Post by jack hamilton on Jul 8, 2010 7:51:39 GMT -5
Chapter 3.
Coming home again
Chapter 3, Coming home again
I came home from the Hospital about October,
the summer heat was over and I finally was able to 'come home'
to 'my 25 Acres', seven months after my wreck.
The refrigerator was empty, the house was all dusty
and looked like it had been vacant for years.
I had no money for food so I lived on canned food,
oatmeal, and whatever I could find for two years
before I got disability and food stamps.
I was 236 Lbs at the time of my wreck and now,
9 years later, am still only 192,
a 44 Lb loss.
I haven't run, done a push up or 'got laid' for 9 years.
I started by cleaning house, ordering my stuff in the house,
the barn and attic and am still doing that 9 years later.
I learned how to make knives.
It took a year to 'learn' how to build a forge.
{and build one}
Another year to save enough for a 'Grizzly' belt sander.
Another year to 'learn how to build' {then build} a web site.
I made knives from rail road spikes and out of 'junk'.
{Saw blades and leaf springs}
Then learned about 'new pre-annealed blade steel'
and started making knives out of 'new steel'.
I started raising poultry and building cages and coops.
The big 'show coop' was under construction for 4 years
and isn't finished yet.
Money or 'lack of it' has been the reason.
Writing became my obsession.
I was a music major at U.T.
{the University of Texas at Austin}
and played piano, guitar and accordion.
My piano had worn out and been sold years ago to be rebuilt.
But I had an accordion and before my wreck
{which was not an accident}
I played every night.
But after my wreck, writing became my passion.
My disability Judge, my Doctors and therapists told me to:
"Jack, write all those stories down".
So I spent six years writing down all the stories
'I had in me'.
And ran out of stories just in the nick of time.
I just finished writing all my stories,
before I was murdered again,
and this time by 'two police departments'.
My motorcycle wreck was caused by three 'white trash'
who died in prison the next year,
and not by the prison but by the inmates.
Then four Lancaster policemen and one $15. an hour
jail goon from Desoto, conspired to murder me.
Conspired to murder me, tried and failed three times,
succeeding only in crushing my spine.
I was a disabled coma patient with no criminal record.
And I have no idea why they did it.
But after six years writing, I had an idea.
I was an author now,
and decided to use my newly acquired writing skills,
to report the situation to the proper authorities.
God put me on the earth a 'Mastermarksman'
with a profound hatred of evil and injustice.
I could shoot every dxxx one of the Lancaster police.
15 cops would equal 30 seconds, trigger time.
And I still may, but I sat at my computer for 365 days,
24 hours a day and worked on writing the letter,
and learning who to send it to.
I sent the letter via 'certified mail'
and mailed them 'from Dallas' to the two Cities,
{Lancaster and Desoto}
the Texas Rangers, District Attorney,
Attorney General, and the Houston office of the FBI.
After that my typing is beautiful.
And I have learned much about writing.
My spelling, while horrible after my wreck,
is much improved.
I studied writing for six years and then,
after having been hurt so bad,
used it to 'kill my enemies', and I did.
One day coming home from the store I saw two
Sheriff's cars parked by the creek on the way home.
I stopped and talked to them about what happened,
and was shocked to find out they knew everything about it,
More than I did in fact.
They knew and could repeat every word I said during my
visit to the Lancaster police department to complain.
"Jack was with 'Lt. Boone' behind two locked doors
and 'Lt. Boone' was armed!
{One deputy told the other}
You could have heard Jack screaming at Lt. Boone
all over the building.
"You fat fxxx"!
"Look at me while I am talking to you"!
"Perhaps that was what they wanted"!
"Me to open my door for my insurance card
thereby turning my back to that big van behind me
so that they could shoot me in the back 18 times"!
There it is!
There it is!
"There's that terror in your eyes"!
"Got you fat boy!"
The other Deputy turned to the speaker
with shock in his eyes, saying:
"If I knew I was going to prison for the rest of my life
I would have shot Jack".
"I can't believe he left the Lancaster police department alive"!
The 'speaker' said"
"Boone is a coward and Jack's not"
was the reply.
"Boone, Bolton and the other four are going to prison
for conspiracy".
"The penalty for conspiracy is 99.5 years,
and they have absolutely no defense".
"They are dead".
I live alone, on 25 acres at the end of the road,
surrounded by 1,000 acres of bottom land.
I never have company and it is real lonesome,
as I am disabled and never go to town.
My disability Judge as well as the Head Doctor
of Baylor Hospital severe, traumatic, brain injury ward
Milton Thomas, and all my Therapists told me to
"write those stories down".
So I started writing, and today, nine years later,
I am still writing.
Here are some of the short stories I wrote,
after coming home from Baylor Hospital,
about my hounds, and various other subjects
which are dear to my heart.
My Greatest Accordion Performance
or...
'Close your eyes and just play to me'
Once upon a time...
I went to the 'Dallas Accordion Association' meeting
over in Ft. Worth one evening after work.
I had bought a new {used} accordion
and had not intended to play but just to show
the accordion to a friend.
I had been on a '250 square commercial roofing job'
all day in the summer heat,
had tar on my knees,
hadn't eaten or had a bath,
and had drunk '10 beers' on the way home
to get my accordion and driving to Ft. Worth.
As it so happened a realtor who wanted 'my 25 acres'
and had been kicked out of the association for bad mouthing me,
and had paid $10. each for each one of about 60-70 women
from 'MADD' to join the association to vote me out.
Rather than 13 people, like I expected there were,
when I walked in the door,
not only about 100 women from MADD.
But the head accordion teacher in Dallas, Natasha Gedding.
An accordionist who had a tape out and was real good,
Alan Walling of 'Alpinmusikanten',
and basically everybody who was anybody
with accordions was there.
Someone asked me to go sign up to play,
and so I did.
Boys it was a set up.
When time came for me to play,
they all started yelling and booing.
I am hard of hearing anyway and I just couldn't hear to play.
I tried and tried.
And didn't understand the reason for all the commotion.
I would start one song and get yelled down.
I would start another and the booing was impossible
to over come so I just stopped.
I closed my eyes and held my hands open,
palms up and said:
"Help me Carol."
Took a deep breath
and as the room got a little quieter,
started to play.
{Actually the accordion repairman,
the accordion tuner, at Natasha's request
walked over to the realtors seat and said
'loud enough for everybody in the big room to hear him':
I didn't see it because my eyes were closed,
but somebody told me about it later.}
"The cops are on the way",
"one more word,
and you are going to jail",
"again"!"
And Bryan Cepac stood and said:
"He's hard of hearing!
give him a chance!"
The room got real quiet,
Carol was my girl friend from Denver
and was in fact still in Denver
but was my spirtual guide too
I had said 'help me Carol'
I heard Carol's voice,
as if she were there, say:
"Keep your eyes closed
so that you can't see all those people
'and play to me',
just play to me I'll listen".
I started playing and played for '20 minutes',
{I heard later}
Stopped on 'Du Du Leicht Meir im Hertzen'
or 'You, You, the One of my Heart'.
Opened my eyes,
and made a formal bow like a classical pianist would,
in perfect silence,
and started walking back to my seat.
All of a sudden the whole room broke out in applause,
Yells,
Cheers!
It was deafening!
I thought they were all going to jump on me
but they loved it.
The realtor was sued by the association for half a million,
someone asked Natasha if she would give 'this guy' lessons
and she said with tears in her eyes:
"I would 'take' lessons from him."
"My father was Russian and he loved that song."
The guy with the tape out, Allan, said:
Everything I play is exactaly the same every time.
My material is all memorized.
This guy doesn't know from one second to the next
what he is going to play.
It's all improvisation,
he plays what he hears in his mind.
I would give anything if I could improvise like that.
I just can't do that.
And the waitress said to me
'as I was getting me a beer':
"That was the best anyone has ever played
in here,
ever!"
Boys the material was well...
everything.
Mexican music like the 'Corredo Coyote',
the ballad of the Coyote.
