Hoot Owls, Bacon, and Boats

Recently, I had the pleasure of relating this story at the Tea Ladies of the Saint James Goose Creek Parish Area Annual Tea.

It was one of those days in early summer. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and all was right with the world. It was the day of our big adventure. Jimbo Dillashaw and I were going on our great adventure. Of course, when you're ten years old, every adventure is a big one. Jimbo Dillashaw was my very best friend. We were about the same age, but he was a little shorter and I was a little rounder. His bright red hair was cut in a crew cut while my brown hair was cut short as well. Sometimes I would call him "Frenchy" and it would make him angry even though he was a descendant of the French Huguenots. His family name had been de la Shaw.

We had packed up our backpacks. We didn't have fancy backpacks like they have now, but ours were army surplus ones in o.d. green with U.S. stenciled on them. Jimbo's mama had dropped him off at our house on her way to town. So we ready to go. We would go through the barnyard on our way to the back side of the farm where we were going to camp. There  was a deep gully there. To us it was the Grand Canyon. We just had to get there.

We entered the barnyard. On the left was a small building which looked like a privy but was actually where we stored all the harness, which we called gears, for the mules.  Next to it was the hog pen. There were two storage buildings which we called cribs. One of those cribs held corn that we fed to the animals and where I would shell some for us.  We would take the shelled corn, about a half bushel, to Shiburg mill. There the miller would grind it into cornmeal for mama to make cornbread and hush puppies. Shinburg was also near Jimbo’s house.  On the back of the barnyard was a gap to the pasture beyond and fence to the right side. On the right side of the barnyard were stables for the mules. Nearer the front gate was a loading chute for loading cows on a truck to take them to the sale barn. In the middle of the barnyard was a big barn with stables for the milk cows.

Jimbo and I  had almost crossed the barnyard when he said to me, “Ain’t that that new bull y’all just got over there?”

“Yeah, it is,” I said, noting the young Black Angus bull my uncle had just bought. He weighed less than a thousand pounds but would grow up.

Jimbo says, “Tony, I’ll bet you could lasso that little ole bull just like the cowboys do!”

I thought about it a minute or so. We were big fans of cowboy movies.  We had seen the cowboys lasso cattle many times in the movies we had seen with Grandma at the Carolina Theater.

“Yep, I can do it,” I said, answering the challenge. “Tell you what to do. Go around the barn and get the bull to follow you around to the loading chute.  I’ll be sitting on the fence there with a rope ready to lasso that rascal!”

Jimbo popped to attention and gave me a right hand salute, “Yes, sir!”

I did not think Jimbo would have any trouble attracting the bull; after all, he had that red hair and was wearing a red shirt.

I went up to the gear house and found a brand new plow line, made a loop in it, and fed the long end through the loop.  That made my lasso. I felt just like a cowboy as I twirled it overhead. Back in the barnyard, I positioned myself on the fence and waited. I yelled, “Jimbo, where are you?”

Within  few moments I heard Jimbo yell and the thunder of running feet, and they weren’t Jimbo’s. Around the corner of the barn they came. Jimbo’s red shirt in the wind behind him. He was beatin’ feet! A few feet behind him was the bull, his head lowered, snorting and making that angry bull sound. As they passed by me, I slung my lasso.  The loop dropped over the bull’s head and around his neck. The rope tightened; I tightened my grip. I flew from the fence and nose dived into the ground. The bull did not slow but ran like a caffeinated jack rabbit. Jimbo had ducked into one of the barn stalls.  The bull drug me around the barn about three times before I realized he wasn’t going to stop. I’m not always the sharpest knife in the drawer.  I released the rope and brought my body to a screeching halt.  When I stood up and began to brush myself off Jimbo came out of the stable and walked up to me laughing his head off.

“Whew,” he said with his nose turned up, “You sure do stink!”

