BULL OF THE
WOODS
From the Chapter "The Stuff
of Legends"
If
you have not been in
South Georgia
in the middle of summer then you would be hard
pressed to imagine how hot it gets. Envision
living day after day in dripping-wet humidity, extreme heat, without air
conditioning, or any real way of keeping cool, other than fanning with a funeral
home fan, sitting under a shade tree while sweating and fighting gnats, or going
swimming. Late most Sunday
afternoons, after all the company was gone, the Deriso boys would strike out for
the Nancy Hole, their favorite swimming place.
The
boys learned to swim in this particularly deep hole formed by a sandbar in the
crook of a small creek that ran behind the farm up the road a piece.
Learning to swim, to these farm boys, was just as natural as learning how
to plow a mule. Aficionados of
proper grammar will quickly point out my error in not describing it as how to
plow with, or, plow using a
mule. Sorry, but plow a mule worked then and it works now, for those who have been
below the
Mason-Dixon Line
.
To
get to the Nancy Hole they had to climb over a fence and run across the corner
of a pecan orchard belonging to a nearby farmer.
This orchard also served as the pasture for the farmer’s livestock.
The big Kahuna of the livestock in the pasture was a big, strong, mean,
ill-tempered
Hereford
bull that had an intense dislike for
trespassers. If the bull had been a
dog he would have been described as territorial.
The
boys usually saw the bull in plenty of time to outrun him to the back fence,
climbing over the fence before the bull could inflict any serious bodily damage.
The bull would stick his head over the fence, watch the boys running
away, and snort and paw the earth, as if issuing a warning, and a dare, for the
boys to come back. The boys always
gave him another chance when they returned home from swimming, but the bull was
not smart enough to lie in wait for them at the fence where they crossed.
He was usually up near the barn hanging out with the young milk cows.
Actually, he wasn’t so dumb after all.
One
weekend the boys made new flips (slingshots) from forked chinaberry branches,
strips of rubber inner tube, and pieces of shoe-tongue leather for the pouch.
They decided to go to the swimming hole and cool off and try out their
new flips. When they came to the
pasture they crossed the fence, and instead of running, they stood their ground,
whistling and yelling, confident their new weapons would protect them from the
bull. Here came the bull running at
full speed, ready to kick some trespassing farm boy butt.
They wouldn’t get away this time!
The
boys had small creek rocks in the pockets of their overalls to use as ammunition
for their flips. As the boys loaded
up with small, smooth rocks it never occurred to them the amount of force it
would actually take to stop or deter an eight hundred pound, infuriated Hereford
bull, running wide open at fifteen miles per hour, with death and destruction on
his mind.
One
of the boys had come upon a small steel front wheel ball bearing about the size
of a marble at the filling station, and was dying to try it out in his new flip.
He loaded the steel ball bearing into the flap of his flip, pulled it
back as far as he could, aimed at the bull’s front shoulder, and let fly.
The ball bearing probably had an initial flip velocity of between three
hundred fifty and five hundred feet per second.
This velocity is less than the muzzle velocity of a .22 caliber rim-fire
bullet, but you still would not want to get hit with that ball bearing.
A flip, like a pistol, is not extremely accurate much beyond ten feet.
The bull was about thirty feet away when my uncle opened fire.
He did not hit the bull in the front shoulder.
In fact, he did not hit the bull in his front at all.
What he did do was hit the bull in the bull’s most private of his
private parts.
The
bull came to an immediate stop, whuffed, sat down, and his eyes rolled back in
his head until all you could see was the whites.
The bull gave a low, human-like moan, realized what he was sitting on,
and stood back up, as if standing up would hurt less than sitting down.
He immediately sat back down and gave another low, pitiful moan.
He repeated this up and down procedure five or six more times, evidently
decided that there was no position that would provide him any kind of relief,
and gingerly half-walked, half-limped across the pasture, back to the barn.
The
bull never bothered the Deriso boys again, but the young female cows would come
down to that part of the pasture and give them mean and dirty looks when they
crossed the pasture on the way to the swimming hole.
The Story Page
|