What's Sad? This is a true story
Feb. 21st, 2010 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitsjayafjsakj My dad's writing short stories!
Okay, okay, so I'm overwhelmed by how adorable this is, but back-story. My family is the personification of Southern oral tradition. If you thought oral tradition was just some weird anthropological case study of New Guinea or somewhere, come to my house on any weekend night. We sit around telling stories passed down from generation to generation and adding our own new ones as it goes along. Everyone in my family can tell you stories about the two draft horses my great-grandpa owned, or the way he got called up for WWI twice, or any number of things. I've always loved sitting around and hearing these stories, even though I could recite them by heart, because they're so comfortably Southern. They're all a part of me, these bits and pieces that all accumulated until I'm sitting here now. The more outrageous the stories, the better (and trust me, our family has some outrageous ones).
So I've always wanted to collect and preserve these stories but never got around to it. For some reason, my dad did though. And he sent me one! He was all embarrassed and sent it to me and Sean to look over, because he hasn't written in a really long time, but I think it's awesome.
Here's my dad's short story!
Late spring brought waves of heat with it, usual for South Texas, but less expected was a call from an old buddy of mine. Though technically a city boy, Tom’s heart was in the country and I could tell from the enthusiasm in his voice that it was going to be a long day in the field.
Not that I minded all that terrible much, as I enjoyed a day knocking around in the hills as much as the next guy, but then I had been doing it my whole life, whereas it was still new and fresh to him.
Our place was just on the edge of the balcones escarpment, the ridge of limestone hills that travels roughly along I-35 from Austin down to San Antonio As you drive down the freeway, the left of the road stretches into fields of black farming ground, spotted with low-hanging mesquite trees. To the right rises the hills with their limestone outcrops and open oak savannah. Beyond that, somewhere just out of sight, was the Edwards plateau. Every once in a while, a finger of those hills would jut out and the highway would cross them, threading the fields and rises like a patchwork quilt.
I was laying in bed, sweating under the distinct disadvantage of no air conditioning, when Tom’s call rousted me. He had just got a new lever action .22 and was itching to try it out in the fields.
“How ‘bout I come over an’ we go hunting?"
Contemplating the prospect of sweltering some more or tramping around outside, I agreed readily enough. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Okay, be over in a few minutes.”
Tom and I were always going hunting, regardless of whether we were actually looking for game or just rambling and seeing what might turn up. More often than not, hunting would simply end up being a good excuse to see how many cactus pears we could shoot without missing and we usually ended up killing nothing except a good day.
I rolled out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s shirt, hunted around the floor for a pair of socks, pulled on my old boots, and headed out the back door. I snagged a biscuit and a piece of bacon laying on top of the stove under a dishtowel, and was through the screen door to the back porch. Right off the back porch was a small out building which was where the washing machine was kept and happened to be where I kept my rifle.
I looked down the drive in time to see Tom’s Torino turn in. He roared down in a swirling cloud of caliche dust before turning and coming to a controlled skid to stop in front of the house. The door popped open and Tom's 6' frame unfolded out of the car, hat first.
Tom and I were about the same height, but whereas I couldn't cast a shadow on a summer day, he was a little more filled out. With his sandy hair, quick wit, and a flair for the absurd, he and I had been best friends for a long time, and I guess that our differences is what made us get on so well. Where I was tentative and awkward in a crowd, barely knowing how to carry on a coherent conversation, Tom was the soul of confidence, quick with a witticism as a friendly dig at a person ( which most people never did seem to mind), and generally at ease whatever the social setting. The upshot was that since we mostly hung around together, we could cut up and have a grand old time, and I could hold my own with him when it was just us.
But today we were headed into my element. I had spent my days out in the woods, the brush, and pastures; from early on, if I wasn’t doing my chores or in school, I was fishing, hunting, or riding to just see what was over the next rise or down the next draw.
Tom stretched, reached in the car and grabbed his rifle, looked up and asked, “You ready?” with his ever present grin firmly affixed.
“Let’s go,” I said and we started across the pasture adjacent to the home place. We had to cross about a half mile of flatland prairie covered in waist-high bluestem, through a weedy wash, and then suddenly we hit the foot of the hill. The ground changed into something rockier and we were suddenly into shortgrass and live oak trees. Scattered out through the trees were Agarita bushes, the occasional mountain laurel, and small thickets of what we called wild persimmon. I never learned the correct name for them, but I do know that I never got up the nerve to try eating it; the raccoons and possums sure loved them, though, based on the evidence laying around for unsuspecting boots everywhere. The transition was pronounced and I marveled at this natural demarcation of the land, a distinct boundary crossed as sure as if someone had drawn a line down the middle.
