Vernon Lorenzo Oggie Delay, 76, of Lucasville, passed away Saturday, 12 August 2017, at his residence.
He was born 23 May 1941, in Columbus,Ohio and was the son of the late 1915-1950 Carl Eldo and 1905-2000 Allie Ethel Rowe Delay.
He leaves behind a Special friend : Nancy
He is survived by his twin sister Vernita Sigler of Chillicothe, Phyllis Ramsey of Lucasville, Carolyn Russell of West Jefferson, and Ann Edminster of Columbus.
He was also survived by his special long time friend Nancy and a dear life long friend Patrick Crabtree.
He was also preceded in death by two brothers, Vernon Joseph Pratt and Carl Orcie DeLay; and four sisters, Myrtle Chandler, Henrietta Castle, Barbara Garrard, and Joyce Strickland.
Brothers and Sisters are:
1921-1986 Myrtle Evans - Ray Eric Chandler
1927-1989 Henrietta Pratt
1929 ____ Anna Lillian Pratt
____-____ Blanch
1930-1931 Edna Wina Calhoun
1932-2012 Vernon Joseph Pratt
1935-1935 Henry Pratt
1936-2013 Joyce Evelyn Beasley
1940-____ Edith Carolyn Delay
1941-____ Goldie Vernita Delay twin
1941-2017 Vernon Lorenzo Delay twin
1943-____ Cora Phyllis Delay
1944-2012 Carl Orice Delay
1945-2010 Barbara Louise Delay
McKinley Funeral Home in Lucasville.
Oggie, you will always be missed and loved. You had many friends who cared about you.
God Be With You my dear cousin
Exerts from: "Ode to Vernon Lorenzo "Oggie" Delay
Written by his dear friend Pat -Patrick W. Crabtree
Allie Ethel Rowe Delay
Orsie - Carl Orce Delay
During my youth, perhaps I was 13 or so, my pals and I loafed quite a bit at Vernon "Oogie" Delay's house in Crowe Hollow. Oogie was a confirmed bachelor and lived with his mom, Allie Ethel Rowe Delay FAG 26739233
, but she was rarely at home, typically preferring to visit with one of her several daughters 100 miles north at Columbus for extended periods of time.
Allie's absence from the premises facilitated quite a number of really good times for a pack of teen-aged Hillbilly boys and Oogie (about 26 at the time) was our perfect leader. Oog's most endearing quality was that he was game for anything, anytime. If you pulled into Oog's driveway and hollered at him, "C'mon, Oog -- we're goin' to Texas!" then he'd respond with, "Hang on -- lemme git my cigarettes!" He went to Texas on more than one occasion that way.
Oog and I had become great hunting partners by this time, mostly tramping the area for rabbits and squirrels which both his mom and Old Sadie Friend loved to eat. Sadie, a much-beloved widow lady who lived on nearby Ghost Hollow, existed in poverty and this was about the only meat she ever got -- the fare at Sadie's house on most days consisted solely of brown beans and biscuits.
As for Oog, he was the second most unsafe hunter who ever stepped into the forest or field. His cousin, Joseph Edgar Rowe FAG 104827994 , son of Santford Rowe FAG 67106693 pictured in the family photo with Allie, to her right), was Number One on the firearm hazard scale. Joe often lauded his philosophy: "If it moves, it dies." One had to keep this in mind when you were in the woods with Joe Edgar.
Anyway, one night the whole clan of us decided to go coon hunting in the woods behind Oogie's house. I had never been coon hunting before and it all sounded pretty exciting. It was decided right off that we needed to go pick up yet another ostensible cousin of Oog's and Joe Edgar's: Brother Bill Scaff . I don't think Brother Bill is actually a cousin of this pair, or at least not a close one, but somehow when people in Appalachia got such a thing into their head that somebody was their cousin then that's pretty much how it stood for life, actuality and genetics be damned.
It was alleged by Oog and Joe Edgar that Brother Bill had all the good coon dogs in the county, two in particular. The more profound and traditional-looking hound was Old Champ, a heavily-scarred, bedraggled, black-and-tan cold-trailer who always stunk to high Heaven of a bad ear infection which Brother Bill was perpetually attempting to cure with various ineffective salves and old bottles of turpentine. The other dog was reportedly a wonder of canines worldwide who answered to the sobriquet of T. Texas Red the Hospital. We couldn't just call him Red for short because Oogie had another hunting dog named Red, an admirable critter which I had shrewdly obtained in a three-way dog deal. Allie saw Red and, at once, asked me for him. Allie surely had a sharp eye for dogs because Red turned out to be the best hunting and watchdog combination throughout the entire region. Red would hunt anything, including grouse, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, 'possums, groundhogs, and so on. He seemed to know as we entered the woods what sort of game animals we would be pursuing that day and so he adjusted his nose to fit the circumstance.
T. Texas Red the Hospital, however, was quite another matter. He was, in terms of pedigree, what we always called a Fiece Mountain Cur, brindled black and brown in the front and, in this case, lemon-spotted on white in the rear. He had short, stand-up perky ears and a stubby and bent curly tail. He was also a foul-tempered devil and if you touched his hindquarters unexpectedly as a gesture to halt him, he harbored no issues with taking a chunk out of your hand. Was he a good coondog? Brother Bill swore by him but it's hard to tell when dogs are running as a pack. Old Champ would bellow a single time and that meant he was treed either on a 'possum or a 'coon. Then you'd hear T.Texas Red the Hospital chiming in [I always contended "Tailgating"] on the tree along with the other dogs, the last of which was Oogie's second dog, Hi-Ho, a creature that was good-for-nothing except that he liked to run up and lick the sweat off your face when you'd drop to the ground for a rest. His horrific breath smelled of dead rats and rotting fish heads.
Brother Bill was an excitable fellow. He's the same age as Oogie and Joe Edgar and he has always endured various disabilities. He suffered from epilepsy and as a consequence he could never drink alcohol as it would nullify his daily medications.
He also had learning disabilities and, like Oogie and Joe Edgar, never learned to read or write but he could calculate money up to a certain point.
But none of this ever kept Brother Bill from being happy -- he was always the life of the party. He also fancied himself a preacher (of the hell-fire and brimstone variety), a singer (he made up the lyrics to his own songs as he went along, which really isn't all that easy to do if you try it), and a banjo-picker, (a brazen cacophany which caused his dogs to run for cover every time he hammered away on his out-of-tune instrument.) Brother Bill would occasionally allude to the fact that the girls liked him notably better than they did Oogie (which was not actually true). These yarns typically culminated in Brother Bill getting a foot rub or a free haircut from the lady involved so Brother Bill's view of success in that realm was somewhat diminished from our own more traditional views.
