Page 50 - barefoot-in-the-sand-remembering-the-waning-days-of-the-hopewell-community-(1998)-bruce-c-gragg

Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 46/123

LOCAL GATOR VISITS OUR FIELD

It was about this same time frame, I was about three and a half years
old, Papa (our Granddad) didn’t have a tenant farmer living on the
farm, he had to do all the plowing. At the time he was still young
enough and in good health, he could plow all day four to six days a
week to keep up his crops. With about 90 acres cultivated he
practiced a somewhat limited crop rotation plan. He came in for
dinner (now called lunch) and said the gator had been in the field
again the night before. Now a (in today's terms an uninformed
youngster), 4 year old had heard of alligators but never even seen a
picture of one, had an imagination going wild, trying to picture what
it looked like. Right off I got the impression it was not something
someone would want to meet up with. The picture I mentally drew was
something like a RCA logo dog, but longer hair, instead of sitting on
hind quarters it rear legs were real short, quite a fearsome
creature. This creature lived in a pond on the south end of the big
field south of the house, across the road from the tenant house. We
never found out what he was after, exercise or hunting something to
eat, or maybe both. There were the most and biggest wetland ferns
I've seen anywhere growing in the damp ground near this pond. They
were at least waist high to an adult and they grew very thick with
big fronds. It was almost like a scene from a photo made in a
tropical rainforest, they were so dense.

A few years later an event took place in the same area this time it
was real true to life. Curtis had returned from the war, while home
on leave we went Raccoon hunting. Elias Waldron lived in our tenant
house, Jesse Jackson (his brother-in-law), Clayton Mitchell (his
nephew), Curtis, and I set out with the dogs. There we were hunting
’coons. That is not what we found’ In the course of a night we
located and chased 3 skunks, aroma and all! Needless to say we were
not welcome home later that night. Many people think the aroma from a
"roadkill" skunk is not very pleasant, that is very true. But, if you
really want it first hand, try being in the direct line of "fire"
when they begin distributing this "perfume." For a while that cured
my desire to go hunting, especially at night. Later I did resume
night hunting. We had several large pecan trees in one of our fields,
when the dog got after a ’coon they would head straight to the pecan
trees. They were worst at raiding our fields when the corn was
beginning to get hard a few weeks before it was time to start
gathering it. Although they would actually start once the corn had
filled out the kernels and was still tender and juicy. With a strong
head light, we would spot their eyes shining and bye-bye ’coon. This
meant fresh meat for the dog or even us at times. We were being
watched over carefully, we never encountered any of the many
poisonous snakes

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