My grandparents' little farm was surrounded by acres and acres of wooded forest, fields, and creeks and streams. I could walk one way one day and go in another direction the next day. It was my own personal Magical Kingdom. I could always go to my little own world while walking around there, free from the stress and strain of the outside world - even at my young age. About a half-mile from the house, there was a place called Husband's Place, named after a lawyer out of Richmond. It sat down on a creek which had a little dam. It was a big deal back in the 1950's, when people used to go there to picnic, swim, boat and fish. There was a cabin with old fashioned picnic tables and benches, a barbecue pit, a place to hang a hammock, an old chain link swing and, at the top of the hill old thick ropes that people used to swing way out on. During the sixties and early seventies, the place was hardly ever used. Great, smoothed barked beech trees grew along the banks of the creek. It didn't matter how hot it might be back at the house. Down in the bottom underneath those beech trees, it stayed nice and cool and shady. The sun would gently filter through the thick leaves of these magnificent trees. It always seemed to put a person into a very relaxed mood. All these years later, I can close my eyes and feel the sun's rays beaming down on me through the branches of the beech trees and smell the cool, musky air coming up from the creek's banks. Truly a Magical Kingdom.

Having grown up in the country, we hunted in the winter time. My Grandpa taught me how to hunt at a young age. We hunted mostly small game, such as rabbits and squirrels, for they were plentiful around our farm. I used to love to squirrel hunt. The squirrels that lived along the creeks were very smart. There would be a lot of hollows running along the creeks, and when they saw or heard us coming, they would run up the hollows and hide and would not come out until we were gone. The squirrels on high ground would build their nest high up in the tops of trees. A lot of them would build nests at the end of very long thick vines. My Grandpa taught me how to grab the vines and pull until the squirrels came a-runnin' out of their nest. They were easy pickings. Grandpa would do all of the pulling of the vines while I stood back and did all the shooting. 

In the Fall of 1977, I was spending a weekend in November on the farm, and it was a cold, brisk and windy Saturday. I asked Grandpa if he wanted to go out hunting for squirrels, and he declined. This was the first time ever for that. So, I went out by myself, back to an area which was always loaded with nests and vines. I pulled on the vines until I returned to the house with five dead squirrels. I can still remember thirty-four years later the smiles on my grandparents' faces when I came through the door. Their little boy had grown up, and now he was the hunter. 

After Grandpa and I went hunting, we would bring the game home for Grandma to cook for us. We didn't need it, though, but it was a way of life when my grandparents were coming up in order for them to survive. But, as I reflect back now, shooting a poor defenseless critter does seem pretty cruel and maybe reflects our society as a whole.

Here is a side story about Freckles. There is an old a.m. radio station in Richmond, WRVA, that's probably been a part of Richmond longer than the Richmond Times Dispatch. One Sunday afternoon, my parents and I were visiting at my grandparents' house. They were sitting around the table reading the Sunday paper while listening to WRVA. In between songs, the DJ came on and said "Would the owners of a spotted brown-gray-black pig please come and reclaim their pig from the neighborhood of Indian Springs (an area just through the woods and creek of my grandparents' place)."  My grandparents looked at each other before heading out to the hog pen. Sure enough, ole Freckles had made her escape for freedom through a hole in the fence on the back side. She headed towards the city of Richmond or Petersburg for a new life, free from slop and nasty old hog feed. Her freedom was short-lived, however, as Grandpa caught up with her and returned her to her pen. 

As the years passed by during the early to mid-seventies, Freckles had a vast number of baby piglets herself. Finally, she had a last litter of four, and her milk had all but dried up. Grandma and Grandpa took the piglets and placed them into a large cardboard box and kept them in the pantry of the house. Every two hours, they would feed them with baby bottles of milk until they were old enough to eat regular feed. 

I went over to their house one weekend, and my grandparents told me they had taken Freckles to the stockyards of Richmond or Petersburg, I can't remember which one. I can remember them watching the expression on my face, for they knew how much she had meant to me when I was younger. But by now I was at the age where I had girls and other things on my mind rather than some old pig. I really didn't give it much thought. As I reflect back now, I realize that animals have more common sense, soul and spirit than we give them credit for. And I remember that Grandpa had taken me to the stock yards of Richmond and Petersburg when I was a young lad. And now I realize that Freckles deserved a much better send-off than those slaughter houses in the stock yards before ending up as sausage links or strips of bacon on someone's breakfast plate. I think of how scared she must have felt when she was left all alone and sensing something was dreadfully wrong as she met her fate. Which just goes to show that life is sometimes not fair for neither man nor beast.

