Hunting Arrowheads

When I go hunting for arrowheads I know what I am looking for and I expect to find something. I will stop and examine a piece of flint; a mere chip from an arrowhead that is several thousand years old and has been on the ground on this spot for ages. Finding a chip is the first clue that most beginners miss.


I always look for a unique color when I go onto an old cornfield or a one that was plowed and rained on. The colors on the ground in our part of the country are always in the brownish range — some dark and some light with lots of in-between shades of earth colors. If something black pops out at me it is almost always an arrowhead.

The next thing I want to see are small objects with at least one straight side. A straight line doesn't exist in Nature and if you see one it has been made straight by a human being. So arrowheads have at least two straight lines that are the edges of the blade.

The blades are made of flint, often traded but seldom found locally in the rough. Local Indians traveled great distances to obtain new flint stones they obtained by trading. Or, they might set down along what is now called Flint Ridge in Ohio, (a natural outcropping of flint used by Native Americans for as long as anyone can remember) and strike off some promising flakes that are easier to carry home than a chunk of stone.

If you go to Flint Ridge, be prepared to walk on mountains of flint shards that people flaked-off over the centuries. I was astonished the first time I visited the place — astonished that people often at war, could travel such distances and work side by side in peace, fashioning stone implements of war sharper than a surgeon's scalpel, and leave without harming each other.

But the next day, on the way through the woods, to their homes, they would easily put one of those new flints through your head or rib cage and cut off your scalp to add color and excitement to their adventure told around a campfire back home.

The arrowheads we find and pick up and stick in our mouths to get some of the dirt off, were used and not discarded. We could easily be sticking a flint point that killed a young settler, up from Kentucky, in our mouth and never know if they died instantly or suffered through the night before they died.

I remember, in a cornfield, just northwest of Brookville, finding two, nearly identical arrowheads, where the cornstalks grew up out of the ground. Finding two, like that, tells me that the arrows were shot into a human being or an animal that escaped and died, alone, somewhere in the forest.

Since arrowheads are so valuable they were always retrieved from the prey and identified by the markings on the shafts and returned to their owners. It is possible that both arrows were shot into a human being who ended up hiding in the forest where he died and over the centuries the only thing left was the two stone arrowheads that I found.

Hunting Deer

Shawnee State Forest

© by Abraham Lincoln

I used to be a pretty good shot with a bow and arrow. I bought a new bow in Greenville and this gently recurved bow sent many an arrow into the bullseye on targets. I didn’t go for the much-hyped “Bear”archery branded bows but I did buy a new “Root”bow and it was my choice when I hunted deer. I am proud to say that my arrows never killed anything but just getting ready was part of my life experience — going to the forest and finding deer and their trails and leaving without being detected.

Long before I had any hope of killing a deer with my bow and arrow I spent lots of Saturday mornings driving to Shawnee State Forest looking for deer and was finally successful in finding the saddle where a small herd crossed over each morning. My idea was to be there on that ridge when the deer came up and crossed over to the other side. I did it because of visions in my head of killing a deer that would be fresh meat for the family.

Once I had learned where I had to be to be able to shoot at a deer, I would leave home very early in the morning and arrive at the forest, park my car, and be on the ridge, waiting on deer by 5:00 AM. If it happened to be raining that was so much better as it is a lot easier to move through a wet woods without making any sounds than it is when it has been dry for a spell.

I had visions of a deer tied on my car before I left that day. It was those visions that kept me going to Shawnee State Forest to hunt deer. I always imagined myself coming back home, in Gordon, Ohio with a deer strapped on the car. I wondered what the people back home would say? Seeing me with a smile on my face, coming back into town; my car loaded with fresh meat — and a new skin to work into leather.

Life was different getting ready for the hunt — no sex, no smoking and no perfumes. Instead, I wore apple-stained clothes; and had no sex and quit smoking for a week before the hunt. None of this is made-up by me to tell here; it was old-timer's advice from long ago.

Smearing rotten apples on your clothes and abstaining from sex and smoking is what you learned to do if you didn’t want the deer to smell you in the woods. Deer are also attracted to the smell of rotten apples on the ground and that smell will attract them to the tree where they can eat apples. So smearing yourself with apples was a smart thing to do.

I notched the arrow that would do the deed and drew the string and left it go. But, just the sound of that arrow as it slid over the wood spooked my deer. It jumped up and came down and was gone without a trace and without a sound. I stood there in defeated silence and heard the birds start singing again. I smelled like rotten apples all the way back home.

Shucking Corn

Shucking Corn
© By Abraham Lincoln

Nowadays the fields are still planted with corn and soybeans. The corn is field corn and not sweet corn. Sweet corn is the kind you roast and slather with butter, sprinkle with salt and bite-in filling the space between teeth with bits off the cob.

Field corn is the kind fed to farm animals. During the war years my mom would sometimes reach through the rusty wire fence and pull off several ears of field corn and drop them in a pot of boiling water.

Field corn doesn’t taste anything like sweet corn but we got used to the taste and it broke the cycle of having a pan of green beans for dinner— and leftovers for supper.


Back in the day, the fields were sometimes planted by a check method whereby a corn planter was filled with seed corn and every foot or two over, ran a wire from one side of the field to the other and there were knots tied in the wire.

The planter would be tripped as it ran across the field with the knotted wire and dropped one, two or three kernels of corn into a fresh row that the machine made and then covered up before it dropped another kernel or two in the same furrow a foot or farther from the first kernels dropped. It was called, “checked”corn.

I think the same machine, pulled by a team of horses, was used to plant tomato and tobacco plants.