{"The Coyote is just out looking for something
for his family to eat."}
A Mexican lady from 'MADD' said:
"I haven't heard that song since I was a little girl!"
And became so hysterical she had to be taken from the room.
"I'd marry that man!"
German songs like the' Horst Wessel lied',
where a table of 'Germans' stood and gave the Hitler salute.
During the whole song, because:
"It is not legal to play that song in Germany."
"Or to give the Hitler salute,
but that's part of the song,
to stand and salute during its playing
and we have never done that in our lives,
its the S.A. marching song
but it's legal here,
and it was fun!"
"We'll never forget it."
Ha Ha, and with a tango ending!
Ha Ha...
Russian Baliliakas,
Supe's light calvery overture,
The sextet from Lucia de Lammermoor,
by Giatano Donnezetti
{that killed them}
Good bye old paint,
Dixie,
Bonnie blue flag,
Du, Du, Licht mir im Hertzen,
the Marines Hymn.
Not only the requisite
Waltzes, Marches and Polkas,
every grade of music from Cowboy songs
like 'Goodby Old Paint',
'Legend of Lobo',
Mexican Corredo's,
to classics like 'Opera',
Music from every country
and every time period,
and every economic class,
all run together in one giant medly,
two or three or four or five...
verses from each piece,
all mixed up,
it \was insane!...
but beautiful.
It was my greatest performance
I knocked them dead
and never went back
Tschüß
J. Winters von Knife
{need a knife?}
There exists a video of this event
and if I can ever get it,
I will include it in my book.
Thank you
J. Winters von Knife
Old Tom-dogs First Hog Hunt
This is the story of Tom-dogs first hog hunt.
Tom was a walker hound dog,
six years old and a beautiful animal.
He was well mannered and good in every way.
Tom’s heart was good and we took to each other right off.
We got along fine from the first meeting in January 2002.
My name is Jack, eleven months ago after thirty five years
of riding motorcycles. I was coming home from the beer joint
on my Yamaha 850 triple.
About 1:30 am riding slow and easy,
30-35mph instead of the usual 80mph.
Any slower and I would have to down shift to second…
and then I couldn’t see or hear…
{see coma story}
Tom-dog and I are well matched
as we are both recovering from something me,
my motorcycle wreck, and Tom, his former owner.
We are both sort of healing.
So after all this intro stuff we can go hunting.
When I was a kid we lived south of Dallas
where we could hunt, run our trap lines and learn to fish.
There were a few stock farms like Clayton Wyman’s.
But hogs moved into the area I am living in now!
{Which is even further south}
and I have never killed a hog.
And being a professional hunter-trapper hogs and me
were bound to get aquainted sooner or later.
One day right out from the hospital,
I figured it was about time to go hunting,
as I had done about all the recovering I was going to do inside.
So I grabbed old Thunder, a knife, rope, and two beers
and strode with Tom-dog in the direction of the woods
I had hunted in for twenty years.
I made a living hunting with my hounds and trapping
for three years here after another injury.
For miles I knew these woods,
I knew them like the coon knew them.
Knew them like the mink knew them, the coyote, beaver,
the bobcat. I knew them,
I dreamed of these woods.
I was determined to kill a hog so off we went.
We walked down the abandoned road, across the bottom,
waded the newly named hog creek.
Walked across and up the hill till I saw a thicket which felt hoggy, and I circled it.
Tom was being a dog and working the brush everywhere.
There went a mess of hogs!
Headed out to the next thicket two hundred yards away!
Then I saw another start from the thicket,
'Old Essey' my SKS, came up to my shoulder,
the iron sights snapped into alignment
and 'Old Thunder' spoke. BOOM!
A hog running away from you looks like nothing but a big ass.
That’s why a .22 will not do!
Fifteen rounds would not knock down a 200 pound hog
when I had just gotten home from the hospital.
A man needs a .30 .30, 7.62 x 39 or better for a hog!
Old thunder spoke and the first bunch of hog ran across the grassland to the next thicket, out 250 yards.
I looked hard at the last one and saw no damage!
I started circling the thicket rifle ready!
Around once, twice and OOOOOWWWW!
Tom was bawling, not like he does on a coon but like he was thinking this thing is big!
OOOOW! OOWWW!
I looked into the thicket and the hog was dead.
I did not build a fire and whoop and holler like I have done to celebrate a kill, to appreciate a young dogs triumph.
But I patted him real good and sincerely thanked him.
Pointing out how the hog was lost and he was the one
who found it.
I made sure he was praised as this is what dogs live for.
The praise from their human,
he as much as I was amazed at how much meat
we had to drag home. And me just home from the hospital.
The job was done and the hog was raised in a tree,
gutted, head and feet chopped off, skinned.
And from then there was nothing to do but soak,
wash, wrap, and go to sleep.
It was 4:00am when we went to sleep,
and I awoke at 9:00 the next morning still wired
from all the work we had done, and all the work that remained.
I froze the head and one ear.
Tossed the skin and guts, cleaned the kitchen and built a fire. Rubbed a 25 pound chunk of ribs with back strap on one end
and bacon on the other, with salt, pepper, garlic,
Worcestershire, pepper sauce and laid it out on my smoker.
Five or six hours later I was drunk as a dog,
the slab was done, and I pronounced it the first pork meat
I had ever eaten!
It was not like and pork I had ever had before!
Or any meat I have ever eaten before in my life!
Today I fell like a new man,
like I have accomplished something!
I have made 100 pounds of meat!
Me and Tom have gotten to be friends,
{easy with 100 pounds of pork}
and especially with this pork!
I don’t think I will ever buy meat again!
Not with hogs like this across the street!
Poor old Tom dog died and this story
was written before he went on that long trail.
His pictures is right here.
I really loved old Tom and sometimes wonder why
God has seen fit to show me so much pain,
and all at once.
J. Knife
Trappers Philosophy
“College days at the University of Texas at Austin
I loved to study piano.
To learn, study and play the classics.
Bach, Mozart, and Chopin were so profound.
Any part of playing the piano like scales, chords,
right and left hand separately, I never got tired of it.
I can remember thinking that all I wanted in the world was an apartment with a place for a little garden,
and two or three hundred dollars a month,
and a piano and I would never leave music school ever!
One day I sat at the piano nine hours.
I had a clock and would stop it when I went to the bathroom,
or the phone rang.
Nine hours I sat there and studied, and that was a good day.
It is hard to write about music in words.
I would like to write about studying music but how to say in words,
what I thought in tones?
To a person who has never played piano it would be impossible, and that is basically everybody.
Rhythmic patterns, that one feels in ones stomach,
the sounds from a good piano, the tones, the vibrating strings,
and the mixtures of sounds made when two or more strings are vibrating at the same time.
It is interesting to hear just the cords,
two, three, four tones just listening to the intervals without any rhythm.
Intervals, chords, scales, tonal patterns,
all the words that describe music just may be used to awaken interest or remembrance from one who knows music.
From one who does not, maybe,
it would help me writing my book.
In the world there are just about as many pianists
as there are coon hunters.
And not many of either.
I love both but how to write an interesting book,
well it is interesting to me,
but neither is interesting to anybody else,
as coon hunters don’t read much and pianists don’t coon hunt!
So why not!
It is again the 'mutual attraction of opposites',
coon hunting and classical music, for example.
What could be more opposite?
Yin and yang,
Stonehenge and Trapper Jacks fur shed
stones and bones
the poet/warrior all good examples.
The 'mutual attraction of opposites'
is conceptually interesting
but people who like one, rarely like the other.
A true philosopher would,
but people,
are on average just not that philosophical,
and philosophers I have known
actually are not all that philosophical either.
I am interested in the concept of the philosophical opposites
of coon hunting and classical music and so was Jerry Dean
at the university of Texas.
Doctor Dean said so and used coon hunting to the class
as a model of freedom, exercise,
and such while he was describing how we needed to get out of doors and get some exercise.
All of you people are over weight or underweight.
He asked the class how many have gone coon hunting?
