1950

In 1950 I turned 13 years old, I was playing high school football, rabbit hunting, running track, playing baseball and fox hunting with my dad every chance I got.

I also went coon hunting when I could find someone with a good dog. My dad said I had enough dogs without owning a coon hound right then, I had a good pair of beagles out of a Bolts mike female and FCc. Richardsons Chief Leader. My cousin Tommy Chastain and a good friend Sam Stokes ran our beagles a lot at night, some nights we would run from sundown to sunrise the following morning. A beagle had to be very tough with a lot of stay power to hang with either of us. F.C. Richardsons Leader was by Grays Lineman. These dogs had good noses and would jump a large amount of rabbits while we were gun hunting in the winter. My dad Fred Grant, a couple of his friends,J.A. Nealy and A.F. Thomason and I fox hunted a lot.

One day after a previous night hunt, while trying to round up the fox hounds, we ran up on a bootleggers son Harv. It seems that Harv's dad Lon had drunk too much of the recipe and had gotten very sick. Lon called Harv to his bedside and asked him to pray for him, if something didn't change he believed he was going to die.

Harv said to his father, "Pa. You know I can't  pray, I've never prayed in my life."

Lon  replied, "If you don't and I ever get well enough, I'll beat you to death."

So Harv started praying. "God..,here lays Pa.. drunk."

Lon yelled out loud, "No....,don't tell him I'm drunk you fool, just tell him I'm sick!"

Just remember those old Grays Lineman dogs were kind of special. See you next month.