Pushing Up Daisy's

Picture is not the actual lady.

At first glance, I didn’t know she was dead. I was two driveways away from being home after a long day of graduate school classes. My car was a convertible and the heat of a Mississippi summer was wearing on me. The air-conditioned townhouse which my wife and I rented would be a welcome reprieve.

My first reaction when I saw her was, “Just keep driving. You didn’t see anything.” When my conscience caught up with reality and informed my heart, I knew I needed to pull over.

She was lying face down in her yard donning a robe over her night gown. The water hose was running just feet away creating a puddle in the St. Augustine and running over the curb into the road. When I bent down to feel for a pulse, I saw the ants starting to gather near her gray hair line on her temples. How had no one seen her before now? Clammy skin. No pulse. No breath.

Cell phones were scarce in 1994. The fastest and closest phone I knew was my stuck-in-the-early-eighties neighbor. Shirtless, per usual, he came to the door. After briefing him, he turned his dark-mulleted head and baby-oiled tanned body in the direction of the phone and dialed 911. We waited on the lawn standing over someone’s grandmother unsure of what to say or do.

Ten minutes later the EMT’s pulled up and confirmed our assessment. She was indeed dead.

I never got her name. I did not meet any family members. She was a lady in her yard enjoying watering the daisies she would soon be pushing up.

Abduction

We heard the rushing sound descending upon us and ran uphill as fast as we could . . . as if we could escape the intruder.

Mark, Matt, Chris and I had been at the tennis courts most of the morning and were on our way home. There were two routes home, each a mile long. One route took us by road. The other led us through the woods. On this day, we chose the cooler forested route.

Half of this hike was on an old road bed on the side of a hill. We were goofing off feeling like taking our time and so left the road bed to climb the side of the hill.

We had recently been to the theatre to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was 1977. Extraterrestrials were fresh in our conversations and haunted our thoughts. When the sound began, all of our senses went directly to Richard Dreyfus, mashed potatoes, and Devil’s Tower.

The sound was a subtle rush at first like a wave of cicadas in the heat of summer. But the sound was increasing and moving toward us. We looked up at the trees and there was no breeze moving the leaves. We all looked at each other with terror and ran uphill away from the approaching abduction.

The downpour and laughs came simultaneously as the summer rain cooled our heads and drenched our clothes.

Black-Chinned Red

I really don’t have an infatuation with salamanders. It’s just, in my early years, they were an accessible non-venomous amphibian that I could catch, keep, and observe. It also just so happens that on our property at Appleby Lane we had a creek in the front of our house and a spring at the back of the property deep in the woods. Deep in the woods is probably an overstatement. I recently looked at Google Earth and that property was not nearly as big today as it was to my elementary-aged self.

It was the spring behind our house that most intrigued me. I felt adventurous and independent anytime I hiked to get there. It was nestled between ridges and the water slowly crept through a damp valley to a small pond belonging to another property. Muscadine vines hung on the edges of the trail and rock outcroppings were potential hideouts for other creatures that might lurk.

Dusky, Two-lined, Red-backed, and Slimy salamanders were frequent finds under decaying leaf litter of the spring as well as numerous crawfish of varying sizes. It wasn’t unusual to find salamanders in their larval form with gills on the side of their heads.

Finding and attempting to catch these species was a thrill yet there was always the intrigue of uncovering something that I had never found before. Like finding flint in a newly-plowed field, it kept me searching. Every log, or rock, or pile of leaves that I upended might surprise me with something I had not seen.

That happened on one of these adventures. As I was flipping stones and ever so slowly rolling deteriorating logs so not to muddy the water, I glanced at something red, and big. The largest salamander I had ever witnessed emerged from under the debris. I gasped and grabbed. The creature slithered through my hands and escaped under a stone. My heart was racing. With the watchful care of a mother covering her now sleeping baby I lifted the stone and watched as the water cleared from the smoky mud that drifted away with the current. He was there. I lowered my cusped hands and caught the treasure. Slipping him quickly into my collection jar, I placed the lid on and screwed it down tightly.

All other potential finds be damned, I grabbed whatever I remembered I had brought and raced down the trail toward the house. I couldn’t wait to show my parents this strange amphibian I had procured.

