6. FOUR SQUIRRELS AND A WATERMELON
The 7th grade meant I was a man now, and I got to get me a gun. Now I don’t mean a Red Rider BB Gun or a toy, but you know the kind that shoots bullets, the real kind of bullets. I loved it! I hunted almost every day, I even hunted before the school bus ran and I certainly went hunting every day after school. Well, almost every day anyway.
But…… more on that later on.
So let me tell you this true story. I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and anything but the truth. Folks, all kiddin’ aside, this REALLY did happen.
Since I hunted all the time, I figured I’d take a yard rake and rake me a path through the woods. Hey, I must have raked 2 or 3 miles of path through the woods. This was so’s I’d have a quiet place to walk while’s I was hunting squirrels. I could sneak up on them better than a hawk could.
But, on this day I only had 3 shot gun shells with me, but who cares, I was still going to kill supper. We didn’t eat dinner, we ate supper. Well anyway I shot me 3 squirrels right off the bat. Heck, I’d just got started, but might as well head home since I was outta ammo anyway. Well I was headin’ home and low and behold I saw me a squirrel up in a tree, maybe 30 feet off the ground. I thought to myself, If I’d scream right before this varmint jumps to the next tree, I’d scare the pee-pee out of him, and he’d fall. Then, if I had my act together and moved fast enough I’d hit him with the butt of my gun on the way down.
Well my Mom taught me not to lie, and of course I always did what she said so this is the honest to God truth.
Well, right before this critter jumped, he squatted on his haunches, and I yelled. I’m telling you I screamed so loud it echoed for what seemed like about 5 minutes. Sure enough that squirrel flinched, jumped and missed his branch. But, I was ready for him. I took the butt end of my gun and swung as hard as I could, and by-crackey, I hit him.
I think I stood there soaking in the shock and wonder of what had happened and recounting the story so’s I could get it just right when I retold it. That was the day I killed 4 squirrels with 3 shells- Scouts honor.
To this day I think its ought to be in a world record book or something, and man what I woulda given to have me a witness there that day.
Most of the time there were 3 or 4 of us kids (I mean men), that would go hunting together. We’d go across Clinton Highway to an old dirt road that was called Dynamite road.
It was a long road, maybe three or four miles long and just a little more than a path. Now you could drive on it, I certainly proved that later on in my teen years. But, two cars could have no way passed each other that’s for sure.
We could all spread out and what we’d call hunt together. It sure was fun, not one of us really knew what we were doing, but we sure thought we did, after all we were “men” right?
We probably spent most of our week-ends trompin’ together in these woods, shooting squirrels, rabbits, birds, hey, whatever we could find. We would start out at one end of Dynamite Road and hunt until it came out again on the highway, down next to the Hitchen Post. At night that road was used as a lover’s lane (we knew this was true, because of all the “evidence” left lying around on the ground). Anyway, this was a fun place for a feller to spend his teenage years, either hunting or making out, it was fun.
Living in Claxton, our house was right off Clinton highway, and about a mile from a country store called Conner’s market. At least five times a week or so, our Mom would send one of us kids to that store to buy milk, bread or whatever. On every trip to the store as I walked down that busy highway, I’d look for soda bottles, we’d call them coke, or dope bottles so’s I could cash ‘em in. I always did find at least three or four and this would keep me in spending cash to buy my favorite drink or a couple more of those Baby Ruth candy bars. I don’t ever remember not having at least some cash jingling in my pocket. Back then three cents wasn’t bad, but if one had fifteen cents in his pocket, I was rich.
In the summers of the early to mid-60’s, we’d go across the highway to this cow pasture that was all grown up with who knows what kind of weeds. But in the mist of that conglomeration of weeds grew thorny blackberry bushes. Us kids would pick them blackberries to sell for a dollar a gallon. It was not hard to find some old lady to buy them from us, so hey why not, right?
One day, after pickin’ those hand staining berries all day, we run across this watermelon patch right in the middle of that field, with a fence around it.
Scoping it out, we sat under a shade tree to make a plan on how we were going to raid it the next coming night. In the summer time it didn’t get dark ‘til about 9:30, so we had to come up with a plan that would work for all three of us.
I was going to spend the night with Steve while Steve was spending the night with Jimmy and Jimmy was spending the night at my house. Our planning was working out and all things were arranged. That next night we stumbled through those woods and thorns, crawled on our bellies and swiped all the water melons those little teenage arms could carry.
Did this about three times a week until one day in the bright sun light picking blackberries, we looked over towards our favorite melon patch and saw a sign on a post that read:
“One of these watermelons has been poisoned”.
This threw us for a loop. What were we going to do? Our entertainment was coming to an end, all because some grumpy old man wanted to keep that acre of melons to himself.
Folks, this wasn’t good for us men, you know we were teenager and certainly believed we were men, but not to be skunked by the selfishness of a greedy old man that wanted to keep his own watermelons to himself.
We had to come up with a plan, and a plan we did make. We were to meet again that night, to make one more raid on that patch before our new found ‘sand box’ was taken away from us.
So that night, just after dark, we met and took off on that long tract across the highway, and through the woods, trying to dodge the blackberry thorn. It wasn’t easy because the moon wasn’t out that night as it had been previously. After crawling some quarter of a mile on our bellies, we were right to the edge of the fence that had recently become our favorite after dark entertainment.
But this time, we made and took our own little sign. Steve drug it the whole way. He’d use it to ward off the thorns, so he had it a little easier than Jimmy and myself had it.
Anyway, I took that sign on a stick and crawled to the middle of that melon patch, where I stuck it in the ground for all to see that came within a half mile of that delicious watermelon patch.
I can’t even imagine, or maybe we could, what that old man thought when he woke up in the morning to see another sign in the middle of his beautiful green, mouthwatering melon patch. I could just see the look on his face when he read,
“Two watermelons have been poisoned”!