Pages of my Life
Short stories from the last 65 years
Blackpowder & the cannon, 1959
Milton and Eddie Earl Martin was High School chums. One time Eddie Earl and I was Squirrel hunting and came across this old house way back on a neighboring farm. It had not been lived in for many, many years. We decided to have a look at the inside as we could see lots of old stuff through the windows. We could not believe what we saw in there. It looked just like someone had been living there way back in the old days, maybe as far back as the Civil War. The place had been left with all the furniture, pictures, clothing and everything one might have in a house in those times. There was old Civil War saddles, spurs, harness and all sorts of old stuff. Over in one corner of an upstairs room I found and old brown paper bag. Looking inside was what I took to be black powder. “Hey Eddie Earl……..come have a look at this” Eddie Earl walked over and had a look at the black stuff in the bag. “Rich…………….you think that might be black powder?” Well, I said, “ we can sure find out quick enough, lets take some outside and put a match to it” So we took a little bit and went outside away from the house so we wouldn’t burn it down if it did turn out to be black powder. Now neither one of us had no experience with powder except what we had saw in movies. I poured the black stuff out onto a flat rock, maybe about three tablespoons of it and stood as far away as I could and still be able to throw a match on the pile. BOOOOOOOM, one hell of an explosion………….it durn near knocked me down………..burnt my hand and singed all the hair off my face and the side of my head. Man…………that was awesome……..”Hey Eddie Earl………….I looked around and Eddie Earl was standing a good twenty feet from where the blast had taken place…………guess he wasn’t taking no chances……Hey Eddie Earl…………that stuff IS black powder. Yep, he says, “Lets take it home with us and build a cannon and shoot that stuff off in it……….that ought to be fun.
So we went back in the old house and got the bag of powder and packed it home with us, being careful to handle it with care as we had seen in movies that the stuff could be set off by a jar or shooting it with a rifle, or so we thought.
The next Friday I went home from school with Milton and Eddie Earl and spent the night with them, yep, I had that black powder with me all that day at School………Man, if you did that today, you would NEVER get out of Jail. Well, anyway we had plans to make a cannon on Saturday as their old man had a welder and Milton had learned to weld with it. We was up at first light on Saturday morning an as soon as the chores was done we had breakfast and then headed over to the old tool shed where old ‘Mutt” their Dad kept the welder. There was a huge scrap pile of metal there and we scrounged through it till we found a piece of 2” diameter galvanized pipe about five feet long. We found a piece of flat steel and Milton welded this over one end of the pipe. Then a hole about 1/8” was drilled into the side of the pipe about a half inch above the steel plate.
There was an old horse drawn hay mower sitting there that had not been used for many years. This thing had steel wheels on it so we drug it over within reach of the welding cables and Milton welded the cannon onto the side of one wheel. We figgered this would allow us to elevate the cannon and also keep it from going rearward when it was fired.
Our first shots was with a small amount of powder with no projectiles and we fired it a few times. Man…….that thing belched a huge cloud of blue smoke and shook the ground. After maybe a dozen shots, we got braver and decided to load it with a heavier charge. We would turn the wheel and point the cannon straight up for loading. We poured in a hefty charge of powder and one of us…..I don’t remember which one ran in the shop and grabbed a handful of old nuts and washers. These was poured down the barrel and a piece of wadded up newspaper was packed in over them. There was a big plowed field out in front of the shop and about 100 yards out in the field was about 10 Beehives that their Dad had. We turned the Mower till we had the cannon pointing at the beehives and then lowered the barrel until it was aimed a few feet over the Beehives which we figgered would account for any drop of the projectiles if any.
Mutt had been away in town that morning but it was just our luck that he was just coming down the driveway in his old pickup and saw everything that took place when we touched the cannon off. We was using fuses that we had removed from cherry bombs to fire the cannon. They was only about 2 inches long so we had to run like hell every time we fired the thing. We was so interested on what we was doing that we never noticed their Dad coming down the driveway which wound along the edge of the plowed field. Well, one of us lit a match and touched it to the fuse and ran like hell. We didn’t know if the pipe would withstand the charge we had put in it but we weren’t taking any chances. Man………this thing went off with a powerful blast that nearly busted out eardrums. The recoil turned the mower plumb around and left the cannon pointing straight up like it was wanting to be loaded again. When the cannon discharged we saw all those nuts and washers kicking up dirt all around them Beehives…………so did Mutt………and he came over and stopped the pickup where we was…………”Boys, he said…….just whut in hell do y’all think you’re doing……….have you wrecked my Beehives or whut?”
