DOWN FOR THE
TEN COUNT
From the Chapter "Deep
Roots"
Sis
was not the only family member who had an occasional brush with the local
County
Mounties
. My
grandfather took no guff from man, woman, nor child, and this hard-assed
attitude got him in hot water occasionally.
One of his most memorable confrontations occurred when he was
eighty-eight years old.
He was
having a problem with his neighbor’s dog digging in his garden and chasing his
livestock in the back pasture. Grandpa
asked the much younger neighbor to please keep his dog at home, but to no avail.
He made several more entreaties but he was ignored by the neighbor and
the dog continued to be a nuisance. Grandpa
finally told the neighbor he would shoot the dog if it came into his pasture
again. Well, the dog did and Grandpa
did.
The irate
neighbor came over and began berating Grandpa Jones for shooting his dog.
Grandpa Jones told him he only shot him with a .22 cartridge loaded with
birdshot, and the dog had only been “stung” just a mite.
The neighbor was not to be mollified and finally called Grandpa a
“senile old goat.” That was a
bad mistake on the neighbor’s part. He
should never have called my grandfather “old.”
Grandpa’s hands were the size of Honey Baked hams and when he made a
fist it was the size of a volley ball. With
one lick Grandpa knocked the man up under the old red pickup truck, unconscious.
When the neighbor came to he crawled from under the truck, called the
Sheriff and demanded the old man be locked up for assault and battery.
A deputy
came out and got both sides of the story. The
neighbor stayed in the officer’s face, pressing his demand that Grandpa be
arrested. The exasperated deputy
finally told the neighbor if he didn’t shut up he would turn Grandpa loose on
him again. The neighbor went
ballistic at this news. The deputy
finally reached his threshold of suffering fools gladly and turned to him and
said, “I’ll tell you what I will
do. I am going to arrest this old
man, take him to jail and book him, and file a report.
Then, I am going to call a TV news reporter I fish with, and tell him the
entire story. I suppose you wouldn’t mind seeing the television story about
how this old man who is fifty-three years your senior kicked your younger butt
with just one punch. Just think, you
might end up on Sixty Minutes.
It’s your decision.”
The
neighbor decided to retire from the field of battle, Grandpa avoided
incarceration, and the dog never came back into his pasture.
The deputy did give Grandpa a ten dollar citation for cruelty to animals
for shooting the dog. He told
Grandpa if he had killed the dog there would have been no problem, but since he
just wounded the dog he would have to pay the fine.
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