Leonard D. Hilley II's Blog, page 16

Friday the 13th (October)

In a little over two weeks, my newest Dee’s Mystery YA novella (Witch Cat) will go LIVE. Pre-orders can be purchased at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075X2FGSQ

For those who have read the original short story, The Beating Heart Beneath Hollow Hill Cemetery, know a little about Edgar, Marty’s strange and bizarre cat. WITCH CAT explains how Marty found Edgar and soon after, Marty somehow got the ability to see ghosts.

Blurb:

“Marty Sullivan’s black cat, Edgar, mysteriously appears at the most unusual times and in the least expected places. For the others in Dee’s Mystery Solvers Club, they suspect the cat is somehow magical. What they don’t know is Marty has a secret he needs to reveal about Edgar and where he found the cat. But in doing so, he knows his suspicious sister, Dee, will not rest until they completely solve the mystery. He fears her stubbornness will put their lives into peril, especially after he tells her that Edgar was found in the haunted Tangled Forest. Marty’s greatest fear is that returning to the forest might cause him to lose Edgar forever, as the cat’s true owner is a ghost … The ghost of a witch.”

 

 

Why I Don’t Hunt

When I was a teenager, my stepfather took me hunting several times. I loved fishing, but hunting? Not so much.

Using a shotgun against little animals didn’t seem like much of a sport, at least not for the animals. I liked to hear and watch the beagles run through the thickets to chase out a rabbit, because other than terrorizing a rabbit into running, this seemed more sportsmanlike. Rabbits often ran a lot faster than the dogs, and if it was the rabbit vs. dogs, rabbits were usually smart enough to get away.

Several times I had watched a tired rabbit come out of hiding to sit and wash its forepaw while catching its breath. I had every opportunity to shoot, and because my stepfather stood out of sight, I let the rabbit return to running.

Quail hunting … much more difficult, and quite possibly the last hunt I remember taking.

It was a cold morning with gray overcast skies. The leafless trees stood like forked skeletons. Since I loved being outdoors, I tagged along for this trip, but my interest was more in finding cocoons on the bare trees than bird hunting.

My stepfather invited one of his friends, Johnny, to go with us. Johnny had a German short-haired pointer with an ornery attitude. It hated to hunt with other dogs and had attacked other dogs when hunting in groups. So my stepfather brought Ol’ Lady, his pointer, and since she was a friendly dog she didn’t pose a threat to Johnny’s.

We headed across the remnants of a soybean field with the dogs running and sniffing in zigzag formations ahead of us in the field. We crossed the entire field and entered a second one. The dogs didn’t pick up any scent, which confused my stepfather. His uncle owned over three hundred acres, and they knew several large coveys were out there. The problem was finding where they were, and that required a lot of walking.

After crossing the next field, the dogs took a quick detour into the woods that separated the next field from where we stood. A rugged set of truck tracks carved the only road in those trees and about midway up the path was a large pile of brush someone had cut and left to burn later. The two dogs hurried closer and then slowed their pace.

The dogs stood at each side of the brush pile. Their bodies were rigid and their tails pointed straight. They had found the first covey. My stepfather motioned us where to stand and to remain quiet. We eased closer, as quietly as possible on the layers of brittle leaves. The tension settled over us. After an hour of walking the fields, the moment was finally at hand.

We raised our shotguns, preparing to shoot when the dogs were given the command to rush the covey. However, the gun I had was one I had not used before. I slowly eased off the safety and the gun fired.

Johnny stood to my right. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! He unloaded his automatic shotgun into an empty sky. The dogs (I’m not kidding) both turned and looked at us with “What the Hell are you doing?” looks on their faces. The birds were still on the ground and probably as confused as the bewildered dogs.

My stepfather made the dogs flush the covey, and he managed to shoot two of the birds as they flew into the trees. Needless to say, I decided if I had embarrassed myself in front of two loyal dogs like that, my hunting days were over. And they were.

