{Some of my stories are based partially in truth, very few are completely true. I hesitated to even write this one, since I have a good idea what the reaction of some will be. But what the hell. Here is one from far back in my youth, and almost completely true.)
Unlike many others when I was young, I grew up on a remote island, a short six mile walk to our nearest neighbor. School was twelve miles, at least it wasn't uphill both ways but it sure as hell was uphill on the way in. At first I had to run all the way every day, then things got modern and I could meet the school bus at a turnaround a couple of miles away. That saved a lot of time for work, running all the way to school took over two hours each way.
There wasn't any real socializing, I just plain didn't have time because there was always the ranch, work was always waiting.
My Dad strapped a small pistol to my hip when I was six, I graduated to a rifle by the time I was nine.
It wasn't for show, it was a tool. I used firearms to help feed our family, and also to protect myself since there were things that lived out in our woods that had teeth and considered me or one of my brothers a potential meal. Usually making a bit of noise would keep them out of sight, but often we were hunting so we didn't really want to make any noise.
There was a little black Bear one day that acted like it wanted to visit, I was out picking thistle heads to take back and store for salads. All we did with those was store them, the outer layers would turn brown but when we peeled them back there were nice and fresh, they lasted almost all Winter if kept cool. I liked those salads, Mom would slice cabbage and thistle heads, add tiny slivers of squash and Carrots and splash some vinegar on it.
That danged Bear was pesky, it kept getting closer, curious about me I guess. I popped four rounds into the ground at it's feet and it completely understood that.
I knew which plants were good to eat, I knew which trees had bark that made a nice tea, I knew how to fold up a skunk cabbage leaf to make a pot, so I could heat water over an open fire. I even made Rabbit stew in those a few times. Up by the headwaters of one of our little springs there were snails, big ones sometimes 3 inches across. I fried those in butter, I could eat 20 of them at a setting. I also stewed up a batch in my skunk cabbage pot many times, mixing in some cattails for flavoring, adding some of that white colored moss that grows on the Adler trees. Even mushrooms if I could find them, sometimes a couple of red Elderberries. Those gave them a mildly bitter taste that I liked.
If the fire was kept low that worked great for stews and soups, get a bit too much flame going and I got to build another fire.
I carried a heavy blade, too. That came in handy for lots of things, like building a fire in the rain from green wood. Some might laugh at that, but all I had to do was select a good Fir limb with bubbles of pitch, peel off some thin shavings into tiny little curls and it burned nicely, covered by branches from Ferns over a stack of rocks to keep the rain off. Then there were always dry branches on the lower part of the Fir trees, even when it was raining.
Live wood burns like paper if shaved thin, wood that is rain wet won't burn at all.
In bad weather I could find a warm dry bed, a rotten windfall stump hollowed out with leaves and branches laid down over it to drain the rainwater away served me just fine. Some of them still had huge rootballs, those were the very best. I had a feet of them I dug out that had enough room for two, maybe three people inside.
Of course critters liked them too, so I usually gave out a few hollers as I got close to one of my older shelters.
The Ferns were great for a roof, first lay down some thin branches for bracing, then lay green Ferns on overlapping with the tips of the leaves pointed out and it made a perfectly dry little shelter.
I could build a shelter in about 30 minutes, plus I had literally dozens of locations up there to choose from that I made over the years.
Those rotten stumps were always nice and warm inside, too. Sometimes I would be gone an entire weekend hunting, rarely almost an entire week if I was curing out in the woods. I got a big Elk once that I cured all the meat out there and hung it where the animals couldn't reach it, then I went and got my brothers and we packed it all home in two trips. We never hunted close to the house because sometimes in the Winter game was scarce and the weather would get bad enough we could not go miles to harvest something.
Besides, smoked meat got old after awhile, some nice fresh venison steaks and homemade bisquits and gravy would hit the spot come January.
Animals that hung around close came in nice and handy, but it was rare we had to do that. Dad saw to it that we put up plenty of stores, most years food was not a problem.
By the time Winter set in, we usually had hard smoked meats and fish. The fish were just salted and dried. A couple of dozen Rabbits usually hung up there, we smoked the whole thing after salt curing it. There were stores of dried Corn, Potatos, huge Onions hanging upside down from the racks. Carrots kept well, and we also grew a lot of those big Squash. Some types we ate raw right off the plant when they were little, other kinds would keep all Winter long.
Yes, the description of me and my brothers is wild. We were animals too, predators on the world around us.
The result was a very naive young man compared to the other kids in town, almost completely and totally unaware of the possible ills of the world.
