Our barn consisted of a large central area which extended from front to back, with three stalls on either side. The first stall on the north side was the feed room, with an entry door to the front of the barn. The opposite wall from the entry was lined with three fifty-five gallon barrels for feed storage, and two more barrels on the adjacent wall to the right. The wall to the left was about five feet high and consisted of horizontal wood slats with five or six inches between them and a gate into the center area. The other stalls were similarly built.
By the time I was around twelve years of age, we converted the stall opposite the feed room into an area for our chickens. The wood slats were removed and replaced with chicken wire and the outside wall removed, allowing full access to a fenced-in corral area. One of my responsibilities was feeding the chickens when I got home from school. The chickens became accustomed to the routine and would typically gather inside in the late afternoon, anticipating their feeding time. One of my favorite mischievous activities was to slowly open the feed room door, and enter as I crouched as low as possible to keep the chickens from seeing me. Once inside, I would jump up into view and yell loudly, catching them off guard and scaring them significantly. I took great delight in watching them scatter, partially running, partially flying, bumping into one another, and squawking loudly as they fled the barn. When the feathers settled and I was able to stop laughing, I would scatter their feed in the stall and they would come running back inside to devour my offering, obviously not afraid of me. I did that on a regular basis, with the same result each time, and providing me with much laughter.
One afternoon I went out to feed the chickens, and planned to startle them in the usual manner. I crept into the feed room, and as I began to rise up, my peripheral vision caught movement. I quickly turned my head to the right and found myself face to face with a huge chicken snake stretched out across all three feed barrels, staring at me and flicking it’s tongue! I don’t know if the chickens ever saw me, because less than two seconds later I had covered the one hundred feet of lawn in front of the barn and found myself out near our driveway, with my heart pounding at, surely, two hundred beats per minute! I could have probably made the state tournament for the 100 yard dash! The next few times I went into the feed room, my head was on a swivel, and I wasn’t interested in scaring chickens! I suppose many would call that….KARMA…!!
My early to mid teen years produced additional responsibilities. For one, I became in charge of the afternoon milking of our two cows. I was old enough and big enough to handle Sissy and her cantankerous ways, and properly manage the process. Each day, when I got home from school, and daily through the summer, I filled a bucket with warm water and proceeded to the barn, where Beauty and Sissy would be waiting at the back gate. I put feed in their individual troughs and let them in. Taking my seat on the milk stool, I would wash the udder and teats with the water, place the milk bucket on the ground and begin the process of squeezing two teats at a time until the udder was empty. Often, one of the cats would come by, nosing around the bucket, and I would aim a stream of milk at its face, like I had seen Daddy do on many occasions. It was fun to watch the cat try to catch the stream in its mouth, and end up licking milk off its fur. When I was done, the bucket of milk went to the house to be strained through cheesecloth, transferred to bottles, and placed in the refrigerator.
I had a cousin who lived in Beaumont, who spent a few days with us one summer, and after observing the milking process, refused to drink any more of our milk. He would rather have the kind that they bought at the store! We could not convince him that they were basically the same. Ours just had more butter-fat that had to be stirred up before serving.
I can only remember one time that we made butter from our milk. I think the process was too time consuming when we could so easily buy it at the grocery store. We would, however, often let it sit outside refrigeration until it curdled, and then make clabber and sometimes cottage cheese. I would only eat those if they were slathered with sugar.
In 1956, the planning and acquisition phase was completed for construction of the new Interstate 10 highway that would run from Florida to California; as part of the Dwight D Eisenhower national interstate system. The section that ran from Orange, Texas to Beaumont passed just a few hundred feet behind the back corner of my grandparent’s property. There was a mayhaw thicket just outside their property, where we often picked the fruit to make jelly, so I was familiar with that area of the forest. I would often walk through those woods and watch the giant Caterpillar bulldozers as they shoved over huge trees and cleared underbrush into big piles to be burned, in order to prepare the right-of-way. It was fascinating to observe the shaping of the roadbed and ditches for four lanes of main highway with two lane service roads on either side. Huge dump trucks carried loads and loads of sand from nearby sand pits to elevate the surface above the often low lying terrain. As a young teen, I dreamed of operating one of those mighty dozers.
There was a small community called Ballville, about a mile south of our place, that consisted of, perhaps, a dozen residences. The only business was a little independent gasoline station that sold a few staple groceries and had a small lunch counter. It was owned by a young couple who lived behind the store. I would often ride my bike down there and visit with them as we watched the construction of I-10 across the road from the store. At that time, primary roads were paved with concrete, which was poured in forms made of steel, and were reinforced with mats of iron re-bar. The process required much labor, and was very interesting to observe.
One afternoon, the station owner and I were sitting on a bench under the canopy at the front of the store after a sudden heavy rain had moved through the area. The rain, of course, stopped all work, and most of the workers left for the day. A few hundred feet down the road, there were a few men standing around some trucks near the work area. Suddenly, without warning, a strong lightening bolt struck nearby, frightening both us. When we regained our composure, we looked around and saw steam rising down in the area where the men were. They were running around the area, with some jumping into the trucks and some gathered on the ground. At that distance we couldn’t tell what they were doing, but in a little while we heard a siren in the distance. Shortly, a sheriff car flew by us and pulled up to that area. A few minutes later an ambulance pulled in from the opposite direction. We didn’t know what was happening, but that evening the news on TV reported that a worker was standing next to the steel form and was struck and killed by the lightening strike.
