Farm life

BLACK SNAKES AND A NAKED WOMAN

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I have a fear of snakes. Not a phobia of snakes. Just given the choice of petting a kitten or petting a snake I’m going to pick the kitten…every time! While I don’t have a hatred of snakes I also don’t want to live with them. We have nearly ninety acres of woodlands, streams, hills and valleys. They need to stay out there where they belong. Just after we moved in to Hemlock Hills, we found snakeskins…loooooong snakeskins as in five feet plus and they weren’t out in the woodlands, streams, hills and valleys. We found them under the house, in the attic and behind the paneling cladding our bead board walls. The next spring, we would find out where those snakeskins came from.

It was a late March day when I first made the acquaintance of one of my black rat snakes. Laying in the sun, he was not nearly as scared of me as I was of him…or her. How does one tell? How many steps do you run when you first see a snake lying next to your foot? My escape was more of a combination hop and lunge followed by three rapid steps before my mind said, “Shut it down, it was a black snake and nothing poisonous.” It was a huge reptile, as was its mate. They were a matching pair of near six footers I saw together several days later. Both had recently shed their skin and their black skin seemed to glisten in bright sunshine.

Late one afternoon I saw my three puppies sitting outside the back door leading onto our combination back porch wash room which was adjacent to our kitchen. As I continued past them I told them, “You can sit there and wait but your Mommy (Linda Gail) is not here.” There was no reaction except for wagging tails and their attention seemed to focus on the back door which rarely closed on its own and was always slightly ajar. My attention was also drawn to the door when I noticed six inches of rat snake tail peeking out from underneath. Oh pooh! I ran around and went in the front, jogged to the kitchen and found the rat snake occupying the kitchen, back porch and steps leading to it…ALL AT THE SAME TIME! I stepped toward Snakey hoping it would retreat. It did, right under the dryer. Crap! Okay if I rock the dryer maybe I can entice it to move…but it might move right up my britches leg. If I crawl on top of the dryer maybe I can shake it enough to make Snakey move…that is just where Linda found me. “What are you doing?” She was not happy or impressed with my answer. We decided to open the porch door and close the kitchen door and wait it out. It must have worked.

Every time I watch NCIS reruns and the Mike Franks’ character is featured I remember my favorite of many favorite Mike Franks’ quotes,

“But the memories we make.
We fill the spaces we live in with them.
That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live,
the longer I live there
the spaces become filled with memories –
of naked women.”

My space is filled with memories, but of only one naked woman. I was and am truly blessed. I smiled at the vision of my bride sprinting nude from our old fashioned bathroom. Sprinting and yelling, “Snake, Snake, Snake!” I imagined the snake, a five-foot plus black rat snake, yelling in my head, “Naked Woman, Naked Woman, Naked Woman,” as it tried to climb the wall behind her. We had returned late to our old non-air conditioned home. The late July heat and humidity were still evident when Linda Gail decided to bathe. Believing the bright overhead incandescent light bulb simply added to the heat, she had entered the bathroom in the dark and after beginning to run her water, stripped, reached down and plugged in the small lamp that sat next to the lavatory. As the light dimly flooded the small bathroom, she found herself staring face to “forked tongue” with a snake that was coiled below the short electrical cord. Typically male, my attention was drawn to the vision of a fit, well put together woman with fabulous…EYES, running naked through the house and not on the snake that was trying to escape in the other direction. There is always a price to go with the vision I was enjoying, the snake had to be removed but first I had to find it. “Here Snakey, Snakey, Snakey!”

I know a lot of people will ask, “Why did you not kill it?” Someone sold me on the fact that black rat snakes were predators willing to eat everything from mice, rats and birds to other snakes, including the poisonous ones and if hungry enough their own species. I would agree that this was sound advice. Until they met unfortunate ends we had no snake or rat problem. They were dispatched to “snake heaven” by an over eager, snake despising home renovator who believed all serpents were minions of the devil. Exit my snakes, enter mice, rats and copperheads. I really don’t have problems with copperheads when they are where they are supposed to be and my yard is not where they are supposed to be. I have two Blue Heeler puppies who think they have been placed on this earth to rid it of all serpents. Not a problem until they get bit by a copperhead and they have been, a couple of times, and have never learned a lesson. Because of this fact, I have found myself rescuing our legless non-poisonous little friends by putting them over the fence with the strong admonishment, “Now don’t come back!” Why don’t they ever listen?

Don Miller has written three books which may be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM
“Inspirational true stories” in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING can be downloaded for $1.99.
“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in FLOPPY PARTS for $.99.
“Southern Stories of the Fifties and Sixties…” in PATHWAYS for $3.99.
All may be purchased in paperback.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE COLD

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Spring is right around the corner. I could feel it in the cold this morning. It was still twenty-nine degrees, plenty cold for here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, but there was a different feel to it. A feeling that winter’s death grip is loosening. A feeling that the rebirth I associate with spring might be on the horizon. It is a feeling of change. I know that winter will attempt to hang on. In this part of the world March snow storms are not uncommon and the last frost date is April fifteenth. BUT IT JUST FEELS DIFFERENT!

