Grandpa Sam and the Skunk

[itsmeCindi]

When Fred and I were dating, I went with him and his Grandfather to a cedar break for the weekend to chop fence posts. (We had unusual dates).

There was a cabin on the property, but it was summer time and too hot to sleep inside, so we slept out on the twelve-foot flat bed trailer that we brought to carry the fence posts back.

Right at sunrise I woke up needing to find some privacy. I sat up and was just fixing to swing my legs off the trailer to go look for a spot, when I saw a little black dot on the hill east of where we were. I just kind of sat there and watched the little black dot get bigger. Finally I woke Fred up.

"What the heck is that?" I asked, pointing.

He watched for a few seconds.

"Danged if I know, but whatever it is, it's headed this way."

Grandpa Sam sat up and looked.

"Aww...that's that gol-dammed skunk! Sunuvabitch thinks he owns half the county! If we don't go inside, he'll spray every one of us!"

Gramdpa Sam cussed. A lot. It was his way.

Fred and I just looked at him.

"Yer kiddin' me right?" Fred asked.

"He11 no I ain't kiddin' you! I'm goin' inside, you can hang around if you want, but if he gets you...don't expect to ride home in the truck with me!"

I tended to believe Grandpa Sam, after all he spent way yonder more time at the cedar break than we did, so if anybody would know about a territorial skunk, he would.

Grandpa Sam wrapped his blanket around his waist, leaving his pants behind and took off running barefoot to the cabin. That was enough for me. I knew he was a tenderfoot and wouldn't run without his boots unless he had no choice, so I was right on his heels. If he was pulling our legs, then he would get to laugh at me all he wanted, because I literally passed him, running like my very life depended on speed.

We went into the cabin and watched out the window as that skunk stomped its way down the hill and went straight for the trailer. By then Fred was standing up in the middle of the flat bed in his drawers, ready to do battle, a silly half-grin on his face.

The skunk rushed one of the tires first, and then started circling the trailer, hissing and growling. When he got around to the tongue he took about six steps away from it, then rapidly backed up with his tail in the air. That's when Fred jumped off the other end and ran for the cabin. The skunk thoroughly drenched the front end of the trailer, and the corner of one blanket that had been left hanging off the end near the tongue. Then, seemingly satisfied, he went on his way.

We got rid of the blanket and washed off the trailer as best we could with water from the creek, but the stink pretty much went home with us anyway. Grandpa Sam cussed Fred all the way home. A lot. It was his way.

He said the skunk wouldn't have sprayed if Fred hadn't been up there in the bed of the trailer challenging him.

I believed everything Grandpa Sam told me from that day forward. No matter how crazy it sounded. Being Grandpa Sam, he took advantage of me more than once and made a fool out of me every chance he got until the day he died, and I am almost positive that he managed to make a fool out of me at least once AFTER he died. But I loved that man with a purple-eyed passion. Still do.

[RichZ]

Well, Cindi, you can't end the story like that!! How did Grandpa Sam make a fool out of you AFTER he died???? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[itsmeCindi]

I'll try to explain this. Forgive me if I'm a bit off on details. This all happened twenty years ago.

Sam Whitlock was one of the last trappers in and around central Texas. Well into the nineteen seventies he was still trapping coons, fox, and rabbit on a regular basis; both for meat and furs. By this time he was in his seventies and it was what he knew. It was about all he knew, except for chopping cedar. He also worked as a migrant picker, and had a short stint on a hog farm.

He had no education, and barely knew how to scrawl his name, and would only do that when he had no other choice. Sam Whitlock did not know his social security number, nor did he care to as he never paid taxes. He never had a driver's license. If he needed to go somewhere he couldn't walk to, he got someone to take him or he broke the law and drove himself. To my knowledge, he never got caught, even though many times he drove while drunk as Cooter Brown.

Sam made his living off the land and lived on the land. He carried a rucksack on his back and cooked over a fire. He didn't have an actual address until early in the nineteen eighties, when he got to where he couldn't take the winters out in the open anymore, and unofficially moved in with Fred's parents.

You might wonder how he got to be a Grandpa, with all his running around. So did I, and when I asked I almost wished I hadn't...because things got very confusing.

