Hard Work and Hot Fun in the Summer

 The summers of 1969 and 1970 were fantastic and unforgettable.  The spring of 1969 our football coach arranged a meeting with a man name Dollis Ray.  Mr. Ray was recruiting athletic young men to work for Hiwassee Lang Company for the summer.

In the meeting Mr. Ray asked if any of us had ever loaded hale bales or pulpwood.  Most of us had hay experience but only a couple of us had both hay and pulpwood experience.  He talked of the difficulty of the two jobs and stated to us that the job he was recruiting us to do was harder than both the hay and pulpwood.  Our task was injecting hardwood trees with a chemical poison using five feet by two-inch steel pipe filled the chemical using a hand pumped apparatus on the end of the pipe.

Mr. Ray said he was like the Marine Corps.  He needed a few good men.  So began the work of killing hardwood timber to allow the pines to grow.  Areas where the hardwood was dominate; Hiwassee used helicopters to spray (mist blow) the chemical converting lush forest into dead wasteland.  Hiwassee did not mist blow long because the government outlawed the practice.  We were told that the chemical was weed poison.  I believe it was Round Up in its infancy. 

The summer of ’69 we started injecting hardwood along US Highway 31 north of Jemison, Alabama.  Hiwassee had a ninety-nine-year lease of hundreds of acres.  We heard that it was ten thousand acres.

Our foreman was a young man named Benny Lee.  Good old southern boys have a double name.  Benny Lee was an outdoorsman with a unique Southern Drawl.  He instructed us on the injecting technique.

Most of the hardwood we would jab the blade on the end of the pump about two inches apart around the tree.  Hickory trees we girdled making sure to place plenty of chemical.  Benny Lee had us gather around a large hickory in a low area near a branch.  It was about two feet in diameter.  We girdled it and Benny Lee who always carried an axe on his shoulder removed the bark of the hickory about three feet above the girdle.  Then we all went to dinner.

After dinner, Benny Lee carried us back to the tree.  The leaves on this giant hickory had already wilted.   The beautiful white meat of the tree had black streaks rising like a thermometer up the tree.

A little later he called us together to watch a moccasin snake trying to kill a king snake.  The larger moccasin had the smaller king snake in its mouth.  Benny Lee told us that the king snake would kill the moccasin.  We all watched in wonder and awe as the king snake slowly wove its body around the moccasin. 

Slowly, the king began to tighten its body around the moccasin.  We heard bone popping and the moccasin opened it mouth and released the king snake.  Benny Lee said, “The king snake will eat the moccasin.  The jaws of the king snake unhinged, and the king snake devoured the moccasin.

Working for Hiwassee was not as hard a loading and unloading hay.  It was not as tiring as shoulder loading pulpwood.  Working for Hiwassee was fun, exciting, full of surprises, and educational.  We worked hard for Benny Lee.  We worked ourselves out of a job.  What was supposed to last most of the summer we completed in two weeks.  Benny Lee gave us time off to watch the moon landing in “69.  

One day Benny Lee handed me a root and told me to chew it.  I had chewed sassafras roots it taste like root beer.  I chewed it and he asked me how it tasted.  I said, “It tastes like Vicks Salve.”  He said that was what the old timers used before the chemical companies started making it.

Another time he handed me a small railroad spike.  He asked, “What to you see on the side of the hill?”  I told him that it looks like an old road.  He said that it was a railroad bed where there had been a spur when the built Lay Dam on the Coosa River.  All that was visible was spikes along the way.

We had so many adventures that summer.  We pushed down dead trees, found bee gums, played king of the mountain on old sawdust piles from sawmills long forgotten, and run from yellow jacket wasps and hornets.  After work we would drag race our old jalopies. 

It was hard work! It prepared us for two-a-days football practice.  It taught us that it’s not work if you enjoy it.  It was a rite of passage for young boys becoming men.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men - Colossians 3:23

The Sting of Death

 Polistes Carolina, Vespula vulgaris, Dolichovespula maculate, Apis mellifera, and Bombus terrestris are terrible little creatures.  Their very presence strikes fear into most people.  Some people face death as these creatures buzz around them.  They are red wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, honey bees, and bumble bees.

One day I had to rid the eve of the Bethel Baptist Building of a nest of polistes or red wasps.  As I bravely approached the nest with a can of wasp spray, I remembered what my daddy always said when big boys were picking on me.  Yes, I was a runt at one time.  He said, “Son, size don’t matter, a guinea wasp can make a cow run.”

They can make this oversized runt run also.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that red wasp stings feel more painful than stings from other paper wasp species.  I have had my share of stings.  I know that some people must carry an epinephrine pin because bee stings are fatal for them.  Fortunately, I do not need one.  That was not the case for a friend of mine.