He led the way out across that plowed field and we followed some distance behind as we all knowed he would whip our butts in a heartbeat. Man…….you ain’t gonna believe the damage to one of them Beehives. Looked like most of the nuts and washers had concentrated on one hive. It was bust all to pieces with the Bees madder than hell and buzzing all around it. Old Mutt stood there for a minute and looked at it. We had no idea what he was thinking. We was all standing behind him and he turned to us with a grin on his face. Boys, he said, “I was a kid once myself a long time ago……. That was a good Beehive…….. Now y’all can just work in the tobacco this summer for nothing until its paid for….it that alright with y’all?”
Man…..we all breathed a sigh of relief as Mutt walked away chuckling to himself. He stopped about twenty feet from us and said, “I reckon that will be the last shot fired with that thing” and turned and walked to the house.
Milton, Eddie Earl and I walked back over to the cannon. We saw that it could not be fired anymore as that last time had put a 3” split in it right where the fuse went in. The mower sat there with the cannon still welded on it for a long time. I went that summer an worked in the tobacco as I usually did. Old man Martin would always pay us boys 50 cents an hour to sucker, pick the tobacco worms off and to pull the leaves and tie them when they was ready. We carried a pail of lamp oil (kerosene) to put the worms in. Old Mutt never did deduct the cost of that Beehive from our pay. You reckon he forgot about it……..
Milton went on to spend a few years in the Air force and then was a Border Guard on the Mexican Border for several years. He now lives on the old farm where we shot the cannon and does pretty well the same things his father did there when he was alive. Eddie Earl married his High School sweetheart and became a newspaper reporter somewhere in the Carolinas. I have not seen him since High School days and that is about 50 years ago. I went down and visited with Milton a few years ago. Damn, if he don’t look just like Mutt. The old hay mower was not there and I didn’t ask Milton about it.
Man…….you never know what will come into your mind when you sit down and start thinking about the old days.
Arrowheads…..the above reminds me of arrowheads. Them Martin boys and I spent many a Sunday afternoon looking for them. Eddie Earl and Milton had a couple of bushel baskets filled with them. We had certain fields where we knew there was lots of them. The best time to look for them was in late fall or early spring in fields that had been plowed in late summer and had a lot of rain on them. The rail washed the dirt from the rocks and stones and the arrowheads. Some times we would find enough in an afternoon to fill the pockets in our jeans. Most would be broken someplace or have chips out of them but we would always find a few perfect ones.
I remember one time I found the front half of a spear point that was about 4” long. The next year while looking in nearly the same spot I found what appeared to be the rear half of a spear point. I took it home and it matched perfectly the front half I had found the year before. Now was this a small miracle or what?
We found some tomahawk heads and once in a while we found a grinding stone that had a smooth round place in the middle. I guess the Indians or whoever, used these as a pestle to grind herbs and corn in. I found one once and it lay on my folks back porch where it was used as a doorstop for many years. I don’t remember whatever become of it. I used to sell arrowheads to town folks that would sometimes come by on Sundays. I sometimes would get a buck apiece for some of the good ones. I remember that a year or two after I got married that Uncle Robert come one day and traded me an old pocket watch for about a hundred arrowheads. I had them glued inside of little boxes that had a glass front. He got the boxes an all. I never saw them again. I guess that when Aunt May expired that her family got them. Man…….would I ever like to have them back…….
One of the best places I found to hunt for arrowheads was on my Dads farm. The farm was located at the intersection of route 24 and route 43 and lay on the north side of rt. 24. It is about 10 miles South of Bedford Virginia. If you walk down the small branch which kind of runs North or Northwest from the barns about 300 yards there is another small branch that runs into the first one. When I lived there it was all pasture on the South side of the second Branch and cropland on the north side. At that time there was a fence alongside the second branch. That field that was part of the cropland right there next to the branch was loaded with arrowheads. Many a time I filled my pockets there in an hour or two. Sometimes I found one and when I straightened up I would see another from where I was standing. There was good arrowhead hunting all around that place for a mile in every direction. I guess there must still be thousands still lying there to be found. Maybe when I get slowed up a little in my rifle building I’ll go back and find some more.
Bullets for the 22 rifle, 1955
Dad inherited a Winchester Model 12, 12 gauge shotgun and a Marlin model 97, .22 caliber rifle from his father George Franklin. Dad told me the following story.
