Sporting Life

Tent Adventures

The Airstream isn’t such a bad idea after all

By Tom Bryant

There was to be a full moon — not just a full moon, but an October harvest full moon. Linda, my bride, and I were at what has become known in our family as our beach house, and it’s often located at Huntington Beach State Park, right below Murrells Inlet in South Carolina.

Beach house is a misnomer in a way, because we pull our little house, actually an Airstream trailer, behind our Toyota FJ Cruiser. The beauty of not having a real location at the coast is that we can take our vacation home with us and then put it up until it’s needed again.

We love the coast in the early fall. There’s just enough edge to the ocean breeze, the bugs are diminished, most of the kids are back in school, and it’s too early for the invasion of the snowbirds, the nickname given to the folks that leave their winter-frosty states up North for warmer climes. The surf has cooled enough to bring in big reds, flounder and other sport fish that will keep me on the beach, happily fishing for hours.

We usually try to get to Huntington several times a year, but October has become a must month for a trip. Sadly, this area has been discovered. In the past, we were able to reserve a site just about anytime we would call; but the spillover from Myrtle Beach, plus our friends from the North, and now-retiring baby boomers who have discovered RV camping fill up the place every week. During the summer season, reserving a site is practically impossible; and even in the off-season, it can be hard to get one.

This week, though, was to be a restful time, kinda laid back, maybe with some bike riding, of course fishing, and naturally we would work in some time to visit our favorite seafood restaurants down in Georgetown. We would absolutely have to budget a day trip to Charleston to check out old familiar places and see if they were still familiar. It was to be a busy but happy 10 days.

Linda and I walked out on the beach right before moonrise to watch the amazing, almost surreal moon ascend from the ocean like an ancient god. A golden magnificent orb to begin with, the moon drifted to a grey-white with the valleys and craters clearly visible. I had carried a couple of low-slung beach chairs with us, and we sat right at the surf line and listened and watched as Mother Nature put on her best show.

There were a few walkers, and a solitary fisherman was trying his luck down the beach; but for the most part, we had the strand to ourselves as we watched the moon get higher, lose its orange glow, and diminish in size. As the tide began to change we headed back to the Airstream and the dessert that we had postponed, being too full after our delicious shrimp dinner.

After dessert, Linda worked on an art project she had brought, and I decided to sit under the awning for a bit and have a cup of coffee. The full moon lit the campground with a soft glow, and I watched as a few walkers took a late stroll before bed. There were several tent campers at the site across from us, and they were sitting around a campfire softly talking as one of them strummed a guitar. It was a peaceful, restful evening.

I watched the young folks having a good time and remembered the days when we used to tent camp. I use the word “we” rather loosely because Linda was never a big advocate of spending a night in a tent. She did it one time. Thinking about those early days reminded me how my camping experiences have changed over my many years sleeping in the great outdoors.

To say they have changed is an understatement. Here we’re camped in the little Airstream with most of the conveniences of home. Our experience today can hardly compare to the years I used an Army surplus pup tent as a kid. The little tent worked fine, though, unless a driving rain drenched the campsite, then the tent leaked like a sieve. I always carried a waterproof duffle bag to stuff everything in that had to stay absolutely dry.

After the pup tent came a waterproof sleeping bag that I won by selling Christmas cards. I completed the requirement of moving the first batch of cards, primarily to family and friends, and received my sleeping bag. That wasn’t the end of it, though. The greeting card company I was dealing with sent another batch of cards, unannounced and unrequested. I was also responsible for selling this bunch. With the second batch came all kinds of threats on the chance that I didn’t complete the sales task. After a call from my father to a company representative, the problem was rapidly solved. I got to keep the sleeping bag and could have kept the cards, but my dad convinced me that the best thing was to pack them up and send them back to the company, collect.

The so-called waterproof bag worked OK if there was only a heavy dew, but any kind of rain would seep through the outer lining, and I would wake up as wet as if I had just gotten out of the bath. There were other problems, too. I was not the only one sleeping under the stars. Outdoor creatures, you know, have a tendency to do the same thing.

One early spring night, I was stretched out in my bag and dozed off after a strenuous day afield. As a precaution against snakes, I had placed a rope around the bag. I had read somewhere, or probably more like it, had seen it on a Roy Rogers western movie at the old Aberdeen theater, that a rope around your sleeping pad would keep out snakes. I can attest to the fact that it worked, no snakes that night. Early that morning, though, as I was really sawing logs, I was awakened with a start: An animal was licking my face. After a few seconds of terror, I discovered that it really isn’t impossible to climb an oak tree in a zipped-up sleeping bag. When I realized that the culprit that tried to eat my face was my trusty companion and watchdog Smut, I climbed down the tree and gave the dog a serious scolding. I believe though that Smut had heard me snoring and was just checking to see if I was all right. Linda will sometimes do exactly like Smut, no licking, just a firm elbow to my arm. Works fine, only difference, I don’t climb trees.

My next camping experiment was with a jungle hammock. It worked great, got me off the ground. Only problem was it was designed strictly for summer. After a winter night hanging between a couple of pines rapidly turning into a Popsicle, I decided to relegate the hammock to summertime use only.

My last piece of camp housing gear was a Eureka four-man tent. It worked great, and I still have it stored in one of my camping closets. Maybe I’ll break the old tent out one of these days and see if I can still rough it.

Naw, not gonna do that. I’ve gotten too used to the good camping life. Plus Linda would stay home.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

An Ear to the Ground

Sometimes you can hear the past

By Tom Bryant

It was a child’s trick remembered from early days growing up in proximity to the railroad tracks. I leaned down, put my ear to one of the rails and listened. The sound was barely discernable: a thin, humming, almost-not-there pitch. If I hadn’t done it before, I wouldn’t have known what the sound represented.

I was in Pinebluff, my old stomping grounds, aimlessly riding around the area, recalling days when I was a youngster and how much fun we had camping, exploring, growing and learning. I was standing in the middle of the railroad tracks, looking south toward Addor. I left my old Bronco parked off Pinebluff Road under an ancient pine and walked north on the tracks to locate the little sand pit that used to be nestled on the east side of the railroad.

As Boy Scouts, we camped in the area many years ago. The little cut-back in the short brush to the camping spot was easy to find, and the site looked basically the same as it did when our old Scout Troop 206 used it, maybe a little smaller. To me, as an adult, everything in Pinebluff seems smaller.

On the way back to the Bronco, I remembered how to put my ear on the track to see if I could hear an approaching train, an old trick discovered by the native Americans when they were fighting the railroads and “iron horses,” as they called the black smoke-belching locomotives. I probably learned the trick from a Roy Rogers Western in the old, long-gone Aberdeen Theatre.

