Skunk hunting on Sunday meant being sent home on Monday One Sunday afternoon we had company which came home with us from church. The dog was in the woods barking his head off so we decided to go see what he had treed. We arrived to find that he had chased a skunk in a hole in the ground. We decided we would extract the skunk from the hole. After all the dog had done his work we should not slack off on ours. To get a skunk from the hole you take a small long limb about six or seven feet in length and you make a small split in one end and pull it apart enough so that when you push the pole against the skunks fur you can twist the pole and its fur gets caught in the split and you pull it out by it fur. Skunks have a safety feature which

is a very strong odor that can actually make you sick if you get too strong a stream on your person. We could not get the twist pole on the adult skunk so we sharpened the stick and poked it through the hairless babies and retrieved them in that manner. There is really nothing you can do with a baby skunk so all we got for our trouble was a full dose of skunk spray.

We shed our clothes when we got home and bathed in strong soap all to no avail. The scent was there until it wore off. We arrived in school on Monday only to be sent home by the teacher. For some reason she did not like the way we smelled. Image that if you can?

Hog killing day On the farm you did not go to the store when you wanted some meat. There were two reason for that, Number one is you didn’t have the money to buy the meat and number two was that the closest store for that would have meat to sell was 35 miles away and with a wagon pulled by two horses or two mules was a considerable journey. Of course some of our relatives had automobiles and later on we did also but we still did not thing it wise to travel that far for pork when you could kill your own hogs.

            The task of killing hogs was a day’s work. One well placed bullet form a twenty-two would kill the hog in an instance but to butcher the kill was what took time and hard work. In preparation you dug a pit into which you could fit a wood fire and a large metal barrel which was laid on an angle which would still hold water. You had to build a platform in front of the barrel that was large and strong enough to sustain the weight of a 300 to 500 pound hog. Hopefully you had enough sense to kill the hog in close proxsementy to the platform. You also had to build a boom using three strong logs which were tied together with log chain in the form of a teepee. Another strong pole which had to big and strong enough to support the weight of the hog was attached to the teepee logs in the middle and used as a lever. You killed the hog then cut his throat to bleed him. You took a short pole about three feet in length and sharpened the pole on both ends. (The length of the pole was determined by the size of the hog) You ran the sharp ends of the pole thro the hamstring just above the back feet of the hog thus spreading the legs of the hog as far apart as you could. You attached the short pole to the longer pole with a log chain. Using the longer pole as a lever you lifted the hog onto the platform and placed its head toward the open mouth of the barrel. When the water in the barrel was at the right temperature, a learned science, you pushed the hog into the hot water. After a little while you pulled it out a little way and checked to see if the hairs of the hog could be easily pulled out. If not you put the hog back in the water and repeated the exercise. If they could be pulled our easily you rotated the hog so the part not in the water could be treated with the hot water. Then you pulled the hog back on the platform and everybody who could find a spot around the pulled hair as fast as he could before the hair become set and could not be pulled. When the hog was clean of all hair you used the lever to lift the hog and cut its head completely off. Then with it suspended off the ground you placed a number two wash tub under the body and opened the hog from the bottom of the hog from one end to the other and let the insides of the hog fall into the tub. When the job of gutting the hog was finished you then again laid the hog on the platform and began the job of butchering to hog. Feet were usually cleaned and canned to be eaten later. The head could be made into head cheese. The small intestinal tubes could be cleaned and used to stuff pork Sausage into. The meat was usually placed into a smoke house where a small fire was started and green hickory chips were placed because they were green they the chips would smoke more than burn. The original reason for the smoke was to keep flies form laying eggs in the meat and they hatch into maggots and ruin the meat. And of course people grew to love the hickory taste of the meat.

            What I liked best was that we always had fresh pork loins for supper on the day we killed hogs.

Explosion at the wash pot on a wet morning.

Explosion at the wash pot on a wet morning. One of my tasks that I had to do weekly was to draw tubs of water for the weekly wash day and to start a fire under the kettle to heat the water for washing the clothes. This I had to do outside ever week rain, snow or sunshine. The hardest time was when it was raining because it is hard to start a fire out in the open when it is raining.

            One morning all the wood for the wash kettle I could find was wet. I brought coals from the wood stove in the living room and tried to get the wood to burn but I was not having any luck. We had run out of coal oil which to city people it is called kerosene. Kerosene is a liquid that is extracted from coal so country people called it what it is. It is coal oil. It is ideal to work with because it will burn when you put a match to it but it is not volatile.

            I was running out of time because I had to go to school but also had to get thing ready for my mother to do the weekly washing. Then I remembered something my father had told me one time. It must have been the devil that directed my father to tell me this thing because I had never ever considered it before. He said; “Son don’t ever try to start a fire using tractor fuel. It is dangerous.” Bingo! Gas will burn. I can get this fire started with a little bit of gas. I reasoned that I could but some gas in a small open container and stand back and pitch the gas on the coals which I had already placed under the wet wood. I failed to take into account that gas gives off fumes which linger in the air. So when I pitched my gas everything was fine until the hot coals ignited the gas and it exploded and followed the fumes back to me and singed my lashes and eye brows and the front part of my hair. Fire started, lesson learned and I never tried to use gas to start a fire again.