I was even more thrilled to know that my parents didn’t know what kind of salamander this was. Did they really not know everything? Fortunately, my dad had a friend who was a herpetologist who lived nearby. I was told that this expert was coming over to see it. Knowing that, I felt something that I may have never felt before. Pride.

Dr. Echternacht arrived red-haired and spectacled just like a herpetologist ought. After the adult chit-chat and niceties between he and my parents concluded we got down to the real business. I led him downstairs where I kept my terrarium and where I had lovingly placed the giant and waited for the biolgist’s assessment.

“Ahh. Hmm. That’s curious. Very nice." My dad broke the wonder. “Sandy, what do we have?” “It’s a Black-Chinned Red Salamander. It’s a little out of its range, but that’s definitely what it is. See the very dark pigment under the chin?” All I heard was, “It’s rare because you . . . you Corey . . . found a salamander that is not supposed to live here.” I had found gold. Would the newspaper come by this week? Would the salamander be renamed? Would Pseudotriton ruber schencki be upgraded to Pseudotriton ruber peltoni? I only hoped.

For years I lived in that glory. Maybe I still do.

Sam Gribley

I wanted to be the one who ran off into the Catskills and lived in a hollowed-out tree. I wanted to make my own fish hooks, and snare traps, and dig around for wild edible roots. I wanted a falcon named Frightful to call my own. Oh, to be Sam Gribley!

When I read Jean Craighead George’s book, My Side of the Mountain, I dove deep and vicariously through the life of Sam Gribley, the main character. As one who was not a great childhood reader, I probably read that book five times. Mrs. George had a way of taking me to gurgling mountain streams and all of the wild places I enjoyed so much as a youth and still do today.

What is it about the young desire to test out our independence? We all have that vision of the boy or girl with an inverted red bandana parachute full of necessities-on-a-stick that will carry us to beanie weenie campfires built by mei and me alone. The wild calls and we want to answer. Fictional Sam Gribley was the only success story I knew. And I felt as if I knew him so well. After reading that book I always wondered if any of her young readers ever actually ran away.

My seventh grade year I was among a group of students who spent an hour a week in some sort of gifted program. I gag to even write it. I was certainly not a good student or a deserving student to be termed gifted. In fact I had a predisposition against the gifted class because I had a classmate whom I heard braggadociously explain to an adult that he was in the gifted program with an air of superiority and far too much emphasis on the word gifted. What a poor road to self righteousness we set our kids upon. Sheesh. Anyway, one of the opportunities we had was to write down an author who we admired and what question we would ask them if we could. Of course, I gladly wrote down mine.

A month later, our group of gifted students were gathered in a small room. The teacher responsible for us said that she had a special surprise for us and lifted the receiver off a telephone. “Corey, would you like to ask your question?” What? What was this? Right now? Jean George? “Hello. Mrs. George? Thank you for taking time out of your day. I’ve got a few students here who would like to ask you some questions.” She hands the phone to me. Gulp.

I was star struck. Was this really my hero author? I pulled myself together and quickly spat out my question before my body had any chance to shut down and crumble in fear.

To her knowledge she had no children readers who had actually flown the coop for a life of a survivalist but understood the temptation to do so. She was kind, funny, and willing to hear our elementary questions. My day was made and the school library lacked Jean Craighead George books on its shelf for quite some time.

Maybe it was a gifted class, not for the intellect or arrogance of the students involved, but for the gift it was to the students.

007

The summer before my 4th grade year, my family moved into a house my parent’s built on a six acre wood lot in the middle of an older neighborhood.   It was in the rolling hills of East Tennessee not far from the banks of the Tennessee River. We lived on a dogwood trail, meaning, come April the streets would be active with motorists driving at a snail’s pace following permanent pink dots leading them by the blooms of the pink and white trees and flowery landscaped yards. Our house was tucked deep down a long gravel driveway and surrounded by forest.

The roads through our neighborhood were hilly and often dropped off into steep gullies. These were places to hide from cars passing by, find box turtles, or just cool off in the shade on hot summer days. We were fond of these wooded respites and often avoided walking on the roads by dropping off into these secret oasis’s. Oasi? Is that the plural form? It should be.

