Jerry and Davy

Jerry's favorite playmate as he got older was Davy Fuller.  He was my age, but he and Jerry had much more in common.  Davy's father, Burdette, was a great hunter and he passed that love of hunting down to his son and Jerry.  (Just a little side note about Burdette...I can remember being at their house one time and Burdette was putting on his boots, he had an end of a cigar in his mouth and was chatting with us as he was putting these boots on.  My gosh, it took him forever to get these boots on!  First he would have a wrinkle in a sock, or something else would be wrong. I kept thinking we would never get where we were going, or he would go without boots!  He was never in a hurry and neither was his wife Betty.  Good folks, loved to tell stories and laugh about it.) Burdette and Betty Fuller.

Jerry with a beaver that he had trapped.

 In the 1950's Burdette taught Davy and Jerry how to run a trap line and they both did that before and after school during the winter months.  Davy trapped the upper part of Catlin Hollow and Jerry did the lower part. They trapped muskrat, mink, fox and horned owl.  For muskrats, they would get $1.00 to $1.25 for the hide. a mink would bring between $20.00 and $30.00, a fox would come in at $4.00, and the bounty on a horned owl was $5.00.  I thought it was interesting on how they trapped for a horned owl.  They would cut the top out of an old tree and anchor an old roost out of a chicken house to the top of the old tree and bait it with the meat of one of the animals they had skinned.  Now I understand the horned owl is protected.

Red

In the late summer and fall they hunted raccoons. Jerry had a Redbone Coonhound that he named
Red.  He saved his money and ordered him from a magazine.  When he arrived he was a skinny looking thing, but Jerry fell in love with that dog, built him a beautiful house and put it out beside the garage and Red seemed very happy in his new home.  I will never forget the first time my Mother saw that poor dog when Jerry picked up the shipping crate, he was just a bag of bones covered with red hair, but he immediately loved Jerry. Mother thought she had to fatten him up quickly, she felt so sorry for him.  Everyone was pretty proud of Jerry for what he had accomplished.  He and Davy had a lot of fun with Red and we all loved to hear his bark when he spotted a coon or was on a track, he had his own sound.  A raccoon hide would bring in around $2.00 if it was a good one.

Jerry

In the late 50's Jerry and Davy decided to build a Cabin.  None of this Hut stuff for them now, they were on to bigger and better things, but they were back begging to Daddy for material to construct said cabin.  It seems that Daddy and Jerry had used a cross cut saw to cut down some pine and oak of Daddy's and taken them to Alan Raker's saw mill to have them cut up into lumber, so Daddy let them use some of that lumber.  They had railroad ties to use for the foundation, so now they just needed to supply the labor and that they did.  They constructed a two room cabin with a sub-floor and a main floor.  It had a nice roof and a real smoke stack.  They used a kerosene heater first for heat, then they remembered our cast iron brooder stoves that we had in our huts, so they scavenged one of those, and that worked pretty well until they caught the floor on fire.  They didn't have any water to put the fire out and had to use a barrel of cider to put out the fire that had already burned into the sub floor.  I guess the cider hadn't turned too hard yet or that could have been a big problem.  They later acquired a cook-stove that worked much better for their purpose.

In the picture, you can see that they had curtains in the window.  I asked them what the curtains were made from, but neither of them could tell me.  They both had a lot of fun at their cabin and spent many nights there.

I can remember being in the cabin only once and that was after I was married, in fact Jerry was married, and I think Davy was also.  We had been out spotting deer and someone shot a deer, so we took it to the cabin to dress it out.  When we went to open the trunk of the car, we found much to our surprise, the deer's tail was hanging out of the trunk.  Daddy was also surprised when he found the venison in his washing tubs in the morning.  Enough said.

Davy and Jerry

Jerry and Davy killed a rattlesnake on the way up to the cabin one time.  Davy said that he cut a stick to kill the snake with.  It started out to be a long stick, but by the time he got the stick the way he wanted, it was a little shorter than he would have liked.  At that time they could get a dollar for a rattlesnake and now it is illegal to kill one.  Davy recently told me a story that I had heard Aunt Charlotte tell before.  When Rodney was a baby Aunt Charlotte had him out in the yard playing on a blanket and when she picked up the blanket to bring him in there were two rattlesnakes under it! Burdette was called and he killed both of the snakes.

Jerry and Davy

When we were kids, we could use our coaster sleds to ride down hill and we all had them.  We rode on the roads more than the hills.  The snow was always pretty deep and there were always deeper drifts to have to get through, so the roads were easy access compared to the hills.  People didn't travel the back roads much and they looked out for the kids back in those days too.

Davy made a toboggan out of some steel roofing one year.  He nailed wooden slats on the top of it so we would know where to sit.  As he tells the story, the first time down the Ice House Road, it went so fast that the slats flew off never to be seen again, as the road was glare ice and we literately flew down the road.  We had the week off from school because it was too cold to heat the school, so we kids rode down hill the whole week.   We rode down the Ely Hill Road or the Ding Dang Road and Ice House Road.  They didn't cinder then, as the cars used chains.  If it thawed during the day the road would freeze again overnight and we were ready to go again in the morning. When we got home our clothes were frozen stiff and could stand by themselves, but we had a ball.  It was a great week of fun, thanks to Davy and his toboggan.

Davy's parents also had a farm pond that we ice skated on, we had many skating parties there.  I remember having a birthday skating party there when I was a teenager.  After a day of skating we went back to our house and Mother fixed a big spaghetti dinner for all of us.  We had boys and girls at that party. All of the Bryant boys were at that party too.   It was great fun for all of us.  If we didn't have a dinner waiting for us, we always had hot chocolate and cookies.  Back then it wasn't the instant mix, it was homemade hot chocolate syrup with fresh milk from our own cows.

 If there was enough ice in the creek we would often have homemade ice cream and that was a special treat.  One of my favorite flavors was banana or grape nut, which was really Post Grape Nut cereal added to vanilla ice cream.  Daddy would take a burlap bag and an ax and go the creek and chop out some ice and bring it to the house then use a maul to break it up into small pieces that would fit in around the tank in the ice cream freezer.  While Daddy was doing that Mother would cook the custard for the ice cream using fresh milk, mostly cream and eggs from our chickens to make the base for the ice cream.  We would all take turns cranking the ice cream until it was frozen; the best part was being able to spoon off the paddles when the ice cream was frozen.  We kids got to do that, then the ice cream was packed in ice and salt until we were ready to eat, sometimes we were ready to eat it right now!!  We kids were always ready NOW!