Farm life from a to z and then some

            Making hominy. There are many tasks on the farm that are hard work. There none that I looked forward to more that making hominy. You had to draw tub after tub of water from the well. You had to have a fire outside with a kettle that would hold close to ten gallon of water. You had to shuck a lot of corn and then remove it from the cob. Make sure it was clean and then but it into the pot of boiling water and put lye and ashes into the water with the corn. You then would cook the corn until it would swell up to about four times its usual size. When this happened the outer hard husk on the corn would begin to peel off but not completely. When it had cooked long enough for the husk to be loose you begin with the washing process. All the lye and ashes must be washed from the corn. After the first washing to remove a lot of the lye you begin the next washings and with your hands you rub the corn as it is being washed to remove the hard husk that has been loosened. This is not an easy process but laborious. You continue moving the corn into clean tubs of water until the husks are gone and the lye and ashes are completely removed. Then the corn in put back into a washed out and cleaned kettle and cooked until the corn is done. The process is hard work but the results are a delight. There is nothing like hominy freshly made. That you buy in the store is not even a close second.

 Civic lessons and two pair of pants. In the seventh grade I had a class in civics. One of the assignments was to memorize the pre-emblem to the constitution. That was not a monumental task for someone who could memorize a three act play. However, being seventh graders and thinking that the assignment was over the top the class got together and decided that we would not do the assignment; there were fourteen of us in the class. When the day of the assignment came due no one in the class had memorized the pre-emblem. I think the teacher knew that there was a conspiracy going on so he went ballistic. He said we would have to write the pre-emblem five hundred times. One of us asks and if we don’t write it then what? He said he would give each one of us 20 licks with a paddle on the behind. We got together during recess and all but one girl and two boys decided to take the licks. In fairness to the two boys who did not take the licks of the paddle it was their father’s wrath they feared not the teachers.

            When we made know our decision to the teacher he said he would not spank us all on the same day so his arm would not give out. I was one of the lucky one who got to wait for the second day punishment. I wore two pair of jeans to help cushion the sting of the paddle. It may have helped some but a paddle wielded by a full grown man hitting you behind while you were bent over holding on to your ankles can be felt well enough. I still cannot quote from memory the pre-emblem to the constitution. We the people of the United States in order to perform -------.

The trauma of overalls and modern washing machines. When I first started to school we did not have electricity so my clothes were washed using a number two galvanized wash tub and a rub board. But alas there came the day that the local Tennessee Valley Rural Electrical Association found Witts Springs on their map a came out our way putting in electrical poles and they put one right close to our house. We were on our way to modernity. We had electricity. The first thing we bought was a refrigerator and we now could have ice cream without waiting for a snowy day. Next came an electric washing machine with an electric wringer. It was easier to wring water out of overalls using the wringer than by hand but the rollers that the wringers had could wreck havoc on the metal fastener on the galluses. Herein lay the problem, after several times being washed and ran through the wringer the metal parts became bent and hard to fasten, that is to latch and unlatch. I was in school and needed to go to the bathroom. I ask and received permission to go. By the time I arrived to the outhouse the urge was upon me and I was unable to undo the fastener on the end of the galluses. The end result was that I did my business in my overalls. I could not go back to class after messing in my cloths so I went over the school fence behind the outhouse and went through the woods to our house where I could get help. I do not remember the teacher ever asking what had happened that I did not return to class. It may be that she got busy and did not miss me.

Locking up two classes with one board. Faye Drewry was several years ahead of me in school and gave me grief from time to time. I did not like him because of his pestering and teasing me. He did turn out to be a great adult when he grew up but this event her related was during his school years at Witts Springs High School. Some background information is necessary to understand how the story unfolded. The school did not have indoor plumbing but had two outhouses. One outhouse was for the girls and one for the boys. The girl’s outhouse was located on the north side of the school propriety and the boy’s on the south side. During the time that classes were in secession those needing to go to use the outhouse would raise their hand and when the teacher would recognize them they would ask to be excused. Thus the teacher gave his or her permission for you to leave the room. For some reason which I do not know the teacher would write your name down and the time you left and returned. It may be that they were just trying to keep up with each student since they were in charge of each student. At any rate I ask to be excused and the permission was granted. I went to the outhouse and on returning into the school building; just inside the south entrance of the building I encountered Faye Drewry. There were wood and some lumber lying on the side just inside the door. The wood was for the wood stoves that heated the class rooms. I do not know what the long boards were doing there. Faye looked at me and said, “Kenneth you are a chicken if you do not pick up that long board and place between the two doors.” The two doors opposed each other across the school hall way. I avowed to him that I was not a chicken. We went back and forth for a while, then I picked up the board and jammed it against the two doors which opened in the direction of the hall. The room on the East side housed the 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grades along with the principal of the school. The room on the West housed the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd grades.

            I went to my room and promptly forgot what I had done and did to think of the consequence at any time. I had in effect locked six classes into their rooms. I learned latter that in the room where the principle and the upper grades were located one of the students ask for permission to leave and informed the principle that the door would not open. The principal thought him in jest until he tried to open the door and could not get out. He was an elderly man and became quite concerned that the door would not open. The school building itself is or rock construction. This is not fake rock but real rocks only the partitions between the rooms are made of wood. This leaves a small crack between the rock wall and the wood wall. The old gentleman put his head in the corner and began to try to get the attention of the teacher in the adjoining room. His plea was, “Miss Turney, Miss Turney please let us out.” This cry went on and on to no avail, because Miss Turney could not hear him. The high school students were getting a kick out of the whole show. This begging went on until it was time for school to be over then one of the high school boys simply raised a window and jumped down, a distance of about six feet to the ground, and went around to the door and removed the obstruction. Why the principal did not think of this is beyond me. The next day the old gentleman who also was the principal of the school went to each room and got the names of students who had been dismissed from their room at the time he deemed that the board had been placed between the two doors. From my home room there were three of us, J. D. Watts, Sonny Heit and myself. He asked which one of us had placed the board there and Sonny was our advocate. Sonny pleaded our case with a passion avowing that none of us would do such a thing. I simply remained silent and said nothing as Sonny pleaded with success and thus did not receive the thrashing the old gentleman would have administered to me had I owned up to my crime. It was a case of lying by saying nothing.