The danger of teasing your little brother

My brother, Leroy was forever teasing me about this or that. One day he began to tease me about a girl in a neighboring community. That went to the same school we attended. She was from a very poor family and always came to school dirty and smelly. My brother was telling me that she was my girl friend and he just went on and on. I got angry with him and began to throw rocks at him. He was hiding behind the wood pile to escape from the rocks. I hurled one with all the strength I could muster just as he raised up from behind the wood pile and caught him in the forehead. The force of the rock almost knocked him out and it cut his skin and blood was pouring out. He ran crying to my mother and I got a good thrashing from my mother. He got a large knot on his head and a lesson that although I was smaller I could deliver a good blow with a rock.   

Removing the head from a chicken

When we would have company in the summer time after church we would need to kill a chicken or two in order to have meat. Since we had no refrigeration we could not go to the freezer to get it. I had watched my grandmother take a chicken by the head and in a quick twisting movement of the hand and wrist she would have the chicken head in her hand and the rest of the headless chicken was flopping on the ground. When I tried to do this the chicken just got up and ran off with its head in tack. I never did learn how to do that trick so I held the chicken by the feet and laid it head on the chopping block and cut it off with an ax.

Learning to swim without an instructor

 One of the fun things that hillbilly boys love to do is to go in swimming in the ponds and creeks. We always did this in our birthday suits. There is no one to teach you how to swim you must learn on your own. My brother was bolder than myself so he learned how to swim very fast. I was more cautious. So when we would go in swimming I would play around the edges. They would encourage but I was not buying it. But I could tell that it was more fun to swim than just play around the edges. One day I discovered that I could lie on my back and float. After that it was easy to begin to paddle with my hands and feet. I swam across the swimming hole a time or two on my back then simply flipped over on my stomach and started swimming.