The summer vacations finally rolled around even out in the far west side of Oklahoma ... but when you are a third grader in Miss Mustang’s class .. it sure takes a long time coming around. But by gosh, the magic day came finally in May of 1950.
Finally --- three nice long, hot months away from the trials and problems of solving fractions -- after all, why does it matter if Tommy has 3/4ths as much pie as James does when the damn thing was first baked or whatever? No one has ever knocked on my door since and asked about a portion of a pie since third grade nor do I ever expect them to. I didn't win any spelling contests either for that matter ... and only got in one fight that year that I recall.
The first days of summer were really wonderful. The
blazing heat of July was still a month away and Dad's old bamboo fly rod
and a short walk of about a mile to the creek just was no ‘biggie’ and
was performed daily ... catching a few ‘yellowbelly’ grasshoppers on the
dusty road to the creek. Then just a little hike down the creek to some
deep holes and every toss
brought a fat perch to the bank. Inevitably, the hopper supply
ran out, so we just put our feet in the cool creek water, after leaning
down for a long drink. Gosh, it was great. One thing though,
before drinking it sure paid to have to look upstream .. once after a nice
long drink we noticed a dead possum in the water just upstream .. no consequences
of seriousness came of it though.
Then a dreaded hike home with a stringer made of a forked willow stick full of perch and a cat or two ... the sun was usually burning down by the time we headed home. Actually there was a shortcut through the pasture, but the fly in the ointment was that the neighbors ol’ shorthorn bull lived there. It sure paid to peek over each hill before showing your hat, just in case the devil was in sight ... if he wasn’t there, then no sweat, Chet.
Even had a wonderful ol’ Granny who lived with us that cleaned the fish. Now can you beat that for luck.
I had a ancient old Remington single shot .22 and from time to time, Dad would spring for a box of ‘shorts’ for us. Cost: $0.35 at the grocery store. They were used damn miserly since resupply depended on Dad’s finances -- which were usually seriously low and he had an obligation to buy some licorice candy for my sisters once in while, too. No shots at tin cans - ever. But we had a good sized prairie dog town only a half mile from the house .. and a few shots at the very closest dogs had to be taken just to keep ‘em on their toes. Can’t remember hitting very many, and I don’t believe a one ever stayed on top for us to collect after a hit.
Now, the other problem was that summer came to an end and back to Horace Mann Elementary for more torture. But there was some joys along the way. The school bus took over an hour to get to our house .. and the trip to some of the ranches was a long way over and a long way back. So the driver let us out to play in the road til he came back along in half hour or so. One time he was taking the ‘census’ as bus drivers did at that time and was writing down the information from the lady of the house. All us kids took off for the big barn to play in the loft in the hay til time to go on home. One goofy kid named ‘Freddie’ tossed a pile of hay down from the loft with the idea that we could jump from the loft into the hay and have a gob of fun. Actually not a bad idea, but no one wanted to be first to jump since the loft was a lot higher than it first looked. No problem .. we would just throw Freddie down to check ‘er out .. if he did OK, then we all could safely jump. Heck of it was, Freddie wasn’t going for the idea at all. We ganged up on the little devil and he dug in his heels to beat hell.... but we overpowered ol’ Fred and made a run for the edge of the loft. We launched his butt, but overshot the hay by quite a bit and Freddie hit the dirt like a sack of corn. Damn, we thought he was dead -- he didn’t move for a while and he sure looked dead to us. But then finally he rolled around on the ground and started to try to talk but had the wind knocked out of him. Scared the crap out of us kids and Freddie wasn’t too happy either. He finally quit bawling and started breathing normally again ... we had to promise him a ton of goodies so he wouldn’t tell the bus driver.
Jackrabbits though -- Well, pardner, let me tell you. They were thick and dumb. When I got older, I bought an old ‘49 Harley Davidson and got a hell of a deal on a High Standard Double Nine revolver .. paid 20 bucks for it on Saturday night in a barbershop in town. I was 15 or 16 years old at the time and $20 to me was a pile of sheckles, but Man a good revolver was the thing for jack rabbits especially since you could tie it on the handlebars of the old Harley and ‘sickle’ down the road for jacks - sand and all.
Oh before I forget .. the old ‘double nine’ had a slight defect. The rear sight was the dovetail slide-in kind. Well, it slid out somewhere along the way. No Problem .. just took a clothespin and sawed off the end and glued it on in the dovetail slot .. then took a file and made a ‘V’ notch in it and painted the whole mess black .. Actually it didn’t look that bad and worked good, too. A holster at the saddle shop in town cost 4 bucks and the rig was ready for action. By that time, I could afford .22 long rifle ammo, too .. way better than the ‘shorts’ we used in third grade, you know.
Now back to the jacks ... toward evening, if you chuckled along in third gear on the old Harley, you would see jacks along the edges of pastures and wheat fields close to the road. I haven’t a clue why they didn’t take off but the dumb beasts just sat there. Just haul out the ol’ pistol and blaze away .. only ones that ran off were the ‘near misses’ that threw dirt in their faces .. the rest would tolerate misses and just set there. Can you imagine that? Huge fun and we even thought our few neighbors all appreciated getting rid of the stinking rabbits. It is said a jack will eat as much grass in a week as a cow does in a day .. so economics show that seven jacks in a pasture would eat the same as a cow does every day ... damned if I know who came up with that equation .. but I know some pastures had 100 jacks or more in it. We did our best to up the grass availability for cows .. but don’t suppose we made much difference.
Then there was one time along when I was 18 or 19 or so years old. My brother, his girlfriend and my girlfriend (I had a rather plump girlfriend at the time of whom I was fairly proud) and I were coming along an old country road after checking windmills and cattle for my Dad. I was driving the old Chevy half ton pickup (a ‘53 model) and feeling rather pleased with myself. I saw a buzzard circling around up ahead and told everyone I believed I would just pot the thing on the wing with my sixshooter. I had no prayer of even scaring the old buzzard, but stuck my head out the window and launched a round in his general direction ... You ain’t going to believe this, but here came the old bird headed for earth .. Wonder of Wonders !!!!! I acted like it was nothing at all and I could do that all day if I really wanted to. The old buzzard landed in a plowed field about 100 yards from the road and began walking around. I stated it was no sweat, I’d just shoot him again to finish him off. Again, I had less chance of hitting the buzzard at a 100 yards with a wore out sixgun than I had of avoiding the draft (which was none at all), but took a decent bead and tripped the trigger ... DAMN, over went the buzzard dead as a carp on a bank. Hell, I was even ‘GEE WHIZZED’ to the point I stuttered for a week. That would never happen again in a hundred years, but it sure happened that day ... Oh, my fat girlfriend was impressed as all git out, and we just passed 32 years of marriage. Oh well, what the heck, I made two fine shots anyway - and you can’t have everything turn out perfect all the time.