In the August 18 column I shared some stories from my friend, Jimmie Ray “Jiggs” Newsom of Sikes. Here are some more of his tales from eastern Winn Parish.

Trace Chain Red

My grandpa Chris Newsom and Uncle Loyd Newsom liked to fox hunt, so I started to join them at an early age. We always kept four hounds because they made a great sound when we chased the fox with just our dogs. We never had any prize dogs nor fast dogs, but they were always compatible with any dogs you wanted to hunt with.

Two of our hunting partners were Elmer Taylor and Monroe Erskins. Elmer had two dogs about like ours and Monroe had one that fit in with the pack, but he also had a big red hound called Trace Chain Red, who was the fastest dog on earth.

Red would just run away from the pack. To slow him down, Monroe attached a few links of chain to his collar. He became known as Trace Chain Red.

The Alford Place

The Alford Place was familiar to me because my grandpa was born there in 1884 and lived there many years. Located on the east side of Flat Creek about five miles southeast of where Flat Creek crosses Highway 126.

The Alfords had moved there from Lawrence County, Mississippi, cleared the land, built the house, and started farming. Among the farm animals they brought from Mississippi were some peacocks. After a few years of farming their north Hickory Valley land, they woke up one morning and the peacocks were gone.

They assumed wild cats or foxes had caught them. Two weeks later they received a letter from Lawrence County saying the peacocks had come home. The Alfords took this as a bad omen and packed their belongings and went back to Lawrence County, Mississippi.

Homesick

In the 1930s the Depression had taken its toll on Hinton Camp, a logging community owned by Urania Lumber Company in southeastern Winn Parish, and jobs were hard to come by. If you had a job in Urania it only paid about $1.50 per day, and they paid in script or Urania tokens.

One day in late August Curt Hatten and Radford Vickers set out on foot to the new world (Franklin Parish) where they heard you could make $3 a day picking cotton. After a week or two of this back breaking work making less than their projected $3 a day, they got exhausted and homesick. They collected their pay and hit the road to Hinton Camp in a trot.

They walked till they got within two miles of Hinton Camp, and Radford couldn’t go any further. Blistered feet and exhaustion from steady walking had ended his trek. Curt walked the other two miles and got Betie, Radford’s wife, and a wheel barrow, and went back to wheel Radford home. Radford was tall and thin and hung over the edge of the wheel barrow pretty good. As Curt and Bertie wheeled him home, the neighbors around Hinton Camp stood and cheered as they passed.

Preacher Webb Fishing Trip

In the early years, fish were plentiful around Hinton Camp. All you had to do was dig a few earth worms, grab your pole and head for the nearest spring branch, Hinton Camp pond, Flat Creek, or take the longer hike to Castor Creek.

In the summer months, Flat Creek and Castor Creek would dry up in holes, confining the fish into small areas. To shorten the time it took to catch a pile of fish, people would take a couple of sacks of lime, or green walnuts and stir them up in one of these holes. The fish would come to the top, and you could pick them up. It was a misdemeanor then, and now, so it was necessary to keep a look out for game wardens and strangers.

If you were lucky enough to come across a stick of dynamite, you could stick a match to it, throw it into one of these holes, run like hell, and after the blast, go back and pick up your catch. It was also a misde-meanor.

One day Preacher Webb, “Preacher” just being a nickname, not indicating a man of the cloth, found a stick of dynamite. Why waste it? Preacher gathered up the boys from Hinton Camp and headed for Flat Creek. In the crowd was Preacher’s squirrel dog.

The boys selected a hole in the creek that should have a bunch of fish in it. Preacher found some dry wood, tied the stick of dynamite to it so it would float, lit the fuse, threw it into the water and started to run. The squirrel dog, who had been trained to fetch, jumped into the water, grabbed the dynamite, and headed for Preacher.

The race was on. The dog and dynamite running after Preacher and Preacher running full steam away, looking back at the dog. Just as the dog and dynamite exploded, Preacher ran head on into a big cypress tree, putting out his lights for ten or fifteen minutes. No one ever asked how many fish they caught.