If, in rabbit hunting season, you could get into a field of standing corn that was brown and the ears were ripe and ready to fall off, you could stop anywhere in the field and see a straight row in any direction—even on the diagonal.

So fields of checked corn were ideal for hunting rabbits and pheasants. But the corn had to be removed from the corn stalk at harvest time and in most cases it was a labor intensity job.

The corn stalks would be cut and stacked up to form a kind of tipi in the field and each stalk had ears of corn still attached. The next step was to let the corn dry and then it would be pulled off the stalks and tossed into a wagon that was pulled by an older horse who had lots of experience in corn shucking and knew when to advance and when to stop.

We didn’t own a car but did go to town on Friday nights or Saturdays with the neighbor lady. On the way we would pass field after field filled with tipi-like stacks of cut off corn yet to have the ears removed.

When the corn harvest ended, the corn cribs up near the barn would be filled with corn on the cob and that would be fed to the farm animals. There was usually some corn left over in the corn crib in the spring but it would be empty and ready to refill come next fall.

Brookville Weather

Brookville Weather
© By Abraham Lincoln

A few weeks ago I stood at the window and watched it pour down 3 inches of rain in a short time. Once, we stood and watched the manhole covers bounce and water shoot-up about 2 feet. Our street looked like a mighty river and it was being fed by neighbor's yards that were flooded and spilling over sidewalks. My backyard looked like a running river. Water got up and flooded the library parking lot. It was an angry Wolf Creek that summer.

In 2002 we had a wet spring followed by a hot dry summer that melted into a cold and wet winter and lots of neighbors were shoveling and blowing snow. So in 2003 we started with a cool and wet spring and had a nice summer with more than enough rain to keep the grass a bright green into the middle of August. That may change now but my bet is that it is going to be a really nice winter and I might not get to use my new Toro snow blower.


Sometimes it is hot and humid and the air is loaded with pollutants plus ragweed. At other times it is cool and breezy and you look around thinking it is fall when it is just beginning summertime. Now and then some of us get to see a tornado.

Do you remember that a tornado took some of the roof off of Boose Chevrolet? Another time people got to see a tornado skipping along the ground and cross Arlington Road just north of where Interstate 70 is today.

People often talk about the blizzards that snowed us in. I remember the big one that found most people stranded along Wolf Creek Pike. Larry Gray's wife got stuck and spent a couple of days with others in a farmer's house on Wolf Creek Pike. I left work early that day and got as far as Heckathorn Road and got stuck. I had a new 1967 Ford. Eventually I was able to back up so I could turn down Heckathorn and followed it to Wellbaum Road. I took that all the way into Clayton and from there got on to I-70 and headed west at a crawl.

It was snowing big time and hard to see more than a few feet in front. But I got in behind a semi and followed it to the exit at Arlington Road and got off and drove on into home. The kids and my wife were watching at the window and were glad to see that I made it home.

That might be the year the trailer park east of town was snowed in. Someone died but the funeral home couldn't get there to pick up the body. They eventually got the dead man on a snowmobile and strapped him on the seat behind the driver. Do you remember that winter?

One winter the snow was so deep along the streets that you could only see little orange flags go past but you couldn't see what the flag was mounted on—a car, maybe a snowmobile.

I wonder what the year 2014 will be like?

August Vacations

© 2005-2013 – Abraham Lincoln. All rights reserved.

 The National Cash Register Company, where I worked after getting out of the US Army in 1957, shut down for vacations in August. The NCR complex remained open but most of the offices thinned-out and some factory departments closed for 2 weeks. Nearly every one had been employed there long enough to get two weeks of fully paid vacation each year and when I left, years later, I was getting 3 weeks.

There was a great exodus from Dayton and vicinity to places like Michigan and Canada. Long before drugstores stocked over-the-counter Benadryl a lot of families headed north for some relief from the Miami Valley Drip. Once you crossed the Sault Ste Marie International Bridge into Ontario, sinusitis disappeared. My father in law liked going to fish at Blind River for walleye and always brought home an ice chest or two packed with them.

Patty and I went past their spot on Blind River and ended up fishing in Kagawong Lake. An immigrant family, from England, owned the camp. Eager to please, they made our stay there a real pleasure. It was a primitive site with an outhouse or privy, and the water you bathed in or drank came straight out of the lake.

I never caught any walleye fish but then I only fished for something I could catch and eat right away and that was perch. I do remember taking my father in law out to my favorite fishing spot in the lake, beside an island and pointed out to him the monumental boulders you could see just a few feet below the surface. The water was crystal clear.

Minds do not work alike I am told but when I think about vacations my mind is flooded with memories of vacations and none so vivid as one to Lake of the Woods, Ontario. I went in a brand new 1958 Pontiac accompanied by a friend from work. We met at State Route 40 and 49 in the wee hours of the morning and Howard transferred his goods into the cavernous trunk of my new Pontiac and off we went.

We found a place in Canada where we could stay and get the use of a boat. The mosquitoes were horrible and forced us to move and camp on an island in the lake — a breeze kept the mosquitoes away. It was a nice place to fish and we caught enough to eat each day.

My wife and I had only been married since 1955 and I was overseas until 1957 so I was just getting to know my wife again when this fishing trip came up. All of a sudden I missed her more than I enjoyed fishing so I promptly announced I was going home the next morning.

My companion who had caught more fish than I did was disappointed but we came home after being gone one night and two days. It was the shortest vacation to Canada that I ever took.

Tobacco

The white eggs hatch inside the worm and eat it from the inside out

You are close to being my age if you can remember what a tobacco lath with a spear on the end looked like. I doubt that many alive today can pick out a true tobacco barn and if they did would they know why the sides had tall, narrow, doors that opened up and were hooked in the open position on each side.