Mark and Matt were brothers the same age as myself and my older brother, Chris. They often visited their grandparents who were our closest neighbors through the woods from our house. We became an inseparable foursome often exploring the wooded roadside havens.

On one of our excursions we came across what looked like an old dumping ground for various trash of years past. Blue and green glass bottles, metal gas cans, and beer cans were buried in degrees of decaying leaf litter. We became particularly interested in the beer cans we found. Among these were cone top cans that we didn’t know even existed and were opened with a bottle opener. These gave way to old Budweiser cans that were gold and could only be opened with a church key can opener puncturing the flat top of the steel can. Other cans offered a banner that read, “Tab Top” as these cylindrical vessels were transitioning to pull tabs.

Our curiosity hit a peak when we found two cans with James Bond girls on them: James Bond’s 007 Special Blend. After procuring our cans, we left the dump and took our treasure home. Soon after we bought a book called, The Beer Can Bible (revealing, yet again, that humans are very religious people), which gave a brief history and value of old beer cans. The book was copyrighted in 1976 and our 007 cans were valued, if in mint condition, at $125.00. Jackpot. Granted, our cans were nowhere near mint, but what a rush to find something rare and with beautiful girls. Who would have thought a dogwood trail could produce such fine specimens?

James Bond Beer was brewed by National Brewing in the late sixties but only for a brief time until National learned that they should have checked the trademark on James Bond commercial products. Meanwhile, they had produced seven different cans donning seven different James Bond girls. The beer was only distributed to four cities and my hometown of Knoxville happened to be one of the four. Today, these cans fetch up to $700.00 depending on the condition.

Pentecostal

Matt and I lived in a garage for a summer.  We didn’t complain.  It was a nice garage in a nice setting.  It was one in a row of garages in a green metal-framed building housing an office for an environment camp, a workshop, and us.  We were working for the University of Tennessee trapping bears for research in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

Behind the garage door you would find two bunks on the left, a single cot on the right, shelves and fridge against the back wall where a large black Norwegian rat would make it’s presence known on occasion. 

We were unencumbered summer students who didn’t mind the accommodations and loved the fact that we had a small charcoal grill, Clash tapes, and fold-out seats for evening meals in the parking lot immediately outside our roll-up door. 

Frequenting the workshop to our left was the maintenance man for the environmental camp.  His name was Ron.  

We were excited to find out that Ron, of all the staff of the environmental camp that we perceived were liberal wackos, was a down-to-earth born again and again Christian.  He was kind, helpful, and willing to talk to us at days end while we were relaxing by smell of our cancerous briquettes.  

So kind was he that he invited us to have a meal at his house where his wife would supply us with something other than hormone-injected and unnaturally-formed beef patties or tube steaks. We set a weekend date. 

We either showered in the camp’s dorm or took a cold bath in the mountain stream which was a stones throw from our domicile.  We donned our best military surplus pants and collared shirts and drove the few miles outside the national park boundary. 

Ron’s white farmhouse could have been the subject of a Thomas Kincade painting.  It was at the end of a bucolic lane in a mountain valley.  Barns dotted the hills and a small stream sauntered under a foot bridge in their freshly cut lawn.  You wanted to breathe in deeply when you stepped out of your truck in hopes you could carry the scene with you in your lungs.  

Inside the house was just as country as you can imagine; hand-knitted throws over a floral couch, dark wood paneling, creaky wood floors, and a porcelain white-skinned Jesus in a powder blue robe framed in gold.

Butter beans, greens, corn on the cob, and fresh sliced garden tomatoes as deep red as Jesus’s own blood were on the table.  Ron’s wife was pulling a cast iron skillet of steaming cornbread from the propane fueled oven.  Country ham added the protein. 

Ron’s wife was the perfection of Pentecostalism.  Her braided brown hair framed her clear glossy face oiled from the stove before her.  Oven mitts gave way to the long sleeves of a white shirt tucked into a denim skirt dragging the kitchen’s linoleum even in the un-air conditioned July house.

