A collection of stories about growing up in Red River County, Texas in the 1940s and 1950s.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Remedies for Treating Screwworm Larvae

by Douglas Fodge



We had chased the bull calf all over the pasture until we panted like one of Daddy’s hounds on a hot day, but still the calf couldn’t be cornered and caught. I suppose he suspected that he wouldn’t like what we had in store for him that afternoon! We had discovered that the calf had a bad wound on his belly, probably on his naval, and the wound was teeming with the maggots (insect larvae). A frothy, bloody discharge appeared on the surface surrounding the wound, and up close the stench emanating from the open site was pretty strong. If left to the designs of the screwworm larvae, the calf would soon be a part of history. We had to do something, and fairly rapidly at that, and there was no time to wait several days for the arrival of a Vet, moreover we had little or no money to spend on his services.

Screwworm larvae represented the parasitic stage in the lifecycle of a fly (now named Cochliomyia hominivorax), and prior to about 1960 they, and close kin, caused severe damage to domestic and wild animals, and infrequently people (most frequently the nasopharynx tissues), across Texas and much of the south. These flies were nearly twice the size of the common housefly. More than 100,000 species of two-winged fly species had been identified by the 1950s, and several attacked animals. Myiasis was the veterinary term for a fly strike, and each species of fly had a slightly different mode of attack, a different life cycle and a different range of occurrence. Some flies attacked rabbits (Cuterebra sp or Dermatobia hominis), others deer etc., but if any of the troublesome species laid eggs near open wounds on animals, the eggs had plenty of rich nutrients for their needs. Of all of the species, the screwworm fly was the worst one because each individual female fly could lay perhaps 500 eggs, and the eggs hatched shortly thereafter.

The eggs quickly changed (metamorphed) into larvae and migrated into a wound. These beasts had strong mandibles for chewing that were complimented by an enzyme-laden digestive system, and they were capable of destroying an animal, inside out. Wounds did not need to be elaborate and could be caused by anything from a scratched insect bite or a thorn’s penetration of an animal’s skin, no matter how slight it may have seemed. An animal’s navel or a thorn penetration (holes) usually concealed the extent of the problem, but surface wounds could easily be enlarged from simple scratches to large holes by the larvae. It was rumored that screwworm flies carried infectious bacteria and viruses, and perhaps other things as well, but the big problem with them were the larvae. Left unattended, screwworm maggots could kill an animal in less than 2 weeks, and during that time thousands of the larvae would mature into pupae, leave the wound and burrow into the topsoil where the fly’s lifecycle was completed. This species was an obligate parasite (to complete their life cycle the larvae could only develop in wounds of animals). Fortunately, by the mid 1960s, screwworm flies were eradicated as far south as Central America when the USDA (U.S. Dept. of Ag.) released X-irradiated, sterile, male flies. When these males mated with females, their offspring did not lay fertile eggs and the life cycle was stopped in its tracks.

Navels were particularly vulnerable sites for screwworm flies to lay their eggs, and the bull calf was a prime example of this since his navel was teeming with the maggots. After about 15-30 minutes of chasing the calf, we finally cornered and downed him. Daddy tied the calf’s back feet together and sat on them, and I lay across his front legs and held his head on the ground. I don’t know who was worse from the chase, the calf or me, but at least I wasn’t about to be worked on, and he was. I suppose that had a Vet attended to the calf’s miseries, he would have used sterile, stainless steel instruments to make the corrective measures that were necessary, but we didn’t have any of those. Daddy had his pocketknife, and it certainly wasn’t sterile, but neither was the wound.

With the knife Daddy cut a small hardwood limb and removed the bark and limbs from it. Then he fashioned a small hooked point on one end of the tapered stick. This foot-long stick was used to dig the maggots out of the wound, and since there were hundreds, if not thousands in the wound, the process to snare the maggots one-at-a-time and pull them out of the decaying flesh was lengthy, estimated at 30-45 minutes. Although the screwworm maggots would have eventually killed the calf, maggots of some other species have been used, even in modern times, to clean out a wound leaving it almost bacterial- and fungal-free. However, the medical community used maggots raised under aseptic conditions for this practice, rather than allowing some flies to blow the wound! After fishing maggots out of the wound, Daddy decided that he had cleared out enough of them to take the next step in the treatment process.

Any time we treated an animal for screwworm infestations, we were concerned and uncertain that all the maggots had been removed, much less any other contaminating microbial species. Therefore, the next procedure was aimed at killing any leftover maggots and preventing a second infection before the wound healed. On a farm there were plenty of other marauders (blowfly species of the genera Lucilia, Calliphora, Phormia, and Chrysomyia ) awaiting the attractiveness of an open wound, and any number of them were capable of introducing infectious agents to the site if they got the chance, although these flies were not obligate parasites and did not need to lay eggs in wounds to complete life cycles. Out of his pocket Daddy produced his omnipresent bottle of inexpensive disinfectant (coal oil, kerosene), and he doused the interior and exterior surface surrounding the wound with this solution. Coal oil was used to disinfect anything that needed to be disinfected on our farm. Then he smeared (Product 66, a Balm or Salve of unknown commercial sources) a tarry product about one-half inch deep on the inside and outside of the wound. The balm was composed of things to disinfect the wound, and it had a black, thick consistency, and I doubt that anything could penetrate it. For all I know, it may have been asphalt, but it didn’t have the consistency of asphalt and didn’t need to be heated before use. Since we didn’t have suturing materials, the calf was let loose, complete with an open wound covered thoroughly with this product. The calf recovered pretty nicely, and when we sold him that fall he brought a decent price.

