Up close it was sort like looking up a section of stove pipe to see who you were talking to.

Not being a fashionista, what my father may not have known, or at least failed to mention, is the reason that women’s dresses shortened during the Great Depression.  It was a very practical reason--the lack of money for purchasing material.  Women knew how to make a penny scream in those days and shorter hemlines meant less material to be purchased.  As American society transitioned from the Depression into WWII hemlines shortened even more to save material for the war effort and more women began wearing pants as they moved into the factory workplace.

The Star Skunk

The Great Depression impacted Americans from almost all walks of life.  It is possible that the folks in the Ozarks were more prepared to "make do" during "Hard Times," as they called it, but finding money for Christmas gifts for your parents and little brother, might make you take ill-thought-out measures.  The lessons of the Great Depression are what shaped the Greatest Generation.

I believe that it was the first winter that we spent on the little farm south of Bona that Richard and I got a hard lesson in honesty in the episode of the star skunk.  I would have been about eleven and Richard was thirteen.  My memory may not be what it once was, but I sure do remember that skunk and what happened in painful detail!

One a crisp, clear late fall Saturday, probably in November, we had nothing but morning and evening chores to do.  Richard and I decided to go exploring.  We headed across the fields south toward where Maze Creek crossed the county road about halfway to Dadeville.

It was a marvelous day—sun shining and the sky was that incomparable blue that results only from unpolluted air and is seldom seen anymore.  The weeds in the fence rows were brown.  In the woods the brown leaves had already fallen to make a thick crunchy carpet underfoot.  There was a cold breeze so we were both wearing our sheepskin coats and long underwear and Richard was wearing a knitted Ace cap pulled down over his ears.

The rolling landscape was a study in rich earth colors.  Stubble fields left from the harvest of oats and wheat were golden in the sun.  A cottontail rabbit startled a covey of quail that exploded into flight ahead of us.  We pretended to shoot at the small birds as they scattered and wheeled away.  Neither of us were old enough to carry a shotgun and we had not brought the little single-shot Remington squirrel rifle because we did not have any bullets for it.

We crawled through a barbed wire fence and topped a rise above the creek bottom.  Below there was cornfields between us and the winter-naked trees along the creek bank.  The tall yellow shocks of cut fodder scattered across the field looks for all the world like a village of Indian tepees.  We knew that there had actually been villages of Osage Indians in the area in the past because we could walk across a cornfield in almost any bend in the creek and kick up Indian arrowheads—and once in a great while a musket ball.

As we walked down the gentle slope toward the cornfield I let my imagination go and became Buffalo Bill Cody approaching a hostile Indian camp to negotiate a peace treaty.  I was just starting to pass between lines of threatening Indian braves to face Sitting Bull when I tripped over a flintrock and fell down.  The Indian village vanished.

“You clumsy tithead,” Richard probably said sarcastically, “why don’t you watch where your are going?”

“I was thinkin’,” I would have answered defensively. 

“Wool gatherin’, you mean.  I bet you have not heard a single word I was saying!”

“Did, too!  You was talkin’ about not having any money to get the folks and Rex something for Christmas.”

We climbed over a hog wire fence and headed up along the creek.  The water gurgled clear and cold over stones and across shallow riffles of gravel.

“Got to build us some more box traps and catch us more rabbits,” Richard went on.  “We can get twelve cents apiece for them at the store this time of year.”

“Take a lot of rabbits to amount to much spending money,” I answered dolefully.

“Well—at least we could buy some shells for the twenty-two.  Even a little money is better’n none atall.”  Richard scratched his head.  “What we really need to do is to go possum hunting or get us some steel traps.  Good possum hide’ll bring a dollar and a quarter.  The steel traps would be better.  Striped skunk hide is worth a dollar and a half—and a good star skunk will bring nearly twice that.”

“Got no possum dog,” I stated, “and no steel traps.  Them steel traps cost money.  Besides, skunks smell something awful.  I don’t want nothin’ to do with them!  Go to school with skunk on you, they gonna send you home to have a bath!”

