Beginnings

I'm not sure just how old the farm house really is. Dad put its true age at somewhere over 75 years, but that was some 45 years ago.

We moved to the farm from the small coastal Texas plains town of Premont when I was three years old. Memories of living in town are few and, for the most part, indistinct. They consist mainly of pinching ripe, sweet strawberries from the yard of our neighbors, Wilmer and Estelle Schneider.

I had a pet Boston bull dog, Fritz. We got caught under the tool shed sharing a bone in the cool, damp soil in the crawlspace. Mother could see our eyes shining in the dark recesses beneath the floor as we took turns gnawing on the bone. No amount of threats or cajoling would get either of us to budge. A good scolding was one thing, but even at this early age I could appreciate a strategic advantage. I was not about to give up a secure hiding place and expose myself to the distinct possibility of having my bottom dusted. Fritz and I couldn't figure out just what was wrong with Mother, anyway.

My horizons expanded considerably with our move to the country.

I was a child used to struggling to escape the confines of a chain link fence around a small city lot. The farm presented infinite possibilities.

Dad had stopped plowing and stepped down from his tractor to visit with a friend in the heat of a lazy summer afternoon. I worked my way over to the tractor while he and Alston Brown exchanged greetings. Even then, I had come to love the rich smell of freshly turned earth, watching the roil of soil play out behind the plow. As Dad settled into his conversation with Alston, I crept beneath the huge wheels, pulled myself aboard, ground into first gear and headed for the back forty, leaving an erratic set of wonderful rich smelling furrows in my wake. I was a real farmer! Dad kept a much closer eye on me and the key to the tractor in his pocket after that.

With the passage of a few years, I came to accept the constraints of public school with some degree of resignation. When the final bell rang to free us for the balance of the Fall afternoons, those hours were filled in the pursuit of jackrabbits or quail with an old Remington single shot 22 that Dad had passed on to me from his boyhood. He had first hunted with it as a boy in 1927.

Various friends would accompany me on these outings, and it is a great source of pleasure that most of us are still in contact with each other despite the passage of considerable time. I was no more or less bloodthirsty than the boys I grew up with and we all dearly loved hunting and anything to do with the outdoors. It is a passion that I retain to this day.

One of my favorite quarries in those days happened to be rattlesnakes. They were plentiful, and the chance of an encounter with one was a constant possibility. I was always bringing snakes home. I would skin them and salt the hides. After curing, I would work Neetsfoot oil into the brittle, salty skins and sell them for belts and hat bands.

My interest in wildlife went well beyond simple hunting. I wanted to learn all I could about the variety of creatures inhabiting the world of my youth. As a result of that curiosity, I came to rear and possess a menagerie of animals. These included raccoons,deer, cottontail rabbits and javelina. The latter got me into, by far, my most serious fall from grace, in the eyes of my mother, that I was to experience for many years to come.

You know, that might be as good a place to start fanning these embers as any. You will see that I had a pretty fine childhood.

I hope I never grow out of it...