Chapter 1

Granddad was Swedish, but he always referred to his heritage as Scandinavian. Grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee who had a perpetual smile on her face. Granddad was my mentor throughout my younger days, as Dad was in the military and always gone somewhere. Mom contracted the big ‘C’ and passed away in childbirth of a stillborn when I was four and my sister was five.

Granddad had a farm in Southeast Missouri that could grow just about anything, and did. We grew a lot of corn and sugar cane. You would know that Granddad brewed some of the best whiskey and bourbon there ever was if you’re a farmer from that area. Granddad’s name was Jeb for Zebadiah. Grandmother probably had another name, but everyone knew her as ‘Happy’ because of her smile.

According to Granddad, he found Happy when she was only twelve or thirteen. She had wandered off from her tiny village and had become lost. She had been resourceful enough to trap rabbits and cook them over open fires. She was carrying all the rabbit skins so she could use them when she found her way home when Granddad found her. Granddad was a man of nearly seventeen when he found a girl like that, and did what he should have by taking her back to her village.

This group of Cherokee had gone off by themselves during the Trail of Tears, and had been left to live peacefully in an area no one really wanted to settle in.

According to the story, Happy was offered to Jeb for two deer a year for five years. Granddad obviously kept his part of the deal, and Happy became Granddad’s. They even had a church wedding when a church was built in the closest community. They already had two children of course, but what was important is that they were a happy couple.

Grandmother was a special person and loved my Granddad more than life itself. She would have died for the man if it had ever been necessary, but then she would have given her life for us kids too. She was very unselfish. The one thing she had learned from the ‘White Man’s’ world was how to cook. She could make a meal out of almost anything, and it would make your mouth water in anticipation. Her cornbread was known throughout the area as the absolute best.

My sister and I grew up in the country knowing that Dad was in in Viet Nam at the end of that war and Desert Storm later. Wherever he was, it wasn’t in Southeast Missouri with his two kids. We knew he missed our mother and knew that he was having a difficult time getting over the loss. He was using the Army to help him get over his grief. Our parents had grown up together and been married when they were both seventeen. She was six months pregnant with my sister, and Dad had enlisted in the Army to support them. He had mistakenly thought that he would train and be stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood which wasn’t all that far from the farm. The good news was that he had finished basic training and was on leave when Sis was born. I was told stories about how that had been a big time celebration.

Sis was a week old when Dad took a train out of Springfield to go to a Fort in Texas for more training. I don’t know where all he went during that time, but I know that he came home on leave a couple of months later and Mom became pregnant with me. Dad wasn’t home when I was born since he was freezing in Korea while on an isolated tour. He was gone for almost two years that time, came home once again, wasn’t careful during the reunion, and Mom became pregnant with the child that killed her.

Dad was a mess, but he knew that Sis and I would be taken care of and would probably grow up to be decent citizens if Granddad and Grandma raised us.

You gotta know something about Southeast Missouri. I think this is where the term ‘Hillbilly’ came from. The people who lived there called themselves ‘scratchers’. They could scratch out a decent living on three hundred and twenty acres of low mountains and forests. You could file for a hundred and sixty acres and pay a whopping twelve dollar signing fee during the early 1920s. You had to build a house on the land and work the ground. Well, a lot of people figured that a man could file for one plot, and the wife could file for another adjoining one hundred and sixty acres, build a house that straddled both pieces of property, and work what land there was. That was the land Granddad and Grandma lived on and worked.

We didn’t have many fields, but there were enough to grow corn and sugar cane. We even grew enough sugar cane to sell some sugar to neighbors for a couple cents a pound. Granddad would make his corn liquor in the caves on the land using the wonderful spring water that was abundant around the area, and was very particular to not let his leavings from making liquor get into the creek water. He had a deep well where he dumped all his leavings and let them settle into the earth. I’d bet the water wells in the area had a kick to them. We would fill five and ten gallon milk cans with some good aged stuff and take them to Springfield, Branson, down to Fayetteville, and as far as Kansas City when we had a lot of liquor. Who’s going to stop a farmer in a rickety old pickup with a bunch of milk cans? It was never difficult to sell everything we took to the city. It was always, “When can we get more?” and “How much can you deliver now?”

It was always the same and Granddad would tell them, “I’ll bring more when it tastes the way it should.”

We had revenuers come to the farm fairly often to poke around all the buildings looking for cooking equipment, but they never found anything that would give away what we sold. We had cows that justified the milk, we sold some of the sugar we made, and fed a lot of corn to the hogs and cows. This was a working farm that had a big garden that we canned vegetables and fruit from every summer and fall. We had a lot of apple and pear trees that made great apple butter and some hard cider and vinegar that we kept for ourselves. Grandma loved that apple cider when it had a good kick to it. That smile would just get bigger.

