Linda sometimes looks at me funny when I scrape every bit of food out of a can or gnaw every scrap of meat from a bone.  I grew up on a farm and my parents had lived through the Great Depression, so I was trained to never waste a morsel of food.   

There is an old saying that farmers used every bit of a pig except the squeal.  We may not have been that careful, but we were close.    When daddy and I shot doves or quail, we cleaned them and even kept the tiny gizzards, livers and hearts for giblet gravy.  We could not imagine popping the breast out and throwing away the legs and wings like is common now, they had meat on them! Squirrel hearts and livers were also kept for the same thing.   

We had 11,000 laying hens and sold eggs to local stores for resale.  But at the farm, we also sold directly to folks living near us.  They could buy cartons of eggs just like they got in the stores, but at a slightly reduced price.  Eggs were “candled,” running them over a light to look for cracks and blood spots.  Only perfect ones went into cartons.  

But for the frugal, we sold cracked eggs by the flat, two- and one-half dozen, 30 eggs, to each flat.  Flats were 35 cents each or three for a dollar, great for cooks making lots of cakes.  And we used the left-over cracked eggs, the ones not sold, at home. The only ones thrown away were the ones with blood spots.   

When hens “laid out,” reaching the end of their useful time, we sold them straight from the chicken house.  People would come from miles away to buy them, they were very cheap. 

And each time we cleaned out a house my family killed, cleaned and froze about 50 to last the few months until the next time a house ended its egg laying cycle.   

I will never forget the hens flopping around, bleeding out after I chopped off their heads with my hatchet.  After they quit flopping, they were picked up, doused in a big pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers, then plucked clean and gutted, saving the giblets too.   

We had hogs and when they were killed several hams were smoked, salted and hung in a tightly sealed room.  They would last for months although some mold would grow on them. Mama just scraped the mold off and we ate the salty meat.   

One thing we did not keep were the “chitlins.”  I never had them until I was grown, about the same time I realized the word was chitterlings. But most everything else was used. Daddy loved pickled pigs feet, a taste I did not acquire until I got out of college.   

Daddy also likes souse and tripe, two more things I never developed a taste for but were common for breakfast when I was growing up.    We had a huge garden every year and never bought vegetables.  String beans and tomatoes were canned,  and mama put up many jars of tomatoes mixed with okra for soups and stews.   

She also canned peaches, plumbs, pears and blackberries.  Butterbeans, corn, both on the cob and cut, black eyed and field peas were all frozen.    Potatoes and onions were spread on a sheltered concrete floor where they lasted all winter.  

  I guess growing up on a farm taught me to be a survivalist long before it was popular.

I am proud of Growing Up Southern

    Growing up in the south makes us different from others that did not have that privilege, and we are proud of it. Our experiences may be shared by people in other parts of the US, but we have our own special way of looking at and doing everything.

     Many kinds of fish live all over the US but in the south bass are king and we fish for crappie to eat.  In the north musky are king and they fish for walleye for food. 

    Musky fight hard and they are harder to catch than bass, but they get huge, with 40 pounders not too unusual. Bass fight hard and a ten pounder is not common, but it doesn’t take the famed 10,000 casts it takes to hook a musky to hook a bass, most days.

    Walleye taste good but I will put crappie up against them any day. On a trip to Tennessee a few years ago I took some crappie filets for the communal fish fry and a couple of guys from Michigan brought walleye filets. Everyone there said the crappie were better.

    `Deer hunting is not the same here as it is up north and in the mid West and West.  Here we hide in trees and wait on a deer while swatting mosquitoes.  Up north they freeze their feet off tracking deer through the snow. And out west where Mule Deer grow, they jump one, wait for it to run a hundred yards before turning to look back, then shoot it.

    `In cold climates they go ice skating in the winter. We go roller skating.  And they cut holes in the ice on ponds and lakes, sit there staring at a tiny pole and hope for a bite.