Stepping inside one of these old tobacco barns the first thing you notice is the giant posts that hold the barn skeleton upright is crisscrossed with rails -- not just any rails but very strong and dried out tobacco rails. Depending on the size of your tobacco harvest those rails might have to be moved back and forth on two levels. The top most level and the one below nearest the bottom of the barn.

Those tobacco rails spanned the width of the barn and the tobacco lath that laid across them was filled with speared-on-the-lath tobacco leaves. And a whole lath about 6 feet long was enough to hold a dozen, or or less, freshly cut tobacco leaves. The whole lath with the leaves was hung up on or across those tobacco rails and left there to dry out.

The green leaf color turned to a cigar brown as it dried out. The tall narrow doors that stood open along the barn sides, circulated fresh air that came into the barn with old air among the leaves drying in the barn.

The only thing I didn’t mention was that tobacco had to have the blossom cut off the main stem to keep it from going to seed. And there were those fat tobacco worms that would ruin a considerable amount of tobacco by eating the leaves.

Some adult was always offering a little kid a quarter if they would just bite the head off the tobacco worm. Some did it and collected the quarter and some didn’t. I didn’t do it and got nothing but I have seen older boys do it without getting a mouth full of green slime.

At least once or twice the entire field was gone over with men carrying hoes and their job was to keep the hoe as sharp as a razor to cut off the many weeds that seemed to grow taller than the tobacco.

Machetes were used to cut the stalk of tobacco off close to the ground. The stalk was the part that was speared and was slid down to the bottom of the tobacco lath.

A wagon load of tobacco, on laths, was a job for a good team of horses to pull up to the tobacco barn where the speared tobacco on the laths was loaded on the tobacco rails in the barn.

The tobacco dried and in the winter, each lath was taken down, brought into the strip shed on the end of the barn — the tobacco was taken off the lath and the leaf was pulled off the stems. The stems were used like sticks of wood to keep the fire going in the little stove in the strip shed.

Leaves were packed in a large wooden box and sold to tobacco buyers who came around to appraise the tobacco farmers had grown on a specific allotted number of acres.

Fences

Bob Wright was the city manager when we moved to town. He was the person everyone called when they wanted to find out something. Shortly after we moved in, we began to meet our new neighbors. We had kids and were the youngest family in the block. The rest were older people—40s, 50s, and 60s.

Not long after we moved here I was sitting on my toilet in the utility room with the door wide open. And I hear the sliding screen door open but thought it was one of the kids— instead, in walks my new neighbor, Ruby Davis. She saw me on the toilet and said, “Hi neighbor.”

Lordy, I was embarrassed. I sat there and said, “Morning, Ruby; what’s up?” About that time, my wife, Pat, came from somewhere and laughed so hard she almost had an accident. Seeing what a predicament I was in, she moved Ruby away from the utility room door so I could get out of my bathroom.

I went to Sears and bought a roll of old-fashioned garden wire fence material—brought it home and began digging holes for the posts. Ruby watched the route to our house being cut off and came over to inquire about what kind of fence I was going to put up. She went on and on about this crappy fence I was putting in the yard instead of chain link.


I had to tell her that the neighbor’s young boy, still in diapers, had fallen into a hole that I had filled with water. The hole was for a bush I was planting and I had filled it with water so the ground would be saturated when I planted it. Patty had called me for lunch and I left the hole unattended when I went in the house for lunch.

We both heard this “Sploosh” sound and jumped up and looked and saw our neighbor boy, in a diaper, clinging to the side of the hole with muddy water running out of his diaper. Pat got him out of the hole and took him over to his mother.

I told Ruby about kids falling into holes filled with water and said I had to put up a fence. She didn’t like my fence and said she was going to call somebody about it. Before she had a chance to call, I called Bob Wright, then the city manager, and explained my problem with my neighbor.

He told me that I could put up any kind of fence, with any kind of wire, or boards (painted or unpainted), as long as it was in my backyard and on my side of the property line. And that’s what I did. The fence ended up being pretty nice and was replaced, when I had more money, with chain link and then with a wood fence that is still up. Times have changed. The last board fence I had put up was expensive. Ruby would have been pleased.

You're In The Army Now

Our Company Clerk class after basic training. I am on far right in front row

After 14 weary days at sea, the transport ship docked at Yokohama, and my company went to Camp Drake, Japan and as individual replacements were scattered throughout the Far East - some stayed in Japan but others went to Korea, Guam and the Philippines. Two days after landing at Camp Drake's 15th Replacement Company my orders shipped me to the Adjutant General Section (AG) at 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters, at Camp Crawford near Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan.  

Three camps were established outside Sapporo, the Islands capital city. 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters and the 7th Cavalry Regiment were stationed at Camp Crawford. The 5th Cavalry was stationed at Camp Chitose, Area I. The division had a huge training area of 155,000 acres. The mission of the division was to defend the Island of Hokkaido.

On 10 February 1953, the 5th Cavalry Regiment, 61st Field Artillery Battalion and Battery "A", 29th AAA AW Battalion, departed from Otaru, Japan for Pusan and Koje-do, Korea to relieve the 7th Cavalry who had previously rotated back to Korea. On 27 April, all elements of the 5th Cavalry, less the 3rd Battalion and Heavy Mortar Company, returned to Hokkaido. I joined this regiment in 1955 at Camp Schimmelpfennig shortened to Schimm.

Sapporo was the coldest place on earth. To me it was impossible to get warm and stay that way very long. We stood rifle inspections in blizzards that were so cold the rifle bolts froze in the open position and could not be slammed shut. Troops were towed about the complex on long ropes pulled by "cats." 

