May 21, 2010 · loosey anna · animals, the great outdoors
A typical email exchange with my dad.
Dad: Up along the East Coast and in New England the snake is indeed called a Timber Rattlesnake – it was the snake featured prominently during the American Revolution with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me”. That’s still pretty good advice.
Then, down thru the Appalachian Mountain country and the costal country and swinging west as far as where I live, here in Louisiana, they share the range with Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes; which can get bigger than even the biggest Timber rattler. I killed a big Diamondback when I was a kid working in a cotton field that measured 7’11 ½” from his nose to the tip of his rattles. He was as long as the bed on my old ‘longbed’ 1954 F100 pickup. I showed that snake all over town. People took pictures and measured him and measured him again. That afternoon I sold him to one of my father’s semi-outlaw friends for, as I remember, about $12. That was a lot of money in 1962. Gasoline was $0.23 a gallon at the local Gulf station. They had old-time nickel slots in there, right in the front, and a card game going all day in the back.
But, back to Canebrake rattlesnakes: There is still debate among wildlife biologists as to whether the Canebrake and the Timber Rattlesnake are the same species, or, if the Canebrake is in reality a different snake, a separate subspecies.
I’ve killed a few Timber Rattlers in the North Mississippi hills, and up in middle- Tennessee, around the farm where my mother’s grandfather walked to, starving, a couple of years after he stood at attention at Appomattox Courthouse and watched RE Lee surrender to US Grant; one of two men I consider to be the only true military geniuses of that entire and recent unpleasantness, which was called by some a “civil” war.
Anyway, my great grandfather was standing with the small remnant of the 26th North Carolina who’d actually survived the ‘duration’ of that war. And he later wound up in the hills of Tennessee, where he married a pretty brown-haired local hillbilly girl whose name was Missouri Stevens. They eventually had eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood. I’d visit up there, up on their little hill farm, during the summers, sometimes, when I was a kid; they had Timber rattlers there, mostly, and a few Diamondbacks and lots of Cottonmouths along and in the creek. Sometimes we’d catch rattlesnakes in the creek, too. All of which my cousins and I would kill, unless we were barehanded. Then we’d just back away real carefully.
Well, I’ve lived here in Louisiana, man and boy, most of my life, and I like the big hardwood timber. I know a lot about our swamps and old timber and the creatures that live in them; and it my personal opinion that they are different snakes, the Canebrake rattler and the Timber rattler. But it’s nothing but my opinion, which isn’t worth, really, the time it’s taking you to read this overlong note.
Anyway, I don’t dance around with them and charm them, or let them bite me like some of these snake-wiggling, holy-rolling, tongue-speaking, sweating, eye-rolling, shaking, shout to Jesus and the Holy Ghost Pentecostals do.
I generally kill just them, the big ones anyway. They can hurt you, they’re dangerous to man and beast. That snake, yesterday, was the 1st full-grown one I’ve run across in about a year. So I killed it and brought it home and skinned it and scraped it and washed it and salted it and rolled it up. I’ll stretch it out in about a week and tack it to a board.
Oh, when I stretched him out straight on my shop table to skin him, I actually put a tape measure on him: he was just a fraction over 65”. Nine rattles and a button, with a big old spade-head about the size of a woman’s fist. His girth was just a little bigger than my upper arm.
Me: how did you kill him exactly?
Dad: With a stick. I was empty handed when I saw him.
October 21, 2009 · loosey anna · animals, homelife
My 93 year-old grandmother was recently moved out of her place and in with my cousins.
I happened to be talking about the situation to a family member and when I mentioned the 15 cats in the house he laughed and asked me what I thought about the chickens. I said, what chickens? He said, the chickens that live in the house.
They have CHICKENS living in the house. They’d moved them inside to protect them from the ‘coons’ that live nearby. I can’t confirm any of this as I haven’t been to see it for myself (except for the photo above). But I do know this: chickens cannot be house trained. And they stink.
1) Indoor chickens are a health hazard. Period. And insane. When I was a child in a small Louisiana parish we used to talk about people so poor they could watch chickens pecking through the cracks in their floorboard.
2) A pack of cats living in a home are nasty too.
3) The last time I was in their home, it was filthy – that was before the fowl and with only 1 dog and a couple of cats; and with kids in residence only part time.
4) My 93 year-old grandmother has a been a typical old Southern Lady snob her whole life. And here she now lives? Not to mention the cousins using the fact that she now lives with them as a way to extort money from the rest of the family to buy them a new house, new car, kids clothes.
So, here are my thoughts about the people and the situation, all summed up in one word: Holyfuckingshit.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I thought you might like to start planning your meal. Here are a few things we had every year.
For starters, salad. Healthy salads.
Ambrosia Salad:
Canned tangerine wedges
Can of pineapple chunks
Bag of miniature marshmallows
Bag of that shredded coconut stuff you find in the cake aisle
Container of Cool Whip
Throw into a bowl. Mix.
Pear Salad:
Can of pear halves
Mayonnaise
Cheddar cheese grated really small.
Put pear half on plate. Put huge scoop of mayonnaise on top (if only you could hear how this word was pronounced by my grandparents). Sprinkle with cheddar cheese. Serve.
Some other stuff, does it even matter what? Are you making a shopping list?
If this is too hard to do on your own, Simply Sara may be able to help with her informative step-by-step video instructions.
This doesn’t need much comment; however, I will say that in my own experience, the people you see in these photos aren’t simply Southern caricatures, they are real people. I just might be related to some of them.
A side note: I’ve found that the combination of patriotism and insistence on speaking English is inversely proportional to actual command of the English language.
Today, I logged on to Facebook — as one normally does after getting their double soy latte and vegan donut here in San Francisco — to discover my sister has just become a “fan” of McDonald’s. In Facebook parlance, that is about as good an endorsement as it gets.
But really? A “fan” of McDonald’s? Nothing more interesting? Like the local “guns for tots”? Or less gross?
Though truth be told, I am not surprised. My family isn’t interested in much really. And there are factions who still consider McDonalds’s take-out fit for Sunday dinner and Sonic Burger for Thanksgiving.
On a recent Friday night in Brooklyn, I was sitting with my wife and wondered to myself, “What might people in my old hometown be doing with YouTube and a global audience?” I did a search for “greenville nc”:
The search auto-suggest feature took me straight to “greenville nc fights,” which was too much to pass up. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you “Drunk Trailer Park Fight”:
You just have to love the shaky camera work through a rain-covered windshield, the breathless silence as the spectator takes it all in, the shadowy figures walking in circles with their dukes up, the mobile home backdrop. . . . all punctuated by the only dialogue in the clip: “Oh shit!”
A typical email exchange with my dad. 
My 93 year-old grandmother was recently moved out of her place and in with my cousins. 