    Our water doesn’t get hard on top so we can fish out of our boats all winter and big bass bite best then.  Almost all my eight pound plus bass hit from December through February.  They would be too big to come through a hole in the ice.

    In other rural areas kids probably dam branches, build tree houses and camp out. But there seems to be more rural areas here where kids grew up in the woods.  Can you imagine trying to dam a sewer, build a light pole house or camping in an alley?

    We eat different wild critters here, too.  Forget grits, a staple of southern diets that will just get a puzzled look when you order them in Wisconsin, as I found out.  Many other common southern foods are not eaten in other areas.

    Crawfish are popular here and you can catch your own. Some places up north serve crawfish but not many. And alligator meat is great, and you can catch and kill your own here, too.  But up north it is a rarity and many are afraid of it.

    Squirrels, rabbits and doves are eaten often in the south and sometimes up north, but nobody in other areas of the country eat possums, and the sweet potatoes that you have to serve with them are store bought, not grown and hilled in  your garden like here.

    Greens up north and out west mean lettuce, spinach and chard.  Those are all good but you can’t be southern without loving turnip greens with roots, collards and poke salad. And you must have corn bread to eat with them and cook them with streak of lean.

    Here we sweat, in other areas without our heat and humidity they perspire. In the summer you start dripping almost as soon as you step outside.  Our summer lows are usually much higher then the high temperature in other places.

    I was surprised to find out mosquitoes can be just as bad up north as they are here, but at least they don’t have chiggers.  I get a laugh every time I see a tourist with northern license plates on their car getting Spanish moss to take home. They are taking more than the moss, and are in for an itchy surprise in a day or so.

    We are different in the south, and there is even a difference in the name for Yankees that come south for a visit and those that move here and try to make us just like them. But that is impossible!

    Although I have visited 40 of our 50 states and fished in many of them, and been to many foreign countries on five different continents, I have lived in middle Georgia all my life. There is no better place on earth!

   Traveling around Georgia and Alabama doing research for my Georgia and Alabama Outdoor News Map of the Month articles I visit many small towns that remind me of growing up in Dearing, Georgia.  Small towns have a charm and feeling unique to them, and I often miss them.

    Each season holds special memories.  Halloween was special in the fall each year.  Everything from trick or treating on our bicycles to going to the Halloween Festival at Dearing Elementary School heightened the excitement of the season.

    We prepared our costumes for days, although they were always homemade and simple.  You could not go to the local dollar store and get one store bought and detailed.  I wore everything from mama’s carefully sewed clown costume to an old sheet with holes for eyes.

    My favorite for several years was my hobo costume.  I’m sure it would be politically incorrect now, but people were much saner back then. We did not take offense at everything that might trigger us.

    My hobo costume was old clothes that were ragged and patched, really just some of my oldest daily clothes I wore around the farm.  I wore one of daddy’s old caps and had a corn cob pipe I made with a corn cob and section of creek cane.  Sometimes I stuffed it with rabbit tobacco and even lite it – after getting well away from my house and mama and daddy’s watchful eyes.

    A mustache and beard, made with smut from a fire painted my face. And I had to have a stick with a colorful scarf bag hanging on it to put over my shoulder.

    There was no fear of the goodies we got from neighbors all over town.  Again, folks were sane back then and we all knew each other. There was no worry about foreign objects in the treats we got.

    Home made candy was the norm.  We knew which house would have candied apples, dipped with care and individually wrapped in wax paper. And where to go for fudge squares, some with a pecan half embedded on top.   
    Store bought candy was a special treat and rare. But some houses were known for dropping a Baby Ruth, Snickers or Milky Way into your bag and those houses were sought out every year.

    I do not remember “tricking” anyone on our excursions.  There was no need, each house in town had a welcoming porch light on, and a few even had some decorations, maybe a carved pumpkin or corn stalk bundle, sitting near the door.