If you know anything about Southeast Missouri, you know that those people are one hundred percent rednecks. They’ll give you the shirt off their backs, but they don’t tolerate city folk, state lawmen, revenuers, or someone who steals from a neighbor. It was amazing how many people just turned up missing and were never heard from again. They disappeared, and even the car they were driving never surfaced. I don’t know this to be a fact, but I’d bet they would find hundreds of cars that were lost over the years if they ever drained the Lake of the Ozarks.

The local law was good because they didn’t mess with anyone. They harassed the young men who drove too fast, but then they’d let life go on the way it had for several decades if they weren’t causing any major trouble. Everyone knew where you could get a drink, and everyone knew where a man could find some ‘comfort’ as they called it. There were a couple houses on the outer edge of every small town or village that would have the light on the porch late at night. You could find comfort there if the light was on. No big deal, right? You could get some Saturday night ‘comfort’ as long as you were at church Sunday morning.

One of the things I defy you to find deep in the heart of that redneck country is a hungry family. Neighbors provided the raw materials for a family to eat if they were having a problem. Young men would cut wood for heat and wood stoves. Those same young men would kill a couple of extra rabbits when they hunted and take the dressed game to those who were hungry. Chickens would find a way to get to those homes, as well as smoked meats that would show up on porches. Women would get together for blanket quilting and making clothing for the kids. These people took care of each other. I’m sure times are changing even for the folks in the mountains, but I’d bet they still take care of each other.

Granddad was very strict about school. He said that he was glad to have gone to school through the fifth grade to learn to read and write. Grandma had never been to school, but she had learned to read and write. She knew a lot about geography, and showed us kids the world through an old Encyclopedia Britannica. We would often spend a night with her reading about some far off place. She would get the book with the world picture and point to where a place was. Anyway, Granddad made sure that we went to school and that our grades didn’t slip. Sis was always fascinated by boys and young men as she grew up. Our grandparents would warn her off the bad ones, and didn’t harass her about the boys they thought were worthy of her. Sis was a good cook. She could darn a pair of socks with the best of them, and could patch a pair of torn pants in a flash. She must have been good at some other things, because she got married to one of the local farmer boys the week after graduating from high school. Her rented robe covered the rounded belly from her coming first born.

I did morning and evening chores, as well as most of the field work, since I was the boy in the family. It was my responsibility to do any repairs on equipment, as well as our pickup and the family car. Our car was a very good running antique 1946 Chevrolet four door. The only times it was driven was to church on Sunday and the grocery store on Saturday.

It was also my job to keep the leavings from the stills going down the deep well Gramps had dug. The well would almost fill up and you could smell it if you were within twenty to thirty feet if we had an exceptionally good year. Gramps would have me shoot a couple of varmints such as ground hogs and put them around the covered well so the dead animal smell would overwhelm anyone who walked nearby when that happened.

That brings this tale around to hunting. Grandpa had a good double-barreled shotgun and a thirty-thirty lever action rifle that did everything he needed to do. He also had a long barreled Colt .45 revolver that he would go out and shoot targets with. He said that he hoped he would never need it. He also had a Colt 1911 automatic that he said was a great gun, but he wasn’t a good shot with it.

Grandpa took me to the Western Auto store in town when I was ten. He bought me a used new style .22 semi-automatic rifle that would shoot .22 shorts all the way to long rifle rounds. This rifle was supposed to be superior to others because you could shoot the inexpensive shorts without it jamming. You could buy what was called a brick of shorts (500 rounds) for five dollars. Gramps paid thirty-nine dollars for the rifle with two bricks of shorts, and a box (50 rounds) of long rifle cartridges.

I didn’t get to use the rifle right away because Grandpa kept taking me out and teaching me where to shoot and when not to shoot. He emphasized how the round could carry for a mile and could hit someone or a farm animal. I was always supposed to be aware of where I was shooting. We went out with me carrying the unloaded rifle and he would point and say, ‘rabbit’, ‘squirrel’, and even ‘deer’ to see what I would do. I would look to see where I was going to shoot as I would raise the rifle. I’d lower the gun if it was at a rock bluff. I wouldn’t shoot if it was at an open area with no knowledge what was beyond. I’d raise the rifle and say, ‘bang’ if it was toward the ground.

It was September before I was sent out with a rifle magazine full of .22 shorts. My goal was to bring back at least one squirrel or rabbit. My exciting two hours resulted in firing my new rifle three times and bringing a rabbit and two squirrels home. Grandpa took all the unfired shells from the rifle and counted them. Grandma took the cleaned game and began preparing it for supper. I had passed Grandpa’s test.

I didn’t ask for anything special that Christmas because I felt like I had received the best gift for my birthday. Grandpa waited until everyone had opened the couple of presents of clothes that were given. I had made Grandma some kitchen spoons because I had noticed the ones she had were becoming nicked and looked cracked. I found some good oak and carved out six kitchen spoons that were every bit as nice as you could get in a store. Grandpa showed me how to smooth out the spoon and handle. I made Grandpa a belt from one of the deer hides I had tanned. My sister was always easy because she loved rabbit slippers. I would use a couple of rabbits and sew the hides into slippers.