As a retired baseball coach my feelings of change may be tied to major league pitchers and catchers reporting to camp or the reports of high school and college scrimmages with their opening dates just around the corner. I remember a game finished in a heavy sleet and another with a wind chill so low that both pitchers combined to pitch a one hitter. I do not miss games in early March. No, winter will hold on as long as it can despite what a ground hog saw or didn’t see.

There are other harbingers. Crocus and buttercups are trying to push up toward the sun. I saw gold and purple finches at my feeder. Time to get some thistle. The main herald is my beautiful red tailed hawk. Well she is not mine but it is the third or fourth year she has made her nest in a dead oak tree on the hill above us. I hear her mating call and know there is a male somewhere and that it won’t be long until they will be training their little “branch hoppers” to fly and hunt.

If weather trends continue like the years before, there will be plenty of great days for baseball practice, a round of golf or even wetting a hook in late February and then March will come in like a lion with strong and mostly cold winds. I see there is possible snow coming next week but there is something about this cold.

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ANIMALS GOING BUMP IN THE NIGHT

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Since only six of you actually saw the original blog I decided to “rebrand,” “re-picture” and “reblog” this in hopes more people would find in enticing. We will see. Two divorces say I have been disappointed before.

Viewed from a distance, sitting on top of a small hill and surrounded by hemlock, poplars and black walnuts, our old farmhouse looks like it might be haunted and must be inhabited by all types of “haints”, poltergeists or spirits. This assumption is especially fitting when viewed during the darkness of night. Some of my students have even made comparisons of Casa de Miller to the “Bates’ Motel” of Alfred Hitchcock fame. So haunted it looks, in the thirty years we have lived here not one Halloween trick-or- treater has had the intestinal fortitude to come to our door despite the brightly burning outside light. I have to admit I have seen unexplained movements just inside of my vision’s periphery and have heard noises I just could not explain as the “creakings” of an old house. “I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

Built in 1888, it sits on top of oak timbers milled from the land it was built upon. Although we did not know it at the time, our old home had beadboard walls and ceilings to go with pine flooring, wavy lead glass windows, and was covered by tin shingles. It also sat bathroom-less with no plumbing or electricity until 1956. My guess is that most of the winter functions “back in the day” took place in the small kitchen due to the heat produced by the cook stove and the close proximity to the path leading to the distant outhouse. The old house also had no insulation until 1956 when shredded paper insulation was blown into the walls. Sixty years later, my guess is the insulation has compressed just a wee bit. Mr. Copeland, Hemlock Hill’s previous owner, was a fount of information with a former minister’s well developed “sense of the spoken word.” In preparation for his retirement, he had purchased the house and land in the 1950’s after it had sat empty for several decades. Later it would be inhabited by human beings off and on until Mr. Copeland finally retired from “preachin’ the Gospel” in the late Seventies. I say “inhabited by human beings” only because it was and still is inhabited by more than just two-legged animals and their four-legged pets as we found out when removing the cheap paneling and ceiling tile covering our beadboard walls and ceilings.

While moving in we noticed the quilting room, complete with quilting racks and their supports, had no paneling or ceiling tile. Mr. Copeland had converted the quilting room into his study and informed us the whole house was done with the old-fashioned beadboard the study sported. He had put cheap quarter-inch paneling up to help insulate the house. Really? Quarter-inch? The next month or so “lifetime” was dedicated to the removal of the ceiling tile and paneling. We found out two things. Similar to his verbal skills, Mr. Copeland believed if one nail would do the job, four ought to be used…more if there happened to be a pine knot nearby. His philosophy seemed to be “Nothing done could be overdone.” The one-by-four-inch strips of wood that held the ceiling tile were almost impossible to get down because of the four ten-penny nails spaced every foot or so. Our second discovery was that Mr. Copeland had no issue about covering up dirt dauber nests or bird pooh. The same was true of the paneling but, at least, he used the small paneling nails…thousands of small paneling nails. There were also several large snakeskins found, not only in the attic but in other rooms as well. Okay…where there are snakeskins….

