Thursday, June 8, 1944
Our Army and Navy Boys
Lieutenant Robert K. Moore returned to his base at Camp Gordon, Georgia, Monday, after a week’s furlough with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Moore and other relatives.
James L. (Fatty) Dilley, mechanic in the Air Corps, stationed at Moore Field, Mission, Texas, arrived Saturday, to spend a 21-day furlough with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Dilley. He has been in service since February 1942.
Private Lawson S. Cutlip, stationed at Camp Bowie, Texas, is at home on furlough with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Romie J. Cutlip, of Marlinton.
Mrs. Loy Sharp has received word that her husband, Loy Sharp, of the United States Navy, has landed safely in New Guinea. He is the son of Elmer Sharp, of Jerico Road.
Gilmer Sharp was home from the Army a few days this week. He is the son of Cliff C. Sharp, and is one of four brothers in the service.
Two Pocahontas County men are receiving their initial naval indoctrination at the United States Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois. They are: Shad R. McLauglin, 19, son of Mr. and Mrs. Elmer D. McLaughlin, of Huntersville, and James Marvin Wimer, 31, husband of Merle R. Wimer, of Marlinton.
FIELD NOTES
Life is becoming wilder in the wilds tributary to the Churchville District and threatens to overflow into the realms of pure science, pure reason or pure cussedness.
In fact, the recrudescense of bear life, of deer life, has become so threatening that some of the old timers are getting ready to hunt Indians again.
Farmers no longer know whether they are working for the wild life or themselves, or the game warden, or the judiciary, or for whom.
Not long ago a bear killed a sheep near one farmstead fold, and came back the next night for a second helping. That was bad, for a trap closed on the bear, and he was subsequently trailed and dispatched.
The real problem arose in another case, however, when a farmer killed a bear that had killed a sheep, and the farmer ate some of the bear.
A game warden is reported to have tried to arrest the farmer who insisted that he was merely eating his own property, the sheep that the bear had eaten. The game warden insisted the farmer didn’t have a permit to kill the bear, and the farmer replied that neither did the bear. With that one, the warden withdrew to consult the curator of something in some zoo which presumably is involved in getting an expert statement from a trained Washington bear accustomed to a college atmosphere and an economy of plenty.
What, however, has thrown the best minds in the Churchville district into further confustication is the matter of the gregarious deer.
Deer almost any morn may be seen floating across the fields or landscape and over a six-foot fence with all the eclat of the gentlemen on the flying trapeze.
What is more to the point, however, is that a deer dotes on garden truck – particularly the garden the farmer and the farmer’s wife have labored days to bring to a luscious fruition. Three or four deer in an acre garden patch can just about clean it of everything except the top soil.
Another warden, who is conscientious, wants to know can he arrest a farmer for killing a deer that has depopulated his garden – has, in fact, practically moved in with the farmer’s family and is eating at the first table, dogs or no dogs.
About the only way the farmer can get his money back is to eat the deer, and maybe there is something about that in the Atlantic Charter.
Judge W. Terrel Sheehan, of trial court, says, off the record, it’s all a matter of calories, and if you can hold a calorie or vitamin for misfeasance, then you’re a better judge than he is.
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“Title to a certain piece of earth is one of our more or less human fictions… The only true title to things is use, and good use in the long run is good title, while bad use is bad title. We will soon lose what we cannot use well, no matter how sure we are that we own it.”
From: “The Wind Blew from the East.” – Ferner Nuhn