As we ate and after we ate she talked.  She talked of Jesus.  She talked of fiery eyes.  She talked of Jesus with fiery eyes and serpents.  She talked of fire and dreams of fire. The food and warmth of the house and strange talk mesmerized me and made me uncomfortably sleepy.  Judgment, and lakes, and fire came from this gentle smooth-skinned woman.    

We yawned and thanked and excused.  Slowly we pried ourselves away into the dark lawn and the familiar vinyl smell of our truck seats that we wanted to breathe in deeply and carry with us in our lungs.  Matt and I were silent as we drove back to the garage.  

The Cute Rats

Woodrats are cuter rats than, say, a Norwegian rat.  They are smaller, have a brown coat, and aren’t slinky like their bigger, darker, more intimidating cousin. They are in a grouping called pack rats.  They build nests of sticks and debris and are attracted to small shiny objects like bottle caps, foil, and apparently moth balls.  

One summer while living in Arkansas we had Woodrats that had made their way into our attic.  You could hear them making their nighttime rounds as they scampered above our bedroom. 

Getting into our attic was like climbing an obstacle course turned vertically.  The entrance was a tight rectangle entered only first by climbing a ladder and contorting your body over a top closet shelf which could not hold the body weight of a halfling.  

I squeezed my way in and had my wife toss up a few Victors and peanut butter.  

After a few days of rambunctious mocking and no game, I had to regroup.  And fast.  My mother-in-law had come to town to watch our children for a week while my wife and I went out of town.  

“Throw some mothballs up there.  That will run them out.”  This was the advice of my wife’s mother.  I knew that mothballs were a claimed deterrent for some things (like moths), but rats?  The look on her face said that she was determined for me to do something about them before we left.  My wife’s face said the same.

In frustration I sucked in my gut, corkscrewed through the hole, had my wife toss up a box of mothballs, and proceeded to throw handfuls into every corner of the hotbox of an attic.  I emptied the entire box on them.  “That’ll do it,” I lied as I slapped my hands together for my mother-in-law’s comfort. 

I didn’t take time to think that I was actually unleashing the mothballs on us.  Upon our return from the week away, we entered the house to the smell of our grandparent’s wardrobe times ten.  

As my wife and I lay down that night, glad to be home and in our own bed, there was silence.  Silence until a Woodrat started playing hockey with a mothball. 

Retrieving a Dart From a Bear's Derriere

The drive from the environmental camp to the entrance of Cade’s Cove loop road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a curvy 8.61 miles.  We lived in a garage at the environmental camp (That’s another story to be told later). With little traffic it takes 18 minutes to drive that 8.61 miles.  The Cade’s cove loop road is 11 miles.  The entrance to the Abram’s Creek trail is 5.1 miles (halfway) around the Cade’s Cove loop.  At 6:30 a.m. it requires a total of approximately 32 minutes to get from Tremont Environmental Camp to the trailhead.  That’s the getting to the parking lot.

The hike started with a river crossing that was impossible to rock jump and keep your feet dry. So we either had to remove our boots and socks or just trudge through it knowing our boots would be wet for the day. The trail was an 8 mile round trip back to the trailhead and parking lot.  For a hiker at a steady pace (2 miles/hour) it would take approximately 4 hours to complete the hike.  But we were not steady hikers because we had tasks interrupting our hike.  

Our task was checking snare traps for any black bears that might have wandered toward the scent of sardines which baited them. A snare trap is a cable around a tree with a foot peddle that, once pressed upon, would throw a metal arm like a huge safety pin and tighten the cable around the forefoot of the bear. For the most part, it was effective.

Matt, my closest friend and roommate, and I were working for the University of Tennessee as technicians trapping black bears for research.

This particular day we caught an average size bear (90-120 lbs) in one of the first traps along our trail. Working up a bear meant darting the bear’s rear end with either a long stick with a syringe and dart filled with drug or a dart pistol. If enough drug was administered according to the guessed weight of the bear, you would have a 15 to 30 minute wait for the bear to fall into a deep slumber. At that point a number of things would take place: measuring every part of the animal from it’s head width, total length, girth, and even its private parts if a male; a weighing of the beast to see how far off you were in your guess of drug amount; extracting a small tooth for aging purposes back at the lab; tattooing the lip and groin with a specified number; and piercing an ear tag through the ear. If bear’s were to return home to their parents they would have some ‘splainin’ to do.

