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Traditional Story from the Website of Bluegrass Storyteller, Chuck Larkin
This story started to be about my fi rst visit to my Uncle John and Aunt Irene. I had turned eight the year before and my folks had said I could travel by myself on either bus or train to visit relatives. I had already rode the train into New York City and visited with my Irish Aunt, Kate Kenney. This time I headed south on the bus to visit Aunt Irene and Uncle John. When I arrived, Aunt Irene asked me, “Chuck would you like to go deer hunting with me and Shorty?” Would I ever, wow, that was like being treated as a grown-up for the fi rst time. Aunt Irene was the hunter in the family. She used an old muzzle loading rifl e and I mean she could fl at out shoot. I’ve seen her trim the toe nails off squirrels at 100 yards and then walk up and shake them out of the trees into her game bag. Without toe nails the squirrels couldn’t hold on to the branches. Hunting squirrels that way she wouldn’t tear up the meat. That summer, we ate so much squirrel meat, that every time a dog barked the whole family started running for trees. I shared that memory with a friend once and he recalled the time he ate so many Opossums he couldn’t go near a highway. But you know food does things to you. I met an old Florida Cracker fi ddler once who shared that back in ‘39 his Momma cooked up chicken every day. She started Sunday with fried chicken, next day parboiled, baked, steamed, fricasseed, roasted and smoked then Sunday start back with fried. Week in and week out nothing but chicken until they all had pin feathers growing on their ankles. I remember one Thanksgiving Aunt Irene loaded up her rifl e barrel with black powder, salt, pepper, spices, chunks of potatoes, onions, carrots, celery and I do not know what else. We were about 2 miles from the cabin. Suddenly she fl ushed a large, plump wild turkey with a seven-inch beard. Aunt Irene pulled the trigger and the hammer with the little piece of steel slammed down onto the fl int and kicked up a spark in that old fl intlock muzzle loader. The trouble was, walking under the trees some old rain drops had fallen and gotten her powder damp. The damp powder in that little fl ash pan did not fl ash but began to sparkle and fi zz and slowly burn its way down the tiny hole into the back of the barrel where the main charge was. Aunt Irene did not fl inch. She just closed her right eye and held that rifl e on target. After about six seconds, wham bam that old blunderbuss fi red off the charge, smoke and feathers, they were everywhere. When the air cleared I couldn’t see a turkey anywhere. “Aunt Irene you missed!” “Chuck you do not have any faith in your Auntie.” Lets go home, dinner will be near ready by the time we get there. We were within a hundred yards of the cabin I started smelling our Thanksgiving, dinner cooking. We opened the kitchen door, I could not believe my eyes. Aunt Irene had not only shot that corpulent turkey but had cleaned and stuffed the bird. Blown him the two miles back to the cabin through the air, down the chimney. There he was cooking on the fi re rack in the fi replace. I mean my Aunt Irene could shoot and that is no lie. The chance to go deer hunting with Aunt Irene and Shorty what can I say. It was a new stage in life. I was almost a grown-up. Aunt Irene whistled up Shorty. I do not know if you know this but mountain people name their dogs after their body characteristics. When Shorty was a puppy he had gotten to close to a swinging sickle and had his tail cut off right behind his head. There wasn’t much to Shorty after that, fact is, he was really short. First thing Aunt Irene did was to tape Shorty’s left nostril closed. With the right nostril open and he tracked deer. Tape the right nostril closed and leave the left one open he became a raccoon tracker. Upper left open was for squirrels, upper right for rabbits, lower left open for ducks, lower right for doves or pheasants. Even in the old days Shorty was an unusual hunting dog. The cabin sat on a small three acre pond with the ridge fi elds out the back door. We were about half way round the pond when Shorty fl ushed up a twelve-point buck deer. I thought we were going to follow them when Aunt Irene turned on me and said, “Chuck sit down on that log and hush up!” Now, hush up is an old mountain dialect word that means do not be seen twitching or heard breathing. If you have not yet known any mountain women let me give you some advice for what it’s worth. Mountain women