Thursday, November 9, 1950
A BOY
(Sent in by Floyd Viers, for dedication to the boys of Pocahontas County)
After a male has grown out of long dresses and triangles, and has acquired pants, freckles and so much dirt that relatives don’t care to kiss it between meals, it becomes a boy.
A boy is Nature’s answer to the false belief that there is no such thing as perpetual motion. A boy can run like a deer, swim like a fish, climb like a squirrel, balk like a mule, bellow like a bull, eat like a pig or act like a jackass, according to climatic conditions.
The world is so full of boys that it’s impossible to touch off a fire cracker, strike up a band or pitch a ball without collecting a thousand of them. Boys are not ornamental; they’re useful. If it were not for boys, the newspaper would go undelivered, and a hundred thousand picture shows would go bankrupt.
The boy is a natural spectator; he watches parades, fires, fights, football games, automobiles and planes with equal fervor. However, he will not watch a clock.
A boy is a piece of skin stretched over an appetite however, he eats only when he’s awake. Boys imitate their dads in spite of all efforts to teach them good manners.
Boys are very durable. A boy, if not washed too often and if kept in a cool, quiet place after each accident, will survive broken bones, hornets nests, swimming holes and five helpings of pie.
Boys love to trade things. They’ll trade fishhooks, marbles, broken knives and snakes for anything that is priceless or worthless.
When he grows up, he’ll trade puppy love, energy, warts, bashfulness and a cast iron stomach for a bay window, pride, ambition, pretense and a bald head and will immediately begin to say that “boys aren’t what they used to be in the good old days.”
FIELD NOTES
Up on Browns Mountain, the state road workers stirred out a big mother copperhead snake. By actual count, she was carrying 32 baby snakes. The lateness of the season and number of babies are both unusual.
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Late last month, Carl Gibson killed a big rattler on Thorny Creek. She carried one baby snake and a half dozen eggs.
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William Akers killed a big coon when hunting squirrels in Buckley Mountain one day last week. Its fur was remarkably dark for a coon found east of Greenbrier Ri-ver. We all expect the darker pelts to come from the Black Forest.
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Last week, Roy Bird, of Big Back Creek, arose to inquire if there was a Buckwheat Dropper yet in existence in these parts. It was a new name to me for a buckwheat reaper. I put the notice in the paper. This is only Friday, but two citizens have been in to report. The first was Grover Taylor, of Green Bank. He said his neighbor, Roger Sheets, had a buckwheat dropper; that he and Pinckney Doyle had harvested their crop with it this year. They had hitched a tractor to it.
Mr. Taylor had no sooner gone than Frank Morrison, of Lobelia, came in to say that his neighbor, Don Ryder, had a buckwheat dropper in good condition. He had harvested a crop with it this season.