At the completion of these various efforts one of us would have to wait around for the bear to wake up to be sure the bear was safe. The other of us would meander up the trail to check the rest of the traps. It was generally a time saver.

We were having an unusually burdensome day as our dart system was not working properly. Our method for the summer was the use of the dart pistol. The pistol required a CO2 cartridge for propulsion of the dart and a small ignition cap for the firing. On this particular bear, we guessed the weight at about 100 pounds. We measured the Ketamine amount to be 2cc’s (cubic centimeters). One cc per 50 pounds tended to cause a bear to doze nicely. But we were having trouble with misfires due to the caps. After several attempts and wasted drug, we finally got a dart successfully into the bear’s rump. We were left with 4 cc’s of Ketamine for any other bears that we might encounter. That amount of drug would put down a 200 pound bear. Not a problem since we had not caught a bear of that size all summer and this trapline had been slow of late.

The bear had just stumbled away from the trap site when Matt came running back breathless. “Another bear. Last trap. Big,” he stammered. The last trap was another three miles out. Strapping on our backpacks we made quick stride up the trail.

When we arrived at the site, the area of the snared bear was cleared of all debris leaving a circular dust bath. He was seemingly trapped recently and thus fresh in his fury. My friend and I looked at each other letting the reality of our predicament settle in. If we didn’t get a dart in this bear correctly, or if the drug amount wasn’t enough, we would need to hike the four miles out, cross the river, drive the now trafficked Cades Cove Loop road all the way down the mountain through curves back to the Environmental Camp and back to cross the river and hike another eight miles out and back. It would be well after dark before this bear could be released.

As said earlier, we had enough drug to put down a 200 pound bear. But Ketamine wasn’t exact in its effectiveness. We guessed that this bear was somewhere over 200 pounds. But what could we do but try and see if it would be enough. We drew out the remaining drug into the syringe and put it in the dart. We put a new cap in the pistol to make sure it fired correctly. Matt got the bear’s attention while I circled to its back end, aimed, and fired. A dart is supposed to move like a bullet train not like a church league softball pitch. But it did. So when it entered the bear it didn’t have enough force to inject the drug. The CO2 cartridge lacked CO2. Now all of our Ketamine was dangling in a cylinder from the rump of the bear.

We were tired and frustrated. About to give up and start our marathon evening of hiking out and back, an idea came to us. It would be a stretch. It would be a McGyver move. But it could work. Maybe.

Finding some fishing line among our pack of odd items we tied a small slipknot loop on the end of a long stick. With Matt at the bear’s angry head keeping it’s attention, I was on the other end attempting to loop the slipknot around the drooping dart. The bear was uncooperative. Apparently he didn’t like having a person in front and behind him. As soon as he saw me leaning out to loop the dart, he would turn ferociously popping his jaws together, huff, and blow snot out his nose in intimidation.

We were about to give up when, in a moment of weakness, the bear miscalculated and I was able to loop the dart and pull it free. Using the stick we were able to slowly drag the dart a few inches at a time closer to the edge of the dust circle and out of the bear’s reach.

As the saying goes, we were not out of the woods yet. Would the pistol work and would there be enough drug to put the bear down? We replaced with CO2 cartridge with an extra, put on a new firing cap, and aimed. The dart hit its mark. Now to wait.

About 20 minutes later the bear fell asleep. We quickly took all measurements and samples and went to lift the bear to weigh it. We could not lift the dead weight of the bear completely off the ground but guessed a good 250 plus pounds. Another hour later and the bear stumbled off into the forest. We slid the pack straps on our shoulders hiked the four miles out, crossed the river, drove the Cove Loop, glided down the 8.61 miles of curves and got back to our garage at the environmental camp exhausted but satisfied in the accomplishment.

Purple Popsicles

My dog is about to have pups.  It’s her first and possibly her last litter.  I’ve learned a lot in the process that I never knew before and would have probably been fine without ever knowing.  Like, when three minutes after the stud dog arrived and my wife and I were meeting his owners for the first time, Mavis (our dog) screams a cry of terror.  We turn and find they are locked together facing away from each other.  I didn’t know that’s how it worked. How do you have an adult conversation with a couple you’ve just met with that happening in the background?  

