Life Is Good, Memories Are Better

First Rabbit Hunt

I had spent the entire morning desperately attempting to keep pace with my dad and Uncle Johnny and the rest of the hunters. They tore through the prickly briars in anxious pursuit of the echoing chorus of beagles that were trying to turn the rabbit back in our direction. I had learned some time ago to stay in the path cleared by the men in front so as to avoid the cuts and nicks involved in penetrating the thick briars on my own. A few times already during the morning, I had felt the sting of the briars, and had even gotten hung up in the tangle so that either my dad or one of the other men had to give up their vantage in order to come back to free me.

If you’re going to be part of the hunt, son, you’re going to have to learn to keep up and not worry about being stuck by a barb or two. You just have to suck it up and keep going. Uncle Johnny said. I had already heard this twice before that morning from my dad. In spite of the pain I felt from the briars and the slap in the face by a low-hanging tree branch springing back from the wake of the guys in front of me, nothing could destroy the pure joy and excitement of the moment.

As I broke through the thick growth into the clearing, I heard the boom of the 12 gauge, double barrel shotgun and saw the flash of the small green empty cylinder from my dad’s gun. I stood there for just a moment watching my dad slide a new cartridge into the chamber and then thrust the gun toward me and almost whispered, Here, son, you take the next shot. I missed him, but he’ll come right back through here as soon as the dogs catch up.

I wasn’t quite sure if the cobwebs I had been running through were still in my face or in my ears. I couldn’t quite believe what I had just heard my dad say. Could I really do this, I wondered? My cousin, Jimmy, had told me that he had fired his dad’s shotgun and the kick from the recoil almost knocked him down. You just hold the butt of the gun tight against your shoulder, then look right down the barrel of the gun and point it at the rabbit like you were pointing your finger at it. Then you squeeze the trigger when the rabbit is in line with the end of the barrel, Dad said.

Simple, precise instructions were always the rule for Dad and it sounded easy, as I took my position waiting for the rabbit to come back. I could feel my throat tighten and my heart pound as I could hear the chorus of beagles turn the rabbit back in my direction. Dad had placed me in a strategic place so that I would have the first shot when the rabbit broke into the open out of the undergrowth of briars. The other hunters standing like sentinels on the little knob just above me exuded a confidence and excitement that was apparent in the way they held their guns in front of them at a ready position.

Now he’ll come right out from under that clump of honeysuckle right over there, dad said as he pointed in that direction. Just keep a good steady hand, son, and do what I told you. My eyes were transfixed to that spot for so long that my vision was blurring or was it the blur of motion coming from under the clump that caused me to close my eyes momentarily as the shotgun blast exploded in my ears. I had envisioned myself flattened to the ground after firing the gun, but that had not happened. My gun was the only one that had fired and there lay the crumpled ball of fur in front of me.

My excitement was not because I had managed to somehow kill the rabbit, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, seeing the blood. It was because I had managed to fire the shotgun and I was still standing. What my cousin, Jimmy, had said would happen didn’t happen. I slowly and methodically ejected the spent cartridge, picked it up from the ground, and held it to my nose to inhale the peculiar, sulfur odor from the gunpowder. I had smelled this numerous times before when I had gathered spent cartridges from my dad’s gun after he had shot it, but this was different. The scent of this cartridge stirred a feeling of control and power that I had never felt before. This was my first hunting experience and one that I knew I would never forget.

When there are eight children to feed and six of them are always hungry, active boys, most of the time is spent working trying to earn enough money to take care of all the needs of the family. Daddy, for this reason, had very little time to spend in leisure doing the kind of things he dearly loved doing such as he had done on this day of rabbit hunting. But there were some other days that were notable.

The Chimney Tops

The Chimney Tops was a place I had heard Uncle Johnny and Poppa Fletch talk about numerous times. It was a place that I envisioned as in the deep woods on a hill overlooking the water of the Wolftever Creek below. This creek was a little meandering stream in days gone by, but was now the backwaters of the Chickamauga Lake. This lake had been formed a few years before I was born, I guess. The Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, had built another dam across the Tennessee River to provide electric power to the region. This was probably the biggest industry project ever executed by the federal government to "improve’ the living conditions of an extremely rural geographic area. We didn’t know this at the time, but Daddy had nearly drowned in these backwaters a few years earlier when he was wading out into the water of Wolftever Creek in his heavy waders. He stepped into a hidden, deep hole and went down filling up his waders with water. Somehow, my daddy managed to free himself of his heavy, water-filled waders and swim out to freedom. The Chimney Tops received its name tag because at some point in the past, there was a big house that had stood there and a family had inhabited the area. Who they were was a mystery to me, but I imagined a pioneer family who probably had to fight off indian attacks. Whoever they were, they had left only the remnants of a big chimney made of stone to let you know that they had lived there. The large house must have been burned to the ground in one of the indian attacks and the chimney was all that remained.

