"Hoote"

DATELINE: 6/27/2011
RE: "Hoote"


When I was about ten years old, my best friend was Primo, my five year old English Setter. We were pals and went everywhere together, but when I started fifth grade Primo would disappear from the house most every day while I was at school. One Saturday I decided I would follow him and find out where he was goin, so I hid from him for a little while, and when he thought I wasn't around, he took off through the woods. After about a mile, the trail he was on came out into a pasture in the back of an old ramshackle farm house with an old barn. Neither one had been painted in decades.

As I came up on the house, an old woman came out of the house with a female dog, and I saw the reason for Primo's visits. The old lady said her name was Hoote (now I ain't never seen a name like this before or since, but it sounds like Foot, only with an H), and Primo had been coming to visit her, and her dog Sally for several months, and she was glad to find out where he was from. She then told me that she was the second cousin of my Grandpa, and that made her my cousin too.

Now Hoote was one of the strangest people I had ever met. She had her dog, two milk cows, a mess of chickens, and more than twenty cats, but she didn't get along with people very well. The farm house looked as old as Hoote, and when we went inside for a glass of iced tea, I could hear the cats runnin around in between the walls of the house. Hoote did not have any mice in her house.

I spent most of that summer visitin Hoote and her family of animals. Hoote sold milk, butter, and eggs to folks in town, to get money for the store, and to pay her taxes. That summer I killed my first rabbit with Hoote's old shotgun. She also taught me to milk cows, and how to churn butter. She was my best friend that summer, and we spent a lot of time walkin through the woods with our dogs, and that old shotgun.

The next year I started playin baseball in the summer and I did not see as much of Hoote as I had, although Primo still kept goin over to see Hoote and Sally. My Grandpa sort of liked it better that way, as he thought Cousin Hoote was kinda crazy, livin by herself that way, with all those cats runnin around in the walls of that old house.

When I turned fifteen Hoote died, and left all of her money to the Methodist church. It was more that a million dollars.

I learned then, that people ain't always what they seem to be. Some are better than others, and some are worse than you think, and some have more, or less money than you think they do. Hoote did not like, nor trust politicians, and I learned to feel the same way. I still don't trust those rascals, especially the ones up in DC!   But, I did learn that you can trust somebody who works hard to take care of themselves, and don't brag too much about who they are, or what they got.

"Now, that's the way I see it, and you can tell'um I said so!"

Bascomb Biggers