We wore skis and snowshoes and Mickey Mouse boots and often climbed up ladders to get out of our snowed under Quonset huts. It was not uncommon to see met walking across the roofs of their huts on their way to the mess hall.

My Army career began with the Carrier Company #2 as the Company Clerk, and I shared an office with the First Sergeant and Company Commander in the 1st Cavalry Division, and I was in the 1st Cavalry Division when my tour of duty ended in 1957. Four years, two months, 17 days of service to my country. 

Hollyhocks

Pink Hollyhocks

 The pink hollyhock was the last to bloom this summer. I liked it because I could see all of the tiny veins. And it has a wrinkled appearance instead of each petal being smooth like silk.

Yellow Hollyhocks

There were a lot of hollyhocks this summer and that was the only kind of flower that came up from its seed. These were all pink.

You can participate in the September 1, 2013 theme something pink  link your post on September 1 to the CDP theme day page.

Learning to carve stone

One of the things I used to do a lot of that I don't do anymore is stone carving. This is one example of that stuck into the bricks at the entrance to my office. It is easier to carve straight lines in granite and marble than it is to carve curved lines in black slate or soft stone like sandstone (At least I thought it was). Anyway, in 1981 while the bricklayer was laying up the bricks I showed this carving to him and he suggested he fix an opening for it and that's how it got there in the brick wall. I also carved names on some of my dog's tombstones. Anyway, that's an example. If you die while taking a walk, and are interested in being taken home—wear dog tags.

Spittoons

Spittoons
© By Abe Lincoln
 
The tiny building set along the Dayton, Greenville and Union City railroad line. It was built as a ticket and baggage office shortly after the railroad came to town. The small office was no longer used by the railroad and was sold to George Myers. It was his Gordon Coal Office. My mom didn't like the place because my dad went there, and she said it was "A place where old men loafed and told dirty stories."

When I was a little boy, I used to go there and listen to the men tell stories about some “loose” ladies in town—they didn't seem dirty to me. I didn’t know what the stories meant, but I laughed like I knew.

Old wooden chairs lined up against the office wall and beside each was a tobacco spittoon. Some spittoons were once brass, that shined, but now most were a brownish black where the tobacco juices and spittle had dried. My dad chewed and spit Mail Pouch tobacco juice.

I was careful not to bump those spittoons because they were almost always full and I didn't want to clean the stuff up if it slopped over the edge onto the oiled floor.
Almost everyone chewed tobacco in those days and very few used regular store-bought cigarettes.

He smoked Bull Duram tobacco that came in a little bag with a drawstring. His wife, Esta, used a cigarette rolling machine to make cigarettes for him. It was her job before she fixed his breakfast. She put a clean piece of tobacco rolling paper on the little machine and poured a little tobacco from the sack onto the paper, and pushed the handle over and it rolled one cigarette that looked like one bought at a store.
 
Esta Flory, my neighbor lady, rolled cigarettes for her husband, Ira, a retired tinner—he made tin roofs and installed them. One day he fell off of a roof and never worked a day after that. He was the first man I ever saw who smoked cigarettes.
 
The end of Ira's nose was yellowish-brown from smoke and his fingers were stained yellowish-brown too. Mom said the long hairs growing on top of his nose came from him smoking so much. They were long hairs and when I was little, I couldn't keep from looking at them. 

Most spittoons in public places, like movie theaters, were made out of brass and they were kept shinned-up like gold. Spittoons were everywhere—not just where men loafed—they were in the grocery stores, the post office, banks and in the butcher shop. 

My dad never owned a regular spittoon. He used old coffee cans until they got to looking so bad that my mother who throw them out. Then he would have to go to the door to spit—that didn't last long.

He would use one of mother's glass Mason canning jars to spit in—that made mom mad. That looked worse because you could see, and evaluate the tone of the juices in the jar. So mom would get him a new can—anything you couldn't see through for him to use and she would grunt and cuss, under her breath while trying to clean out the canning jar.

When I first went to work at NCR, in Dayton, Ohio, they provided brass spittoons for any employee who chewed tobacco. NCR had crews who pushed carts filled with clean spittoons. They picked up spittoons that were filled with slop and left a clean one that shined like gold.
 
After my parents were divorced, before I started to school in the first grade, my mother became interested in someone; she said he was like Jesus.
 
She told me that you could always tell a carpenter from anybody else because they always had some fingers sawed off. He was missing two or three fingers on his right hand. He didn't loaf much. So he was like Jesus.
 
He was married to a fat lady who smoked Kool cigarettes and chewed tobacco—the slobbers ran out the corner of her mouth. She wasn't like anybody else I knew.

I told mom about her bad habits and she told me to mind my own business.
 

© 2005 Abraham Lincoln - All rights reserved.

Welcome Park

Welcome Park— The sign you see when you come into Brookville, Ohio off of Interstate 70 and/or Arlington Road.

The Vintage Brookville Lawn

The Vintage Brookville Lawn—
Lawns, power mowers, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are big business. Large corporations have a vested interest in maintaining the ideas that created new industries and made stockholders wealthy. Snow blowers, garden tractors and tillers produce income in seasons when grass is not being cut.

A few years ago we bagged grass clippings because we were told, by the "Lawn Experts" that it was the proper thing to do. Some old timers knew better but went along with the experts. Then the experts changed their advice when confronted with dumps filled with grass clippings.

When the city and county land fills got full of vegetation, they said, "No more grass." City officials were warned that the cost of dumping city trash would increase dramatically if any bags of grass were in the dumpsters. That threat eliminated the practice of bagging grass clippings for the trash men to haul off to the dumps.


