My youth was a perfect mixture of strict discipline and growing up wild in Georgia. It prepared me for having a balanced life where I worked hard and did the best I could at my job, but my free time was mine. I could concentrate fully on my job during the workday but forget it and do what I wanted the rest of the time. It has served me well in retirement, too.
From about six years old I had responsibilities on the farm that went along with my age. I helped gather eggs from our 11,000 laying hens, cleaned out watering troughs that ran the length of the chicken houses by running a broom down them from one end to the other, and putting graded eggs in cartons.
Those jobs increased in complexity and effort as I got older. But not all were hard work. I loved taking my semiautomatic rifle with the high-capacity magazine that I got for Christmas when I was eight years old that was loaded with .22 rat shot to the chicken houses each morning. Four of the houses had big open feed bins and during the night wharf rats would get trapped in them. I would climb up to the top, shoot any rats inside, then grab them by the tail and take them to the dead chicken dump hole.
That same .22 rifle or my trusty .410 single shot shotgun accompanied me on my morning and afternoon pre and post school and weekend trips to the woods during the fall and winter. Most anything was fair game, squirrels and rabbits during season and birds the rest of the time.
It was not unusual for me to leave the house on Saturday morning at daylight and return home at dark, exhausted, dirty, hungry and happy. I took some snacks like potted meat, Vienna sausage or sardines with some Saltines or Ritz crackers but that was never enough, although I supplemented it with roasted birds and a pocket full of pecans when they were falling.
Spring and summer were fishing times. Rather than my .22, I would carry my Zebco 33 rod and reel or later my Mitchell 300 outfit and small tackle box with me and walk or ride my bicycle to local farm ponds and fish all day. Or I would go down to Dearing branch with some fishing line and a small fly in my pocket.
I made the flies with chicken feathers and some of mama’s sewing thread, and they looked awful. I would dangle them from the end of my rod, a stick that I had cut in the woods. And the tiny bream and horny heads in the branch thought they were food often enough to make fishing for them productive.
Summer also brought the wondrous time of having many full days to spend wild. My friends and I would camp out, starting near the house in the back yard at eight years old them moving deeper into the woods each summer. Cooking food over a campfire was always an experience, and it never was cooked right, but there was never a crumb left!
We built tree houses, forts, “cabins” in the woods that kept out neither rain nor wind, and traps for non-existent animals. We dammed Dearing Branch, sometime making a pool deep enough to come up waist high on a 13-year-old skinny dipper.
We chased toad frogs and fireflies at night until bedtime. The adults often sat around on the porch after dinner and we kids, not tired enough from a full day of activities, would run around in the dark, chasing toads, fireflies and each other.
I hate that those days seem to be gone. I can not imagine someone 100 years from now sitting at a computer writing about a video game they played as a kid!