Maggots did not have lungs, but they needed oxygen for survival. Since there weren’t lungs to inspire the air and oxygen, the maggots relied on a series of tubes (spiracles) located on their posterior surface to breath the air. These tubes carried air to the interior of the worm, and if any substance clogged the spiracles the maggots would be suffocated. I am confident that Product 66 killed maggots because it clogged their breathing apparatus, and they suffocated in the process. Many farmers used any oily substances that were available, ranging from axle grease, motor oil, mineral oil and even cooking oils to coat the interior of wounds that contained screwworms. According to my cousin James R. Miller, Uncle Jack often mixed some sulfur with Vaseline, and used this mixture to treat cattle for screwworm infestations. Since it contained sulfur, it probably also inhibited microbial growth in the wounds.

Cattle weren’t the only animals that suffered screwworm infestations, and on other occasions we treated various farm animals that had an infected wound, usually started as a small cut. One special animal that we treated was one of Daddy’s priced foxhounds that suffered either a cut or scratched the skin on his scrotum. We suspected that it occurred while the dog tried to clamber through a barbed wire fence, but as talented and well trained as Daddy’s hounds were, they couldn’t talk, and we never knew what happened. Sure enough in a few days after suffering this indignity, flies of some species laid eggs near the wound and within hours the foxhound, and we, had a big problem. However, catching one of Daddy’s hounds could be difficult even when they were healthy, and this one avoided us for more than a day before we finally caught him. Some of Daddy’s hounds were practically wild animals, and I recall vividly one prized Beagle, Buck, who lived at our house for 12 years, eventually dying of old age, and Mama’s hand ever laid on him during the 12 years, and she caught him only twice after he had been injured in some hunting incident and didn’t run away from her. By the time we caught Daddy’s foxhound with the infestation, the maggots had already done considerable damage. As rapidly as possible, we repeated the procedure that we had used on the calf, and the hound recovered after a few weeks. Eventually the hound was carried on hunting trips and he began to hunt at a level up to his previous standards.

Following the foxhound’s successful show of vigor in the hunts, Daddy began to wonder if the foxhound had suffered permanent sterility (castration) from the larval infestation. As soon as a female was available, Daddy penned the foxhound in a kennel with a female in estrus to test his virility. In due time, we had evidence that the foxhound was fully recovered. The female gave birth to a fine litter of healthy pups, and many of them became fine foxhounds.

While the field surgery procedures described herein were gruesome and seem primitive by modern standards, others in the region practiced them just as we did, and similar procedures are still used today in many areas of the world. They worked almost every time. Nonetheless, screwworms took a major toll on cattle ranches and farms across Texas and the region, and as mentioned previously, screwworm infestations often went undetected until it was too late to save an animal. Experts in modern Vet Schools have estimated that an outbreak of screwworm flies, similar to those of the first half of the 20th century, would cost the US cattle industry upwards of nearly $1 billion per year, not to mention the impact that such an outbreak would have on other animal production industries. While such an outbreak is unlikely, should such an occurrence happened, I take comfort in the knowledge that one procedure would be available to help save animals, at least for those of us old enough to recall the treatment.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Ice Cream On A Sunday Afternoon

by Douglas Fodge



The peach trees were almost collapsing under the weight of fruit, and I was licking my chops in anticipation, but not just for ripe peaches. The entire extended family was waiting for an invitation from Aunt Evie (AE) and Uncle Carl (UC) to sample some peach ice cream over at their home. Ice cream at their home was a warm weather routine and a fine social event, but they usually made ice cream with bananas in it. That is, until local peaches started ripening. Now, mind you, I ate ice cream at lots of other local homes, but theirs was tops on my chart. At the time I didn’t have a clue about why I liked theirs better than other ice creams I ate, but I am finally beginning to understand.

UC and Daddy were brothers and AE and Mama were sisters so we had almost a double-whammy set of parents, and three double-first cousins thrown in for good measure. Casual observation pointed out the differences more than the similarities of the four. The major difference between Mama and AE were size and temperament; otherwise they had lots of similar interests and motivation levels. Both women loved music, reading and could lecture on many subjects with little provocation. Neither of them tolerated foolishness very well, but both had great a sense of humor and fine intellects. On the male side, physical appearances were slightly apparent since Daddy had smooth facial skin, but UC’s face was wrinkled to the maximum extent possible. Had all of the wrinkles been flattened, UC’s face might have been at least half-again its size. However, the depth of each wrinkle was an appropriate reflection of UC’s kind and gentle nature. It wasn’t so much that Daddy was unkind or not gentle, but he was so absorbed in his hobbies of hunting and fishing that he was sometimes unaware of things around him – focused, focused, focused on catching the game, spare no life or limb. Daddy trained hounds and possessed general hunting skills that were second to none of his local hunting buddies. He had little interest in anything mechanical or electrical although he was a decent gardener. In marked contrast, UC had zero interest in hunting and fishing, but he constructed mechanical garden tools. This was before you could run to Home Depot and buy them. He built something with lumber regularly, and all devices worked well for the intended purpose. For example, UC built the house where I was born, assisted by Daddy. Both men and Uncle Bob, their younger brother, were skilled musicians, and I remember hearing all three of them whistling tunes while they worked, and they whistled on key at that. Mama and AE could also whistle pretty well, but they primarily sang hymns when they worked. The women had more formal education than the men, but all were smart. Ice cream making was one of those areas where AE and UC made their mark, at least as judged by me. Theirs was the best ice cream in the region as far as I was concerned, but then no one ever accused me of possessing discriminating taste buds or having unbiased opinions.

