A Thanksgiving Story

If I have told you this high hunting adventure before please stop me.

I have told a few people here and there this story and I am not quiet sure if I blogged it or not. I went back to check my blogs for last year and the entire month of November 2005 for Chicken Fat and Chickenfat is missing, so I don’t honestly remember.

One Thanksgiving about four or five of us teenagers met someplace very early in the a.m. and headed to White, Georgia, to hunt.

On one of our outings we discovered a series of dirt country roads near White, Georgia, that seem to have went on and on.

We had a plan. Have you ever been out on a lone dark road and seem to see deer and rabbit dart out in front of you? Sometimes they are stunned by the headlights and freeze.

We had one of Larry’s father’s old beat up junk cars from his used car lot. The plan was for a person to ride on each front fender, with a shotgun, and if we see a rabbit or a deer or anything else that moved shoot it. We didn’t know much about hunting, nor much about physics… shooting a kicking shotgun while on a fender? A no no.

First we found an old deserted house and stopped in and built a fire in the fireplace to sat around and tell high school gossip, who was romancing with whom, and it was dark with the fireplace flickering lights onto the walls and ceiling, so that probably called for a few ghost stories that I vaguely remember.

After a while of idle talk we wanted to try out our new theory of shooting live things from the fender and went out on the dirt roads. God watches out for drunks and fools, and we qualified under the fool category. We did not see one live thing from the headlights. We rode mile after mile on the dirt roads. Nothing.

We decided to turn around and go back as it began to get light.

The first house we passed a young black man in overalls was out by a chopping block skinning a rabbit. He got his.

When we entered White, Georgia, City Limits we had a flat.

We checked the trunk and there was no spare.

We sat there in the near dark trying to figure out what to do. We were sitting on the edge of a turn in to a service station. Maybe we were in luck. We would just have to wait until they opened…. If they open on Thanksgiving.

As it got lighter we saw across the street was a rock house. I noticed through the years there are plenty of rock houses in that area and also the Calhoun and Dalton area. Behind the rock house a little path led up a little hill to an outhouse.

Larry said he was going to go take a dump in the outhouse. We advised him against it. Larry loved to take dumps in outhouses. He always had. He said the family probably wasn’t up yet and he slipped up, crouched down and from bush to bush and into the outhouse.

We were sitting there talking about something and I noticed movement. I looked up and a lady in a housecoat was walking up the path to the outhouse. She had a magazine or a newspaper section with her. I told everybody to “LOOK!!!”

We all were screaming in fits of laughter when the woman opened the door of the lighthouse.

Larry bounded out trying to pull up his pants with one hand and scratch his forehead with his other hand. Larry, every time he got embarrassed would scratch his forehead to cover his face.

He ran down the hill with the woman looking behind him with her mouth agape.

Larry jumped intothe driver’s seat started the car and off we went, flat or no flat. He ruined the tire and the rim. We made it to another service station/store down the road.

When the store opened we bought a used tire on a used rim, which just happened to be the car’s size for $5.00. Our last $5.00 pooled together.

We got back on the road and about 2 miles down the road we ran out of gas.

“Now what?” We asked.

I forgot our logic process on how we came up with the next decision. I would hitchhike home about 50 miles away. At home I would get my car and drive over to Larry’s parents’ house and slip Larry’s car out of the driveway and leave mine there. I think the idea behind that is that they might be furious if Larry came home but didn’t come inside. And the reason to leave my car and take his car is that Larry said he had a wad of money hid in his car.

As planned, I hitchhiked to my parents house. My parents were having Tom and Mary Jo (see blog just a day or two ago) over for Thanksgiving dinner. I quickly shook hands and left in my car, saying I didn’t have time to eat.

I went over to Larry’s and parked my car behind their garage and slipped Larry’s out. I saw Larry’s older brother run out just as I was hitting the street.

This was before the I-75 went through this area. The main road to that area was the 4-Lane, aka Highway 41, aka, Cobb Parkway.

I got 30 miles up the road near Cartersville and ran out of gas.

“Now what?”. I had no money. There was money hid in Larry’s car but I had no idea where at.

Incidentally, about the same place I ran out of gas is about the same place Anna’s nephew Neal walked across the street and was ran over and killed about 15 years in the future.

I started walking north, towards where I left them, which was about 20 miles away.

I was walking north backwards, facing the south with my thumb out. What I did not realize and they did not either, they were doing the same thing, except the opposite. They were walking backwards thumbing down the southbound lanes. We were almost even.

I forgot if it was me or it was them, but somebody saw the other and we all got back together and walked back down to Larry’s car.

That is synchronicity!

What would happen if we both had gotten rides, or either I or they got a ride? We would have missed each other.

I would have wounded up, in time, back in White, Georgia, looking at an empty car. And they would arrived at Larry’s house only to discover my car instead of Larry’s car which they didn't have the keys to.

As I said, the Lord looks after fools and drunks. We had reason to be thankful we were fools.

I have no memory of retrieving our guns or the old car, but I’m sure we did.