I was the only one who raised my hand
even though I had not ever had a good hound
or hunted coon with one,
however I had trapped for 10 years
and
I knew what he was talking about.
The concept of opposites attracting,
is conceptually interesting to a philosopher.
The idea of a well rounded person must of necessity
include opposites.
Mental, physical, violence, peacefulness,
tonal beauty and bullets.
See if I could put this concept into a coherent form
and publish it…
it is a great subject to write about…
and I could ramble on and on about it for hundreds of pages.
If… I could think of how to put the piano school thoughts
into words. Tones-words.
hmmm
This concept is a good one even though most people read sxxx.
It is different!
The coon hunters need to be more intellectual
and the classical pianists need to be more heathern.
Don’t they?
It could be fun!
It may be the subject that I alone of all the people on the earth could write about well.
There is a little red neck in most people
and a little philosopher too!
A little musician,
a little warrior,
farmer gardener,
home brewer,
chef, hunter, weightlifter,
a little writer,
and a little viscous killer,
the thing I am trying to do here is put together
all the things I am interested in and know about.
Into some framework of order
so that I can write about them,
publish a book
and make a lot of money
so I don’t have to work anymore.
Thank you
J. Winters von Knife
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
The Big Stash
I came home from the hospital five years ago.
My house looked strange, like no one had lived there in a long time.
I opened my five gallon buckets of LME {liquid malt extract}
and saw that they were covered with white mold.
I had 6 SIX! 22 oz bottles of ale left after my 'friends' ,
{who had keys to my house}
had drank my brewery dry.
If I ever needed a beer it was then.
Even the disability judge was told by his secretary:
'He'll just spend it all on beer!"
The judge looked at me with a big smile,
{he was ex military and had horses too}
"After all the crap Jack has been through
I imagine he needs a drink."
The roofing business went to hell after 9-11
and there still is basically no money.
I built up and run my old trapline and hunt hog.
Built up the knife shop and started making knives for sale.
I stay home all the time to save on gas,
write short storys on 33 subjects that are dear to my heart.
I grow my own vegetables, raise poultry and play my accordian.
Make knives, cut my own hair and brew my own beer.
For five years I have suffered abject poverty and deep sadness.
My horse, old Dolly, died.
I rode Dolly 26 miles in one day, bareback.
She just got old and died.
My last remaining hound from my great pack,
old Ranger, died too.
Both my girlfriends dumped me.
When reracking...
I would drink a gallon so that their is only 4 gallons to rerack to the secondary.
Bottling... another gallon so there is only 3 gallons to bottle.
Then I drink it all up before it even gets carbonated.
It is a viscious degenerative cycle poverty is,
that if I have any ale at all,
it's never as good as it could have been.
Life has been hard and unfair.
But ... things are getting better.
Today I was bottling some 'DME with S-04 yeast,'
{'8 Lb Hammer'}
and as I picked up four bottles out of the milk crate and placed them on their shelf in the brewery, I had a feeling of 'wellness.'
I looked up at 112 full, green 12 oz bottles.
And down at 20 gallons in primaries and secondaries.
About 65 Lbs of DME {dried malt extract} is on hand
and knives are selling well so that every month
I can buy another 55 Lbs.
55 Lbs will brew 7 batches of 8 Lb hammer.
That's 35 Gallons and I can only drink 30!
So, slowly but surely,
I am at getting ahead.
My new hound Sandymay is my best friend,
and a good walker hound.
{She loves to ride in the truck,}
{and we are in love.}
I now am brewing ale faster than I can drink it.
Of a 5 gallon batch,
50, bottles go on the shelf in the brewery rather than 30.
The brewery is filling fast!
Soon I will be drinking ale that had been in the bottles 3-4-5 months
Life is good.
J. Winters Knife
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
Sandymay on the Trapline.
Sandy learned to run my line ahead of me,
at first two or three sets ahead. But later I was running my line and only a third through it when she came up and told me with a proud look in her eyes:
“We didn’t catch anything today”
Sandy my New Walker Hound
Sandy’s story begins September 5th 2003.
I have a new Walker Hound named Sandy.
She was given to me from a friend who works at the local feed store Feeders Supply.
Thomas has been looking for a good hound and I told him today if he needs a place to hunt just come over and hunt my woods.
I have access to 3-4 miles of woods all along the creek.
The most coon I have ever taken in one season was 24.
Hunting with hounds!
I trapped coyotes and Bobcat but didn’t want to trap a coon
as I had hounds to hunt and they could handle three miles
of creek easy.
Sandy is two and a half years old and a fine looking Walker. Thomas told me where she was and I drove over to his brothers house and as I pulled up in front of the house.
I took one look and fell in love with Sandy dog.
Old Tom would have really loved her.
Tom died of heart worms and I really miss him.
He was a good dog and really loved me too!
With all his black and those long, long ears he would have made beautiful puppies with Sandy. She has lots of white and a long aristocratic nose. With her nose and Toms ears the pups would have been really world class.
Sandy has been here a week
and aside from a few accidents she has been no trouble at all.
Sandy is a lithe young hound with a good body and a long frame. She likes to put her front paws on me and stand up as high as she can. She can even do this without me to stand on.
Now Sandymay…
Gentlemen,
Sandymay and I went down to the Coon Creek Camp
tonight and got us a Coon.
Sandymay was a free Walker hound
and we have been together for four years.
She is so tight mouthed however
I never know where she is, and have taken to staying
in one of two camps,
so she knows where I am and hopefully
if she trees something it will be with in hearing of the camp.
We didn't get anything the first winter because I was trying to stay up with her
like I used to do with my old hounds.
When I started staying in camp and she learned where the camp was, and that I would be there, she started hunting around camp.
She is a little weird which is why she was a free dog.
But Sandymay is real smart.
Well... she is real smart in some ways.
Anyway we got two the second year, three the third and four last year.
Tonight she treed a good coon on the way home
and I got there and saw eyes,
and these were coon eyes!
I shot it out with only one shot,
which is good for me as I'm 58 and have to have glasses
to read now. I can't see the old sights as well as I used to.
Bang went old Squirrel grabber and it sounded like a solid hit,
the coon started acting like it was head shot and then fell with a dull thud.
I yelled Coon!
while it was on the way down to the ground and when it hit Sandy grabbed the coon
and after shaking it real good like I expected her to do she grabbed the coon and ran off with it!
Sandy!
I called but to no avail.
I thought she would come back,
but no she didn't.
Then as I was walking home,
I was hoping she would bring the coon home
and I would find it in the yard in the morning.
I may, as Sandy is real smart and she does things like that.
However in the morning I will take her on a leash
to the place we killed the coon.
I marked it with a plastic sack.
And make her find the coon which shouldn't be very hard
and she was covered with coon blood when I got home.
Her legs especially, so I know she carried the coon a long ways,
and she can find it if she is on a leash.
There is a big blood trail.
So, wish us luck...
Jack the Knife
'and Sandymay'
'Tight mouthed hounds',
Is an appropriate subject for me because I have one...
Sandymay was a free hound, and I now know why.
She has a few faults but I can live with most of them.
Sandy will not make a sound in the woods except to tree.
However she barks 4,000 barks an hour in the truck.
And right in my ear.
{I counted her barks for a minute and multiplied by 60}
Hmmmm
Sandymay is loving, sweet and when the need arises
a good fighter.
She ran 'six full grown German Sheperds'... off,
biting them in their behinds,
every second or third jump
all the way back to the house they came from,
them 'Ki Yi' ing' all the way home.
Sandy is a female Walker hound 8.5 years old
and I am a 58 year old disabled coma patient, I can get around well though.
We sleep in the same bed together
and 'she is my sweet puppy'.
Sandy got two coon the year I got her.
Three the next year and four last year,
so we are getting it together.
She loves to hunt and we go down to the 'Coon Creek Camp'
where I build a fire
and sit down and drink beer.
I can't walk with her,
because I never know where she is,
and when I first got Sandy,
I felt like I was out in the woods alone.
But she is always out there with me,
hunting hard,
I just can't ever tell, because she is so 'tight mouthed'.