It worked. There was a definite hum when I placed my ear to the rail. The sound was growing louder, but I couldn’t see anything because of a slight curve in the tracks to the south. I slowly climbed the embankment that overlooked the tracks and settled down to wait and see if the noise in the rails turned into a rumbling iron horse.

The whistle of the freight train in the distance indicated it was getting close, so I performed another tradition just as we youngsters did in the old days. I hustled down the slight incline and placed a penny on the rail. Shoot, what the heck, inflation has caught up with us, so I put a quarter beside the penny and went back to my observation point.

In just a few minutes, the huge freight train rumbled around the bend, moving slowly as it labored up the slight grade toward Aberdeen. It was massive; and as always, the sight of the big engines blowing diesel smoke had not lost its magnificence to me as I watched it move on north and out of sight.

It took a while to find the flattened quarter, and I never did find the penny, probably stuck to the wheel or lodged in the underbelly of the rail car. I took one last glance up the track toward Aberdeen and hiked back to the Bronco.

A lot has changed since, as a youngster, I walked the tracks from the ice plant in Aberdeen to our home in Pinebluff, hunting along the way. I would range out in the woods on either side of the tracks like a close hunting bird dog. I was hunting for anything in season. The game bag usually leaned heavily toward squirrels, though. When I got home, I’d clean the game, and Mom would store it in the freezer until we had enough for a real wild game feast.

My attraction to trains began early, at least according to my mother. During World War II, while Dad was moving around the country being trained for the Navy, Mom and I, an infant not yet 1 year old, followed him. We would find a small apartment and stay there until he moved on to the next training camp. Like most of the rest of the country, during those war-torn years, we always traveled by train.

After the war, Dad mustered out of the Navy in Washington D.C., boarded a slow-moving passenger train and rode it home to South Carolina. I think that was his last train ride. Although he didn’t travel by train anymore, they were an integral part of his work experience. He was the superintendent of the ice plant in Aberdeen. The plant, City Products Inc., loomed over the tracks a couple of miles south of the town. Fruit and produce freight car activity was constant 24 hours a day. A platform off to the side in the middle of switching tracks could handle 50 freight cars and enabled the plant to get ice into bunkers to refrigerate products on their way north or west.

Ice plants were strategically positioned along the north-south freight train run, enabling timely icing all the way north. I can remember plants in Florida at Miami, Lakeland, Sanford and Jacksonville, and in Florence, South Carolina, and Aberdeen, North Carolina. Aberdeen was the most productive and could manufacture and store 25,000 tons of ice. The plant was built to accommodate the Seaboard Railroad’s largest switching yard near Hamlet, North Carolina. This was where trains were made up for their ultimate destination. Seventy-five trains could be assembled for points north, south and west. It was a huge operation, and the ice plant in Aberdeen played a major part in Seaboard’s shipping plans. It was so important that the railroad had a fully staffed office in the ice plant with personnel who kept up with rail cars that needed refrigeration. The Seaboard official’s office was immediately adjacent to my dad’s.

On several occasions, I accompanied my father when he called on Seaboard offices at the switching yard in Hamlet. The yard was massive and always filled with activity with yard switching engines assembling trains for their ultimate destination. Hamlet was dubbed the “Hub of the Seaboard,” with five Seaboard Air Line railroad lines leading from the town and, at its high point, 30 passenger train departures each day.

A few days after my sojourn to the railroad tracks in Pinebluff, Linda, my bride, and I made the short ride to Hamlet to visit the restored railroad depot and see the old switching yard of the Seaboard. The CSX railroad company now owns the yard and uses it for the maintenance of freight cars.

The depot is magnificent. It received the Historic Preservation of North Carolina’s 2005 Carraway Award for outstanding restoration work by public agencies. The station is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of the finest restored depots I’ve ever visited and was well worth our trip.

The switching yard is now more dedicated to maintenance, and not much was going on when we were there. I’ve even heard a rumor that CSX is slowly putting it in mothballs.

The Hamlet railroad depot? Amtrak does not provide ticketing or baggage service now, and only two trains come through a day.

The City Products ice plants are history. Not one left. Shortly after my return to Southern Pines, I drove down the narrow dirt road that was the only way to get to the plant by car. Nothing can be seen of the massive original structure, which was, in the past, Moore County’s largest building and you might even say Aberdeen’s skyline. All that remains is broom straw and pine trees.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Keepin’ It Cool

Fans, porches and a visit to the ice plant

By Tom Bryant

Good night nurse, it was hot! Fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk kind of hot, and I was in the woods at a little farm pond trying to fish. The morning had started off pleasant enough. I was up and at ’em early, anticipating the scorcher promised by the Weather Channel, another of their disaster predictions, and I hoped to catch a mess of bream before the sun could cook my brain.

Fishing was slow, as I knew it would be, and I was going at it the lazy way. I cast a couple of lines baited with night crawlers, anchored the rods securely on the bank, and looked for some shade. The tree line was too far from the pond, so I pulled the old Bronco close to my set and kicked back on a camp chair in her shade. That made it right tolerable.

Growing up when air-conditioning meant an opened window and, if we were lucky, a strong window fan, I think people knew how to handle the scorching summer heat. As kids, we would head to Pinebluff Lake. It was fed by springs and a little creek, and I can still remember swimming into a cool spot created by one of the natural springs. We spent hours in the little lake, devising all kinds of games to play in the naturally cool water.

Probably one of the reasons I don’t like swimming pools today is that I feel like I’m cooped up in an oversized bathtub.

I was also fortunate that my dad ran the massive ice plant located next to the railroad tracks in Aberdeen, and if the summer temperatures got completely out of hand, I could always cool down in one of the storage rooms that were wall-to-wall with ice. Typically, I didn’t stay long. The average temperature in those rooms was about 28 degrees. It’s a pretty good shock to your system when it’s summer outside and, all of a sudden, you’re freezing.

We kids had a routine: Pinebluff Lake in the morning, home for lunch and a nap, and back to the lake in the late afternoon. It was not just a normal nap. Dad had installed a window fan in my sisters’ bedroom, the kind of fan that had four speeds and was reversible, and I knew exactly how to make that thing work. My little brother and I had the bedroom right across the hall from our sisters. We were upstairs so I could close the door at the bottom of the stairs, open our bedroom doors, put the fan blowing out, switch it to “high,” and stand back. That fan would have the curtains in my bedroom standing straight out from the window, and the cool breeze was constant. The sound of the fan and the cool air wafting through the room were almost hypnotic, and in no time I was in the midst of a great nap. I think that’s the reason I nap today and have a sound machine nearby.

