Down from the big old house we go, my two sons and I. They have decided that today they will explore the woods at grandmother's. My wife, overly protective as usual, sees that I guide this adventure.

For two small boys, exposed only to patterned sub-divisions, tailored lawns, and manicured playgrounds, each step is a new adventure. They cannot under­stand the seemingly endless carpet of leaves; but instinctively, as all children will, they roll and tumble in them.

At the end of the hollow they find their greatest discovery, a chimney still standing with the skeletal remains of a foundation. Made of hand hewn split pine, the beams are still solid. One could almost feel them say, "Build on me again," but with a deep saddening, you know that they belong to a time past. It was here in what had been a small sharecropper's house that C. D. and Mattie had lived. Mattie helped grandmother in the house, and C. D., well, I don't think he ever did anything, except hunt.

To a young boy of nine, C. D. was awesome. Almost as old as my grandfather, he was a giant of a man. With skin black as ebony and gray hair, he always wore an old dress coat with a felt hat pulled down on the right to cover up the hollow where the eye had been. Often, during the cold, he rubbed the cheek and temple around the hollow. Once, after working up the nerve, I asked him what happened.

"That eye belonged to the devil," he said, "and he takes what's his." I sensed a sadness in Mattie’s eyes and I never questioned him again.

In time we became the closest of friends, and it was he who introduced me to hunting. He could always find the feeding tree of squirrels. Many a time though, I scared them off. Finding the patience to sit absolutely still for what seemed like hours was sometimes beyond a 10 year old. C.D. would always tell me “Patience, patience --- is a virtue, that is its own reward.”

But of all the hunting, C.D.'s greatest love had to be 'possum hunting. Many a night in the late fall, C. D., Don my younger brother, Elton Ray my cousin, and I made the rounds of the persimmon trees. We found the possums in the trees with his light and used sticks to drive them down. Then C. D. would throw a croaker sack over the 'possum. He never shot one. Each catch went into an old chicken coop behind the house where they would be fattened up.

With the 'possums in the bag, the best part of the evening lay ahead, for Mattie always had hot biscuits fresh from a wood stove, fried crisp salt pork, and hot coffee waiting. Mine was always mostly milk with a little coffee. (Boston coffee, my grandmother called it.) We all gathered around the hearth of the fireplace to eat. It was there C. D. always had an eager audience in several pairs of young ears. Whether C. D. told stories about 'coon hunting or 'possum hunting, he always had a couple of yarns that held us spell-bound. Then around eleven, Mattie would have him walk us up to grandfather’s house.

Now, as my sons explore this old chimney and walk these beams, I wonder who will fill C. D.'s role in their lives. I fear they will never know the childhood of the rural South as I did, or the friends I had.

To this day I still vividly remember eating the heart out of a 30 pound watermelon at sunrise, getting caught taking sugar cane stalks from the neighbor's patch, having tomato fights after the harvest.

Far removed from the world today, I ponder the justice of modern civilization on my sons' childhood.

“Was this a ship?” asked my oldest.

“No, this was the house of the ‘possum hunter,” I replied.

“Possum hunter, what is that?” he exclaimed.