After that occasion my wife declared all the gross stuff now and forever my responsibility.  

One of those privileges is taking rectal temps the week of birth.  These hind end forays are to determine the day of birth by a temperature drop. Butt this story is about bears.  It all relates.   Bear with me.

The summer my friend and I trapped bears for research, we had the privilege of all sorts of measurements and samplings that needed to occur for data collection.  Because the bears were sedated and it was mid summer in the Appalachian mountains, we watched closely to make sure the bears didn’t overheat like your dad’s jalopy.  To do this, you took its temperature through its derrière.  I told you it would relate.

The climax of the story is already here.   The only difference between the dipstick that exits a dog’s rump and the dipstick that exits a bear’s rump is a bear’s comes out purple matching their primary summer diet of blueberries.  This too is embarrassing in the company of mixed couples.

Smile

It was my sixth grade year and the orange, yellow, and red leaves had settled to the ground.  The anticipation of turkey and tinsel was dialing up.  “Do you have your Christmas list?”  I loved that question.  It led to many hours of day-dreaming and fantasying about what could be.  

After searching diligently through the catalogues and circling items of interest I landed on one object on which I began to obsess.  A camera.  Specifically, a Canon AE-1.  The dials, the buttons, and the promise of birthing new images over and over again was almost too much to carry.  It was truly a gift that could keep on giving.  I could envision myself stooping with strap around my neck focused solely on the perfect framing of a luna moth.   I could feel the weight of the camera and the lens balanced in my hands.  

I was a latchkey kid.  After I stepped off of bus #41 after school and hiked down our long gravel driveway I was alone at home for several hours every day.  My parent’s bedroom was upstairs and contained a large walk-in closet with parallel his and her clothes hung on either side.  Above were shelves.  I knew that this was a perfect hiding place for presents waiting to be wrapped.  

Please understand, I was a middle child rule-keeper.  I rarely got into trouble.  Never before had I been tempted to peek into the secrets of Christmas morning.  Until one fateful afternoon.  

I happened to be in my parent’s closet, you know . . . just hanging around, when I saw the plastic bag on the shelf.  If the opening hadn’t been toward by eyesight as I was standing on a shoe bin maybe the temptation would not have been so strong.  But it was.  And there it was.  In a yellow Kodak box.  My heart sank.  This was not the professional camera I was pining for.  It was a point and shoot with an internal rectangular flash cube that screamed “age 4 plus.”  It was called a camera outfit.  Outfit?  Of course, I had seen these cameras before.  Michael Landon, from the television version of Little House on the Prairie promoted it regularly in commercials.  

I practically crumbled to the floor in disappointment.  I was disappointed in the kind of camera.  I was disappointed in my parents.  I was disappointed in myself for succumbing to the fever. I was disappointed in Jesus for not getting me something better on His birthday.    

I sat cross-legged in my fake happiness as it was brother’s turn to open a present. He got a Canon AE-1.  

'Possum

@coreypeltonphotography

At a very young age I was introduced to the world of animals.  My father is a retired prof from the University of Tennessee.  He was hired back in the late 60’s around the time of my birth, into the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.  Soon after, the National Park Service contacted him to begin a research project in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to determine the population density of the American black bear.  That turned into, not only the longest running bear research project in the world (50 years), but the impetus for my young, inquisitive mind toward animals of all kinds.

We temporarily housed a number of animal species until they were ready for release; from raccoons, to squirrels, to salamanders, to baby opossums.  Which brings me to the topic . . . Didelphis virginiana . . . the common opossum.

The opossum, henceforth referred to as simply ‘possum, is a complex marsupial.  They don’t know they are complex.  It’s more that we are conflicted about the ‘possum.  Are they cute?  Are they repulsive?  Do we fog the sliding glass door enamored by them as they eat our cat’s food, or do we grin their self-same grin when we see them spatchcocked on the asphalt?  

