Gulf Coast Boy...Teenage Years

Deep woods...Wild Peach community..1960..I was twelve years old.
I hated to move from my coastal town to the woods. I was sure all my friends and adventures were behind me.
We had no close neighbors, but less boys my age. But I had a dog, and we hunted every day.
I learned to love the woods and even the solitude.
We had cleared enough of the dense woods to build a modest house and large yard. Probably four acres. Chain saws were rare, but axes weren't, so we chopped and dragged the undergrowth and trees to a good spot for burning.
Red bugs and ticks were a new torment, but the deep woods mosquitoes were old friends.
I rode a bus to school, a long trip. Some of the other riders were pretty rough. The bus ride could be filled with terror or boredom.
The bus driver was never bothered by the sound of a punch or a girls scream as she was being held down against her will.
But try to tell him that he had missed your stop and he would rip your head off. He was my science teacher, also.
My family always hunted deer. We had a nice lease in south central Texas, 3200 acres. The owner wanted only eight 'guns' on the lease and charged $100.00 each. That money was hard to come by...I remember my mother and father going to a finance company every year to borrow our share of the lease money.
But we always had venison. I loved to hunt and did well, always getting my limit. We ate a lot of venison.
Back then, we just hunted, no feeders, walkie-talkies, or four-wheelers...just a tree to sit beside. If it rained, I would take a piece of plastic to sit on. I loved it. If you got one, you would go back to camp and return with a wheelbarrow. After cleaning it, we would take it into town to the ice house. When the trip was over, we would stop and retrieve it, taking it to a processing market.
One day leaving the lease, my uncle's car got stuck in soft sand. I jumped out of our truck and found a fallen tree to use. I straddled the trunk and began to hack at the bark with my hatchet.
About the third blow, the axe glanced off and went thou my boot. It didn't hurt, so I thought it just nicked me. But when I pulled the hatchet out, blood spurted with it. I limped back to the truck. One of my older cousins was there. He had been a medic in the Korean war.
He told me to lay back in the truck bed, but I said I wanted to see the nick.
But I discovered seeing your own blood for the first time isn't as cool as you might think. We were soon off to the clinic in the nearest town. By pure luck, the blade had gone between my tendons, saving me from surgery and a limp. They just stitched me up and I was good to go.
When my dad and I got home, my mother met us in the driveway as always.
She saw the huge bandage on my foot and actually trembled as she asked what happened.
I was cocky, my first real wound and all.
"I shot myself in the foot" I answered.
I will never forget the pain and horror in her face. The suffering I caused her with that stupid statement has haunted me ever since.
I learned something about life and a mother's love that day, but she paid for my lesson.
I was fourteen years old.
As time moved on, I met new friends, even in the deep woods. It was becoming a pretty good way to grow up. We would haul hay or cut wood or do ranch work for spending money.
We had fun, and never were vandals. Burnt down a tree trying to smoke out a squirrel once, but never intentionally harming any ones property.
But boys have to be stupid at times, and I kept the faith.
I told my mother three of 'us guys' were going night fishing. We actually were going down to a river to drink beer. One of my friends had somehow got two bottles of whiskey. We stopped on the way to the river and each bought a Coke. One Coke each. Two fifths of whiskey
and three Cokes. After the first stout drink, you really couldn't taste it. Pretty soon we were chasing wild range cows and rolling down a small hill, over cactus and rattlesnakes like idiots.
Then we saw tug boats pushing shell barges up the river ever thirty minuets or so. We decided to see who would swim closest to the tugs before 'chickening' out.
A tug would come buy and one of us would swim out toward it. When you got within fifty feet, the propeller would begin to suck you toward it..at about thirty feet, you panicked and tried to avoid being sucked under. It was pitch dark on the river and no way the tug boat would ever know you were there. I was sixteen.
I had a girl friend about then. Girlfriends require money to date. The deep woods wasn't the commerce capital of the world, but there was money to be earned, it you were willing.
Some of my buddies told me I could get a job at a local egg farm. I drove into the driveway of the mom and pop egg farm and got out, eyeing their dog.
About then, a crazed old man, followed by an elderly woman came running out.
"Git, git, git off of my property. You boys are no good, I'll sic my dog on you..git, now."
This man was awful to look at. He had a mean disposition and a meaner appearance. His wife wasn't much better. I realised my 'friends' had set me up. Several had worked for him, but spent most of their time smoking cigarettes behind the chicken barns.
But they needed help, so, after a good cussing, I was hired. $1.00 an hour.
My main job was to use his 1954 Chevy truck to shovel the chicken 'litter' from under the coops into the truck and drive it to the back of his property and un-load it with the same shovel. All day. Once, I had to kill two dozen copperhead snakes from a den I disturbed. All in a days work.
Now, folks, chicken 'litter' never really dries, and it was a disgusting job. I couldn't eat chicken or eggs for two years.
On occasion, I'd get to go with the lady into town to deliver eggs to the stores. I liked that.
They paid me. $8.00 for 8 hours....that would cover a date pretty well in 1965.
At the end of the summer, I told them I had to go back to school. They paid me the best compliment I've ever received. These mean, cynical people said I had changed their mind about boys, and 'maybe' not all of them were bad.
I missed them after I left.
I was seventeen.
end of part two