FAMILY STORIES

Uncle Bruce and Aunt Maggie Lee came by the store in his two toned Ford pick-up truck (shared his bolo bar with Spot) and asked me to go with him and Aunt Maggie to seine a water hole on the old Am Griffin place. The water hole was the same width as the seine, so we could cover the entire width of the water hole with one sweep of the seine. The bottom of the water hole was sandy (the whole Am Griffin place was pretty sandy) with no stumps, trees or bushes in it. If there were any fish in there we would get them if everything went according to plan. So we did a clean sweep through the thing without getting snagged on anything. We were doing fine (the corks were on top and the leads on the bottom…. no fish though) until we caught a very large snapping turtle.

Uncle Bruce accused the turtle of eating all of the fish that were in the water hole. He knew there had been fish in it because he had caught a bunch of small ones fishing in the river and put them in there. Now there were none. The penalty for eating Uncle Bruce’s fish was apparently death. The only means of execution he could find was an old rusty pocketknife. It was really dull and the turtle was really tough. This turtle had a neck the size of a circus midget’s ankle. This turtle was mean too; Uncle Bruce poked at the turtle with a stick and the turtle viciously grabbed hold of the stick as if he were trying to kill it. Then when he pulled the stick, the turtle’s head and neck came out of the shell, so he could get a good whack at his neck with the pocketknife. The Turtle would not let go of the stick. I guess he thought that he had latched onto a part of Uncle Bruce. We as the struggle went on the turtle’s neck was winning.

Uncle Bruce made one last desperate mighty stroke and the knife slipped off the turtle’s neck and into the large artery in Uncle Bruce’s forearm. We had to quit and take him to the doctor to get stitches and I think the turtle lived to rob another water hole of fish.