I started reading the magazine when I was a boy. Perhaps in another post I will share a story I read in it over 40 years ago that made a big impression on me. Over the years the magazine has become slick and has beautiful photography of North Carolina scenes.
This month’s edition has a story written by Guy Owen that tickled my funny bone. Owen was a novelist, poet, editor, critic, and teacher who grew up in NC. I enjoy reading a story like this one written by a man with a Ph.D.
Our State magazine introduces his story with these words: Owen’s affection for North Carolinans’ expressions and humor is evident in his stories. “One marked characteristic of Tar Heel talk is humor,” he wrote. “Perhaps it’s a spillover from the tall tales of the frontier, but the humor is often wildly exaggerated. It makes use of some irony, but is seldom subtle, always energetic, and generally optimistic.”
“Uncle Corny and the Coon Monkey” by Guy Owen
Sometimes I think that just as most rural churches during the Depression had mourner’s benches – or pews referred to as that - there should have been a corner in all country stores set aside and designated the Liars’ Corner. At least this would hold true for our crossroads grocery before World War II. If our old rusty cast-iron stove with the leaky flue could talk, it could recall some yarns that would make most modern oral histories pale in comparison and seem as bland as leftover rice pudding.
And if prizes were handed out for pure stretchers, T.J. Wiles, Will Shipman, and Uncle Corny Eller would walk off with a croaker sack full – although my uncle had a habit of topping most of his companions’ yarns.
I thought of this the other day when driving by a filling station with a monkey in a wire cage, which reminded me of Uncle Corny’s talk about hunting with a monkey he’d trained especially to hunt coons. (The chimp wouldn’t pay any attention to possums.)
In those days, there were plenty of caged animals like monkeys, coons, and bears used as come-ons at gas stations, so monkeys were fairly easy to come by. As you got closer to Florida, they favored giant snakes and alligators, and, sometimes exotic birds as well.
Anyway, on this particular Thursday night, Uncle Corny was later than usual, and T. J. Wiles and Will Shipman and three or four young pulp wooders had already got primed by bragging about their coon dogs and favorite setters and pointers. Pretty soon, though, I heard the old duffer hitcher his mule to the corner fence post. He came in out of the cold, wearing his blue lumber jacket, felt hat, and knee-high boots. At the door, he spit out his chew of Black Maria; then he fished a Nehi Grape out of the drink box and commenced eating a box of ginger snaps I handed him. He seemed not to hear the bragging talk as he warmed his gnarled hands at the cherry-red heater in the sandbox.
Will, who was the old-timer’s archrival as dog trainer and coon and deer hunter, was recounting how he’d recently palmed off a crippled hound on a city-slicker from Wilmington.
“How’d you manage to unload that worthless pointer, Mr. Shipman?” T. J. inquired.
“Why, I told the fella that was the dog’s natural gait, that he just naturally rotated his feet like that so one leg would be resting all the time.” The fat sawmill owner slapped his thigh and laughed, and the others joined in.
T.J. admitted that was pretty sharp trading, but then he recalled how his father had swapped off a cripple setter that way once - only he claimed the dog always measured how far he’d run. “And there ain’t but three feet to the yard, you know. That’s why he never put this right paw down, to keep from getting confused about his distance.”
There was a lull in the conversation, and I could hear the wind whistling around the gas pump outside. It was dark, and it would soon be time for me to go home and do my homework for the next day of school.
Next, T.J. took on about what a fine pointer that hound was before his foot got mangled by a steel trap. “Why, you know that old log across Eller’s Branch yonder toward the river? Well, Pa trained that dog - Ring was his name – so he’d drive a whole covey out on that log, When he got 10 or 12 partridges lined up, just so, he’d kill them all with only one shot.”
The pulp wooders agreed that was a dandy trick and would save a lot on shells during a hunting season.