Old houses make noises. Creaks and groans make me wonder if there is a “life” existing inside of our old home. There were other noises that could not be explained away as just the “settling” of the old house. Some of the ghostly noises we heard emanated from the old attic and a downstairs…for lack of a better descriptor… “cubby hole” in the upstairs master bedroom. Thumps and squeaks with the pitter-patter of little feet led us to believe that there had to be a herd of mice in our downstairs “cubby hole.” There were also those periodic booming sounds as something traversed the metal roof during the darkest moments of the night that didn’t sound like a mouse. One night Linda and I decided to explore the “cubby hole” and its strange noises not really wanting to find a colony of mice. We didn’t. Instead, we found a colony of flying squirrels. It’s amazing what the width of a tail will do to your mood, especially when one of the “big eyed” rodents decided to make his getaway by gliding from a rafter to a small opening that led to the outside. “Rocket J. Squirrel” didn’t stay there. Later we would find colonies in unused chimneys, behind my books in the study. One “little gamester” would send our indoor cat “Minnie Muffin” into a “hissy fit” as it glided back and forth between the fireplace mantle and bookcase in the study. The booming noises on the roof? We still have no idea and just named it a “boomer.”

Typically, male, I came in from a morning of cutting and splitting wood, pulled off my boots and socks, stuffed the socks into the boots and left them in the hallway next to our staircase…for about two weeks. Linda finally took me to task, firstly, over leaving them for her to trip over and secondly, because, according to her highly developed sense of smell, they stank like something dead. I took offense to the idea that my boots stank until I took out a sock and found what I thought was a dead rat rolled up in it. Our simultaneous “GROSS!” exclamation changed to an “OH NOOOOO!” exclamation when it turned out to be a flying squirrel. From here our explanations of its unfortunate demise took two different paths. I said that death was due to it rolling up in the sock and becoming trapped. My love explained that it met the grim reaper after having breathed the stench of my boots.

We may have become too used to the creaks and groans that our home emits…or maybe to the ghosts, spirits or flying squirrels who decided that our home was just too crowded for them. I just don’t hear them anymore and it makes me feel just a bit sad. Those scratches made by the real mice? That’s another story or five for another day.

If you enjoyed this story you may be interested in one of Don’s books

Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING $1.99 on Kindle at http://goo.gl/DiO1hcX
“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu “Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

All maybe purchased as paperbacks.

THINGS GOING BUMP IN THE NIGHT

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Viewed from a distance, sitting on top of a small hill and surrounded by hemlock, poplars and black walnuts, our old farmhouse looks like it might be haunted and must be inhabited by all types of “haints”, poltergeists or spirits. This assumption is especially fitting when viewed during the darkness of night. Some of my students have even made comparisons of Casa de Miller to the “Bates’ Motel” of Alfred Hitchcock fame. So haunted it looks, in the thirty years we have lived here not one Halloween trick-or- treater has had the intestinal fortitude to come to our door despite the brightly burning outside light. I have to admit I have seen unexplained movements just inside of my vision’s periphery and have heard noises I just could not explain as the “creakings” of an old house. “I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

Built in 1888, it sits on top of oak timbers milled from the land it was built upon. Although we did not know it at the time, our old home had beadboard walls and ceilings to go with pine flooring, wavy lead glass windows, and was covered by tin shingles. It also sat bathroom-less with no plumbing or electricity until 1956. My guess is that most of the winter functions “back in the day” took place in the small kitchen due to the heat produced by the cook stove and the close proximity to the path leading to the distant outhouse. The old house also had no insulation until 1956 when shredded paper insulation was blown into the walls. Sixty years later, my guess is the insulation has compressed just a wee bit. Mr. Copeland, Hemlock Hill’s previous owner, was a fount of information with a former minister’s well developed “sense of the spoken word.” In preparation for his retirement, he had purchased the house and land in the 1950’s after it had sat empty for several decades. Later it would be inhabited by human beings off and on until Mr. Copeland finally retired from “preachin’ the Gospel” in the late Seventies. I say “inhabited by human beings” only because it was and still is inhabited by more than just two-legged animals and their four-legged pets as we found out when removing the cheap paneling and ceiling tile covering our beadboard walls and ceilings.

While moving in we noticed the quilting room, complete with quilting racks and their supports, had no paneling or ceiling tile. Mr. Copeland had converted the quilting room into his study and informed us the whole house was done with the old-fashioned beadboard the study sported. He had put cheap quarter-inch paneling up to help insulate the house. Really? Quarter-inch? The next month or so “lifetime” was dedicated to the removal of the ceiling tile and paneling. We found out two things. Similar to his verbal skills, Mr. Copeland believed if one nail would do the job, four ought to be used…more if there happened to be a pine knot nearby. His philosophy seemed to be “Nothing done could be overdone.” The one-by-four-inch strips of wood that held the ceiling tile were almost impossible to get down because of the four ten-penny nails spaced every foot or so. Our second discovery was that Mr. Copeland had no issue about covering up dirt dauber nests or bird pooh. The same was true of the paneling but, at least, he used the small paneling nails…thousands of small paneling nails. There were also several large snakeskins found, not only in the attic but in other rooms as well. Okay…where there are snakeskins….