    Daddy was principal of Dearing Elementary and teachers and students worked for days getting ready for the festival.  Each classroom was turned into a different game or challenge, but they were simple. 

    One classroom would be the “fishing hole” where the bottom half the door was covered with decorated cardboard to block it. On the floor or a small table were hand carved wooden fish with rings in their backs.  A short cane pole with q wire hook at the end of the line was used to catch a fish.  It was harder than it sounds, but when you landed one you were rewarded with a candy treat supplied by the PTA.

    Another classroom would be the haunted house, with cardboard corridors inside to lead you through gross and scary scenes.  There might be a table with a pig or cow brain in a pan, a turn where you ran into hanging “spider webs” of sewing thread, or a cardboard skeleton that would suddenly swing in front of you, controlled by a laughing teacher.

    And there was always a hidden cubby hole where a teacher dressed in a scary costume would jump out at you, to the screams of the younger kids and the laughs of older kids and the witch or goblin.

    There were skill contest, too.  One vivid memory is of a nail driving contest, where you got a reward based on the number of blows it took to drive a 16-penny nail to its head in a 2X4.  Daddy was beside me the year I wore a bulky clown costume mama had made for me. When I had trouble hitting the nail squarely, daddy said I was good with a hammer, but the costume hindered my swing. 
I hated the disappointment in his voice that I had not done a better job.

    Of course, the best part of fall for me was the opening of squirrel and bird seasons.  Daddy was also the agriculture teacher when Dearing had a high school and taught shop to eighth graders after the high school grades were moved to Thomson.  He visited local farmers to help them with his experience from his work and degree from UGA, doing everything from “cutting” male pigs when they reached the right age to helping with calf births.

    He was invited to dove shoots almost every Saturday and I got to go with him, at first acting as his retriever then being allowed to carry my .410 when he was sure I had learned field safety and etiquette.  And after dove season we spent every Saturday following our pointers, looking for quail

    But squirrels were my first love, from the time I grabbed my .22 and got Gladys, our maid and farm worker, to her great concern, to follow me across Iron Hill Road to shoot my first squirrel.  I was eight years old and had seen it out the window but knew I could not take a gun out without an adult with me, so I somehow talked her into going with me.

    After that I spent thousands of happy hours in the woods, mostly by myself, and killed hundreds of squirrels over the next ten years until I went off to college. And we ate every one of them.

    Every season had special memories. I wish kids today could experience, and be thrilled by, those simpler times.

Building huts, tree houses and forts were always a big part of summer. By mid-August, we had built more than we could use but still continued to build them.
Building them was the biggest part of the fun.

I always wanted to build a log cabin, as did my friends Harold and Hal, but our hatchets were never up to cutting down trees and notching them. So, we made do with what we could handle.

We found four small trees growing in some-what of a square on a hillside overlooking Dearing Branch. They would be the corner post of our cabin. We cut sweetgum saplings the right length for the walls. Since we couldn’t notch them and stack them like a real log cabin, we tried lashing them to the corner post but quickly gave up and used nails.

When the walls were about three feet high, about half done, we realized we had not made plans for a door. So, we made another post five feet high, cut the wall poles shorter in one corner and made our door there. Harold ended up graduating from UGA with a degree in architecture so maybe that influenced him.

When it came time for the roof, we thought we could make a thatched roof with the branches from the sweetgums we cut. Wrong. The leaves are nothing like the palm fronds used for real thatched roofs we read about and they quickly dried out, making the rain come through like nothing was there. Even when green it slowed the water down very little.

We found an old army surpluse tarp that didn’t leak much and used it for our roof. But we didn’t spend much time in it, the gaps in the wall “logs” let mosquitoes in. But it was fun building it.

A better hut was one we built of lumber. Harold’s family owned a sawmill and lumber yard, so he had access to lots of wood. We made prefab walls and a roof from 2x4s and 1x6s and laboriously lugged them to the woods under our biggest tree house in a big pine tree. We dug holes for the 2×4 post and nailed the three walls and roof together. It was to serve as our supply hut for the tree house.