For most of the kids, the consumers, ice cream was merely a delicious frozen treat, and they paid scant attention to the process involved in the making. We were usually too busy eating ice cream and playing card games or croquette to bother with such details. However, I recognized even as a kid that the ice cream I ate at numerous other homes around our community just wasn’t up to snuff (acceptable quality). My interest in this subjective conclusion resulted in a lifelong curiosity and prompted an occasional investigation to attempt to explain why I thought their ice cream was better than others. The investigation got rolling when I was in college and has continued intermittently through the years. Partly having to take physics classes and eating homemade ice cream ‘round the world, much of which didn’t live up to their standards, fueled my investigation. Most homemade ice creams had too much fat in them and were not light and fluffy – things I expected in ice cream when we ate UC and AE’s product.

AE & UC’s prowess in making ice cream was probably self-taught, and I’m pretty sure he couldn’t explain any of the physics, but AE might have given it an A for effort. Had a food technology textbook been available UC probably wouldn’t have read it since he had really poor eyesight and didn’t care that much for reading. For example, after their offspring left home as adults, Jim Curry or I often traveled with UC when he made trips to new customers. UC drove a truck, and due to his poor eyesight he wanted someone to go along on the first trips to help find and read the signs. These were the days prior to modern freeways with well-lighted signs. He could have read the signs, but he wore really thick eyeglasses that weren’t amenable for darting your line of sight all over the place, especially at nighttime, to find the signs. Afterwards, he didn’t need to find and read signs as the route was memorized. Making homemade ice cream didn’t require 20:20 vision, but to make it time-after-time to the same consistency required fine powers of observation, tasting skills, and a good memory of what did, or did not work well. They certainly mastered this.

To manufacture homemade ice cream an emulsion, foam and dispersion must be formed among the ingredients. If you got all the parts working properly, then you produced an ice cream that had tiny ice crystals, the appropriate amount of dissolved air, and thoroughly distributed and stabilized fat globules. These three areas done properly gave ice cream the appropriate mouth feel and texture. Theirs was the only ice cream I sampled locally with this characteristic. Some years ago I started examining recipes for homemade ice cream, and recently I obtained the following recipe (from Vivian Fodge Patterson, one of our double-first cousins) that was used by AE for preparing their homemade ice cream:

“Mother mixed ½ gallon of whole milk, 1 ½ cups of granulated sugar, a pinch of salt, 3 well-beaten eggs, 1 tsp of vanilla extract. They usually made Banana Ice Cream, and she sliced 3 bananas, added those and then filled the ice cream bucket about 2/3 full to allow room for expansion. Daddy always used blocks of ice because it was harder and didn’t melt as quickly as pre-chipped ice. He chipped the ice block with his ice pick as needed and added the ice and rock salt around the freezer bucket. When the ice cream mixture could no longer be turned with the hand crank, he covered the entire assembly to let it harden for a while. Done with this part, he sat back under the shade tree, rolled himself a Prince Albert tobacco cigarette and relaxed while the cream finished.”

I calculated the amount of fat in AE’s ice cream recipe as being somewhere between 80 and 90 grams/gallon, about 2.5%. This estimate depended largely on the fat content of the whole milk she used, and in those days the fat content could have varied by as much as 20 to 30%, if not more, on occasions when they bought milk from individual farmers who owned Jersey cows. Compared to eight other vintage recipes for homemade ice cream from various parts of the USA, AE’s recipe averaged about 25% less fat and calories and had even less protein than others. Although the eight other recipes in my collection yielded low-fat ice creams, AE’s would have been ultra-low-fat, yet it had superb mouth feel and taste and consistently yielded better ice cream than any I have made.

Unless a commercial producer of ice cream used ultra low-temperature, high-speed extrusion equipment and air-injection systems, it would have been hard for them to easily make a commercial ice cream that was as high-quality as theirs. For decades ice cream manufacturers have used large quantities of whole milk, whole cream and eggs (principal sources of fat and protein in ice cream) to overcome the formation of ice crystals and to produce premium quality ice cream. Some of the homemade ice cream recipes required 9 to 10 eggs/gallon and used Half-N-Half rather than milk. This trend led to the current popular, premium quality ice creams such as Haagen Das or Ben & Jerry’s. For commercial companies, it was probably less expensive to overwhelm the mouth feel and texture by increasing the amount of stabilized fat globules in their products than to pay for the extra processing costs associated with preparing a high-quality, low-fat ice cream. Even today low-fat ice creams sold by premium brand companies aren’t really low-fat compared to AE’s recipe. If the answer was not in the recipe, then what contributed to the superb mouth feel and taste of their ice cream?

As far back as the 1960s, we have been spoiled by icemakers in refrigerators or by a 7-11 on every corner where we purchased chipped ice, or the equivalent of chipped ice. When we were kids there were few such options, at least in our small communities. We purchased ice from an icehouse, and it was either in blocks (25, 50 or 100 lbs per block) or chipped. In our community, the Martin and Norwood families sold and delivered ice to local residents. Generally, the blocks of ice arrived wrapped in discarded newspapers and covered with thick quilts. Once you got it home, the ice was stored in either an icebox or in a tub, and neither was refrigerated. Then we raced against time during the hot weather months to use it before the ice absorbed enough heat from the air and melted. Chipped ice, due to the huge increase in surface area of the chips, was warmer and this was due to the fact that it absorbed heat rapidly and melted much more quickly than block ice. A few times after I was old enough to help him make the ice cream, I went with UC to buy block ice, and he always mentioned to me that we were going to a particular ice house because they had the coldest ice. He never used chipped ice. We brought the blocks of ice home and started making ice cream as rapidly as possible. We chipped the ice as needed to fill the freezer space around the ice cream container, and this meant that the chipped ice he used was a lot colder than most used by others. UC also had a few other tricks that he used to top off the ice cream preparation.

