Category Archives: growing up wild in Georgia

Christmas Holidays

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.

Building Tree Houses – Growing Up Wild In Georgia

Do kids still build tree houses? That was always a favorite summer activity of mine. From the one in the pecan tree in my front yard to the ones we built down in the woods, they ranged from simple platforms ten feet high to complex ones so far up we put side boards on it to keep from falling out.

The house I grew up in had five pecan trees. There was a huge one in from of the house, another big one to one side and a third in the edge of the field past mama’s flower bed. There were two more smaller trees right beside the ditch on Iron Hill Road to the same side as the flower bed.

One of those smaller trees had a big limb about ten feet from the ground that was perfect for the base of a tree house. Boards nailed to the tree trunk provided a ladder for access. Then two by fours nailed to the limb made the base, with braces going back to the trunk below them.

I rebuilt that one several times over my youth as the boards rotted and became unsafe. I spent many summer days sitting in it, cooled by any breeze that filtered through the limbs and shaded by the leaves above me. I felt completely hidden from the world watching the occasional car or truck that passed just a few feet away. And although mama knew where I was, I could not see the house from my platform.

Taking sandwiches and a drink up in the tree to eat made many summer lunches pass quickly. In the fall there were always pecans on the platform for a snack. One special place was a limb knot hole right beside the platform where I often found pecan hulls where a blue jay or wood pecker had stuck a nut in the small hole and used it as a vice to hold its lunch as it pecked away the shell and ate the meat.

The highest tree house we ever built was in a huge pine tree behind Harold’s house. My memory tells me it was way too high but it was probably no more than 30 feet from the ground, still scary enough for a 12-year-old. It was hard work hauling the boards up that high, either pulling them up with a rope or passing them hand over hand between Harold, Hal and me while we perched with one leg hooked over a limb.

The platform on this one was probably 10 feet square, sitting on a big limb parallel to the ground. Another limb below that one that ran up at more of an angle provided a great place for supports so we could build it bigger. It was cross braced and around the edges we had nailed one by eights to provide a small lip.

We actually slept up there in our sleeping bags one time but near the base of it was our camp. We made prefab walls and a roof and struggled to get them the couple of hundred yards to the site. The three sided shed was a great place to store wood for a dry fire starter and some tools we used every time we camped there.

A rock fire pit with a homemade spit, made from two forked limbs and a cross piece with the bark stripped, was used for roasting squirrels and birds. We cooked breakfast in our mess kits on that fire and also put our “camp dinners” on it. Those were the big patty of ground beef topped by potatoes, onions, carrots and butter wrapped in tinfoil.

Other tree houses ranged from not much bigger than what I now put up for a deer stand to platforms we could lay one and stretch out. We never had anything like the fancy prefab “tree” houses on posts you see in yards nowadays. They are often nowhere near a tree, usually put up by the parents, and very complex.

I can’t help but believe kids are missing something by building their own houses down in the woods, all by themselves, with no adult supervision or help, like we did.

Damming Dearing Branch

Damming Dearing Branch was always a favorite summer activity when I was growing up. The branch entered our farm in the woods that ran along the edge of our big hay field. It came under a fence at the adjoining property line and left the other side of our land, running under another fence and going into a culvert under Iron Hill Road.

The woods were about a quarter mile wide from our field to the pasture on the other side at Rodgers’ Dairy. Right where it first hit our woods it was about eight feet wide and the area around it was flat and sandy. In other sections it had cut deep and was only three or four feet wide with two feet of water in that ditch area. The sandy area was only a few inches deep unless there had been a big rain.

About 20 yards past the fence on the upper end two big trees squeezed the water into a narrow gap three feet wide. We wanted our own private swimming hole and those two trees made a perfect place for a dam.

The first time we tried we quickly found that no matter how fast we shoveled sand between the trees it just washed away with the current. I don’t know where we got the idea for sand bags, probably from reading books, but we got croaker feed sacks from the barn and filled them with sand. That worked.

We would dig sand from the bottom of the shallow area to fill the sacks and struggle to drag them to the trees. As the water rose at the gap between the trees it would start running around either side so we extended the dam out to the sides.

Our best effort was one summer when we got an old cross tie and drug it across the field and through the woods to the dam site. It took all the strength three 12-year-olds could muster but we got it there and in place. It made a great base. We then started digging sand and filling sacks.

