I remember another story regarding one of my favorite places. This place, or location if you will, is Laurel Branch. Laurel Branch is situated on Pine Mountain. If I remember correctly it is on Daniels' Mountain. I believe they own it. If not, then I think it is adjacent to Daniels' Mountain.
The way you got there was to take the old highway (119) out of Wallins toward Coldiron. There was a bridge or culvert that was situated on the old highway. You would enter Pine Mountain and climb until you got on top of the mountain. As I talked about before, size perception is much different now. When I was a kid, I thought that it was a long haul down the highway, and quite a hard climb up the mountain. But now I'm thinking that it might not have been that far. I have tried to locate it from the new highway, but I'm not sure where it is. One of these days when I have the time, I hope to do an exploration. I will probably be disappointed if I discover that it was not as grand as I remember it.
Anyway, back to the story that I wanted to talk about. My cousin Damon Alred and me took a trip up to Laurel Branch on a hot summer day. We were climbing the mountain peak which had a shear cliff on the front of it. Why were we climbing it? Because it was there. Please forgive me. I just had to say that. But it really begs the question. I guess we did it because we just took a notion to do it. We avoided the hard and dangerous climb by going up the back side through dense undergrowth. I guess you know what happened. We got eaten alive by chiggers. We were scratching and digging so bad that we decided to get down the fastest way. You guessed it, over the shear cliff. We were making our way down by holding on to small trees and vines that were growing out of the face of the cliff. I know if you have been reading my other stories, you know what happens next. I fell off the cliff, probably half way down, maybe 60 feet. I landed on a large rotten tree on the ground which cushioned my fall. I wasn't hurt. You know by now that the Lord has had a full-time job looking after me. Thank you Lord. Damon and I tore our clothes off and jumped in the ice cold water to ease the itching. What a relief.
Thinking back about those days and the risky things we did, it seems really wild and crazy. But at the time it didn't feel that way. I'm sure that if our parents had known, we would have been in a heep of trouble. We were able to cover a lot of these things up and keep from knowing, however. I think we had free range, so to speak. Boys were just out and about during the summer. There was a lot of work to do if you were caught and detained. It took strict supervision by a parent to keep me working, however. I was the all-time champion slipper-offer. All it took was a second's distraction and I was off to the races. Unfortunately, my mom knew where to look for me. Most of the time it was Sarah's Cafe or the poolhall. It was pretty embarrassing to have your mom come to get you, or even send word that you were to get home right away.
Back to the story. I also had a few unwanted encounters with snakes, as all of us probably did growing up. I remember catching crawdads to go fishing. I was in the creek near the Spout in Terry's Fork. I saw this nice big crawdad back in under a rock. I eased my hand very carefully up under the rock and grabbed what I thought was a very large crawdad. It turned out to be a very large snake that I pulled out instead. It wrapped around my arm. I took this as a signal to move on down the road. I got rid of that snake quicker than I would have a live grenade. After tossing the snake into the water, I split the creek wide open and ran for some distance before the adrenalin subsided. Lassie Lee would have been proud of "Old Lightning."
One sunny spring day as I was riding my bike down the railroad track toward Dixietown, I ran over several copperheads that where sunning themselves on the gravel. A couple of them struck at my legs. I held my legs up so they couldn't bite me and kept going. That snakes were there was not that unusual as cold blooded reptiles like to sun themselves. What might be considered unusual, however, could be a brain damaged kid riding his bike on the hot gravel. At least he might have gotten some clue after the first or second snake he saw. Oh noooooo!!!! This is why we kept our parents in the dark. And no we weren't smoking loco-weed. We didn't know you could smoke it back in those days.