I was jolted out of my reverie by the zinging of one of my rods as the line was being pulled in the lake. I raced to catch it and yanked to set the hook. Nothing. Whatever was on it was gone. I reeled in, rebaited the hook and went back to the Bronco. The sun had angled around the corner of the truck, so I rearranged the chair and kicked back again.

The lake, naps and ice plant weren’t the only ways we had to cool down. Most of the Aberdeen downtown businesses were just beginning to install air-conditioning, and the movie theater was one of the first. The mothers in Pinebluff alternated carpooling us kids to the theater on Saturday afternoons. It was 15 cents to get in, 5 cents for a drink and 10 cents for popcorn; and we really got our money’s worth when there was a double feature. The cowboys — Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash LaRue and Rex Allen — reigned supreme in those early movies. Air-conditioning, a novelty at first but soon to become a necessity, made for a kid’s great afternoon of fun.

My ancestors in the 1800s weren’t so lucky. A South Carolina low country summer could be unbearable. Our old family home place was built to provide a little relief from the heat.

First, there’s a rain porch that stretches across the entire front of the house with columns to the ground. The roof’s overhang is far out from the edge of the porch so that during a storm, a person won’t get wet while relaxing in the swing. Next, a long entrance hall runs the length of the house to the back door that opens onto a screened sleeping porch. The house also faces east to catch the prevailing breezes, and the foundation pillars are about 4 feet tall and connected with latticed skirting, allowing air to flow beneath the house. Big rooms with 14-foot tall ceilings and 8-foot windows also helped.

All of these features were great in the summer, but winter was another story. Every room has a fireplace, and in those days, using them kept at least one person busy hauling wood. I guess those early relatives thought that frostbite was preferable to heat stroke.

I checked the lines on the fishing rods to make sure they still had bait, went to the back of the truck for a cool libation, moved my chair to the diminishing shade, and sat back down. The ride home was going to be a hot one because the Bronco doesn’t have air-conditioning.

That thought got me thinking about our first air-conditioned car, a 1969 Buick LeSabre. Prior to that, I thought air-conditioning a car was an expensive add-on that we could do without. Needless to say, after a couple of summer trips to Florida in our un-air-conditioned 1962 MGB, my bride, Linda, helped me to think otherwise. So, along came car air-conditioning.

The sun was now almost directly overhead, so I decided to give up the fishing expedition and try again in a few days when it got a little cooler. I felt a little like a wimp, though, as I loaded the gear in the back of the Bronco. Back in the day, I would have stuck it out till dark, and did that many times. It made me wonder if the reason we suffer so much from the heat is that, as a general population, we’ve become softer and more acclimated to modern conveniences.

That observation needs more study, I thought, something to think about when I take my afternoon nap. I hope Linda turned down the air-conditioning. I fired up the Bronco and headed home.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

The Wings of an Idea

A quiet time when the cosmos comes calling

By Tom Bryant

“I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it’s both.”       — Forrest Gump

Over the bay there was a bright moon coming up that seemed so close I could reach out and touch it. A few light cotton strips of clouds drifted across the brightness and fostered a feeling of loneliness, although I was right next to a full campground.

Linda, my bride, and I were in Florida, camping in the little Airstream, on a late season trip. We were at our favorite spot, Chokoloskee Island, to hang out, fish (I would do most of the fishing) and, in general, break away from all the rigmarole that seemed to infest our lives of late. Also, it was a trip ostensibly to help me pull together what has become known around our house as “The Book.” I’ve been working on this particular manuscript forever, it seems, and I hoped the different scenery would add a little incentive for getting the bloomin’ thing finished.

Tonight, though, I thought I’d do a little evening fishing to catch some trout for tomorrow’s supper. There was a group of folks out on the end of the boat dock enjoying the moonrise, and they wished me luck as I shoved off in my little canoe.

The bay was as calm as a lake, and the tide was in, which meant I had a couple of hours before the tide shifted and I’d need to get back. Thinking about the tidal flow, I paddled inland toward the Everglades so I’d not have to buck the outflow when it changed.

There is a peacefulness on a gulf bay backlit by a full moon. In no time, I had put out a line baited with shrimp and was enjoying the solitude. I kicked back in the canoe to await a little action and also enjoy the scenery.

During my lifetime in the great outdoors, I’ve had some amazing experiences, a lot of them defying normal explanations; and tonight, drifting along, fishing the bay, I had another. I had just settled down and opened a drink from the cooler when a dolphin surfaced right off the bow of the boat. He played around like he thought the canoe was a friend, and after a short visit, he did a final leap and was gone.

I’ve had other surreal encounters with amazing wild creatures, and as I floated in my canoe on that early spring night, I thought about a couple that had no explanation other than what each was, a gift.

Rich Warters, a good friend, and I were coming out of the woods one spring morning after an early jaunt to try for a turkey. This was our third attempt of the early turkey season, and we had been unsuccessful thus far. Dogwoods were in full bloom, and the air still had a little winter nip in it, so we were glad to get back to the truck, where we had a thermos of coffee waiting. We had poured ourselves a cup of steaming coffee and were standing at the back tailgate of my vehicle commiserating over our lack of success in the turkey-hunting department. We were planning the next day’s adventure when, all of a sudden and seemingly from nowhere, a ruby-throated hummingbird flew right between us, hovered a few seconds, looked at both of us, and was gone. Rich and I stood there opened-mouthed, and Rich exclaimed, “That made my day!”

I replied, “Rich, that made my year!”

There was another time when I was duck hunting and a pair of otters surfaced right beside my boat, looked me over slowly, then disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

The appearances of these wild creatures were amazing, but there was one other wonderful encounter that I’ll always remember.

In the late ’70s, a good friend and I decided to fulfill a long-time career desire to start our own newspaper. Now, we were good in our newspaper endeavors, if not exceptional. Jim was the features editor of a major daily paper in another county, and I was the ad director of our city’s daily newspaper. We were both doing well in our separate divisions of the business, and we felt the timing was right for a new community voice in our market. So, after a year of planning and three months of pulling everything together, we launched our first edition. It was October 1976.

Jimmy Carter, bless his heart, a good old boy from Georgia, was elected president a month after our first edition. Right away, it seemed, the economy tanked. Now I can’t blame Jimmy; I even voted for him. After all, he is Southern, and I loved his brother Billy; but I believe the quagmire that was Washington then and still is today sucked him down as surely as the economy was doing to our fledging newspaper.

For three years we waged an uphill battle. Our circulation continued to climb; but small advertisers, our bread and butter who paid the bills, were on a downhill slide. My partner decided to hang it up, and I was left, a captain on a sinking ship.