The Hardships and Discoveries in Moving

If I detest anything with a passion, moving has to be at the top of the list.

It’s hard to comprehend how we accumulate so much stuff during our lives. Over the years, we’ve thrown away dumpsters full of stuff, and yet, it seemed only a small portion. No matter where we’ve lived, most of our belongings (books primarily) have been stored in boxes. We’ve never lived in a house big enough to accommodate our possessions without a vast majority of it remaining in boxes, until now.

I have learned that the older I become, the worse the toll my body suffers in carrying/loading/unpacking heavy boxes, especially my lower back and knees. I ached for three weeks after moving this time and the thought of ever moving again sickens me. And stairs … Someone point me to the elevator.

The beauty of this move, however, is that unless some bizarre ordeal takes place, this is the house we shall call our permanent home. No more moving. That short statement is satisfying in so many ways.

In unpacking boxes, we are discovering items that we had even forgotten we had. Most have not seen daylight since we moved from Alabama to Kentucky in 2007 because we moved into a much smaller house for almost nine years. Boxes of our knickknacks and collectibles were boxed in the attic above us. Finding these now is almost as glorious as an archaeologist digging up treasure.

Sadly, some things don’t survive moving–even a short distance one. This dragon was boxed and moved from our last residence. The ‘real’ discovery here is that this dragon was supposed to be solid pewter and has plaster inside. This was sold back in the early 90s from a company that had an ad in the back of ‘Parade’ magazine in the Sunday newspaper. If memory serves me, the price was over one hundred forty dollars. Nothing super glue couldn’t fix for the cosmetic effect, but fool’s gold when one considers the false advertisement used to entice a dragon collector.

Among other items I had forgotten about were a collection of frog figurines I had slowly built during the time I was preparing to write ‘Devils Den’ where Justin McKnight is magically transformed into a frog humanoid in the Underworld (Aetheaon).

A small portion of the frogs.

I knew I had the collection, but I had forgotten how many I had. Why frogs and why the transformation of a boy into a froglike creature? The reasoning is a blog for another day.

My new office is slowly transforming in its progression, too, but still a year or so from ever being completed, as I have plans to build bookcases along the perimeter and get more of our books out of boxes.

Ideas are emerging for new books, which have been placed on the back burner for a couple of months as I spent most of the summer packing and moving everything from the upstairs of the rental house in Marietta, Ohio, before the house collapsed. Whether we had decided to move or not, the house was going to move on its own. The foundation was in shambles. As promised, I shall upload pictures soon of that frightening ordeal.

Cheers!

 

The Old Porch Light and Toads

When I was a boy we kept the porch light on during the night. This light attracted night insects, which in turn attracted a small army of toads to feast upon the insects that circled and fell onto the concrete carport. The light also brought marvelously large beetles and moths, too.

Each night I watched these toads catch insects with their lightning fast tongues. We used to catch the toads, because they were interesting creatures. I was probably about five years old when I first saw a tiny toad barely a half inch long. I caught it and not knowing the life cycle of a toad, I carried the little toad over to a big fat toad, thinking it was obviously the parent.

“Here’s your baby,” I said, tossing the little toad in front of the larger one.

In a second’s time, the little toad got wrapped by the larger toad’s tongue and was swallowed out of instinct. The larger toad didn’t have time to notice its prey was another toad, it didn’t care, and I was too young to realize that amphibians didn’t nurture their young. It would be years later before I discovered the tadpole phase. I was horrified that the little toad had become food. Of course, no amount of persuasion could ever get the larger toad to undo what had occurred. From then on, I kept the smaller toads away from the larger ones.

Observation is one of the best tools for learning. And what the light attracted at night were insects that often hid during the daylight. I saw my first Polyphemus male moth resting upon the side of the house one morning. I marveled at its coloring and how large it was compared to the butterflies I saw during the day. Since the moth was resting on the wall, I gently touched it, which disturbed it and caused it to loft into the air and lazily fly in circles until it rose higher and then the moth flew up into a tree where I couldn’t find it again.