Almost overnight, power mowers were introduced that chomped and ground and re-cut the grass until it was just about invisible. They were called "Mulching Mowers."After that cost of living in Brookville theme simmered down, the city got the idea of selling very large paper bags the citizens could buy to put their yard/lawn wastes in and set it out or take it to the city garage and put it in one of their large trailers yourself. As far as I know that is still the policy.

We bought a new mulching mower that had no chute for the grass to exit. The mower blade was bent and twisted in such a way that it was supposed to keep the grass cuttings in the air to be repeatedly cut by the ugly looking blade until there wasn't anything left to cut.

But after several years, the virtues of buying paper bags and setting them out only to see them go into the same dumpsters at the city garage dulled the virtues of cleaning up our dumps and buying paper bags to do it. The yard debris and small trashy limbs and stuff have been bagged in black plastic and set out on trash day to be picked up.

These were sold and still are sold to anybody buying a new mower. And suddenly, the experts who once told us that grass clippings were bad for lawns now said it was OK to leave them on the ground. They also said that they did not produce thatch buildup which was something we all knew but trusted them to know better.

The pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers have destroyed most ground bacteria. And that has made finding a night crawler next to impossible except at bait stores.

Interesting reading and photographs from the period—
Restoring American Gardens An encyclopedia of heirloom ornamental plants 1640 - 1940

Eating Pig's Feet

Pig's Feet
We never had a whole hog to eat but we did eat all of what we got. We ate their skin that was cut into small squares and put into a press and cooked and became a cake of cracklins. The grease that came from the skin was the lard everyone used to cook with. Nowadays the lard cannot be sold and is thrown away but the cracklins are worth about $4.00 a pound. Mom loved pig's feet and got them when she could. She also liked pickled pig's feet. Of course we ate the pig's intestines because they were packed with sausage. The jowl meat was and is delicious as is the side meat when sliced like bacon.

Chicken's Feet
We ate their feet, necks and the back. Mother said we ate "the part that was last over the fence." We also ate their gizzards, hearts and livers. Mother even sucked what meat there was off their heads and those feet with toenails. I never could eat the heads and feet but learned to eat everything else.

Grease Sandwiches
Oh boy. Mother fried fresh bacon in an iron skillet on the old cook stove. She always saved the grease to use in preparing other dishes. After the grease was poured out of the skillet the residue left over became the main ingredient in a "grease sandwich." She took a couple of slices of bread and used it to wipe out the skillet. The stuff in the skillet came off on the bread and that, plus fresh green onions, was the best sandwich I can ever remember eating.

Cold grease sandwiches were much like eating pure lard that looked to be riddled with dirt or scraps of something. The scraps of something were bits and pieces of burned bacon. Gosh it was good eating.

Warnke Covered Bridge

The Warnke covered bridge is located closer to us than any of the others. We drive out of our way to cross it. It is in good condition and is still used by traffic on a daily basis. I have been taking pictures of it for many years and some of the kids grew up having their picture taken in front of this bridge.

Christman Covered Bridge

The Christman covered bridge is similar to the Warnke covered bridge that is considerably closer to us than the Christman. We still have about a dozen covered bridges in our area of the state of Ohio.

Dreams

When I went to bed last night, Memphis, Tennessee was the farthest thing from my mind. After pulling the covers up around my neck and beginning the first coughing fit, the down-filled comforter was not comforting but rather hot–as in heat hot.

I got up, used the big green monster we thought was such a neat color in 1962, and fumbled around in the dark looking for a cough drop. The selection was awesome–Halls more like candy; or, something stuck to a wrapper I had to bite through, to get open. It took both to stop the cough and one or the other made me realize this was the NCAA playoff–Memphis against Kansas.

So I sat in the recliner and dozed through the first half of this important basketball game and went back to bed when Memphis was behind.


I had a dream last night. Maybe it was the cough drops. I dreamed the most beautiful dream. I was a fabulous person and a professional photographer and people swooned at the sight of me with my camera.

Everywhere I went dogs and kids followed me around and when I stopped they posed. I could turn, point my beautiful camera and shoot and the photos were instantly snapped- up by Time Magazine, People Magazine and the UK’s very own Daily Mail and Daily Mirror.

Rich ladies, whose garages were filled with Bentleys and Lamborghinis, had agents steal me off the street, with my camera, and set me up in mansions to make pictures of their daughters.

I walked into kitchens and saw young ladies, with toast in one hand and a glass of milk in the other and I pointed my beautiful camera and pressed the shutter and out came glamour magazine shots of models wearing jaunty hats with wide yellow ribbons; and pouting lips with Mona Lisa smile. In one hand a $10,000.00 bill and in the other a contract edged in gold.

Memphis lost.

Eating Pig's Feet

Grease Sandwiches
Oh boy. Mother fried fresh bacon in an iron skillet on the old cook stove. She always saved the grease to use in preparing other dishes. After the grease was poured out of the skillet the residue left over became the main ingredient in a "grease sandwich." She took a couple of slices of bread and used it to wipe out the skillet. The stuff in the skillet came off on the bread and that, plus fresh green onions, was the best sandwich I can ever remember eating.

Cold grease sandwiches were much like eating pure lard that looked to be riddled with dirt or scraps of something. The scraps of something were bits and pieces of burned bacon. Gosh it was good eating.

Chicken's Feet
We ate their feet, necks and the back. Mother said we ate "the part that was last over the fence." We also ate their gizzards, hearts and livers. Mother even sucked what meat there was off their heads and those feet with toenails. I never could eat the heads and feet but learned to eat everything else.