That summer we had a pool almost four feet deep, coming about chest high on us. We could almost swim in our 20-foot-wide, 20-foot-long private pool. Since it was down in the woods we didn’t bother with bathing suites, we just wore what we were born with. Skinny dipping was so exhilarating!

Every summer our dams would wash away with the first big rain and we learned a lesson about the power of moving water. But the cross tie was such a good base it held up for a couple of months. After a very big rain it, too, washed enough to turn the cross tie sideways, moving it from the trees and destroyed out pool. But that was a memorable summer.

It took a tremendous amount of effort to make the dams. Dragging the cross tie was the worst, but just filling bags with shovels and moving them a few feet was strenuous work. If our parents had made us work that hard we probably would have been upset but our own effort was fun and worth it. That was another lesson learned, if you wanted to do something no amount of effort was really “work.”

Growing Up Wild In Georgia

I loved growing up wild in Georgia. Most of my happy memories are of things I did outdoors. Thank goodness video games and TV either did not exist or were so unimportant that they took very little of my time.

Many of those memories also involve wild critters. I was in a church group, the RAs, that went on camping trips every summer. One very memorable one was to a mill pond about 20 miles from Dearing. There were about ten of us kids from about ten to 14 years old, and several adult supervisors.

We put up our pup tents the afternoon we go there and went exploring. I wandered off by myself, not unusual for me, and walked along the creek below the mill pond dam, trying to catch anything that would bite my earthworm on small hook under a cork. I was in the edge of the water, for some reason I always had to wade, and looked down near my feet then jumped back to shore. There was something on the bottom I had never seen and it scared me.

That ugly mottled brown lizard shaped critter was about a foot long, with a big, wide head, long vertical flat tail and four legs. It also had what looked like red downy feathers around its neck. The thing was lying or standing in shallow clear water and not moving.

I picked up a stick and hit it and killed it. At that age it was not unusual to kill anything new, often to get a better look at it. When I gingerly picked it up its body was smooth and slimy. Taking it back to camp everyone gathered around and even the adults said they had never seen anything like it although most of them had spent most of their lives outdoors.

When I got home I went to my trusty Encyclopedia Britannica and finally found it. It was a type of salamander called a “Hellbender” and its range included some of Georgia, although more common further north. It was rare and I was sad I had killed it.

It was interesting to me when I started bass fishing a lot with artificial baits in the early 1970’s one of the most popular plugs was a “hellbender.” Another was the “waterdog,” which is another name for the hellbender salamander. Those were two of the early crankbaits and I have often wondered if they were named after the salamander. They are still available and are great for trolling.

Saturday night on the mill pond camping trip most of us were fishing near our camp right on the edge of the water. A “water moccasin” swam up to investigate and someone killed it. I’m sure it was some kind of harmless water snake but back then every snake that was near water was a dangerous, poisonous, deadly, kill-you-if-it-could, water moccasin, so it was kill or be killed.

I had my trusty pocket knife in my pocket, as did every other boy there. We would just as soon leave home without our pants as without our knives. Since I was always curious I decided to “dissect” the snake. When I cut it from head to tail, I found two surprising things.

First was a fish head. That told us why the snake was so close to us. Earlier we had cleaned some bream and thrown the heads and guts into the water, and the snake was after an easy meal. Even more surprising were the 17 yellow, marble size eggs in it. We were happy we had actually killed 18 snakes rather than just one.

After cutting the snake open I made another discovery. I threw the body on the fire, and found out how terrible a burning snake smells! The men in camp almost ran me out of camp for doing that.

A few years later I made another fire discovery. By then we had plastic milk jugs and when an empty one is put on a fire with the cap on it, it will often take off like a rocket. The air inside heats up and as soon as a tiny hole melts in the plastic it acts like a jet engine nozzle.

I discovered a painful critter when camping with my family at Clarks Hill Lake when I was about 15 years old. Daddy smoked back then. One day an hour after eating lunch I went into our big tent to change into my bathing suit. I put my hand down on the floor going in to the door and thought daddy had left a burning cigarette there.

I probably screamed and daddy came running. We got a flashlight and looked closely, and found I had put my hand down on a small brown scorpion. Although only 20 miles from our farm, where I had spent hundreds of hours exploring everything outside, I had never seen one.

