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Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 108/123

PALMETTOS AND RATTLESNAKES

On a sunny summer afternoon, as I was walking north of the house on
the road, I heard something in the underbrush. This small area had
low palmettos, huckleberries, gallberries and other woodland plants,
with livestock trails running in different directions. The trail from
which the sound was coming turned towards the road enough I could see
the actual trail. There in the trail was the biggest rattlesnake I’ve
ever seen! I ran to get a rifle, after all he was headed in the
general direction of "home.’r Being only about 11 years old, mama
went with me, we heard, then spotted the rattler in some big
palmettos, but just a portion was visible. Mama wouldn’t let me try
to get him, she insisted I wait until I could see his head. I did
convince her his head was not going to come into view. I fired
several shots, with no indication that I did get him. If there were
any hogs around they would have had a field day with that much snake
meat to eat, as they are very efficient snake disposal units walking
around on four feet. In that same area a few years later Carlton
Carter wanted to haul some logs across our land and papa gave him
verbal permission to make a log road through it. William Pafford on a
crawler tractor, driving through the palmettos was dwarfed by their
size. With a side view from only a few feet the only thing that could
be seen was the palmettos moving. Many of the palmettos were a pale
yellowish green color and not much more than waist high. These in
this particular spot were a very dark green and the fronds were as
big as limbs and they were very dense.

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