Pig's Feet
We never had a whole hog to eat but we did eat all of what we got. We ate their skin that was cut into small squares and put into a press and cooked and became a cake of cracklins. The grease that came from the skin was the lard everyone used to cook with. Nowadays the lard cannot be sold and is thrown away but the cracklins are worth about $4.00 a pound. Mom loved pig's feet and got them when she could. She also liked pickled pig's feet. Of course we ate the pig's intestines because they were packed with sausage. The jowl meat was and is delicious as is the side meat when sliced like bacon.

Snow Screwers

Maybe I'll get to use my Toro Snow Blower—which, by the way—doesn't "BLOW" snow. You can't even "BLOW" snow with a leaf BLOWER (I tried). The flakes just laid there and looked at me as if to say, 'WTF you trying to do, idiot—do I really look like a leaf?'

The words, "SNOW-BLOWER" on a "SNOW-THROWER" is an advertising mystery. I am flabergasted that the company has not been sued for a million dollars? Actually, to be "HONEST-ABE" about it, my snow blower isn't really a snow blower or even a SNOW-THROWER, as implied above.


My machine is really a "SNOW-FLIPPER." There are a series of blades that turn-round and "flip" the snow up a chute so hard that the snow flies 30 to 40 feet in a large arc before landing on the neighbor's driveway. My machine is really a "SNOW FLIPPER," but you'll never find those two words anywhere on my machine. Think about it. "Snow flipper"

If "SNOW-BLOWER" isn't bad enough, my neighbor has a "SNOW-SCREWER." He really does. He can 'SCREW' the snow off his driveway but I can't BLOW it off mine. His machine doesn't have any fancy label on it saying it is a "SNOW SCREWER" but it could and it would be more accurate than "snow blower."

To be an perfectly honest about this: There are three known snow removal machines on my block.

#1) Some are SNOW-FLIPPERS
#2) Some are SNOW-SCREWERS
#3) Some are SNOW-THROWERS*

*A SNOW-THROWER is a FLIPPER in drag.

Time Forgotten

Around the bend and far away, the sound of tapping made my day. I knew what it meant and where it was but I had no idea time was what it was. There was a sound. Men wrenched as if in pain. They had seen people who screamed before, and while it was not a pretty sight, it was, the way of forgotten time. Stone pierce flesh and stick in bones and shreiks of misery wafts over the forest still. Sounds, like morning smoke glides over the canopy. Animals shift ears this way and that.


A horrific yell as someone runs away, bloody hairless, and dying. A yip another yip then silence. Long red hair waved from a dirty fist. Slobbers run off a lip. Teeth, yellowed, sprout bits of meat from a rabbit's back — breakfast. A big grin. Forgotten this time was not. A hunter found a body, scalped and all, whose hair had been red and put up with a bow. Now askew and splattered with rain and blood and a face gnawed on by wolves, no doubt.

Packs of wolves patrol the night and smell the air to taste any food. Alive or dead it doesn't matter, wolves eat anything. Fire they fear but it is not well known that a wolf will kill from spring to home and drag the body a mile away to feast. One pine torch would do and that is easy to fix but most neglect safety so close to home. Once, in forgotten time, an animal trail, much used, ran from Lexington to Ithaca and beyond to Fort Jefferson. From there to Fort Greenville, home to wild animals and Indians. Ithaca, before it was platted in 1832, was a trading post on the trail used by travelers between Lexington and Forts north. Here, at the trading post, was the last stop for one young settler for as he left, he was followed – south.

Days later, he was found, along the trail. near Fort Lanier. His rifle was badly bent – probably used as a club. His knife and tomahawk were gone. The goods he had traded for at the post in Ithaca were gone. Blow flies scoured his naked skull where his long curly hair hung days before.

Noah's Ark

You think you got problems? Just imagine the problems somebody like Noah would have in trying to locate his billfold that he left in the Ark. You must remember that he was so glad to get his feet on dry land that he left the Ark and his billfold behind. He lived a long and happy life and then he died. He was sent off to Heaven. When he got there, St Peter questioned him and Noah was upset that St Peter didn't know him. St Peter told him that he had to prove he was Noah. Noah reached into his deepest inside pocket and his fingers searched the musty interior for his rawhide pocketbook. His hand jumped all around, frantic-like, searching.


"Well? Come on, I ain't got all day. There's a line waiting. Where's your driver's license?" St Peter asked, rather impatiently. A group of Angels began to gather around to see who was trying to get into Heaven. Noah said, "I got one. God gave it to me. I must have left it back on the Ark. Can you wait a minute while I go back and fetch it?" Noah asked St Peter. St Peter smiled and nodded, OK.

Now, Noah is back trying to figure out if he has landed at the right place. He thinks St Peter has got it in for him and has played a trick on him and has put him in this foreign place he has never been to before. Nothing looks the same. His ears are tortured by sounds and his eyes cause his head to hurt more than the first time he got drunk. He stepped into a building and spoke but people looked up at him, in his would-be heavenly costume, and they all laughed. He is still wandering around the Middle East trying to remember where he left the Ark. Noah parked the Ark somewhere and all the animals got off and disappeared to different places around the world. But for poor Noah, there was no parking attendant in Heaven to give him a parking ticket so he didn't really know where it was. He has just pulled in and left the Ark, but where?

He just came back to get his driving license to prove his identity. If anybody sees him wandering around please tell him to ask President Bush—he knows everything.

I Feel Good

By Abraham Lincoln

I went to McDonalds and got a large coffee to go. I am drinking some of it as I write this. Somewhere between home and there and back home I thought about the terms we all use to describe how we are feeling.

