I had what I called a “cattle hack.” It was spelled with two ts. It was a pick-up truck, so that made it a cattlehak. I actually had calf in it once. A friend of mine wanted to take it to the sale…
I read an article one time in Readers Digest, how the big trucking companies never changed their oil, they just recycled it. That sounded reasonable to me so I never changed my oil. At 30,000 miles I had to have a valve job, and at 35,000 miles I needed a ring job… I found out the hard way, you really do have to change the oil. The sulfur in the gasoline corrodes the engine parts and after 30,000 miles my engine was pretty corroded.
I was on a dirt road in Nevada I was out in the desert, north of the gypsum mill, east of Susanville when the car broke down. It was interesting out there. There was an old hotel there, it was vacant, so they made it into a house of ill repute but the women of the town decided to take matters into their own hands, they went out and burned it down. That was the end of that old hotel. There was a ghost town called Eagleville in Surprise Valley, in Modoc Country, where there are many dry lakes.
There was another old hotel there, and there was one guy living in that hotel for free. He had one room with a stove in it, he was living in it rent free. The rest of the rooms were inhabitable, the roof had fallen in. This was in the 50s. But then everything changed, it got built up. Out of Jamesville, there’s a grade, the first thing you saw was a pond with beavers in it. Then it leveled out. I was hunting out there. It started to snow. All the hunters got out because of the snow but I had 4-wheel drive, we drive down the road, and it was snowing so hard that the deer couldn’t run. And we all got our bucks that year. A few years later, I went back up there and it was all houses.
I was on a dirt road in Nevada I was out in the desert, north of the gypsum mill, east of Susanville when the car broke down. I’d turn it a little and it’d turn a lot. Then I heard a funny noise. It sounds like I have a flat tire. I go out and it was fine. But when I got on the highway, it did it again. So I pulled into a gas station in Susanville, the mechanic had gone home for the weekend. It was a long weekend. That’s when I bought my ’55 truck…turns out the kingpin had come out. What color was my truck? I got a green one. It’s the worst color, it’s just like back it absorbs heat. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. I got a green truck. I didn’t know it at the time. I found out the hard way.
I put 96,000 miles in it. I put it up for sale in the paper. But when people called up and I said 96,000 miles, it was click! They’d hang up. I wanted to sell that truck so I took out the speedometer, ran it backwards and put it back to 50k miles—it wasn’t illegal in those days. And a mechanic bought it right away. Then Gene Bride bought it. He painted it red. One day I pulled into the gas station where I used to go, and I was shocked: there’s my truck. The mechanic said no, It’s a one-owner truck. It was owned by Gene Bride I said, well, I sold it to the fellah. See that trailer hitch? I made it myself. And the mirrors too
On Highway 299 going from Redding to Modoc County, there’s a flat mountain, and a road that rises up a pretty steep grade, with cliffs. You’d look down on the Pitt River mills and you’d look out. There are fence guards strung all along the banks that deflect falling rocks. You always hoped that no rocks were going to fall on you as you went up the grade. It’s funny, I sometimes dream about that place, and every time I dream about it, I dream that I forgot my hunting buddy and I’d have to go back for him past the falling rocks and get him.
— Paul Craibille
DUSTBOWL
I remember the dustbowl,
I remember the Iowa drought
I remember looking up at the sun one day
and it was red as a fireball.
That was when they had those dust storms
high up in the sky blowing for miles & miles
—Paul Craibille
When my father died in 1930, my mother had 8 kids at home, one had died and the county gave us only $30 a month to live on, which wasn’t enough to feed 8 kids, so my mother took in washing and ironing for a living. I remember my older sisters ironing for 2-3 hours a day. So hunting was a necessity. We kids went barefoot all summer in southern Iowa—except for in the woods. I was a good hunter. When it came to hunting I had a secret advantage from all the other boys, I had a slingshot and I used crabapples for ammunition. I kept my secret from all the other boys but they had more fun than me because they could go out with girls. I only had overalls.
In the woods, the squirrels would jump from limb to limb but they’d wait for the right time to jump. They’d wait for when the wind was right so they could glide from limb to limb. But we’d shoot at them with crabapples, they’d tale off in a hurry and then they’d fall too short and miss their limb and they’d land on the ground. And then we’d run after them and scoop them up. Those squirrels made it to the dinner table, fried. Everything was fried in those days. Rabbits too.
I did have a shotgun too but ammunition was expensive so didn’t use it as much. I made every shot count. One time I was out walking in the woods and a rabbit popped up his head right in front of me. Well it was a reflex. So I just shot him in the head. Then I heard behind me a clomp, clomp down the hill and there was the commissioner with the game warden looking pretty angry. I didn’t have my license on me because I didn’t have a wallet. I didn’t even own a wallet. He took our names down and checked us out.
One time it snowed and a powder snow covered the field. We noticed rabbits jumping up out of the snow to see where they were and then they’d run under the snow, so we began to chase them. After about 3 jumps the were tired so we just picked them up. Soon we had so many, we found some and strung them up and we were dragging all these rabbits through the snow like a plow. Soon we had 50 rabbits between us. We tried to give away rabbits but nobody wanted them. Nothing went to waste in our family. So my mother canned them and later made them into mince meat pies. The best I ever tasted. Wild rabbits were the best because they fed on all kinds of wild of things. Not like domestic rabbits. They’re bland because they’re fed alfalfa.
We lived on the edge of town. So we’d hop over the fence and we’d be in the woods. There were two 80-acre fields and the rest of it was woods in Chariton, southern Iowa A Burlington railroad engineer owned most of it. He’d built a castle there. Every room had a fireplace at each end. The roof was a sea of chimneys. They had a moat, even an arboretum. A 9-hole golf course and a circular driveway that was so big, it went form 12th to 14th street. He had 28 houses. He planted locust trees. But he lost his money in the crash and committed suicide…..so we’d go hunting there….
—Paul Craibille
Hellfire and brimstone. We all met through the church. The length of skirts went down during the depression and up during the war. Flappers were short in the ‘20s… I was baptized twice in one day. My twin sister hadn’t been baptized and our mother wanted us to be baptized together. Maybe the first time didn’t take.
—Paul Craibille
No comments:
Post a Comment