Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there’s more than one way to get killed with a rope

Back when I was a youngster i had an uncle who was a gyppo logger in a little old place called peanut in northern california. sometimes when money was scarce for us my dad would go up to the log camp to help out. I got to spend one whole summer up there myself. the log camp came with aN INHERITED mule named praxiteles. Praxiteles was an old “retired” mule and one of my chores was to take care of him. one day i went down to feed him and he was gone. he had wandered off through a gate that somehow was left open. I was kind of wondering where he might have gone when the neighbors called and said he was over at their place and would I bring a rope and come fetch him. they lived about three miles off through the woods from us. the rope that i found to take was about 30 feet long. it was pretty long for a lead rope, but i thought it would do in a pinch. off i went after praxiteles and four of my uncles coon hounds tagged along. about half way there it had started raining and by the time i got to the neighbors place me and the dogs were pretty well soaked. THE DOGS DIDN’T CARE BUT I HAD TAKEN A BIT OF A CHILL. the neighbors, of course, warmed me up with some lunch before i started back. they helped me rig up the rope into a sort of hackamore and fixed it onto praxitieles and we started off going along back home. pretty the soon the hounds put their noses up into the wind and started in baying and off they went trough the woods chasing after something or other. there was nothing to do but follow them. those dogs, once they got onto a trail they wouldn’t come home until you called them off or they killed the critter. by and by me praxiteles came up with the dogs at the bottom of a big old pine tree. way up in the top of it there were four raccoons huddled together suspiciously watching the dOGs. I was standing there looking up at them and thinking that four coons would go pretty good into the stew pot. i couldn’t reach the lowest branch on that tree though, not even when i got up on praxiteles’ back. finally i had to undo the rope from the mule and tie one of it end securely around my waist. by throwing the other end of the rope over the branch i was able to hoist myself up to it. i had found a kind of stout looking walking stick earlier and was figuring to use that stick to knock the coons down out of the tree with. by the time i had got up to the top of that tree those coons had forgotten all about the dogs and were quite nervously watching me. we were up there about fifty feet, i guess, and the branches had become PRETTY small and flimsy. I didn’t want to fall out of the tree myself so i decided to tie myself to the tree before goinG into action with the stick. the very first swing THAT i made with the stick caused me to lose my balance THOUGH and I dropped the stick trying to hang on. all four of those coons THEN took into me like screaming banshees and i couldn’t get out of their way because i was tied to the tree. there was nothing to do but fight them off with my fists. i was a pretty scrappy kid, but not really much of a match for four enraged coons. finally i knocked all of those coons out of the tree and as soon as they hit the ground the dogs killed them. when i got down out of that tree my left hand and forearm were shredded and i was bloodied with about a hundred bites and scratches. i had some pretty deep ones that were leaking blood profusely. I had to take off my britches and wrap the coons up in them and tie them off with my galluses. i proudly marched back home through more rain in just my skivvies. time i got there i had caught a bad cold and was badly used up and had to be taken in for some doctoring. my cousins sure made a fine stew for that night though.

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