THE EARLY YEARS

We moved back to Gainesville because Dutch's rig was sent to drill on Lake Texhoma. Dutch's crew consisted of four men: Don Laxton was the driller, Billy Ray "Salty" Saltzman was the derrickman, Dutch was the engineman, and Uncle Warren was the lead tong. I don't remember who their pusher was.

As I mentioned, I spent the second half of the 3rd grade here and I was in the same class that I spent the 1st grade in. For the first couple of weeks, I had an easy time of it because the school at Valley View was further along than the one here. This is where I first learned to use the "borrow" in subtraction and where I first learned division. I remember this because the teacher asked me how to subtract 88 from 111 and I said take the 8 from the 1 and borrow 8 from the other and 8 plus 1 was 9 so we would have 1 left over. She said that I was close.

I put together a science project that won my class's competition. I searched all over Grandma's back yard finding bones of all sorts and putting them into a box. Then, I went down the alley and to the creek looking for different bones. I got some books from the library and asked a lot of people what the bones were. Then, I took a large piece of cardboard and glued the bones to it. Each bone was carefully labeled (with my printing using a crayon) indicating what animal it came from. It was pitiful but the judges liked it. From my school, it was taken to Cooke County Junior College and put on display with hundreds of other science projects from throughout the county. Here there were experiments with electricity and chemicals and home-made airplanes that actually flew. I was pretty discouraged when I saw all of the other projects. Imagine my surprise and happiness when it was awarded a first place, blue ribbon! I was actually so happy that I cried when I saw it at the college.

I would go fishing often on Lake Texhoma while Dutch's rig was drilling there. His rig was put right on the shore of the lake and we would go out there and set up our fishing poles near it. As it started getting dark, we would catch dragonflies and use them as bait for crappie and perch. We would put out a trotline and let it sit for a couple of days and then pull it in. A trotline is a long piece of thin rope that had treble hooks on a leader tied to it. Each of the hooks was baited with things like shrimp, blood, liver, worms, or whatever else was available. It would then be placed out in the water and anchored to the shore on one end and weighted on the other. It would be close to the bottom of the water because we mainly wanted catfish. After having it sit there for a day or so, we would pull it up and take the fish off of the hooks.

Butch took me out to Lake Texhoma and the Red River to go fishing for catfish. We went out on the river one day in his boat to check his trotline. He had it run out from the bank and across the river to about halfway. If we had the line connected to the other side, he would have to get an Oklahoma fishing license. Anyway, we were pulling the line in and at one point, it was especially heavy. At first, we thought it was snagged on a log in the river. But when we pulled it up we found an alligator gar on it. The fish was about five foot long and had gotten tangled in Butch's hooks. It took us several minutes to wrestle the dead fish into the boat. We barely had enough room left in the boat for us.

On another occasion, we had gone fishing and decided to go over to L.V.'s house. Butch and L.V. were running mates from way back and got into lots of trouble together. On the way there, we crossed a small bridge and saw a water moccasin sunning itself on a bank. We got Butch's Savage .300 magnum and I took a shot at this snake. Not only did the snake blow apart, it felt like my arm would do the same thing.

The fascinating part about visiting L.V. is that he always had something weird at his house. When we visited him this time, we learned that he had found a wolf pup in the forest and brought it home. The pup was in a terrible way with mange all over his body. And he was not particularly friendly. He had already been chewing on his legs trying to get out of the cage. L.V. was a fairly nasty guy anyway and had a good laugh at the pup. I felt sorry for it being in such a state and wished that it would either die or escape. I found out later that it finally died from the mistreatment.

But in other things, L.V. was an okay sort of guy. It was L.V. and Butch who took me catfish grappling. We would go to the shallows of the lake and find areas where the catfish were nesting. Then, we would get a large hook and either tie or tape it onto our hands. We then got in the water and reached into the small caves and wiggle our fingers. The catfish saw the fingers as food and bit down on the hand. When they bit, you set the hook and pull out the fish. Butch caught a fish that weighed 64 pounds using this method. I only caught one small one and after that, was too scared to fish this way again. I didn't feel like sticking my hand in the water and not know what was down there.

To get bait for fishing we could either buy it or seine for it. Uncle Warren was pretty cheap (as were Dutch and Butch) so we would take a minnow seine and find a tank. Each of us took a stick and put it through the seine on both ends. Then, we would wade into a tank and pull the seine through the water and bring it up on the bank. In it, we found crawdads, minnows, perch, frogs, snakes, and all sorts of water bugs. Of course, we would keep the crawdads, minnows, and frogs and toss everything else back in. Especially the snakes because Uncle Warren was deathly afraid of snakes of all kinds.