What does “feel good” feel like? I tried to think what part I could touch that would feel good, or was “feel good” something in my head that stops my pains and leaves me, “feeling good?”

If feeling good was the feeling I got from touching something then I have to think long and hard about the last thing I touched that actually made me forget my rheumatoid arthritis.

Not that long ago one day when I touched my thumb it hurt bad enough that I asked my wife to call 911. She yelled at me, “What for?”


After I said my thumb really hurts she refused to call saying trying to explain that to the crew would land us in the psycho ward at Brookville’s asylum. I argued that my thumb didn’t “feel good” at all. She told me to get over it!

I know at least one human being who gets a kind of high from the sight of a woman’s foot (and the nails do not have to be painted). And, he doesn’t have to touch the foot to get the feelings he gets. That is how he gets to feeling good.

It makes me wonder what happens to the mind and body when we look at a chocolate upside down cake. Does it make us feel good because we try to imagine how good it will be or does the sight of it have the same effect as that guy gets from seeing a woman’s foot?

When I look at my breakfast I really get to feeling good. Sometimes the sight of fried bacon on the same plate with a soft egg makes me feel better than good.

I am not able to touch something on my body that explains why I feel this way, and, I am not able to tell you were to look to find the spot that makes bacon and eggs look good to me. But I do have that feeling good feeling. Feeling good, to me, is like Heaven is to a religious zealot.

I don’t think love has anything to do with feeling good or lousy. I know some people say the mere sight of their “X” spouse makes them feel bad. While others say the mere sight of the “X’s” X-spouse makes their knees get weak. It is odd how the same X-spouse can have totally opposite effects on two different people?

I feel good when I find a $20.00 bill in the parking lot and nobody is around. I understand that this $20.00 bill belonged to somebody who probably needed it to pay for gasoline at the cheap place but his/her loss is my feeling good gain.

If you know what feeling good is then I would like to know. Don’t tell me it is the lack of pain because black and blue and bleeding is happiness to some and feeling bad is when they are pain free.

Helping Wildlife

I really can't imagine going through life without doing my best to offer some help to wildlife.

My mother and I lived alone during WWII. Our total income was $2.00 a week for a bushel basket of washing and ironing my mother did for a bachelor. With that $2.00 and our vegetable garden we had enough to eat most of the time. Mom bought chicken "peeps" from Sears and Roebuck and we raised them for the eggs they produced. We traded eggs for things we had to have at the little grocery store. We lived.

Mother would not kill a chicken to eat unless it was an old hen that had stopped laying eggs. Sometimes we had no meat and mom would be hungry for some meat. So I would pick up my sling shot and some rocks along the railroad track and go hunting for something to eat. Sometimes I would actually kill a rabbit (and not always in season) but often I killed doves and several of them would be enough meat for a meal. I would also go out to the local farmers and ask if I could get some pigeons out of their barns and they always said I could.

I would take a burlap grain sack and climb high up above the haymow close to the window where the pigeons came in and went out. Then I waited until I could see one coming back into the barn and I would throw the sack at them which always knocked them down to the hay below. I would jump down and kill the pigeon and when I had several I took them home to clean and eat.

When I was older I used a bow and arrow to hunt rabbits and other game, including squirrels. I was always able to find something to kill for meat for myself and my mother to eat.

I would also fish in local creeks and take home everything I caught for meat to eat.

That is my debt. I have to pay back for what I took.

Wildlife supplied our meat needs all through the second war and I am not sure we could have made it without the animals I killed.

I have devoted nearly all of my adult life to paying off that debt. I have always given food and shelter to anything that needed it or looked around my property for it. I have also tried to provide shelter and water for wildlife

I love to go fishing and even took the barbs off of hooks to prevent as much damage as I could when I caught a fish. Then I thought I don't need to fish for food so it is the fun part I was still enjoying and I flat out quit fishing.

I used to find birds along streams and lakes that were caught up in fishing line and would spend hours until I was able to unwind it and free them. (People still leave fishing line all over the place and it is a real hazard). I picked up a duck that had itself tied up in fishing line and the line was cutting into the joint where its wing attached to the body. It could no longer raise its head up to eat without the line cutting deeper. I took this duck to my vet and had the line removed. The duck got back to health in my garage. It had water, feed and shelter there until it was well. This story made local newspaper headlines.

I also found a duck that I called "Quackers" that had a twisted bill. It was a cute little fellow but had a terrible time eating. In those days I carried 50 pound bags of shelled corn to the park and dumped it on the ground every other day for anything to eat that was hungry. Quackers had a time trying to eat so I would get him off to the side and keep the geese and ducks away until he had gotten some corn to eat. I watched him grow up and then when the time came for ducks to leave the park, he left and I often wonder if he made it on his own. I have a picture of him that I drew.

I used to carry water to the park and pour it out in pans beside geese and ducks who were sheltering their eggs from instense heat. The ducks and geese would not leave their nests exposed to the blistering heat because it would kill the babies inside. So I poured water in little pans beside each nest and feel like that alone saved many animals. I did that during the nesting period and did it every day.

I have had to kill chipmunks that walked across lawns still wet with pesticides. The chemicals attack the nervous system of these little guys and they go into a miserable state of withering agony. The only solution is to kill them as quickly as you can. And I have had to kill more than one until I was able to convince my neighbor to abandon his lawn treatment program. He is dead now and so is his wife. I wonder what St Peter will say to him about the times he poisoned chipmunks -- not to even mention or think about how he ruined the lives of countless insects and soil bacteria of all kinds.

