BY

Rev. Walter Pervia Rowland

EDITOR'S NOTE: So far I have been unable to locate the rest of this document. Therefore, I have no context to indicate what went before nor what followed this episode. -- rrw

When we grew older, we would drive a large nail in a tree and then pull the nail out, stick a 22 caliber rifle shell in the hole and stand to one side and beat the back end of the shell with a hammer until the shell exploded -- which was usually the first lick. The explosion would cause the hammer to rebound with force enough to almost knock us down. We spent all our Christmas money for 22 caliber rifle shells one year and among us we had around two thousand shells. We were giving an exhibition of skill one day and one of the boys father was standing around watching as were a lots of other people -- men, women, and children. Suddenly an old man (about 50 I guess, but to a subteenage kid that was "OLD") commenced to jump up and down and grabbed his suspenders and yelled, "Run, girls, I'm coming out of them [his overalls]!". Before he had finished saying it, he was out of his pants and pulling and raking his legs. In his attention to the shooting match he had stood on top of a large red ant bed. They had pretty well covered him before he thought about what he was doing. Needless to say, there no girls or women there by the time he was undressed.

That is about the time that the boys of our gang thought that in order to be a man you just had to learn to go with a chew of tobacco in your jaw, making it look like you had a toothache, AND a large dip of snuff under your lower lip, AND a cigarette sticking to your under lip all at the same time befrore you could be called a man. In the struggle to qualify as a man, my brother just younger than I had taken a big chew of Town Talk Chewing Tobacco one morning. We walked around in the timber for quite a while and went home for dinner. While I was washing, Hiram, standing near, commenced to vomit. Oh boy, was he sick. It looked like he would vomit his socks up. I knew what the struggle but our poor mother did not, so she came running with a wet rag to hold to his head (Where did that idea originate?) and saying, "What on earth is the matter, son? What on earth is the matter?" He, of course, could not tell her. I don't know what she and Father would have done. Pa used tobacco, but we thought that we would get the hound beaten out of us if they caught us using tobacco, so Hiram told her that he had eaten so many raw potatoes that they had made him sick, and though that has been over half a century, we still tease Hiram about the amount of raw potatoes that it takes to make a man that sick.

I remember that Mother had whipped Hiram, in fact she had whipped us both but I had taken my licking and gone on, for I knew I had it coming, but Hiram was feeling sorry for himself. Mother tried to make him hush screaming. She had given him the "second blessing" (whipping) and he had just gotten worse and said "Go ahead and kill me.". There was a five gallon can of "slop" mostly dish water with what kitchen refuse there was sitting there. Mother caught sight of it. She picked up the can and emptied it on him. I will never forget the surprised look that he had in his face. He hushed crying and looked at Mother as she picked up another can sitting there and said, 'Now you hush, or I will just drown you." Boy, he began to beg the odor of the first deluge and the suddenness of it had overwhelmed him. That was the last time she ever had any trouble with him on that score. It is marvelous what patience, fortitude and wisdom it take to rear a bunch of hearty, healthy boys. What one can't think of, certainly two can. If two can't, let three, or four, or maybe five have a chance at it and the gamut will about be run.

We still tease old Hiram about the time that he caught a bee to see its eyes. He was four year old and still in dresses. There were plenty of honey bees working in the wild hoarhound flowers around the place. I had seen him chasing something around and diving at it and thought that he was trying to catch a butterfly, which he often did. Directly, he let out a Tarzan war cry. When we discovered the trouble, Hiram had caught a bee to see its eyes which he had been told a few days before were under the bees wings ………[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sorry, the rest of this story appears to be missing. -- rrw]