When the dogs would tree a 'possum or 'coon, Brother Bill would become very excited and agitated, shouting out orders to us all, (mostly non-sensical stuff), but it did add to the excitement and melodrama of the hunt. The truth is that we only ever caught a single raccoon and it was a monster, about 25 pounds or so. When we took it back to Oogie's house, Allie was home and she began baking it for us at about two in the morning in a big enameled roaster along with fresh yams, white potatoes, celery, and onions. I would tell you that it tasted a lot like bear meat but most folks don't know what bear tastes like anyway. Suffice it to say that it was quite delicious -- Allie was a monumentally terrific cook.
Getting back to the hunt on that night, Oog was packing an old sawed-off 12-gauge Iver-Johnson shotgun and while I was up in the top of this giant beech tree, attempting to shake out the snarling 'coon, he cut loose from the ground about 60 feet below and it sprayed the hell out of both me and the 'coon with Number 6 shot. Luckily, I was wearing a very heavy coat, coveralls over my regular clothes, and big leather boots so it didn't get me too badly. Bill finished off the 'coon with a .22 rifle just after we both hit the ground (I had endured a series of falls, trying desperately to cling to limbs and grapevines after getting sprayed with birdshot, but the final drop was a good 15 feet) and all four dogs leaped straight on to me instead of on the 'coon. T. Texas Red the Hospital was leading the pack, jumping in at strategic opportunities to nip my legs and hands as I tried to fend him off. Brother Bill finally got him off me by shouting, "Cut that out, T. Texas Red the Hospital!" over and over.
During all this chaos, Joe Edgar was screaming threats at the top of his lungs at T. Texas Red the Hospital. Joe Edgar clearly relished opportunities like this where he could really cut loose and burn through the alphabet (which, ironically, he was wholly unable to recite), issuing a continuous slur of one ear-burning profanity following another. But this seemed to have no effect whatever on T. Texas Red the Hospital who probably encountered such emphatically-delivered language with great frequency, given that Brother Bill's dubious social circle included some pretty unsavory fellows. My own wounds were fairly superficial thanks to my heavy clothing and gloves, plus the excitement of it all sort of over-rode any concerns I had regarding any lacerations or punctures to my body. I think that T. Texas Red the Hospital was heartily gratified at having seized upon the opportunity to maul a Hillbilly under the auspices of a mistaken identity scenario. He trotted all around us afterward, head high and chest out to display his pride and macho-dogliness.
I never cared much for T. Texas Red the Hospital after that incident but Brother Bill wouldn't ever hear of trading him off. He did hint around one time that he would consider trading him for Allie's Red but that was a non-starter for both Allie and Oog.
It was only about a week following the beech tree episode that we switched our hunting grounds from behind Oogie's house in Crowe Hollow, a terrain which we all knew by heart, to a huge and monotonous bottomland of dried-mud horseweeds and silver maples, down in the Scioto River bottoms. This was the domain of an acquaintance who shall remain un-named here but who was a rapscallion and scoundrel of epic local infamy. He solemnly informed us boys (along with Oog, Joe Edgar, and Brother Bill) that these bottoms were bulging with 'coons which turned out to be a monumental lie. We let the dogs out of the car at about midnight and it wasn't long before Old Champ pierced the moonless night with his single plaintive wail. [Thus, I knew precisely what this phrase meant years later when it was coined by an articulate witness during the O.J. Simpson Trial!] We all raced through the darkness, coughing from the noxious dust spore of the horseweeds, in the direction of the promising howl.
As we approached the approximate location of Old Champ's bark, we could begin to hear the other three dogs more clearly as well. Red was emitting a low and guttural growl, T.Texas Red the Hospital was voicing some manner of accentuated whimper, and Hi-Ho was yipping away. It was the latter mongrel which, in seconds, came streaking back past us, headed like a lightning bolt for the car. Then the smell hit us all -- they had cornered a skunk. It was a big old skunk and he was in no mood for any interference with his nightly scavenging rounds for his routine supper of beetles, grasshoppers, and grubs. Neither were we of a mind to further antagonize the poor critter. We gathered the dogs, all of which had been circling the enraged polecat but not courageous enough to jump in for a scrap. All four dogs had gotten a significant dose in the face and the smell was pretty unbearable. When you live in the country, you smell skunks quite frequently but most of the time it's from a distance and a light breeze will mercifully carry away the noxious scent. But here we were taking it right along with us.
The last thing you want to roust out on a coonhunt is a skunk -- the dogs' noses are doomed for days thereafter.
Gary Lee "Spud" was driving us that night and we had all crammed into his Corvair, one of Chevrolet's great failures from my view. Of course the selling point which salesmen used in marketing this tiny car was that it would track along great in the snow because the air-cooled motor was in the rear which gave it lots of traction... but this also meant that the trunk was in the front and that's where our dogs were being transported. I don't suppose that it would have made much difference where the dogs actually rode because by touching the critters, we had already transferred much of the skunk's musk to our own clothing. We whipped in at a late-night gas station in Lucasville and were promptly run off by the attendant. So we took Brother Bill home and his ancient and crusty old dad, Elijah Scaff, handed Brother Bill an old rug and a blanket and pointed to the shed after whiffing his son at the door. Old Man Scaff was a sage of few words but he had a knack for making his thoughts known with an economy of comment or gesticulation.
The rest of us made due as best we could. I took a bath upon my arrival at home, to no avail. Dad retreived a big can of tomato juice from the pantry and I rubbed that all over me at his instruction but it didn't help much -- so I had to sleep on the floor as to not contaminate my bed. The rest of the boys, Oog, and Joe Edgar all caught hell about it and we didn't fare very well at school the next day either. Of course, Brother Bill, Oog, and Joe Edgar didn't have to worry about that particular inconvenience.
I don't know what ever ultimately happened to T. Texas Red the Hospital but I do know that he lived a long time. Had he been my dog, I would have traded him instantly for a flawed weasel pelt, a Japanese jack-knife with a broken blade, or a sackful of discharged shotgun shell casings. But Brother Bill wasn't that sort of fellow -- he thought more of his dogs, T. Texas Red the Hospital in particular, than he did of most of his own family members. I could not fault him for this posture once I got to know them, the Old Man excepted. But I did finally discover why Brother Bill was so attached to the dog. He told us about a coon hunting expedition one night out in the Scioto Brush Creek bottoms when T.Texas Red the Hospital, before any of Brother Bill's other dogs gave notice, treed something in a big hollow sycamore. The valley had recently experienced a substantial flood and mud coated everything, including this tree, far up the trunk. Brother Bill climbed the tree like a monkey (he was good at that and a sycamore is especially difficult to climb under the best of conditions) and peeped into the big hole which seemed a likely repository for any creature which might be in hiding. Ignoring any prospect of a bobcat ripping off his arm, Brother Bill reached boldly into the hole and retrieved a big old channel catfish by the jaw, the fish having gotten stranded during the flood! So T. Texas Red the Hospital had come into his great fame as the dog that treed a fish.
Not many of those around!" Brother Bill liked to boast now and then.