It seems that back in the twenties, Sam married Fred's paternal grandmother and sired three children. Among them was Fred's father. Fred's grandmother spoke of Sam with nothing but disdain. She said that he only came around long enough to hang his pants on the bedpost for a night at a time, and leave her pregnant. She got her fill of him in the thirties when she officially divorced him and remarried.

Grandpa Sam happened to be in Junction, Texas in the early nineteen forties when Fred's parents got married. It was at the union between his son and his son's new wife, that he met Cleo, Fred's maternal grandmother, who was a widow at the time.

Even though Fred's mother (who only knew of Sam by reputation), could see it coming and warned him that she'd never forgive him if he did, Sam eventually married Cleo.

So, Sam was Fred's grandfather twice, once biologically and once matrimonially, an extreme source of embarrassment for Fred's mother. For some reason, all the men in the family, including Fred, found the situation humorous, but Fred's mother held a grudge against Sam that lasted unil the day he died in nineteen eighty-four.

Naturally the marriage to Cleo didn't last long. As soon as she discovered that he had no intentions of being a husband in the conventional sense, she kicked him out, but retained the name Whitlock and they remained on friendly terms. After the separation, Fred's mother would tolerate Sam's presence in her house as long as he didn't mention her mother's name. If he ever forgot himself and uttered the name 'Cleo' within her earshot, she would toss him out on his ear and banish him for months at a time.

By the time I met Fred, Sam had learned his lesson and never mentioned Cleo's name. It was imperative that he remember this rule as he was getting old and one of the few places he could 'winter' was at Fred's parent's house.

Even though he technically lived there, he was rarely around. I heard of him long before I met him, but after I got to know him, and despite Fred's mother's hatred of him, I liked him very much. I thought he was interesting and funny, and it didn't take me long to figure out how both of Fred's grandmothers managed to fall for this rough and grisly man.

Fred and I had been married less than a year and were living in Jonestown, Texas when Sam slipped out of this world peacefully in bed in Fred's parent's house. I didn't know what bed, or in what room; it didn't seem appropriate to ask, and at the time I didn't know it mattered.

Shortly after the funeral, Fred and I were forced to move in with his parents due to financial difficulties. One Saturday night, Fred, his mother and father and a few friends were playing poker at the kitchen table. Having no interest in the game, and since it was getting late, I went to bed. I hadn't been asleep very long when I felt someone sit down on the foot of the bed. Thinking it was Fred, I merely rolled over and went back to sleep. Shortly after that I was awakened in the same manner. I was irritated, but didn't say anything. Until it happened a third time.

"Fred! You're sitting on my feet!" There was no answer, but the pressure went away immediately.

I got up and turned on the light. There was no one in the room. I wobbled my way to the kitchen, where the poker game was still going strong.

"Who keeps coming in there and sitting on the bed?" I pointed in the direction of the bedroom.

All I got was a round of blank stares.

"You were probably dreaming." Fred said.

"No she wasn't." Fred's mother said abruptly. "It's happened to me, too. It's that MAN." She blurted. "It's not enough he haunted me when he was living, but he has to keep coming back even after he's dead! He probably wants to marry HER TOO!" She pointed at me. "He died in that room, you know, in that bed." She informed me, like it was a fact that I should have known all along.

I was young and sensitive, and it was all too much for me to grasp, so I burst into tears in the middle of the room and wailed like a child. Looking back on it, it was funny, but at the time, it scared the be-jesus out of me.

It was an established and accepted fact that Grandpa Sam came back many times to that house after his death. Why? Who knows? Maybe just to irritate Fred's mother when he knew she couldn't do anything about it. But at least once, he made a fool out of me, a fact that I'm sure amused him no end.

For the balance of the year that we lived there, if I felt the bed move, I simply ordered him out of the room by threatening to sic Fred's mother on him. That usually did the trick.

[RichZ]

Cindi, you have the greatest stories!!! I thought Jillian's Ghost was your only brush with the supernatural!!! I'll bet you have had more experiences, too!!! So among your books to be written, should be...Cindi's Ghost Stories!!! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[itsmeCindi]

I've got a few. I tend to forget about them until something jogs my memory. Thanks Rich!