As he added the freshly chipped ice and covered it with rock salt, UC stirred the mixture vigorously for several minutes, almost to the point of building a foam head on the mixture. This rapid churning had a direct impact on the lightness and fluffiness of the ice cream as it allowed a lot more air to be dissolved in the emulsified liquid before it started to freeze. I do not recall others doing this when they made ice cream. Another thing that UC did was also important; he preferred to use the hand-driven ice cream makers rather than electric models. Even if he used the electric models he often had rigged the equipment so that when the electric motor stopped, he could replace it with a hand-crank. Then, he continued to churn the mixture with the hand crank. Once the mixture froze solidly, turning the crank caused the entire assembly to turn. When this happened either Jim Curry or I, or someone of the younger set, were told to sit on the ice cream freezer to help hold it in place so he could continue to churn the mixture. The continued churning motion in the freezing mixture prevented the formation of large ice crystals (coarseness) in the last part of the cream that froze, that portion that is the most concentrated with sugar and fat globules. He also prevented air from escaping the product. Thus, part of UC and AE’s success undoubtedly was related to their understanding that he could overcome the low fat, protein and sugar content of the recipe if he kept turning the crank long after others stopped. If they used fruit in the preparation, then the additional churning motion was even more important.

In this day and age of behemoth football players and exaggeration of size in men, it is worth mentioning that UC weighed about 160 lbs (with rocks in his pockets), but he had an advantage over lots of his contemporaries. These were the times before forklifts were widely available, and as a truck driver delivering heavy construction lumber he had to unload and stack the lumber at a customer’s office, all by hand. Several of us can testify to the fact that it was a rare event when the customers provided someone to help unload the truck. One 2” x 12” x 16’ piece of freshly cut, moisture-laden piece of oak weighed perhaps 125-150 pounds, and 8” x 8” x 12’ posts weighed even more. The trailer was about 32 feet long and stacked with hundreds of these things. Thus, if a fellow unloaded and stacked a few truckloads of these every workday, what resistance could a little hand crank on an ice cream machine possibly offer? What better testimony to their intelligence I cannot imagine than their ability to independently determine how to consistently produce superb ice cream.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Salting Plants and Animals

by Douglas Fodge



Mr. Ed’s face was flushed and a halo of steam was coming off his head he was so angry. His anger was directed at us, and especially at Mr. C. Unknown to us, but discovered by Mr. Ed, we were pickling more than the cucumbers. All the fish, other animals and plants in the creek behind his house were dead, and that little creek was where we dumped effluent from the pickle plant. This was bad news for us.

The plant had dumped wastes in that creek for decades and nothing had ever happened to the fish. Something had changed because since time immortal freshwater invertebrates, minnows and perch had been killed by salt water. Always the briny effluent from the Pickle Shed had contained some salt, occasionally up to about 1.1 lbs of salt/gallon, or some lime. This caused much consternation for us, for local citizens and for the Texas Water Quality Board, the forerunner of the Texas EPA, and it may have been the straw that eventually broke the camel’s back. Prior to the observation of dead fish and plants most complaints had been about the odor emanating from the Pickle Shed.

What happened? Answer: we grew too fast and overlooked some things that would be obvious today, but weren’t then. Mr. C. was ideally suited to grow a business, but he could have benefited from having technical people on his staff. During the day he worked the telephone and visited with potential customers who dropped by for discussions and to “kick the tires”, and there wasn’t much time left to tend to technical matters, although he was trained as an engineer. Mr. C. had spent a career participating with marketers and promoters to grow a local brewery (Schlitz) into a nationwide juggernaut. Thus, the moment a visitor indicated an interest in a special product, Mr. C. knew how to get their business. Even today after 35 years of promoting ideas, product and process concepts, marketable products and of prospecting for new customers, I still am amazed at Mr. C.’s ability in these areas.

Our business expanded along two major lines: fresh produce and salting of cucumbers. We shipped fresh cucumbers to such places as Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, New Orleans, St. Louis and Chicago. On paper this looked like a good business activity, but we lost about 50% of our shipments from spoilage of the produce. After a few losses, Mr. C. stopped this activity and concentrated on other things.

To give the reader an understanding of Mr. C.’s ability to develop business, one or two projects stand out above the others. A Food Broker indicated that they needed pickles for relishes, but had a hard time acquiring enough quality raw materials. Ironically, each day we stationed men to hand pick and discard crooked (crooks) and knobby cucumbers (nubbins) that were in the farmers’ produce. We either threw the crooks and nubbins away or gave them to any farmer who could use them. Under Mr. C.’s leadership we weighed and paid farmers about $0.40/100 lbs for these previously discarded cucumbers. The farmers were happy to get paid for something that was a cull in the past. We pickled the crooks and nubbins like all the other cucumbers, and Mr. C. sold the product for the best $/100 lbs sales price that the company ever achieved. The business axiom that I learned: Turn Your Trash Into A Specialty Product For Your Customer. The other long-term notable result of this product development: a niece, Francis, received a nickname, Nubbin, from my brother Mack. Another business activity that expanded our effluents was the Muleshoe project, another story.

