about Skeeter Skelton

When a "Black Duster"
hits, there's not much
two young schoolboys
on Easter breal<can do.
Mothin' that is
exm
cept get into a little
mischief and some
good ole shootin' fun
with a couple of alltime classic rifles.
...
YOU'VE
GOT TO BE at
i
.
least 50 years
old to remember how it was in a little
red schoolhouse in the Texas Panhandle
when the 'long winter had grudgingly
passed, the trees were budding, and
you fidgeted in your blackboard-walled
cell, waiting for the Easter parole.
M e and Jody Bishop sweated out
our Easters i n an old brick building
called Central School in Hereford, Tex.
After seven months of maximum-security confinement, not counting Thanksgiving and Christmas, we were fit to
bust out of our bib overalls by the time
the April holiday showed up.
Thefruity smell of paper-bag lunches,
screech of cheap chalk on scratchy
blackboards, and the drone of the geog- ing weeks that they were slippery. We
raphy teacher dully describing places had stored up enough ammunition to
we would never see (and didn't care) open a shooting gallery.
We were in business.
all combined to make us crinkle our
toer and bite the insides of our cheeks
After a gigantic supper beneath the
to endure those last few days befare coal-oil lamp on Rosie's oilclothrelease. .There were bad tempers and a covered table. we hit the feathers early.
lot of fist fights on the playgrounds A dawn attack was scheduled.
Along about 3 a.m. the senile board
right before Easter.
Outside our prison the trees were house started making subtle creaking
greening up and the birds were chirping sounds. A loose shingle slapped sugtheir appreciation of the warmer weath- gestively on the roof. A low, continuous
moaning rising in pitch washed aroupd
er. Rabbits .were thick in the winter
wheat and alfalfa, and me and Joe the farmhouse. I took notice and sensed
knew that the crappie fishing in our that loe, lying next to me, was aware
almost-private creek was just beginning of it, too.
We moaned inwardly to ou;selves.
to perk up.
In our hungry anticipation of four
We had a hideout for our four days
of hiatus from Central School, and like days in our cherished preserve, we had
Mr. E. G. Robinson and Mr. J. Cagney neglected to remember one harsh fact.
of the movies, we laid plans t o "crash We lived in the end of the Depression,
out of that college."
on the High Plains, and in the heart
O n Thursday afternoon, Jody's of the Dust Bowl of the '30s. It was
mother drove us t o her parents', the springtime, and while that meant cherry
O'Farrells, farm, loaded with our guns, blossoms in Washington, D.C., it held
clean underwear, and a few spare Three a portent of 100-rnph winds tha? blackMusketeer candy bars.
ened the sky and choked, blinded, and
immobilized the people and places they
A t the old frame farmhouse, we
greeted Elmer and Rose O'Farrell; old commanded in Texas.
These storms were terrible and quite
Dick, leader of our ratty dog pack;
and Nickand Freckles, our horses. Then common i n those days. They were
we fell to serious business, dragging our called Dusters or Black Dusters back
long bamboo fishing poles from storage then, and when you got caught in one,
in the barn, checking the line and hook you couldn't see five feet ahead of you.
supply, and counting the minnows in They were dangerous, and people died
the stock tank.
.
.
i n them. Nobody in their right mind
Our .22 rifles had been cleaned and would leave shelter until thedust storms
oiled so many times during the preced- had blown themselves out-which
114
SKEETER SKELTON 1980
sornetirnes took days.
M e and Joegot out of bed and waited
for the sun to rise, but it never did.
We had us a Black Duster on the first
of our precious days.
We fought our way t o the barn, bareheaded so we wouldn't lose our sornbreros, fed the horses, milked the aging
cow, and threw the dust-stirred milk to
the chickens.
ljaving learned respect for dusters,
we strung three lariat ropes together
from the barn door to the yard gate
of the house so we'd have a lifeline
through the choking darkness when we
had to venture out for the necessary
care of the stock.
Following the wire clothesline to the
big galvanized tank of the windmill,
M e and Joe got out of
bed and waited for the sun
to rise, but it never did.
we ~ u i i e dthe lever that shut off the
rickety Dempster fan by turning i t sideways into the wi'nd and clamping it
against its tail. Then we drew a few
buckets of tank water for the house,
covered them with wet flour sacks to
keep some of the flying topsoil out,
and went back inside-into exile.
That first day, Good Friday, we
tromped the house nervously, leaving
gritty tracks on the linoleum floors.