I did everything I could, cut everywhere I could, and thought of every solution to save the floundering business, but I had hit a brick wall. One Saturday after a morning at the office, I went home to take a break. Linda was grocery shopping, so I grabbed a beer from the fridge, went out on the deck and sat in one of our rockers. I glanced up at the big white oak trees in our backyard, leafing out in early spring green.

As I looked up, I noticed a piece of leaf, or I thought it was a piece of leaf, fluttering in the top branches. In a moment, I saw it was a butterfly. I watched it for several minutes as it flitted from one tree to another, and then just as if it were on a string, it fluttered down to the deck and lit on my knee. I watched open-mouthed as the big monarch sat there for a few seconds, wings opening and closing, then flew away.

That night I awoke from a deep sleep, sat upright in bed and mentally grabbed the remnants of a fleeting dream. The dream was about a new publication, published for the retail outlet craze, which was in full bloom.

Thus was born The Outlet Outlook, a shopper paper designed for transient outlet shoppers. In no time, we had papers in outlet centers in Burlington, North Carolina; Myrtle Beach and Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. As Forrest Gump so eloquently put it, “We had more money than Davy Crockett.”

The tide was beginning to change, and I had three trout in the bucket, enough for tomorrow’s supper, so I decided to head back to camp. It was an easy paddle, and I let the boat drift along, remembering those days when I was much younger. I don’t know if that butterfly was a messenger helping me with my destiny or just a beautiful piece of nature floating along, but I tend to agree with Forrest; maybe it was a little of both.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

The Home Place

Taking the road to fond memories

By Tom Bryant

It was a perfect spring day. Most of the pine pollen was gone, and a late night rain shower had cleaned the air as fresh as only it can be in the early morning. I was on the way to the little farm I lease for bird shooting, but really more as a place in the woods where I could get away from everyday hustle and bustle. Turkey season had been in for a week, and I had yet to venture into the woods to see if this would be the year I would be successful in my quest of bagging that long bearded, elusive bird.

My route to the farm takes me through the little town of Pinebluff; and on a whim, I turned down the road where my old home place sits up on a little hill. I left the Sandhills right after high school when I went to college. Soon after that, my family moved to Florida where Dad took over management of a large ice plant. The only thing holding me to the village was the home place where I grew up, so I only visited the little town when passing through the area.

After my father passed away in the ‘70s, Mom sold the old house and I rarely visited. The small village held too many memories, and I was afraid that our home for many years wouldn’t look the same.

I was right. As I drove slowly down our street, I realized that only the bare bones of good memories were left. The old place seemed to be listing a little to starboard and badly needed a coat of paint. The yard was overgrown and a ragged pickup truck sat in the front, right next to the porch. I eased by with only a cursory glance then drove on down the road to Pinebluff Lake.

The lake still looked the same, although it has had quite a few improvements including a new pier jutting out over the spring-fed black water. I pulled up close to a picnic table, got out and walked down to the shore. A bright sun in a cloudless sky was high overhead, and the heat on my shoulders felt good. I went back to the table, sat down, looked up to the headwaters, and memories tumbled over in my mind like falling dominoes.

In the late ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Pinebluff was a great place for a youngster. With only about 300 residences, the little village could have been right out of a classic book like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; and as a kid, I could have played the main character.

The small Village Grocery, where I had my first charge account, was only about two blocks from our house. I could buy a coke for a nickel.

The local phone company was headquartered at Mom and Pop Wallace’s house with the switchboard in their living room. Our phone was on a party line, and the number was 212. Mom Wallace knew the whereabouts of all the kids and many of the adults. If you wanted the latest scoop and you were on her good side, all you had to do was give her a call.

The police force consisted of the town constable, Mr. Deaton, and I have to admit he knew all the local kids and kept most of us under control. It wasn’t a hard job, though, and I honestly can’t remember any major law breaking in Pinebluff, or as far as that goes, in any of our surrounding towns. My parents very seldom locked the house, maybe when we went on vacation, and then only latching the screen door and turning the doorknob lock. Those were different days and a simpler time.

Aberdeen was three miles away; Southern Pines, six; and Pinehurst, about seven or eight. The major highways were two-lane connectors with very few homes or businesses interrupting the pine forests on either side. Pinehurst was another world, and not many young folks ventured past the city limits. The village actually closed in the summer. Many of the downtown stores put plywood shutters over the windows until they reopened in the early winter when folks from the frosty North would reappear just like migrating birds.

I had the opportunity to work for a brief time for Mr. Carl Moser, owner of The Pine Crest Inn. I was between colleges, having just graduated from Brevard Junior College and right before my adventure in the Marine Corps. This was a real experience for me and opened the door to a world I had no idea existed. It was during the middle of the Pinehurst season, and the hotel was maxed out with guests arriving and departing every day. I was hired as one of two desk clerks, and Moser also helped when the desk was really busy. Several

Sporting Life

Easy Floatin’

A new canoe takes an old trip

By Tom Bryant

My new canoe slid into the blackwater river easily. I was pleased with the boat. She was quick but stable and promised to be a pleasure to paddle. It was early morning, and a soft mist drifted out of the ancient cypresses that lined the bank like river ghosts from days gone by. I tried to be extra quiet and not disturb wildlife that might be close. Downstream just around the bend, I could hear the raucous call of a wood duck; and in just a few seconds, a pair flew upriver, gaining altitude as they saw me and all my gear. They screamed indignantly at the interloper, headed toward the swamp and were gone. I’ve always had a hard time identifying a wood duck call from a hawk. They sound a lot alike.

It was a beautiful morning, not unlike the many mornings I had spent on the river long ago with my granddad. This was to be a kind of déjà vu adventure. Here I was with a new canoe on an old low country river that I hoped had not changed that much from the early times my grandfather and I paddled the same fast flowing water.

He had taught me how to paddle when I was a youngster. He had a fish camp located several miles from Galavants Ferry right on the banks of the Little Pee Dee; and during the summer when work on the farm slowed, we would get our gear together, or my granddad would, mostly. I’d be dispatched to the old catawba trees to pick fishing worms and to the tobacco fields to hustle up a bait can of tobacco worms. They were messy creatures. They had a habit of spitting tobacco juices when I plucked them off the leaves. This was way before pesticides became so prevalent, and usually I could fill up a can of worms, no pun intended, from three or four tobacco stalks. The catalpa worms were a different story. They were valued as much by fishermen farmers as their crops were, and in many cases, harvested just like their garden vegetables. The worms were superb fish bait.

