How Sand Mountain Are You?
Neal Wooten
Have you ever: Fiddled earthworms, put out a trotline, gone frog gigging, swam in the creek, swam in the coal mines, caught crawfish, smoked rabbit tobacco, nailed a catfish to a tree to skin it, made a flip out of a forked limb and innertube, made a thread-spool tractor with a matchstick and rubber band, made your own bow and arrow, rode in the back of a pickup truck, or climbed a tall skinny tree and let it lower you slowly to the ground?
Have you ever: Put lightning bugs down in a frog’s belly, put lightning bugs in a jar, put a June Bug on a string, had a battle using pincher bugs, thrown rocks at a hornet’s nest, caught a salamander, stepped in a fire ant bed, been stung by a scorpion, accidentally walked over a yellow jacket nest, been stung by a sweat bee, or broke out from chigger bites?
Have you ever: Ate frog legs, ate snapping turtle, ate polk salad, ate mountain oysters, ate honeycomb from a wild beehive, made snow cream, canned blackberries, snapped green peas, cooked on a wood-burning stove, ate salmon patties, fried real pork skins, mixed sorghum syrup with butter to slap on a biscuit, made peanut brittle, ate hominy, or gotten sick from eating too many crab apples?
Have you ever: Made homebrew in an old butter churn, made Muscadine wine, made a trip to the line, drank buttermilk straight, drank water right from a stream, sucked the nectar out of a honeysuckle, drank homemade Alka Seltzer using vinegar and baking soda, milked a cow, drank moonshine, or chewed the bark from a gum tree.
Have you ever: Played flies and skinners, played kick the can and run and hide, pitched horseshoes, played softball in a cow pasture, played mumbly peg, played hopscotch, played ring around the rosie, played red rover, entered a turkey or ham shoot, been to a tobacco spitting contest, used a hatchet, or been to a tent revival?
Have you known: A water witch, a person who could buy warts, any snake handlers, a bootlegger, a bee charmer, a person who could pull snapping turtles out of the creek with their bare hands, a midwife, anyone who could make totem poles or dream catchers, anyone who dipped snuff, or anyone who could hypnotize a chicken?
Have you ever had to: Turn the antenna, siphon gasoline, spray ether into a carburetor, plug a tire, cut and split firewood, rebuild a motor, pop a blister, sleep with an electric blanket, use a kerosene lamp, use an outhouse, shuck corn, slop hogs, or skin a deer?
Well, I guess you’re pretty Sand Mountain then.
How Sand Mountain Are You?