The creatures attracted to the old porch light captivated my interest in what thrived during the night, but slowly over the years, I’ve seen fewer toads. The last time I found a large number of toads was in 2005 when I was hunting for moths at street lights in Alabama. With my wife and kids, we drove into an old church parking lot where a bright light brightened the asphalt. We found dozens of toads, and my kids spent some time catching them. We even caught a couple and took them home to release near our porch, hoping to see them populate near our house.

Finding toads today seems even rarer. From what I’ve read and researched, their numbers have drastically decreased since 2000. Poisons and other elements have been the culprits, as they are sensitive to their environment. I know I’ve not seen any at our home in Marietta, Ohio, but we have come upon several on hikes near Vienna, West Virginia. Before fall settles in, I will search for them. Their absence today makes me long for the days when they were more common. They are unique creatures and fun to watch.

Do you see toads in your area? If so, is the population large or small. Is it rare for you to see them? Post a comment and please let me know.

Throwback Thursday: The Old Homestead

The old house we grew up in sets behind my oldest brother, Chris, and myself in this picture. It seems the older I get, the more my mind reflects back to the simpler times, when as a child I didn’t worry about the things in life I now face. The thought of growing old doesn’t bother me, but my memories of things gone by continue to jostle my mind. Perhaps it’s the blessing (sometimes a curse) of a writer’s mind.

From the time I was two years old, my mind has absorbed and contained things that even baffled my mother when she was still alive and we talked about events during the early times of my youth. I recall these events in perfect detail.

“How do you remember those things?” she asked. “You were so little.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. And yet, I do. I remember things she and my father probably wished I didn’t remember. I recall things I wish I didn’t, too, but those I’ve learned to accept and move on.

From the picture, I remember this old bouncy horse, not because it was fun, but because my leg had gotten pinched in those old springs one time when I wore shorts. It left a painful bruise and one that lasted a couple of weeks. I imagine this had happened to a lot of children back then, and perhaps it’s why they stopped making these types of horses many years ago.

I remember the summers when my two older brothers and sister came to visit. Those summers were some remarkable times. Things we did have stuck with me even now, and a lot of those things shaped me as a writer. We all loved ghost stories, scary tale comics, and investigating what we thought were great mysteries in the woods and pastures behind our house. The old woods behind the house was an actual spooky place, and my oldest brother can tell you tales of unusual circumstances that occurred when he had lived in our old shed as a teenager for a while.

Our father was one who loved to pull practical jokes, but I’ve seen times when even he showed fear about those woods. Once, my younger sister and I had set up a homemade tent in the side yard, so we could camp out for the night. Many times we attempted to do this, but not once did we retain the bravery to do so. One particular night after darkness had settled upon us, we were hiding in the tent too afraid to actually fall asleep. I told my sister that Dad would try his best to scare us so we’d run back inside. Sure enough, we heard footsteps in those woods not much later.

My sister was little, perhaps five years old or six, and against my warnings, she bravely headed to the edge of the woods where the footsteps crunched the underbrush and leaves because we thought our father was out there. I expected him to jump out and scream at any moment. A few seconds after she stood at the tree line, our father called from the back porch behind us.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

His voice caused us to jump. We turned and ran to the house beside him. We told him about the footsteps we had heard, and needless to say, we didn’t go back outside until the following morning. The stranger part is that our father didn’t go to see what had been walking along the edge of the woods. And even stranger was that our dogs never barked or pursued what was there.

If I chose to list the odd occurrences about the old house and those strange woods, it would easily comprise several volumes. Were there ghosts? Spirits? What was the strange, overly large creature that roamed the woods behind us and the swamp on the long dirt road behind our house? I kid you not. Something was there. What exactly remains a mystery.

It wasn’t just our family that had witnessed such odd events. A senior who rode on our school bus once got on with an unusual sense of dread in his eyes, which was totally out of character for him. He lived about two miles from our house on a different side road and less than a mile from the swamp.