Posted 21st October 2011 by McGrottomaster
Patrick Crabtree's Blog: *The Ospidillo News
✻ღϠ₡ღ✻
♫ ♫ God Bless America the land of the free ♫ ♫
He was born 23 May 1941, in Columbus,Ohio and was the son of the late 1915-1950 Carl Eldo and 1905-2000 Allie Ethel Rowe Delay.
He leaves behind a Special friend : Nancy
He is survived by his twin sister Vernita Sigler of Chillicothe, Phyllis Ramsey of Lucasville, Carolyn Russell of West Jefferson, and Ann Edminster of Columbus.
He was also survived by his special long time friend Nancy and a dear life long friend Patrick Crabtree.
He was also preceded in death by two brothers, Vernon Joseph Pratt and Carl Orcie DeLay; and four sisters, Myrtle Chandler, Henrietta Castle, Barbara Garrard, and Joyce Strickland.
Brothers and Sisters are:
1921-1986 Myrtle Evans - Ray Eric Chandler
1927-1989 Henrietta Pratt
1929 ____ Anna Lillian Pratt
____-____ Blanch
1930-1931 Edna Wina Calhoun
1932-2012 Vernon Joseph Pratt
1935-1935 Henry Pratt
1936-2013 Joyce Evelyn Beasley
1940-____ Edith Carolyn Delay
1941-____ Goldie Vernita Delay twin
1941-2017 Vernon Lorenzo Delay twin
1943-____ Cora Phyllis Delay
1944-2012 Carl Orice Delay
1945-2010 Barbara Louise Delay
McKinley Funeral Home in Lucasville.
Oggie, you will always be missed and loved. You had many friends who cared about you.
God Be With You my dear cousin
Exerts from: "Ode to Vernon Lorenzo "Oggie" Delay
Written by his dear friend Pat -Patrick W. Crabtree
Allie Ethel Rowe Delay
Orsie - Carl Orce Delay
During my youth, perhaps I was 13 or so, my pals and I loafed quite a bit at Vernon "Oogie" Delay's house in Crowe Hollow. Oogie was a confirmed bachelor and lived with his mom, Allie Ethel Rowe Delay FAG 26739233
, but she was rarely at home, typically preferring to visit with one of her several daughters 100 miles north at Columbus for extended periods of time.
Allie's absence from the premises facilitated quite a number of really good times for a pack of teen-aged Hillbilly boys and Oogie (about 26 at the time) was our perfect leader. Oog's most endearing quality was that he was game for anything, anytime. If you pulled into Oog's driveway and hollered at him, "C'mon, Oog -- we're goin' to Texas!" then he'd respond with, "Hang on -- lemme git my cigarettes!" He went to Texas on more than one occasion that way.
Oog and I had become great hunting partners by this time, mostly tramping the area for rabbits and squirrels which both his mom and Old Sadie Friend loved to eat. Sadie, a much-beloved widow lady who lived on nearby Ghost Hollow, existed in poverty and this was about the only meat she ever got -- the fare at Sadie's house on most days consisted solely of brown beans and biscuits.
As for Oog, he was the second most unsafe hunter who ever stepped into the forest or field. His cousin, Joseph Edgar Rowe FAG 104827994 , son of Santford Rowe FAG 67106693 pictured in the family photo with Allie, to her right), was Number One on the firearm hazard scale. Joe often lauded his philosophy: "If it moves, it dies." One had to keep this in mind when you were in the woods with Joe Edgar.
Anyway, one night the whole clan of us decided to go coon hunting in the woods behind Oogie's house. I had never been coon hunting before and it all sounded pretty exciting. It was decided right off that we needed to go pick up yet another ostensible cousin of Oog's and Joe Edgar's: Brother Bill Scaff . I don't think Brother Bill is actually a cousin of this pair, or at least not a close one, but somehow when people in Appalachia got such a thing into their head that somebody was their cousin then that's pretty much how it stood for life, actuality and genetics be damned.
It was alleged by Oog and Joe Edgar that Brother Bill had all the good coon dogs in the county, two in particular. The more profound and traditional-looking hound was Old Champ, a heavily-scarred, bedraggled, black-and-tan cold-trailer who always stunk to high Heaven of a bad ear infection which Brother Bill was perpetually attempting to cure with various ineffective salves and old bottles of turpentine. The other dog was reportedly a wonder of canines worldwide who answered to the sobriquet of T. Texas Red the Hospital. We couldn't just call him Red for short because Oogie had another hunting dog named Red, an admirable critter which I had shrewdly obtained in a three-way dog deal. Allie saw Red and, at once, asked me for him. Allie surely had a sharp eye for dogs because Red turned out to be the best hunting and watchdog combination throughout the entire region. Red would hunt anything, including grouse, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, 'possums, groundhogs, and so on. He seemed to know as we entered the woods what sort of game animals we would be pursuing that day and so he adjusted his nose to fit the circumstance.
T. Texas Red the Hospital, however, was quite another matter. He was, in terms of pedigree, what we always called a Fiece Mountain Cur, brindled black and brown in the front and, in this case, lemon-spotted on white in the rear. He had short, stand-up perky ears and a stubby and bent curly tail. He was also a foul-tempered devil and if you touched his hindquarters unexpectedly as a gesture to halt him, he harbored no issues with taking a chunk out of your hand. Was he a good coondog? Brother Bill swore by him but it's hard to tell when dogs are running as a pack. Old Champ would bellow a single time and that meant he was treed either on a 'possum or a 'coon. Then you'd hear T.Texas Red the Hospital chiming in [I always contended "Tailgating"] on the tree along with the other dogs, the last of which was Oogie's second dog, Hi-Ho, a creature that was good-for-nothing except that he liked to run up and lick the sweat off your face when you'd drop to the ground for a rest. His horrific breath smelled of dead rats and rotting fish heads.
Brother Bill was an excitable fellow. He's the same age as Oogie and Joe Edgar and he has always endured various disabilities. He suffered from epilepsy and as a consequence he could never drink alcohol as it would nullify his daily medications.
He also had learning disabilities and, like Oogie and Joe Edgar, never learned to read or write but he could calculate money up to a certain point.
But none of this ever kept Brother Bill from being happy -- he was always the life of the party. He also fancied himself a preacher (of the hell-fire and brimstone variety), a singer (he made up the lyrics to his own songs as he went along, which really isn't all that easy to do if you try it), and a banjo-picker, (a brazen cacophany which caused his dogs to run for cover every time he hammered away on his out-of-tune instrument.) Brother Bill would occasionally allude to the fact that the girls liked him notably better than they did Oogie (which was not actually true). These yarns typically culminated in Brother Bill getting a foot rub or a free haircut from the lady involved so Brother Bill's view of success in that realm was somewhat diminished from our own more traditional views.
When the dogs would tree a 'possum or 'coon, Brother Bill would become very excited and agitated, shouting out orders to us all, (mostly non-sensical stuff), but it did add to the excitement and melodrama of the hunt. The truth is that we only ever caught a single raccoon and it was a monster, about 25 pounds or so. When we took it back to Oogie's house, Allie was home and she began baking it for us at about two in the morning in a big enameled roaster along with fresh yams, white potatoes, celery, and onions. I would tell you that it tasted a lot like bear meat but most folks don't know what bear tastes like anyway. Suffice it to say that it was quite delicious -- Allie was a monumentally terrific cook.
