20th Century Tales Forum

It was Jack Hays. What happened was, he had a pair of Paterson Colts. Every time he saw a head appear over the curvature of the rock,he put a hole in it with his revolvers. It doesn't take that happening too many times before you run out of folks dumb enough to stick their heads up.

In that general area I have found not just topaz, but tiny garnets & sapphires, a chunk of silver nearly 99% pure, & tracings of gold & lead. There's lots of galena up there, which is mostly lead but has silver in it. I suspect what I found was refined silver from a clandestine mine & smelter, of which there were many in Texas prior to 1867. Most of the creeks have the garnets & sapphires--the biggest ones are about the size of a large grain of rice--& some have flour gold in them. Unless you've got an electronic concentrator the only way to recover flour gold is to amalgamate it with mercury & then boil the mercury off in a retort. You'll spend almost as much buying the mercury as you'll recover from the gold, & if you breathe the mercury vapor it'll eventually kill you.

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When hurricane Carla went over the home place in Sept of '61, we lost 31 ewes. I hope everyone's familiar with 'ewe,' pronounced 'yew.' It's what you call a female sheep.

Anyway, like a sensible rancher, Dad wrote the 31 ewes off as a storm loss on his '61 income tax. The papers were filed by the accountant in Austin Dad always had do his taxes. About a month later the accountant called Dad. Seems the IRS had a question about his return. The accountant said Dad really ought to handle this one personally.

Dad went to the IRS office in Austin & identified himself. He was ushered into an office occupied by some guy with a New York accent. "Mr. Eckhardt," the guy said, "you've claimed a storm loss of thirty-one ee-wees. What is an ee-wee?" I wish I'd been there to hear what Dad had to say.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2009 06:55PM by Wayne in BC.

I can see that happening with a government employee for sure

This happened to a friend of mine back in the '70s. At the time he worked for NASA as a draftsman. It was a very stressful job, so he needed real relaxation when he could get it. He was, at the time, an historical re-enactor & a primitive hunter. 'Primitive hunting' means getting as close to an earlier period--camping, firearms, clothing, everything else--as you can. His period was 1830s/'40s. He had a lease on a large farm in the Davy Crockett National Forest. In Texas, 'National Forests' are composed of private farms & ranches, timber-company-owned land, & a little--very little--federal land. At the time timber companies would allow almost anyone with the money to hunt their land, though that's changed somewhat over the years.

Anyway, he trucked all his stuff in, took the truck back to the farm's HQ, & walked back to his campsite. He was dressed in homespuns, a buckskin jacket, coonskin cap, hi-top moccasins, the whole works. He had a lean-to tent & a home-made bedroll. All his cooking stuff was replicas of early 19th century stuff. Dried beans, piloncillo sugar, cornmeal, jerky, the whole bit. He had a paraffin-lined keg full of water &, of course, a crockery jug with some corn likker in it for the evenings.

About his 3rd morning he got up to go to his stand about an hour before daybreak. He'd just gotten there when a pea-soup fog rolled in. Being a primitive--but not a dumb--hunter, he reached into his possibles bag, got out the space blanket he kept for emergencies, rolled up in it, & took a nap. About 10 AM he woke up & the fog was burning off in the clearings but remained thick in the woods. He folded up the space blanket, put it back in his possibles bag, & began to move around until he could feel a slight breeze on his face so he'd be downwind of any deer.

He hadn't gotten far when he heard somebody holler "Hey, buddy!" He saw a guy come running across a clearing towards him. According to my friend, this guy was so green the tags were still hanging off his K-Mart hunting clothes. He was also obviously lost & had committed the cardinal sin in Texas deer hunting--he'd crossed fences. You never cross a fence unless you've already made arrangements with the landowner to hunt that land, too.

Anyway, the guy got close enough to see how my friend was dressed & realize he was carrying a flintlock long rifle. He said--in a sort of shaky voice--"My God, how long you been lost?"

My friend has a peculiar sense of humor. I think he got it from a distant ancestor--a guy called Atilla the Hun. He looked the intruder over & then said, in his best drawl, "Wal, stranger, Ah doan reckon Ah rightly know. Last I hearn, Gen'rul Houston was a-headed fer Nackydoches an' Ah reckon Ah musta missed him." Then he turned away and walked into the dense fog.

Neither of us knows how the story ended, but we would have loved to have been flies on the wall in the first bar that guy got to after he got out of there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2009 04:56PM by Wayne in BC.

always good fun to mess with cheechakos!
In my outfitting days i always screwed an electrical plug plate to a tree next to the tents. Some of the dudes would just look at it funny for a time and say nothing. Finally they could stand it no longer and ask, "whats that about?" or such, to which i would reply.........never seen a "currant bush" before?

Like you, I wonder how many folks he has told about seeing a ghost while deer hunting...so funny! Thanks for sharing this story. Kelley (Texas)

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"Try to live up to your dog's opinion of you!"

Back when I could still camp out--knees have to have a warm bath to get going in the morning these days--I happened to be camping next to a tent which had a sort of 'valley girl' as an occupant. She wanted to know where she could plug in her hair dryer. The closest electricity was a quarter-mile away at the latrine/bathhouse.

On another occasion my wife & I were in our VW camper van parked at a roadside park. A bunch of drunks showed up. One grabbed the van's sliding door handle & tried to open it. You don't do that when there are dogs inside. The door was locked, of course, but the reaction of the dogs was enough to send the guy away with his tail between his legs. If it hadn't been, I was awake & had a .45 in my hand.

Wild storie's.......Thanks.....

I've been kinda hesitant about writing this story, but it did happen & it happened to me. It was in the spring of '62. I was not in college at the time--Carla made a mess of a lot of things, so I didn't get back to school until the summer of '62.

The place in front of ours was about 2200 acres. The family ran 300 head of hereford cows. That meant, that spring, they had 318 calves to work. We all got together for the branding, vaccinating, & cutting of the bull calves. It was an all day job. The stars were still out when I climbed into the saddle that morning & were out again when I mounted to ride home.

There was a BBQ after the calves were worked, but no beer. The family was staunchly Baptist & teetotal. Therefore, I was not 'impaired' on the way home. Our front gate was about 2

Most folks don't realize it, but a horse is not a very brave animal...some times they will take the position that everyone has to fend for themselves. I guess that horse sensed that something was not normal with that woman ghost and just wanted to get away from the area. This is a good story, I enjoyed reading it. Kelley (Texas)

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47 years does kinda diminish the effect of it, but I don't think I'll ever forget it. Animals have a sense about things like that, but people don't. I'd call myself about as psychic as a dill pickle, so I'm not a 'ghosty' sort. That woman lookd as solid to me as any person I've ever met.

That 2200 acre place is now the Georgetown Country Club. I don't even know if Sawyer Oad's still standing. It was a liveoak, so it would last hundreds of years if nobody cut it down. There's a liveoak near Corpus Christi that's believed to be over 500 years old.