First Kill, Thanksgiving Day, 1952

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I remember my favorite Thanksgiving Day quite well.  It was when I was eight. I suppose I was an average farm boy in the red clay area of South Carolina. Thanksgiving Day was always a special day for us. It was at the end of the fall and the onset of winter. All the crops had been harvested for the year and most of the winter firewood had been cut. We had moved the wood burning stoves from an out building inside the farmhouse  to heat it for the winter. My chore list now included carrying in firewood after getting home from school every day. If the weather remained cold we would be butchering hogs in a few days.

I woke at daybreak. I was excited. After getting dressed I broke the ice on a bucket of water in the kitchen. There was a small table in the corner of the room with two buckets of water and a wash basin. There was a mirror over the table Daddy used while shaving. With a red and white enameled dipper I splashed some water into the basin and proceeded to wash my face. I used the towel on the hook beside the table to dry my face. Sort of.

In the living room I opened the door of the wood stove which we referred to as a heater and poked the chunk of red oak which  had been burning all night. The coals glowed and I laid some splinters of fat lighter on the coals. They burst into flames. I quickly added some small pieces of dry pine and then some hardwood. By then the the rest of the family; my mom, dad, and sister were up, and the room was much warmer.  The heater was actually sitting in front of a fireplace which had been modified to accept the stove pipe from the heater. To the right of the heater was a closet and Daddy’s chair, where he would sit and read the newspaper or the Bible. Of course, it never got very warm because of the cracks in the floor and walls.

Momma cooked what she referred to as a “sawmill breakfast”. We feasted on grits, eggs, salt cured ham, biscuits, and gravy. There was peach preserves, homemade of course, to have with some of the hot buttered cats head buttermilk biscuits, too. Daddy said I had to bring some more wood to put on the back porch after breakfast. He said I probably wouldn’t be around in the afternoon to do it. I asked him why, but he said to do it because he said so. More times than I would like to admit I had felt my father’s leather strap on my behind, because I did not do as I was told. I asked no more questions and began my task.

The wood pile was near the dog house. Peggy, the little tan and white pointer was there. She was chained to the doghouse. I thought she should have been free but Daddy said, “No!”. She was hungry. I knew Daddy did not feed her much during hunting season. He said dogs hunted better when they were hungry. I had seen him beat her too. He said, “A stick on the behind sent a message to the mind. It works on dogs and small boys”. I didn’t know about dogs, but I knew worked on small boys.  By the time I had carried the wood to the porch and done some more chores it was time for Thanksgiving dinner. Daddy said a long blessing before we got a chance to eat. We never had turkey or goose. At our house it was always a hen, usually the one that ran the slowest. Momma baked the hen and served it with dressing made of leftover cornbread and biscuits with seasonings. We had store-bought  cranberry sauce. I love cranberry sauce. I even like it just like jelly in a buttered biscuit. We had green beans and Irish potatoes and giblet gravy too. I have always been suspicious of those bits of meat  in giblet gravy.  Iced tea was our beverage of choice. Dessert was chocolate cake. My sister and I got to pull the pully bone, and I got the long piece.  I made a wish for a new bicycle, but that wish never came true.

My biggest surprise of my childhood came right after we got up from the table. My father only did three things for fun. He enjoyed listening to baseball games on the radio.  He also enjoyed listening to the Democratic Political convention on radio.  And, he was an avid bird hunter; that is, a bobwhite quail hunter. Bird hunting season in South Carolina began on Thanksgiving Day. Many times I had seen him put on some old leather leggings, his tan hunting jacket, and that old tan cap before picking up that battered old 12 gauge Winchester shotgun.  He would walk out the door and pull out that old brass US Army Military Police whistle to call the bird dog. I usually followed with my toy gun of choice, which was usually a double barrelled pop-gun. But on that day, Thanksgiving Day in 1952, he did something a bit different. Right after the meal he reached into the warmer over the wood cook stove for a couple of baked sweet potatoes and he handed me one.  The potatoes would be our snack if we got hungry.  I stuffed mine in my pocket and followed him into our parents bedroom. He knelt down beside the bed and reached underneath it, then stood up holding a long thin object wrapped in brown paper. He ripped the paper off and held it in front of me and said, “Your momma is against this, but I think you’re old enough. They were having a sale at Planters Hardware, and I got this for you”. I did not know what to say, as I looked at the blue steel barrel and walnut stock. “It’s a 16 gauge single-shot Iver Johnson,” he said. He quickly added, “Whaddya gotta say?”

“T-t-thank-you, Sir,” I stuttered.