Granddad George spent his last years working at the Norfolk & Western shops in Roanoke, Virginia. Him and his fellow workers would set outside on nice days and have their lunch there. They had a sort of game where they would shoot the Sparrows from the tops of the high smokestacks. Granddad got tired of being outshot with the single shot 22 he had and he bought the Marlin. He said it was the most accurate of any of the 22s the boys was shooting Sparrows with. This Marlin was made about 1920, it was a lever action repeater with an octagon barrel, and a case-hardened receiver. It also had a Marble fold-down peep sight. Dad said Granddad George won many a bet shooting Sparrows with this rifle.
When I was a 12 year old, Dad kept this rifle and the shotgun in his bedroom and we were not allowed to touch it unless he gave us permission. Ever since the war Dad was not crazy about guns, so the rifle and shotgun rarely saw the light of day. I remember only one time that Dad took the rifle out and gave me some instructions on how to shoot it. He took me out hunting only one time when I was a kid. One day in the wintertime he brought out the shotgun and the rifle and asked me if I would like to go rabbit hunting with him. Of course I said yes, as I was born crazy about guns. We went out that day and Dad jumped a cottontail and shot it on the run. Being a kid with no experience I thought that was quite impressive. Dad let me shoot a few sparrows with the 22. that day. I had a great time that day with dad and often wondered why we never went hunting again.
I would sometimes play sick on Sunday morning and Mom would let me stay home from church. As soon as they would drive out of the driveway, I would have the 22 out and go shooting sparrows or tin cans. It was a common thing to have only a few bullets. In those days parents did not give kids an allowance so I had to be creative to get my hands on some 22 bullets. I would get a couple of eggs out of the chicken house and take them out the road a piece to the little country store and the Lady there would trade me a few 22 bullets for the eggs. This is how I got ammo to burn up in the 22. Whenever I did get my hands on some money, I spent it all on 22 bullets. In those days kids could not afford a full box of 22s even though they were only about 40 or fifty cents a box. I never bought a full box until I was maybe 15 or 16 years old. Mom and Dad never knew I was swiping eggs to pay for 22 bullets. A couple of years ago when Mom was about 88, I told her about me taking the eggs and trading them for bullets.
When I was old enough to work for the neighboring farmers in their tobacco or getting up hay bales I would spend all of this money on ammo for the shotgun and 22 rifle. I can remember sometimes I would have 22 bullets in the top drawer of the chest of drawers in my bedroom several inches deep. I would dump them out of the little cardboard boxes and have them loose there in the drawer. Sometimes when I came home from school I would have a little while before chore time, so I would grab a handful and head for the woods in search of a Squirrel or rabbit.
By the time I left home I had nearly wore the barrel out on that 22 Marlin. Its no telling how many rounds I shot in it when I was growing up, many, many thousands I know. It’s a wonder there is a Squirrel or Rabbit left anywhere in the state of Virginia today as I killed a bunch of them with the 22 when I was a kid. Mom always cooked every one I shot except for some I would sell to town folks when they would drive out on Sunday afternoons.
About twenty years ago, Dad gave the Model 12 to me and the Marlin to my brother Johnnie. I went to visit Johnnie a few years later and the 22 was hanging on his wall. I got it down and had a look at it, remembering the good times I had had with it. Johnnie evidently realized what the rifle meant to me and so he gave it to me that day. Man………..that made my day. Today both guns are displayed on the walls in my home. I haven’t fired the 22 in years as the bore is shot out for the first few inches and it is not accurate any more. My grandson Mike shoots the 12 gauge quite often and shoots it well. One day they will be his as he is the only grandson I have. I have been in love with guns since I was born and Mike is following right in my footsteps. My two sons, Curtis and Chris were never much on hunting and guns, although today Chris owns a few rifles and pistols and shoots targets some. Curtis has a good 22 caliber Brno I gave him a few years ago and shoots a few gophers with it each summer.
Richard, 2009
Blowing up Robert Arrington, 1959
When I was about 16, Robert Arrington came to work on the Dairy farm. He had killed an uncle in a fight, with a steel pipe. As it was self defense he was not charged but the County Sherriff thought he might benefit if he could spend some time around decent folks, so he asked Dad if he would take Robert and work him for awhile.