It was at this same Chimney Tops that we were going to camp out. Daddy announced this one Friday, summer afternoon after he came home from work. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Daddy was going to take all of us camping? The excitement of that announcement touched off a flurry of activity in our house on Snow Hill Road. Mother immediately began making preparations. She packed food, an iron skillet to cook the fish that we were going to catch, along with the potatoes and onions we were going to fry in the skillet. She included blankets and all of the other things we would need to sleep in the woods at the Chimney Tops. I sensed that Mother was more excited than my brothers and I were, but her excitement was for something that none of us would understand at that particular time. This was going to be a nice quiet evening for Mother and Cynthia, my older sister. No hungry boys to feed at supper. No dishes to wash and dry. Just some good peace and solitude. That had to be rare for Momma.

The hike across Poppa Fletches rolling green pastures up to the edge of the woods seemed like a day’s journey. When we finally reached the edge of the woods and made our way across the carpet of soft brown leaves, I felt like there were hidden eyes watching us as we passed under the big oak trees. There must be Indians out there somewhere watching us proceed up the path to the Chimney Tops, I thought, but as long as daddy was leading the way, I felt very safe.

We reached the Chimney Tops after what seemed like hours. We had emerged from the Indian infested woods and walked out onto a little- used road that winded across the crest of the ridge and led us to the promontory overlooking the Wolftever Creek, a backwater portion of the Chickamauga Lake. What a perfect place to make our camp! Oh no! There were no tents to be pitched. We didn’t have such fancy things. Besides, we were tough guys. We could just sleep out in the open on the ground.

Daddy showed each of us how to gather up leaves and grass to cushion the ground under our blankets that we would spread out to sleep on. Building the fire was the most important task we had in front of us. Daddy could always make that task look simple. I am certain that is how my younger brother, Joe, became so adept at accomplishing that task. Those camping skills we were taught on this trip have stuck with me and have even become useful numerous times.

After we had prepared our campsite and eaten our supper, the dark curtain of the forest around us had begun closing in. Our supper was fried taters and fried onions. I can clearly remember the taste and smell that seemed to permeate the entire woods. Even now when I sit down to eat this dish after my wife has cooked it, I can catch a glimmer of those sights and sounds and smells at the Chimney Tops, but it’s not the same, of course. It just smells better in the woods.

We had already strategically lined the creek bank with long poles that had a throw line attached to it with hook and sinker and bait. Some hooks were baited with minnows and some with worms. We were going to catch a whompus cat with this bait. That’s what Daddy had told us as we were staking up each pole. Lying there in the woods, listening to the summer insects and the soft gurgle of the water below us, I had the feeling that this night should go on forever. There are nights, you know, that should not end. This was one.

Listen, Daddy whispered loud enough for all of us to hear. Did you hear that whompus cat ? I had no idea what a whompus cat" looked like, but I could hear it and I knew it was huge!

My first cousin, Sammy, who had come to the Chimney Tops with us had become too frightened and had to be taken back to my Uncle Charles’ house. I was really glad because Sammy was sleeping next to me on my blanket and I knew that Sammy sometimes wet the bed! So now I’d have the blanket to myself without the threat of getting wet. Lying there looking up through the canopy of oaks at the stars, I made a wish as a shooting star shot across the tops of the trees. A shooting star is a rare thing to see. Grandmother Morgan told me that when you see a shooting star, if you make a wish, it will come true. I wished that this night would never end, and the memories never have.

Mud-ball War

It seemed like only a few days later that this same parcel of farmland became something opposite of pleasant. It became a nightmare for my brothers and me. Although as I recall the events of this dry fall day in August, I know that it was probably two or three years later than the experience at the Chimney Tops.

Mother had packed us all lunches early that morning consisting, as I recall, of cheese sandwiches. My brother, David, says it was potatoes and onions as usual and an old skillet to fry them in, and some cookies. He is probably right because we had already become addicted to fried taters and onions. We were going to be playing in our favorite place. There were big erosion ditches that cut across the expansive open fields of Pete Boyd’s farm. Pete was an eccentric recluse who very seldom was seen outside his house. If he came out, it was to walk about 2 miles to Pete Combs’ store to buy a pack of cigarettes. In a recent conversation I had with Raymond Monger, a childhood playmate, Raymond said that Pete would walk to the store and buy his cigarettes on credit. He would then walk back the next day and pay for them. This recounting by Raymond further convinced me that my childhood recollections of this old eccentric were accurate. Anyway, this was a perfect place for boys to spend a day. The weather had been unusually dry and there was little green pasture left. The fields that surrounded these erosion ditches were seared brown and very dry.

Mr. Boyd, who owned the land, had not used these fields for his cattle to graze in for quite a while, so they were covered with sage brush and undergrowth that provided good cover for the rabbits and other wild creatures. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing farm animals on his property.

We divided into two warring groups as soon as we got to the ditches. In my group were Mark Fairbanks, Louis Combs, my brother, Joe, and me. We were the youngest of the whole group. Our enemies were my older brothers, Fletcher and David, Charlie Rogers, and Punk Plott. The decision was made to first build our forts at opposite ends of the ditch. We would each have some time to stockpile our forts with the weapons we were going to use, big red-clay mud balls. My brother, Joe, recognizing our distinct disadvantage in age and physical strength, proposed that several of our mud balls should have a small rock rolled up in it so that the impact would be more effective. What a great idea, I thought, and all of our warriors agreed.

We spent a good part of the morning building our fort and gathering our deadly ammunition into the fort. By the time we were ready for battle, we had accumulated a veritable arsenal.

We had earlier agreed that the chosen leader of each