“Owning and using a gun is a big responsibility.  It’s a man’s responsibility! And there are a few rules you got to follow.  If you break these rules for any reason, I’ll take away the gun and you’ll never see it again!  Do you understand?”

“Yes,Sir!”

“Never point the gun at anything you are not going to shoot!”

“Never bring a loaded gun into this house!”

“You got that?”

I said, “Yes sir!” and repeated what he said word for word.

“Let’s go kill some pottages,” he said as he led me out of the bedroom.  On the way out the back door my momma hung her head down and I heard her say, “Y’all do be careful’.

As soon as we were out of the house I went over to the dog house and released Peggy. She jumped up and put her feet on my chest. She licked my face. I pushed her away, and she began running around me in a circle. But that all stopped when she heard the sound of that M.P. whistle.

“When can I shoot my gun?” I asked, as we left the back yard and began to walk into a large field that had once been filled with wheat.  

“You gotta load it first. Here, let me help you,” Daddy said.

I pushed the lever behind the hammer to the right and the breech opened. I retrieved a shot shell from my coat pocket and inserted it into the breech.  The breech snapped closed. I put the gun to my shoulder. It was too big for me, but I knew I would grow a bit in the coming years.

Daddy said, “I’m gonna throw this can up into the air for you to shoot at, okay?”

“Wait, I gotta cock it!”

“Okay, tell me when you’re ready.”

I took the gun from my shoulder and pulled the hammer back with my thumb. It was hard and made a loud metallic click when cocked. As I settled the gun stock back into my shoulder I told Daddy to throw the can.  The can flew into the air and I aimed the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The noise was very loud and the recoil of the shotgun hurt my shoulder.

“That tin can is still safe,” said Daddy.

“I know I’ll hit it next time!” I said anxiously.

“Ain’t gonna be a next time. Shotgun shells cost too much money. You’ll get better.”

I loaded another shell into the gun and told myself I could hit a real bird.

We continued to walk across the big field, with Peggy going in front of us walking in large circles with her nose to the ground. The field was about ten acres with trees on three sides. The hardwoods on the edge of the field were no longer crimson and gold. What leaves were left on the trees were dirty brown. About fifteen yards from the edge of the field Peggy froze in mid step. Daddy put his forefinger to his lips and then motioned for me to come forward. In a matter of seconds the sixteen gauge was cocked and against my shoulder. We three inched forward. Then the sound of a hundred wings broke the stillness of the air. Daddy’s big Winchester barked twice.  And I shot too. Many of the quail flew toward the woods. Some did not. Peggy had her nose to the ground and Daddy was saying, “Dead bird, dead bird!”

Peggy displayed her legendary skills as a retriever by bringing my daddy three bobwhite quail. Daddy yelled, “Single bird!”, and Peggy put her nose back to the ground. Peggy and Daddy found two more birds at the edge of the field. These were added to Daddy’s game bag.

Quail have short wings and can fly fast, but not too far. Sometimes they stay together in a covey, and sometimes they scatter. There was tall brush, grass and briars at the edge of the field. Daddy held hi gun over his head and barged right through. One caveat about following my daddy through the woods was never to follow him closely. The briars and brush he pushed out of his way would spring back and hit you. I got scratched up by some tall briars as we left the field and entered the woods. I bled. I showed Daddy my bloody hand but he just said, “It’s skin.  It’ll grow back.”

The covey of birds in the  field became the only ones we would see that day. Daddy decided that I could not return home empty handed. Maybe I needed to validate his gun purchase. I don’t know and did not question. It seemed we would find no more birds. Rabbits were out of the question. We decided that squirrels were to be my target. But we didn’t see any. Daddy said we were probably making so much noise that the squirrels were in hiding. But Daddy spotted a squirrel nest high in a hickory tree.  “Maybe there’s something in it,” Daddy said and added, “ Blow it outta the tree, Son!”

“Okay,” I said. I found a sweet gum sapling and rested the barrel of my gun on a branch to steady my aim. I cocked the gun, took a deep breath, held the gun snugly to my sore shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. Bang! The nest was gone. It disintegrated into thin air. The smell of exploded gunpowder filled the air.

“Well, I’ll be doggone. There was a squirrel in that nest. You got your first kill, Son!” Daddy said with some kind of bravado.

I gingerly picked up the furry gray animal. The feeling of elation eluded me.

We ate our sweet potatoes and got a drink of cold water from a shallow stream. Peggy drank right beside me.  It was near darkness, twilight,  when we emerged from the woods. Momma would have supper on the table by the time we got home.

I slept well that night. I did most of my hunting in my dreams after that Thanksgiving Day, and never killed a wild animal again.