During high school summers, I worked for Hiwassee Land Company.  We killed hardwood trees by injecting the trees with weed killer.  Yellow jacket and hornet stings were an everyday occurrence.  We were constantly jarring the trees where yellow jackets and hornets built their nests.  They retaliated by attacking from the sky and from the ground.  It was common to hear, “YELLOW JACKETS” as a coworker raced by us.  We ended each day bragging about how many stings we had.  The most I had in one day was twenty-eight, which was not the record.

Some days were comical.  One day my “future” brother-in-law had busted a zipper in his Levi jeans.  Yes, I know what you're thinking, and they did.  Yellow Jackets found the opening and they entered while at the same time my brother-in-law exited the jeans.

Another day my cousin, now a retired CPA with Buffalo Rock, whacked a small hickory and pumping weed killer into it.  Yellow Jackets covered his pants turning them yellow while hornets buzzed around a huge nest above.  My cousin stood there like a mighty warrior or dumb idiot, I let you be the judge, and swatted yellow jackets saying, “I think I’m in a yellow jacket’s nest.”  Then out of nowhere, a hornet zeroed in on my cousin’s back between the shoulder blades and stung with the force of a kicking mule.  After landing face down, my cousin leaped to his feet and running fast said, “YELLOW JACKETS.”

Other days at Hiwassee were more serious, deadly serious.  One day while taking a break a hornet buzzed around the face of my friend Rickey.  He waved the hornet away several times.  Suddenly, the hornet stung him under his left eye.  In seconds, Rickey broke into hives.  The Hiwassee foreman took him to the emergency room.  The doctor said that another sting would be fatal.  My friend never returned to the Hiwassee woods.

I pondered the wasp nest on the building, my mind returned to 1960 at the eves of our house.  My daddy started building our house in the early to mid 1950’s.  Before he completed it, we moved to Illinois for three years and then returned back living with an aunt until daddy completed the house.  You can imagine how a construction site looks after a three-year absence.  The yard looked like a jungle with all sorts of creatures making it their habitat.  The eves of the house were full of red wasp nests.

Under one eve of the house was a huge red wasp nest.  It was full of red-orange death.  My Grandpaw Chapman used the larvae from the wasp nests to bream fish.  I had watched him take a long stick and knock down a nest.  It looked like fun for a seven-year-old.  A short time later, I took a long stick and punched another orange-red covered nest.  It is hard to explain what happened next, but with the speed of platoon kamikaze dive-bombers, red wasps confused my sandy blond hair for a rival wasp gang buzzing the eve of the house for territorial rights.  Grandpaw did not have this problem.

I learned that day that red wasps are territorial and sting when provoked.  That evening I understood what it meant to be a knot head.  I had wasp stings all over my head.  Boy, my head was sore.  I think it was because I was much smarter.  I learned more about red wasps that day than I can ever forget.

Since that morning, I have been chased down or either stung by honey bees that do not like to being disturbed by starting a diesel John Deer tractor, hornets that do not like their nest being vibrated by an injector killing the their tree house, yellow jackets of the same tree that do not approve of the roots of their tree being jarred, and bumble bees that hate the roar of a bush hog trimming their yard.

While I were courting, I carried my date home one night after an evening of fun.  When we entered her home, she screamed as a heinous monster greeted us in her living room.  Actually, the heinous monster was her older brother whose face honeybees had distorted and his eyes swollen shut.  My date thought he had on a monster mask, but it was his face.

It seems that her dad and two brothers had been robbing a bee gum earlier that day.  The older brother did not like an itty, bitty honeybee buzzing around his nose.  Warned by his dad and younger brother not to provoke the bee, the bee unnerved my brother-in-law, and he did an uh oh! Yep, he swatted at the bee knocking on his dad’s lip.

Honeybees seek revenge when humans steal their honey and take swats at their workers. The bee stung my father-in-law, and his upper lip looked the caricature of a bear’s head or that of a monkey’s lip.

The next day, a Sunday, was a humorous day at my date’s household.  Her dad had huge lips, her older brother had swollen eyes, and the younger brother, who escaped without a sting, had swollen ears from hearing about the bee raid over and over.  I could not help but laugh.  Her father and brothers looked like the three monkeys of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.  The evil was stealing itty, bitty bee honey.

With all those stinging thoughts, I ready my can of spray just like gun slinging cowboy flexing his fingers before a gunfight.  With the speed of a darting bee, I brutally executed those red stinging carriers of death.  One by one they dropped.  One last desperado hid behind the nest waiting to get retribution for his fallen comrades.  When he moved, I got him and he too floated harmlessly to the ground.  I blew the nozzle of the can and sang, “Another One Bites the Dust Uh Huh.”

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?  The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 15:55-57 KJV)

What is your favorite bee, hornet, or wasp story?

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What do you think when you hear the phrase, “O death, where is thy sting?”

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What do you fear about death?

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Prayer:  Father, death is part of living.  All will experience it unless you return.  Help me when I approach death to face it with confidence that you give through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  I know I will experience the resurrection after I die.  Thank you that death will be just a sting, but eternity will be forever.