I have two camps and she knows where they are,
and never trees out of hearing of which ever camp I am at.
She is just one hound,
and lots of times the coon will come down
way out from the tree it went up,
and she looses them.
I need to get another hound or two and am looking,
but I will just hunt with my Sandymay dog this winter.
Maybe we'll will get 5 coon this winter???
First Coon Island Trip
1983
About dark, Randy, Mary and I loaded 'the old Harthingy'
and launched from a boat ramp on Cedar Creek Lake
and headed for coon island.
The water was perfectly still with no wind,
perfect weather for coon hunting.
It was cool but not cold.
We could see the island as a dark shape,
and the lights from highway 274 behind it forming a glow,
a halo, over the top of the dark island.
We went to the left of a sunken ridge line that extended
for half a mile from the southeast corner of the island,
marked by lots of tall dead timber,
and right up to the island.
I intended to land and build a fire but Randy wanted to circle
the island so we did.
We discovered north cove, east cove,
saw a 13 pound swamp rabbit and came around to an old pier.
I tried to get past the timbered ridge,
and it was too thick to go through,
we went too far out in the lake to circle,
so we decided to stay there.
There was no pier for 10’ out from shore
as it had rotted and caved in,
so we had to improvise.
There was predictably no firewood either
but we found enough to get a fire going.
We got a good fire going had a drink of some of Randy’s whisky,
smoked a joint and felt better.
We kept dogs tied to let the island quiet down
and let the coon start moving again.
By 10:45 the dogs started booger barking and we let them go.
They came back and stayed in camp till we went hunting about 11:15.
We walked north across an old grown up farm then through woods with really big trees including the biggest cedar tree I’ve ever seen,
it was four feet in diameter.
Big, old trees,
'Good Coon Woods'
I thought.
Then Joe and Sue may started running a track.
They were excited and I ran to keep up.
Then they were barking treed and I thought this is too easy!
When I got to the tree they were on a den tree.
We saw fresh chewing on the edges of the hole and coon scat under the tree. Identical to scat taken later from a dead coon,
so we called it a ‘sure enough den tree’ and went on.
It didn’t take 10 minutes till they were treed again.
I ran over and was the first one there.
A coon! I hollered,
Randy and Mary came up and sure enough there was a fine coon about one year old.
I took a rest and drilled her through the head with a perfect shot.
Took her to shore and cleaned her out,
put her on a heel stick,
and off we went to get another.
We tramped all around the island mostly in the center.
Dogs treed again this time in a big cedar.
Since I couldn’t see into the tree I decided to climb tree and shake the coon out or just shoot him.
I unloaded .22 auto and tied it to my waist and started climbing.
I checked limbs on the way up and saw no coon,
as I got to the top something jumped on my head!
I yelled and ducked but it was only a swaying limb
from the next tree over.
Finally the top and nothing so I came back down.
Dogs swore there was something in the tree,
but I finally succeeded in getting them started again.
Joe swung wide and picked up another track,
ran and treed again.
This time I could see it,
a very big squirrel and this was at 1:30 in the morning!
I shot squirrel, cleaned him and we took off.
About then I came to mounds in the middle of the forest.
They could have been Indian burial mounds as we knew a guy who used to come out to the island and dig up old Indian pottery
and lots of it!
Joe Miller was his name and he would use a rocker
with ¼” hardware cloth on the bottom,
and dig up the sandy dirt.
When he had gone through the gravelly dirt looking for pottery shards,
he would take it out in the lake and dump it
so he didn’t have to go through it again.
Joe worked the island for years and found all kinds
of Indian related stuff.
The island, before the lake was built was a hill between two big creeks that came together on the south end.
It must have been a good fishing place and higher than the surrounding area so a good camp or village site.
There used to be lots of Caddo Indians here
so these mounds were likely burial mounds I thought.
But it was so dark we could only tell that all the surrounding land
was flat except these mounds with small trees growing on them.
Then we came out on top of a hill where an old set of pens and fences were still standing but very old.
From there we followed an opening back until it quit and we started descending into what we would later call:
“The thicket of death”.
The thicket was solid with sticker vines taller and thicker than I’ve ever seen.
It got worse and worse with no end.
We couldn’t keep out directions straight either.
The dogs couldn’t even get through they would go around
several hundred yards and catch up.
Dogs would tree and they would sound excited
like they could see coon.
But by the time we would get there…
nothing.
This happened three times and took us in circles for three hours, always in the thicket.
I remember a smaller tree in the thicket and a giant oak
that may have had a coon cause it had several big holes,
but was so big 6’ in diameter and so thick we couldn’t see much of it.
I figured that a grown and very smart and experienced coon had been climbing trees and jumping out thereby breaking his scent trail and taught these young dogs a valuable lesson.
Another time the dogs were barking excitedly at the shoreline,
we knew they were on a coon.
They would walk out on a log and back again,
run up and down the bank and back to the log.
Walk out to the end of the log and bark.
That old coon must have swam off from the end of that log
and broke his scent trail when he heard the dogs coming.
Scent was real fresh but ended at that log.
We didn’t think to take a dog either way,
but we didn’t pick him up coming on down the shoreline so he must have gone around us and landed the way we had just come.
There were groups of doves in d**n near every 6th tree 3-10 birds.
Every minute or so, all the time we were in the upland part of the thicket we would hear a “whoosh! Whoosh!
And off they would go,
at night!
I remember three slick trees had occurred when I said
“lets start heading towards camp,
and not knowing directions but being on an island.
We picked a star and walked towards it till after about an hour
we were exhausted and sat down and had a drink of water from my canteen.
At this point I climbed a tree and saw water.
We kept going and finally reached the shoreline.
By now Gibson’s light was totally out of battery power.
I could barely see a glow of puny light behind me and Randy started saying slow down,
and me and Mary said come on more and more often.
We had intended to follow the shoreline around to the right
till we hit the pier and the boat.
But we discovered that the thicket extended right down to the water.
We could walk the shore for about ten feet then had to go inland for about one hundred yards to go around fallen trees
covered with saw briars every where.
Eventually we got pretty good at it,
at one point completely surrounded by impenetrable saw briars,
I dove head first over a small seven foot tall cedar tree covered with briars and broke it down while Randy and Mary walked over my body and past.
We crawled, pushed till we were bound in vines
then put a foot on the mass,
jumped over and continued till we were pretty tired
and plopped down and built a fire,
stacked up some wood,
took another drink of water and lay down.
I was falling asleep, it was 5:00am,
listening to Sue May mournfully yo, yo’ing in the distance.
I said she isn’t treeing but she has been in the same place for a long time.
I’ll go check on her.
I got up and walked up the hill and saw Sue May in a cage trap!
It was 6’x3’x3’ and set for coon.
This cage trap was only 100 yards from the boat,
so I hallowed Randy and Mary.
We put out the fire and came on in to our original camp,
ate a sandwich and built another fire and layed down.
The dogs were dead tired, foot sore, and hungry.
They lay down and soon asleep-5:30 am.
I couldn’t sleep because the ground was so cold.
So I just sat up. I should have cut cedar limbs for a bed
but it was already getting light.
I sat by the fire while Randy and Mary slept.
And when the sun was up enough to see I went 'a huntin'.
I walked down the shoreline and saw 25-30 ducks,
which had roosted along the shoreline.
They flushed way ahead of me.
I shot at one with my .22 but missed.
I saw the place where we had cleaned the coon which I thought was nowhere near here.
I heard 15 Canada geese take off from mid-lake.
Saw nutria and coon sigh everywhere
but only the coon sigh was fresh.
Several ducks had been eaten along the shoreline by coon.
About on the southeast corner of the island I sat on a log in
'coon gut cove' and smoked a joint and headed back.
A swamp rabbit flushed and I broke his spine with second shot,
cleaned him,
and walked into camp just as Gibson and Mary were getting up.
We hung rabbit up on the meat pole loaded the 'Old Harthingy'
and circled the island
before crusing back on home tired but happy.