We had a bunkhouse for the hired hands to live in. They took their meals in the house with the rest of our family like anyone else regardless of skin color. Robert was a black boy but his skin color was lighter than me or Johnnie. Robert liked to consider him self white, rather than black and was always looking for something that would make his hair straight. He once bought some stuff home in a bottle and tried it out. Well, Mister Man…………..that stuff pretty near burnt his scalp up. He didn’t have to worry about it being straight no more cause it all fell out or was burnt out. It took Robert quite a spell to recover from this episode. He learned his lesson and never again tried to make his hair straight.
Robert liked to play his Guitar, and one night he was in the bunkhouse lying on his bed plunking away. There was a Puffin Billy tin heater in there with a six inch vertical stovepipe that went above the roof about three feet. Johnnie and I had some cherry bombs we were saving for a special occasion and we thought this occasion was special enough. We had about ten or twelve of these things and we decided to sneak up on the roof of the bunkhouse and drop them down the chimmy and see what effect it would have on Robert. If you ever fired off a cherry bomb you know how powerful they are. I expect one would darn near blow your fingers off.
Well, we climbed up on the roof, being careful to not make a sound that might alert Robert we was up to no good. Johnnie lay on one side of the chimmy and I on the other. Robert had a pretty good fire roaring in the Puffing Billy as flames were shooting out of the top of the chimmy. Ole Robert was playing the Yellow Rose of Texas, when both Johnnie and I threw in the cherry bombs and rolled away from the pipe…………..Man………………what a blast…………totally awesome……………..flames and smoke shot ten feet into the air……….just like a cannon. Next thing we knew ole Robert didn’t take time to open the door………….he just ran through it……..knocking it off its hinges………and ran to the Dairy barn shouting and screaming. There was a water faucet there and he headed straight for it.
Me and Johnnie jumped down and had a look inside. Man……….the place was on fire…………we ran and got a garden hose going and managed to put the flames out. The stove which was made of tin had ruptured and one side was blown out. We knew we were in for it as Dad would tune us up good for this trick. We went down to the barn to see how bad ole Robert was disfigured. Lucky for us he was mostly just scared out of his wits. He had a few minor burns and his clothes were scorched a bit. I reckon it’s a good thing Robert was easy going and good natured as the fight could have been on, but Robert forgave us and didn’t hold any ill will.
Dad made us clean out the place and fix up the damage but he didn’t get mad and clean our clocks. It was a fool stunt and we got off pretty easy I guess. Robert worked for Dad on the farm for a few years. He was one of the best hands we ever had. He was always happy-go-lucky and nothing ever upset him. Robert Arrington went on to join the Army. He did two tours in Nam and retired after 30 years of Army life. He did well, real well for himself. He came to see me from Missouri in 2007. He had a nice fat wife and was doing fine. We sat around and talked about old times and had a good visit. I had an urge to ask “Hey Robert…………you remember the time me and Johnnie blew you up in the bunkhouse”…………but I didn’t.
Red Bonds and the Hornets, 1959
Red Bonds was another black boy that worked for us on the farm. He was called Red because he had red hair. Red had enough white blood to make him nearly as light as me and Johnnie. Mom always said that in the summer, when Johnnie and I got tanned up good that she could not see any difference in the color of either Robert, Red, Johnnie or me. Red was one of 14 kids that lived in a cabin over on the back side of our Farm. It was a tar paper shack with a dirt floor. I don’t know how they kept from freezing in the wintertime. Joe, one of Reds older brothers worked some for us but was mean and Johnnie ran him home one day with a pitchfork, jabbing him in the butt, which gave Joe a good start. Joe later went to Washington DC to live. He ended up shooting a fellow and spent most of his life in prison.
Dad sent Red and me down to the far end of the place one day to look for a cow he thought had had her calf and was hiding out someplace like they do sometimes. We finally found the cow with the calf that was no more than a few hours old. We were driving them to the barn on a well used cow path that ran down through the woods near a creek. I knew where there was a tree that had been blown down in a windstorm a few days before and in the top branches was a huge Hornets nest. The top of the tree was laying only a couple of feet beside the cow path. I kind of fell back a bit and let ole Red follow along close behind the cow and calf. When he was abreast of the Hornets nest I jumped up on the tree at its base near the stump and jumped up and down on it. I yelled as loud as I could. “Red……..run…………….Hornets……………run Red”. Man…….them Hornets came alive………quick. The closest moving thing they saw was Red……..and a bunch of them sailed right on him. Immediately, Red took off at about 90 miles an hour……..but not up the trail and not down it. Over to our left about fifty feet was a barbed wire fence around another field and Red headed straight for it. I saw right away what was going to happen and I yelled out to Red that there was a fence there, but he never heard a word………..just kept on getting up and crashed right into that barb wire. He had enough speed up that it didn’t slow him down. He somehow was flipped right over the top wire. He landed on his back and as soon as he hit the dirt, he was up and off again at high speed. The Hornets was working him over the whole time and he never slowed down all the way to the barn.