Getting back to the hunt on that night, Oog was packing an old sawed-off 12-gauge Iver-Johnson shotgun and while I was up in the top of this giant beech tree, attempting to shake out the snarling 'coon, he cut loose from the ground about 60 feet below and it sprayed the hell out of both me and the 'coon with Number 6 shot. Luckily, I was wearing a very heavy coat, coveralls over my regular clothes, and big leather boots so it didn't get me too badly. Bill finished off the 'coon with a .22 rifle just after we both hit the ground (I had endured a series of falls, trying desperately to cling to limbs and grapevines after getting sprayed with birdshot, but the final drop was a good 15 feet) and all four dogs leaped straight on to me instead of on the 'coon. T. Texas Red the Hospital was leading the pack, jumping in at strategic opportunities to nip my legs and hands as I tried to fend him off. Brother Bill finally got him off me by shouting, "Cut that out, T. Texas Red the Hospital!" over and over.
During all this chaos, Joe Edgar was screaming threats at the top of his lungs at T. Texas Red the Hospital. Joe Edgar clearly relished opportunities like this where he could really cut loose and burn through the alphabet (which, ironically, he was wholly unable to recite), issuing a continuous slur of one ear-burning profanity following another. But this seemed to have no effect whatever on T. Texas Red the Hospital who probably encountered such emphatically-delivered language with great frequency, given that Brother Bill's dubious social circle included some pretty unsavory fellows. My own wounds were fairly superficial thanks to my heavy clothing and gloves, plus the excitement of it all sort of over-rode any concerns I had regarding any lacerations or punctures to my body. I think that T. Texas Red the Hospital was heartily gratified at having seized upon the opportunity to maul a Hillbilly under the auspices of a mistaken identity scenario. He trotted all around us afterward, head high and chest out to display his pride and macho-dogliness.
I never cared much for T. Texas Red the Hospital after that incident but Brother Bill wouldn't ever hear of trading him off. He did hint around one time that he would consider trading him for Allie's Red but that was a non-starter for both Allie and Oog.
It was only about a week following the beech tree episode that we switched our hunting grounds from behind Oogie's house in Crowe Hollow, a terrain which we all knew by heart, to a huge and monotonous bottomland of dried-mud horseweeds and silver maples, down in the Scioto River bottoms. This was the domain of an acquaintance who shall remain un-named here but who was a rapscallion and scoundrel of epic local infamy. He solemnly informed us boys (along with Oog, Joe Edgar, and Brother Bill) that these bottoms were bulging with 'coons which turned out to be a monumental lie. We let the dogs out of the car at about midnight and it wasn't long before Old Champ pierced the moonless night with his single plaintive wail. [Thus, I knew precisely what this phrase meant years later when it was coined by an articulate witness during the O.J. Simpson Trial!] We all raced through the darkness, coughing from the noxious dust spore of the horseweeds, in the direction of the promising howl.
As we approached the approximate location of Old Champ's bark, we could begin to hear the other three dogs more clearly as well. Red was emitting a low and guttural growl, T.Texas Red the Hospital was voicing some manner of accentuated whimper, and Hi-Ho was yipping away. It was the latter mongrel which, in seconds, came streaking back past us, headed like a lightning bolt for the car. Then the smell hit us all -- they had cornered a skunk. It was a big old skunk and he was in no mood for any interference with his nightly scavenging rounds for his routine supper of beetles, grasshoppers, and grubs. Neither were we of a mind to further antagonize the poor critter. We gathered the dogs, all of which had been circling the enraged polecat but not courageous enough to jump in for a scrap. All four dogs had gotten a significant dose in the face and the smell was pretty unbearable. When you live in the country, you smell skunks quite frequently but most of the time it's from a distance and a light breeze will mercifully carry away the noxious scent. But here we were taking it right along with us.
The last thing you want to roust out on a coonhunt is a skunk -- the dogs' noses are doomed for days thereafter.
Gary Lee "Spud" was driving us that night and we had all crammed into his Corvair, one of Chevrolet's great failures from my view. Of course the selling point which salesmen used in marketing this tiny car was that it would track along great in the snow because the air-cooled motor was in the rear which gave it lots of traction... but this also meant that the trunk was in the front and that's where our dogs were being transported. I don't suppose that it would have made much difference where the dogs actually rode because by touching the critters, we had already transferred much of the skunk's musk to our own clothing. We whipped in at a late-night gas station in Lucasville and were promptly run off by the attendant. So we took Brother Bill home and his ancient and crusty old dad, Elijah Scaff, handed Brother Bill an old rug and a blanket and pointed to the shed after whiffing his son at the door. Old Man Scaff was a sage of few words but he had a knack for making his thoughts known with an economy of comment or gesticulation.
The rest of us made due as best we could. I took a bath upon my arrival at home, to no avail. Dad retreived a big can of tomato juice from the pantry and I rubbed that all over me at his instruction but it didn't help much -- so I had to sleep on the floor as to not contaminate my bed. The rest of the boys, Oog, and Joe Edgar all caught hell about it and we didn't fare very well at school the next day either. Of course, Brother Bill, Oog, and Joe Edgar didn't have to worry about that particular inconvenience.
I don't know what ever ultimately happened to T. Texas Red the Hospital but I do know that he lived a long time. Had he been my dog, I would have traded him instantly for a flawed weasel pelt, a Japanese jack-knife with a broken blade, or a sackful of discharged shotgun shell casings. But Brother Bill wasn't that sort of fellow -- he thought more of his dogs, T. Texas Red the Hospital in particular, than he did of most of his own family members. I could not fault him for this posture once I got to know them, the Old Man excepted. But I did finally discover why Brother Bill was so attached to the dog. He told us about a coon hunting expedition one night out in the Scioto Brush Creek bottoms when T.Texas Red the Hospital, before any of Brother Bill's other dogs gave notice, treed something in a big hollow sycamore. The valley had recently experienced a substantial flood and mud coated everything, including this tree, far up the trunk. Brother Bill climbed the tree like a monkey (he was good at that and a sycamore is especially difficult to climb under the best of conditions) and peeped into the big hole which seemed a likely repository for any creature which might be in hiding. Ignoring any prospect of a bobcat ripping off his arm, Brother Bill reached boldly into the hole and retrieved a big old channel catfish by the jaw, the fish having gotten stranded during the flood! So T. Texas Red the Hospital had come into his great fame as the dog that treed a fish.
Not many of those around!" Brother Bill liked to boast now and then.
Posted 21st October 2011 by McGrottomaster
Patrick Crabtree's Blog: *The Ospidillo News
✻ღϠ₡ღ✻
♫ ♫ God Bless America the land of the free ♫ ♫
Vernon Lorenzo Oggie Delay, 76, of Lucasville, passed away Saturday, 12 August 2017, at his residence.