We worked our way down an old track that had once been access to an abandoned quarry now filled up with water. Although there wasn't another body of permanent water for miles around, Ma Nature had seen fit to stock this little tank with several varieties of perch and bass. We took a couple of shots at a wooden snag against the far bank with the back wall of the quarry as a back stop, then turned and began to work our way up the hill which topped out a hundred foot or so.
The ground grew rockier as we walked, the vegetation thinning out into fewer trees and more brush, then the ridge suddenly stopped. In my experience, when most low hills fall off, they don’t just go smooth down, but generally create a mishmash of wide and narrow steps like a staircase made by a drunk carpenter.
The side of this hill, on the other hand, fell off into a steep drop. The steps consisted of huge flat-top boulders, each eighteen inches or so away from each other. I was working my way down, and just as I was about to jump to the next ledge, I spotted him stretched out along the base of that rock. It was all I could do to change direction without losing my balance or, worse, stepping on him. I jumped past him and spun around, looking for his head which had disappeared. Tom had worked his way over from above and was looking down, trying to figure out what I was doing and getting in the way of my chance to shoot at the same time.
“Move over to the left so I can get a shot,” I yelled.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It's a Rattler, and a big one.”
“Where?”
“There, just below you,” I said, gesturing in that direction.
“Yeah, I see it,” he said, “ Lord, what a monster! Where's his head?”
“Man, that ain't even all of him ‘cause his head and part of him is in a hole."
“Shoot him!”
“I can't with you behind him,” I complained good-naturedly.
By that time, old man Rattler had finally figured out we were there, and just that quick he disappeared down the hole. One minute there was a good 5 to 6 feet of him stretched out along that rock, and the next, he was gone. He didn't wriggle, bunch, or twitch; he just slid, like someone had tied a line to his head and just pulled him in.
Now Tom had always wanted himself a rattlesnake skin hat band, and seeing that Rattler disappear into the hole just put him even more in a mind to get one. Neither of us were likely to stick our hand down there and try to grab the snake, so we sat staring at the rock trying to figure out how to get him out again.
“Hey,” Tom said, with that note in his voice that meant he had an idea, most likely one that would get us into trouble. “Let’s smoke ‘im out!”
I thought about it a minute. The deceptive thing about Tom’s ideas was that normally they sounded reasonable enough at the onset or in the planning phase; it made it hard to learn from past experiences how they usually turned out. “Guess we can at least try,” I finally said.
We started gathering up dry grass, lit it in front of the hole, and crouched down to wait.
Looking back, our first clue should have been when the smoke actually poured down that hole.
We kept feeding the fire with dry grass that had just enough new green in it that it was smoking up a storm. It seemed to be working like a charm, the smoke being sucked down instead of rising. Leaning over and fanning it, we kept at it, mentally patting ourselves on the back for such a clever idea. Like I said, Tom’s plans were deceptive that way.
After a little while I got to looking around, surprised to see smoke pouring out of the hill all around us. Of course, that’s when it hit me.
Rattle snakes will layup over the winter, with hundreds of them in one den, and I realized that if we were successful we might possibly have snakes exiting from every one of them smoking holes and they'd have us completely surrounded.
Now I know you see them fellas on TV these days that run around handling snakes, getting in the snake’s face, daring them to bite; but take it from me, that may be great theatrics but it ain't good sense. The thought of trying to negotiate an exit off that hillside with mad rattlers everywhere was not something I felt I wanted to do.
“Hey Tom, looky there,” I pointed to the surrounding countryside.
“What?”
“The hillside, it’s coughing smoke everywhere.”
It took Tom a minute, but when it hit he didn't waste no time, just quit fanning and began stomping that fire. As soon as we had that fire out, we got on up out of there. We hadn’t seen any snakes yet, but we weren’t anxious to stick around and see if our plan had worked after all.
Once we cleared that smokin’ hillside, we stopped to laugh and consider, and to this day I have always felt that episode proved my dad wrong about Tom; he had clearly demonstrated that he did too have sense enough to pour water out of a boot.
Maybe trying to smoke that rattler out wasn't the smartest idea he'd ever had, but the speed with which he decided to get out of there seemed like one of his better decisions, and one I was in wholehearted agreement on.
Both he and I would love it if you have any constructive criticism that I can pass along.