In a short amount of time, we were salting cucumbers from near and far, and this eventually resulted in the need to dispose of huge amounts of brine. For example, when we filled a vat with cucumbers, we dumped either bushel baskets or big sacks, weighing 50 or 100 lbs, respectively. For every 500 lbs of cucumbers (10 bu) dumped into a vat, we added 25 lbs of rock salt. When the vat was filled to within 6 inches of the top we added saturated salt water (brine) to cover them. The brine had two principal functions: to allow desirable bacteria to thrive and to preserve the cucumbers.

Osmotic action caused by the brine drew water and biochemicals out of the cucumbers. The salt-tolerant microbes, primarily bacteria of the genus Leuconostoc and Lactobacilli, used the sugars and nitrogen-containing substances for metabolism and growth, and in the absence of oxygen, they produced carbon dioxide, lactic acid, smaller amounts of ethanol and acetic acid as waste products of their metabolism. The last three waste products were the pickling agents.

If there were problems with the freshly filled tanks, they were of two prncipal kinds: a) the fermentation process did not occur or b) there was too much fermentation. The lack of fermentation was rare, but when the expected small amount of foam and the proper aroma did not develop, the solution was to give the vat a transfusion. We drained a large amount of the liquor out and replaced it with brine from 2 or 3 functioning vats. I didn’t know it at the time, but the bad vat did not have the proper bacteria in it, and that meant that they were not present on the cucumbers in the field. In contrast, the properly functioning vat had been filled with cucumbers from a field harboring the proper bacteria. At the time, I had a difficult time understanding what the word transfusion meant much less understanding the microbial ecology.

The second problem was too much fermentation, and in this case carbon dioxide built up beneath the cap to such an extent that it blew the cap apart. This happened more frequently than too little fermentation and occurred when cucumbers had excess fermentable substances in them; I guess the farmers really pumped them up with fertilizers. Usually these vats also had foam up to 3 feet tall on them. This wasn’t considered a dire emergency, but we usually removed 30-50 bushels of cucumbers as rapidly as feasible, put them into another vat, and recapped the damaged vessel. Neither of these problems contributed much to the effluent from the plant.

In all vats, we measured the saline concentration daily and gradually added salt until the content was nearly 16% salt, and then we maintained this level of salt until the product was shipped to a customer. As is obvious, we used a huge amount of salt in the operation. On our busiest days thousands of pounds of rock salt, one bucket and shovel full at a time, were handled by two full-time people! We bought salt in train car quantities, shoveled it from boxcar to truck and then into storage bins. My back aches with the memory of those ordeals. It should not surprise the reader to learn that we used stainless steel wherever possible to slow the rusting process, but nails, hinges, belt buckets, zippers etc. succumbed to the salt and decomposed in record time.

After a few months in the brine, the cucumbers were removed from the vats and shipped to customers. We then dumped the brine and refilled the vats with clean water and added about 25 lbs of lime to it to prevent mosquitoes and other critters from growing in it as the weather warmed. When the cucumber harvest began to arrive the next summer, we dumped the limed water, rinsed and scrubbed the inside of each vat until it was spotless. The vats had a 1.5” diameter bung in the bottom and another about 6 inches above the bottom to aid in release of the liquids. I concluded that the volume of fresh, salty and limed water that we released increased about 20-fold over the course of a 5-year period, and this meant that the creek and its inhabitants were constantly being bathed in solutions that were unfavorable for life. The unrelenting odor and the newly discovered effluent problems overshadowed many positive aspects about the Pickle Shed, but the bad deed had been done, accidentally.

The Pickle Shed provided multiple people in our community much needed wages and many of us acquired skills, unrecognized at the time, lasting a lifetime. For me, I learned the basics of doing business in a very competitive field, commodity agriculture. It’s often been said, and even written in some business books, that someone who can make a living selling pickles can make a living doing just about anything, I’ve given it a whirl in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, agriculture, hotels, trading and service industries, always reverting to things I learned at the Pickle Shed. Three important business axioms were: a) turn your trash into your customer’s most valuable product, b) location, location, location was the key to economic success in agricultural as well as in other industrial endeavors, and c) a good manager utilized the brains and brawn of all employees, assigned responsibility to them and held everyone accountable for getting the work done. I suppose the most valuable lesson learned was that skills may be learned in unexpected places and from unappreciated resources, including from people who are vastly less educated than you.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Top Gun Coon Hound

by Douglas Fodge



Have you heard the adage “Up a Creek without a Paddle”? That sums up nicely the situation I experienced. It was pitch black dark, and I was about half-way to the end of a branch near the top of a big oak tree and fury personified glared eye to eye at me.

Always be kind to animals
morning, noon and night.
For animals have feelings too
And furthermore, they bite.

- John Gardner


This particular event happened during mid winter after I had played a Junior High basketball game on a Friday night. I was already bone tired since I had guarded a roadrunner and human chimera in the ball game. I had barely gotten home and opened the front door when Daddy struck a match and fired up one of his roll-your-own Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco cigarettes. This wasn’t unusual since he smoked every hour on the hour through the night and more frequently during daylight hours. Daddy (the conversation is generally accurate), “Boy, you ready to go Coon Huntin’ (raccoon, Procyon lotor)? I traded for a new Coon Hound, a Plott Hound, today and I want to test him out.” “What the devil is a Plott Hound, Daddy?” I asked. Out of the dark, illuminated only by the glow of Daddy’s roll-your-own, Mama chipped in, “Why Douglas a Plott Hound is just about the best Coon Hound that man ever bred. This one was so good that the man only needed to tie a $5.00 bill to his collar to make sure Russie got a good deal!” Daddy, “Ah, don’t listen to the Madam, Boy, she’s just upset that Joe might eat us out of house and home.” “Amen, Russ Fodge, you needed this hound about like I needed another hole in my head.” At least Mama wasn’t mad, and since Daddy was pretty smart he didn’t prolong his misery by firing off any retort. He had learned that he wasted his breath arguing with Mama since her verbal skills could best those of the most ardent evangelical preacher.

