Maple Ridge Barndo

My grandfather was a textile mill worker. He quit school in fifth grade to do clean-up in the cotton mill. He retired as head of maintenance and repairs with the skill to fabricate any replacement part that was needed. He stood maybe five feet five inches, but he was tough. He was fiery and hard-headed, but not with me.

My grandfather had nicknames for all of his grandchildren. I was towheaded, so he called me Cotton Top. I was his coon hunting buddy from the time I was six or seven years old. At first that meant riding along in the truck and helping him listen for the coon dogs when they were too far away for his old ears to tell the direction of their yipping or baying. By the time I was eight or nine, he had taught me to chew Brown Mule plug tobacco (or sometimes Levi Garrett or Red Man loose leaf). Because it was too cold outside to roll the windows down, he also taught me how to swallow the juice. He didn’t allow any spitting in the floorboard of his baby blue ’65 Ford shift-on-the-fly pickup. He taught me to drive that pickup by pulling the seat back and letting me stand in front of him. I would lean against the front edge of the seat with my backside and extend my leg as far as possible to push the clutch. I could almost see over the dash.

We almost always hunted on land he owned or leased. Occasionally, we got to hunt on land owned by people who were more country than we were. All they wanted in return were any possums the dogs treed in their hunting frenzy. We would shake the possums down, or if that didn’t work, I would climb the tree and throw them down. Pawpaw would put them in a Croker sack. We would take them back to those people who would later cook them with biscuit dough in a cast iron pot over a fire in the yard to make a steaming cauldron of possum and dumplings. I tried it on more than one occasion. My wife asked me what they taste like. I just said, “greasy.”

My Pawpaw expected a lot from his hunting dogs. He bought trained Redbone and Bluetick Coonhounds from somewhere in Tennessee over the years. I don’t remember where exactly, but I do remember the women there wore bonnets. They may have been Amish or Mennonite, but there’s no one left who can verify that for me. These trained dogs carried a price tag of close to a thousand dollars. This was a lot of cash in the mid-1970s, and he was not cash rich. My grandmother and uncles all complained behind his back, saying he was crazy to spend that kind of money. I think the joy those dogs brought him made it worth it.

For such a tough man, he was always very patient and kind with me. He took the time to teach me how things worked and always let me be in the middle of whatever he was working on. I quickly learned the names of tools so I could hand him the right thing when he asked. He taught me how direct current electric fencing works by holding on to me and grabbing the fence, giving me a good jolt. He taught me how to handle livestock. He taught me how to milk cows. He let me whittle with his pocket knives. He taught me to drink black coffee that he made by reusing grounds in a 30-cup percolator. He believed in me so much that he let me hook the trailer up to his truck when I was ten just because I said I could. Turns out I couldn’t, and I crushed two toes when I dropped it. My mom took me to the emergency room. He felt awful.

I grew up across the highway from my grandparents’ farm. In the summertime I probably ate as many meals at their house as I did my own. On occasion, after a meal, my grandfather would pull out a guitar and sing some of his favorite Hank Williams songs and a few others. I would sit in the floor and listen, singing along when I could. He and my grandmother lived in that farmhouse together until he died at the age of 90.

Many years have passed since those days growing up in rural Alabama, but in my childhood memories, he will always be bigger than life.