The Summer of 1956

     Mike Ford, my city boy cousin, arrived at our farm from California one morning in June, 1956.  Life on our Arkansas farm was a constant battle with assorted animals for our crops. Mike had never been out of the Los Angeles area before. The stage was set.

     Soon after Mike's arrival, the raccoons attacked the corn patch, which was in the roasting ear stage, in force. Every coon in the bottoms seemed to show up at dark. My dog Tooter, Mike, and I were assigned the task of protecting our patch. I was excited to have someone with me, but a little apprehensive about how my city boy cousin would do. But it wouldn't take long for him to figure it out.

     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 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 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 sensible solution came to mind, I called, “Do something, Mike!”

     He hit the coon on the head with the knife, and it just got mean. So I acted. I jumped up, planning to hold the tail by the right hand, slide my hunting knife (actually, a U.S. Marines combat knife) out of it's scabbard, and hit it on the head. But by the time I 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 by a momentary flash of good sense, and I shook it loose. Tooter joined the chase then, because he was still a young dog, and 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 big 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 that 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. Later that night as we lay in our sleeping bags on the hardwood floor in my room, scratching at the chigger bites on our legs, Mike confided, “I would sure like to have some scars like that to take back to California.” I felt a surge of pride swell up in my heart.

     A few days later, Mike went down to run the traps we had sat out in our corn patch, got too close to a squirrel or a coon or some such animal, and got his own battle wounds. For days, he pulled the scabs from those wounds, so that the scars would be visible when he wore them back to California.

     As the corn matured, the crows moved in. Hundreds of crows. Our focus turned to them. One who has never experienced the crow as an enemy cannot possibly appreciate the cunning and intellect of a wild crow. Without a gun, we could get close, like the tame golf course variety of today. But with a gun in our hand, they knew what that meant, and we could get almost in range before they abandoned the ear of corn and flew, laughing and calling to the others, or maybe at us, as they flew.

     Mike and I built a blind in our patch. As we entered, one guard crow watched from the tree line. We waited hours; not a crow showed. When we finally gave up in disgust, heading for the house, the crows would always flog in and cover the patch when we got out of range.

     One day Mike finally discovered a chink in their armor. A crow does not count well. We both entered the blind, one of us would leave, and the crows would flog in on top of the remaining shooter, discovering their error in math too late.

     These crows also provided a source of spending money. Yell county had a fifty cent bounty on crow heads, simply show them to the county clerk (Fay Mathis, I believe it was) and collect the reward. However, the first time we proudly sat a fruit jar full of aging crow heads on his desk, he suddenly decided he could trust us, as he fled his desk, holding his nose. From now on, we would only have to come in and tell him how many we had.

     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 trapline in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. All he could catch were cats and ground squirrels, though.

     Just this last summer we met up again. We talked about the old farm. He told me that summer in Arkansas over 50 years earlier had influenced the course of his life. And as he talked about the many trips he made into the wilds of the west, I thought about that summer in 1956, and how my city cousin had turned country boy and friend. And I realized it had also influenced the course of mine.


If you like this story, please share. Thanks for your time, and your attention.