Okay, okay, so I'm overwhelmed by how adorable this is, but back-story. My family is the personification of Southern oral tradition. If you thought oral tradition was just some weird anthropological case study of New Guinea or somewhere, come to my house on any weekend night. We sit around telling stories passed down from generation to generation and adding our own new ones as it goes along. Everyone in my family can tell you stories about the two draft horses my great-grandpa owned, or the way he got called up for WWI twice, or any number of things. I've always loved sitting around and hearing these stories, even though I could recite them by heart, because they're so comfortably Southern. They're all a part of me, these bits and pieces that all accumulated until I'm sitting here now. The more outrageous the stories, the better (and trust me, our family has some outrageous ones).
So I've always wanted to collect and preserve these stories but never got around to it. For some reason, my dad did though. And he sent me one! He was all embarrassed and sent it to me and Sean to look over, because he hasn't written in a really long time, but I think it's awesome.
Here's my dad's short story!
Late spring brought waves of heat with it, usual for South Texas, but less expected was a call from an old buddy of mine. Though technically a city boy, Tom’s heart was in the country and I could tell from the enthusiasm in his voice that it was going to be a long day in the field.
Not that I minded all that terrible much, as I enjoyed a day knocking around in the hills as much as the next guy, but then I had been doing it my whole life, whereas it was still new and fresh to him.
Our place was just on the edge of the balcones escarpment, the ridge of limestone hills that travels roughly along I-35 from Austin down to San Antonio As you drive down the freeway, the left of the road stretches into fields of black farming ground, spotted with low-hanging mesquite trees. To the right rises the hills with their limestone outcrops and open oak savannah. Beyond that, somewhere just out of sight, was the Edwards plateau. Every once in a while, a finger of those hills would jut out and the highway would cross them, threading the fields and rises like a patchwork quilt.
I was laying in bed, sweating under the distinct disadvantage of no air conditioning, when Tom’s call rousted me. He had just got a new lever action .22 and was itching to try it out in the fields.
“How ‘bout I come over an’ we go hunting?"
Contemplating the prospect of sweltering some more or tramping around outside, I agreed readily enough. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Okay, be over in a few minutes.”
Tom and I were always going hunting, regardless of whether we were actually looking for game or just rambling and seeing what might turn up. More often than not, hunting would simply end up being a good excuse to see how many cactus pears we could shoot without missing and we usually ended up killing nothing except a good day.
I rolled out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s shirt, hunted around the floor for a pair of socks, pulled on my old boots, and headed out the back door. I snagged a biscuit and a piece of bacon laying on top of the stove under a dishtowel, and was through the screen door to the back porch. Right off the back porch was a small out building which was where the washing machine was kept and happened to be where I kept my rifle.
I looked down the drive in time to see Tom’s Torino turn in. He roared down in a swirling cloud of caliche dust before turning and coming to a controlled skid to stop in front of the house. The door popped open and Tom's 6' frame unfolded out of the car, hat first.
Tom and I were about the same height, but whereas I couldn't cast a shadow on a summer day, he was a little more filled out. With his sandy hair, quick wit, and a flair for the absurd, he and I had been best friends for a long time, and I guess that our differences is what made us get on so well. Where I was tentative and awkward in a crowd, barely knowing how to carry on a coherent conversation, Tom was the soul of confidence, quick with a witticism as a friendly dig at a person ( which most people never did seem to mind), and generally at ease whatever the social setting. The upshot was that since we mostly hung around together, we could cut up and have a grand old time, and I could hold my own with him when it was just us.
But today we were headed into my element. I had spent my days out in the woods, the brush, and pastures; from early on, if I wasn’t doing my chores or in school, I was fishing, hunting, or riding to just see what was over the next rise or down the next draw.
Tom stretched, reached in the car and grabbed his rifle, looked up and asked, “You ready?” with his ever present grin firmly affixed.
“Let’s go,” I said and we started across the pasture adjacent to the home place. We had to cross about a half mile of flatland prairie covered in waist-high bluestem, through a weedy wash, and then suddenly we hit the foot of the hill. The ground changed into something rockier and we were suddenly into shortgrass and live oak trees. Scattered out through the trees were Agarita bushes, the occasional mountain laurel, and small thickets of what we called wild persimmon. I never learned the correct name for them, but I do know that I never got up the nerve to try eating it; the raccoons and possums sure loved them, though, based on the evidence laying around for unsuspecting boots everywhere. The transition was pronounced and I marveled at this natural demarcation of the land, a distinct boundary crossed as sure as if someone had drawn a line down the middle.
We worked our way down an old track that had once been access to an abandoned quarry now filled up with water. Although there wasn't another body of permanent water for miles around, Ma Nature had seen fit to stock this little tank with several varieties of perch and bass. We took a couple of shots at a wooden snag against the far bank with the back wall of the quarry as a back stop, then turned and began to work our way up the hill which topped out a hundred foot or so.