Old houses make noises. Creaks and groans make me wonder if there is a “life” existing inside of our old home. There were other noises that could not be explained away as just the “settling” of the old house. Some of the ghostly noises we heard emanated from the old attic and a downstairs…for lack of a better descriptor… “cubby hole” in the upstairs master bedroom. Thumps and squeaks with the pitter-patter of little feet led us to believe that there had to be a herd of mice in our downstairs “cubby hole.” There were also those periodic booming sounds as something traversed the metal roof during the darkest moments of the night that didn’t sound like a mouse. One night Linda and I decided to explore the “cubby hole” and its strange noises not really wanting to find a colony of mice. We didn’t. Instead, we found a colony of flying squirrels. It’s amazing what the width of a tail will do to your mood, especially when one of the “big eyed” rodents decided to make his getaway by gliding from a rafter to a small opening that led to the outside. “Rocket J. Squirrel” didn’t stay there. Later we would find colonies in unused chimneys, behind my books in the study. One “little gamester” would send our indoor cat “Minnie Muffin” into a “hissy fit” as it glided back and forth between the fireplace mantle and bookcase in the study. The booming noises on the roof? We still have no idea and just named it a “boomer.”

Typically, male, I came in from a morning of cutting and splitting wood, pulled off my boots and socks, stuffed the socks into the boots and left them in the hallway next to our staircase…for about two weeks. Linda finally took me to task, firstly, over leaving them for her to trip over and secondly, because, according to her highly developed sense of smell, they stank like something dead. I took offense to the idea that my boots stank until I took out a sock and found what I thought was a dead rat rolled up in it. Our simultaneous “GROSS!” exclamation changed to an “OH NOOOOO!” exclamation when it turned out to be a flying squirrel. From here our explanations of its unfortunate demise took two different paths. I said that death was due to it rolling up in the sock and becoming trapped. My love explained that it met the grim reaper after having breathed the stench of my boots.

We may have become too used to the creaks and groans that our home emits…or maybe to the ghosts, spirits or flying squirrels who decided that our home was just too crowded for them. I just don’t hear them anymore and it makes me feel just a bit sad. Those scratches made by the real mice? That’s another story or five for another day.

If you enjoyed this story, you might be interested in Don’s books which maybe downloaded on Kindle
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING $1.99 on Kindle at http://goo.gl/DiO1hcX
“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu “Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V
All maybe purchased as paperbacks.

A GOAT IN THE WELL

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My Bennett family friends had given my wife a tape of a minister delivering the African-American version of a hellfire and brimstone sermon using the story of a goat that had fallen into a well to provide an example of “shaking bad things off and then stomping them down.” The old farmer, not sure of what to do, had decided to bury the goat where it was but the old goat had other ideas. As the soil landed on the goat’s back, he would just shake it off and then stomp it down until finally he had raised the level of the bottom of the well so that he could jump right out. The morale of the story being “No matter how bad things are, just shake them off and stomp them down.” As a child I had heard a variation involving a frog that had fallen into a milk pail and saved himself by kicking so hard he churned the milk into butter. Since then I have heard similar stories using a donkey. For my purposes, I’ll stay with the goat because, for a short period of time, we decided to raise goats.

Linda Gail and I did not actively think out the process and say, “We need to go out and get a goat.” No, as you can tell from my other stories, rarely do we think out anything. A friend of my wife had a goat but because of an impending move, he needed to find a home for the aptly, if not creatively named, Nannie. Nannie, a pet from birth, had been imprinted upon by humans and could not understand why she wasn’t included at the dinner table. There were many times she would startle us. After having found a way out of her little compound and seeing the back door open, she would push her way into the kitchen and say hello. Hello!

Later, when I decided that putting a goat on a leash was not a good idea, I created a fenced-in paddock around a stream covered in briars, small trees and Kudzu and complete with a little goat lean-to. We purchased two Alpine milking goats and stood by watching our new acquisitions in the middle of their plush pasture…starving to death. They wouldn’t eat. A local goat authority, and character in his own right, told me they were too “high fa lutin’” and needed a briar goat to teach them what to eat. He didn’t say, “briar”; he said “Brraaaaar goat.” Then he sold me one for thirty-five dollars. Enter Newt, as in neuter or what is known as a steer goat. It was Newt’s responsibility to teach Nugene and Nicholette what to eat…which turned out to be pretty much anything. Did you pick up on the “N” names? Blame my wife.

Newt was a goofy looking thing. Gray in color, heavy bodied with the skinniest of legs, he had two misshapen horns that gave him an expression of perpetual awe. Turning his head to the side, he always had the look of someone who had a question…like maybe “Why did you cut them off?” Also, he was, first and foremost, a pet. Like Nannie, Newt believed he should be included in all family activities… and in many cases was. Our briar goat was more curious than most cats and this sometimes got him into trouble without the safety net of having nine lives. Once, while staked out in a specific area to eat kudzu, he decided to stick his nose into a hornet’s nest. When I saw him next, his head was the size of a basketball. He was about to choke to death because the dog collar tightened due to his rapidly expanding neck. I quickly released him and then waited for him to die when all of the poison from his head reached his heart. I watched his head literally deflate like the oft spoken of “nickel balloon.” After all of that trauma, he still survived!