We were afraid to sleep in that tree house. Although we put side boards around the platform, it was just too high. So we camped under the tree in our army surplus pup tent and sleeping bags and kept our stores in the hut.

Putting out a sleeping was always fun. No matter how hard we tried, we could never get all the sticks and rocks cleaned up that would dig into us and make us miserable all night.

The old tent leaked a little. I will never forget one morning after it rained most of the night. We managed to get a fire started at the mouth of the hut with wood we kept dry in it and cooked breakfast. Taking our tin mess kit plates back into the tent to eat our perfectly burned eggs, bacon and toast there,
I set my plate down on the floor. It floated in a puddle of water. I could spin it and it would spin several times before stopping.
But breakfast was good!

We built tree house all over the place, but my favorite was in my front yard. A pecan tree just a few feet from Iron Hill Road had two somewhat parallel, somewhat level, limbs coming off the trunk. I built a simple platform about five feet square on those limbs.

During the summer, I spent many hours sitting or lying on that platform, watching the occasional car go by. I watched as that road it changed from dirt to tar and gravel and finally asphalt over a ten-year period.

I loved reading and often took a library book up in the tree with me, getting lost in adventures all over the real and imagined world. And many of them were science fiction, taking me off our planet completely.

Outdoor magazines were read there, too. I had a subscription to Outdoor Life, Sports Afield and Field and Stream as far back as I can remember. I read and dreamed about hunting, fishing and survival adventures like the folks in them.

Although I knew I would never be able to build one in middle Georgia, I wanted to try my hand at igloos and snow caves. I wondered if I could survive the cold and attacks by polar bears while eating bear, seal and caribou meat.

Tree houses and huts were good places to dream and scheme. Some of those dreams, like salmon fishing in Alaska, came true for me. Many did not. But just the dreams were invaluable.

In the late 1950s and early 60s fireworks were legal in Georgia. And not just the wimpy stuff made legal in the past few years and being sold now. I don’t think there were any restrictions or controls on size or power. All six of the small stores in Dearing had a display every July 4th and New Year’s.

We kids saved our money from allowances, collecting bottles for deposits, picking blackberries for sale and other money making schemes. Since my allowance was 25 cents a week and we got a penny for every bottle collected from ditches and 25 cents for a full quart of blackberries, we were careful with our funds. We studied the fireworks displays, carefully picking out our favorite things to buy.

I loved things that made a big, powerful boom. Back in those days’ cherry bombs, TNT bombs and M-80s were my favorite and each one was just a few cents, so my money went a long way. I always got a few packs of smaller firecrackers as well as a few bottle rockets and aerial bombs, but those seemed to go way too fast.

The big ones were powerful. Every year we just had to test them on concrete blocks. A cherry bomb fired off in one the holes in a block would break it into two pieces, a TNT bomb would break it into several chunks. But an M-80 would shatter it into gravel chunks.

We always had to see what we could blow up. Anything around the farm was fair game for a bomb stuffed into it just to see the effect. Anything from tin cans to hollow trees were tested. Trees didn’t react much, but cans were shredded, and we learned to run from them fast to avoid the shrapnel.

We were constantly warned by parents and store owners to be careful, and we usually were. Every year my friends and I would challenge each other to hold a small firecracker between our fingertips and light it. I was never brave enough to do that, always throwing them away before they went off, but a couple of times friends were brave.

The powder stain on their fingertips and reported burning and stinging was not something I wanted to experience.

Sometimes friends would light a whole string of firecrackers. We all liked the rapid-fire popping, but the one time I did it, I realized I had burned up my whole string of firecrackers in a few seconds. I never wasted them that fast again.

Skyrockets and aerial bombs were similar. They were pretty and made a good boom, but each one was expensive, probably a quarter each, and each one was a one-shot deal. That was way to fast to blow my money.