Mrs. Wright, our bus driver, noticed he was shakened after he took his seat and asked what was wrong. He replied that he had driven his motorcycle the night before through the bend in the dirt road that cut through the swamp. Midway through the swamp he encountered a large white-furred creature that walked upright. It crossed the road before him and ran into the trees. He turned his motorcycle around and sped home.

She laughed at the story for several moments, as he was known to joke a lot, but when he didn’t laugh in return or let on that he was making it up, we all took him seriously. His fear of what he had described didn’t lessen, and when she drove the bus through the swampy section of the dirt road, he pointed to where he had spun the motorcycle around on the sandy dirt road to avoid whatever he had seen. Sure enough, deep tire marks were cut into the road. He never recanted his story, and not long after, he started driving to school.

Some years later, when I was collecting butterflies in that area, I noticed a huge claw mark freshly dug into the muddy side of the ditch and this mark was bigger than my size twelve shoes. On the bank above the mark was tall sage grass about waist high. I climbed up to the grass, and something big scampered away on all fours toward the trees. A bear? Doubtful, as none have been reported there. And if I thought it were a bear, I’d say so. Honestly, I have no idea what it was. All I know is it was large and as it ran toward the trees, I ran the opposite direction. Self-preservation at its best.

Our grandfather could tell stories of things he had seen, too, and I regret that I never really got to sit down to hear his tales before his death in 1984. But soon, I shall reveal more of those mysterious events that shaped and molded my imagination. For as a writer, I’ve always asked, “What if?” Sometimes, I wonder, “What was it?” I suppose these questions keep me writing, and a lot of these mysteries have helped with the writing of my Young Adult series, “Dee’s Mystery Solvers.” I’ve almost finished the second book in this series and hope to see them in print later this year. Read early unpublished chapters at my Patreon.

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to comment.

Interview with Author Jamie Brindle

Today, I would like to welcome Jamie Brindle, the author of All Quiet in the Western Fold [Storystream Book 0], A Treatise on Blood and Iron [Storystream Book 1], and Tales From the Storystream.

As an author, I love to pick the brains of other authors to find out more about their writing process, what inspires them, and why they are driven to write stories. After reading All Quiet in the Western Fold, I sought an interview with Jamie Brindle, because this story is so unique and interesting, I wanted to know what prompted the ideas behind the characters and their world. This tale is well worth your time to read. Jamie hails us from the UK.

All Quiet in the Western Fold synopsis: “The stories are far too happy. It’s uncanny. For Indigo Shuttlecock – Sheriff of the Western Fold, a backwater district of clichéd mysteries and old science fiction tales – the fact that her charges have lost their conflict isn’t a good thing. It’s a problem.

Fresh out of the Academy, Indigo thought being given the Western Fold to protect was a punishment, a humiliating first posting with no chance of promotion.

But when her stories start to succumb to a strange sickening that leaves them devoid of antagonism and interest, can Indigo uncover the secret rot haunting the past of the Western Fold?”

All Quiet In The Western Fold is the first novella set in the vast, interlocking Universe of the Storystream. It is the prequel to, ‘A Treatise On Blood And Iron.’

 

Thanks, Jamie, for taking the time for an interview.

Hi there! Thanks for inviting me to take part in an interview. I must say, this is quite exciting.

The Dark Tower Movie Review

Like many others, I had been eagerly awaiting the release of “The Dark Tower” at the cinema. However, the reviews for the movie were horrible, and I almost didn’t go watch it. Apparently, the majority of others in Marietta, Ohio, believed the reviews and didn’t attend, either.

I’m not a fan of watching a movie in a packed theater, but I was stunned to find the headcount at this showing was ten people. Ten people for a Stephen King film. The upside to this was we enjoyed the movie without a lot of surrounding noise, comments, or the occasion bright screen of a cellphone. But ten people?

“The Dark Tower” is not a typical horror movie. It’s not intended as such. And for those King fans who eagerly relish such a film, like I do, ‘It’ is set to release September 8th of this year.