He was born 23 May 1941, in Columbus,Ohio and was the son of the late 1915-1950 Carl Eldo and 1905-2000 Allie Ethel Rowe Delay.
He leaves behind a Special friend : Nancy
He is survived by his twin sister Vernita Sigler of Chillicothe, Phyllis Ramsey of Lucasville, Carolyn Russell of West Jefferson, and Ann Edminster of Columbus.
He was also survived by his special long time friend Nancy and a dear life long friend Patrick Crabtree.
He was also preceded in death by two brothers, Vernon Joseph Pratt and Carl Orcie DeLay; and four sisters, Myrtle Chandler, Henrietta Castle, Barbara Garrard, and Joyce Strickland.
Brothers and Sisters are:
1921-1986 Myrtle Evans - Ray Eric Chandler
1927-1989 Henrietta Pratt
1929 ____ Anna Lillian Pratt
____-____ Blanch
1930-1931 Edna Wina Calhoun
1932-2012 Vernon Joseph Pratt
1935-1935 Henry Pratt
1936-2013 Joyce Evelyn Beasley
1940-____ Edith Carolyn Delay
1941-____ Goldie Vernita Delay twin
1941-2017 Vernon Lorenzo Delay twin
1943-____ Cora Phyllis Delay
1944-2012 Carl Orice Delay
1945-2010 Barbara Louise Delay
McKinley Funeral Home in Lucasville.
Oggie, you will always be missed and loved. You had many friends who cared about you.
God Be With You my dear cousin
Exerts from: "Ode to Vernon Lorenzo "Oggie" Delay
Written by his dear friend Pat -Patrick W. Crabtree
Allie Ethel Rowe Delay
Orsie - Carl Orce Delay
During my youth, perhaps I was 13 or so, my pals and I loafed quite a bit at Vernon "Oogie" Delay's house in Crowe Hollow. Oogie was a confirmed bachelor and lived with his mom, Allie Ethel Rowe Delay FAG 26739233
, but she was rarely at home, typically preferring to visit with one of her several daughters 100 miles north at Columbus for extended periods of time.
Allie's absence from the premises facilitated quite a number of really good times for a pack of teen-aged Hillbilly boys and Oogie (about 26 at the time) was our perfect leader. Oog's most endearing quality was that he was game for anything, anytime. If you pulled into Oog's driveway and hollered at him, "C'mon, Oog -- we're goin' to Texas!" then he'd respond with, "Hang on -- lemme git my cigarettes!" He went to Texas on more than one occasion that way.
Oog and I had become great hunting partners by this time, mostly tramping the area for rabbits and squirrels which both his mom and Old Sadie Friend loved to eat. Sadie, a much-beloved widow lady who lived on nearby Ghost Hollow, existed in poverty and this was about the only meat she ever got -- the fare at Sadie's house on most days consisted solely of brown beans and biscuits.
As for Oog, he was the second most unsafe hunter who ever stepped into the forest or field. His cousin, Joseph Edgar Rowe FAG 104827994 , son of Santford Rowe FAG 67106693 pictured in the family photo with Allie, to her right), was Number One on the firearm hazard scale. Joe often lauded his philosophy: "If it moves, it dies." One had to keep this in mind when you were in the woods with Joe Edgar.
Anyway, one night the whole clan of us decided to go coon hunting in the woods behind Oogie's house. I had never been coon hunting before and it all sounded pretty exciting. It was decided right off that we needed to go pick up yet another ostensible cousin of Oog's and Joe Edgar's: Brother Bill Scaff . I don't think Brother Bill is actually a cousin of this pair, or at least not a close one, but somehow when people in Appalachia got such a thing into their head that somebody was their cousin then that's pretty much how it stood for life, actuality and genetics be damned.
It was alleged by Oog and Joe Edgar that Brother Bill had all the good coon dogs in the county, two in particular. The more profound and traditional-looking hound was Old Champ, a heavily-scarred, bedraggled, black-and-tan cold-trailer who always stunk to high Heaven of a bad ear infection which Brother Bill was perpetually attempting to cure with various ineffective salves and old bottles of turpentine. The other dog was reportedly a wonder of canines worldwide who answered to the sobriquet of T. Texas Red the Hospital. We couldn't just call him Red for short because Oogie had another hunting dog named Red, an admirable critter which I had shrewdly obtained in a three-way dog deal. Allie saw Red and, at once, asked me for him. Allie surely had a sharp eye for dogs because Red turned out to be the best hunting and watchdog combination throughout the entire region. Red would hunt anything, including grouse, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, 'possums, groundhogs, and so on. He seemed to know as we entered the woods what sort of game animals we would be pursuing that day and so he adjusted his nose to fit the circumstance.
T. Texas Red the Hospital, however, was quite another matter. He was, in terms of pedigree, what we always called a Fiece Mountain Cur, brindled black and brown in the front and, in this case, lemon-spotted on white in the rear. He had short, stand-up perky ears and a stubby and bent curly tail. He was also a foul-tempered devil and if you touched his hindquarters unexpectedly as a gesture to halt him, he harbored no issues with taking a chunk out of your hand. Was he a good coondog? Brother Bill swore by him but it's hard to tell when dogs are running as a pack. Old Champ would bellow a single time and that meant he was treed either on a 'possum or a 'coon. Then you'd hear T.Texas Red the Hospital chiming in [I always contended "Tailgating"] on the tree along with the other dogs, the last of which was Oogie's second dog, Hi-Ho, a creature that was good-for-nothing except that he liked to run up and lick the sweat off your face when you'd drop to the ground for a rest. His horrific breath smelled of dead rats and rotting fish heads.
Brother Bill was an excitable fellow. He's the same age as Oogie and Joe Edgar and he has always endured various disabilities. He suffered from epilepsy and as a consequence he could never drink alcohol as it would nullify his daily medications.
He also had learning disabilities and, like Oogie and Joe Edgar, never learned to read or write but he could calculate money up to a certain point.
But none of this ever kept Brother Bill from being happy -- he was always the life of the party. He also fancied himself a preacher (of the hell-fire and brimstone variety), a singer (he made up the lyrics to his own songs as he went along, which really isn't all that easy to do if you try it), and a banjo-picker, (a brazen cacophany which caused his dogs to run for cover every time he hammered away on his out-of-tune instrument.) Brother Bill would occasionally allude to the fact that the girls liked him notably better than they did Oogie (which was not actually true). These yarns typically culminated in Brother Bill getting a foot rub or a free haircut from the lady involved so Brother Bill's view of success in that realm was somewhat diminished from our own more traditional views.