For some reason they were rare in that area. But not here in Griffin. I find them every time I turn over a piece of wood in my yard, and have had them drop from the ceiling into my bed at night. I solved that problem by sealing the crack around the overhead light fixture. I now have to clean a few out of the globe on it every few months, but at least when they come from the attic along the wires they are trapped up there before they can join me in bed!

I did learn some useful things when out in the woods back then. I learned how to build a fire, patch up cuts, cook several kinds of food on an open fire to make them at least barely edible, and the importance of clearing rocks and sticks from the area you planned on putting your sleeping bag.

If you have a kid take them outside and let them learn about the real world!

Christmas Time Growing Up Country

Christmas was always a wondrous time growing up in rural Georgia in the 1950s and 60s. We had little compared to today but we had great fun and I have fantastic memories of those Christmases long past. I hope today’s kids are experiencing things they will always remember, too.

Until I was 12 years old I lived in an old farm house that was heated by an oil burning stove. It sat in front of the old fireplace that still had a mantle so that is where we hung our stockings. And they were stockings. We always talked mom into letting us have one of her worn out stockings – and back then, they were stockings, one for each leg – to hang. It would hold a lot!

Oranges and apples were always in them and I enjoyed them, but more fun were the boxes of sparklers, caps for the cap gun I played with for years, some fish hooks and sinkers, and other small items. Sometimes there were small toys, too, but they were usually quickly lost.

Santa always left some great outdoor gifts. Every year I got a block of ten boxes of .22 bullets and several boxes of .410 shells. I got a used .22 rifle when I was about 8 years old and it was great, but when I was 12 there was a brand new Remington semiautomatic .22 with a scope on it under the tree. I still have that gun and shoot squirrels with it.

The .410 shotgun was a hand-me-down and it killed many squirrels and a few doves and quail. My brother still has that gun. He got it when I started using dad’s 12 gauge shotguns. He had three, an old pump Winchester he had growing up, and two semiautomatic guns.

That old pump gun was temperamental. It had a hammer and a very light trigger. So light that sometimes it would fire when a shell was loaded and the slide slammed shut. One day I was sitting on a tree lying in the woods and bumped the butt against it. Fortunately the gun was pointing straight up since it fired. I learned then to never cock the hammer until I was ready to shoot it.

I still have that old pump and the two semiautomatic shotguns and use them when I get to go bird hunting.

Family and friends were very important and we always spent time with my uncles and aunts and dozens of cousins. We usually visited them the days after Christmas since we were in Florida the week before Christmas. One of my aunts lived in Ocala and dad’s mother lived with her. We would head down there the day after school holidays started and spend several days with them.

I loved Florida, from visiting Silver Springs to picking oranges right off the tree. Strange thing was, the oranges in our stockings looked a lot like the ones we had picked and brought home. I also loved digging in the soft sandy soil in my aunt’s back yard. I spent hours digging holes – and filling them back up.

Christmas lights were great and we got to see a good many on our trip since we drove straight through both ways, and it was about a 12 hour drive back then. We passed one house in south Georgia that had a very pretty yard and a pond in front of it. My mom said it was her dream house. They had some lights around the house that the pond reflected and they were beautiful.

Christmas lights were very subdued back then compared to now. No light icicles hanging from eaves, no big lighted statues in the yard. Most house had a single Christmas tree in front of a window. A few had lighted trees outside and very few had other lights. Many houses did have manger displays, the real reason for the season, and it seems it was more honored back then.

I did get to go hunting during the holidays, from trips by myself to kill squirrels to running my friends pack of beagles for rabbits. I loved both. Deer hunting was a few years in the future back then. I didn’t go deer hunting until I was 16, just a couple of years after the first season opened in Georgia.

We also hunted Christmas decorations. An old abandoned field a couple of miles from our house had a lot of cedar trees in it and they were perfect Christmas trees. We also went to an old home site and collected Smilax, which I found out later is green briar. It stays green all winter and was thick at the old home site. We made wreaths out of it and also framed our door with it. It was very pretty since everything else was pretty drab after the leaves fell off the pecan trees in the yard.

I hope you have some great Christmas memories and make even more this year.