A fan of The Dark Tower book series should enter this movie expecting the movie to be inspired by the book series rather than expecting only one installment of the series, as the movie compresses all seven books into a film that is an hour and a half long. That’s a lot of condensation, so true fans of the novels will find great disappointment in this. Essentially, the movie is a watered down version of the books. With that mindset though one can still enjoy this movie as a loosely based spin off of the original.

The Dark Tower is better categorized as fantasy with bits of horror, sci-fi, and Western elements weaved within. The only downside I found with the movie is that it needed at least another half hour or more of screen time. The movie is slightly rushed, but overall, the shortness of the film doesn’t lose the viewer’s understanding of the story. Lengthening the film could flesh out the characters more and give more background for The Gunslinger.

The CGI monsters in the film are done quite well, but perhaps there should have been a lot more monsters since the novels are infested with monsters. The movie is PG-13, which limits the amount of gore and other components that an R rating could have allowed. The rating and the condensation of the story are probably the biggest reasons so many reviewers ranked this movie with poor reviews. Again, understand that “The Dark Tower” isn’t like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” where one can almost follow the books chapter by chapter on the screen. “The Dark Tower” takes the strongest elements of its book series and combines them.

Tom Taylor plays Jake Chambers, the boy who everyone thinks is delusional and insane based upon the intense nightmares he’s experiencing and the absolute dread that overshadows every aspect of his daily life. Taylor does an exceptional job with the role and has acting skills far beyond his age. Any actor that can use facial expressions and eye movement to speak without words is an actor with immense talent. Taylor has this and more.

Idris Elba is Roland Deschain, also known as The Gunslinger. He definitely plays the role believably well, and as a viewer, I would have enjoyed more time seeing his background brought to life on the screen, but Elba’s portrayal is spot on, although devoted fans of the books sharply disagree. Elba was convincing in mannerisms and the toughness The Gunslinger is known to possess. He brought a lot of greatness to the film.

The Man in Black is Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey captures the arrogant evil of the character in a rather annoyingly way, which suitably is how a narcissistic character acts, especially when the person believes himself to be invincible.

These three main characters are the heart of the original The Dark Tower and slightly altered, but bring to life on the silver screen a story worth watching.

The Dark Tower universe with portals to numerous worlds leaves us wondering what, if any, future adventures will come to the big screen? The movie ending leads us to suspect something more lies ahead, perhaps deviating even more from King’s original into new areas unknown. This might explain why the seven novels were condensed into one opening film. Who knows for certain at this point?

If you’re a diehard fan of the book series, this movie is still entertaining, provided you keep in mind that the movie isn’t a direct reflection of the books. Rather, it is a distorted shadow of the world with the strength of the main characters. Take the chance and see for yourself. I did, and I enjoyed the movie. 4.5/5

Marvin

Our family had a lot of dogs during the years of my childhood. Marvin was one of our dogs, and he was oddly unique. He was part Eskimo Spitz, and other than his ears being brown, he looked like a full-blooded spitz.

Marvin was an exceedingly fast dog. I don’t recall ever seeing a dog run as fast as he. One of his worst habits was chasing cars. His best qualities were being protective of us kids and our property, and wanting to have the back of his ears rubbed. He was a great dog.

The old dirt road behind our house took a sharp bend at the edge of our property before cutting between the woods and a pasture. A few people drove this way to get to the paved road at the front of our house from the longer dirt road on the other side of the woods. Most people simply followed the longer dirt road and met the paved road about a mile up the road from our house.

Our father had a ‘friend’ who lived on the dirt road. Each morning he’d drive around the bend behind our house before the sun rose. For a man who was supposed to be our father’s friend, he had a nasty habit of deliberately running over our dogs. He’d drive slowly until our dogs circled in front of his car, and then he revved the engine and aimed for them. Marvin was no exception. In fact, Marvin seemed to be his intended target.