I am now 69 years old.* I have lived in this spot for 43 years and have had to kill several chipmunks, one raccoon and one squirrel. I hated to do it. It bothers me for days after I do it. I never can look at that squirrel box again without thinking of this pitiful squirrel that lived there with a terrible disease. I catch myself looking at the 4 inch diameter hole and wonder when the animal will poke its head out. Until I for that I won't forget what I did to the animal.

I felt so bad about our government policy about the slaughter of some 80 million buffalo that I wrote a book about it. Those animals were the PX for the Ameican Indians and it was a disgraceful slaughtering process that many of my ancestors took part in.

My debt to wildlife is not paid yet.

My kids are paying on it in Florida and Colorado and here in Ohio.

Maybe it will get paid off before I die but I hope not. I don't mind this kind of debt at all.

*I am now 78 and will be 79 in October of 2013. So, I wrote this piece 10 years ago.

Brookville Weather

Brookville weather borders on the bizarre. Most people say this whole year has been screwy. Nobody seems to know why our summer has been pleasantly mild while Europe is smothering is melting heat. A few weeks ago I stood at the window and watched it pour down 3 inches of rain in a short time but did not see water shooting out of the sewers like it did in the past. So in spite of the heavy rains, nothing has come close to the rains we had one summer in Brookville.

We stood and watched the manhole covers bounce and water shoot-up about 2 feet. Our street looked like a mighty river and it was being fed by neighbor's yards that were flooded and spilling over sidewalks. My backyard looked like a running river. Water got up and flooded the library parking lot. It was an angry Wolf Creek that summer.

In 2002 we had a wet spring followed by a hot dry summer that melted into a cold and wet winter and lots of neighbors were shoveling and blowing snow. So in 2003 we started with a cool and wet spring and had a nice summer with more than enough rain to keep the grass a bright green into the middle of August. That may change now but my bet is that it is going to be a really nice winter and I might not get to use my new Toro snow blower.

Sometimes it is hot and humid and the air is loaded with pollutants plus ragweed. At other times it is cool and breezy and you look around thinking it is fall when it is just beginning summertime. Now and then some of us get to see a tornado. Do you remember when it was reported that a tornado took some of the roof off of Boose Chevrolet? Another time people got to see a tornado skipping along the ground and cross Arlington Road just north of where Interstate 70 is today.

People often talk about the blizzards that snowed us in. I do remember the big one that found most people stranded along Wolf Creek Pike. Larry Gray's wife got stuck and spent a couple of days with others in a farmer's house on Wolf Creek Pike. I left work early that day and got as far as Heckathorn Road and got stuck. I had a new 1967 Ford. Eventually I was able to back up so I could turn down Heckathorn and followed it to Wellbaum Road. I took that all the way into Clayton and from there got on to I-70 and headed west at a crawl.

It was snowing big time and hard to see more than a few feet in front. But I got in behind a semi and followed it to the exit at Arlington Road and got off and drove on into home. The kids and my wife were watching at the window and were glad to see that I made it home. The traffic all stopped on I-70 and many were stranded there under Arlington Road overpass. It had taken me 4 hours to drive from work at NCR to Brookville.

That might be the year the trailer park east of town was snowed in. Someone died but the funeral home couldn't get there to pick up the body. They eventually got the dead man on a snowmobile and strapped him on the seat behind the driver. Do you remember that winter?

Snowmobiles were big sellers for a few years and dealerships sprouted like new wheat. Then our winters began to come and go without much snow and kids and sleds and snowmobiles disappeared. My diary shows one winter we had one snow that just barely covered the grass and that was all. In contrast I have photographs of snow under my patio (which was covered then) to a depth of 3 feet. One winter the snow was so deep along the streets that you could only see little orange flags go past but you couldn't see what the flag was mounted on—a car, maybe a snowmobile.

I wonder what the year 2013 will be like?

NB: August 26, 2013 We had a wet spring and early summer that was followed by a stretch of cool weather through most of July and August but it is turning hot again and promises to get up in the 90s with little hope of rain. Thankfully, we got a lot of rain this spring.

Wolf Creek Rail Trail

TRAIL LENGTH AND ELEVATIONThe surface is asphalt with crushed limestone sides and rest benches dot the length of the trail. Covered rest areas are located at Air Hill Road and in Wengerlawn. Elevation is 400' uphill from Trotwood to Brookville. Elevation is level from Brookville to Verona. It is 6 miles from Brookville to Verona. It is 7 miles from Trotwood to Brookville. It is 13 miles, with mile markers, from Trotwood to Verona.

RESTROOMS
There are restrooms at the Train Depot in Trotwood and at Brookville at Golden Gate Park and at the Village Park in Verona.
HANDICAPPED PARKING
General parking and handicapped parking are at the Trotwood Depot and at Golden Gate Park at Brookville.
POLICE
Dial 911 for emergencies. Brookville 833-2001. Trotwood 837-7777

DISTANCES
Distances were measured on bicycle, beginning in Trotwood riding towards Verona.Trotwood
7 miles from Trotwood to Brookville
13 miles from Trotwood to Verona
3.2 miles from Trotwood to Air Hill Road
2.7 miles from Air Hill Road to Brookville
1.2 miles from Seybold Rd to Diamond Mill Rd
.8 mile from Diamond Mill Rd to Heckathorn Rd
.65 mile from Heckathorn Rd to Westbrook Rd
1.2 miles from Heckathorn Rd to Albert Rd
Brookville
.8 miles from Main St to Arlington Rd
2.3 miles from Heckathorn Rd to Arlington Rd
6 miles from Brookville to Verona
4 miles from Brookville to Wengerlawn
3 miles from Brookville to Route 40
2 miles from Wengerlawn to Verona
Verona