I looked at the front of my shirt and pants. I had old cow patties, new cow patties, big cow patties, and  little cow patties all over my clothes. I think I had hit every cow pattie in the barnyard.  If I did not get some clean clothes, Jimbo would complain about the smell and spoil our adventure.  But, it would take time away from our big adventure for me to change clothes. What is more important to a ten-year-old boy? Clean clothes or a big adventure? Against my better judgement I sneaked back into the house to change clothes. I had to be very quiet so Momma would not hear me. She, no doubt, would have some harsh words to say to me about the dirty clothes. Luckily I got changed and stuffed the dirty clothes in the corner beside the wardrobe. I would be long gone before she found the dirty clothes.

Soon I was back in the barnyard with Jimbo. We hiked to the far side of the farm to the Grand Canyon. We made our camp on the flat sandy bottom of the big gully. The sides were fairly steep, and we had slid to the bottom. Fortunately, when we looked for firewood, there was plenty supplied by a fallen pine tree. We found some rocks to make a fire ring and hung our food bag from a scraggly sapling which was jutting out from the wall of the canyon. It took about a half dozen kitchen matches to get the fire lite. soon the fire was burning brightly as I set the cast iron frying pan atop it. Jimbo dug a can of Star Fort hash out of the food bag and tossed it to me. "you gonna open it?" he asked.

"You better do it," I said, "My Hoppy knife doesn't have a can opener."

"Roy was always a better prepared cowboy!"

"No, just the Roy Rogers knife has a can opener. Roy ain't no better cowboy than Hopalong Cassidy. No way,  no how, Frenchy!"

Jimbo's face turned a little red and then he started dancing around and singing, "Tony's got a girlfriend, Tony's got a girlfriend!"

"Stop it! Stop it!" I yelled as I cocked back my fist to hit him.

"Okay, okay," he said, "You know why I'm saying that. At school Debbie Cochran peeled an apple and throwed the peeling over her shoulder and when she looked at it, it had made a great big 't'. My sister told me all about it. I'll stop but you better stop calling me Frenchy!"

"Okay. Blood brothers, right?" I said. We shook our hands. About three years ago we had each cut the palms of our right hands. Then we shook hands, our blood mixed and we were  blood brothers for life.

He handed me the pocket knife and I used it to open the can of hash. It sizzled as it hit the hot skillet. After I had stirred it a bit, I divided it between us and we ate it with some light bread. i don’t know why we called it light bread. It was white sandwich bread. I’m sure it was Merita bread, which sponsored the Lone Ranger on the radio. Jimbo got to clean up after supper; after all, I had cooked it. He was down on the floor of the canyon scrubbing out the frying pan.

“I’m scrubbing it out with sand,” he said.

“Sand?” I queried.

“Yep, that’s what the cowboys use. I seen it once in a movie,” Jimbo answered.

“Don’t believe I saw that one,” I said is resignation.

We began to lay out our bedrolls for the night when I had to move Jimbo’s backpack. It was heavy. ”Whatcha got in here, Jimbo?” I asked as I opened the backpack.

“Just stuff,” he said.

“It looks like you have a big Bible in here,” I said. “Why do you have this Bible on a camping trip?”

“Well,” he said, “Daddy said that back in the war he knew a soldier that carried a Bible into battle and it saved his life. If the Bible hadn’t stopped a bullet, he would have been dead!”

“I know, Jimbo! I’ve heard that story before. Nobody’s shooting at us here!

“Old man Jenson did!”

“Yes, but we were stealing his watermelons! Now, let’s get some sleep!”

By now the sun was set and twilight was upon us. The sounds of the night were soon around us.  The sound of the crickets seemed deafening, and the call of the whip-poor-will could be heard. In the distance we could hear the big bullfrogs on the pond over the hill. Not all were the sounds of nature. A freight train could be heard going through the town of Bradley, some ten miles away, and there was the sound of an eighteen-wheeler straining to get up Watson’s Hill. We spread out our bedrolls and were soon trying to go to sleep.  I had barely closed my eyes when I heard the Who-who-who… of the great hoot owl.  When I was a little boy my grandmother used to tell me that if I did not go to sleep the ole hoot owl would get me. I’m not sure how being afraid of the hoot owl is supposed to induce sleep, but it worked.  Through the night we were awakened by things seen, heard, or imagined.

