Baker's Branch

Since a boy, my idea of adventure was entering a dense stand of timber at daylight with a twenty-two, single shot rifle in hand. I did it at every opportunity between the ages of ten and seventeen. The rifle, a Winchester Boy’s Rifle, model circa 1937, belonged to my grandfather, Austin Howell.  A box of .22 caliber long rifle shells cost me fifty cents which I gathered up every day from the deposit of discarded glass pop bottles at Hundley’s general store in Calvin. Three cents a bottle, which I gave right back to Mr. Hundley for squirrel bullets. Apparently, we both thought it a good deal, so many years did we barter. I went off to college knowing where to get my squirrel shells and very little else. Just the thought of the adventure I found in those deep, dark woods motivates me to this day. I did not know a boy my age that did not want to be an Indian so heroic a figure did they cut. Solo trips into the squirrel woods allowed a boy to imagine whatever he wanted to imagine. ...

If I said the word “summer”, and then said the word “thundershower”, would you understand the difference? Do you know the smell of hot concrete in the rain, and how gratifying it can be because of what it means? It does not rain in this country in the summertime. June, July, and August are what people in the oil patch used to call “waterhauls”. You can go months at a time in Oklahoma and not see a drop. Not one.  In that country, Little Dixie, and in that time, the 1950’s, my grandparents began thinking of river trips, trotlines waded knee deep to waist high, baited with crawdads seined from a pond; hand-cranked ice cream on the porch in the dark, heat lightning in the distance. Hot, hot summertime. Air conditioning? Jeeminy Christmas. “Swamp coolers” if you were lucky; those that melted the hard candy into amorphous lumps on the coffee table and wrinkled the pages there in the family Bible. The best place in the country was right there on the front porch in the dark; not coo...

  It’s light enough, now, to thread a needle outdoors at six in the morning, and cool enough to make you wonder why anyone ever complains about the heat in Oklahoma. Concrete workers, and roofers, know this. So do catfishermen. In June, in the hot, hot summertime, in the rocks, you’re going to find the catfish, three species, spawning; no roofers or concrete workers. If you do see the latter, just keep moving, gaze averted. One cool morning this week, right after a pleasant nighttime shower, you would’ve found me there. I was catching fish, nice, fat channel cats up to about three to four pounds; one bigger that broke me off. Channel? Blue? Flathead? I don’t know. I was using live bait, so it could’ve been any of those three mentioned, the flatheads almost always preferring live bait to dead. It was big, whatever it was. I say “live bait”, and that would include earthworms and crawdads, wouldn’t it? Over the years I’ve caught more cats in the rocks using what they call “marke...

           Men and women do not react to happiness the same way. Women cry over things that make them happy. Men don't do that. A movie with a happy ending will make a woman cry. So will a graduation, hers or someone else's. A gift card, with no money in it? Oh, yes. A wedding? Holy mackerel. The list is practically endless.         Once I became aware of this significant difference (I was maybe eighteen, thereabouts) I began to employ it to my benefit, and never looked back.         When my wife and I married (Wewoka First Baptist), older women all over the sanctuary, older women she had known for years, broke into tears, recalling no doubt her earlier promise (substantial), and, now, right in front of them, the reality of the fine catch she had made. There it was, me, standing up there beside her for all of them to see. At some point during the ceremony, I heard a sob or two behind ...

My wife is a good cook. Not me. I have to cheat. Somewhere around Memorial day is when you are most likely to catch me. I’m pretty good at it. I’m probably doing it as you read this. I watched over my father’s shoulder the first chicken he ever charcoal grilled. It was up in Nebraska where we were visiting my grandpa Harry between dad’s naval service moves. He hated growing up on that farm, but somehow always managed to pull us into that muddy drive just north of the milk barn for “leave” between the two coasts. Remembering his parents, he wanted to visit with them, farm or not. If we were to stay a week, Dad would get bored somewhere around the third day in, and start doing the farm chores he joined the Navy to get away from. Mowing alfalfa to be baled, he would jump down off the tractor and run down baby jacks and cottontails fleeing the side-mower blades. I said, “run them down”. It didn’t seem possible, but he would bring them to me in a cardboard box to play with. Once he brought ...

    Author's Note:     I married above my station in life, but not blindly. Of course the girl was nice looking, but her dad had to be a fisherman, and he was. Her mother had to be a good cook, a good housekeeper, and in every other way have her life in order, and she did, and then some. Such had been the men and women in my life, and I was just barely smart enough to see the advantages of that lifestyle. On the other hand, the girl had plenty of options of her own. There were two Division 1 football players in her life; two or three young men Hollywood handsome, and a future millionaire or two. She picked me. The Lord works in mysterious ways.         Fiftieth wedding anniversaries, you know, the "Golden" ones, grew on her family tree like ripe figs on a biblical tree. There were summers that seemed as if all we did was go to the big celebrations; hours spent eating white cake with sickening pure sugar icing, small plates of cashews and ...

  Editor’s Note: I was assigned to the US Army Headquarters for all of Europe located in Heidelberg, Germany in August 1985. A few months after arriving I  was promoted to major. Having never been to Europe it was an exciting adventure for all of us. This article was a response to a letter I sent Conrad soon after my promotion. Dear Vernon: Got your letter yesterday, and it sure was good to hear from you. Congratulations on the promotion. Making Major in today’s army is no mean feat. Sorry to hear the raise in pay falls considerably short of matching the newly acquired status. Major Vollertsen: it has a ring to it. Nancy’s bound to be proud. I know Dad is. I feel certain that it was no coincidence your letter arrived at the height of the hunting season as it did. It must be nice living in Germany, and touring all of Europe in your free time, but did I read a note of whimsy between the lines? What could be better than a covey rise off the side of a plum thicketed hillside...