Читать книгу Smokey and the Fouke Monster: A True Story - Smokey Crabtree - Страница 8

Winter was coming on and our wood burning heater, we used for heat, had barely made it the winter before.

We had no way of getting another heater. They had to come from the store and that meant money.

Mother must have been doing some real thinking. She came up with the idea of building a fireplace. We all knew this fireplace would have to come from what we had or what we could get for nothing. We all had ideas but Mother's were usually the best.

We had an old mule Daddy had bought from Bill Cox. We were still making payments on him at the time Daddy passed away. Later, Mr. Cox gave us the mule. He knew we needed the mule and had no way of paying for him.

The old mule helped with the fireplace but it was common sense that played the biggest part.

We knew it would have to be a dirt chimney and that it would have to stand up under heavy rain and a lot of heat. This meant a special kind of clay dirt.

There was a crawfish flat back in the woods, a mile or so from our house. The dirt there was a clay. It was a light gray color and really stuck together well. It was a low place and when it rained the water would stand there for an extra long time. This meant the water did not soak through the dirt as easily as it did through sand.

When the flat did go dry, the crawfish that lived there would dig down to the water level to stay alive. While they were digging their hole they piled the mud around the hole in the form of a chimney. Some of these chimneys were a foot high. When they dried out they became hard, like brick.

We used the old mule and a ground sled to transport the clay to the house. We got all our materials ready first. We rived slats for lumber and pulled dead grass from the fields and piled it up at the location where we were to build the chimney.

We built the frame out of slats first. Then we mixed water with the clay dirt making a stiff mud. We mixed grass in the mud to reinforce it. We rolled the mud into the shape of a worm. Mother called them "cats" They were about three inches in diameter and up to two feet long.

We stacked the cats inside the frame and outside of it too. All of this was done with our hands. We squeezed the cat into place, locking them all together, then we patted them and smoothed them down with our hands.

The chimney was three feet or so taller than the house and had a nice shape to it. We had to cut a large hole in the wall and finish out the inside.

All eight of us worked on the fireplace. Mother was the foreman and we were the crew. The girls never backed up from the work. They were right there when Mother needed them. The job turned out well and we sure were proud of the fireplace.

Living way back in the woods is never dull to a boy. There is always something for him to do if he knows his way around.

One of our favorite past times was watching our chickens fight.

There were whiskey stills hid out in the woods. We three boys were in the woods half of the time. We would find the still while we were hunting and could always go back to it.

Once the owner drained the soured mash off the chops, he had no further use for them and they were thrown to the side.

We would take some buckets and go to the still when no one was around. We got the soured chops to feed our chickens. The chops were still soaked with the sour mash, making the chickens drunk.

It was a hilarious sight to watch. The one that ate the fastest became drunk first. They acted just like people at a party. The one that became drunk first would quit eating and start walking around looking the others over. He would start trying to start a fight by pecking the other on the head. He would meet another one that had begun to feel the effect of the mash, and the fight was on.

In a short time other fights would break out. The chickens would crowd up, just like people, trying to get into the fight already started. Soon all the chickens were fighting. Some were gang fighting and others paired off. It was an enjoyable sight to watch them. It was amazing how much they resembled people.

We were very careful when we went around the stills. We did not want to get caught there.

Sometimes the law would find the still and hide in the woods until the owner came to it. They would run out on them, try to prove it was theirs, and take them to jail. To throw them off us and to keep them from trying to make us tell whose it was, when we walked up to a still we acted like the law was watching us.

Once we got in sight we began talking real loud like we were excited, to make sure they could hear us.

One of us would ask the others what in the world is this? The answer was I don't know, looks like someone lives here. Another one would say, no, it's not a house, but there's a stove where they have been cooking.

We would really look the place over. Once we decided there was no one out there we would carry on with what we came for. We never once got the owner into trouble or caused him any damage.

During the summer, when school was out, the three of us boys pretty well lived at the river.

We only put our clothes on when we had to go to the house for something. Mother would check on us every few days to see if we were okay.

At times, we would pile some camping gear into a boat, get in with it, and just let the boat drift down the river for weeks at a time. We stopped to cook a fish from time to time.

We caught all our own food. There were lots of bullfrogs. We would stop and put our dog out for a rabbit to eat. We were in no hurry, for we had no place to go. If we met someone coming up the river, we would ask them to stop by our house and tell Mother where we were and we were okay

I don't know anyone person that has enjoyed life in Sulphur River Bottoms more than I. I know the Bottoms like most people do their backyard. There has been times that I knew where every fish for miles along the river lived and what time of day he was at home. I had some of them named. We had no use for them, only to eat, but we would play with them.

There was no money in the country If a man wanted a fish, he caught it. You could not sell fish very well.

Smokey is pictured here standing beside his younger sister, Melba. Brothers Buddy and Harold kneel by Smokey's faithful dog "Old Sputter."