When the dogs would tree a 'possum or 'coon, Brother Bill would become very excited and agitated, shouting out orders to us all, (mostly non-sensical stuff), but it did add to the excitement and melodrama of the hunt. The truth is that we only ever caught a single raccoon and it was a monster, about 25 pounds or so. When we took it back to Oogie's house, Allie was home and she began baking it for us at about two in the morning in a big enameled roaster along with fresh yams, white potatoes, celery, and onions. I would tell you that it tasted a lot like bear meat but most folks don't know what bear tastes like anyway. Suffice it to say that it was quite delicious -- Allie was a monumentally terrific cook.
Getting back to the hunt on that night, Oog was packing an old sawed-off 12-gauge Iver-Johnson shotgun and while I was up in the top of this giant beech tree, attempting to shake out the snarling 'coon, he cut loose from the ground about 60 feet below and it sprayed the hell out of both me and the 'coon with Number 6 shot. Luckily, I was wearing a very heavy coat, coveralls over my regular clothes, and big leather boots so it didn't get me too badly. Bill finished off the 'coon with a .22 rifle just after we both hit the ground (I had endured a series of falls, trying desperately to cling to limbs and grapevines after getting sprayed with birdshot, but the final drop was a good 15 feet) and all four dogs leaped straight on to me instead of on the 'coon. T. Texas Red the Hospital was leading the pack, jumping in at strategic opportunities to nip my legs and hands as I tried to fend him off. Brother Bill finally got him off me by shouting, "Cut that out, T. Texas Red the Hospital!" over and over.
During all this chaos, Joe Edgar was screaming threats at the top of his lungs at T. Texas Red the Hospital. Joe Edgar clearly relished opportunities like this where he could really cut loose and burn through the alphabet (which, ironically, he was wholly unable to recite), issuing a continuous slur of one ear-burning profanity following another. But this seemed to have no effect whatever on T. Texas Red the Hospital who probably encountered such emphatically-delivered language with great frequency, given that Brother Bill's dubious social circle included some pretty unsavory fellows. My own wounds were fairly superficial thanks to my heavy clothing and gloves, plus the excitement of it all sort of over-rode any concerns I had regarding any lacerations or punctures to my body. I think that T. Texas Red the Hospital was heartily gratified at having seized upon the opportunity to maul a Hillbilly under the auspices of a mistaken identity scenario. He trotted all around us afterward, head high and chest out to display his pride and macho-dogliness.
I never cared much for T. Texas Red the Hospital after that incident but Brother Bill wouldn't ever hear of trading him off. He did hint around one time that he would consider trading him for Allie's Red but that was a non-starter for both Allie and Oog.
It was only about a week following the beech tree episode that we switched our hunting grounds from behind Oogie's house in Crowe Hollow, a terrain which we all knew by heart, to a huge and monotonous bottomland of dried-mud horseweeds and silver maples, down in the Scioto River bottoms. This was the domain of an acquaintance who shall remain un-named here but who was a rapscallion and scoundrel of epic local infamy. He solemnly informed us boys (along with Oog, Joe Edgar, and Brother Bill) that these bottoms were bulging with 'coons which turned out to be a monumental lie. We let the dogs out of the car at about midnight and it wasn't long before Old Champ pierced the moonless night with his single plaintive wail. [Thus, I knew precisely what this phrase meant years later when it was coined by an articulate witness during the O.J. Simpson Trial!] We all raced through the darkness, coughing from the noxious dust spore of the horseweeds, in the direction of the promising howl.
As we approached the approximate location of Old Champ's bark, we could begin to hear the other three dogs more clearly as well. Red was emitting a low and guttural growl, T.Texas Red the Hospital was voicing some manner of accentuated whimper, and Hi-Ho was yipping away. It was the latter mongrel which, in seconds, came streaking back past us, headed like a lightning bolt for the car. Then the smell hit us all -- they had cornered a skunk. It was a big old skunk and he was in no mood for any interference with his nightly scavenging rounds for his routine supper of beetles, grasshoppers, and grubs. Neither were we of a mind to further antagonize the poor critter. We gathered the dogs, all of which had been circling the enraged polecat but not courageous enough to jump in for a scrap. All four dogs had gotten a significant dose in the face and the smell was pretty unbearable. When you live in the country, you smell skunks quite frequently but most of the time it's from a distance and a light breeze will mercifully carry away the noxious scent. But here we were taking it right along with us.
The last thing you want to roust out on a coonhunt is a skunk -- the dogs' noses are doomed for days thereafter.
Gary Lee "Spud" was driving us that night and we had all crammed into his Corvair, one of Chevrolet's great failures from my view. Of course the selling point which salesmen used in marketing this tiny car was that it would track along great in the snow because the air-cooled motor was in the rear which gave it lots of traction... but this also meant that the trunk was in the front and that's where our dogs were being transported. I don't suppose that it would have made much difference where the dogs actually rode because by touching the critters, we had already transferred much of the skunk's musk to our own clothing. We whipped in at a late-night gas station in Lucasville and were promptly run off by the attendant. So we took Brother Bill home and his ancient and crusty old dad, Elijah Scaff, handed Brother Bill an old rug and a blanket and pointed to the shed after whiffing his son at the door. Old Man Scaff was a sage of few words but he had a knack for making his thoughts known with an economy of comment or gesticulation.
The rest of us made due as best we could. I took a bath upon my arrival at home, to no avail. Dad retreived a big can of tomato juice from the pantry and I rubbed that all over me at his instruction but it didn't help much -- so I had to sleep on the floor as to not contaminate my bed. The rest of the boys, Oog, and Joe Edgar all caught hell about it and we didn't fare very well at school the next day either. Of course, Brother Bill, Oog, and Joe Edgar didn't have to worry about that particular inconvenience.
I don't know what ever ultimately happened to T. Texas Red the Hospital but I do know that he lived a long time. Had he been my dog, I would have traded him instantly for a flawed weasel pelt, a Japanese jack-knife with a broken blade, or a sackful of discharged shotgun shell casings. But Brother Bill wasn't that sort of fellow -- he thought more of his dogs, T. Texas Red the Hospital in particular, than he did of most of his own family members. I could not fault him for this posture once I got to know them, the Old Man excepted. But I did finally discover why Brother Bill was so attached to the dog. He told us about a coon hunting expedition one night out in the Scioto Brush Creek bottoms when T.Texas Red the Hospital, before any of Brother Bill's other dogs gave notice, treed something in a big hollow sycamore. The valley had recently experienced a substantial flood and mud coated everything, including this tree, far up the trunk. Brother Bill climbed the tree like a monkey (he was good at that and a sycamore is especially difficult to climb under the best of conditions) and peeped into the big hole which seemed a likely repository for any creature which might be in hiding. Ignoring any prospect of a bobcat ripping off his arm, Brother Bill reached boldly into the hole and retrieved a big old channel catfish by the jaw, the fish having gotten stranded during the flood! So T. Texas Red the Hospital had come into his great fame as the dog that treed a fish.
Not many of those around!" Brother Bill liked to boast now and then.