I’ve always been intrigued.  I mean, what’s not intriguing about a marsupial?  A pouch?  Whoa.  That’s kangaroo’ish.  But there’s more . . . they have more teeth than any North American land mammal; needle-sharp teeth to fill out that ghastly grin of intimidation.  A nifty fifty.  

If that doesn’t impress, what about their bifurcated penis.  That’s right.  A forked pecker.  Old-timers swore that they had sex through the females nose (think light socket) and the old lady sneezed her young into her pouch.  If that’s not intriguing than you might be a complete bore and need to ask a few questions of yourself.  At any rate, the ‘possum is, if nothing else, certainly not boring.  

45

Because you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to open up your mouth
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You know what everything's about
You and to have a white hot spotlight
You had to be a big shot last night

- Billy Joel

It was a glorious moment of liberation when I bought my first 45 vinyl record with my very own money. I was in the fourth grade in 1979 and felt like I was in high school. Ninety-nine cents of hard earned change. It was my change. Now it was my vinyl.

My record player was a self-encased player meant to play Disney themes and songs like “I Love Trash” sung by Sesame Street’s muppet, Oscar the Grouch. The plastic turntable sat by my bedside so I could listen before I fell off to sleep.

I was so proud when my mom said, “Let’s hear Corey’s new record” to my brother as we were playing in our room. Oh to hear that low growl of electric guitar intro. The mocking meanness of Joel’s voice rocked my soul. I closed my eyes and pictured myself on stage with the crowd entranced.

Maybe it was the message of a woman’s intoxicated escapades that would go unremembered that lifted the needle off the record. Or maybe it was Mr. Joel’s use of “don’t come bitchin’ to me” that caused my mom to cut my joy short. Either way, I found the record placed back in it’s paper envelope in the trashcan the next morning.

I wonder if she ever knew that I got it back out of the trash and sold it to my neighborhood friend for fifty cents?

Dog Days

The Hatcher’s were an older couple my parents drug me, unwillingly, to visit on occasion.  They were our next door neighbors.  I was very young.  Kindergarten, maybe? There is something about a certain kind of matchy-matchy polyester older couple that you just sense that they are far too proper to act out around.  There were no toys.  The conversation was adult and far too long.  I was a shy, quiet child and hated these visits.  

I remember that they had a backyard and covered carport that we could enter near a crab apple tree from our driveway.  I also remember that they had a German Shepherd.  As a third grader this dog was huge and intimidating and a pup still . . . so, very active.  And it’s name was Princess.  Sounds just like a name an older couple wearing matchy-matchy polyester would choose.  

My mother informed me one day that I was going to a birthday party.  Yay! . . . . .  for Princess . . . Boo!  A birthday party for a dog?  I had never heard of such a thing.  Even at the age of a mere fry I knew that wasn’t right.  

It got worse.  Princess had been signed up for the Burger King Birthday Club. It was a theme party?   I wasn’t signed up for the Burger King Birthday Club.  I went.  I was terrified.  I was bored.  And who got to eat the burger?  Princess.  

First Beer

My heart was racing and my mind was lost in the news of it all.  My first girlfriend had just told me she was calling it off.  Here we stood in our family’s double garage . . .  her silent, and me angrily trying to get the gas cap off my 1978 brown Toyota truck.  The truck was on empty, the cap stuck, and I needed to drive my newly minted ex the thirty minutes to her home. 

The car I borrowed (the gas cap would have to wait until I got back) was the car two friends and I were going to drive to Nags Head, North Carolina for my senior year Spring Break.  Yes . . . put the data together: I was 18 before I had my first girlfriend and my first beer.  I’m pretty sure one led to the other.  After an awkward and bitter good riddance at her door, I floored it (carefully) for home.  

When we entered Kelly’s Restaurant and Tavern I was tired from the drive and relieved to be nine hours from heartache.  It was an “R” month so we bellied up to the bar as confident as any three underage first-time drinkers could manage and sheepishly ordered a dozen oysters and a Budweiser. Broken heart, good friends, and a cold beer.  That was a good beer.  

*Panhandler Salamander

The Green Camp Gap Trail became one of my favorite bear trapline trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  It was easily accessible but rarely hiked because it had been listed as an abandoned trail by the park service.  There were no signs marking its existence and it was allowed to grow over, no longer to be trampled by humans.  