We continued making our way along the creek bank, now more than two miles from home.  Across the narrow creek ground had risen to a low but steep bluff covered with scrub oak trees.  In places there were outcropping of grey limestone.  We were looking for a cave that we had heard was up that way.

I had halted and crouched down to flip over some flat rocks in the edge of the cold creek water to see if there were any crawdads this time of year; there were none that I could find.  Richard suddenly nudged me with his shoe and pointed across the creek.  “Great gawd a’mighty,” he said in an awed voice, “speakin’ of skunks, lookee over there!”

Star Skunks have very little white on them and are prized for their fur.

Beyond the opposite bank of the creek there was a huge grey boulder that had tumbled down the bluff.  At the base of the boulder, someone had set a steel trap.  Held firmly by one forefoot, a large coal black skunk with only one spot on its forehead was in the trap

Richard said in a low voice, “Man oh man, that’s gotta be the biggest old star skunk I ever saw!  Bet you his hide would bring three dollars—maybe more!”

I caught a whiff of the skunk’s scent and curled my lip in disgust.  “Yeah, and that sucker stinks, too!”

My brother stood with his blue eyes riveted on the hapless skunk.  I could almost see the wheels turning in his scheming mind.  “Let’s go over and have a closer look,” he suggested.

I drew back.  “Oh no you don’t, buster!  Next thing I know you’ll be tryin’ to talk me into helpin’ you take that there old skunk!  Nuthin’ doing!  It don’t belong to us.”

“Don’t be chicken, dummy!  If we did take the skunk, it wouldn’t be stealing—just poaching.  There’s a difference.  Besides, that old skunk will either chew off his foot and get away or it might die right there before someone runs that trap.  It would spoil and be wasted.  Whoever set that trap ain’t gonna come along here this time of day—it’s the middle of the afternoon.  That skunk hade means good money for Christmas that we’ll split.

I wavered just enough that Richard knew he had the advantage and he pressed it, “No one would ever know that skunk was ever in that trap.”

Had I been thinking quick enough I would have simply said, “How would you explain it to Pa?” but I didn’t.  Instead I argued, “We got no gun to shoot that skunk and we would get skunk smell all over us anyway.  It is dang hard to get rid of and, like I told you before, they send you home from school if you come in smelling like skunk; you know that!”

By that time, we had splashed across the creek at a shallow riffle and were approaching the boulder.  The pungent scent of skunk musk was heavy in the air.  The animal retreated to the far end of the chain that secured the steel trap to a steel stake at the base of the boulder.  He stood there defiantly, teeth bared, facing us.

“Wouldn’t want to shoot it even if we had the rifle,” Richard stated.  “Bullet hole would ruin the hide.”  As he surveyed the scene, a crafty look came into hi keen eyes.  “I know how we can get it,” he said confidently.  “I’ll get a long stick and twist it into his fur from up there on top of the boulder.  When I get his hind legs off the ground…”

“Now wa-ait a minute,” I cut in.  “You ain’t gonna talk me into goin’ in after that dang old skunk and get squirted with skunk stink!”

“Heck,” he snorted, “don’t you know nothin’ at all, birdbrain!  He cain’t throw that stuff with his hind legs off the ground.  You ever try to pee with your feet off the ground?  Cain’t be done.  All you got to do is run in and grab him by the tail and hold his feet off the ground until I get down to help kill him.  He cain’t squirt that stuff on you that way!”

“Bullhockey!!”  I turned to walk away.  “You AIN’T gettin’ ME to take the dirty end of the stick this time!  Get the dad-blamed skunk your own self if you want it so bad!  Don’t want nuthin’ to do with it!  Do without Christmas money!”

Richard always had a final salvo to fire.  “Jist like always,” he sneered, “you’re a chicken-hearted scaredy cat!  I’ll get the skunk and I’ll keep all the money!”

He had me over the proverbial barrel.  He knew that I could not tolerate being called a scaredy cat and he knew that I would like to have a split of the profits.  He also knew that he had won when I halted and turned slowly around.