J. Winters von Knife
'and Sandymay'
Coming home again
Chapter 3, Coming home again
I came home from the Hospital about October,
the summer heat was over and I finally was able to 'come home'
to 'my 25 Acres', seven months after my wreck.
The refrigerator was empty, the house was all dusty
and looked like it had been vacant for years.
I had no money for food so I lived on canned food,
oatmeal, and whatever I could find for two years
before I got disability and food stamps.
I was 236 Lbs at the time of my wreck and now,
9 years later, am still only 192,
a 44 Lb loss.
I haven't run, done a push up or 'got laid' for 9 years.
I started by cleaning house, ordering my stuff in the house,
the barn and attic and am still doing that 9 years later.
I learned how to make knives.
It took a year to 'learn' how to build a forge.
{and build one}
Another year to save enough for a 'Grizzly' belt sander.
Another year to 'learn how to build' {then build} a web site.
I made knives from rail road spikes and out of 'junk'.
{Saw blades and leaf springs}
Then learned about 'new pre-annealed blade steel'
and started making knives out of 'new steel'.
I started raising poultry and building cages and coops.
The big 'show coop' was under construction for 4 years
and isn't finished yet.
Money or 'lack of it' has been the reason.
Writing became my obsession.
I was a music major at U.T.
{the University of Texas at Austin}
and played piano, guitar and accordion.
My piano had worn out and been sold years ago to be rebuilt.
But I had an accordion and before my wreck
{which was not an accident}
I played every night.
But after my wreck, writing became my passion.
My disability Judge, my Doctors and therapists told me to:
"Jack, write all those stories down".
So I spent six years writing down all the stories
'I had in me'.
And ran out of stories just in the nick of time.
I just finished writing all my stories,
before I was murdered again,
and this time by 'two police departments'.
My motorcycle wreck was caused by three 'white trash'
who died in prison the next year,
and not by the prison but by the inmates.
Then four Lancaster policemen and one $15. an hour
jail goon from Desoto, conspired to murder me.
Conspired to murder me, tried and failed three times,
succeeding only in crushing my spine.
I was a disabled coma patient with no criminal record.
And I have no idea why they did it.
But after six years writing, I had an idea.
I was an author now,
and decided to use my newly acquired writing skills,
to report the situation to the proper authorities.
God put me on the earth a 'Mastermarksman'
with a profound hatred of evil and injustice.
I could shoot every dxxx one of the Lancaster police.
15 cops would equal 30 seconds, trigger time.
And I still may, but I sat at my computer for 365 days,
24 hours a day and worked on writing the letter,
and learning who to send it to.
I sent the letter via 'certified mail'
and mailed them 'from Dallas' to the two Cities,
{Lancaster and Desoto}
the Texas Rangers, District Attorney,
Attorney General, and the Houston office of the FBI.
After that my typing is beautiful.
And I have learned much about writing.
My spelling, while horrible after my wreck,
is much improved.
I studied writing for six years and then,
after having been hurt so bad,
used it to 'kill my enemies', and I did.
One day coming home from the store I saw two
Sheriff's cars parked by the creek on the way home.
I stopped and talked to them about what happened,
and was shocked to find out they knew everything about it,
More than I did in fact.
They knew and could repeat every word I said during my
visit to the Lancaster police department to complain.
"Jack was with 'Lt. Boone' behind two locked doors
and 'Lt. Boone' was armed!
{One deputy told the other}
You could have heard Jack screaming at Lt. Boone
all over the building.
"You fat fxxx"!
"Look at me while I am talking to you"!
"Perhaps that was what they wanted"!
"Me to open my door for my insurance card
thereby turning my back to that big van behind me
so that they could shoot me in the back 18 times"!
There it is!
There it is!
"There's that terror in your eyes"!
"Got you fat boy!"
The other Deputy turned to the speaker
with shock in his eyes, saying:
"If I knew I was going to prison for the rest of my life
I would have shot Jack".
"I can't believe he left the Lancaster police department alive"!
The 'speaker' said"
"Boone is a coward and Jack's not"
was the reply.
"Boone, Bolton and the other four are going to prison
for conspiracy".
"The penalty for conspiracy is 99.5 years,
and they have absolutely no defense".
"They are dead".
I live alone, on 25 acres at the end of the road,
surrounded by 1,000 acres of bottom land.
I never have company and it is real lonesome,
as I am disabled and never go to town.
My disability Judge as well as the Head Doctor
of Baylor Hospital severe, traumatic, brain injury ward
Milton Thomas, and all my Therapists told me to
"write those stories down".
So I started writing, and today, nine years later,
I am still writing.
Here are some of the short stories I wrote,
after coming home from Baylor Hospital,
about my hounds, and various other subjects
which are dear to my heart.
My Greatest Accordion Performance
or...
'Close your eyes and just play to me'
Once upon a time...
I went to the 'Dallas Accordion Association' meeting
over in Ft. Worth one evening after work.
I had bought a new {used} accordion
and had not intended to play but just to show
the accordion to a friend.
I had been on a '250 square commercial roofing job'
all day in the summer heat,
had tar on my knees,
hadn't eaten or had a bath,
and had drunk '10 beers' on the way home
to get my accordion and driving to Ft. Worth.
As it so happened a realtor who wanted 'my 25 acres'
and had been kicked out of the association for bad mouthing me,
and had paid $10. each for each one of about 60-70 women
from 'MADD' to join the association to vote me out.
Rather than 13 people, like I expected there were,
when I walked in the door,
not only about 100 women from MADD.
But the head accordion teacher in Dallas, Natasha Gedding.
An accordionist who had a tape out and was real good,
Alan Walling of 'Alpinmusikanten',
and basically everybody who was anybody
with accordions was there.
Someone asked me to go sign up to play,
and so I did.
Boys it was a set up.
When time came for me to play,
they all started yelling and booing.
I am hard of hearing anyway and I just couldn't hear to play.
I tried and tried.
And didn't understand the reason for all the commotion.
I would start one song and get yelled down.
I would start another and the booing was impossible
to over come so I just stopped.
I closed my eyes and held my hands open,
palms up and said:
"Help me Carol."
Took a deep breath
and as the room got a little quieter,
started to play.
{Actually the accordion repairman,
the accordion tuner, at Natasha's request
walked over to the realtors seat and said
'loud enough for everybody in the big room to hear him':
I didn't see it because my eyes were closed,
but somebody told me about it later.}
"The cops are on the way",
"one more word,
and you are going to jail",
"again"!"
And Bryan Cepac stood and said:
"He's hard of hearing!
give him a chance!"
The room got real quiet,
Carol was my girl friend from Denver
and was in fact still in Denver
but was my spirtual guide too
I had said 'help me Carol'
I heard Carol's voice,
as if she were there, say:
"Keep your eyes closed
so that you can't see all those people
'and play to me',
just play to me I'll listen".
I started playing and played for '20 minutes',
{I heard later}
Stopped on 'Du Du Leicht Meir im Hertzen'
or 'You, You, the One of my Heart'.
Opened my eyes,
and made a formal bow like a classical pianist would,
in perfect silence,
and started walking back to my seat.
All of a sudden the whole room broke out in applause,
Yells,
Cheers!
It was deafening!
I thought they were all going to jump on me
but they loved it.
The realtor was sued by the association for half a million,
someone asked Natasha if she would give 'this guy' lessons
and she said with tears in her eyes:
"I would 'take' lessons from him."
"My father was Russian and he loved that song."
The guy with the tape out, Allan, said:
Everything I play is exactaly the same every time.
My material is all memorized.
This guy doesn't know from one second to the next
what he is going to play.
It's all improvisation,
he plays what he hears in his mind.
I would give anything if I could improvise like that.
I just can't do that.
And the waitress said to me
'as I was getting me a beer':
"That was the best anyone has ever played
in here,
ever!"
Boys the material was well...
everything.
Mexican music like the 'Corredo Coyote',
the ballad of the Coyote.
{"The Coyote is just out looking for something
for his family to eat."}
A Mexican lady from 'MADD' said:
"I haven't heard that song since I was a little girl!"