One of my dumber tricks I tried only one time. For some reason I cut a 12-gauge shotgun shell open and made a small mound of the powder on a rock out in the woods. After placing two small firecrackers’ fuses touching the powder, I touched the pile with a lit match.

I’m not sure what I expected but it was not what happened. Maybe I thought the pile would burn slowly, lighting the fuses. But the whole pile of powder went off with a flash while I looked at it. Since I was close, it blinded me for a few seconds.

Then the two firecrackers exploded. I was within arm’s reach of all this and when they popped, my ears started ringing and I was deaf for a few seconds. Not a good idea.

When I could see again, I had to put out several small fires started by my experiment. The leaves beside the rock had caught fire from the pile of powder, then the firecrackers blew them for several feet around it, starting other fires.

One year I watched as a neighbor “shot an anvil.” To do that, the hole in the bottom of the anvil was packed with powder from several shotgun shells. It was carefully placed on top of another anvil and a fuse placed to light the powder.

I loved the big boom and ringing sound the top anvil made as if flew way up in the sky, but that huge chunk of iron flying on an uncontrollable trajectory scared me. I wanted to try it. But standing way back I could watch the projectile and know which way to run.

I was always afraid if I lit the fuse I would be running away – in the wrong direction. I never tried it.

Fire works are fun, but we should never forget what they represent this July 4. The rockets’ red glare and booming of cannon and guns while we fought for our freedom from a tyrannical government controlling us is what we celebrate.

Unfortunately, We the People have let our government become the tyrant, controlling every part of our lives. From what fireworks we can buy, if even allowed to buy any, to what guns we are allowed to own, all aspects of our lives are controlled by our own government. And it seems to get worse every year.

Will some future kid light fireworks and celebrate freedom, or will they be so brainwashed and controlled they have no idea what it means to be free?

“You don’t know what you got till it’s gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” That is the refrain from a song that was popular when I was in college. In my 68 years, I have seen way too much loss of what I consider paradise.

Last summer I drove around Dearing, Georgia where I grew up. Much of it remained the same but it broke my heart to see places where the change was drastic. The worst was my old home place.

The beautiful split-level brick house my parents built in 1962 has a chain link fence in front of it, spoiling its look. Some of the pecan trees, including the one where I built my tree houses, had been cut down.

Worse was the field where I spent many happy hours building forts and roasting birds in a big rock pile. Those rocks had been pushed away to expand the field and are no longer available for a kid to enjoy. And the drain where I killed a snipe had been cleared of trees and ditched, removing the swampy area.

Dearing Branch on either side of our old farm has been dammed, making pretty ponds but covering the valleys where I hunted and played. I was happy to see the huge oak tree on the hillside where I sat and hunted squirrels was still there overlooking one of the ponds, but all around it were open fields.

Some of the old houses where my friends lived had been torn down and replaced with newer ones. Others were remodeled to the point of hardly being recognizable. Worse were the ones that were once the pride of families were so run-down none of folks that I once knew would want to live in them.

Dearing Elementary School, where daddy was principal and I attended first through eighth grades, had been closed and changed to a RESA. The lunch room where I loved the food, especially the vegetable soup, was a work shop with boarded up windows and stuff piled outside.

The front area looked much the same. The big pines, including the one where I kissed my first girlfriend when in the first grade, was there. But the old ball diamond beside it was now just a pretty lawn. The pine thicket where I almost lost an eye during a pinecone fight looked different without the Jungle Jim and seesaws.

The drive from Dearing to Thomson then to Raysville Boat Club, something I did hundreds of times, was also filled with changes. Many of the fields where cows and horses once grazed were filled with houses. Some were very pretty, others reminded me of another song “And they’re all made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.” The lack of trees around them made them look worse.

In Thomson, the old theater where I watched “Godzilla” on a Saturday afternoon and got nightmares for weeks when in elementary school and spent many Friday nights slyly trying to ease my arm around may date, was still open.