There was an old chicken farmer named Calvin McGee, who lived several miles from our place. Every so often, Grandpa and I would venture over there to see what ole Calvin was up to. There were several enormous oak trees in his front yard where Grandpa and Calvin would sit in lawn chairs. They would talk about the good old days, and soon their talk would turn to prophesying the end of the world and how this great country of ours was quickly going to hell in a hand basket. Late one evening, while the two shared stories that even at my young age I'd already heard it seemed to me like a thousand times. I ventured out past Calvin's fields into the woods on the backside of his property where he kept his hogs. One old sow had recently given birth to a whole litter of baby piglets. It didn't take long for me to notice a cute little female piglet with brown and grey-black spots all over her. She came over to the fence while her brothers and sisters were steadily having their evening meal of mother's milk, and she looked up at me. I knew there and then that I had to have her as a pet. I got what I wanted, for on the way back home she rode in the floorboard of Grandpa's pick-up truck. 

I named my new pig Freckles, because of all of the spots that covered her body. They say that pigs are extremely intelligent and have a functioning I.Q. of that of a three-year-old child. I believe every word of it. I played with that little piglet as though she was a pet dog. As she grew bigger, she would see me coming towards the hog pen, and she would eagerly run over to the fence and rub her side against the fence. This was her cue for me to rub her back. Even when she got old she would slowly walk across to the fence and look up at me through her now thick eye lashes and rub herself on that fence. 

More to come on Freckles . . . 

In the early '70's, I had a hairy little Pekinese named Eggroll. That dog and I did everything together, and he loved the woods. The only problem with that type of dog is that they are extremely unafraid of anything, and since their eyes stick out more so than the average dog there was always a danger that the other dog would put their eyes out. It happened to Eggroll, and he lost one eye. But that didn't stop him from always standing up to the biggest dog in the neighborhood even though it was always a fight he could never win. In the fall of 1975, my family and I had moved to a house in Powhatan County, Virginia. A stray collie came from out of nowhere and put his other eye out. My parents said they were going to take him to be put to sleep. I was fourteen years old. I sat in my room crying. I couldn't even go out to say goodbye to him. But a couple of hours later, they returned with Ole Eggroll. They couldn't put him to sleep because of me. The new house we had moved into sat way back in the woods, and the next spring he took off. You would think that a dog, even a blind dog, could smell his own scent back to the house.  But he disappeared and never was seen again.   At the time, I was sick with the flu, so I couldn't go looking for him until I was better - which was way too late. There was a small river, the Appottomax, about a mile behind our house. I have a feeling that there is where he went and drowned. I feel kind of selfish now that I should have let my parents have him put to sleep. It might have been a kinder ending for Eggroll than drowning in the Appottomax River. I saw recently on television that a Pekinese named Malachy won first prize as best in show at the Westminster Dog Show. It brought back many warm memories of my days with Eggroll.

Grandpa's rows were straight as an arrow, and one afternoon while he sat and sipped on some Old Crow whisky he shared his secret with me - which was nothing more than two stakes, a good eye, and a string line. After fresh Spring rains had fallen, I would tag behind him and Molly. Much to my surprise, the most beautifully crafted arrowheads would surface to the top of the recently tilled ground. Grandpa said that this part of the country used to be an Indian reservation. I bought that story then, and I collected as many of them as I could find, stashing them away in an El Producto cigar box. As time went by, however, I realized that I had never seen arrowheads of this size and different curves made out of stones. Not in any museum, National Geographic or any type of educational television shows. Some of these spear stones were up to four inches long, which made me wonder what kind of game they were hunting. Also, given the time frame that the early British colonies came and settled across the state of Virginia, wouldn't the Indians have just gradually moved westward? I decided that there was no way that there was once an Indian reservation in this part of the state. I deeply believe that those arrowheads were from the prehistoric era and were used for killing much larger, perhaps prehistoric, game than what we've seen in these parts for a long, long time. Maybe even a giant wooly mammoth?