And became so hysterical she had to be taken from the room.
"I'd marry that man!"
German songs like the' Horst Wessel lied',
where a table of 'Germans' stood and gave the Hitler salute.
During the whole song, because:
"It is not legal to play that song in Germany."
"Or to give the Hitler salute,
but that's part of the song,
to stand and salute during its playing
and we have never done that in our lives,
its the S.A. marching song
but it's legal here,
and it was fun!"
"We'll never forget it."
Ha Ha, and with a tango ending!
Ha Ha...
Russian Baliliakas,
Supe's light calvery overture,
The sextet from Lucia de Lammermoor,
by Giatano Donnezetti
{that killed them}
Good bye old paint,
Dixie,
Bonnie blue flag,
Du, Du, Licht mir im Hertzen,
the Marines Hymn.
Not only the requisite
Waltzes, Marches and Polkas,
every grade of music from Cowboy songs
like 'Goodby Old Paint',
'Legend of Lobo',
Mexican Corredo's,
to classics like 'Opera',
Music from every country
and every time period,
and every economic class,
all run together in one giant medly,
two or three or four or five...
verses from each piece,
all mixed up,
it \was insane!...
but beautiful.
It was my greatest performance
I knocked them dead
and never went back
Tschüß
J. Winters von Knife
{need a knife?}
There exists a video of this event
and if I can ever get it,
I will include it in my book.
Thank you
J. Winters von Knife
Old Tom-dogs First Hog Hunt
This is the story of Tom-dogs first hog hunt.
Tom was a walker hound dog,
six years old and a beautiful animal.
He was well mannered and good in every way.
Tom’s heart was good and we took to each other right off.
We got along fine from the first meeting in January 2002.
My name is Jack, eleven months ago after thirty five years
of riding motorcycles. I was coming home from the beer joint
on my Yamaha 850 triple.
About 1:30 am riding slow and easy,
30-35mph instead of the usual 80mph.
Any slower and I would have to down shift to second…
and then I couldn’t see or hear…
{see coma story}
Tom-dog and I are well matched
as we are both recovering from something me,
my motorcycle wreck, and Tom, his former owner.
We are both sort of healing.
So after all this intro stuff we can go hunting.
When I was a kid we lived south of Dallas
where we could hunt, run our trap lines and learn to fish.
There were a few stock farms like Clayton Wyman’s.
But hogs moved into the area I am living in now!
{Which is even further south}
and I have never killed a hog.
And being a professional hunter-trapper hogs and me
were bound to get aquainted sooner or later.
One day right out from the hospital,
I figured it was about time to go hunting,
as I had done about all the recovering I was going to do inside.
So I grabbed old Thunder, a knife, rope, and two beers
and strode with Tom-dog in the direction of the woods
I had hunted in for twenty years.
I made a living hunting with my hounds and trapping
for three years here after another injury.
For miles I knew these woods,
I knew them like the coon knew them.
Knew them like the mink knew them, the coyote, beaver,
the bobcat. I knew them,
I dreamed of these woods.
I was determined to kill a hog so off we went.
We walked down the abandoned road, across the bottom,
waded the newly named hog creek.
Walked across and up the hill till I saw a thicket which felt hoggy, and I circled it.
Tom was being a dog and working the brush everywhere.
There went a mess of hogs!
Headed out to the next thicket two hundred yards away!
Then I saw another start from the thicket,
'Old Essey' my SKS, came up to my shoulder,
the iron sights snapped into alignment
and 'Old Thunder' spoke. BOOM!
A hog running away from you looks like nothing but a big ass.
That’s why a .22 will not do!
Fifteen rounds would not knock down a 200 pound hog
when I had just gotten home from the hospital.
A man needs a .30 .30, 7.62 x 39 or better for a hog!
Old thunder spoke and the first bunch of hog ran across the grassland to the next thicket, out 250 yards.
I looked hard at the last one and saw no damage!
I started circling the thicket rifle ready!
Around once, twice and OOOOOWWWW!
Tom was bawling, not like he does on a coon but like he was thinking this thing is big!
OOOOW! OOWWW!
I looked into the thicket and the hog was dead.
I did not build a fire and whoop and holler like I have done to celebrate a kill, to appreciate a young dogs triumph.
But I patted him real good and sincerely thanked him.
Pointing out how the hog was lost and he was the one
who found it.
I made sure he was praised as this is what dogs live for.
The praise from their human,
he as much as I was amazed at how much meat
we had to drag home. And me just home from the hospital.
The job was done and the hog was raised in a tree,
gutted, head and feet chopped off, skinned.
And from then there was nothing to do but soak,
wash, wrap, and go to sleep.
It was 4:00am when we went to sleep,
and I awoke at 9:00 the next morning still wired
from all the work we had done, and all the work that remained.
I froze the head and one ear.
Tossed the skin and guts, cleaned the kitchen and built a fire. Rubbed a 25 pound chunk of ribs with back strap on one end
and bacon on the other, with salt, pepper, garlic,
Worcestershire, pepper sauce and laid it out on my smoker.
Five or six hours later I was drunk as a dog,
the slab was done, and I pronounced it the first pork meat
I had ever eaten!
It was not like and pork I had ever had before!
Or any meat I have ever eaten before in my life!
Today I fell like a new man,
like I have accomplished something!
I have made 100 pounds of meat!
Me and Tom have gotten to be friends,
{easy with 100 pounds of pork}
and especially with this pork!
I don’t think I will ever buy meat again!
Not with hogs like this across the street!
Poor old Tom dog died and this story
was written before he went on that long trail.
His pictures is right here.
I really loved old Tom and sometimes wonder why
God has seen fit to show me so much pain,
and all at once.
J. Knife
Trappers Philosophy
“College days at the University of Texas at Austin
I loved to study piano.
To learn, study and play the classics.
Bach, Mozart, and Chopin were so profound.
Any part of playing the piano like scales, chords,
right and left hand separately, I never got tired of it.
I can remember thinking that all I wanted in the world was an apartment with a place for a little garden,
and two or three hundred dollars a month,
and a piano and I would never leave music school ever!
One day I sat at the piano nine hours.
I had a clock and would stop it when I went to the bathroom,
or the phone rang.
Nine hours I sat there and studied, and that was a good day.
It is hard to write about music in words.
I would like to write about studying music but how to say in words,
what I thought in tones?
To a person who has never played piano it would be impossible, and that is basically everybody.
Rhythmic patterns, that one feels in ones stomach,
the sounds from a good piano, the tones, the vibrating strings,
and the mixtures of sounds made when two or more strings are vibrating at the same time.
It is interesting to hear just the cords,
two, three, four tones just listening to the intervals without any rhythm.
Intervals, chords, scales, tonal patterns,
all the words that describe music just may be used to awaken interest or remembrance from one who knows music.
From one who does not, maybe,
it would help me writing my book.
In the world there are just about as many pianists
as there are coon hunters.
And not many of either.
I love both but how to write an interesting book,
well it is interesting to me,
but neither is interesting to anybody else,
as coon hunters don’t read much and pianists don’t coon hunt!
So why not!
It is again the 'mutual attraction of opposites',
coon hunting and classical music, for example.
What could be more opposite?
Yin and yang,
Stonehenge and Trapper Jacks fur shed
stones and bones
the poet/warrior all good examples.
The 'mutual attraction of opposites'
is conceptually interesting
but people who like one, rarely like the other.
A true philosopher would,
but people,
are on average just not that philosophical,
and philosophers I have known
actually are not all that philosophical either.
I am interested in the concept of the philosophical opposites
of coon hunting and classical music and so was Jerry Dean
at the university of Texas.
Doctor Dean said so and used coon hunting to the class
as a model of freedom, exercise,
and such while he was describing how we needed to get out of doors and get some exercise.
All of you people are over weight or underweight.
He asked the class how many have gone coon hunting?
I was the only one who raised my hand
even though I had not ever had a good hound
or hunted coon with one,
however I had trapped for 10 years
and
I knew what he was talking about.