Beating the Heat Growing Up By Going Fishing

One of my favorite ways to beat the hot weather when I was growing up was to go fishing. Weather like we have had the past few weeks always brings back memories of those days, back when we did not start school until after Labor Day and could fish and enjoy life for a full three months during the summer.

From the time I was about 10 until I got my driver’s license at 16 I spent many wonderful summer days at local ponds. I would ride my bicycle to them, often traveling five or six miles to fish. Most of the time one of my friends was with me and we would make a day of our fishing trip.

My bicycle had a huge basket up front, big enough for my Old Pal tackle box. I would hold my Mitchell 300 reel and rod across the handle bars and head off. Usually we packed a lunch, and it mostly consisted of saltine crackers and Vienna Sausage or Ritz crackers and potted meat. Sometimes we carried sardines, but they were not my favorite at that age.

Drinks were a problem. Back in those days cans were unheard of and all drinks came in bottles. We did not have the small ice chests that are so popular now, so we would sometimes wrap our drinks in newspaper to keep it somewhat cool. Most of the time we just took a Mason jar of water along since a hot Coke was not real good, even at that age.

Riding to the ponds would make us very hot but we solved that as soon as we got there. Jeans and tennis shoes were the uniform of the day and as soon as we parked the bikes and got our tackle rigged up we would start wading. Easing around the pond in the shallows, casting ahead of us, we would carefully fish every bit of cover available.

I can still feel the mud oozing around my feet and the cool spots we would sometimes hit. It was amazing how the water would be real warm but suddenly we would find a pocket of cool water. Those were probably springs but we did not realize it then. Those spots were favorites to stand and cast from for a long time, even if nothing hit. We leaned where they were in each of the ponds we fished.

Now I watch a depthfinder on my boat to find underwater stumps, ditches, rocks and other cover and structure. Back then it was more personal. My feet were my depthfinder. Over the summer I would locate stumps, rocks, brush and ditches with my feet then fish them the next time we made a trip to that pond.

We learned to slide our feet along slowly, mainly so we would not disturb the fish, but also so we would not step off into a hole. It was not unusual to wade up to neck deep, especially when crossing a cove or ditch to get to the other side. As often as not we would have to swim some, doing a kind of dog paddle with our feet while holding rods and reels over our heads.

In those days catch and release was unknown, we practiced catch and hot grease. We kept and ate just about everything we caught. A stringer tied onto a belt loop always received bass and bream that hit our lures and we had to be careful wading with some fish following us around. We always worried about snakes trying to come eat our fish, but it never happened. I am sure the snakes were more scared of us than we were of them.

I learned early on not to wade too close to stumps that came above the water in the ponds. They usually had a small bush growing on them, and we were afraid of snakes. But the biggest danger were the wasp nest built on them. It is hard to run from wasps when wading chest deep, and, unlike a snake, they will come after you if you get too close.

When we took a break for lunch our wet clothes provided air conditioning and the ride home on our bicycles was cool and comfortable. There was no air conditioning at home, but there was a mother waiting to make sure we left wet, dirty shoes and jeans at the back door. I always hated to take them off but it helped knowing they would be waiting on me the next day for another fishing trip.

Growing Up In A Small Town In Georgia

I was getting my every-other-Saturday haircut from Mr. Ralph one fall when the conversation turned to squirrel hunting. One of the old men sitting around the checker board said he wanted a dog that would tree squirrels. I said Hal had one and Mr. Ralph said “I didn’t know Tippy would tree squirrels.”

That is what I love about growing up in a small town and why I am so thankful for my childhood there. Not only did the local barber know which friend I was talking about by his first name, he knew his dog’s name, too.

I grew up in Dearing, GA on Highway 78 near Augusta. We had a caution light on the main highway and there were six stores in the town. You could buy everything you needed in each one, including gas, fresh meat, clothes, guns, fishing tackle and canned goods. They were typical country stores of the 1950s and the owners knew everyone that came through the door.

My house was a half mile from the center of town, right on the “city” limits. The sign was right in front of my house on Iron Hill Road and we had 15 acres. On it were seven chicken houses with 11,000 laying hens, a hog house with sows and nearby a pen to raise out the young pigs, and fields with ponies and cows.