Richard had a pocket knife.  He cut a long willow branch like we would usually use for a fishing pole and split the small end which he wedged open with a small sliver so that it would catch in the long thick fur of the skunk when it was twisted.  Moving cautiously, he edged around and climbed to the flat top of the boulder where he slid on his belly until he was directly over the skunk which was still keeping a wary eye on me.

“Okay,” he hissed, “get ready!”  He reached down slowly with the willow pole.

I advanced a couple of cautious paces and the trapped skunk shrank back and hissed at me, baring its teeth threateningly again.  Richard got the split end of the stick into the thick fur back by the animal’s tail and twisted.  It worked—sort of.  The stick caught in the fur and Richard lifted the animal’s hindquarters off the ground.  “GOT HIM!” he yelled triumphantly.

I lunged for the skunk, my clodhopper work shoes scrabbling against the rocky and frozen ground.  The skunk squirmed violently and, just before my hand closed on his tail, the stick slipped loose.  I had one fleeting glimpse as he hit the ground, tail upraised.  I saw a pink spot appear just under the base of his tail, then a squirt of yellow musk caught me squarely in the eyes.

It smarted and it blinded me.  I howled and scrambled backward away from the enraged skunk.  On all fours I lunged for the creek and soused my head into the icy water.  The odor of skunk musk on me, my sheepskin coat, and knitted wool hat was overpowering.  After repeated dousing with the cold water, the burning sensation in my eyes lessened and I could begin to see again, although quite blurrily at first.  The snarling skunk was crouched at the base of the boulder facing me.  Atop the boulder Richard was rolling around howling with laughter.

“HOO-EE,” he chortled.  “That is the funniest thing I ever did see!  He got you smack between the eyes!”

My temper exploded.  I was more enraged than the skunk at that point.  I came up off the creek bank and my hand closed on a rounded glacial flintrock about the size of a large orange.  My rage was directed equally at my gleeful brother and at the hapless skunk as I charged.

Fortunately for Richard, the skunk was the nearer the two.  Throwing practice in corncob fights, throwing rocks at birds and cans, and schoolyard baseball had strengthened my arm and honed my aim.  The rock caught the skunk squarely on the white spot on its forehead.  It went down kicking feebly, its skull crushed.

I was miserably cold from the icy water of the creek and stinking to high heaven of skunk musk.  I stalked indignantly to the trap, released the spring with my foot, then—grabbing the heavy carcass by the tail—heaved the dead skunk onto the boulder.  It landed directly on Richard, smearing his heavy sheepskin coat with skunk blood and musk.

“There!  THERE’S your stinkin’ old skunk!  I killed it.  YOU carry it!  I should have done that to start with instead of listening to your harebrained schemes!”  My voice was bitter, to say the least.

Richard stopped laughing and cursed when the skunk hit him.  He rolled it back off the boulder and jumped down angrily.  I did not run, but simply squared off with clenched fists and glanced out of the corner of my eye for any handy throwing rocks.

The attack did not develop.  Perhaps he felt a twinge of remorse.  What was done was done and could not be undone by a fight.  He shrugged and turned back to the skunk.

The animal I had killed was obviously a prize pelt.  It was huge and , although now rumpled, the fur was thick, deep, and glossy.

We decided that we would have to take the animal home to skin it since we had only Richard’s pocket knife and, although well practiced in skinning rabbits and squirrels, neither of us had yet skinned either a skunk or a possum.  Since the skunk Carcass weighted several pounds and we were both now emitting a strong odor of skunk must (we stunk, it what we did) we each took a hind leg and set off on the long hike home.

It was nearly sundown as we approached the farm.  Our father was out splitting wood for the cook stove—a chore Richard should have been doing—when we came up across the south pasture.  The odor of skunk no doubt preceded us on the evening breeze because Dad put down his axe, turned, and waited impassively as we came up the path from the barn.

All of a sudden my happy thoughts about the money we would get for the skunk hide vanished on the chill breeze and I suddenly was overcome by a feeling of guilt.  The skunk was not really ours.  We slowed but marched up and halted uncertainly before the keen gaze of our father.  It seemed that his blue eye could look right inside you.