The roofs of our mouths felt like they'd
been coated with goat-scented talcurn
1
powder. Little, inanimate things floated
in the dippers of well water as we
swilled, trying to wash out our mouths.
Rosie made us some of her huge
pancakes, smothered i n homemade
sugar syrup. We ate every bite, but we
didn't tell her that our favorite O'Farrell
dish tasted like i t had metal filings in it.
Me and Joe checked our greasy guns.
They were oily muddy. We wiped them
off and rolled them in an old sheet.
By midafternoon the winds were a
steady 60 mph. Rosie and Mr. O'Farrell
made constant passes through the
house, dusting and sweeping. The dirt
b u i l t i ~ again
p
immediately i n their
wake, piling bvo inches high or more
in front of the dried out old doors.
M e and Joe were going nuts.
We tried playing checkers, never my
favorite pastime, and loe swamped me
10 in a row. No mumblety-peg in the
house, so we checked out the reading
material. Mostly old magazines and
books on farrning. We'd seen 'em before.
Jody started telling stories about the
previous winter's hunting and the big
goose he'd shot with his Model 12
Winchester 20 gauge. I' reminded hirn
that I'd popped the old gander, too,
with my Ithaca double. He said my
shot wasn't necessary, and I said i t
was, and that it had been just as much
my goose as his. He said i t was not,
and Eimer O'Farrell told us both to
hush up, so we did.
For a long time.
W i t h no'electricity there was n o
radio, and we'd never heard of television. Crandpareilts and boys alike were
on edge, so Jody and I fought our way
to the barn, tended the animals, and
brought in the eggs. With no rehigeration for meat, there was only a supply
of smoked bacons and hams in the fruit
cellar, so i t appeared we were going to
be dining on sowbosom and hen fruit,
instead of fried rabbit, fresh fish, or
frog legs.
After supper, by mutual agreement,
we finished chinking up the doors and
windows with wet newspapers and went
t o bed
Saturday was the same, maybe worse.
M e and Joe would have gone back to
town to the comparative comforts of
home, but M r O'Farrell wasn't about to
try the trip in his tin lizzie, and if we
wal ked, we would have probabl y wound
up in the Land of Oz.
That second, terrible day irnproved
a bit after M r O'Farrell took pity on
us and let us rumrnage through a small
room that contained the memorabilia
of his life. It was a roorn to which we
were normally denied access, and we
knew i t contained rnysteries and wonderful things. Joe's grandpa unlocked
the door and told us we could look
around to our heart's content.
Leaning in a corner was a huge Confederate cavalry saber in a ringed,
heavy rnetal scabbard. It was almost as
tall as me and loe, and we wondered
how big a man i t would have taken to
swing it, one-arrned during a mounted
charge. I had once scythed a little wheat
on a relative's Kansas farm. but the
scythe seemed like a fencing foil compared to this gigantic long knife.
In a box was an aging Edison phonograph, the kind with a big, petal-shaped
speaker and a winding crank. I t used
thick cylinders for records, and i t took
half a day of tinkering and oiling to
coax sound from it. The speed wasn't
quite right, and J o d y and I giggled
through a high-speed, chipmunk-sounding monologue about a farmer getting
his picture taken for the first time, a
famous baritone singing i n tinny
soprano, and finally a John Philip Sousa
rendering of The Stars and Stripes Forever in slow motion.
Next, we found several cigar boxes
containing a beautiful collection of arrowheads and other flint tools. Most of
them were larger and of prettier flint
than those few that we had encountered
before. Sorne of them were of gorgeous
Alibates flint that had been mined in
only one spot in the Texas Panhandle
and traded by ancient Indians as far
away as Canada. We hadn't known that
Joe's granddad had them, and he
shrugged them off saying he'd picked
'em up over many years at the reins of
a one-mule plow.
He let us into the little closet that
housed his guns, and our eyes widened.
There was more stuff in that forbidden
hideout than either of us had realized.
Before we coulcl dive in, Mr. O'Farrell
closed the door and shooed us out. It
was milking and horse and dog feeding
time.
That second day had gone a little
faster.
Outside, the gale continued to blow.
Fine sand, along with tens of cubic
yards of dry tumbleweeds, had piled
against the sides of the outbuildings
and the house, burying some of the
fence posts almost to their top wires?
M e and loe ate our sandy suppers
and went to bed for the third night,
praying silently for a sunny, springtime
Easter Sunday. Instead, the winds i:\-creased, and by 10 a.m. we had taken
refuge in the fruit cellar.
