The Red Flannel Rag

when it’s green. Let it dry here for a month, and you will have a good bow.” A month later,

he helped me string the bow with a leather thong. While we were waiting for the hickory

stick to become a bow, we carved arrows out of long narrow sticks that came in the boxes

when Aunt Goldie ordered baby chickens. The sticks were a soft, clear pine and could be

whittled down to round arrow shafts. Sometimes we carved out the arrowhead from the

wood and other times we made metal points to slip into the end of the shaft. Randy showed

me how to make feather tips for the back end of the arrows. These made great toys as well

as weapons to shoot rabbits. The bows were very strong and we could shoot arrows great

distances.

When I was a little older, Randy took me hunting with him. Squirrel hunting season

didn’t start until October, but he liked to hunt them when the leaves we re still on the trees,

and the squirrels were fat from eating acorns and hickory nuts. He said they had a better

flavor from eating green hickory nuts.

One day, early in September, we went squirrel hunting. We walked for miles,

stopping to listen every now and then. He showed me how to walk quietly and step at the

exact same time he stepped so we would make less noise. He could see a squirrel hiding in a

tree better than anyone I knew. He could hear a squirrel slide around a tree as he walked

underneath. When this happened, he quietly picked up a rock and threw it on the ground

on the other side of the tree. The squirrel would slide around in full view. One shot and the

squirrel fell to the ground. On this particular September day, we returned home with

twenty-four squirrels hanging from Randy's belt.

135