One of our Alpines once needed a transfusion…at three in the AM. I was sent home to retrieve Newt to bring him back to the animal hospital so he could supply the blood for the transfusion. With no way to actually transport a goat, I stuffed him into the cab of my pickup and off we went. Thank goodness there were few vehicles on the road at three o’clock in the AM… but there was this one drunk. The look I got from him as he eyed the cab was “Son, that is one ugly closing-time honey!”

Periodically, the old cistern that served as our water source needed to be cleaned and serviced. I discovered the hard way that if the level of sand in the bottom of the dyke accumulated too high, that sand would get into the backflow valve causing it to stay open and the pump would lose its prime. One summer morning I found myself having to clean the dyke and to replace the aforementioned valve. Newt decided he would join me, lending whatever “moron” support I might desire. I thought it was cute but would not think so a few minutes later.

My guess is that Newt’s lineage came from a mountain goat because he always liked to climb to the highest point – up onto a stump, or up onto a rock or into the back of my pickup truck and once even onto the cab. As soon as we got to the cistern, he hopped up on top of the corrugated metal sheet cistern cover and disappeared, in the blink of an eye, when the metal sheet gave way. The look on his face was priceless as was mine I am sure. He was a tall goat and I could clearly see his head peering over the top of the cistern, his face mirroring the “What the f…?” question running through my mind. I remembered the story of the goat in the well but decided burying him was out…although when he decided to explore the hollowed out cave behind the dyke I thought I might have to. When he came back into sight, he stumbled and broke off the backflow valve. For a moment, I dared to ponder how goat BBQ might taste.

All’s well that ends well, I guess. With a lot of straining and pulling, I extracted the hundred and fifty-pound goat from the well and then replaced the backflow valve. Later I had to make an uncomfortable phone call to my wife explaining why she might want to boil any water we might drink or cook with for a while. I understood salamander pooh was okay but just wasn’t sure about goat pooh. Was it my imagination or, for a while, did our drinking water taste a lot like a wet wool blanket smelled?

If you enjoyed this story you might also enjoy:
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle
http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

“Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

TOTALLY ILL EQUIPPED

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BELIEVE IT! Our forefathers were built of sterner stuff!
Our power is off and I am writing this by virtue of the wonderful modern technology we possess, a battery powered laptop. I am also freezing despite the roaring fire I have going and the worry I feel that my lower than normal wood reserves will dwindle to nothing before Blue Ridge Coop gets the power back on. It can’t be much above freezing in here. I also wonder how previous generations survived. You see, here in the “Dark Corner” of upstate South Carolina, we are having a major winter event. I live in the South where most of our “snow storms” would be classified as a mist if it were rain and an inch of snow can bring everything to a screeching halt…except the dairy and bread baking industry. Ours was a doomsday forecast with copious amounts of predicted snow falling followed by freezing rain and sleet followed by more snow. We are on the thin line separating more freezing rain from more snow. I pray we are on the snow side of that line and as dawn breaks I see we probably were. It looks to be some six to eight inches of compacted snow and ice. So let’s get the power back on okay?

Nearly thirty years ago, my wife and I decided to purchase a farmhouse built in 1888. Built on top of oak timbers milled from the land, it had bead board walls and ceilings, pine flooring, wavy lead glass windows, all covered by tin shingles. Thirty years ago we were big on “ambience,” today we are big on “KEEPING WARM!”

The old house sat empty from the Forties until 1956. It also sat bathroom-less with no plumbing or electricity and no heating system other than the five fire places and the wood “cook stove” sitting in the kitchen. It is my guess most of the winter functions “back in the day” took place in the small kitchen due to the heat produced by that the cook stove…and the kitchen’s close proximity to the path that lead to the distant outhouse. The old house also had no insulation until 1956 when shredded paper insulation was blown into the walls. Sixty years later my guess is the insulation has compressed just a wee bit. Thankfully we added a modern “edition” that is well insulated but still the temperature just can’t be much above freezing in here…can it?

Can you imagine keeping five fireplaces and a wood stove fed during the winter months? We found a broken cross cut saw, forgotten in a closet, which I am sure is a tribute to the “stuff” the original owner’s had. I have a top of the line, modern chainsaw and since my last bout of sciatica from splitting wood with an axe and maul, a yearning for a hydraulic splitter. I can’t imagine keeping those fireplaces fed with modern technology much less with just an axe and crosscut saw. Did they just freeze if someone comes down with sciatica? I hear people “yearning for the good old days.” Really? Maybe simpler, less stressed out days. More time to spend with family instead of trekking to and from the office maybe…. Just remember “more family time” might be sitting around the kitchen stove for the heat or family wood cutting and splitting expeditions.

