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My Invention
I have always been blessed with just the right amount of intelligence to get neck deep into something, but never enough intelligence to get out successfully. This was one of those occasions. It involves two bird dog bitches and a dummy, me.
Twice Bitten
For a fourteen-year-old, truth can be illusive. In many cases it’s hard to sort out and in other instances it’s just as plain as the nose on your face. I do know one thing that was true; it was well into November, and it hadn’t rained in Amite County since July. The farmers had fed out all their hay and were hoping to get winter rye into the ground before the December frosts, but they needed a rain.
The Long Journey Home
Belle’s favorite pastime time lately, was to become perfectly still, and at the most opportune time snap and catch one of the deer flies that tormented her. That’s what her life had become. She hadn’t known freedom for a year now and her spirit was weak, waning, nearly broken. She had plenty to eat, that wasn’t a problem. Brown Man brought meat scraps to her, and he kept her water clean too. But her whole world lay within the radius of the chain she was shackled to. She had grown to accept the chain, but not willingly. After a while she learned it best to not dream of home and Randall. She rested solely in the fact that Pup was growing strong, and that Brown Man was not a cruel man.
THE LONG JOURNEY HOME
‘Why’, is a man question, not a dog question. Whether hate, or malice, or greed, or power, was someone’s motive for her circumstances mattered not to Belle. ‘What’ mattered to Belle. What could she do for her pup? ‘Who’ mattered also. Who could she trust, and who could she not trust? ‘Where’ mattered too. Where was she, and where was home? She sensed ‘When’ was important also, but she’d have to bide her time for now.
The Long Journey Home
It would have been different had Belle been at home. She would have found a safe warm spot near the hay loft. Randall would have looked in on her throughout the day, more than likely bringing her bits of leftover bacon and biscuits and making sure the pups had a clean place to be whelped. She was royalty at Bent Pine and didn’t kennel with the other dogs. She had the run of the plantation. Her favorite place to lie, be it summer or winter, was under the rail fence of the barn lot. There, she was shaded in the summer by huge spreading oak and beech trees. In the winter she was warmed by the sun shining through those same trees then leafless and unable to fend off the warm welcomed rays. She laid under the bottom rail that was positioned just right to offer a scratch to her long back whenever she chose to do so. It was perfect. The spot seemingly offered a respite, though actual work didn’t exist for Belle. Maybe she enjoyed the spot for reflection, that now, she had aplenty. From her favorite spot she could view anything approaching the main house, as well as view over a mile of cleared bottomland, a bottom that stretched eastward to the Black Warrior River and south for three miles farther than Belle could see from the rails even on a clear day.
NOT ALL SINNERS GO TO HELL
Harry was a close and cherished member of the Winterhawk Bird Dog Club. He ran dogs throughout the walking circuit in the 80’s, and was particularly known for running his favorite, Harry’s Gentle Ben. I’m pretty sure he got Ben as a pup from Delmar Smith, and Ben won in the best of competition. Winterhawk Bird Dog Club had some stout competition in those days, accounting for many championships at all levels of the field trial sport. On hunting trips Harry and Ben held their own too, and then some. This may all sound ho-hum until you know Ben was a Brittany Spaniel. Big, stout, and leggy, he’d run and hunt with the best of the pointers and setters back then.
What Billy Morton Taught me
By the early 70's wild birds were getting harder and harder to come by. Subdivisions and trailer parks grew up right where our old covey haunts were. Ever the optimists, we started a little walking shooting dog club. 'Shoot to kill', it was called back then. We knocked along for a few years, and our dogs were getting better, or worse, according to who you asked, different for sure. We subscribed to the American Field and read, religiously, accounts from all over the states and Canada. A whole new world opened to us. We read about Miller's White Cloud, Red Water Rex, The setter, Johnny Crocket, all the old legends, and their handlers.
A CHRISTMAS DEAL
Marshall Loftin was a dog man, pure and simple. Fox hounds, cat hounds, catch dogs, high dollar bird dogs, dogs, it didn’t matter, he could get more out of them than any man I’ve ever known. But, if he was a dog man, and he was, he was more so a keen observer and student of his fellow man. He dealt, with a high level of success, with millionaires, and poor sharecroppers alike. Doctors, slick horse traders, lawyers, wealthy businessmen, weekend rabbit hunters, and even I, counted Marshall as a friend and gave him plenty respect, though I never knew him to request it. Accounts of his interactions are many, I’ll relate one of my favorite.
THE WHISTLE
While running a dog at the NBHA National Derby recently, I lost a whistle that I had used in South Dakota back in 1979. It was a special whistle to me. I clearly remember sitting crossed legged on a horse while waiting on a lost dog and looking out across those open prairies. I thought of home for just a moment, and because it was my mother's birthday, I scratched the date on the whistle's side, August 27, 1979. I should not have been using such a keepsake, but it was my favorite. Even good things come and go, I guess. Losing it, and looking for it, and remembering it, reminded me of the following; one of many memories I have of that summer. It's not meant to be a striking work of prose although it may become one sometime in the future. I'm just recounting as it comes to me. However, every word and how it transpired is true, exactly true. (I'll change the names only to save any embarrassment, though no one should be embarrassed by the truth).
Pie Day
Toward the end of each month, Mother made pies, usually five or six. We kept one The others were delivered and given to various people in the community, the sick or shut ins or sometimes just a friend Mother hadn't seen in a while. I wasn't particularly fond of pie day. It wasn't because it meant me knocking on doors and handing the pies out, it was because of the hugs and cheek pinches all the old women felt obliged to give in return. Just before Thanksgiving and the opening day of quail season in 1964, pie day took on a very different meaning.