Linda, my bride, had dropped me off at a boat landing I found on a map of the river and was to pick me up at Galavants Ferry later in the day. I had packed a lunch, typical of what Granddad and I would share back in those long-ago days. Sardines, Beanie Weenies, a slab of rat cheese, a loaf of crusty bread, a can of Vienna sausages, hot mustard, and for dessert, a pack of Moon Pies. Linda had given me a Yeti cooler for my birthday, and I had it filled with bottles of water, a couple of Pepsis, and a few cold beers. That was the only deviation I took from Granddad’s menu. He was a teetotaler, but I knew he would forgive my one indiscretion. I also put my small tackle box, a spinning outfit, and a bait-casting rod and reel in the bow of the canoe. I was ready for a great day on the water.

I was pleased with my new canoe, an Old Town Penobscot. She cut through the water and was really sensitive to the paddle. I could turn her on a dime, and I practiced several strokes as we floated down the fast flowing river. It’s just like riding a bicycle; once you learn, you don’t forget. I settled down and began enjoying the scenery.

The Little Pee Dee River actually starts in North Carolina. Drowning Creek is part of its headwaters and flows into the Lumber River. The Lumber flows into the Little Pee Dee, which merges with the Big Pee Dee, then next stop, the Atlantic Ocean at Georgetown, South Carolina. One time in my young carefree days, a couple of friends and I tried to paddle the entire stretch, but unfortunately, we had to pull up short due to lack of time and supplies. It was quite an adventure, though.

The river eventually moved slow but steady, and with a few strokes of the paddle, I could keep the boat in the middle and fish the banks with my spinning outfit. I caught a few bream, none big enough to keep; and after a short time, I put the rod down and just watched the wild river and the cypress trees back in the swamps as I floated south. It was just as I remembered, with the exception of maybe more trash floating in the sloughs. I was surprised at the numbers of waterfowl. I saw many wood ducks. Great blue herons were numerous, and every now and then, I could hear the plaintive cry of a pileated woodpecker.

Many years ago while floating this same stretch of water, Granddad pointed out a huge bird flying in a slow, loping style that many big woodpeckers have. It was heading across the swamp but lit on a decaying branch of a giant cypress and started pecking on the limb. Pieces of dead wood flew as if he were swinging an ax. Granddad said, “Son, that’s an ivory bill woodpecker. Wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t declare that particular bird extinct in a few years. That’s the first one I’ve seen in a long time on this river.”

I had just been letting the canoe go where it wanted with only a stroke of the paddle every now and then, but just ahead I could see the water pick up speed as it approached a tight bend to the right. I grabbed the paddle and eased the boat to the right bank to keep away from a tree that had fallen and was partially submerged, blocking the left bank route.

I don’t know who was more surprised, the old gentleman fishing off the sandbar that pushed way out in the river, or me as I silently came around the bend and was on him in an instant. The old guy had several cane poles anchored in the sand and was fishing in the lee of the bar. I moved the canoe out in the river to get out of his way and did a backstroke to slow the boat. “How they biting?” I asked.

“Well sir, they been kinda slow this morning.” I eased the boat closer to the downriver side of the bar.

“Mind if I join you for a minute?”

“Naw sir. Make yoself at home.” I dragged the canoe up on the sand and went back to talk to the ancient fisherman.

“You’ve got a nice setup here.”

“Yassir, I’ve been doing it for a lotta years. It’s restful and sometimes I catch myself some supper.” He grinned and looked up at me from the little stool he was sitting on. “You floating down the river?”

“Yep, going to Galavants Ferry. Three or four more hours, I reckon.”

“That’s about right. Watch out for blown-down timber. We suffered a might in the last big storm.”

We chatted for a little while and I found out the fisherman was a local. As a matter of fact, he had lived on the river all his life, or as he put it, “Not quite, but that’s the plan, with what I got left.” He was a happy soul.

The rest of the paddle was uneventful. I didn’t even try to fish the remainder of the trip. I had to portage around a couple of downed trees, saw a humongous cottonmouth snake that I gave plenty of room, and arrived at the ferry about 4 o’clock. Linda was waiting, and in no time, I had the canoe lashed on top of the Cruiser, and we headed down to Huntington Beach, where we were camped with the little Airstream.

Later that evening, while kicked back in a rocker under the awning of the Airstream, I thought back to the day’s adventure on the river and to the aged philosopher I met fishing. Right before I left him and paddled downstream, the old fellow and I were talking about changes in the area, good and bad. He said something that brought everything into perspective.

“Mister, this river was flowing to the ocean long befo I came along and will be flowing to the ocean long after I’s gone. The important things don’t change, I reckon.” PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Wisdom of the Porch

A rocking chair, fireflies and the future

Most of the world is covered by water. A fisherman’s job is simple: Pick out the best parts.  — Charles Waterman

By Tom Bryant

It was early summer and I was kicked back in the swing on the front porch enjoying the end of a Sandhills day. A whip-poor-will was calling in the woods behind our house, and I could hear the early sounds of a barred owl as he prepared for his evening hunt. A yapping dog barked from up the street. He sounded a little like Johnny Mill’s terrier, probably chasing a squirrel or maybe a rabbit. The moon was waxing and was half full, already beginning to light up the night as the sun set, and a welcome coolness seemed to settle over the pines.

I could hear Mother through the screen door. She was in the kitchen frosting a cake she had made to take to church on Sunday. There was to be a celebration of some sort; I didn’t hear what, or probably did and just wasn’t paying attention; but I did remember there was to be a covered dish lunch. Dad was working late at the ice plant. A train, on its way north and loaded with vegetables, came in early that afternoon, and the bunkers on the cars had to be iced and salted so the cargo wouldn’t spoil.

I was kinda at loose ends, having fished the headwaters of Pinebluff Lake most of the day, catching one little bream I threw back along with a lake turtle that ate my worm. I had to cut the line at the hook to let him go; and since I wasn’t really in the mood to fish, I put the rod and reel down, found a restful place against a leaning pine and took a little nap. You might say it was a laid-back kind of day.

Aberdeen High School class of 1959, of which I was a lucky member, had just celebrated its graduation. The whole year had been geared to that great day when we would be out of school; but after it actually happened and all the ceremonies were over came the reality. A special era was gone, and it was a different day.

My plan was that I would take three or four days off after graduation, maybe go to the beach like a lot of my friends, or just do nothing, which I decided was the best thing. Then I would go to work at the ice plant to build up my college fund. I was lucky enough to be accepted at Brevard College, a little private school located right next to the Pisgah National Forest. Pisgah was famous for being a great place to hike, camp and explore, and the mountains also had great trout fishing streams.

I was kind of numb with the end of high school and the beginning of the future and college. It was as if I was having a severe bout of nostalgia and wasn’t really ready for all the new challenges that waited in September when I headed off to school.

Mom came to the screen door, looked out and said, “It’s time for your dad to get home. Tell him his dinner is on the stove. I’m going to take a shower.”