YEAAAAAAA! THE POWER’S BACK ON! Quick turn up the heat! Wait, the furnace thermostat says it’s a balmy sixty degrees. Sure seemed colder. Yes, they were built of sterner stuff…or thicker blood.

BOOMER

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Boomer was named by one of Linda Gail’s basketball players, Cullen Gutshall, during a celebratory gathering to honor their basketball team at the end of a successful season. Celebration wasn’t an unusual occurrence as most of Linda’s basketball and tennis teams were successful. And as usual, I had been roped into assisting. “Have spatula – will grill.” Cullen had decided, with reason, that our large, beautiful, one-eyed and one-legged Rhode Island Red looked like a “Boomer.” I would have named him “Long John Silver” or “Lucky” for obvious reasons…but I am getting ahead of myself.
We had purposely not named any of our chickens for two very good reasons. First, you shouldn’t name what you are planning to eat. Second, chickens and roosters don’t usually come running when you call their names unless, of course, you have a handful of scratch feed to bribe them with. I should clarify that in number one I said planned to eat because I am here to tell you, “We ate nary a one.” Nor did we eat any of the “meat” rabbits we were raising; however, between the rabbits and chickens, we grew wonderful sweet-tasting tomatoes using their droppings as fertilizer. Can you say “organic?”
Boomer was either the luckiest or the unluckiest animal in my barnyard… depending upon your perspective. Unlucky because he was locked in the chicken coop with his son for an entire day. Do you know what two cocks do in order to while away the hours when locked in a chicken coop? I don’t know how long they fought but when I discovered the closed door and opened it, the yet un-named Boomer quickly exited having lost multiple feathers and an eye during the fracas. He had also lost his standing as the flock’s “alpha” male. Boomer did what any loser might do, he ran away and hid. He disappeared for several days until I thought I heard what turned out to be the weakest of “cock-a-doodle-dos.” He had managed to get himself trapped in an old lettuce sack and was in the process of thirsting to death. I had to cut him out as one plastic strand had become wrapped tightly around one of his legs just below where the “drumstick” began. The normally bright yellow shank had turned a shade of sickly gray. I feared he would die from gangrene but instead, several days later, the leg just fell off and he survived! Boomer was as lucky as any one-eyed, one-legged rooster could be!
All things considered, Boomer adapted quite well. He developed a gait that involved stepping with his good leg and then flapping his wings to get him back onto his good leg. It was a “step-flap-step-flap” cadence. When in a hurry, he was quite humorous to watch and as quick as you would expect a one- legged rooster to be. Unfortunately, he was not quick enough. Normally there were two times when he was in a hurry – to get away from the younger rooster or when he was “à la recherche d’amour” …and he was always looking for love. There was a problem. All the hens knew they were faster than he was or knew that all they had to do was hop up onto a fence to escape his advances.
Hopping onto a fence was how he got his name. Cullen watched him use his wings to propel himself onto the fence between two hens. After wobbling like a broken weathervane, he fell off, landing with a thump and a cloud of dust. Cullen laughed like the crazy person she was and exclaimed, “He fell off and went Boom!” After the third or fourth time the name Boomer had stuck. Poor Boomer was no luckier with the ladies than he had been at life. He eventually arrived at the idea of hiding in the shrubbery in hopes that “une jeune fille” might happen by. If he was lucky and a hen walked by, he would explode out of the shrubs and…well this story is rated for all audiences. Unfortunately, the hens adapted and began to stay away from the shrubs. I believe I had said in a previous story that chickens weren’t too bright. I may not have given them enough credit!
I don’t remember how long Boomer lived but I’m sure it was much more than the somewhat average seven years. I am also sure that his longevity was due to the special care and love given to him by Linda Gail. Short of playing the role of a pimp, Linda saw to his every need. Extra food, yummy beetles and caterpillars, a warm place to sleep in the shrubs…I should have had it so good. I’ve always said if the Hindu’s are correct and we are reincarnated, I want to come back as one of Linda’s animals…except the beetles and caterpillars.
Late in his life, Boomer took to lying in the sun in the one spot of the heavily-treed yard that does receive sunlight for a long portion of the day. He would stretch out his wings which were still inky black and the sun would reflect off of them like a freshly-polished black car. The red, orange and yellow on his neck were just as bright as they had been years before. I don’t guess feathers turn gray like hair. Despite his bad luck he had outlived all of our original chickens. In fact, he was so old that he no longer paid attention to the “spring chickens” in our small flock. That was how I found him on his last spring day. He had died quietly in his sleep while lying in the warm sun. When you think about it there might not be a better way in the world to go…in your sleep, contented and warmed by the sun.