But a few doors down, the pool hall where I slipped to some afternoons, skipping last period band, was a shop of some kind. No kids would learn to play pool and vastly increase their cuss word vocabulary there any longer.

The boat club we joined in 1966 has undergone a lot of changes, too. It hurts to look at the small group of big pines near the water where our camper sat a few feet from the water that are still there. But a ruling by the Corps of Engineers meant removing any structures near the water.

I will never sit on the small porch beside the camper and shoot a deer across the cove. Or just sit drinking coffee and watching the world. Memories of that camper are great but gone. Like the time the lake was three feet high and we pulled our ski boat within a few feet of the deck one afternoon, only to awake the next morning to find the lake at normal level and the boat sitting high and dry. That will never happen again.

One of my favorite memories is the Christmas Holidays when I spent at the lake the week from Christmas Day until New Years Day when I had to go back to work. For five days in a row I didn’t see another person. It was just me and my dog. I ate when hungry, slept when sleepy and fished the rest of the time. The lake is way too crowded now for that to ever happen again.

All the campers had to be moved further from the lake, and many new ones have been added. The area in front of the club house has campers side by side and the sign there says “Corner of Confusion’” a very appropriate name. And the road into the boat club is no longer wild, with may new campers lining it from the gate to my mobile home.

Much of the lake has changed, too. There are not many houses on the water due to Corps rules, but there are more docks. Many of the old stumps and brush piles where I could count on catching a bass have rotted away. But one cedar top I sank on an old road bed in the 1970s is still there and still produces fish.

I still love going there but the changes are sad. There is a sense of loss, maybe for my long-gone youth, but also for my dog Merlin, my constant companion from 1974 until 1988 when she had to be put down. And staying there by myself is depressing, remembering the times with my parents. There are just too many ghosts.

Change is often good, but some of it is also sad. But making memories like I have are invaluable. Don’t get so busy you miss making them.

Outdoor Life, Sports Afield and Field and Stream magazines were staples of my reading while growing up. I could not wait for new issues every month and read each from cover to cover.

Every winter, articles and pictures about ice fishing fascinated me. I dreamed of drilling holes through the ice and sitting in a nice warm shanty while catching everything from perch to pike.

In middle Georgia, ice fishing does not happen. I knew there was little chance of me ever going up north to try it, but I wanted to. In the winter when Dearing Branch froze over, something that didn’t happen every year, I tried to ice fish, but the ice was never strong enough to hold me.

I did manage to stand on the bank over deeper holes and punch a hole in the ice with a stick, no drilling needed for the ice that was seldom an inch thick. And I never caught a fish, I guess most of our southern fish don’t eat much when it is that cold.

I have fished in Wisconsin ten times, but in the fall just after Labor Day. Although I experienced snow and sleet on those early September trips, there was no ice, I was a couple months too early.

Signs of the coming ice were everywhere. All docks there are removal, they can be rolled up onto the bank to keep the ice from crushing them. And I was amazed by trees and brush around the bank. There was a clear line about five feet above the water line where no leaves or needles grew.

I thought it might be a browse line where deer ate the foliage, but the local fisherman that hosted our group on those trips told me it was the snow line.
Snow around Rhinelander, Wisconsin covered the ground and lake ice about that deep for several months each winter, killing the tender parts of the plants.

A few years ago, I did catch a fish though the ice. My pond froze over about an inch thick, way too little to support me, but I took an idea from my past. Out on the end of my dock where I fed the fish all summer, I punched a hole in the ice with a pipe, baited up with a piece of floating fish food, and landed a two-inch bream.

That will probably be the only ice fish I ever catch.

Christmas Holidays were always a special time during my school years in the 1950s and 60s. Two weeks out of school meant many happy, free days, most involving hunting, family and church.