Fruit cellars were also called cyclone
cellars in those days. Most of them
along the Tierra Blanca creek had been
laboriously dug into the tough, chalky
caliche banks then roofed over with a
one- or two-foot thickness of hard digging~.They were pretty solid, offering
a low profile to tornadic winds as well
as a good even-temperatured storehouse for Mason jars of peach preserves, stewed tomatoes, rhubarb, and
other garden truck. But with four people in them sweating out a cyclone,
they seemed as big as a phone booth.
The worst was finally over, and we
emerged after an hour or two to see a
buff-colored waste around the house
and barn. With the breeze reduced to
Fine sand, ,along with
tumbleweeds, had piled
against the house, burying
some of the fence posts.
about 20 knots, ine and Joe attempted
to lure the dags from beneath the house
for a short safari. &ut they were quite
comfortable in their hidey hole, thank
you, so we,returned inside t o halfheartedly help with the cleanup, which
would take days, and t o get a closer
look at Elmer O'Farrell's guns.
He allowed it.
There was a 12-gauge Model 97 Winchester-Full choked, of course-and
a long, .octagon-barreled .30-30 Model
94. We had seen them before, although
he'd never let us shoot them. There was
the beautiful little Winchester Model
92 saddle-ring carbine in .32-20 that I
wanted desperately t o shoot and had
secretly fetched along a few shells for,
in case Mr. O'Farrell agreed.
Other loiig guns included a lengthy,
straight-bolt-handled World War I Cerman Mauser that I had never seen, as
weli as a rifle that I can't explain being
in the gear of Mr. O'Farrell.
It was a custom-made, fancy-stocked
.220 Swift in nice condition. I t had a
receiver sight and was in no way the
sort of gun that the old gentleman
.
SKEETER SKELTON
1980
115
would have acquired for his own use.
He must have been keeping i t for someone, or perhaps liad taken it in on a
debt.
In the handgun line, pickings were
slim. Wrapped in an oil rag was a loaded
U.S. government property Colt 1911 .45
automatic. I t was the twin of the one
carried by Jody's dad, Big Joe Bishop,
in his work as a city marshal. I had
never learned the history of these guns,
but me and Joewere not allowed t o fool
with them, which made them all the
more fascinating.
There was almost a full box of .41
skort rimfire cartridges. Mr. O'Farrell
would give no explanation for them,
but I've always believed there was a
double-barreled Remington derringer
stashed around the place, most likely
in the old farmer's pocket.
The breeze had dropped so that Jody
and I could navigate a bit outdoors,
but the waters of the creek would still
be far too choppy for any fishing, and
no sane rabbit would be out of his burrow. This seemed a good time t o h i t
on loe's grandpop for permission t o
shoot his sleek little .32-20 Winchester.
I got up my nerve and made the
proposition, showing him the 10 nickelplated, lead-bulleted cartridges I'd
brolight from town. They were factory
fresh, and I'd bought them at Kerr's
Hardware for 304:. A full box would have
cost about $1.50. which was beyond
my means, but all the hardware stores
in those hard times would break open
a box of shells and sel1 you as few as
you wanted or could afford.
With t h e warning that. we had t o
clean it, me and loe took the beautiful
carbine out beyond the barn. We set a
one-gallon can against a d i r t bank,
rested the Winchester on a fence post,
and took five shots each, exulting in
the smoothness of the lever's stroke.
We each got five hits at about 15 yards
and I've loved '92 Winchesters ever
since.
This success at centerfire shooting
led t o requesting and getting permission to drag out the old German army
rifle. I t hadn't been well cared for, and
none of us, including Mr. O'Farrell,
knew what sort of cartridges i t took.
If someone had said "8x57," me and
Joe would have supposed they were
giving us a multiplication problem.
M e and Joe had a little junk box at
the farm that contained the accumulated overflow from our pockets for the
years we had spent our spare time with
the O'Farrells. Digging in this assortment of broken pocketknives, buttons,
slingshots, ruined dollar watches,
busted arrowheads, and old cartridges,
we came up with two or three .35 Remington rounds, which should have been
at home with my dad's old Model 8
Remington deer rifle. It didn't take long
t o discover that they would chamber
in the Mauser and the bolt would close.
116
SKEETER SKELTON 1980
It seemed to follow that they would
shoot, so a promising experiment got
under way.
We weren't very smart, but we were
too smart to fire the old rifle without
taking some precautions. We retrieved
a used 600x16 tire from the trash dump.