COTTON FIELDS…FROM “PATHWAYS”

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As a five or six-year-old I did follow along with the plow as my grandfather furrowed out rows to be planted with cotton seed on a small red hill patch located near my home. I also followed along when he plowed his more fertile fields for tomatoes, corn, squash and beans. Sometimes he even let me try to handle the unwieldy plow but my rows were not very straight. I was his number one field hand…his only field hand until my stinky little brother was born when I was five. The cotton field field had so much red clay I honestly don’t know how anything other than broom straw and rocks grew there. “Little Donnie” would follow along as my PawPaw “geed” and “hawed”, keeping his horse on his path while attempting to create straight rows. My job, in the early spring of the planting season and my life, was to hand water the emerging cotton plants breaking through the dry clay crust on that hill. A bucket would be dipped from a nearby stream and carried to each plant and ladled, a cup at a time, until the process had to be repeated when the bucket emptied, which was much too often. Later as the season turned with the leaves, I would help pick the same cotton when it matured, a very painful process for my young fingers. After filling my small but heavy “poke”, I would follow my grandparents down to the cotton gin located across from Pettus’s store just a hundred yards or so from my house. Here, our cotton would be weighed and graded before being placed with like-graded cotton. The cotton bolls were “ginned”, or seeded, and the remaining fluffy and dirty raw cotton was pressed into five hundred pound bales, wrapped with a thick burlap cloth to be transported by the truck load to the cotton mill. After my grandparents were paid off, I would be rewarded with a trip across the road to Pettus’s store and given a “Sugar Daddy” for my trouble. At the time I could not have been paid better.

A Southern boy comes of age in the Sixties in PATHWAYS Download on #Kindle today at http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

A ROOSTER IN THE POPLAR

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Even when Linda and I have attempted to portray ourselves as actual farmers, more times than not, we have found ourselves in a cross between “Green Acres” and a gothic horror story…or gothic comedy. Most of these forays involved our attempt at “domesticating our animals” which at various times have included goats, rabbits, chickens or all three. I have learned lessons from all but will focus on what I learned from raising chickens…other lessons will be shared later.

I learned very quickly not to say “I need…” or “I might get…” or “We ought to…” in front of my father-in-law. I wish I had mastered this lesson before saying, “I might get a few chickens since we have a coop.” Never allowing grass to grow under his feet, my father-in-law Ralph Porter immediately went on a quest to get Don and Linda some “yard fowl.” I had to stop him when our flock topped thirty “mixed bag” laying hens and three roosters to go with them. Ralph had gone anywhere there might have been someone who was trying to get rid of chickens, tossed them into the back of his covered pickup, and transported them to “Hemlock Hills.” Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks and American Bantams Game Hens began to lay more eggs than we could even give away…until the wildlife came by to sample our “bill of fare.” We found out very quickly that our Reds and Rocks were fair game for foxes, raccoons and possums. Never quite getting the coop secure enough, we reduced our “flock” by about two-thirds. For some reason out of the coop the roosters and game hens seemed to be well-suited to escape the critters. So, “free range” roosting became a safer option… but that led to more lessons to be learned.

Of all the animals on “God’s Green Earth,” chickens must have been hiding when the Good Lord was passing out brains. My God, being a humorous God, decided to do them no favors by creating a bird that can’t really fly. Our surviving game hens who were brighter and more mobile than most breeds took offense to our robbing their nest for eggs and decided to take advantage of our free range farming techniques. They just disappeared. After a while we believed they had been kidnapped by Br’er Fox who had been shopping for dinner. Later in the spring, while sitting in my upstairs study, I was startled to hear the “peep, peep, peep” sounds of baby chicks emanating from outside the open second-story window. The game hens had laid their eggs in the squirrel nests high in our hemlock trees and were hatching them out. Temporarily struck stupid in amazement, Linda and I never considered how they would make their way to the ground. Their mothers hadn’t considered it either. Chickens fly only slightly better than rocks. Chicks? They don’t fly at all but simply make a sound reminiscent of a nut being cracked when they hit the ground. Returning from a local coach’s clinic I was greeted with the vision of sheets strung from tree to tree. Linda Gail had decided that sheets strung under the trees was a better option than running around trying to catch the helpless little things with a butterfly net which we didn’t have. My wife is one of the brighter animals God created and was able to save most of the babies.

As if cascading biddies were not enough, one of my two remaining Rhode Island Red roosters seemed intent on committing suicide. He was the Alpha rooster if there was such a thing. He was a beautiful bird with a mostly black body but with the characteristic red, orange and yellow feathers on his neck and back. He was also rather…confused.

