Sammy Turner was two years older than me. We
ran around together a lot in the 1950’s. We had a call. “Whoo, Whoo, Whooie e
ooo!” That call carried over the top of whip-poor-will hill between our houses, and
pretty soon we would be on a great adventure. He was a leader, I was a great
follower, and somehow I got into a lot of trouble following Sammy.
We decided to build a club house up on
top of the hill. The small pines, chopped down, made a great frame. We
went to an old barn, barely standing, and salvaged lots of planks. One day we
went back to the old barn, and it was flat on the ground. We must have removed
a key plank the day before. When the clubhouse was just about built, we
made up the club rules, wrote them down, folded up the rule sheet and stuck
them in a crack. The next day, when we took out our rule sheet, I saw Dad had
been there. Another rule had been added.
“Do not cut any more pines belonging to
John Gillum.”
Sometimes, after harvesting our peanuts,
we would hang tow sacks (city people call them gunny sacks) full of peanuts up
in the smokehouse. Sammy and Mack Carter, a cousin, finally got in the habit of
coming by and manipulating me, two years younger, into sneaking into the
smokehouse and getting them a good supply. I made a tiny hole in the
bottom of a bag. After this happened a few times, I guess Dad caught on,
because one day I snuck in, and Dad was in there, sewing the hole up with a
needle and thread. One good glare from Dad was all I needed, and I hauled out
of there and never tried that again. Dad never cared how many I ate, because he
knew how hard I worked and I deserved them. But furnishing the neighborhood
boys, who he knew did not work as hard, went against his grain.
As JR Turner once told me, “The
Gillum’s were not like other people.”
Once, Sammy decided we could catch perch
in Stowe Creek by feeling under the rocks and grabbing them. That worked well,
until we pulled out a big water moccasin! That was the end of that.
Sammy had another good idea. We stuck
needles in the end of our arrows, put on an extra shirt for armor, and shot
them at each other. Fortunately, we were not very accurate.
Another idea was to lay a .22 shell on
the concrete, reach around the corner of their rock cellar, and hit it with a
hammer. I nixed that one. Even I knew better than that.
Sammy and I spent a lot of time looking
for arrowheads. One of our favorite places to look was down close to the river.
There were plowed fields there then, but now they are covered with tall pines.
One Sunday, as we started out, Dad said, “Don't get out of our pasture.” Well,
the good hunting was well past our pasture. When we got to the river, two miles
out of our pasture, we decided to cross it and look on the other side. After we
explored awhile, we tried to return to the Hale Ford, where we had crossed.
Every time we reached the river, all we could find was wide and deep water. We
could not cross. Well, we could have swam, but it was a little cold to relish
that. We finally headed downriver and came out at Rover Bridge, a couple of
miles downriver.
About sundown, we drug in home. Dad
said, “Sammy, maybe you need to stop coming over here so much.” I had cows to
feed and, since Dad was waiting for me, I got right to it. Finally Dad said, “I
was down in the pasture today, and I didn't see you there.”
“We decided to hunt arrowheads in the
woods,” I lied.
“No wonder you didn't find any,” he knowingly
said. I totally deserved a whipping that day, but he let me slide.
A different trip to the river with Sammy,
which Mom had nixed, earned me my only real whipping Mom ever gave me. Mom took
me out under the persimmon tree. She had a big limb. I was taller than her
then, and I just kinda looked at that small woman headed toward me with that
limb, and I sorta smirked. She got hold of me with one arm, and we went round
and round with her working on me with that big limb. You could hear my screams
all over that hill. I never doubted her abilities after that.
My older siblings filled me in early as
to what Dad was capable of, so I never tested him much. A certain look over the
top of his glasses and “putt, putt, putt!” was all I usually needed to keep me
in line. I never could figure out what that meant exactly, and I never wanted
to know. If anybody knows what “put, put, put” means, I would now really like
to know.
Sammy and I built two carts that we could
sit on and steer. A piece of wood for a steering wheel with wires running to
the front wheel area did the trick. We had trails made through the pines on the
side of the hill, and it was great fun. One day Sammy showed up with a
car steering wheel for his cart. I was jealous. Well, I went home and started
going through my brother Harold's stuff he had stored. He was a mechanic in the
Air Force at that time. I found something that looked like half a car steering
wheel, so I got that. It worked great. By the time I totaled my cart against a
tree at the bottom of that hill, this cart thing was getting old anyway,
so I left it there.
Some 50 years later, Ken Gillum, Harold's
son, called me up and said, “You would never believe what I found up on the
hill. I can't figure it out! A B-29 steering wheel! Did you ever hear of a B-29
crashing up on the hill?”
I told him, “Ken, I think I can
help you out on that one.”
A year or two ago, one of Sammy's
teachers at Fourche Valley School in the 1950’s told me, “Sammy was the smartest
student I ever had. He was so far ahead of everybody else, he was bored. He
spent his time thinking of troublesome things to do. He helped me out a lot in
deciding teaching was not for me.”
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