The concept of opposites attracting,
is conceptually interesting to a philosopher.
The idea of a well rounded person must of necessity
include opposites.
Mental, physical, violence, peacefulness,
tonal beauty and bullets.
See if I could put this concept into a coherent form
and publish it…
it is a great subject to write about…
and I could ramble on and on about it for hundreds of pages.
If… I could think of how to put the piano school thoughts
into words. Tones-words.
hmmm
This concept is a good one even though most people read sxxx.
It is different!
The coon hunters need to be more intellectual
and the classical pianists need to be more heathern.
Don’t they?
It could be fun!
It may be the subject that I alone of all the people on the earth could write about well.
There is a little red neck in most people
and a little philosopher too!
A little musician,
a little warrior,
farmer gardener,
home brewer,
chef, hunter, weightlifter,
a little writer,
and a little viscous killer,
the thing I am trying to do here is put together
all the things I am interested in and know about.
Into some framework of order
so that I can write about them,
publish a book
and make a lot of money
so I don’t have to work anymore.
Thank you
J. Winters von Knife
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
The Big Stash
I came home from the hospital five years ago.
My house looked strange, like no one had lived there in a long time.
I opened my five gallon buckets of LME {liquid malt extract}
and saw that they were covered with white mold.
I had 6 SIX! 22 oz bottles of ale left after my 'friends' ,
{who had keys to my house}
had drank my brewery dry.
If I ever needed a beer it was then.
Even the disability judge was told by his secretary:
'He'll just spend it all on beer!"
The judge looked at me with a big smile,
{he was ex military and had horses too}
"After all the crap Jack has been through
I imagine he needs a drink."
The roofing business went to hell after 9-11
and there still is basically no money.
I built up and run my old trapline and hunt hog.
Built up the knife shop and started making knives for sale.
I stay home all the time to save on gas,
write short storys on 33 subjects that are dear to my heart.
I grow my own vegetables, raise poultry and play my accordian.
Make knives, cut my own hair and brew my own beer.
For five years I have suffered abject poverty and deep sadness.
My horse, old Dolly, died.
I rode Dolly 26 miles in one day, bareback.
She just got old and died.
My last remaining hound from my great pack,
old Ranger, died too.
Both my girlfriends dumped me.
When reracking...
I would drink a gallon so that their is only 4 gallons to rerack to the secondary.
Bottling... another gallon so there is only 3 gallons to bottle.
Then I drink it all up before it even gets carbonated.
It is a viscious degenerative cycle poverty is,
that if I have any ale at all,
it's never as good as it could have been.
Life has been hard and unfair.
But ... things are getting better.
Today I was bottling some 'DME with S-04 yeast,'
{'8 Lb Hammer'}
and as I picked up four bottles out of the milk crate and placed them on their shelf in the brewery, I had a feeling of 'wellness.'
I looked up at 112 full, green 12 oz bottles.
And down at 20 gallons in primaries and secondaries.
About 65 Lbs of DME {dried malt extract} is on hand
and knives are selling well so that every month
I can buy another 55 Lbs.
55 Lbs will brew 7 batches of 8 Lb hammer.
That's 35 Gallons and I can only drink 30!
So, slowly but surely,
I am at getting ahead.
My new hound Sandymay is my best friend,
and a good walker hound.
{She loves to ride in the truck,}
{and we are in love.}
I now am brewing ale faster than I can drink it.
Of a 5 gallon batch,
50, bottles go on the shelf in the brewery rather than 30.
The brewery is filling fast!
Soon I will be drinking ale that had been in the bottles 3-4-5 months
Life is good.
J. Winters Knife
jacksknifeshop.tripod.com/
Sandymay on the Trapline.
Sandy learned to run my line ahead of me,
at first two or three sets ahead. But later I was running my line and only a third through it when she came up and told me with a proud look in her eyes:
“We didn’t catch anything today”
Sandy my New Walker Hound
Sandy’s story begins September 5th 2003.
I have a new Walker Hound named Sandy.
She was given to me from a friend who works at the local feed store Feeders Supply.
Thomas has been looking for a good hound and I told him today if he needs a place to hunt just come over and hunt my woods.
I have access to 3-4 miles of woods all along the creek.
The most coon I have ever taken in one season was 24.
Hunting with hounds!
I trapped coyotes and Bobcat but didn’t want to trap a coon
as I had hounds to hunt and they could handle three miles
of creek easy.
Sandy is two and a half years old and a fine looking Walker. Thomas told me where she was and I drove over to his brothers house and as I pulled up in front of the house.
I took one look and fell in love with Sandy dog.
Old Tom would have really loved her.
Tom died of heart worms and I really miss him.
He was a good dog and really loved me too!
With all his black and those long, long ears he would have made beautiful puppies with Sandy. She has lots of white and a long aristocratic nose. With her nose and Toms ears the pups would have been really world class.
Sandy has been here a week
and aside from a few accidents she has been no trouble at all.
Sandy is a lithe young hound with a good body and a long frame. She likes to put her front paws on me and stand up as high as she can. She can even do this without me to stand on.
Now Sandymay…
Gentlemen,
Sandymay and I went down to the Coon Creek Camp
tonight and got us a Coon.
Sandymay was a free Walker hound
and we have been together for four years.
She is so tight mouthed however
I never know where she is, and have taken to staying
in one of two camps,
so she knows where I am and hopefully
if she trees something it will be with in hearing of the camp.
We didn't get anything the first winter because I was trying to stay up with her
like I used to do with my old hounds.
When I started staying in camp and she learned where the camp was, and that I would be there, she started hunting around camp.
She is a little weird which is why she was a free dog.
But Sandymay is real smart.
Well... she is real smart in some ways.
Anyway we got two the second year, three the third and four last year.
Tonight she treed a good coon on the way home
and I got there and saw eyes,
and these were coon eyes!
I shot it out with only one shot,
which is good for me as I'm 58 and have to have glasses
to read now. I can't see the old sights as well as I used to.
Bang went old Squirrel grabber and it sounded like a solid hit,
the coon started acting like it was head shot and then fell with a dull thud.
I yelled Coon!
while it was on the way down to the ground and when it hit Sandy grabbed the coon
and after shaking it real good like I expected her to do she grabbed the coon and ran off with it!
Sandy!
I called but to no avail.
I thought she would come back,
but no she didn't.
Then as I was walking home,
I was hoping she would bring the coon home
and I would find it in the yard in the morning.
I may, as Sandy is real smart and she does things like that.
However in the morning I will take her on a leash
to the place we killed the coon.
I marked it with a plastic sack.
And make her find the coon which shouldn't be very hard
and she was covered with coon blood when I got home.
Her legs especially, so I know she carried the coon a long ways,
and she can find it if she is on a leash.
There is a big blood trail.
So, wish us luck...
Jack the Knife
'and Sandymay'
'Tight mouthed hounds',
Is an appropriate subject for me because I have one...
Sandymay was a free hound, and I now know why.
She has a few faults but I can live with most of them.
Sandy will not make a sound in the woods except to tree.
However she barks 4,000 barks an hour in the truck.
And right in my ear.
{I counted her barks for a minute and multiplied by 60}
Hmmmm
Sandymay is loving, sweet and when the need arises
a good fighter.
She ran 'six full grown German Sheperds'... off,
biting them in their behinds,
every second or third jump
all the way back to the house they came from,
them 'Ki Yi' ing' all the way home.
Sandy is a female Walker hound 8.5 years old
and I am a 58 year old disabled coma patient, I can get around well though.
We sleep in the same bed together
and 'she is my sweet puppy'.
Sandy got two coon the year I got her.
Three the next year and four last year,
so we are getting it together.
She loves to hunt and we go down to the 'Coon Creek Camp'
where I build a fire
and sit down and drink beer.
I can't walk with her,
because I never know where she is,
and when I first got Sandy,
I felt like I was out in the woods alone.
But she is always out there with me,
hunting hard,
I just can't ever tell, because she is so 'tight mouthed'.