Posted 21st October 2011 by McGrottomaster
Patrick Crabtree's Blog: *The Ospidillo News
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♫ ♫ God Bless America the land of the free ♫ ♫
He was born 23 May 1941, in Columbus,Ohio and was the son of the late 1915-1950 Carl Eldo and 1905-2000 Allie Ethel Rowe Delay.
He leaves behind a Special friend : Nancy
He is survived by his twin sister Vernita Sigler of Chillicothe, Phyllis Ramsey of Lucasville, Carolyn Russell of West Jefferson, and Ann Edminster of Columbus.
He was also survived by his special long time friend Nancy and a dear life long friend Patrick Crabtree.
He was also preceded in death by two brothers, Vernon Joseph Pratt and Carl Orcie DeLay; and four sisters, Myrtle Chandler, Henrietta Castle, Barbara Garrard, and Joyce Strickland.
Brothers and Sisters are:
1921-1986 Myrtle Evans - Ray Eric Chandler
1927-1989 Henrietta Pratt
1929 ____ Anna Lillian Pratt
____-____ Blanch
1930-1931 Edna Wina Calhoun
1932-2012 Vernon Joseph Pratt
1935-1935 Henry Pratt
1936-2013 Joyce Evelyn Beasley
1940-____ Edith Carolyn Delay
1941-____ Goldie Vernita Delay twin
1941-2017 Vernon Lorenzo Delay twin
1943-____ Cora Phyllis Delay
1944-2012 Carl Orice Delay
1945-2010 Barbara Louise Delay
McKinley Funeral Home in Lucasville.
Oggie, you will always be missed and loved. You had many friends who cared about you.
God Be With You my dear cousin
Exerts from: "Ode to Vernon Lorenzo "Oggie" Delay
Written by his dear friend Pat -Patrick W. Crabtree
Allie Ethel Rowe Delay
Orsie - Carl Orce Delay
During my youth, perhaps I was 13 or so, my pals and I loafed quite a bit at Vernon "Oogie" Delay's house in Crowe Hollow. Oogie was a confirmed bachelor and lived with his mom, Allie Ethel Rowe Delay FAG 26739233
, but she was rarely at home, typically preferring to visit with one of her several daughters 100 miles north at Columbus for extended periods of time.
Allie's absence from the premises facilitated quite a number of really good times for a pack of teen-aged Hillbilly boys and Oogie (about 26 at the time) was our perfect leader. Oog's most endearing quality was that he was game for anything, anytime. If you pulled into Oog's driveway and hollered at him, "C'mon, Oog -- we're goin' to Texas!" then he'd respond with, "Hang on -- lemme git my cigarettes!" He went to Texas on more than one occasion that way.
Oog and I had become great hunting partners by this time, mostly tramping the area for rabbits and squirrels which both his mom and Old Sadie Friend loved to eat. Sadie, a much-beloved widow lady who lived on nearby Ghost Hollow, existed in poverty and this was about the only meat she ever got -- the fare at Sadie's house on most days consisted solely of brown beans and biscuits.
As for Oog, he was the second most unsafe hunter who ever stepped into the forest or field. His cousin, Joseph Edgar Rowe FAG 104827994 , son of Santford Rowe FAG 67106693 pictured in the family photo with Allie, to her right), was Number One on the firearm hazard scale. Joe often lauded his philosophy: "If it moves, it dies." One had to keep this in mind when you were in the woods with Joe Edgar.
Anyway, one night the whole clan of us decided to go coon hunting in the woods behind Oogie's house. I had never been coon hunting before and it all sounded pretty exciting. It was decided right off that we needed to go pick up yet another ostensible cousin of Oog's and Joe Edgar's: Brother Bill Scaff . I don't think Brother Bill is actually a cousin of this pair, or at least not a close one, but somehow when people in Appalachia got such a thing into their head that somebody was their cousin then that's pretty much how it stood for life, actuality and genetics be damned.
It was alleged by Oog and Joe Edgar that Brother Bill had all the good coon dogs in the county, two in particular. The more profound and traditional-looking hound was Old Champ, a heavily-scarred, bedraggled, black-and-tan cold-trailer who always stunk to high Heaven of a bad ear infection which Brother Bill was perpetually attempting to cure with various ineffective salves and old bottles of turpentine. The other dog was reportedly a wonder of canines worldwide who answered to the sobriquet of T. Texas Red the Hospital. We couldn't just call him Red for short because Oogie had another hunting dog named Red, an admirable critter which I had shrewdly obtained in a three-way dog deal. Allie saw Red and, at once, asked me for him. Allie surely had a sharp eye for dogs because Red turned out to be the best hunting and watchdog combination throughout the entire region. Red would hunt anything, including grouse, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, 'possums, groundhogs, and so on. He seemed to know as we entered the woods what sort of game animals we would be pursuing that day and so he adjusted his nose to fit the circumstance.
T. Texas Red the Hospital, however, was quite another matter. He was, in terms of pedigree, what we always called a Fiece Mountain Cur, brindled black and brown in the front and, in this case, lemon-spotted on white in the rear. He had short, stand-up perky ears and a stubby and bent curly tail. He was also a foul-tempered devil and if you touched his hindquarters unexpectedly as a gesture to halt him, he harbored no issues with taking a chunk out of your hand. Was he a good coondog? Brother Bill swore by him but it's hard to tell when dogs are running as a pack. Old Champ would bellow a single time and that meant he was treed either on a 'possum or a 'coon. Then you'd hear T.Texas Red the Hospital chiming in [I always contended "Tailgating"] on the tree along with the other dogs, the last of which was Oogie's second dog, Hi-Ho, a creature that was good-for-nothing except that he liked to run up and lick the sweat off your face when you'd drop to the ground for a rest. His horrific breath smelled of dead rats and rotting fish heads.
Brother Bill was an excitable fellow. He's the same age as Oogie and Joe Edgar and he has always endured various disabilities. He suffered from epilepsy and as a consequence he could never drink alcohol as it would nullify his daily medications.
He also had learning disabilities and, like Oogie and Joe Edgar, never learned to read or write but he could calculate money up to a certain point.
But none of this ever kept Brother Bill from being happy -- he was always the life of the party. He also fancied himself a preacher (of the hell-fire and brimstone variety), a singer (he made up the lyrics to his own songs as he went along, which really isn't all that easy to do if you try it), and a banjo-picker, (a brazen cacophany which caused his dogs to run for cover every time he hammered away on his out-of-tune instrument.) Brother Bill would occasionally allude to the fact that the girls liked him notably better than they did Oogie (which was not actually true). These yarns typically culminated in Brother Bill getting a foot rub or a free haircut from the lady involved so Brother Bill's view of success in that realm was somewhat diminished from our own more traditional views.
When the dogs would tree a 'possum or 'coon, Brother Bill would become very excited and agitated, shouting out orders to us all, (mostly non-sensical stuff), but it did add to the excitement and melodrama of the hunt. The truth is that we only ever caught a single raccoon and it was a monster, about 25 pounds or so. When we took it back to Oogie's house, Allie was home and she began baking it for us at about two in the morning in a big enameled roaster along with fresh yams, white potatoes, celery, and onions. I would tell you that it tasted a lot like bear meat but most folks don't know what bear tastes like anyway. Suffice it to say that it was quite delicious -- Allie was a monumentally terrific cook.