One morning after an attack by the local predators I couldn’t find him. I had heard him but had not been able to locate him when I went on a search. As I walked away from his coop I heard him again, “Cock-a-doodle-doooooooo!” His crowing was coming from far above me. When I looked up into the tallest poplar tree in my yard, I spotted him. Had he been any higher in the tree he would have been on a cloud! Imitating a weathervane, he was swaying from side to side in the light morning breeze. He had hopped to the very top of the poplar tree, limb to limb, until he had run out of limbs. “So how are you coming down?” I muttered to myself just as he decided to show me. In a method resembling an old “football” death dive, “Boomer” as he would later be named, jumped into the air, beating his wings frantically. Scientifically, his efforts at “horizontal velocity” had little effect on his downward or “vertical velocity.” In non-scientific terms, HE FELL LIKE A STONE! Just before landing…crashing…totally wiping out, Boomer tried to get his landing gear down but to no avail. It would be his chest and beak that would stop his fall…all five times that he bounced. I knew he was dead and had visions of WKRP’s Les Nessman exclaiming “Oh, the humanity!” But Boomer fooled me. Picking himself up and ruffling his feathers, he looked at me as if to ask, “Hey, how did I stick that landing? A ten right?” More like “any landing you can walk away from is a good one.” Another lesson learned – Roosters are a lot more resilient than turkeys!

Don Miller has self-published three books which may be downloaded or purchased in paperback on Amazon.
A Southern boy comes of age during the Sixties in PATHWAYS http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V
Forty years of coaching and teaching in “WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING….” http://goo.gl/UE2LPW
An irreverent look at FLOPPY PARTS http://goo.gl/Saivuu

WASTE NOT

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Excerpt from the book PATHWAYS which will be released through Amazon in late November.

When did we become such a disposable society? I wish people would quit disposing in my front yard. When did planned obsolescence become…planned? I remember ranting to a science class about wasting resources before I even knew what planned obsolescence meant. Does that make me clairvoyant? No, it probably makes me Clarabelle the Clown. Just because we can throw away a plastic bottle should we? Why do we change fashions every season? Hems go down, go up, then go down again while ties get wide then narrow then wide again. How many of you actually wear something until it wears out? Blue jeans maybe. How many of you really drive a car until the wheels metaphorically fall off. I’ve tried often. Linda and I bought an ’86 T-Bird with sixteen miles on it. It was a beauty. Two hundred and sixteen thousand miles later, thinking we had “licked all of the red off the candy” we traded it for a Mustang. A local teenage boy bought it…and the now father of three is still driving it. Presently I am actually attempting to see who can hit a quarter million first – me or my ’97 Cherokee “Bessie Mae.” We just cracked one hundred and ninety thousand on the “Bessie Mae” but I may be slightly ahead. Am I the only one to name his cars?

My grandparent’s generation were the ultimate recyclers and repurposers. My grandmother was also huge on sayings, “Early to bed, early to rise”, “a fool and his money” and one that I heard maybe daily was “Waste not, want not.” She lived it. Old plastic Clorox bottles were carefully cleaned, holes punched in the bottom and a hole cut about a third of the way up from the bottom. Why? It would become a martin house that would join a colony of Clorox bottles suspended over the garden providing homes for birds that became part of Nannie’s insect control. Buttons were cutoff of unrepairable clothing that would be later repurposed into patchwork quilts with matching pillow covers. The buttons themselves were put into an old Quaker Oats container for future repurposing when I didn’t play with them. My first set of drums were old Quaker Oats boxes and a really magical “comeback” toy. Shoes were “half-soled” repeatedly, old overalls that had finally given up the ghost were cut into patches to extend the lives of this generation’s overalls and blue jeans.

Fall would herald another type of recycling. Dried corn and beans were gathered, the best put into burlap cloth sacks and suspended from the high rafters of the crib. There they would wait until the spring to be shelled out and replanted to provide the next year’s bounty. Potatoes were spread and separated from each other on old newspapers in the darkest corner of the crib waiting to be made into chowders, salads and mashed potatoes. Those that survived the winter were cut, dividing the eyes, and replanted in the spring to start the cycle of life all over again.

Late in the fall an odd-looking truck would show up. It was the miller’s truck, not to be confused with the Miller’s truck. This was cutting edge technology for the period. Instead of taking your grain to be ground up, the truck showed up to grind your grain. This would be preceded by a flurry of activity as corn was shelled from the cob, dang that really hurts your fingers. Corn was ground into cornmeal and grits and no I had never heard of polenta. Even the cobs were ground into a fine powder that was mixed with water to be fed to our hogs. None of this could be done until my grandmother had chosen her feed sacks. This was the ultimate repurposing. She would use the emptied feed sacks to make “sack” dresses that she sewed on her foot-operated Singer treadle sewing machine. Rarely, until later in life, did my grandmother wear anything other than homemade dresses, many made from old feed sacks. Later they would be repurposed into cleaning rags or tie ups for the tomatoes. If they were a particular favorite they would be put into her scrap bag to become a part of a quilt. I am lucky to have several.