December 2011 Newsletter

Things I Remember About December

A couple of weeks back my younger brother, Don, sent me some photos taken while he was rummaging through a batch of personal items which had belonged to our father, who died back in January at the rich and fulfilling age of 101. The pictures featured Daddy’s Duxbak hunting coat, the last in a series of coats made by that wonderful purveyor of hunting gear which he owned. There was also a box of Panodynes (Daddy was prone to intense headaches) and a chinquapin. All of them brought back fond memories in one form or another.

The original Duxbak Company, usually called Utica Duxbak, has long since moved into a world we have lost, although there is a modern company using the name. Yet never does a December roll around when I don’t think about Duxbak attire in an intensely personal way. That’s why I decided to devote this month’s newsletter to a selection of subjects, Duxbak gear among them, which come to mind with the season just as surely as the days are shortening, children are filled with anticipation, and another year is hastening to its end.

As for that worthy line of outdoor gear which went by the name of Duxbak, if you spent much time outdoors in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, or early 1970s you almost certainly wore some of it. Tough, closely stitched, long lasting, and as nearly impervious to the unwelcome attention of blackberries, saw briers, thorns, barbed-wire fences, nettles, cockle burrs, and other irritants as you could find, Duxbak pants were de rigueur for anyone who hunted rabbits, grouse, or quail. If kept treated the cloth turned water quite well, and its durability was such that Merle Haggard might have sung of Duxbak in the same fashion he bemoaned the vanishing American scene when a Ford and Chevy were made to last 10 years “like they should.”

Invariably at Christmas I got some item of Duxbak, usually a new pair of pants. Tough though Duxbak was, I could nonetheless manage to wear through the lower legs of a pair of pants in a single year, and usually well before the passage of 12 months Mom would be taking patches from older pairs she had saved and doubling up on the lower legs where they had become ragged. Less frequently there would be a new Duxbak cap or a coat when I outgrew the previous one (you didn’t wear the coats out and I’ve still got one which belonged to my late father-in-law which is probably 60 years old and perfectly serviceable). For that matter, the one Don dug out has to be a half century old and it’s fine as frog hair. Duxbak also made hunting vests, wide-brimmed hats, and more. Some indication of its enduring appeal is offered by the fact that at least a half dozen times a year, usually after I’ve done some reminiscing in print along the lines now being pursued, I’ll get e-mails asking where folks can find vintage Duxbak. Right now (because I just checked), there’s a pair of Utica Duxbak pants from the 1950s on eBay with a starting price of $112, and Duxbak memorabilia brings premium collector prices. For me though, it primarily produces memories which are priceless.

Another such memory involves mistletoe, and it has nothing to do with stolen smooches or teenage romance. At Christmas Mom loved to have a few sprigs of mistletoe, preferably with plenty of the white, waxy berries this parasite sports attached. In the Smokies it invariably grew high up in trees, usually oaks, and shooting it out with a .22 was great fun. The idea was to sever the stem attaching the mistletoe to a limb with a well-placed shot, and doing so meant bragging rights with my circle of hunting buddies. We usually devoted a Sunday afternoon in early December to this activity. You couldn’t hunt on Sundays then, and Daddy wouldn’t have allowed it even if it had been legal. On the other hand, “hunting” mistletoe was perfectly acceptable.

When Mom knew such an outing was in the offing, she would add two or three additional requests to her heartfelt desire for some mistletoe. First and foremost came an urging to keep a keen eye out for some berry-laden she holly. For the uninitiated, “she holly” is the female, berry-bearing holly. A few trees, holly being one of them and persimmon another, come in sexes. Mountain she hollies could be bountifully bright some years, and the brilliant scarlet of berries contrasting with the deep, shiny green of the leaves made fine decorating material for wreathes, table centerpieces, garlands, and the like.

Mom would also put in a request for a few honey locust limbs (she made miniature gum ball Christmas trees out of them, covering each thorn with a sugar-coated gum ball). Sometimes she would use only green and red gum balls; on other occasions every color imaginable.

Then too, she welcomed things such as cones from white pines and hemlocks; hazelnuts still in the husk (difficult to find that late in the fall); galax leaves with their vibrant and shiny hues of magenta and maroon, green and occasionally gold; hickory nuts and butternuts; milkweed pods; hemlock limbs; and indeed most anything she could magically turn from simple woodland “stuff” into stunning decorations.

December was:

• Riding big sheets of cardboard down steep, broom sedge-laden hills. There was no steerage, but on a warm, sunny afternoon on a south slope, broom sedge would be as slick as a mole’s behind.
• Hoping against hope for a big snow.
• Making popcorn strings for the family tree and popcorn balls with molasses for good eating.
• Fashioning small pieces of colorful construction paper into garlands to go on the Christmas tree.
• Rabbit hunting almost every day once classes let out for the two-week Christmas vacation, and, when the beagles needed a break, heading out for a mixed-bag hunt in the quest for squirrels, maybe a grouse, quail, or a rabbit to shoot on the jump.
• Checking rabbit gums and traps set for muskrats and mink (we almost never caught the latter) at dawn with the chill of the air, the water, and the trap steel leaving hands almost without feeling.
• Spending time with Grandpa Joe at his home, listening to him weave one tale after another from his own boyhood while we enjoyed the comfort of rocking chairs pulled close to the fire on a bitter evening. He had killed a cougar before they completely disappeared from the mountains and told tales of hard times when they ate snowbird pie (using birds caught beneath an ingenious trap triggered from indoors by pulling a string which held up a big box—the birds would be lured beneath it with scattered cornbread crumbs). He talked of a sudden snow which fooled all the critters and was so deep and soft that rabbits couldn’t run and he and his brothers caught dozens of them by hand. At some point he always turned to chestnuts and squirrel hunting, and that would get him choked up a bit because of his affinity for the noble chestnut and sadness at the blight which destroyed it.
• Sampling and savoring Grandma Minnie’s fine fixin’s—stack cake, fried apple and peach pies, pickled peaches, biscuits and biscuit bread, and a great favorite of mine, cracklin’ cornbread.
• Helping Mom with some of her food preparations for Christmas. She always made three or four applesauce cakes sometime between Thanksgiving weekend and the first weekend in December, and then they stayed in a cool place, with the occasional addition of a bit of apple juice or wine to get them exquisitely moist, until Christmas arrived (see recipe below).
• Enjoying orange candy slices purloined from those used to make a cake featuring them (see recipe below).
• Feasting on sausage prepared at hog-killing time in November. Mom would make rich milk gravy filled with sausage bits, and ladling that over crumbled cornbread was a feast for sure, especially when it was accompanied by dishes of cooked turnips and greens.

Holiday Specials

Books make a great Christmas gift, because unlike most gifts they have an enduring quality. In fact, in this month’s newsletter I mention two books I’ve owned for a full 60 years, and I treasure them as much as I did when I got them as a young boy.

Rather than select two or three books for monthly specials, as I usually do, I’m going to take a general approach which covers everything I have to offer from the time you receive this through December 20. SHIPPING BY MEDIA MAIL IS FREE, ON ME. If you want insurance or happen to belong to the clan which procrastinates and wants something shipped overnight at the last minute, I can’t tote that freight. But order now and you’ll save a bit.

I’d particularly recommend Carolina Christmas ($29.95), a collection of Archibald Rutledge’s great Christmas stories I edited, and the book also includes a fine selection of holiday recipes. They are for foods he mentioned although my good wife and I provided the actual recipe details.

Another good choice, especially for the contemplative sportsman, would be Passages ($25). Just out, this book contains hundreds and hundreds of great quotations about all aspects of the outdoor experience. It was compiled by Chuck Wechsler (Publisher of Sporting Classics magazine) and yours truly. The quotations come from the back page of the magazine, where each issue has carried memorable words from our greatest sporting scribes for well over two decades now. The page of quotations was originally my idea, and it has proved to be one of the most popular features of the publication.

Of course there are scads more, from anthologies featuring Robert Ruark, Rutledge, Theodore Roosevelt, Jack O’Connor, and Fred Selous to cookbooks and a rich treasure trove of out-of-print works on turkey hunting, Africana, and more.

For this offer I can only accept personal checks, cashier’s checks, or money orders (no credit cards or PayPal please). Payment should be sent to me c/o 1250 Yorkdale Drive, Rock Hill, SC 29730.

Tel.: 803-329-4354
E-mail: jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com

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Recent Awards

One way for a writer to keep abreast of the quality of his work is to see how he stacks up against his peers in excellence in craft competitions. I am active in two such organizations, the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association and the South Carolina Outdoor Press Association.

This year I was fortunate enough to garner a number of recognitions, and here is a listing of them. As you will notice from the titles, many of them revolve around recurrent themes in this e-newsletter—love of the Smokies, memories from younger days, strongly held (and expressed) opinions, and the like.

It’s folks such as you who keep me plugging along, and any time someone blesses me with commenting on this newsletter or something else I write, it’s always a spur to keep going. This holds true even for critical comments, because even those tell me someone is reading my stuff. Indeed, two of the pieces below, one on damage from horses in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and a second on the havoc otters can wreak in a trout stream, drew plenty of adverse commentary.

Basically, I just want to say thanks for being readers and for providing me an outlet to share thoughts, opinions, warm memories, food folklore, and more.

SOUTHEASTERN OUTDOOR PRESS ASSOCIATION—ANNUAL EXCELLENCE IN CRAFT AWARDS

Weekly newspapers—Third place for “Return of the Native,” Smoky Mountain Times, Sept., 2010.

SOUTH CAROLINA OUTDOOR PRESS ASSOCIATION—ANNUAL EXCELLENCE IN CRAFT AWARDS

Newspaper feature—Third place for “If Only . . .” from Smoky Mountain Times, May 5, 2011.

Magazine feature—First place for “Hazel Creek: An Angler’s Backside of Heaven” from Smokies Life, Spring, 2011.

Newspaper or magazine column—First place for “Bittersweet Memories of September in the Smokies” from Smoky Mountain Times, September 16, 2010

Second place for “Cottontail Reflections” from Smoky Mountain Times, November 25, 2010

Editorial Opinion (newspaper or magazine)—First place for “Problems in Paradise: Of Horses, Bureaucratic Hopscotch, and Horse Hockey” from Tuck Reader Jan. 20, 2011.

Second place for “Problems in Paradise II: Those Odious Otters,” from Tuck Reader, Jan. 13, 2011.

Non-Game Outdoor Enjoyment—Third place for “Trails to Tombstones: A Musing on Mountain Graveyards” from Tuck Reader, Feb. 10, 2011.

Short feature—First place for “Charge!” from American Hunter, April, 2011.

Electronic media—Second place for “Trails to Tombstones: A Musing on Mountain Graveyards,” Tuck Reader, Feb. 10, 2011.

Third place for “Born Stubborn: A Musing on Mountain Character,” Tuck Reader, Feb. 3, 2011.

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