One property line had a branch running near it and where I swam and caught fish. We also tried to dam it up every summer, working like beavers but not nearly a good at dam building as they are. I also explored that branch from end to end and knew every hole and stump in it, and could tell you where a fish would hit my home-made chicken feather flies.

That was a simpler time. There were no video games and TV was black and white with two channels available to us. Kids spent their free time outside when not in school or doing chores. We hunted, fished, shot guns, build forts and tree houses, dammed creeks and roamed the woods and fields.

No one was surprised to see a kid with a gun. Many days I would hit the woods at the creek below my house on Saturday morning and hunt up the creek with my .22 or .410. The creek crossed Highway 78 just outside of town and I would get there at lunch time. Then it was time to pick a store, go in and lean my rifle or shotgun in the corner and get a cold drink from the ice box and a can of sardines, Vienna Sausage or potted meat and have lunch. A box of saltines were always open and available to anyone buying something to go with them.

After lunch I would sometimes hunt back down the creek or hit the road and head home. Walking down Iron Hill Road with a rifle did not draw a second glance, but everyone would wave. I could stop at Harold’s house on the way. He was the only other boy in town my age. We started kindergarten together and graduated from the University of Georgia together 17 years later. Hal was two years older than me.

My father was principal of Dearing Elementary School and my class had 27 students in it. We had basically the same group from first through eight grade but then went to High School in Thomson eight miles away. Thomson High was huge after Dearing Elementary. My class there had just over 150 in it and grades nine through 12 had over 500 students!

All the kids went to church at least three days a week. Sunday mornings we were in Sunday School then church and evenings found us in Training Union and then church. Prayer meeting was every Wednesday and RA’s for boys and GA’s for girls met on Monday nights. We boys talked a lot about hunting and fishing and the highlight every summer was a camping trip or two with all the boys and three or four of the men.

I am very thankful for my youth and wish every kid could have the kind of experiences I had back then. I think there would be a lot less crime and drug use. We didn’t have time for such foolishness. The outdoors tends to do that to you, and you learn respect for others and nature when you are spending time in the woods.

Kids still have opportunities to hunt and fish but almost always have to be accompanied by an adult in today’s crazy world. Try to help them go hunting and fishing any time you can.

Growing Up Fishing A Branch

I miss Dearing Branch. That small branch ran across one of the property lines of the farm I grew up on and it was my summertime home. My friends and I spent many happy hours there during hot weather.

Every summer we would dam the branch trying to make a swimming hole. There was one fairly deep hole where the branch widened then narrowed down, running between two big sweet gum trees growing on either bank. That made the perfect place to dam it up.

We did things that would have made us rebel if our parents had made up work so hard. We would take croaker sacks and fill them with sand to stop the water flow. Have you ever tried to move a big sack of wet sand? We soon learned to fill them very near where we wanted to place them.

One summer dad got some cross ties to use around the farm and we managed to drag one across the field, into the woods and to the branch. It gave our dam the backbone needed to hold the sacks and that summer we got a swimming hole with enough water to come up to our chins while standing up. We could actually swim some in it a little, but the hole was only about 15 feet wide and 20 feet long at most. It was still huge to us boys.

The cool water was great and a welcome relief after the hard work building the dam. We never bothered with bathing suits, we just stripped down and went skinny dipping. But the first heavy rainstorm would wash our dam away and we would have to start all over again. We never gave up, though.

Most summers near the end of August the branch would almost dry up and we would try to rescue the fish. We had a good supply of water at the house so we would carry the small catfish and bream up to the back yard in buckets and put them in wash tubs. A hose kept water running into the tubs and we learned to place them so the water cascaded from one to another, keeping several full.

The fish never lived more than a few days. And we never thought about the conflict between trying to rescue fish one day then going to a local pond, catching fish and cleaning them to eat the next day. Such were the ideals of youth.

I loved fishing in the branch, too. My greatest thrill was getting small bream and branch minnows to hit a “fly” made out of chicken feathers that I tied on a small bream hook with some of mom’s sewing thread. I would spend hours dangling the small bait near a stump in a hole in the bank of the branch trying to lure the skittish fish out. They were great trophies but I always let them go.

I guess what I really miss are the long, seemingly endless summer days of my youth, where a small bream was a trophy, we thought we could control our world with dams and dreams, and the responsibilities of adult life were still far in the future.