Morning came with a heavy dew and sunshine. It took a while to get the fire started, because most of our wood was wet because of the heavy dew. I threw some strips of bacon into the pan followed by a couple of eggs. There is nothing like the smell of bacon frying over a campfire. I noticed my egg was sort of crunchy and gritty when I bit into it. Then I remembered how Jimbo had cleaned the frying pan. “I think I’ll clean the frying pan the next time, Jimbo.” I said.

“I was just doin’ what the cowboys done! I got something in my backpack that might help,” Jimbo said and he reached into his backpack and pulled out two of the biggest and prettiest Baby Ruth candy bars I had ever seen. Jimbo had redeemed himself.

After packing up our gear and cleaning up the campsite, I asked, “What are we going to do now?”

“I think we ought to go fishing! I’ll bet the fish are biting!” Jimbo was excited.

“We ain’t got no fish bait,” I said, “It’s been so dry lately that all the fishing worms have gone so deep in the ground they’re probably halfway to China”

“We’ll use wasps nests,” Jimbo said.

“Okay...but I don’t want to get stung,” I answered with some reservations.

“I bet there’s a big wasp nest up around the barn,” he said as he threw his pack on his shoulders.

We went back to the barnyard and got two bamboo fishing poles from one of the cribs and started looking for wasp nests. Almost immediately Jimbo said, pointing upward, “There’s on there right under the eve of the barn!”

“Better let me knock it down.  I’m a little bit taller than you,”  I said. I used the cane pole to knock down the nest and all the wasps in the world swarmed after us. We ran. As I was going around the corner of the barn I felt a wasp sting my arm. By the time I rounded the second corner I realized that the wasps weren’t chasing us anymore.  Jimbo did not get stung. He could run faster than me.  We sneaked back around the barn to get our prize.  It’s a funny thing about wasps.  They don’t go to the nest on the ground, they go to where it once was under the eve of the barn roof.   We retrieved our treasure and were on the way to the pond at the bottom of the hill.  In the 1950’s the federal government had subsidized the construction of farm ponds and this was one of those. As we walked through the hardwoods toward the pond, which was only a few hundred yards from the barnyard, Jimbo said, “That looks like a boat on the pond!”

“I believe it is.  Momma said she thought that Stiefle fellow put a boat in here.  She said he probably stole it.  She said all them Stiefles steal,”  I told him.

“Maybe we can use it to get out into the middle of the pond where the big fish are!”

We walked around the pond, which was about three acres, to where the boat was.  It was chained to a pine tree.

Jimbo said, “I bet if I look around I’ll find a key to that padlock around here on the ground”.

“You're crazy, Jimbo!” I said.  He never ceased to amaze me.

In a few minutes he returned carrying a rock.  It wasn’t real big; bigger than a softball but smaller than a basketball. Then He dropped it. The rock fell directly on the padlock, which magically opened.

“See, I told you I could find a key  Now let’s get to fishing,” he said.

We launched the boat and used our hands for paddles to get the boat into the middle of the pond.  We were about to bait our hooks when I saw movement on the top of the ridge.

“Jimbo,” I said in a low voice, “someone’s coming!”

“What we gonna do?”

“Let’s get in the water and hang onto the boat.  That way they will only see the boat!” I said hurriedly as I began to climb into the water. Jimbo followed me and soon we were hanging on the side of the boat. And then I heard it. A scream like I had never heard before.

“Yee-ee-eek...Helen, them boys fell out of that old bateaux and drowned!”

I recognized the voice. It was my grandmother.  And I recognized the next voice a few minutes later. That voice was my mother’s. She called me by my full name: Charlie Tony Young.  When your mama calls you by your full name, you’re in trouble.

If my memory serves me correctly, it was after labor Day and school had started before I could sit down comfortably again.