New adventures were also a part of being a teen. At the end of 7th grade I decided to try playing baseball in the Babe Ruth League. I was able to land a spot on a team with several of my good friends. That was my first indication that I didn’t have the natural skills for sports, and the fact that my left arm couldn’t twist below the elbow wasn’t ideal for my glove hand. For three summers I spent most of each game in the dugout cheering on my buddies and playing the last couple of innings in right field. It was near the end of the third summer that I got my first and only base hit; a grounder single to right field. At least I batted in two runs, and enjoyed the cheers from the rest of the team. As it would turn out, baseball was the only organized sport that I would attempt to play.
During my freshman year, the Methodist Church in Vidor sponsored a new Explorer Scout post, which was for older boys. Several of my best friends joined and it sounded like fun, so I joined in as well. That decision opened up a world of adventures that I would never have experienced. There were only about ten of us and the adult scout leader was the father of one of the guys. He was an avid outdoors man and understood what teen boys enjoyed. We weren’t into crafts or merit badges; we wanted adventures. For three years we concentrated on camping, hiking and canoeing. We were able to canoe white water rivers in southern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, and paddle trips on numerous rivers in Texas, including a train ride to the Texas hill country to canoe the Colorado River from Lake Buchanan down to Marble Falls. We went to a jamboree in Oklahoma City, where I tried fried rattlesnake; “tasted like chicken”!!
The summer after my Junior year, nine of us made the ultimate camping trip for all scouts; a car trip across Texas to Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico! We spent twelve days hiking the mountains of the ranch. One night we were bedded down in our tent when we heard noises by the water hydrant and sump about a hundred feet away. One of the guys and myself got out and shined a flashlight on the area. All we saw were two glowing eyes that were wide apart raise up six or eight feet into the darkness! We scrambled back into the tent and lay as still and quiet as possible. It was bear country! After a brief time, we heard huffing and feet hitting the ground as it came our way. Needless to say we were terrified! Fortunately, it passed by us and continued into the distance. I’m not sure how much sleep we managed, but in the morning when we emerged from our tent, we found horse hoof prints in the dirt!
After our time at Philmont was over, we headed north into Colorado and spent two nights sleeping on the gym floor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. We were able to tour the academy, including the famous Chapel, before heading back to Vidor. Three weeks was the longest that I had ever been away from my home.
Loy Callahan was probably my closest friend through high school. He lived a mile away and we spent countless hours together, riding our bikes, driving around after we got our licenses, camping in the woods behind our house, and going on dates together. One of our favorite adventures was to take our shotguns and hike to a slough in the woods near my house, where we would hunt for cottonmouth water moccasins. Crazy, yes! But we made great sport in trying to find the biggest one that we could. On one outing, as we were approaching the slough, I spotted a coral snake slithering across the mud. It was a really big one, so I used my machete to strike it about the middle of its length. All that I did was shove that portion of its body deep into the mud, such that it couldn’t escape. After it thrashed about for a bit, it caught the very tip of its tail in its mouth and began to chew on it. Fascinated by its actions, we watched as it slowly became still and lifeless. It was amazing that it had killed itself with its own venom, rather than be trapped. My Chemistry teacher was an amateur herpetologist, so I put it in our sack and took it to school the next day. He measured it and found it to be the longest coral snake he had ever seen, at over 36 inches in length. He put it in a jar of formaldehyde and it stayed on display in the chemistry lab for all to see.
During my senior year I was involved in my first and only serious auto accident. Our class chose to raise money for class events by selling magazine subscriptions. Everyone involved would canvas their neighbors, families and friends. Since I didn’t have a neighborhood, I had to reach out to other areas. One afternoon after class, my friend Joe Eddie Hanzel and I worked some outlying residential areas on my end of town in his Volkswagen Beetle. When we finished our rounds he was taking me home and on my road when a dog ran out onto the road, causing him to swerve the car. The right wheels left the pavement into the grassy shoulder and caused the car to skid as he tried to pull back onto the road. Unfortunately, we were approaching a culvert with a low concrete abutment that caught the right rear wheel, causing the car to spin to the left onto the pavement, where the centrifugal force made it roll over onto it’s top and slide off the road into the grass. Of course, there were no seatbelts in autos back then, but we both crawled out unscathed, though quite shaken. Joe Eddie was beside himself over his car that was only a couple of years old. The lady whose dog had run out heard the crash and called the highway patrol. It wasn’t long before a trooper arrived and, after a quick interview, drove me the half mile to my house. My mother and I then drove back to the scene with a wet towel for Joe Eddie to wipe the tears from his face. It was quite the experience, but the worst, by far, was his loss of the car of which he was profoundly proud. Oh….and I won a stuffed dog for the subscriptions that I sold!!!
Because You Asked.... 