In just a few minutes Dad’s car headlights illuminated the drive, and he parked by the porch rather than pull down to the garage. That meant he was going back to the plant after he ate supper.

“Hey, Buddyro,” he said as he walked up on the porch steps. “I thought you’d be out with some of your buddies still celebrating your graduation.”

“Nope, most of the crowd’s gone to the beach. I didn’t feel like going. Maybe I’ll join ’em this weekend. Don’t know yet. Mom’s taking a shower. She said your supper’s on the stove.”

Dad sat in the rocker close to the swing and lit a cigarette. He was quiet as he puffed a couple of times and then said, “Pretty night. The fireflies are beginning to light up.” We were both silent as we watched the evening lightning bugs show off and flicker in the blackjack oaks by the house. “Remember when you kids used to catch them in jars?”

“Yes sir, it seems like that was a hundred years ago.”

Dad laughed, ”Just wait, son. The older you get, the faster time goes.” He slowly rocked back and forth. “You got something on your mind, son? Wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I kinda feel out of sorts, being out of school and college coming and friends going away and me going to a strange place without any friends. I don’t know if I can handle all that change.”

He chuckled as he put his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table next to his chair. “Son, that’s what life is all about. Somebody a lot smarter than me once said, ‘The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself.’ As far as your friends are concerned, I think you make friends quicker than anyone I know. You have a real talent for that, and it’ll take you far in life. And you’ve got your family, always a plus. I’m gonna grab a bite to eat and talk to your mom a bit, then I’ve got to go back to the plant and check on some things.”  He went inside, careful not to let the screen door slam.

I watched the fireflies and thought about my high school friends who were also getting ready for the future. When Dad said I have my family along with my friends, it brought to mind some of my good buddies at old AHS. A lot of us literally grew up together. This was before school consolidation and “bigger is better.” Our high school numbered about 300 students, and those times were before our society became so transient. Several of the students and I were together from the first grade through graduation. They were like a second family.

After a bit, Mother and Dad came back to the porch and relaxed in the two rockers. I could hear my brother and sisters inside laughing at a television show. “Tom,” Dad said, “why don’t you get up early in the morning and join your friends at the beach? You can take the station wagon, and I’ll drive your old clunker for a couple of days.” The station wagon was the family car, and my transportation was a 1940 Chevrolet Dad bought me when I became old enough to drive.

“I don’t like to see you so down,” Mom said. “It’s not like you. You’re getting ready to enter the most exciting time of your life. You’ll make hundreds of friends, establish your career, and if you’re lucky, start your own family with a beautiful girl.”

“Yeah,” Dad chuckled, “maybe a girl as pretty as your mom. And you know what? I bet you’ll be able to fish and hunt at all kinds of places. Places you only dream about now.”

We sat silently watching the shadows and the fireflies. “Well, Sport, I’ve got to go back to the plant. I’ll take your car so you can get the station wagon ready for the beach tomorrow. See you in the morning.”

Dad drove off in the old ’40, the name my friends gave my ancient ride. Mom didn’t say anything, just continued rocking. “I don’t like to see him working so hard,” she said. “He loves his family, and if you grow up to be as good a man as your daddy, you’ll be successful in life.” She sighed and stood and watched the taillights of my car disappear up the road.  “I’m going to make sure the laundry is done so you’ll have clean clothes for your trip.”

Mom went back inside and I heard the kids getting ready for bed. I continued to rest in the swing, listening to the night sounds and wondering about the future and what it held for me.

Turns out my mom and dad were right those many years ago when we enjoyed that beautiful early summer evening on the porch in Pinebluff. I’ve made friends, had a great career, married a beautiful girl, and we have a fantastic son. I’ve camped, fished and hunted all over the country. I’ve done every thing my folks predicted except maybe becoming as great a man as my daddy. I don’t think there’s a soul alive who could reach that lofty goal.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Man for All Seasons and Sports

But a fisherman first and last

Most of the world is covered by water. A fisherman’s job is simple: Pick out the best parts.  — Charles Waterman

By Tom Bryant

I started fishing at a very young age. It was said that when I was born, my dad put a baseball and glove in my crib, and shortly afterward, my granddad hung a bait-casting rod and reel on the side. My destiny was preordained. When I wasn’t playing baseball, I was fishing.

Over the years, I’ve met quite a few fishermen and fisher ladies, if there is such a term. I’ve fished with some, caught fish with some, listened to many tall fish tales, some of them true, and told many tall fish tales, some of them also true. My granddaddy often said that you could tell a man’s true character by spending an hour or two with him fishing. And I’ve done that. Most recently was with one of the most colorful fishermen friends I’ve met in quite a while, Bennett Rose, a fisherman’s fisherman. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to have lunch with him.

Bennett could be a knock-off of Ernest Hemingway, or he could fit right in with Augustus McCrae and W.F. Call and their Hat Creek Cattle Company, as told in Larry McMurtry’s famous Western novel Lonesome Dove.  Bennett is a medium-sized fellow with a shock of white hair and beard to match. He has the ease of movement of a natural athlete and walks like a cat. If the room were suddenly turned upside down, he’d land on his feet.

When two fishermen get together, the conversation always starts with the weather, then automatically turns to fishing. When I asked him at what age he started fishing, he looked at me with a baffled look and replied, “I don’t know. I’ve always fished.” Then he added, “Maybe 6?”

Bennett grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, with his two brothers, Porter and Jack, and a sister, Patricia. Like most Southerners, his parents leaned hard toward outdoor sports. Bennett was also encouraged by his grandfather, who had a beach cottage at Pawleys Island in the low country of South Carolina, where he spent many happy days surf fishing.

Bennett’s working life complemented his outdoor sporting life. I asked him how he got into the forestry service trade. “Most everybody living in Greenville worked in a textile mill. I sure didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be outside, so I was lucky enough to get started in a forest managing job; and eventually, I worked for Continental Can Company. I was with them for 13 years managing their forest investments that included over 70,000 acres. They wanted me to move to Raleigh to a desk job, though, and I didn’t want to do that, so I started my own company, Bennett Rose and Associates, Forestry Consultants. I did that for about 17 years.”

Bennett’s son, Smedes, and grandchildren live in New York. When I questioned him about his son’s unusual name, he said, “Smedes was named after my great-grandfather Aldert Smedes. He was an Episcopal priest and actually started Saint Mary’s School in Raleigh.” The conversation turned back to the outdoors. “You not only fish, but I know you love to bird hunt.”

“Yeah, Tom. You know the wild quail that we used to have around here are long gone, and shooting on preserves is just not for me. I was fortunate last year to go out to Texas with my brother Jack, and shoot quail just like it was in the old days. I bet we jumped 25 coveys the first day. What a great hunt. I want to do that again.”

