Jan. 1, 186-Had an awful time in school today. me and Cawcaw Harding set together. when we came in from resess Cawcaw reached over and hit me a bat, and i lent him one in the snoot, and he hit me back. we was jest fooling, but old Francis called Cawcaw up front to lick him. i thought if i went up and told him he wood say, noble boy go to your seat, i wont lick neether of you. anyway i knew that Cawcaw wood tell on me, and so i told old Francis i hit Cawcaw first, and old Francis said Harry i have had my eye on you for a long time, and he jest took us up and slammed us together, and then he wood put me down and shake Cawcaw and then he wood put Cawcaw down and shake me till my head wabbled and he turned me upside down and all the fellers looked upside down and went round and round and somehow i felt silly like and kind of like laffin. i dident want to laff but coodent help it. and then he talked to us and sent us to our seats and told us to study, and i tried to but all the words in the book went round and round and i felt awful funny and kind of wabbly, and when i went home mother said something was the matter and i told her and then i cried, i don't know what i cried for, becaus i dident ake any. father said he wood lick me at home when i got licked at school and perhaps that was why i cried. ennyway when father come home i asked him if he was a going to lick me and he said not by a dam sight, and he gave me ten cents and when i went to bed i got laffin and crying all to once, and coodent stop, and mother set in my room and kept her hand on my forred until i went to sleep. i drempt i was fiting all the time. when i get big enuf there is going to be a fite between me and old Francis, you see if there aint.
July 25. i got a fishhook in my leg today. me and Fatty Melcher was a fishing when we got our lines tangled, i hollered first cut, but i dident have enny nife and Fatty woodent let me have his nife. So we got jerking our lines kinder mad like and all of a suddin the hook got into my leg. gosh you bet it hurt. me and Fatty got the hook out but it bled some. the worst of it was there was a wirm on the hook and when we got the hook out they wasent enny wirm there. Fatty says people sometimes dies from having wirms in them. i bet this one has crawled way in. it may grow inside of me. something is always hapening to me. when i got home i went down to docter Derborns store and bought some wirm medicine and swalowed sum. it was auful bitter. it cost 20 cents out of my cornet money.
July 26. brite and fair. i was all rite today except my leg was stiff mother asked what made me lame and she put on a peace of pork. i told her about the wirm and she said the pork wood draw him out if he was there but she gessed he dident go in. when i told her about the wirm medecine she jest set down and laffed. so i gess i needent wory about having wirms. i went down to doctor Derborns and tride to get him to take the medicine back but he said he woodent. i think he is pretty mean not to.
Haven't had whiskey for a long long time. Sitting in my little house, rural Sweden, snowy winter. Listening to the songs I loved back then. Sipping irish gold. The heartache is like an avalanche. Blessings to all lovers of beauty and truth. "We have a war to fight".
When I was around the age of 12 I went to summer camp in the Uwhrarrie. We camped in Hogans with wooden floors, but the bath houses were cinder block. One morning while walking the path to the bath house I was shocked into paralysis by a snake so big I couldn't even call out. It seemed like time stood still and passed before my eyes all at once. The snake was stretched across the path but began to rattle and coil up. I managed to take a couple of steps back and finally yelled out SNAKE!!!!.
Well here they all came. My camp counselor and several others kept everyone back all the while flipping out at the size of it. One came up with a boulder and bashed it a few times. They gathered it up and took it to the main lodge. A few days later I was preparing to go home and was called to go to the lodge where my counselor told me he had something for me to remember, as he called it, "my near death experience." From a freezer he produced the butchered snake, dressed to grill. "That wasn't for me" he said. Neither was the head, which he produced in a small box, mouth open and inch long fangs out.
"This is for you, Chipmunk." Hey, everybody had a nickname in camp and I had my Mom's chubby cheeks so that was a given.
He had another small box and put it in my hand and told me that this was the largest rattlesnake that had ever been seen or killed in the area as far as anyone around there knew.
This last year I realized that I had lost or misplaced a container containing some of my most personally valuable treasures including that box, and I have fretted over it as I continued to look for it. I let doubt creep in and it really got to me if I let it. I'm not so clingy to most things but I do have some treasures and this is at the top of the list.
Well, to make a long story short, yesterday I struck childhood gold.
Gosh I wish somehow that snake could have been left to live another day...
