November 2008 NewsletterJim Casada
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www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com November Makes Me Mighty HappyOne of America’s finest and funniest outdoor writers of yesteryear was Havilah Babcock. An English professor at the University of South Carolina, Babcock was afflicted by chronic insomnia and wrote on his favorite outdoor pursuits as a way of combating sleeplessness. His favorite subjects were quail hunting, bird dogs, and fishing for redbreasts, although he occasionally branched out into other areas. He had a great way with book titles, and my favorite is “My Health Is Better in November.” The title referred to the fact that November brought the opening of quail season and with it an appreciable uplifting of his spirits. His other books included “Jaybirds Go to Hell on Friday,” “The Education of Pretty Boy,” “I Don’t Want to Shoot an Elephant,” “Tales of Quails ‘n’ Such,” and “The Best of Babcock.” All these except “The Education of Pretty Boy,” which is devoted to the development of a bird dog, are collections of stories. Like Babcock, as the title of this month’s newsletter suggests, my outlook becomes brighter in November. The month takes me longingly back to days of boyhood when quail were plentiful, when there were rabbits everywhere, and when Thanksgiving meant the opening of the hunting season for both quarries as well as a feast of major proportions. Deer were virtually non-existent and I’d already enjoyed the better part of two months of squirrel hunting, so a change of pace came as a most welcome development. Beyond that, the tourists left the high country as soon as “leaf peeping” came to an end, chores lightened up appreciably since there weren’t weeds to be hoed or grass to be cut, and the chill in the air was wonderfully invigorating. I suspect Babcock experienced at least some of the same sensations, and before returning to warm recollections of my own Novembers I can’t resist sharing my favorite Babcock anecdote. Dr. Babcock, who was immensely popular with his students, frequently dismissed classes in November and early December for the richly justified purpose of going bird hunting (for those of you who didn’t have the good fortune to grow up in the Southern heartland, “bird” refers to quail in this part of the world). On one such occasion he rushed into his classroom, already clad in the Duxbak attire which was standard dress for outdoorsmen in those days, and wrote the following message on the blackboard: “Dr. Babcock will not meet his classes today.” He then headed for his old jalopy, already laden with bird dogs, only to realize at the last moment that he had left his shotgun shells in the classroom desk. Hastily returning to the classroom, he noticed the undergraduates still there were giggling and casting furtive looks toward the blackboard. The reason immediately became clear. Some quick-witted student had slightly altered Babcock’s blackboard message to read: “Dr. Babcock will not meet his lasses today.” Without breaking stride, Babcock grabbed an eraser in one hand and a box of shotgun shells in the other. As he left the room he made one swift stroke with the eraser. His words now read: “Dr. Babcock will not meet his asses today.” No wonder students loved the man. While I had some delightful teachers and professors over the course of the 12 years I spent in public schools, along with another eight in undergraduate and graduate studies, none quite matched the inimitable Dr. Babcock. Similarly, I would like to think I was a pretty solid performer in the university classroom in my own right, but folks with his intriguing combination of wit and wisdom come along only once in a great while. Besides that, can you imagine anyone in today’s world of higher education even admitting to being a serious hunter, much less keeping shotgun shells in their desk or dismissing class in order to pursue bobwhites? Ours is a changed world in general, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the liberalism-laced ranks of college professors. In my view the change hasn’t been for the better. With that off my chest (and I spent 25 years in college classrooms, often fretting under the strictures of politically correct administrators and colleagues who had lost all touch with the real world), let’s look lovingly back to November as I once knew it and in some ways still do. It’s a grand time to be in the woods—cool enough to make long walks a pleasure, a time to savor a juicy Red Delicious a treat while waiting for a squirrel or deer to come within range, and a season when a hearty bowl of venison chili is a pure delight. In my boyhood, November brought a whole host of special moments. Hog-killing time, usually a week or two before Thanksgiving, was a smelly, messy, demanding, and supremely satisfying undertaking. It meant fresh tenderloin with Grandma’s cathead biscuits, and what I wouldn’t give for a big old slice of crackling cornbread absolutely laced with cholesterol-laden goodness. We canned the cracklings and sausage, filling the spaces around the meat with lard, smoked the hams, made liver mush, and utilized every bit of the hog to the fullest extent. Then there was Thanksgiving Day, a meaningful family gathering where we truly were thankful even as we enjoyed all the bounty summer crops had given us. Among