“Where did you get that big skunk, boys?”  His tone was quite neutral but I shriveled inside.

“Well…uh…I killed it with a rock,” I said.  “We are gonna get us a lot of money for the hide.”

Dad knelt and looked closely at the skunk.  “’Pears to me that skunk has had his foot in a steel-trap.  You boys got you some steel traps?”

Suddenly our crime seemed enormous.  I shivered, but not from the evening cold, and looked sidewise at Richard.  He stood looking stoically straight ahead as he answered for us, “No, Pa.  We ain’t got no steel traps.”

“Where did you find that skunk?”

Richard answered again, “Well…uh…way over there up Maze Creek toward the cave spring.”

Dad sat back on his haunches and reached for his sack of Bull Durham.  He was silent while he extracted a wheat straw brown cigarette paper and started rolling a smoke.  We just stood in silence, still holding the skunk by the back legs and wishing that we could sink right into the ground.  We were both anticipating the whipping that was sure to come.

Before our father could say any more, our mother came from the house.  “Oh my good Lord!  PEE-YEW!  Just look at the two of you!  We will have to bury your clothes and you won’t have any winter coats!  You get to the smokehouse right now and get those smelly clothes off!”

Never mind that right now, Evy,” Dad said evenly as he rose to stand over us.  He scratched a match on the seat of his overalls and his blue eyes were steely and squinted as he lighted his cigarette and blew smoke over our drooping heads.  “Boys,” he said, “I ain’t aiming to raise me no thieves nor liars.  Now I know that you ain’t lied to me but that there trap belonged to someone and so does the skunk that it caught.  Conrad, you said you kilt it—you can turn right around and march right back and put that skunk right where you found it.”

I did not protest.  I well knew the import of that implacable tone of voice.  My instinct was to protest that it was all Richard’s idea and his fault but I also knew there was no point in that.  I had thrown the rock and I actually took the skunk out of the trap.  I simply turned to go and tugged at the skunk carcass.

Richard stopped me by hanging onto his leg of the skunk.  “It wasn’t just him, Pa.  I…well…I reckon it was my idea in the first place.  He didn’t want to take the skunk; didn’t really want nothin’ to do with it but I talked him into it, I reckon.”

Some long time later I recalled that at that point there was a subtle change of expression on Dad’s face.  The thundercloud softened and I think it may have been pride—pride that we had stood up and each took a share of the blame.

“It’s heavy, {Pa,” Richard continued.  “I’ll help him carry it back.”

As we turned to go, Mother protested, “It will be dark soon, Ernest, and it is a long way over there.  Supper is almost ready and we have to get the boys cleaned up!”

“Boys big enough to kill a skunk and take it out of a trap are big enough to walk in the dark,” Dad said evenly.  “And never you mind supper.  They’ll it it cold or go to bed without when we get them cleaned up and some of that stink off them.”

He looked keenly at the two of us.  “Now let this be a lesson to you boys.  Stealin’ don’t pay.  Furthermore, even if you kept that skunk and sold that hide it would not half pay for those sheepskin coats you have ruined.  Now git—and don’t stop short ‘cause I may be behind you watching.”  He turned abruptly and went back to splitting wood while we trudged off across the pasture dragging the heavy skunk between us.

It was very dark and cold when enough time had elapsed for us to get to the trap and back.  Mother had a steaming washtub of hot water by the kitchen stove and was waiting with strong laundry soap and the juice of canned tomatoes for the skunk odor.  Dad buried the sheepskin coats.  I do not recall how he got replacements, but I know that we never went to school cold.

I realize that my account of the episode of the stark skunk leaves a question.  Did we lug that heavy carcass the more than two miles back to the trap on Maze Creek in the dark?  Well, there are a lot of open pastures in the rolling hills where we could have seen (until it got totally dark) if our father was following us.  There were also areas of woodland, underbrush, and ditches where the soil was loose and might be easy to dig.  We were gone long enough to get there and back, but I reckon Richard and I are the only ones who might know what finally happened to that danged skunk—only after more than fifty years our memories sometimes fail us.