Then we laid the Mauser across the
side of the tire, its butt inside the walls,
and wired it securely with baling wire,'
pointing the muzzle in the direction of
a bluff on the creek a few hundred yards
away.
We rigged a 40-foot twine lanyard
that led to the trunk of a large elm.
We took cover behind i t after loading
the rifle.
Mr. O'Farrell, who by then must have
been as bored with the bad weather
as we were, joined us behind the barricade. I am sure he was silently bidding
his old rifle goodbye.
We emerged to see a
buff-colored waste around
the house and barn.
Jody did the honors, giving a hearty
yank on the twine. We thought we
heard a click from the direction of our
proving ground, but not being sure,
we waited five minutes before sneaking
up on the gun and cautiously opening
the bolt.
The .35 shell was unfired, but its
primer showed a light dent. We repeated this elaborate maneuver several
t i m e c w i t h no success, u n t i l Elmer
O'Farrell decided to save his Mauser
for posterity and took i t back in the
house.
I supposed an accumulation of dirt,
oil, rust, and spiderwebs must have
prevented the Mauser's firing pin from
giving the .35's primer a solid lick. In
a way it's too bad, because in looking
back I rather think that the ,358-inch
bullet trying to make a linedrive through
the Mauser's ,323-inch bore would have
speeded up the ballistic education of
me and Joe considerably.
Mr. O'Farrell 'said grace over our simple Easter supper, and me and Joe
dreamed tortured dreams of our lost
vacation.
We awoke as usual at first daylight.
We listened. We smelled. M'e yelled,
"Hot dog!" in unison.
The wind had stilled, the dust had
settled, and one look out the window
revealed the same kind of light-green
spring day we had left at school, even
though i t was frayed in spots from the
storm.
Rosie fussed as we rushed right past
her breakfast table, siuffing our pockets
with hot cornbread.
We whooped ~ i pthe grinning, tailwhipping dogs, netted a battered minnow bucket full -of bait, grabbed our
guns, balanced our cane poles like
Masai spears, and dashed for the tulebordered creek.
I t was still there, as greenish brown
as moss and cottonwood leaves could
make it. Its surface was smooth as a
marble slab.
We caught fish We caught crappie
and bluegills and some sunperch as
big as y o u ~foot. The black bass were
hungry, and we added a couple of 2%pounders t o our stringer
About noon the fishing slowed down,
and Mr. OIFarrell 'rode down on old
Nick t o see about us. d e brought a
sack of sandwiches and some oranges,
and we persuaded him to take the heavy
stringer back home and put it in the
horse tank until we could get there
t o clean the catch.
He took our poles, too, and after a
drowsy spell under fhe trees we walked
a mile or two down the creek, popping
a few jacks for the happy dogs and the
rabbits' ears for the 24: bounty they
would bring at the courthouse. Facing
the lowering sun, we ambled tiredly
back to the farm, stopping t o kick the
fallen, tangled boards of a ruined old
barn and jump out some cottontails.
M e and Joe each nailed two t o take
back t o town.
Our folks liked cottontails.
We had cleaned the rabbits, and
squatting on our skinny hunkers by the
tank, we started on the big mess of fish,
scaling them w i t h fish scalers we'd
made by nailing bottle caps to little
paddle-shaped boards.
Me and loe never touched tobacco,
b u t innate orneriness occasionally
caused us to indulge in foot-long cigarettes comprised of the bark from cedar
fence posts rolled into pieces of newspaper They tasted awful, sometimes
caught fire, and made your throat feel
like you were performing a sword-swallowing act with a red-hot horseshoe
rasp. You couldn't stand t o smoke
enough of them t o endanger your
health.
To celebrate our day and to brace
for the return t o Central School, me
and Joe puffed furiously as we finished
our fish cleaning. Turning t o wash our
hands in the tanks, we froze. There
stood Mr. O'Farrell, not 10 feet away,
leaning on the corral fence in the dusk.
You couldn't make out the expression
on his face.
Joe always called his grandpa Elmer.
And as usual, Joe kept his cool.
"Elmer," he bluffed, "you ought to
t r y one of these things. They say
they're good for asthma and bad colds
and everything "
Elmer O'Farrell smiled at me and
Joe. He said quietly, "Well boys, my
asthma's been actin' up right smart the
last day or two. If you'll show me how
to make one of those things and get it
lit, I'll just have one to celebrate with
you."
And he did.*