the standard items for our Thanksgiving Day feast would be cornbread dressing chock full of chestnuts, baked hen (we didn’t raise turkeys although in later years we sometimes bought one for the feast), sweet potatoes, green beans and leather britches, a pot of pinto or October beans, mixed turnip and mustard greens cooked with tender young turnips and fatback with plenty of pot liquor always present, creamed corn, hominy, and at least one and possibly two types of winter squash--Grandpa Joe raised an old-time, crook-necked type he called a cushaw (I’m not at all sure of the spelling). There would be watermelon rind pickles, okra pickles, pickled peaches, cucumber pickles, and one or two types of relish. Of course baked goods got plenty of attention. Grandma Minnie almost always had some fried apple or peach pies, made from fruit she had dried in the later summer or early fall, somewhere in the kitchen. Mom would bake a whole batch of her applesauce cakes, with one to be eaten at Thanksgiving and the others to “age,” helped by occasional dollops of apple brandy, until Christmas. Mom always made pumpkin chiffon pies, my Aunt Emma provided ambrosia, and there would be oatmeal-raisin cookies liberally laced with black walnut kernels just in case you got peckish sometime during the day. Either biscuits or cornbread were a feature at every meal, and Grandpa Joe would have considered any session at the table incomplete without one or the other. We ate well, but extra calories were utilized in good fashion. It was a family tradition, throughout my youth, to have an abbreviated rabbit hunt on Thanksgiving Day. This was the first day of the cottontail season, and our beagles would be rarin’ to go. We would hunt until noon or thereabouts and then knock off for the feast. Usually there would be enough daylight afterward for me to head for the squirrel woods for a couple of hours. But the first all out rabbit hunt of the season waited until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when we would be at it from dawn until dusk. Dad, in company with his boon hunting and fishing companion, Claude Gossett, would invite another adult or two along with me and some of my boyhood buddies. We would have a whole pack of long-legged, hard-running beagles—none of the pedestrian pace of those bandy-legged slowpokes for us. We wanted not one race but a whole bunch of them, and an average day would see the group with somewhere upwards of 20 rabbits in the collective game bag as we head home in the gloaming. There also would likely be a few quail killed incidentally when we flushed a covey while trying to jump a rabbit, and from time to time someone got a grouse as well. That pattern would endure right on through December, January, and February until the rabbit season came to an end. There would still be some squirrel hunting, because Dad rightly insisted that the beagles not be hunted hard for two consecutive days, and at times when I ventured out alone anything was fair game. I could pretty well count on encounters with rabbits, squirrels, and quail any time I headed afield, and depending on the locale there was the chance of encountering a grouse or two as well. The quail are long gone, victims of more enemies—foxes; coyotes; nest destroyers including ‘coons, ‘possums, and skunks; fire ants; hawks (we shot the raptors on sight and every hawk was dubbed a “chicken hawk”)--than any game species could handle. Of course the greatest enemy of all has been man, because changed agricultural practices have removed bird habitat in a big way. Since quail and rabbits thrive in the same kind of conditions, cottontails are not nearly as plentiful as once was the case, although you can at least find enough for a few races. One of my favorite writers has long been Archibald Rutledge. Like Babcock he was a South Carolinian, and like yours truly he was a great one for looking back to savor experiences from bygone days. In fact, the title of one of his many books is “Those Were the Days.” I can certainly identify with that, because I had my own youthful moments in the sporting sun. They took place in North Carolina’s Great Smokies rather than the Low Country of South Carolina, but the sentiments are the same. I can only hope you have similar days to look back on, and I would also remind you that there’s no time like this November to be creating new memories. Now, I’ll close with some crass commercialism. The holiday season is at hand, and if the Casada family is to keep the wolf from the door and somehow banish the specter of a 401(k) which has vanished like powder from dried puffballs amidst a high wind, I best be peddling some books. The new biography of Robert Ruark written by his secretary, Alan Ritchie, “Ruark Remembered,” is a dandy, and I was honored to be chosen to edit it. I also edited “The Lost Classics of Robert Ruark,” and I’ve got it back in stock. Then there are three anthologies of Rutledge’s writings I’ve compiled, “The Lost Classics of Jack O’Connor,” a couple of fly-fishing books, several cookbooks, and much more. Browse the books section of this Web site and you should find something which is ideal for the reading sportsman. Meanwhile, have a grand Thanksgiving and take time to indulge in at least a bit of November nostalgia. Thank you for subscribing to the
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