GLASGOW — When I was about six or seven, I wanted to go possum hunting, but my daddy wouldn’t go, and my older brother wouldn’t go with me. One night Momma and Daddy and us kids all got in our old Model A car and went down to see Uncle Charlie Staples, our neighbor, and he said, “Honey, I’ll go possum hunting with you.” He was an old bachelor, but he loved all children, and he knew how much I wanted to go.

After we ate supper, it was getting dark, so Uncle Charlie went and got his lantern and lit it. We put our coats and hats on, and he said, “Come on. I’m ready to go.” Our dogs had followed us to Uncle Charlie’s house and were in the yard. Uncle Charlie and I went out the front door. We walked down the road between the house and the creek about 150 yards, and the dogs followed us. I thought all dogs were possum dogs then, but our dogs weren’t even possum dogs.

The road turned to the left and had an orchard, and we turned and went through the orchard and then back to the house. I guess we were gone about 15 minutes, and I don’t think we ever were over 150 yards from the house. Uncle Charlie’s bye word was “Dad shame.” When we got back to the house, Uncle Charlie said, “Well, Dad shame, it must have been a bad night!” I was just happy that I got to go possum hunting.

After I got to be eight or 10 years old, I wanted to go possum hunting again, but I still couldn’t get anybody to go with me. So I decided I’d go by myself. Every night I went I’d hear boogers and everything else and get scared, but I wanted to go so bad that I’d go anyway! My dad was talking to a neighbor one time about me going possum hunting by myself. The man said, “Some of these nights when I see him out somewhere, I’ll run him in.”

My dad told him, “I wouldn’t do that if I’s you. He’s got my old shotgun with him!”  

A little later on there was a wild dog at Robert Depp’s place. Everyone shot at it, and it wouldn’t get near anyone. One time she had pups under a honeysuckle vine. I got one of the pups, which looked like it was part hound and part something else. He was white and black with a little brown on him, and I named him T-Bone. Glen Rutledge got another one, which was long-haired and spotted. One day Robert Depp and Carl Shelton were working on the farm and the wild dog walked up to them with a steel trap on her leg. They took the steel trap off, and she walked away. It is amazing how she somehow knew that the men could help her even though she didn’t normally get close to them.

T-Bone hated snakes. There was a pile of rotten lumber near our milk barn and one time a spreadhead snake came out of it. T-Bone grabbed the snake and started shaking it. It bit at T-Bone but got only his long hair. T-Bone killed it and a bunch of live baby snakes came out of it, but it was still holding on to his hair.

One night after I was older, a bunch of us boys were down on Beaver Creek possum hunting with T-Bone. He was gone and gone, and I heard a dog barking way up the creek. I said, “There’s a dog barking, but it doesn’t sound like T-Bone. Let’s go on up the creek where I can hear him better and maybe I’ll know whether it’s T-Bone or not.” So we walked up Beaver Creek. When we got to where I could hear him better, I said, “Yes, that is T-Bone, but he isn’t barking right.”

So we kept going and going up the creek, and finally we got up to where he was at. There was an old treetop down, and a bunch of honeysuckles had grown up around it. T-Bone was treed back up under that old tree top. He had changed his voice because he was about half scared. Normally, T-Bone was a good fighter and wasn’t afraid of anything, but this time he sounded scared. It turned out that there was a coon back up in under the tree top and that was the first coon T-Bone had ever treed. T-Bone would go back in the hole up under the tree top and bark. Then he’d come out. Dreckly, I said to him, “T-Bone, go in there and get him!” When I said that, T-Bone went in and got the coon and brought him out. The coon was caught in a steel trap. Somebody had set the trap and the coon had dragged it back there under the tree. T-Bone killed the coon, and we took it home with us and sold the hide. I had gone possum hunting, but my dog had treed his first coon!  

I had several possum dogs over the years, some of them pretty good and some of them not too good, but T-Bone treed possums better than any dog I ever had.