It took me some time to bring the cow and calf up to the barn and when I got there Johnnie told me that Mom had taken Red to the Doctor to have him sewed up, that he had somehow cut himself up bad. Man…………this was more than I had planned on happening…………..I just figured he would get a sting or two and outrun the rest of the Hornets. I never told anyone for a long time what had actually happened to Red. I just said he got into a Hornets nest and run through the fence………….all by his lonesome. Man, that would have been a neat trick……………….if only Red had not run through that fence. He ought to have known that there ain’t no short cuts when trying to out run Hornets or Yellow jackets.
Red came to see me a year or two ago. He was a foreman for a big Construction Company in Lynchburg, Virginia. He had done fine in his life and had a family and a few grown kids. He had come a long way for a black boy, born in a shack with a dirt floor, living with his thirteen brothers and sisters.
Red was glad to see me and I was happy to see him. We had a good visit but I still ain’t told him about why those Hornets got him.
Lucky shots
The Bat and the BB gun, 1954
I guess the first lucky shot I ever made was with my Daisy Red Ryder. I was about 12 years old. Mom and Dad were milking the cows one evening and Uncle Arch was sitting on the porch of the Dairy barn chewing tobacco and teasing me as usual. In the evenings the Bats would always come out chasing the bugs and insects. During the daytime they would hole up in the top of the Silos and sleep there hanging upside down. This evening they were flying all around as usual. I had been shooting at a quart oil can when Uncle Arch said, “if you are such a good shot with that thing, let me see you shoot one of them Bats flying around” I took aim at the next Bat to come close and danged if I didn’t kill it with the BB gun. It fell about five feet in front of Uncle Arch who was sitting there with a grin on his face. I don’t remember what he said but I do remember him telling everybody that I had shot a flying Bat. I do remember that I shot all the rest of my BBs that evening at the other Bats and never hit any more of them. Uncle Arch would laugh every time I missed one.
The 200 yard Rabbit shot with a 22 pistol
Me and Robert Hubbard was hunting Groundhogs on what we always called the “lower Farm” as it was about three miles from the home farm where we lived. Dad bought this place just for the raising of crops to feed the cows. There was an old house still standing there, but had been abandoned years before Dad bought the place. Robert and I used to climb up on the roof because we could see over most of the fields and watch for Groundhogs. I was looking down along the edge of a corn field and saw a Rabbit hopping along. Finally it stopped and sat still. “Hey Robert………..you want to see me kill that Rabbit…………. with my pistol”, Robert looked at the Rabbit and said, “ it’ll be snowballs in hell before you hit that Rabbit with the pistol, that’s got to be over two hundred yards “. I whipped out my 22 pistol like I was fast drawing against John Wayne or somebody and fired from the hip without taking aim. Man……….that Rabbit jumped about two feet straight up and fell down dead as a door nail. I looked at Robert in amazement and he looked at me in amazement. I tried then to make out like it was a regular thing with me………….to shoot a Rabbit at 200 yards, without even aiming. But Robert knew better, saying, “Bet you a dollar you can’t hit it again…………….and you can even aim this time “. Well, I pulled the pistol out again, and taking careful aim I fired five more rounds at the Rabbit………….. With the closest shot hitting about 10 feet from the Rabbit. Robert was laughing his fool head off as I was digging for the dollar.
Doug’s silver dollar, 1960
Christmas 1960, Doug Howell and I were squirrel hunting. We were walking along an old logging road and Doug was flipping up in the air this silver dollar his Dad had given him for Christmas. “Hey Doug……….throw that silver dollar way up and I’ll pop it with my 22”. “Heck, he said…………..you won’t even come close”…………..and tossed the dollar high in the air. POW!!!!!!!.........zinggggggggggg…….the sound of a bullet ricocheting away in one direction and the silver dollar going in another direction. “Damn”, says Doug, “You done lost my silver dollar”, Yep, it was gone forever……………we looked for awhile but never found it. Doug got pretty teed off and complained all the rest of that day. Finally I said, “Doug………if you’ll shut up about that dollar, I got a couple at home and I’ll give you one tomorrow…………it ought to be worth a dollar to see someone shoot one out of the air with a 22, but all you want to do is whine about it”