Prince Albert. Who was he? Well, I recon’ he was the husband if Queen Victoria of England. In the early year of my life I knew him as a figure on one of my favorite toys. I don’t remember who in our family did all that smoking but there was a large supply of tobacco cans up in the loft. I would go in the canning room and climb up the ladder into the loft and play for hours.
The loft was always dark with just a little light seeping in at the eaves. Out house was a hand built log house and there was not any soffits sealing in the eaves of the house. Therefore, we often had flying squirrels and birds nest in our loft. It was very warm up there in the winter so when I couldn’t play outside because it was to cold, I would play in the loft.
The floor of the loft was rough planking that was nailed to the under side of the log ceiling joist so that when you walked you had to step over the logs. The under side of the planks were the ceiling in the house proper, which was papered over with cardboard and then wallpaper on top of that.
A small bit of the loft had a plank flooring on top of the logs about 12 feet square just as you first climb up into the loft. There was an old, full size, cast iron bed in that section where some of the boys slept when they had company. They always had company! It was covered with thick homemade quilts mom had made from old denim and twill pant legs. Nothing was allowed to go to waste at our house.
The rest of the loft was open and had no flooring on top of the logs. Playing there was fun. I made houses and furniture by stacking the tobacco cans as if they were building blocks. Prince Albert cans made great places for treasures such as a pretty button or scrap of rickrack from mommy’s sewing scraps.
PA cans were also valuable to me and my sister Shirley for storing our birch scrapings for smoking later. Our older sisters, Jewel and Delphia, who were teenagers, used these cans to curl their hair. The cans were cut into half inch strips and the strips wrapped in brown paper bag so the edges would not cut their hair. Then these were used to roll the hair by wrapping the hair around the strips and bending the edges back over the hair to hold it in place. This worked just as well as modern curlers!
We had very few store bought toys. We didn’t need “something to do” to keep us from being bored. Finding an old tobacco can and a keen imagination made for days of fun!
Early Saturday morning dad turned the light on in my room and said “It’s time to get up Sug”. Now, when I say early I mean about 4 am! He always wanted to be in the mountains sitting under the hickory trees before daylight. I was the only child still at home of the 10 us. I was born when mom was 45 and dad was 47. By the time I was big enough to go hunting with him the rest of the older ones were long gone and mom worried about daddy going off into the woods by himself. I was always a Tomboy and loved guns. I had my own 22 rifle when I was 12 and could out shoot all the teenage boys on the creek. So, I was tickled to death to get to go with dad.
We would slip out before mom got up, taking our guns and nap sacks with extra shells and room for the squirrels we talked about killing and head for the hills. We would walk for three or four miles back into the head of Short Fork or somewhere else where he figured the squirrels would be cutting. It would be dark as a dungeon and dad had the flashlight. I walked right behind him in his very footsteps almost. He would look under the logs we stepped over to make sure there were no copperheads before I stepped over. I wore an old pair of his work boots laced up to above my ankles just in case he missed one!
He would talk about how he loved squirrel meat as good as anything he ever eat if it was cleaned right. He said if somebody cleaned a squirrel and didn’t know what they were doing that they wouldn’t be fit to eat. He would talk about people hunting them with shotguns and say that the only way to hunt squirrel was with a 22. He said if they were shot with a shotgun they were just tore all to pieces and you couldn’t eat’em. He would talk about how he loved to get under the trees and find a good spot to sit and wait for day to start breaking. This was when the squirrels started cutting. As we got closer to where we were going he would stop talking and tell me to be real quiet.
We would walk the last few 100 yards in silence. The only sounds would be the soft squishing of dew dampened leaves as we carefully placed our feet. Occasionally you cound hear the plop of dew droping from the trees or branches swishing as they glided of our arms and legs as we walked through the underbrush. Just before daybreak the night bugs had stopped chirping altogather and the day creatures had not yet started to stir. Dad would find me a good place to sit either on a rock or a log with a tree trunk for a back rest and then he would get about 10 or 20 feet away and find him a suitable place to sit and wait. We would each be alone with our thoughts and the dark as we waited for the morning.
Just before the glow of morning began to lighten the eastern sky we would hear the first squirrel cutting. Dad would whisper” he is over there in that big ole hickory” but we couldn’t see him yet so we waited. Actual daylight comes pretty fast once it starts. Withing about 15 minutes from the glow of first light we could see good enough to make out the branches above and any movement. Dad would whisper ” I see him way over there in that tree. Can you see him?”
“Where?”
“Right up there on that first big limb, can’t you see him now?” I would finally spot him and whisper ” Yea, I see it!” and if I didn’t I would say that I did anyway because I knew daddy wanted me to see it. He would ask me if I wanted to take the first shot. I always said “no, you go ahead”. I really had no heart for killing them and I knew daddy loved to! He was a dead shot. He would take a bead and fire and the squirrel was in the bag! I would always go get it and he would look at it to see if his shot was true and there was always a grin and look of pride when he saw it was a well placed shot and a clean kill. Sometimes he would get two from this spot and then before it got to light we would slip around the mountain to another spot and he would get another one or sometimes a couple more.
By then, the sun would be about ready to come up so we would start back. The birds would be awake and chirping to each other as we walked home. As the sun came over the mountain and the day started to heat up, the steam would start rising from the forest floor and shafts of sunlight became visable as they knifed between the trees. Spider webs of spectacular design would sparkle with tiny jewels of dew. How peaceful and special were these moments I spent with my daddy! When we finally got home mom would have breakfast ready and we would eat and then daddy would sit down with a cup of coffee and cut off a big chunk of apple tobacco for a relaxing chew and spit session.
Mom would get a dish pan full of cold water ready and go out on the back porch to clean the squirrels. I wound watch her take a sharp knife and cut the squirrel across the back about middle ways between its front and hind legs. She would cut just enough to get two fingers from each hand in the open cut, she inserted them like hooks and started pulling in opposite directions, the hide would peel back and would be turned inside out so there was no hair anywhere near the meat. When the hide was peeled back so it was just attached at the feet and head she would cut the hind feet off and throw the hide away. Next, she would cut the front feet off and continue to peel the hide off the head. the snout and hide was cut off and thrown away. All that was left was the whole animal meat without a hair on it!.Then, mom would put it in the pan of cold water and gut it, cut it up and either fry it or cook it and make squirrel gravy in it.
Now, after watching mom skin the first squirrel one day I decided that I could do it. As usual, she let me! Well, I couldn’t figure out how to hold it and cut it’s back. The skin was loose and kept moving under the knife. I finally wrestled it around and got the cut made but it was full of hair. Then when I put my fingers in the cut, it was too little. I had to cut it some more. By this time it was wet with blood and wet hair is sticky hair! When I went to peel the hide back my hands were slick with blood and the squirrel flew out of my hands and hit the dirt. I put it in the water to wash off the dirt. I tried again. I pulled and tugged, slipped and slid. Inch by inch I got the hide peeled back but by the time I did there was more hair embedded in the meat than there was left on the hide. The whole thing had to be discarded! That was my last attempt to clean a wild animal. I went hunting with dad every time I got a chance but there was no more mountain woman training for me!!!
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