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Fishing Stories

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Fishing Stories Like many boys growing up in the south, my brothers and I learned fishing, hunting, and how to shoot a gun from our grandfather. My earliest memory of shooting a gun was shooting a 410 shotgun into Grape Creek after feeding cows when I was about 6 years old. We grew up on stories about hunting in the Richland Creek and Grape Creek bottoms and fishing in the Trinity River. He loves to tell how he shot a deer with an SMLE (.303 caliber Lee-Enfield rifle he owns, made in 1916) and it blew out 6 inches of spine killing the deer nearly instantly and how another time he had to drag a deer across a slough near Richland Creek after killing it. My folks still love to tell one story about me hunting when I was about 14. One of my grandfather’s workers took me hunting. It was about 35 degrees outside and raining. He had me posted in a brush pile while he went further down in the property. Later on, he said he saw a nice sized buck behind me, but I never shot it. I don’t reme
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Remnants of the Past

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Remnants of the Past In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. This short rhyme is taught to schoolchildren across the nation to help teach kids about Christopher Columbus. But, who and what did he and other European explorers discover? According to William Denevan in his book, The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, he estimates the Americas held a population of approximately 112 million people. There were vast groups of peoples and cultures spread out across the continents not to mention full-fledged empires like the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya. Even here in Texas, explorers found multiple civilizations of people who thrived and traded with each other. The Spanish incorporated many of their words and used their infrastructure when growing their empire. My family and I took a trip last Friday to one of the vestiges of the Pre-Columbian cultures here in Texas at Caddo Mounds State Historical Site and Mission Tejas State Park.   Both parks a
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Interruptions

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 Interruptions Anyone who has attended church regularly for long enough can tell you that church services do not always go as planned. In 2020, churches have had to stop meeting in person for months at a time due to COVID not to mention technical issues like cameras, microphones, and technology not working or cooperating. In decades past, things still did not always go as planned, just like today, but the culprits were not always the same. This first story is from Max. Max attended Providence Baptist Church along with his family and friends including Robert Singleton. Max and Robert like many friends would stay the night at each other's house. Now Robert’s house was located actually in what is now my front yard off FM 637 near the end of Providence Road.  Robert's family had a donkey they would use on the farm.  One Sunday, Max and Robert decided they would ride the donkey to church instead of riding in the car with the rest of the family. So, they rode the donkey down Pr
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Treats for kids

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  Treats for kids For as long as I can remember, my grandfather has eaten a bowl of ice cream every night and has since he was a child. Blue Bell’s Homemade Vanilla ice cream is the favorite culprit, sometimes with some frozen pecans or a little chocolate syrup, or as a Dr. Pepper float. This habit started at the Hamilton Store, which was on Hwy 287 near the current location of the Eureka Masonic Lodge but has subsequently been torn down, replaced by a house. The school bus would stop at the store, dropping off several kids. The Rash kids would get off the bus, go into the store to buy ice cream and snacks before getting back on the bus for the rest of the ride home. They would charge them to their father's account. Ice cream cones, RC Colas with Zero Bars crushed in them, and Coca Colas with peanuts in them were some of their favorite snacks. He used to tell us one of his favorites was to get an ice cream cone in each hand then smush the dips together and use the cones as ha
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Friday Night Lights

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  This week is the last week of the 2020 football season for the Mildred Eagles. It has been an interesting season that will be one for the history books. There has been no season like it in living memory with the shadow of COVID hanging over the season. The Eagles have had some struggles with COVID with a player coming down with it but fortunately have not had to cancel or forfeit any games due to COVID. For the Eagles, nothing has gone to plan this season. They came into the season with high hopes but then struggled as injuries mounted and having a player transfer. They had three girls tryout for the team and play as kickers and have done really well. One even went down to JV where she played on defense in addition to kicking duties. The team struggled at times while showing flashes of their talent. In honor of this being the last week of the season, I thought I would include a couple football-related stories. Every player has a routine on game day. Something they like doing or
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Southern Rite of Passage

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  When my brothers and I were growing up, many a late summer evening found us gathered around the living room at my grandparent house watching Ranger games, performing a ritual as ubiquitous as to be a rite of passage in the south. I am of course talking about shelling peas, shucking corn, and prepping vegetables for storage after harvest. I remember dreading shelling peas before we got started but then enjoying it all the same, especially when Papaw started telling his stories. Many of you found yourselves during harvest time gathered on front porches, living rooms, or kitchens huddled over washtubs or buckets while parents, grandparents, or even great grandparents shared stories to pass the time. Storing vegetables was crucial in times where money could be tight, in hard times, meat could be acquired through hunting, fishing, or butchering livestock but vegetables could only be had in certain times of year and some like beans and potatoes were hardy and could nourish large famili
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How do you know where to dig a well?

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 How do you know where to dig a well? Religion and Superstition has a long history in the south, the lines between often blurring, not truly together, or separate. Where these diametrically aligned forces meet, one could find many uses like telling the sex of a baby before it’s born, or when to plant crops, or where to dig a well. This is a story about using this mixing of religion and superstition to dig a well. Now here in Texas, there are only a handful of natural lakes spread across the states. Unless your home or farm is situated along a river or large creek, you must rely on wells, cisterns, or manmade lakes “tanks” for water and not just for your house, but for crops. My great grandfather, Emmett, needed to dig a well. The land where they lived and farmed was good land, but there were no large creeks or rivers close at hand. They lived about a mile away from Chamber Creek near what is now the shoreline of Richland Chambers Reservoir. Before he started, he went a got an old
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