The first week after school was out usually meant a trip to Aunt Alice and Uncle Charlie’s house in Ocala. Daddy’s mother lived with them and we almost always left on the long trip as soon as possible to have a few days there and be home before Christmas. The drive was exciting, looking at Christmas decorations and seeing new territory.

My brother and I passed time “counting cows,” a standing chimney doubles your count, and arguing and fighting in the back seat. But we always concentrated so not to miss mama’s dream house down near Dublin. It was a nice brick ranch, similar to what we would eventually build. But what made it special to mama was the little pond in the front yard.

I know mama imagined herself, probably with her mother and maybe me, sitting on the edge of the pond fishing. We all three loved fishing, I guess that is where I got it.

Although mama got her dream house there was no pond in front. But daddy dug one a few hundred yards behind the house. She spent many happy hours there, catching anything that would bite.

On one trip, mama and Billy were asleep. I was old enough to just be learning fractions and daddy taught math at my elementary school, as well as being principal. It was a small school.

As the car rumbled along the road, I asked him about fractions. He patiently kept answering my question “What is 1/1” with “one,” but I never did understand it. (I kept saying “one-onth,” but I don’t think that is a word) But it was nice to talk with him like that.

In Ocala my brother and I loved to dig holes in the soft, sandy soil so different from the hard clay and rocks at home. We always planned on digging to China, but never made it. We picked oranges in their back yard and enjoyed the warm weather. We also went to Silver Springs where I imagined catching the huge catfish that played “football” with dough balls below the glass bottomed boats.

On the drive home we would stop in south Georgia and get a 50 pound bag of peanuts. Mama used them cooking, but there were plenty for us to roast in the oven. On nights we didn’t have ice cream before bed we sat watching TV and shelling peanuts to go with our Coke.

As much as I loved those trips, I could not wait to get home, grab my .22 or .410 and head to my little piece of heaven. There were three special places along Dearing Branch, one on our property, and two on either side of it. I spent many wonderful hours in them hunting squirrels and hoping to see a rabbit.

A few days every holiday daddy would take some hours off the never-ending work on our chicken farm and take me quail hunting. Those were especially good times that I will never forget.

The one thing I hated when we got home was choir practice. My parents insisted I be in the youth choir, but I did not like singing, or the wasted hours of practice when I could have been hunting. That lasted until I was 14 and got up the courage to just stand in the choir loft with my mouth shut. After a few weeks of that they gave up and I never went to another practice. And I still do not sing, even in the shower!

Christmas Eve was spent with great anticipation. We didn’t get a lot compared to now, and there was always underwear and sox. But there were special gifts, too, like the year I got my first outfit of Duckbax pants and jacket. They were briar proof and made a huge difference quail hunting with daddy and later rabbit hunting with my friend when wading through briar patches.

My stocking always had oranges in it, strangely just like the ones we picked in Ocala. We also had some pecans, just like the ones we picked up that year in our yard. There were apples and oranges, but candy, too. And bullets and shells for my guns. Those were my favorite.

I always had time for an afternoon in my rock fort, either alone or with Harold or Hal. There was a pile of big boulders in a small patch of trees about 50 feet from our fence line at the edge of the pasture. We made a circle of rocks that used one side of a big one to make an enclosed space.

There was no roof, but little nooks were perfect for hiding our valuables. And we had a fire place with a spit for roasting robins we shot in the field, and a big can where we boiled eggs poached from the chicken house.

I never did understand why the bird that is a “sign of spring” showed up in huge numbers on our farm in late November. Now I know they can not get worms out of frozen ground up north so come south to live where the ground doesn’t freeze, then head back north as it thaws there in the spring. Stills seems backwards to me, though.

It’s hard to believe the holidays lasted only two weeks, but I guess back then two weeks were a much longer part of my life than they are now. And I did a lot of living during those two weeks at Christmas each year.

I have what seem like unlimited memories of those times, and they are some of my favorites. I wish
I could go back and refresh them in person, but just remembering them always makes me smile.