Going to see a man about a horse

Buckskin

The first thing Dad needed when we moved onto that little forty-acre farm was a team of mules or horses.  As it turned out, he wound up with a more mismatched team than the mules Red and Old Blue that we had on the Doc Hunt place.  He scouted around and finally bought a team of horses from over near Greenfield, about twenty miles from Bona.  They made a dandy team.  One horse was a chunky sorrel gelding with a white blaze face.  He was well-muscled and was about the size of a quarter horse—great for riding—which we did bareback because we did not own a saddle.  The other horse was a dainty black mare not more than fourteen hands high.

They were both willing and made a good team but a problem developed the first time Dad started to plow with them.  It turned out that the mare had a bad shoulder.  After a few hours of plowing she was limping and her shoulder was swollen.  I do not know if the man who sold them knew about the shoulder, but when Dad called him he agreed to take back the mare.

To save the money for a truck, which he did not have, my father decided that I would ride the mare back to Greenfield while he went elsewhere to dicker for another horse.  He borrowed a Model T from one of our uncles because we did not have a car at the time.  He also borrowed a saddle for me to use for the twenty-mile trip to Greenfield.

I was tickled to death to get to ride the mare all that way by myself, and in a saddle instead of bareback.  I did not know that I was going to get so saddle-sore that I would have to eat my supper standing up.  I had hardly ever gotten to ride in a saddle.  Most always we just rode a mule to the fields with the harness on or else went bareback.  I figured it would be a great adventure to ride all that way.

Right after breakfast my mother packed me a lunch in my half gallon syrup pail school lunch bucket while Dad saddled the mare.  Her swollen shoulder had pretty well gone down overnight, but she still limped a little and Dad cautioned me to just ride her at a walk or slow trot.  He gave me directions how to get to the horse trader’s place and said that he would meet me there in the middle of the afternoon.

I sat grandly off down the road through Dadeville—a “cowboy” in faded blue bib overalls, clodhopper shoes (I figured you shouldn’t ride with bare feet in the stirrups of a saddle), blue hickory shirt, and a very battered and tattered straw sombrero on my tousled coppery hair over my round freckled face.  The work saddle was well worn, but the leather creaked satisfactorily.  In my active imagination the lame little black mare was a big stallion and I was the black-clad marshal of Tombstone galloping across the western range in a silver-ornamented saddle with a rifle scabbard and with six-guns strapped to my thighs.

Proceeding at the mare’s limping walk, we passed through Dadeville four miles south of Bona in about an hour.  I very rarely got more than two miles from home so it was indeed a big adventure to be in “strange country” and see some folks along the way that I did not know.

Another hour or so later I came to the ford across the Little Sac River.  As I mentioned before, a river ford is a shallow place where a river can be crossed when there is no bridge.  These days there is a high bridge over the Little Sac at that point and the road is straight and paved with black top.  In those days there was only a rocky dirt road that meandered down the bluff and across the river at a shallow place where rocks and gravel had been dumped to form an underwater roadbed.  The shallow riffle it formed was less than knee deep so that a horse or someone on foot did not have to swim.  Cars could be driven across, too, since automobiles were built much higher off the ground back then.  A modern car could not have made it.

I got off the mare at the ford and watered both her and me in the cool clear water of the small river.  I wasted some time piddling around with some crawdads and watching a couple of dragon flies hovering over the water, then rode on toward Tarrytown where the dirt country road would hit the paved highway between Greenfield and Springfield.  At the Tarrytown junction I decided that it must be time to stop and have lunch.  I did not own a watch, but the sun was high overhead by then and it was getting pretty warm.  I tied the mare in the shade of an oak tree, taking off her bridle so she could graze a little, and ate my lunch of biscuits and bacon.

After more than three hours in the saddle it was a relief to rest my behind.  I loafed a while and got to watching a tumble bug pushing his load across the road.

Tumble bugs are big black beetles almost the size of a man’s thumb.  They live on cow manure that they store in their burrows for the winter.