I have two camps and she knows where they are,
and never trees out of hearing of which ever camp I am at.
She is just one hound,
and lots of times the coon will come down
way out from the tree it went up,
and she looses them.
I need to get another hound or two and am looking,
but I will just hunt with my Sandymay dog this winter.
Maybe we'll will get 5 coon this winter???
First Coon Island Trip
1983
About dark, Randy, Mary and I loaded 'the old Harthingy'
and launched from a boat ramp on Cedar Creek Lake
and headed for coon island.
The water was perfectly still with no wind,
perfect weather for coon hunting.
It was cool but not cold.
We could see the island as a dark shape,
and the lights from highway 274 behind it forming a glow,
a halo, over the top of the dark island.
We went to the left of a sunken ridge line that extended
for half a mile from the southeast corner of the island,
marked by lots of tall dead timber,
and right up to the island.
I intended to land and build a fire but Randy wanted to circle
the island so we did.
We discovered north cove, east cove,
saw a 13 pound swamp rabbit and came around to an old pier.
I tried to get past the timbered ridge,
and it was too thick to go through,
we went too far out in the lake to circle,
so we decided to stay there.
There was no pier for 10’ out from shore
as it had rotted and caved in,
so we had to improvise.
There was predictably no firewood either
but we found enough to get a fire going.
We got a good fire going had a drink of some of Randy’s whisky,
smoked a joint and felt better.
We kept dogs tied to let the island quiet down
and let the coon start moving again.
By 10:45 the dogs started booger barking and we let them go.
They came back and stayed in camp till we went hunting about 11:15.
We walked north across an old grown up farm then through woods with really big trees including the biggest cedar tree I’ve ever seen,
it was four feet in diameter.
Big, old trees,
'Good Coon Woods'
I thought.
Then Joe and Sue may started running a track.
They were excited and I ran to keep up.
Then they were barking treed and I thought this is too easy!
When I got to the tree they were on a den tree.
We saw fresh chewing on the edges of the hole and coon scat under the tree. Identical to scat taken later from a dead coon,
so we called it a ‘sure enough den tree’ and went on.
It didn’t take 10 minutes till they were treed again.
I ran over and was the first one there.
A coon! I hollered,
Randy and Mary came up and sure enough there was a fine coon about one year old.
I took a rest and drilled her through the head with a perfect shot.
Took her to shore and cleaned her out,
put her on a heel stick,
and off we went to get another.
We tramped all around the island mostly in the center.
Dogs treed again this time in a big cedar.
Since I couldn’t see into the tree I decided to climb tree and shake the coon out or just shoot him.
I unloaded .22 auto and tied it to my waist and started climbing.
I checked limbs on the way up and saw no coon,
as I got to the top something jumped on my head!
I yelled and ducked but it was only a swaying limb
from the next tree over.
Finally the top and nothing so I came back down.
Dogs swore there was something in the tree,
but I finally succeeded in getting them started again.
Joe swung wide and picked up another track,
ran and treed again.
This time I could see it,
a very big squirrel and this was at 1:30 in the morning!
I shot squirrel, cleaned him and we took off.
About then I came to mounds in the middle of the forest.
They could have been Indian burial mounds as we knew a guy who used to come out to the island and dig up old Indian pottery
and lots of it!
Joe Miller was his name and he would use a rocker
with ¼” hardware cloth on the bottom,
and dig up the sandy dirt.
When he had gone through the gravelly dirt looking for pottery shards,
he would take it out in the lake and dump it
so he didn’t have to go through it again.
Joe worked the island for years and found all kinds
of Indian related stuff.
The island, before the lake was built was a hill between two big creeks that came together on the south end.
It must have been a good fishing place and higher than the surrounding area so a good camp or village site.
There used to be lots of Caddo Indians here
so these mounds were likely burial mounds I thought.
But it was so dark we could only tell that all the surrounding land
was flat except these mounds with small trees growing on them.
Then we came out on top of a hill where an old set of pens and fences were still standing but very old.
From there we followed an opening back until it quit and we started descending into what we would later call:
“The thicket of death”.
The thicket was solid with sticker vines taller and thicker than I’ve ever seen.
It got worse and worse with no end.
We couldn’t keep out directions straight either.
The dogs couldn’t even get through they would go around
several hundred yards and catch up.
Dogs would tree and they would sound excited
like they could see coon.
But by the time we would get there…
nothing.
This happened three times and took us in circles for three hours, always in the thicket.
I remember a smaller tree in the thicket and a giant oak
that may have had a coon cause it had several big holes,
but was so big 6’ in diameter and so thick we couldn’t see much of it.
I figured that a grown and very smart and experienced coon had been climbing trees and jumping out thereby breaking his scent trail and taught these young dogs a valuable lesson.
Another time the dogs were barking excitedly at the shoreline,
we knew they were on a coon.
They would walk out on a log and back again,
run up and down the bank and back to the log.
Walk out to the end of the log and bark.
That old coon must have swam off from the end of that log
and broke his scent trail when he heard the dogs coming.
Scent was real fresh but ended at that log.
We didn’t think to take a dog either way,
but we didn’t pick him up coming on down the shoreline so he must have gone around us and landed the way we had just come.
There were groups of doves in d**n near every 6th tree 3-10 birds.
Every minute or so, all the time we were in the upland part of the thicket we would hear a “whoosh! Whoosh!
And off they would go,
at night!
I remember three slick trees had occurred when I said
“lets start heading towards camp,
and not knowing directions but being on an island.
We picked a star and walked towards it till after about an hour
we were exhausted and sat down and had a drink of water from my canteen.
At this point I climbed a tree and saw water.
We kept going and finally reached the shoreline.
By now Gibson’s light was totally out of battery power.
I could barely see a glow of puny light behind me and Randy started saying slow down,
and me and Mary said come on more and more often.
We had intended to follow the shoreline around to the right
till we hit the pier and the boat.
But we discovered that the thicket extended right down to the water.
We could walk the shore for about ten feet then had to go inland for about one hundred yards to go around fallen trees
covered with saw briars every where.
Eventually we got pretty good at it,
at one point completely surrounded by impenetrable saw briars,
I dove head first over a small seven foot tall cedar tree covered with briars and broke it down while Randy and Mary walked over my body and past.
We crawled, pushed till we were bound in vines
then put a foot on the mass,
jumped over and continued till we were pretty tired
and plopped down and built a fire,
stacked up some wood,
took another drink of water and lay down.
I was falling asleep, it was 5:00am,
listening to Sue May mournfully yo, yo’ing in the distance.
I said she isn’t treeing but she has been in the same place for a long time.
I’ll go check on her.
I got up and walked up the hill and saw Sue May in a cage trap!
It was 6’x3’x3’ and set for coon.
This cage trap was only 100 yards from the boat,
so I hallowed Randy and Mary.
We put out the fire and came on in to our original camp,
ate a sandwich and built another fire and layed down.
The dogs were dead tired, foot sore, and hungry.
They lay down and soon asleep-5:30 am.
I couldn’t sleep because the ground was so cold.
So I just sat up. I should have cut cedar limbs for a bed
but it was already getting light.
I sat by the fire while Randy and Mary slept.
And when the sun was up enough to see I went 'a huntin'.
I walked down the shoreline and saw 25-30 ducks,
which had roosted along the shoreline.
They flushed way ahead of me.
I shot at one with my .22 but missed.
I saw the place where we had cleaned the coon which I thought was nowhere near here.
I heard 15 Canada geese take off from mid-lake.
Saw nutria and coon sigh everywhere
but only the coon sigh was fresh.
Several ducks had been eaten along the shoreline by coon.
About on the southeast corner of the island I sat on a log in
'coon gut cove' and smoked a joint and headed back.
A swamp rabbit flushed and I broke his spine with second shot,
cleaned him,
and walked into camp just as Gibson and Mary were getting up.
We hung rabbit up on the meat pole loaded the 'Old Harthingy'
and circled the island
before crusing back on home tired but happy.
J. Winters von Knife
'and Sandymay'