One afternoon my father and I were outside near the dirt road when the man was returning home from work. He drove at a creeping pace, and then he slowed and stopped when he saw us. He rolled down his window to talk to my father. Marvin stood on the hillside beside us barking fiercely at the man. After a few minutes of conversation, he looked at us and said, “That’s one tough dog you have there. The other day he ran in front of my car and I rolled over him with all four tires. All he did was get up and bark at me.”

I saw anger in my father’s eyes for a moment, and he didn’t say anything at first. I had already had two pups killed on the road, and we suspected he was the one who had run over them. My father’s jaw tightened and with a smile, he calmly said, “Yeah, he’s a tough one all right. Loves to chase cars.”

A few minutes later, this man drove on the down the road. We couldn’t believe the man had just admitted to running over Marvin, and the man seemed proud of having done so. One thing my mother had told me over the years about our father. If he was mad, you usually didn’t know it. But after perceiving a threat and if he smiled, someone was in trouble. And that’s exactly how he reacted to this man. An even smile, and his calculated revenge was in the works.

That afternoon he took a shovel and dug a trench across the dirt road, nearly a foot deep the whole way across. He didn’t need to tell me what he was doing. I understood. Since very few cars drove down the road, the trap was being set for this man. Sure enough, the next morning, I was awakened by a horrendous sound.

I got out of bed and found my father standing in the kitchen looking out the window and laughing. As he explained it, the man had gunned his car toward our dogs and as he came to the bend he hit the deep trench. BAM! He said the guy’s car bounced and rocked hard after the first impact and then again as the back tires struck the ditch. For some reason the man didn’t stop. He sped on down the road, not bothering to stop and see what he had hit. Perhaps he was hurrying because he didn’t want us to see him, thinking we’d never know.

A little while later, our father took the shovel and filled in the trench, patted it down, and returned to the house. The next morning as the man drove down the road, he drove exceedingly slow, looking carefully over the steering wheel at the road when he came to the bend, possibly trying to figure out what he had struck the day before, and after that, he took the alternate route to work. We never saw him drive behind our house again.

We had Marvin for many years, and he was a dog that liked following me whenever I explored the bluffs, woods, and pastures. I’m certainly glad he was tough enough to survive being ran completely over by a jerk bent on killing dogs. I miss the old dog, but the memories of our time together serve me well.

Southern Practical Joker

I grew up in the rural area of DeKalb County, Alabama. Every year our cousins on our mother’s side came down to visit from Middletown, Ohio. So for those of you who remember the City Mouse and the Country Mouse story, you’ll understand how our upbringings in different environments naturally made it much easier for me to set our cousins up for the best practical joke ever.

Now, before anyone gets the idea that what I concocted was right out mean-spirited, let me give you some backstory to explain why we did this, and more amazingly, why my younger sister played along with it.

My sister and I were in our early teenage years, and our cousins always came down while we were at school. Their spring break was often a week or more away from ours, and we cringed whenever the bus approached our house and their RV was in the yard. Now, I’m not saying this is like Cousin Eddie in the Chevy Chase Vacation movies because it wasn’t even close. The reason our stomachs turned at the sight of the RV wasn’t because we didn’t enjoy our aunt and uncle’s visit, we did, but it was because we knew our rooms had been totally wrecked. Mostly, my sister’s room felt the wrath of our cousins, and this time wasn’t any different.

Each time they visited, it looked like a hurricane had blasted through my sister’s window and tossed everything. These two girls, one of which was older than my sister, dumped all my sister’s toys onto the middle of the floor, and then emptied each of her dresser drawers of clothes and other things onto the floor as well. A hurricane couldn’t have done much worse. And yet, with all this stuff piled on the floor, they had never bothered to play with any of it. Who ended up cleaning this mess up? You guessed it. Us. Not our cousins. Us.

I decided the one year that enough was enough. To get even for their outrageous disrespect for our belongings and trashing our rooms, I devised the ultimate plan to get a little bit of harmless revenge. I told them that my sister and I were going to pick blackberries, even though it was still a month or more before they’d even be ripe. They didn’t know that, and it didn’t really matter.

