THE EARLY YEARS

Valley View was my favorite place. We moved there about Christmas 1962. We lived in a small house out in the country and had a two-hole outhouse. Nearby, there was a crawdad pond and some wooded area where Butch and I would go hunt squirrels. Dutch had a single shot bolt action .22 and Butch had his semi-automatic .22 that we would use. I wasn't a very good shot and never hit a squirrel. But when we brought them home, Mama would fry the squirrels.

The crawdad fishing was pretty good there. We would get a piece of twine and tie a slipknot in one end of it. Then, we would put a piece of bacon or chicken on it and throw it into the water. We would wait patiently and when we felt a tug on the string, we would carefully pull the string to the bank until the crawdad was close to shore. Then, we would gently lift it out of the water. Anytime we brought any home, Mama would fry up the big catch for us. Luann and I decided that it would be easier if we had the tank closer to the house. So, we dug holes in the yard, then catch some crawdads and put them in the hole. The next day the hole would be dry and the crawdads tunneled away.

Mama had a huge garden here. She grew tomatoes, okra, corn, potatoes, green beans, and onions here. She told me about how you are supposed to plant the eyes of the potatoes at midnight during the full moon. Why? I have no idea but it seems that they will grow better if you plant them then. It may have had something to do with witches.

Butch was in the 4H or Future Farmers of America (FFA) and raised a calf, Babe, for a school project. He became a family pet and got into all sorts of trouble. He would get out of his pen and come visit the kitchen door and beg for handouts. We later butchered him and he tasted pretty good.

A copperhead bit mama when she was feeding the hogs. Another time, she stepped on a rusty nail. Both times we had to get her to a doctor and both times she was sure she was going to die. I had to calm Luann and help Mama get into the house. Needless to say, she didn't die either time.

Luann and I played a lot with my plastic soldiers. We spent hours arranging and re-arranging them and then throw rocks and dirt clods at them to simulate battle. With all due respect and honors, I would bury all of them in the sand along the dirt road. The last time I buried them, we moved away before I could retrieve them.

Once, we tried to catch an armadillo that was next to the road. It ran into the drainage ditch and the pipe that was under the road. Butch and Dutch told me to crawl into one side of the pipe and try to scare it out the other side. I knew that I didn't like that idea but I bravely tried to get into the pipe. I don't believe we caught it but I knew I didn't want to catch it.

Here was where I first killed chickens for supper (evening meal). We would catch them and put them under a peach basket. Then, we would take a coat hanger and bend it into a shape that would catch the legs of the chicken. We would pull it out, chop off its head and hang the chicken on the clothes line (hopefully, with all of the clean clothes off of the line) to drain the blood out. Blood covered me when the chickens would flop all over the ground spewing blood. And those chickens tasted much better than any of the store bought ones.

Our telephone here was on a party line and Mama complained continuously that the neighbor was always listening to her conversations. A party line is a telephone line that is shared by several houses. If the call is for you, there will be a certain number of rings (like one short and two long). Another set of rings (like two short) would be for someone else. The bad thing about party lines was that if someone else was making a call, you had to wait until they hung up before you could dial. And, if you picked up the receiver when someone else was on the line, you could listen to his or her conversation. I don't remember what our rings were.

This was the first house that we lived in that we had a television. This black and white set took several minutes to warm up before we could watch anything. The only channels we received were CBS and ABC and Mama and Dutch only watched Art Linkletter, Ed Sullivan, any and all Westerns, and Combat! Our reception wasn't that good and whenever the wind blew, either Dutch or Butch would have to go outside and rotate the antenna until the reception got better.