“What other sports do you enjoy?”

“I love snow skiing. I try to go out West to Sun Valley every year for a week or so to see if I’m as good as I once was. And I used to skydive, or I did until it got so expensive.”

That answer took me aback. I had no idea that Bennett had ever done that. “Good grief! How many jumps did you make?”

He looked at me and grinned. “Five hundred thirty-two. It was loads of fun, but the cost finally cut me out of participating.”

“You certainly have done a lot in the outdoor sports category,” I said, “but your reputation that I know about, and the photos on the wall of your porch, testify to salt water fishing, for big fish, red fish, that is.”

Bennett’s porch with its stone fireplace looks like it could be right out of a Garden and Gun magazine feature, and the porch wall probably has 30 to 40 photos of friends and family he has guided on South Carolina fishing trips off the coast of Pawleys Island. In most of the photos, the lucky participant is holding a big red drum, and nearly all the fish are trophy size. “I’ve heard you named this the Wall of Fame.”

“Wrong,” he replied, laughing. “It’s the wall of pain. Tom, we catch and release all of our fish. I use circle hooks so we don’t hurt the fish when we bring them in. I’m sure most of the fish we catch survive.”

I haven’t had the opportunity to fish with Bennett lately; our schedules haven’t seemed to mesh. But there was one trip that Linda, my bride, and I made to Huntington Beach State Park, South Carolina, just a few miles north of Pawleys Island, when Bennett came over for the afternoon, and we did a little surf fishing. I say we, but Bennett did most of the work, bringing everything from his beach cart to the bait we used.

The beach was beautiful as usual, only one other couple fishing, and we set up a little way down from them. Bennett cast out the bait, and I kicked back in a beach chair to watch. After a while, I walked back to the Airstream to get some refreshments, and when I got back to the beach, Bennett was helping the neighbor fisherman pull in a trophy red fish.

I could tell that the fellow was a novice because Bennett was doing all the work. He even ran back to our set-up, grabbed his camera from his tackle box, and rushed back to the lucky fisherman to take a couple of snapshots. After he helped him release the fish into the surf, he walked back to our chairs. I couldn’t tell who was happier, the couple fishing or Bennett.

We watched as the pair packed up and left, heading back to their campsite. “Bryant, do me a favor and find out that fellow’s address, and I’ll send him the prints of his big fish.”

“I know where they’re camped. I’ve seen them down here several times, so I’ll do that tomorrow.”

Bennett was grinning from ear to ear. “That made my day,” he said.

You would have thought Bennett had just pulled in that big fish. Then I realized that what my grandfather said about character is true.

My friend Bennett Rose would have made my grandfather proud.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Relief Guide

All’s well that ends well

By Tom Bryant

We were meandering around in the lobby of the old hotel like a couple of lost bird dogs. Bubba sidled over to me and said, “Well.”

“Well what? “ I replied.

“Where is that fool guide who’s supposed to take us sea ducking?”

“You got me. After that fiasco of a goose hunt this morning, he said he would have his man meet us here around lunch. It’s now 1 o’clock. Seems to me, it’s after lunch.”

“Coot, I don’t know how you always get us in messes like this.”

“What do you mean, me? It was your idea to bid on this guy at the auction.”

“I know, but he talked a good game. Maybe it is my fault, but you should have convinced me not to do it.”

“I tried, but your last gin and tonic had more influence than I did. Maybe he’ll show up. It’s early yet.”

We were on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, near the town of Easton to be exact, on a three-day Canada goose and sea duck hunt that Bubba had bought in an auction at our wildlife club. It wasn’t our first adventure in that part of the country. He and I had hunted on Bill Meyer’s plantation, Plimmhimon, on the banks of the Tred Avon River, and very successfully, I might add. But this misadventure only emphasized how good we had it at Bill’s farm.

Our early morning goose hunt was anticlimactic, to say the least. The night before, we had bunked at the fellow’s supposedly sumptuous clubhouse, which turned out to be a converted two-car garage attached to the good old boy’s house with bunks lined up along the wall. Bubba accused me of snoring; and a constant barrage of pillows, magazines and shoes kept me awake until he finally dozed off. Then an Amtrak train roaring through the front door couldn’t have awakened him.

The next morning we followed our learned guide in Bubba’s Land Rover as his old rattle trap of a pickup smoked down the road. We ended up at a long-ago picked cornfield that would have had a hard time supporting a field mouse, and a pit blind that needed re-brushing. This was our second day goose hunting, and our bag thus far: 0 for 2.

It didn’t take us long to settle in, and our guide said he was going to run over to his other farm to see if the geese were working there.

“Do you know what that means, Coot, other farm?” Bubba asked as the guide rattled away in his old pickup.

“Yeah, it means he’s going to town to get breakfast.”

“I’m going to catch up on some shut-eye. That snoring of yours kept me up all night. All the geese are probably down around Mattamuskeet anyway. Wake me if you hear anything.” Bubba made himself comfortable in a corner of the blind, and in no time, was dozing.

After about 30 minutes, as the sun was peeking over the horizon, I heard a lonesome goose calling in the far distance near the north tree line. I perked up and kept my eyes focused in that direction. In no time, three geese flew treetop high, heading toward the blind as if on a string.

“Bubba,” I whispered. I leaned over and grabbed his boot. I hadn’t even loaded my gun, so I was rapidly pushing shells into the magazine and shucked one down the pipe, ready to go. Bubba looked over at me and I said, “Get ready. You here to sleep or shoot?”

Bubba looked at me bleary-eyed and grabbed his gun. By then, the three geese were right in front of the blind, gaining altitude, heading to parts unknown. We stood, fired, and all three hit the ground.

We climbed out of the pit to retrieve the geese and Bubba said, “Coot, these are the three unluckiest geese in Maryland. They just happened to fly our way. Did you see how they flared when they saw those decoys? If this fellow, our guide, is a goose hunter, then I’m a brain surgeon.”  We put the geese in the blind and rearranged the decoys. “These decoys haven’t been moved since the season opened. When that guy comes back, I might shoot him.”

As the morning dragged on, our guide finally did show up. He was ecstatic that we had bagged three geese. “I saw several working over at the other farm, but they headed out over the river in the other direction.”

“Yeah, right,” I thought.  Bubba grimaced and didn’t say a word.

We spent the next hour with very little conversation, and after a bit, the guide said, “Well, fellows, we’ve got two options for the afternoon. You can come back here and try out the geese as they come in to feed, or I’ve got a fellow who will take you sea ducking. Your choice.”