Grandpa disappeared and came out of the back bedroom with a used single shot .410 shotgun. He told me that I had shown him I was ready to hunt for the family. He also told me, “You’re going to bring in your first deer this winter. It will take two deer to take us through spring when the steer we have will be ready to butcher. Grandma said, “I’ll make you a shirt from the deer hides like your grandpa wears all the time.”

I used the thirty-thirty to shoot my first deer the winter before my eleventh birthday. It was very cold and I knew that I had to get this over two hundred pound deer home after I got over the excitement of the kill. I cleaned out what seemed like thirty pounds of guts, and saved as much of the stomach and skin of the intestines as possible. There’s no way I could carry over a hundred pounds of deer, so I thought about it in the near zero degree weather. I found a couple of small trees that I could break off and made a travois. I dragged that carcass over a mile back to the house. Gramps came out with some more knives when it was hung up to skin, and we made short work of skinning the deer and stretching the hide. He picked out a couple of pieces of meat to take inside and had me put everything else into the smoke house.

I was frozen by this time, but even my sister helped celebrate that I had brought home food for our table. I had a cup of coffee and grandpa poured me a finger of his good stuff and told me it would warm my insides. That stuff lit a fire all the way down. I’m still not sure whether it warmed me up or I didn’t care whether or not I was still cold any more.

It didn’t make a difference. I still had to do chores that night and to cut up a bunch of stove wood.

I began trapping that winter. Grandpa bought a couple of dozen traps for a quarter a piece at a farm auction, and then taught me all the ways to stake them down and how to camouflage and bait them. He walked with me on a two mile circuit that included areas where we might catch an elusive mink or weasel. We might catch a fox because there were a lot of them in the area.

I would leave the house at four thirty in the morning and walk my trap line. I often had to use my .22 to kill what was in a trap. Getting the traps reset and the game skinned took a lot of time. I still had to do barn chores, but my sister would do the milking and clean up for me. I made almost two hundred dollars from raw skins I caught that winter. I gave Sis sixty dollars because she helped me by doing a lot of my barn chores.

I still had to study after supper at night, and it was often difficult to keep my eyes open. I would take my books into the kitchen and do my homework as Granddad would be reading an old newspaper and Grandma would be cutting up some of the game I had trapped. We ate any meat there was on the critter, even though it took a lot of her cooking skill to disguise the gamey flavor of the foxes and weasels. Deer and other mostly plant-eating critters tasted a lot better.

I had over two thousand dollars saved by the time I was fifteen. I spent money on presents for birthdays and Christmas, and did as Granddad said to do and donated at least a tenth to the church. I had bought a couple of steer calves at an auction and was raising them as meat for us, but Grandpa said I could get big bucks for them at the market. We argued over it until we agreed to sell one and eat the other in payment for any grain or hay I used. The animal we sold brought me a hell of lot of money. I used the money to buy another three bull calves that would become food and money when they were grown. Granddad was teaching me how to be a farmer.

Well, Sis got married to a farm boy without a farm and a dad who was happy to get rid of him. The boy, or I suppose a man now with a kid, tried working for different people in town, but the jobs just didn’t last long. He was said to be a good worker, but he couldn’t get on to a place like the grain elevator where he could work all year.

Grandpa had them move into Sis’ room which was next to mine. The idea was to let them use those two rooms and I would sleep on the couch until we built an extra room. Grandpa finally relented and had a propane tank installed. We moved the wood stove to the new summer kitchen where the pantry was and had a gas stove, and bought and installed a gas heating system for the house. What a mess. We had to tear up ceilings and floors to get ducts into the rooms. I didn’t understand why we had to put ducts everywhere when we heated the whole house with a fireplace in the living room and a fire in the woodstove. You just added a blanket when it was cold.

We added a room for me and put in good wiring for lights and electrical sockets in all the rooms while we tore up the house. Grandpa actually went to the city and bought a nineteen inch TV. We had to erect an antenna on top of the house, but we could pick up signals from Cape Girardeau, Springfield, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

I had graduated from high school and was trying to get a money job in addition to the farm, when we were notified that Dad had been killed the day before the cease fire. A couple of men from Ft. Leonard Wood came to the farm to tell us. I felt a huge loss, but he hadn’t been home for close to four years at this time, and we only realized that our absentee dad wasn’t ever going to come home.

Granddad got his shoe box full of important documents out, and gave me a letter and three life insurance policies. The letter was from Dad who had written it not that long ago. He had sent it to Granddad to give to me in case he was killed. I sat there staring at the envelope within the envelope that had ‘give to Barney’ written on the front. My eyes teared up knowing that I would never feel that man’s arms hold me the way they did when he came home and before he left again. I wouldn’t see the pain in his eyes for losing the person whom he loved as no other.