Some things I figured out in school, like the need for an education, and like so many young men fresh out of high school, I really had no idea at all of what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I did know I saw other people with things I didn't have, and I wanted some of that for myself.
College was actually out of the question, my family were farmers. Back then the kids in town were the rich people, their Dads all had good jobs in the local mill. I even thought of doing that, maybe they would hire me? But I was down there once, the place smelled so bad I didn't want anything to do with that.
We were just poor dirt farmers, there was little if any money. We grew food, or we ran something down and killed it for dinner. Our ranch was large, over 3000 acres so there were lots of things to kill. The land next to ours was owned by a timber company, nobody was ever around so we had the complete run of that also, thousands more acres. They showed up to harvest once in awhile, large rough looking men cut the trees and dragged them down to the river with horses. I remember sitting up on the mountain and watching them, expecting them to fall off into the river as they rode the huge logs but none of them ever did.
At least not that I ever saw. One man my Dad knew named George went in, the logs went over him. Nobody ever saw him again.
"Damn fool!" My dad exclaimed when he heard about that.
"He just refused to quit drinking."
I decided to never drink after hearing that story, it made me shudder.
My folks had chickens so there were fresh eggs to trade for flour and sugar, always salt. We would take the boat to town, riding the tide with the tiny little engine chugging away, my job was to bail out the water that ran in so we didn't sink.
I had to bail pretty fast too, and I was a bit afraid of the water so I never stopped.
I actually liked those trips, it meant we had real flour for awhile which was wonderful. Usually we harvested the Bulrush seeds and ground those down to make flour. The store bought stuff Mom traded for was lots better.
We had to go with the tide, if it was against us we went nowhere at all.
We couldn't take a car, we didn't have one.
There were no roads out there anyway.
My Mom cooked on a wood stove and we heated the house with wood, so there was lots of swinging a big 16 pound sledge hammer. Of course that started out with me using the 4 pounder but I grew pretty strong very quickly.
I was the youngest of four brothers, early on it was fine because they were all bigger and could help with bucking the hay for our cattle, and with all of the never ending work. We had some Sheep later on, then Goats. Of course we also had our share of Coyotes, we spent a lot of time keeping a watch out for them.
They stayed on the skittish side because if they showed us any hide at all we put a bullet in them.
My oldest brother joined the army soon after graduation, the next year the second brother was gone to the Coast Guard.
Two years later the third brother was married, it seemed he walked over to see the neighbor girl named Becky who lived about six miles away.
I knew all about that because I sneaked over behind him, and spied on them as they went down to the hay loft. They couldn't see me, I slipped up the wooden ladder to the rafters, I could peek right over the top of a big board wall. My brother looked just like one of the Rabbits Mom kept in her cages, I even giggled once and he heard me, looking around for a moment before going right back to it.
Becky was a little bit on the fat side. I didn't get a real good look at her because my brother was in the way and I was afraid to try and move to a better location.
She sure was naked, though. At one point she had her head laid back and her mouth open, I got to see her right tittie for a few seconds when it slid over to the side, but then my brother's arm got in the way. When it looked like they were getting done I got the hell out of there because my brother would beat me up if he caught me.
There was quite a fuss when Becky's Dad showed up madder than an old wet hornet a few months later, I think he actually had plans to shoot my brother but he ran into my Dad who had his 30-30 model 94 Winchester tucked under his arm.
My Dad was on the big side, and well known for using a rifle. He could hit a six inch circle at 200 yards freehand, and I saw him drop a Coyote dead in it's tracks at 100 yards once, it was on a dead run at the time.
I was standing there, my pistol on my hip as Becky's Dad went into a tirade. By then I could peg a Rabbit at 50 feet pretty regularly, and I shot them in the head so as to not mess up any meat. Becky's Dad eyed me but he went back to yelling at my brother.
I was thinking that if he moved to really do something I would shoot him in the arm, but just then our Dad showed up.
Needless to say, Becky's Dad got a bit more polite when Dad came around the corner.
There were some discussions, my brother married Becky and went to live on their farm. That settled that little problem.
Which left our ranch with Dad, Mom...and me.
I was 13 years old.
My life became a string of getting up at 5 AM, rounding up the cows and milking them. I took the milk up to the house and ran it through the hand cranked milk separator, so Mom could use the cream to make butter, and some of that Cottage Cheese she hung from the clothesline. Lord that was good, there is nothing in the world as good as fresh sweet Cottage Cheese.
Then it was split the wood for the house, take a bath and make the long walk to meet the bus at the end of the road 2 miles away. Rain or shine, it made no difference. Mom insisted that I go to school, Dad objected a little bit saying he needed me around the ranch but Mom got her way.