My sister and I took small plastic ice cream containers and headed down the dirt road. At first, they didn’t want to go, and we told them that they should stay at the house because this was too dangerous for two city kids to do. This, of course, intrigued them, and suddenly they’d have absolutely died if they didn’t get to go. Reverse psychology bait, or as we say in the South, “Hook, line, and sinker.”

“No,” I said, “You need to stay here because there are hunters out there. Where we’re going, it’s dangerous because they don’t like us picking their berries. They’ll shoot us.”

The older of our cousins frowned and said, “You’re lying! I know you’re lying! We’re going to go, too.”

“Okay, but I’m telling you to watch out for hunters.”

“You’re a liar!” she said.

So along they came following us down the dirt road. Midway down the dirt road, we crossed a fence into a pasture. A small grove of pine trees was in the center of the pasture. Blackberry briars clung to the side of the trees like a prickly wall.

What our cousins didn’t know was that in my jeans pocket I had tucked two pull firework poppers. These were small firecrackers with strings attached at each end. When you yanked the strings, the center part exploded with a loud sound, which sounded like a gunshot. I had told my sister that I had them. The plan was I’d pull the first one and pretend I had been shot. After I fell, she was to run and yell for help, then I’d fire the second one. This genius plan worked but not exactly as I had thought.

As I faced the blackberries, I said, “Watch for hunters. I’m going to start picking.”

“You’re lying!” my cousin yelled. “There are no hunters.”

I slid out the first popper from my pocket and yanked the strings hard. BAM!

I immediately fell onto the ground face-first, catching my cousin’s bewildered, wide-eyed gaze as I dropped. Her mouth dropped open, and she looked bug-eyed. It was too much. I got tickled. To prevent myself from laughing, I held my breath, and that made me look like I was having convulsions. My entire body jerked with spasms while I held in my laughter.

My sister went into theatrical mode and took off running. “Hunters! Hunters! Run!”

My cousin simply stood there with a gaping mouth and her eyes darted back and forth. She didn’t know whether to run or not. Meanwhile, I continued fighting my urge to laugh and my body jerked even more. Suddenly, I realized that I needed to pull the other firework’s strings to set off the next ‘gunshot.’ I fished the string out and yanked. BAM!

My sister made a cry of pain and fell backwards onto the ground without hesitation. Unlike me, she didn’t move, but I couldn’t hold my laughter any more. I rolled over onto my back and wailed with laughter. My sister opened her eyes and laughed.

“I knew you were lying!” was our cousin’s response.

“Yeah, sure you did,” we both replied.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, her facial expression had been worth a million. Perhaps it didn’t compensate for all the work we had to do to clean up our rooms, but it was satisfying.

Country kids: 1. City kids: 0.

 

Throwback Thursday

A long, long time ago. This was at a house my parents rented, which was only about a mile from the house they eventually bought in DeKalb County, Alabama, near the Pleasant Hill Community. My father had purchased a feeder pig while we lived here. He and my mother told me that I used to get just a little bit of water in a small bucket, and I made trip after trip to pour the water through the fence into its water trough. He had big plans to raise hogs to make money, and this feeder pig was his trial basis to see how well he liked raising them.

He fed the pig until it was big enough to send to the butcher. He and my mother seemed content about hog raising, and they thought having one raised for food would also save some money in the long

Me as a toddler (1968?)

run.

After the hog was processed, my father picked it up and returned home.

There were several large boxes of meat–bacon, ham, sausage, etc. When they opened the largest box, they were horrified. To their surprise and complete shock, was the pig’s head, which a lot of folks use to make headcheese. All they could see, they said, was me toting bucket after bucket of water to this pig. They couldn’t eat the meat. They gave it all away. They told me that had the head not been in with everything else, they wouldn’t have had a problem with it. But thus ended the dream of hog raising for our family.

If you plan to raise a hog or cattle, it’s also a good idea to never name the animal.