To find the trail, you drove several miles up a gravel road, parked at its termination, hiked out two miles along a fantastic stream, and turned right at a rusted out Model T . . . some of the last remnants of the logging industry from decades past.  

The trail climbed the side of a ridge to a saddle which was the crossing point into another watershed.  Once descending through tunnels of laurel and rhododendron thickets, we (myself along with my college roommate and fellow bear research technician) would come to the first of many creek crossings. The trail would continue down winding back and forth through a narrow valley to the trails end and our awaiting vehicle.  

Rather than being a high ridge trail with panoramic views, this was a dense and dark trail that felt secretive in its lush undergrowth.  If I ever become a fugitive, this might be a place to begin your search.  

A small creek crossing became our lunch spot after several hours of checking traps and what we called working up any bears caught.  Because we used sardines as bait in our bear snares, lunch was often crackers and these deliciously odorous and headless canned fish.  

During our our first lunch on Green Camp Camp we noticed an average size (about 5”) Northern Dusky salamander poking its head out from under a river rock.  For fun, we swatted a fly from the sky and dropped it a few inches from the salamander’s face.  He promptly ate it.  We laughed not expecting a salamander to panhandle like the all too comfortable bears along the national park roadways and parking lots.  Not thinking much more about it, we packed up to check the rest of the traps and finish our day.  

When we arrived to our lunch spot in the middle of the creek on day two, our friend was back again.  Same rock.  Surprised, we repeated the process supplying him with another meal.  Day 3 . . . the same.  Every day we looked forward to our panhandler salamander breaking up the monotony of our 14 day trapline.  

One morning on our way up to the Model T, we were caught in a downpour that continued on and off throughout the day.  Tired, wet, and ready for lunch, we slogged to our beloved creek crossing.  The water had risen.  We never saw the salamander again.  

*Panhandle: to stop people on the street and ask for food or money.  

Sleeping in a Cave

The cave that friend Tom and I slept in was the typical dank 58 degrees of every other cave.  As Junior High boys we didn’t think or care that sleeping in a cave might be horribly uncomfortable, we just wanted to do it.  It felt like risk and freedom joined at the hip.

It was simple to find; just a one mile walk on a well-traveled two lane road through our neighborhood.   A short, steep 30 foot trail led up through thick brambles to the entrance.  The cool air streaming out of the entrance was a relief on hot summer days.  We frequented this hole in the ground often.  

There was a large (dare I say cavernous) entry room that was long and wide with floor to ceiling stalactites and stalagmites.  There was a rock in the middle the size of a manatee.  It looked like the kind of table on which a king might slam a goblet.  When you did pound it with your palm or fist it would give off a low and deep sound like a cast iron tub.  Not far after you entered the main room a tunnel went down to the right offering a crawling passage.  Another was found at the end of the main room.  It was a dream for us to explore. 

The main space had the only area that was somewhat level, though sloping slightly down toward the king’s table.  Here we thought we could set up our sleeping bags for a cool nights sleep.  So we did.  Unfortunately, the floor sloped a little too much.  Even though we placed large stones at our feet to push ourselves up the grade over and over again throughout the night, we didn’t sleep well.  Plus, that 58 degree cave air was also humid air.   We felt like we were breathing in the musty smell an upright clothes washer.

The highlight and low point of our spelunking adventures happened one evening as we got bored waiting until we were tired enough to sleep the first 30 minutes before pushing our bodies uphill.  On the opposite side of the musical table was a pile of rocks which looked as though, sometime over the centuries, the roof had crumbled to the floor.  We started digging around in the rocks looking for fossils or beer cans; whatever was of interest.  We found a human vertebrae.  Then we ran.  Flashlights in hand, we ran home. 

After a decent nights sleep on a level mattress, we came to our senses and braved the cave.  We found a scapula and jawbone complete with teeth.  After sending the bones off to Dr. Bass at the University of Tennessee (look him up), we found out that some of the parts were deer and the other probably Native American; not a murder victim or a vagrant.  

Eventually we wised up and realized that sleeping in a cave was for the bats.