BACK WHEN I were a young man, I was in Pinhook a lot. This was in the ’40s and ’50s. There’s some big islands back there, with beautiful pine timber on it. I’d ride my horse, saddlebags full of corn, back in there along the root road, to check on my hogs and my Cracker cows that ran wild. The road was called root because it was built out of whatever people could dig up. Nobody lived back there.
The timber company didn’t care if people run their stock back in there. Back then the woods burnt and there was plenty of grass for the cows. The timber weren’t hurt. The hogs ate that wampee root—they’d eat it and squeal. To humans it was hot and bitterish, but hogs were crazy for it. [The milky tubers of the water plantain, or wampee, were consumed by Native Americans, as well as by settlers.]
I went in sometimes and trapped razorback hogs. The company didn’t care if you trapped hogs. We built trap pens out of cypress sapling poles. I’d tie an ear of shell corn to a string holding up a gate. When I come back and checked on my traps, there’d be a hog in there. Hogs gentled right up, feeding them corn. We could tell our animals apart because of the way we marked the ear.
Sometimes we’d have an old bear eating our calves and pigs. You get after them, they head for that swamp. You get in there, you in trouble. Mostly it’s solid territory, but there’s some deep holes. Mostly it’s getting lost. People from outside have to holler you out.
Now, I wouldn’t be able to go a hundred yards before I’d get turned around.
One night, my wife woke me up. “Silas,” she said. “Something’s messing with the hogs.” An old bear had caught one of the hogs. He left with hog in his mouth. I watched him climb a four-foot fence—bobwire. He climbed the fence with hog in his mouth. Crazy me, I got out and woke up neighbors. We got the dogs on him. The dogs bayed up in Bert’s Eddy Bay, but we couldn’t get to him. I come in to home way after while, before day. I got a little drink of Hattie Call and got after that old bear again. Finally we found him up an old tree. We killed him at nine o’clock in the morning.
A widder woman lived near there and cooked us steak for breakfast. She taken charge of it. She fried up round steaks—that’s the muscle on each side of the back. He was fat. We ate the steaks. They tasted good.
One time I went in Okefenokee with hog dogs. They bayed up in a Bermuda patch and were making such a racket I had to kick my old horse in the side to get him up there. We got a little closer; I drew back the bushes. I was looking through palmetto fans. The dogs was fighting a cub bear. I was near Breakfast Branch and my gun was in the truck, a mile away. I thought I could take a pine pole to kill it. I knew its mama would kill me if she came back. I waded in, scared, and beat him to death. He never hollered. I put him over the horse and carried him home to dress out.
They’d put me in jail now. They protect them nasty things.
We ate ’em. They was meat for us.
We hunted gator back in Pinhook too, in the lakes. If you knew how to grunt like a baby gator you could call up a big gator. You would shoot him and get in there in the water and get him out, even if he sunk on you. A gator hide brung so much a foot. To cure it you put salt on it and rolled it up. A seven-foot gator brought $3.50. An acre of land was $3.00 to $3.50.
We’d go in Pinhook to hunt deer. We camped out. We trapped coons too and sold the skins. We tacked up the hides to cure. People would come by and buy them about twice a month. Roeann in Union City was a man with connections. He was the one bought mine for years.
I seen one panther in my life. One. Not a wildcat. We used to run wildcats with cat dogs—I’d get out of my good bed to do that. I mean I seen a panther. That day I had been to Lake City for brick. I was cutting across between here and Lake City on an old dirt road, coming home, and one jumped across the road. It was late afternoon and there was a big ole swamp on the north side of the road. I’m sure that’s where it was headed.
We built us a log cabin. Me and my wife. She got on one end of a crosscut saw and we cut down the trees we needed. We’d drag the logs up with a horse and peel them. The cabin was twenty-four by thirty-four feet. We smoothed cement with trowels in the cracks. We lived in it. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.
I was young then and full of vinegar. I plowed a mule, made corn and peanuts. I chipped boxes and made turpentine. I sold raw gum to Jacksonville—I’d carry three barrels in my pickup truck. The plant was on the north side of town. I’d drive right up to the plant and they’d unload it. I had my own bees and would rob ’em. I had four or five colonies. Garden stuff and fruit trees do better when you’ve got bees.
My wife would go pick blueberries on the edge of Pinhook. You couldn’t hardly see her eyes for the bushes. She’d put ’em in the freezer to make pies. Blueberry pie. She could make a good one. She’d pick those highbush blackberries too.
She’d cook pies, chicken and rice, sour cream cake, pound cake. She could do it all.
Her name was R. E. Maybe her folks meant to name her Aury, but she went by the initials. She taught first at old Taylor School, and later at the high school on 122.
When she died I didn’t even know how to turn on the old washing machine. She did all the washing, cooking, canning, ironing. She made me collect rainwater for her iron. Our well water here has iron in it that coats up on things. I’d fill quart bottles with rainwater. There’s three settin’ in there right now.
She’s been dead two years next April. We were married sixty-seven years and nineteen days when she died. Not a day goes by I don’t miss her. When R. E. died, it wasn’t so much I lost my wife; I lost my best friend.
There’s so many more people now. Ain’t so many cows and hogs. There used to be a big ranch over here behind our place. Now it’s just trailers. I used to know about new people moving in. I guess I don’t circulate like I used to. Ever’ Wednesday I go rake and clean off R. E.’s grave. The old cemetery is a-filling up. Soon we’ll run out of land.