Getting back to the hunt on that night, Oog was packing an old sawed-off 12-gauge Iver-Johnson shotgun and while I was up in the top of this giant beech tree, attempting to shake out the snarling 'coon, he cut loose from the ground about 60 feet below and it sprayed the hell out of both me and the 'coon with Number 6 shot. Luckily, I was wearing a very heavy coat, coveralls over my regular clothes, and big leather boots so it didn't get me too badly. Bill finished off the 'coon with a .22 rifle just after we both hit the ground (I had endured a series of falls, trying desperately to cling to limbs and grapevines after getting sprayed with birdshot, but the final drop was a good 15 feet) and all four dogs leaped straight on to me instead of on the 'coon. T. Texas Red the Hospital was leading the pack, jumping in at strategic opportunities to nip my legs and hands as I tried to fend him off. Brother Bill finally got him off me by shouting, "Cut that out, T. Texas Red the Hospital!" over and over.
During all this chaos, Joe Edgar was screaming threats at the top of his lungs at T. Texas Red the Hospital. Joe Edgar clearly relished opportunities like this where he could really cut loose and burn through the alphabet (which, ironically, he was wholly unable to recite), issuing a continuous slur of one ear-burning profanity following another. But this seemed to have no effect whatever on T. Texas Red the Hospital who probably encountered such emphatically-delivered language with great frequency, given that Brother Bill's dubious social circle included some pretty unsavory fellows. My own wounds were fairly superficial thanks to my heavy clothing and gloves, plus the excitement of it all sort of over-rode any concerns I had regarding any lacerations or punctures to my body. I think that T. Texas Red the Hospital was heartily gratified at having seized upon the opportunity to maul a Hillbilly under the auspices of a mistaken identity scenario. He trotted all around us afterward, head high and chest out to display his pride and macho-dogliness.
I never cared much for T. Texas Red the Hospital after that incident but Brother Bill wouldn't ever hear of trading him off. He did hint around one time that he would consider trading him for Allie's Red but that was a non-starter for both Allie and Oog.
It was only about a week following the beech tree episode that we switched our hunting grounds from behind Oogie's house in Crowe Hollow, a terrain which we all knew by heart, to a huge and monotonous bottomland of dried-mud horseweeds and silver maples, down in the Scioto River bottoms. This was the domain of an acquaintance who shall remain un-named here but who was a rapscallion and scoundrel of epic local infamy. He solemnly informed us boys (along with Oog, Joe Edgar, and Brother Bill) that these bottoms were bulging with 'coons which turned out to be a monumental lie. We let the dogs out of the car at about midnight and it wasn't long before Old Champ pierced the moonless night with his single plaintive wail. [Thus, I knew precisely what this phrase meant years later when it was coined by an articulate witness during the O.J. Simpson Trial!] We all raced through the darkness, coughing from the noxious dust spore of the horseweeds, in the direction of the promising howl.
As we approached the approximate location of Old Champ's bark, we could begin to hear the other three dogs more clearly as well. Red was emitting a low and guttural growl, T.Texas Red the Hospital was voicing some manner of accentuated whimper, and Hi-Ho was yipping away. It was the latter mongrel which, in seconds, came streaking back past us, headed like a lightning bolt for the car. Then the smell hit us all -- they had cornered a skunk. It was a big old skunk and he was in no mood for any interference with his nightly scavenging rounds for his routine supper of beetles, grasshoppers, and grubs. Neither were we of a mind to further antagonize the poor critter. We gathered the dogs, all of which had been circling the enraged polecat but not courageous enough to jump in for a scrap. All four dogs had gotten a significant dose in the face and the smell was pretty unbearable. When you live in the country, you smell skunks quite frequently but most of the time it's from a distance and a light breeze will mercifully carry away the noxious scent. But here we were taking it right along with us.
The last thing you want to roust out on a coonhunt is a skunk -- the dogs' noses are doomed for days thereafter.
Gary Lee "Spud" was driving us that night and we had all crammed into his Corvair, one of Chevrolet's great failures from my view. Of course the selling point which salesmen used in marketing this tiny car was that it would track along great in the snow because the air-cooled motor was in the rear which gave it lots of traction... but this also meant that the trunk was in the front and that's where our dogs were being transported. I don't suppose that it would have made much difference where the dogs actually rode because by touching the critters, we had already transferred much of the skunk's musk to our own clothing. We whipped in at a late-night gas station in Lucasville and were promptly run off by the attendant. So we took Brother Bill home and his ancient and crusty old dad, Elijah Scaff, handed Brother Bill an old rug and a blanket and pointed to the shed after whiffing his son at the door. Old Man Scaff was a sage of few words but he had a knack for making his thoughts known with an economy of comment or gesticulation.
The rest of us made due as best we could. I took a bath upon my arrival at home, to no avail. Dad retreived a big can of tomato juice from the pantry and I rubbed that all over me at his instruction but it didn't help much -- so I had to sleep on the floor as to not contaminate my bed. The rest of the boys, Oog, and Joe Edgar all caught hell about it and we didn't fare very well at school the next day either. Of course, Brother Bill, Oog, and Joe Edgar didn't have to worry about that particular inconvenience.
I don't know what ever ultimately happened to T. Texas Red the Hospital but I do know that he lived a long time. Had he been my dog, I would have traded him instantly for a flawed weasel pelt, a Japanese jack-knife with a broken blade, or a sackful of discharged shotgun shell casings. But Brother Bill wasn't that sort of fellow -- he thought more of his dogs, T. Texas Red the Hospital in particular, than he did of most of his own family members. I could not fault him for this posture once I got to know them, the Old Man excepted. But I did finally discover why Brother Bill was so attached to the dog. He told us about a coon hunting expedition one night out in the Scioto Brush Creek bottoms when T.Texas Red the Hospital, before any of Brother Bill's other dogs gave notice, treed something in a big hollow sycamore. The valley had recently experienced a substantial flood and mud coated everything, including this tree, far up the trunk. Brother Bill climbed the tree like a monkey (he was good at that and a sycamore is especially difficult to climb under the best of conditions) and peeped into the big hole which seemed a likely repository for any creature which might be in hiding. Ignoring any prospect of a bobcat ripping off his arm, Brother Bill reached boldly into the hole and retrieved a big old channel catfish by the jaw, the fish having gotten stranded during the flood! So T. Texas Red the Hospital had come into his great fame as the dog that treed a fish.
Not many of those around!" Brother Bill liked to boast now and then.
Posted 21st October 2011 by McGrottomaster
Patrick Crabtree's Blog: *The Ospidillo News
✻ღϠ₡ღ✻
♫ ♫ God Bless America the land of the free ♫ ♫
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