are different from fl at land ladies. I’ve seen Aunt Irene put on her ear rings with staple guns. I’ve seen Aunt Irene and each of her neighbor ladies pick up a pair of crow bars and knit a barbed wire fence and use them for comforters. Mountain women are tougher then woodpecker lips. They even knit with steel wool. I hushed up! I did. I did. I did. Shorty was trained to run that enormous buck deer around the lake path past the barn, the oak tree, the cabin and on around the lake. Aunt Irene just wanted me to have the experience of seeing a buck deer, with that great rack of antlers, go past me about eight feet away at a full run. It was an incredible sight and I can still remember the vision to this day. It was also a very sad day. What happened is poor Shorty was chasing that deer and barking up a storm. He just wasn’t looking where he was going. A thin, sharp, edged rock was sticking up in the dirt. Shorty did not see it. The razor sharp edge caught Shorty right on the edge of his nose and split him down through his tail. The two sides each fell sideways plop plop. Aunt Irene said, “Oh! Oh!, Golly gosh.” She reached over to a pine tree and scratched some pine sap off the tree. She slopped that pine sap on the poor dog, took off her kerchief bandanna, slapped the two sides together, and tied up that dog. Then she hollered, “Shorty, get going” and that dog took off. But you know what happens when you are in too much of a hurry and do not take time to plan out fi rst what needs to be done. Aunt Irene had that poor dog upside down and wrong. Shorty was running with two legs up and two legs down. A dog doesn’t have any speed like that, of course on the other hand, he had a lot more stamina. When the two down legs were tired he would fl ip over and run on the other two and rest the fi rst two. After that Shorty could bark from both ends too. He did learn to run faster. About two years later I was visiting and I watched Shorty climb up a hill. When a rabbit passed below him, Shorty cart wheeled down the hill after the rabbit. The rabbit ran around a tree and Shorty split himself and ran around both sides of the tree also and came together on the other side. Now I hope you realize I’m just kidding about that part. That part about Shorty splitting and going around the tree is made up. I’ll tell you when I’m teasing you. Aunt Irene could see that Shorty was losing ground and the deer pulling away. She pored some black powder down that muzzle loading barrel, then from her black satchel she took a small box and pored in rock salt. Next was a box of long carpet tacks followed by a mess of broken barlow knife blades sharpened on all sides. I said, “Aunt Irene that gun is overloaded and is going to blow up and kill us!” “Hush Chuck!” This time I got behind the oak tree to hush up but I did peak I did. The last thing I seen Aunt Irene do was to take out her pocket knife and cut a wedge into the right side of a round mini ball which she pushed down the rifl e barrel. She picked up the long rifl e barrel and aimed it out to the left. I thought she was going to wait until the buck deer came around to our side of the lake again. But all of a sudden wham bam that muzzle loader went off. That mess was so thick coming out of the barrel I could watch it. That is when I got my fi rst lesson in physics. The notch in the side of that mini ball made that ball slice to the right and follow the curvature of the lake. The wind drag off the mini ball sucked the rest of that mess along behind. One thing I saw that Aunt Irene missed was the ball passed over the water where there was a little leg off the pond. A huge bass happened to leap into the air and the mini ball, it passed right through and killed the fi sh without losing its trajectory. I waded out later and retrieved the fi sh. Meanwhile Aunt Irene never looked, she watched the deer. When the deer got to the oak tree where she had some rope hanging off a limb, Aunt Irene let out a shout that could curdle your blood. The sound scared the deer, he leaped into the air and got his rack of antlers caught in the rope. The mini ball came on around and hit him in the forehead and killed him deaden than a doornail. The barlow knife blades fl oated in skinned and fi eld dressed the buck. The long carpet tacks put the hide right up along side of the barn and the rock salt started curing the meat and the hide. To tell you the truth, I was impressed. And from that day to this, I have been a feminist. AND THAT’S A TRUE STORY
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