Tooter was not
always perfect. Late one summer afternoon, Mom sent me to herd her
young chickens into the coop for the night. Any chickens not locked
up securely at night would probably become a meal for a coon, or
maybe a mink. A mink might eat part of one, but kill all of them,
just for fun. The chickens kept circling the coop in front of me.
Round and round we went, with no apparent signs of progress. Finally,
in exasperation, I called Tooter into action. He quickly developed a
liking for this new game, and he was good at it. We soon had every
chicken in the coop.
Late the next
afternoon, as I came in from the fields, what I saw beside the porch
stopped me short. A dozen dead chickens were stacked in a row.
Tooter, I soon found out, had so enjoyed the game that he continued
it the next day. He had “herded” every chicken to death!
I dreaded
facing Dad. I knew what was coming. Chicken-killing dogs could not be
tolerated on the farm. Finally, the inevitable could be avoided no
longer. “Son,” Dad said slowly, “that many killings would get
anyone a death sentence.” My dad was a hard man. He had to be,
scratching a living out of this hill farm. Hard living requires hard
decisions. Dad, however, more than anyone else, understood the bond
between Tooter and me. Tooter was spared, and I promised to teach him
never to kill the chickens again. I guess Tooter understood, because
he never did.
The summer of
1956 brought a new friend and companion to the farm. Mike Ford, my
city-boy cousin, arrived from California one morning in June. Mike
had never been out of the Los Angeles area before, and even the
routine occurrences on our hill farm became new adventures to him.
Soon after
Mike's arrival, the raccoons attacked our corn patch, which was in
the roasting ear stage, in force. We had to have that corn to get our
cows through the winter, plus we ate cornbread about every day. Every
coon in the bottoms seemed to show up at dark. Tooter, Mike, and I
were assigned the task of protecting our patch. The stage was set for
one of our greatest adventures.
Early one warm
summer night we headed for the patch. No sooner had we reached it
than Tooter was on a hot trail. Mike and I ran down a corn middle. We
could hear Tooter running toward us, knocking down corn stalks as he
ran. A silent, furry shadow flashed in front of me, barely visible in
the dim moonlight. Close behind came Tooter. Reason and common sense
left me, and I joined the chase, momentarily not noticing that I was
doing as much damage to the corn as the coons were, tearing and
scattering stalks as I ran. Suddenly, the game changed. The big coon
turned to fight. Tooter, having better control of his senses than
anyone else at the moment, jumped aside. I don't think I really made
a decision to do what I did next, for I like to think my decision
making process is a little better than this display. And I knew about
coons. A coon like this can be a bundle of screaming and biting fury.
They often whip a dog, and can kill them if they get on them in the
water. I dived at the coon. I like to think I reconsidered in mid
air, but I don't really think I did. I sat on the coon, on my knees.
I held the ringed tail tightly in both hands, while the masked face
peered out from behind me. The coon was strangely quiet, giving me a
moment to consider my situation. I asked myself, “How do I get
off?” when no reasonable solution came to mind, I called, “do
something, Mike!” I don't remember exactly what he did, so I asked
him when I visited him this past summer. He said he hit the coon on
the head with a knife, and it just got mean. So I acted. I jumped
up, holding the tail by the right hand, planning to slide my hunting
knife out of it's scabbard, and hit it over the head. Now, my knife
was not just any hunting knife, certainly not one a 12 year old
should be carrying. It was a US Marines knife, designed for hand to
hand combat. Perfect for my needs now. But by the time I had began my
draw, my fingers had just touched the handle when the coon went
crazy. It was wrapped tightly around my right arm, biting and
squalling, and my arm was turning into sausage. I shook it loose,
only to have it latch onto my right leg, slightly above the knee. I
was struck with a momentary flash of good sense, and I turned it
loose. Tooter joined the chase then, for, still being a young dog,
he liked it better when the coon was running from him. Myself, I was
in the heat of battle now, and I stayed close behind. Again the coon
turned to fight, raking Tooter with his claws. When I entered the
fray this time, the knife was in my hand, and it was quickly over.
We proudly
carried the big coon back to the house, and I basked in the attention
and glory as everyone examined my wounds. We did not think much about
things such as Rabies in those days. Mike later confided, “I would
sure like to have some scars like that to take back to California.”
A few days later, Mike went down to run the traps we sat out at the
corn patch, got too close to a squirrel or coon or some such animal,
and got his own battle wounds. For days, he pulled the scabs from the
wounds, to promote scarring, and he proudly wore his scars back to
California.
The summer was
drawing to a close. Mike was ready to ride the train three days back
to Los Angeles. When he arrived, he got a dog, named him Tooter. He
bought traps, and sat out a trap line in the concrete jungle of Los
Angeles. All he could catch were cats and ground squirrels, though.
He told me this year that the summer in Arkansas influenced the
course of his life. He later made many trips into the wilds of the
west. He talked about me showing him how to spread a spider web across
the hole in a hollow tree, to see if it was being used. I didn't
remember any of that.
I did not see
Mike again until he returned from Viet Nam as a demolitions expert,
sporting a Teflon orbit around one eye. We visited Wing a couple of
days and talked about old times. When he got back to California, he
had a rude awakening. People there did not appreciate him and the
other returning veterans. By the time he had completed college, he
had had enough. He went to Australia, taught school a couple of
years. Then he played basketball on a touring team of displaced
American veterans awhile. When he returned to California, pushing
thirty, he applied for a teaching job. Remembering his earlier
treatment, he did not mention to the Superintendent interviewing him
about his war experience. But when the man asked him why, at near
thirty, he was just now applying for a job, he came clean. The man, a
veteran himself it turns out, stood up, shook his hand, and hired him
on the spot. It turned out to be a 30-year job.
________________________________________________________
Guess what! My new book, SPREADING WING, is finished! I'm in the process of putting it together now, then start working to get it published. My 18 year old grand daughter, Caylie, came up with the name. I knew it was the one when I first heard it, because I cried. Actually, I've cried a lot in writing this book. It will be between 250 and 300 pages.
I want to take this time to thank all my readers of this blog, from all of the thirty three countries readers have shown up from. You have given of your time, and your attention, both a very valuable thing. At my age, much more valuable than money. By the way, Caylie named this blog, also. I could not do either project without Barbara, who has came up our stairs hundreds, or thousands, of times to correct some stupid mistake I have made on this computer. My total mastery of this computer is limited to exactly what I need to know to be able to do this..Barbara, with her absolute refusal to be defeated by any project she starts, pretty well figured this computer thing out by herself. Me, I tend to try, and try, then give up and call Barbara.
Though my book project is finishing up, my blog is not. I'm having way too much fun keeping track of my stats, telling me how many, and from where, are reading. I check it a couple of times a day, when I'm home. I've got many stories yet to be told.
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