“Daddy, where are we going to hunt?” You see, I was already suckered into going hunting! “Well, I was thinking about going over to Mr. Cowan’s woods ‘cause I saw a lot of tracks and other signs of coons there last weekend.” While I wasn’t eager to walk several miles to the backside of Mr. Cowan’s property the exchange between my parents had piqued my curiosity, and I was about to bust a gut to see the new Plott Hound, Joe, in action. Mind you, around the Fodge household we acquired and disposed of hounds about as often as some people shopped for groceries so there had to be something special to get my attention. Joe qualified since I sure didn’t know anything about Plott Hounds. “I better change into my hunting clothes.”

By the time I had changed clothes and got outside, Daddy had rounded up most of his hounds and put them into makeshift kennels or leashed them to fence posts and bushes. As we were leaving Mama yelled out the back door, “I sure hope the two of you will be able to pack home all the coons that Joe is going to catch.” Over at our house, Mama was either ready to debrain Daddy with a frying pan (not too often) or was laughing so hard with him at his antics that she was about to cry (often), so I didn’t pay much attention to the teasing. With Daddy there were no betwixt or between situations, but it sure wasn’t boring around him. At least he had a great sense of humor and laughed as much at himself and the predicaments that he got into as we did. Good-natured teasing was all that kept us sane in those days. We practiced the following philosophy; you may as well laugh about events that happen since it is a lot healthier than crying. It probably works just as well today as it did then.

Joe was as big as Mama had hinted at, and I could have sworn he was a miniature horse, but he was a Kentucky/Tennessee bear dog and somewhat taller and a bit heavier than our other hounds and mostly black with brindle-stripes. Joe’s former owner had trained him to be a Coon Dog since no bears were available to hunt in our area. As an adult I marveled at the Beagles the Division of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) used to find illegal drugs in airport baggage until one day it occurred to me that I knew of equally interesting feats with hounds. Daddy often trained hounds to hunt only a coon, squirrel, rabbit, fox, wolf or quail (much less frequently), but coon dogs rarely hunted squirrels or anything else and this was primarily due to the fact that they were in constant training. In contrast, other hounds were generalists, and they hunted whatever game presented itself. Whether we hunted with generalists, specialists, or both, the hounds roamed near and far, and when one barked (Daddy recognized the bark of every hound in his pack, and when he retold the exploits of the latest hunt he could and did mimic the bark of each hound) he would say, “That’s Queen, and it sounds like she’s hot on the trail of a fox”. A hot trail equaled one that the prey had just made as opposed to a cold trail that might be quite old. Meanwhile all other hounds would be actively searching for something to chase, and the only commands any of them received were Daddy yelling or blowing his cow horn to give them directions. The ATF Beagles had a trainer standing 3 feet away and guiding them through their paces, and I’m sure he helped insure both their safety and then nabbed any smugglers. Had Daddy trained the ATF Beagles and been in charge, he would probably have turned about a dozen lose in the airport baggage area and signaled commands to them on his cow horn from a central location until the search was completed. The guards could have stepped back and watched. Travelers might not have appreciated his approach, but I’m confident that the job would have been done quickly. The hounds would not have been distracted and would have located illegal contraband.

Off we went that particular night as if we were on our way to put out a raging fire. We kept Joe on a leash until we neared the hunt area, and then we unleashed him for a night of fun. Joe, unlike Daddy’s other hounds, didn’t bark until he could either hear or see a coon, or at least it appeared that way. Most of the time we wondered where he went as he hunted until he found a coon before making even a whimper. Fortunately coons usually zigged and zagged and circled about their hunting area so there wasn’t much danger that Joe would wander too far away. Then, suddenly in the distance Joe would let out a caterwauling bellow of his deep-based voice, and a few minutes later he would start to bay at something, a sure sign he had chased a coon up a tree or into a den. He sent us an urgent message, “Hey fellows, hurry up, I have found Mr. Coon.”

Joe’s message was clearly understood, and we made a mad dash through the underbrush and found him on guard at a big oak tree. Mr. Coon has ascended to the farthest branch, and Daddy focused the beam of his flashlight on the coon, presumably to blind him. Up the tree I went, mostly groping my way blindly along from branch to branch, and if this wasn’t near the top of occupationally hazardous and unsafe jobs then it should have been, but I climbed trees nonetheless. We could have shot Mr. Coon, but that would not have been sporty enough. The flashlight may have temporarily blinded the coon, but he quickly determined that I was on the way up to his hiding place and started snarling, chattering and gnashing his teeth together as only a coon can do. Down below, the instructions and encouragement from Daddy kept pace with Mr. Coon’s warnings. Not to be outdone (after all it was his game we were after) Joe bellowed occasionally and a few other hounds, ones who had escaped attention before we left home, seconded his motion.

My responsibility in all this was to encourage Mr. Coon to jump out of the tree, but gentle persuasion never worked very well since he had a PhD in negotiation skills. Therefore, I resorted to more intelligent modes of action: screaming at the top of my lungs, whacking him with a broken limb or shaking the limb he was clinging to for dear life. Naturally, he knew that there wasn’t any safety on the ground, but eventually he lost his balance and fell out of the tree. I marveled at the fact that I wasn’t close behind, but I managed to clutch the bole of the tree with one arm the entire time.