T.J. seemed to get carried away by their warm response, so he added that his father used to do a lot of night fishing there and set a great store by that log. “Why, one night he dropped his lantern in the creek and couldn’t find it to save his neck. Next week, he was fishing there again and hooked what he thought was a big old black fish. But when he finally hauled it up, don’t you know he’d caught his lost lantern - and the wick was still burning.”
He looked up expectantly, but Uncle Corny just grunted from where he sat on his nail keg and never seemed impressed at all. The old hunter did allow that he knew that log well. “Once time back yonder before you young sprouts was born, I caught a mud cat there that dressed at over 90 pounds.”
All the customers turned to stare at T.J. Wiles, until he got right red in the face. “Durn it all, Uncle Corny,” he said. “If you’ll take 20 pounds off your catfish, I’ll blow that lantern out!”
But the old codger never let on, never cracked a smile, “I reckon I ought to remember that there tree. Before it fell during that twister before the Big War, it was the selfsame oak where I had to quit hunting with my coon monkey.”
Here was something fresh, and it snapped their heads up like a dynamite cap going off. The half-dozen loafers set their drink bottles on the counter as the old man swiveled around on the nail keg, his back to the stove.
Will said, “Did I understand you to say ‘coon monkey’?”
Uncle Corny gestured impatiently. “I thought you fellas knew about how I trained that monkey to team up with my best coon dog.” He explained how, of course, the monkey couldn’t actually tree a coon, since his nose wasn’t any account. The way it worked was he sent the monkey shinning up the tree to get the coon after his dogs had treed him. “That little monkey and my dog Jackson made the best hunting partners ever known in these parts. That’s an iron-clad fact.”
T.J. ventured, “Your monkey would go up the tree and shake out the coon, would he?”
“Why no; Junior there could do that. He’d shinny up the tree with a flashlight and a pistol and shoot the coon out for me. I tell you, him and Jackson was plain death on coons.”
“Hold on here, Corny,” Will broke in, “How would he carry a flashlight and a pistol both at the same time and climb the tree all at once? You answer me that.”
Someone suggested that maybe he toted the flashlight with his tail.
But Uncle Corny waved the objections off like they were so many gnats flying about his lean, leathery face. It turned out he’d bought a cowboy belt and holster at the five-and-10-cent store in Elizabethtown, so the trained chimp never drew on the coon until he had him cornered on a limb.
“That stands to reason,” T.J. conceded.
“Sure it does. But all the same, the old hunter said sadly, “I had to get shed of him.”
“Go on, Uncle Corny, what happened? I asked.
By now the men were getting pretty excited. Things had quieted down so you could hear the drink cooler humming.
As it transpired, his beagle Jackson had treed a coon one night in the big oak that later fell across the creek. Uncle Corny clapped his hands and cried, “Coon!” to the monkey, which as usual was riding on his shoulders.
“Then what?”
“Well, he was off like a shot, and I could glimpse him darting his light all over the top limbs of that big, old oak. He was up there nearly a half an hour with Jackson barking and telling the news under the tree. But there won’t no coon to be found, only a great big knot that looked like a coon. It was a false scare, don’t you see?” He paused as if it were difficult for him to continue.
“What happened then, for goodness sake?”
Uncle Corny shook his head mournfully. “I don’t like to think about it to this day. Directly that little monkey flung out of the tree, and he was riled so he was poison-mad. He never so much as looked at me, and before I could make a move, he snatched out his pistol and shot my favorite coon dog between the eyes. Jackson fell over dead as a door nail.”
“You don’t say so!”
“Yessir, you see, I’d uncovered his only fault. That monkey couldn’t stand a lying coon dog. The next day, I sold him off to a fella that ran a station and grab joint down at Acme-Delco, and he never hunted again.”
“I don’t blame you one bit, Corny,” Will said. “If he got that mad at a dog, why, some night he might take a potshot at you over some trifling matter.” He nudged T.J. in his ribs.
But the old timer never even bothered to reply. He’d already gone out to unhitch his mule in the dark. Naturally, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew Uncle Corny was grinning like a sack of possums.
No comments:
Post a Comment