The way a tumble bug gets the manure (and also the name) is that they find a fairly fresh cowpile and make a ball of it about an inch in diameter.  The beetle then rolls the ball by standing on its front legs and tumbling the ball with its back legs in the direction it wants to go.  I do not know hw he knows what direction he is going since his head is down and he is going backwards.  I always intended to follow one sometime and see where he took the ball of cow manure, but a tumble bug moves pretty slow, what with getting the ball around rocks and stuff, so I always ran out of patience and quit watching.

The old tumble bug was pushing his ball along, leaving a little trail in the dust.  I watched him hit a piece of flat sandrock and moved that out of his way.  I might have stayed there longer except I heard a car in the distance and thought it might be my father.  I quick bridled the mare, got back into the saddle, and headed for Greenfield which was still nearly ten miles away.

My father came by in the Model T about the time I was in sight of the Greenfield water water—sticking up out of the green trees around this courthouse square.  Dad stopped the car and repeated his instructions as to how to find the farm that I was to take the mare to, then he headed on into town.

When I finally got there, I had been in that saddle for over five hours and I sure was glad to get off that horse.  My behind was sore, my legs were stiff and felt bowed even though I had ridden part of the time with a leg hooked over the saddle horn.

We put the saddle in the back of the Model T touring car.  As we left town, Dad said that he had found another horse over west of Bona toward Cane Hill and that we would go get it.  I sure groaned inwardly because I had had enough of the saddle for a while, but I did not say anything because it was something that had to be done.  Dad did say that it was only about three and a half miles from our house.

It was getting close to sunset when we got to the farm to get the new horse.  That horse proved to be something else when they led him out of the barn.  He was the biggest buckskin horse I ever saw—probably near eighteen hands tall.  He was big-muscled, had almost a roman nose, shaggy mane, and feet about the size of dinner plates at the end of his long legs.  Inevitably, his name was “Buck.”

Fortunately, Buck was a gentle old critter and we were to find that he was a joy to ride once you got up onto him.  In spite of those huge feet, he was a smooth-gaited pacer.  He never trotted, he paced—throwing those big feet out and plopping along the dusty road.  The ride was as smooth and easy as sitting in a rocking chair.  With all that size, when Buck galloped he really thundered down the road!

This time I was neither marshal of Tombstone, Hoot Gibson, or Tom Mix.  I was by then a very tired and hungry little country boy with a very sore backside.  It was nearly dark when I turned onto the road to Bona and, although I was perfectly accustomed to roaming familiar countryside in the dark, I was in strange territory for the first couple of miles.  The dark hallows that road dipped through seemed ominous as the last of the sun faded.

I was still about half a mile short of where the road crosses Maze Creek—the boundry of home territory—when I really spooked myself.  There was a very dark hollow ahead that got me to thinking about “The Legend of Sleepy Hallow” which I had recently read.  The more I thought about it, the more I imagined that the headless horseman might be riding up behind me.  I was looking back more than I was looking ahead and the hairs on the nape of my neck were prickling.

Just when I was at the bottom of that dark hollow, a screech owl cut loose in the brush nearby.  Now, if you have never heard a screech owl in a dark night, you have missed a very chilling sound.  A screech owl is very small, about the size of a man’s fist, but he can wake the dead.  He does not hoot like a respectable owl, but lets out a scream that could almost be a mountain lion or a banshee.  At least I think so, although I have never heard a banshee wail.

The scream of that little old screech owl did it.  I panicked, kicked that old buckskin in the ribs, slapped his withers with the end of the reins, and we went thundering up the road at a wild gallop.  There were a couple of people up ahead walking toward Bona in the darkness.  When that big old buckskin charged past, they took to the ditch!  Short as I was and hunched over the saddle horn, they probably thought I was the headless horseman!

We thundered across the wooden bridge over Maze Creek and I did not pull that horse up until we got up the hill to Bona and I turned him for home.  With a few familiar lights around me, I soon settled down and my heart quit pounding, but nothing in this world ever looked better to me than the soft yellow lamplight in the kitchen window at home.  The beans and macaroni that Mother had saved for me tasted wonderful—but I ate standing up at the kitchen counter.