When Mr. Coon hit the ground below, some 60-80 feet of free fall, the real excitement started, especially for me since I was temporarily forgotten. I never got to see many fights, but I could hear what happened, and it wasn’t always pleasant, and wasn’t humane as measured by today’s standards. Daddy usually allowed only one hound to fight a coon, and if that happened to be Joe then all I heard was the crunching of bones, followed by silence. If a smaller hound tangled with a coon, then we had action galore. This was especially the case if any water was available and that was often the case as coons hunted for fish and crayfish in creeks. Coons were skilled swimmers and fighters in water, and if possible they climbed on a dog’s head and held it under the water until the dog drowned. However, the usual result in our hunts was that the adult coons, but not the younger ones, often escaped the initial clashes and found another tree to hide in. Stated another way, they made more work for me. The secondary trees were usually some distance from the initial tree, and this almost always meant that I clambered out of a tree with star or moonlight to guide me since the hounds and Daddy with the flashlight were already at my next work site. After Mr. Coon, and a few of his relatives, succumbed to the onslaughts we snatched each from the hounds and then marched off home where we tanned and sold the pelts.

Our biggest problem was getting rid of the ticks after a hunt. Texas was famous for its abundance of ticks and if man or beast walked where cattle grazed or rabbits ran, they were assured of having a few ticks clutching their clothing if not their skin. When we got back home, we immediately disrobed, removed ticks, and left the clothing hanging on the clothesline. Before the clothes could be worn again we had to scald them in hot water, but they needed to be washed after we slogged through the fields, woods, thickets, creeks and other terrain. Hounds were also monitored for ticks, and we dipped them weekly in a homemade mixture of kerosene, sulfur, asphalt tar, DDT and water that we kept in a 55-gallon drum. Even this miserable concoction didn’t always keep them tick-free, but it helped somewhat.

The morning after a hunt we skinned the coons and tacked their pelts inside out to the interior wall of the barn. An intact coonskin, properly dried and fat-free from scraping it each week, would bring a few dollars. The carcasses were field dressed, eviscerated, sectioned, and added the meat to a few bucketsful of wheat shorts, chunks of fat from the local butchery shop and water in a large cauldron and cooked the mixture over a log fire until the meat fell off the bones. If we supplemented this feed with a few vitamins and minerals, the hounds stayed in fine physical condition for up to 10-14 years.

Over the next couple of months that winter, and for several years afterwards, Joe lived up to his press releases, and on many a night we came home with all the coons that we could carry. In the process, we got plenty of exercise since we walked everywhere as we didn’t own an automobile. As testimony to her open-minded nature Mama became one of Joe’s biggest fans, and he was her favorite hound. Now that tells you something about both of them!

Firewood Production and Emergency First Aid

by Douglas Fodge



A memorable event occurred before I started school, and it may have been one of the first outings with the male members of my family, Daddy, Robert, and Mack. Our objective on this excursion was to cut some firewood in a small wood lot beyond the cucumber patch, down in the bottom below the site where we found so many Indian arrowheads. However, when your father’s main interest in life is to hunt ‘round-the-clock you didn’t go anywhere without being alert to the fact that you might happen upon a rabbit or two, perhaps some squirrels or even a opossum, raccoon, fox or wolf. Thus, although we had every intention of cutting firewood, we went to the woods, sans me, fully armed with enough firepower to kill an elephant. As extra hunters, Daddy carried along a squirrel dog, a couple rabbit hounds (perhaps Beagles), and some general roustabouts who hunted any game, but especially fox or wolf. Most were my playmates and good for fine roll and tumble games in the pasture behind the house, but under Daddy’s supervision they became merchants of doom for game animals.

Someone hitched Maude to the two-wheeled cart (WWI Army surplus variety) while Mama helped me into my low-top work boots. Well, they weren’t exactly my boots. I had a small foot, and the boots were somewhere between size 9 and 12 – not exactly boots made for walking! I had several pairs of socks on my feet, and Mama tied the boots tightly because they reached to just below my kneecaps. It was very important to have secure foot ware since every brush pile and briar patch along the way was kicked or shaken, and we went out of our way to make sure we didn’t miss any. For my part, I had a hard time just walking and standing up much less scaring some rabbit into leaving his hiding place and running in front of crazed hounds and excited people equipped with rifles. A little foot in a big boot made for lots of falling, laughter, teasing, and stern commands from Daddy to quit making noise. I never understood how the noise I made walking could possibly have been heard above the din and racket put out by the hounds, but anyway I needed to be quieter – I still need to be!

After lots of personal torment and difficulty, we reached the wood lot, and they set up shop to cut some firewood using a two-man cross cut saw and a couple of axes. I tried to avoid falling trees, flying wood chips and firearms that were leaned against nearby trees. Daddy warned us repeatedly to be careful around any firearms. While the firewood was accumulating in the cart, Maude munched tuffs of grass, switched at horseflies and generally ignored us, but the hounds worked fulltime scouring the nearby thickets. Every so often one of them would blurt out a special bark, at least it was special sounding to the others, but to me all the barks, bays and yelps sounded the same. These barks elicited an equally loud yell of encouragement from Daddy. He was the choir director and after a barking outburst, as the chunks of log were being split into firewood, there was excited discussion about what game might be the object of the barking: cottontail, swamp, or jack rabbit, or perhaps even a squirrel.