The ground grew rockier as we walked, the vegetation thinning out into fewer trees and more brush, then the ridge suddenly stopped. In my experience, when most low hills fall off, they don’t just go smooth down, but generally create a mishmash of wide and narrow steps like a staircase made by a drunk carpenter.
The side of this hill, on the other hand, fell off into a steep drop. The steps consisted of huge flat-top boulders, each eighteen inches or so away from each other. I was working my way down, and just as I was about to jump to the next ledge, I spotted him stretched out along the base of that rock. It was all I could do to change direction without losing my balance or, worse, stepping on him. I jumped past him and spun around, looking for his head which had disappeared. Tom had worked his way over from above and was looking down, trying to figure out what I was doing and getting in the way of my chance to shoot at the same time.
“Move over to the left so I can get a shot,” I yelled.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It's a Rattler, and a big one.”
“Where?”
“There, just below you,” I said, gesturing in that direction.
“Yeah, I see it,” he said, “ Lord, what a monster! Where's his head?”
“Man, that ain't even all of him ‘cause his head and part of him is in a hole."
“Shoot him!”
“I can't with you behind him,” I complained good-naturedly.
By that time, old man Rattler had finally figured out we were there, and just that quick he disappeared down the hole. One minute there was a good 5 to 6 feet of him stretched out along that rock, and the next, he was gone. He didn't wriggle, bunch, or twitch; he just slid, like someone had tied a line to his head and just pulled him in.
Now Tom had always wanted himself a rattlesnake skin hat band, and seeing that Rattler disappear into the hole just put him even more in a mind to get one. Neither of us were likely to stick our hand down there and try to grab the snake, so we sat staring at the rock trying to figure out how to get him out again.
“Hey,” Tom said, with that note in his voice that meant he had an idea, most likely one that would get us into trouble. “Let’s smoke ‘im out!”
I thought about it a minute. The deceptive thing about Tom’s ideas was that normally they sounded reasonable enough at the onset or in the planning phase; it made it hard to learn from past experiences how they usually turned out. “Guess we can at least try,” I finally said.
We started gathering up dry grass, lit it in front of the hole, and crouched down to wait.
Looking back, our first clue should have been when the smoke actually poured down that hole.
We kept feeding the fire with dry grass that had just enough new green in it that it was smoking up a storm. It seemed to be working like a charm, the smoke being sucked down instead of rising. Leaning over and fanning it, we kept at it, mentally patting ourselves on the back for such a clever idea. Like I said, Tom’s plans were deceptive that way.
After a little while I got to looking around, surprised to see smoke pouring out of the hill all around us. Of course, that’s when it hit me.
Rattle snakes will layup over the winter, with hundreds of them in one den, and I realized that if we were successful we might possibly have snakes exiting from every one of them smoking holes and they'd have us completely surrounded.
Now I know you see them fellas on TV these days that run around handling snakes, getting in the snake’s face, daring them to bite; but take it from me, that may be great theatrics but it ain't good sense. The thought of trying to negotiate an exit off that hillside with mad rattlers everywhere was not something I felt I wanted to do.
“Hey Tom, looky there,” I pointed to the surrounding countryside.
“What?”
“The hillside, it’s coughing smoke everywhere.”
It took Tom a minute, but when it hit he didn't waste no time, just quit fanning and began stomping that fire. As soon as we had that fire out, we got on up out of there. We hadn’t seen any snakes yet, but we weren’t anxious to stick around and see if our plan had worked after all.
Once we cleared that smokin’ hillside, we stopped to laugh and consider, and to this day I have always felt that episode proved my dad wrong about Tom; he had clearly demonstrated that he did too have sense enough to pour water out of a boot.
Maybe trying to smoke that rattler out wasn't the smartest idea he'd ever had, but the speed with which he decided to get out of there seemed like one of his better decisions, and one I was in wholehearted agreement on.
Both he and I would love it if you have any constructive criticism that I can pass along.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-22 06:08 pm (UTC)Maybe trying to smoke that rattler out wasn't the smartest idea he'd ever had, but the speed with which he decided to get out of there seemed like one of his better decisions, and one I was in wholehearted agreement on. actually detracts from the humor of the part about pouring water out of boot. We already know this information given in this line and it isn't a great finish. I would suggest just ending it at the "boot" and letting everyone else realize on their own that it was a smart plan. Anyway just my thoughts. Very enjoyable all around and he should definitely keep writing. Let us know what happens because I have a kindle and I would download stories like this.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 03:22 am (UTC)Awesome... actually Dad wants to gather some of his stories and write down some of my great-grandma's, grandpa's, and so on and put them into a collection and publish on Kindle. I'll let you know if/when that happens!
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment on it. ♥