Well, here are some stories from my youth.

One evening, my pals Buster Lindsey and Jim Horton and I decided to try to gig some frogs in a slough located behind a country church about a hundred yards south of Dockery.

With our knee boots and carbide lamps, we ventured into that slough. We had pretty good luck wading around and gigging a few frogs. Then I heard some splashing and waded over to see about it -- and a snake was making an attempt to swallow a fish eel. He had the eel about half done and looked like he wasn't gonna be able to finish the job. I gigged the snake and then realized that the gig prongs really hung on quite well to the snake. Took a lot of doing for the three of us to get loose from the snake. I've used that many times as an example of being very careful about your decisions – especially think really well 'fore you gig a snake.

But now, back to my snake: After getting loose from the fish eel eating snake, we noticed more reflecting eyes than before -- but they were moving. More snakes! The snakes were getting interested in the fluid leaking from the frogs we had gigged. We quickly and unanimously decided to get out of that mud hole. The moral here is obvious: When you go hunting, maybe you oughta see if there's something around that might be hunting you.

When I got home, about two miles south of where Buster lived, I was washing the carbide out of my lamp in the kitchen sink. I noticed one carbide lump lying in the sink, so I decided to just light it with a match, forgetting I had washed some down the drain. The explosion messed up the kitchen ceiling and woke up the family – not good – but the sink trap was cleaned out real well.

[Buster, a lifetime friend, now deceased (his widow, Mary Ann, lives in Cleveland, Mississippi), was a naval officer in WW II; Jim, also a lifetime friend, an Infantry Officer and later a Harvard graduate and a Medical Officer, is still alive in California. I’ll be telling more about them.]

It may have the next day 'fore I realized the critter was cold blooded and never had been warm and that I had lied to Daddy in an attempt to make my case and he knew I was not telling the truth but he didn't embarrass me by pointing it out. I never forgot how he handled it, nor did I forget what I had done and how bad I felt when it dawned on me what I had done.

Although I'm sure we (me and sisters Ernestine and Claudine) must've occasionally stretched the truth, our parents (Nora and Claud) always emphasized that they never expected or suspected from us an untruth (although I now suspect that was their way of training us – and it worked pretty well).

This causes me to recall something I did which I shouldn't have (no way can I recall all of them). I was trying to figure out how to disassemble our 22 Colt Woodsman. Somehow I got the slide loose and the recoil spring flew across the room. I spent most of the night trying to get it stuffed back into place. Eventually I did, and in the process I found a button on top of the slide, the purpose of which was to lock the recoil spring in a compressed position after which disassembly became easy. But one can hardly imagine my concern at having to show that pile of parts to Daddy. As it worked out, finally finding that button, I didn't have to.

Makes me recall the time I was standing by Daddy when one of the hands came up and told Daddy he had finished whatever it was he had been sent to do, and the hand asked what to do now. Daddy said for him to just stand there and jump up and down 'til Daddy thought of something else for him to do, and the hand did just that. Had I been the one to whom he'd given those instructions I'd have done exactly what the hand did – Daddy was to me exactly that sort of authority figure.

That Buster Lindsey was a special person. One of his Navy stories I remember was when one of the officers who inspected the quarters where Buster was staying would do a show-off thing of pulling himself up with one arm on the door frame to where he could inspect for dust on top of the door frame. One time when the inspector told the guys there was dust up there, Buster pulled himself up to look (with one arm). Afterwards, the inspecting officer said to Buster something to the effect, "We're going to have to settle this, aren't we?”

Later they did settle it – and Buster won. Buster did twenty-five pull-ups with his left arm and then went with his right arm, and the other man couldn't equal that.

At Mississippi State, Buster was a star two-mile track man, and that's how he earned his athletic letter and became a member of the "M" Club. Buster and Rut Berger, his college roommate, were members of SPE frat and I was an SAE, but how that happened is another story

The plane was a primary trainer from WWII onto which the owner had built a canopy (it was originally an open cockpit trainer). One day Nott was flying me around and did a snap roll. Well, one of the plexiglass sliding windows sorta exploded out. Nott thought that was funny, so he snap rolled again and popped another window. We never tried to replace them.

One day, Buster and I were taking off in our plane. I was piloting, and as we neared the end of the runway the air speed gauge decided to quit working, so we had no way to know (other than seat of pants) if flying air speed had been reached. We took off anyway, hardly having any choice. Yes, I did the take-off, but Buster did the landing. Guess I only made half a pilot – never could land. I never did solo.

Sorenson was letting me attempt a landing in Clarksdale one day (bear in mind there had been no ground schooling), so I headed for a landing, choosing a runway with a nice big "X" at the end of it. When Harry figured out where I was headed, he grabbed the controls. Turns out an "X'd" runway is one NOT to be used. Guess this is an illustration of where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

In a different plane one day, Nott was flying us over the “Big Field,” the “old river" at the Merigold Hunting Club [Bolivar County, Mississippi]. We saw a big buck run and hide in some buck vines. Doggone if Nott didn't land in the grassy, hog rooted field, and we walked to nearly where the buck was hiding and flushed him.

Sounds something like boys will be boys. How we ever got grown I don't have any idea.

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More early Delta stories - Mavis Turner's diaries


Read many more great articles listed on our USADS memoir pages.

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