We had worked for a while and enough firewood had accumulated to stoke the cook stove and heater for a few weeks. Meanwhile the hounds continued pilfering through the brush. Once or twice work stopped and someone chased through the brush to redirect the hounds or to determine if some game animal had been cornered. Eventually these coaching tips paid off as a hound or two began barking in a more excited manner, and this raised our adrenalin levels to new highs. The hunt was on. Axes and the saw were abandoned, replaced with armaments and off we bounded through the thickets toward the barking hounds. I did my utmost to keep apace by running at top speed but all this accomplished was a multitude of swats from brambles, saplings and briars that sprang upright after being run over by those ahead of me. Occasionally I was stopped dead in my tracks by a sapling striking me flush in the face, and I had to let the stars clear before continuing. Pretty soon, I figured out that I didn’t have to run so closely behind the others, and this helped some.

“Do you think Cowboy might be after a coon?” Mack asked. “Naw, listen to how the hound’s circling back and forth, no coon would run like that and besides it’s daylight, and the coons went to bed before the sun came up. I think they are headed for the slough. I bet it’s a swamp rabbit!” Daddy declared. I didn’t know anything about rabbits, but if it was exciting to them, it sure tickled me plumb to death. Later on I learned that swamp rabbits (Sylvilagus aquaticus) were larger, up to 6.5 lbs, than cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus), up to 4.5 lbs. From Daddy, “You boys spread apart a little bit ‘cause I don’t want that swamp rabbit to circle back and run around us, but be careful if you happen to see him ‘cause I don’t want someone to get shot.” Amid all the confusion, the others kept repeating high-pitched vocal encouragements, and Daddy occasionally blew his hunting horn, mostly little short bursts, to make certain the hounds could hear him above the racket. Daddy used a cow horn, or infrequently a goat horn, that had a special mouthpiece fitted on the tip. He could signal commands with the horn to a pack of hounds from as far away as a mile or more. Since he was a musician, his horn sang out clear notes and could be downright melodious if he desired it that way. He rarely tried to make music with his horn, but a few hunting buddies could blow taps and simple musical pieces on theirs.

After an eternity to me, but perhaps only 15 minutes, of chasing after the hounds, Daddy announced at the top of his lungs to the rest of us, “Cowboy has got it treed.” This didn’t mean as much to me as it did to the others, but now we crashed through the brush with renewed intensity, although I wasn’t sure what to expect. Soon enough I learned. After a few minutes I completely lost sight of everyone, but there wasn’t any danger for me as there was plenty of noise to guide me. In fact, the noise probably woke the dead in cemeteries all over the county. Finally I arrived to find the others standing next to a very large tree. The hounds were barking as loudly as possible and clawing at the base. When I got closer I could see a hole that was big enough to hold a basketball. Apparently the animal had temporarily escaped the approaching hounds by climbing into a hollow space inside the tree. I had no clue what kind of animal was in the hollow, but the others had convinced themselves that it was a rabbit. In any event, the adrenalin level was really maximized by now. No amount of intense excitement exhibited by any athlete under game conditions was greater than our father’s on these occasions, and that attribute lasted until his dying breath.

In a few minutes, Daddy had cut and stripped a small sapling and shaped a fork from two little branches on the small end. Then he inserted the fork end into the hollow of the tree until he touched something that moved, and he immediately commenced twisting the sapling round and round in an attempt to snag the animal’s fur in the fork. The objective was to snag and then yank the animal out of the tree, but the animal disagreed and climbed beyond the reach of the sapling. Daddy sent someone to get an axe. In a few minutes, the axe appeared, and Daddy lined up to chop a hole in the tree. “I’ll take care of this dad gummed (probably a little more expletive-laced expression was used) rabbit,” and he swung the axe in a circular arc above his head, obviously aimed about head-high on the trunk of the tree. However, as the axe came down, a little branch suddenly appeared out of nowhere (overlooked in the adrenalin-fired prelude), and diverted the flight of the axe. Instead of landing solidly with a whack in the side of the hollow tree in front of us, the blade landed at a glancing blow in the side of Daddy’s head, just above and behind his ear, about a two- to three-inch slash. Fortunately Daddy had a leather cap on, and the axe struck at a glancing blow or we would have had a really bad situation. It was grave enough for me.

The sight of blood pouring out of my father’s head and him cussing the branch for getting in the way was somewhat unsettling, if not downright comical now. Simultaneously, he grabbed his head, pressed the gash closed, and started looking for his leather cap knocked loose in the event. He started reassuring us that it was a little cut, and it would be fine. As soon as he located his leather cap he calmed because it sported only small damage where the axe had landed – I suppose all hunters are practical that way! However, these calming words and actions didn’t help a lot as far as I was concerned, but the others began asking Daddy what to do. Soon a clean handkerchief and some coal oil (kerosene) appeared. Apparently he carried a little bottle of coal oil on his hunting forays; I suppose he started fires and disinfected wounds with it. In any event, they doused coal oil on the handkerchief and directly into the bleeding wound, and then applied direct pressure on the gash and tied the soaked handkerchief tightly around his head. This helped stop the flow of blood. Then he pulled his leather cap down over his head as tightly as possible, and the combination of the coal oil treatment, the pressure from the handkerchief and the hat led to a big reduction in the blood flow. In a few minutes, they went back to chopping a hole in the tree and then caught the game, a swamp rabbit. We had fried rabbit for supper that night, but I didn’t eat any as I was still reeling from the sight of the blood.