Bubba answered, “You know what? We’re gonna get an early start in the morning, so here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go back to the lodge, load up our gear, find a couple of hotel rooms and meet your sea duck guide. We can clean the geese and have lunch while we wait. All you need to do is tell us where to meet this fellow.”

Bubba’s impromptu plan worked great. The hotel where we booked two rooms was right on the bay and had a marina where we assumed our sea duck guide kept his boat.

We were still in the lobby of the hotel commiserating about our lack of a guide when this young fellow came over to us and said, “I heard you guys talking about wanting to go sea ducking.”

“Absolutely,” Bubba said. “We didn’t think you were going to show up.”

“I’m not the guide you’re looking for, but I can sure take you hunting. If you haven’t been before, it’s quite an experience.”

He was right. It was unlike any other waterfowl hunting Bubba and I had ever done; and thanks to the young fellow and his boat, we had a grand time. We found out that he was leaving the very next morning for Alaska, where his uncle had a fishing lodge. He said he would probably get there in time for the opening of the season.

We also learned that he was, as he put it, “Fifty percent American Indian. I’m not particularly politically correct with this Native American thing. I’m proud to be part Indian.”

On the drive home, Bubba was in an unusually pensive mood as we talked about the trip and the lack of honesty shown by our goose-hunting host. We never did find out what happened to his sea duck hunting guide.

“And look at you, Coot, getting those two oldsquaw ducks. They’re gonna look good hanging on your wall.”

Bubba was right. They are two of my favorite duck mounts, though the oldsquaw name has been replaced, changed to “long-tailed duck” in deference to Native Americans. By any measure, they bring back wonderful memories of an unexpected guide who loved his heritage.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

The Champion Holiday

Memories that stretch across the seasons

By Tom Bryant

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree is the
presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
 — Burton Hills

As a youngster, holidays played a huge part in my life. It seemed, in those early pre-teen years, I was always in a dither, wanting to move time forward to celebrate one special occasion or another. The biggy, of course, was summer, when we were paroled from the forced halls of learning to days of fun: swimming and fishing at the beach; camping with the Scouts on Mr. Troutman’s farm; bicycling across the wilds of Pinebluff with my loyal companion, a curly coated retriever I named Smut. The lazy days seemed to stretch on forever. It was a wonderful time, until on the horizon I saw approaching interminably, like a major storm, autumn and back to school.

But with fall and the days of regimentation in classrooms where new subjects expanded our knowledge came dove season and another good reason to be in the woods. It was a wonderful time; and as a result of my being a year older, my parents extended my borders of responsibility to let me venture into the wilds and hunt from Aberdeen to Pinebluff. It worked something like this: I would catch the bus to school, and Dad, who was the superintendent at the ice plant in Aberdeen, would carry my shotgun and Smut to work with him. After school, I would hike the couple of miles to the plant located on the railroad tracks just south of Aberdeen, do my homework in his office, grab my shotgun, whistle up Smut, who was napping under the car, and hunt the tracks back to Pinebluff. I would get home just about dark and clean what game I had harvested, which could be anything from squirrels to doves to rabbits. Mother would put the day’s catch in the freezer, and later we would have a wild game feast to rival Davy Crockett’s, or so I thought at the time.

Thanksgiving opened another whole avenue of excitement. This holiday brought with it quail season, and to add to that special event, the opening of deer season. Now, to be truthful, I didn’t hunt deer in my confined areas around Moore County. I never saw a deer or any sign that a whitetail was about. But down on my granddad’s farm in South Carolina, they were plentiful and hunted, and I was part of that great adventure.

The family would always celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter at the home place. On Thanksgiving, as soon as I was out of school for the holiday, Dad would take me down to the farm, and for a couple of days I would follow my grandfather around like a yearling puppy, asking interminable questions with the main one being, “Can I hunt this year on my own deer stand?”

Typically, my grandfather’s hunt club of about 10 or 15 members would hunt a different farm every week; and in the past, I could only accompany Granddad as a spectator. Finally, one special Thanksgiving, I was allowed to have my own deer stand, and on that day, I considered myself almost grown. I didn’t shoot a deer that season but I saw one, and it is still etched in my memory like a spectacular painting and has just grown more beautiful over the years.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful holiday, but the champion of all holidays and the one I started thinking about when the first frost whitened the broom straw fields of Pinebluff and the “bible” of toys, the Sears Roebuck catalog, arrived in the mail, was Christmas.

It was a magical occasion. What I remember most about that amazing time was the smell of newly cut cedar, wood fires, freshly baked cakes and turkeys in the oven. The excitement and anticipation of the wonderful days ahead were almost more than I could stand.

I was champion of the roost during that time and roamed far and wide in my quest for just the right Christmas greenery, which included holly with bunches of red berries and mistletoe that had to be shot down with my shotgun from the highest trees. This was quite a feat for me in those days when I would buy shotgun shells from Burney Hardware for a nickel apiece. I didn’t waste ammunition very often.

There was no one who loved Christmas more than Mom and Dad. I found out later that they would begin early in the fall to locate just the right presents for Santa to bring my sisters, brother and me. There would always be something thrilling under the tree, a shiny bicycle, a shotgun, new hunting boots or a duck hunting mackinaw. One year, the year I was working on my Boy Scout photography merit badge, Santa brought me a Kodak box camera and all the fixings to develop my own film. I made, developed and printed photos that year and still have one in our collection.

On Christmas Day, after seeing all the loot that Santa had brought, we loaded the car and headed south to the farm to celebrate with my grandparents and all the numerous uncles, aunts and cousins. A magnificent feast was prepared with roasted venison, turkey, ducks, hams and barbecue. There were all kinds of vegetables and casseroles and sweet and baked potatoes. The sideboard seemed to creak under its heavy load of pies and cakes and puddings and the most important, Grandmother’s fruitcake.

After dinner, the entire family moved to the living room, where a giant Christmas tree filled the corner, its top nearly touching the 16-foot ceiling. Presents were piled high, and particular cousins were assigned the task of passing them around. It seemed to take forever for all the presents to be opened and all the oohs and aahs to be shared before we could get back on the road to home. I mean, after all, I had a brand new bike I had to check out, and time was wasting. We needed to hurry.

Those pre-TV days were simpler, and we made the most of them. It seemed I lived outdoors more than in, and when I wasn’t creating my own adventures, I was reading about others in books such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and another one of his classics, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And truth be known, those fellows really didn’t have a leg up, as far as I was concerned. Their only advantage was they had the Mississippi River in their neighborhood. And me?  I had Manly Wade Wellman’s book, Haunts of Drowning Creek, and Drowning Creek was my big river.

Yessir, I had a grand time as a youngster, especially at Christmas.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.