Coon Dog Story

There was a time, long ago, when I was asked to do the impossible. The people-pleaser part of me wanted to comply. I made every effort. Try as I could, though, I could not keep Rick’s coon dog, Sandy, from killing that coon.

You see, I always tried to please Rick. I’ll never understand why. He tormented me, but I still would try.
He had this ’50 green Chevrolet step-side pickup. He built a little white platform cover for the bed out of boards. The cover only stood about an inch off of the bed and the siderails of the cover only extended upwards about two inches above the bottom of the cover. There wasn't much wood to keep things in place on the top of the bed cover.

For some reason, we were going to Lamkin to my grandmother’s house. It was about a five mile trip by dirt roads. Rick was driving, of course. He had a live coon that he wanted to take over to her house. I don’t remember why. He also wanted to take Sandy, his black and tan coon hound.

Instead of putting Sandy under the white cover into the bed of the pickup and closing the tailgate, he insisted that Sandy ride atop the white cover. He also put the coon on the top of the white cover. He was adamant that I sit slap dab in between the two and keep them apart.

He said, “Now, don’t you let Sandy get to that coon!”

Naively, I took hold of Sandy’s collar with my right hand and held him as best I could. He was a strong, muscular hound. I talked to him continually and told him to “Stay. Be still. Sit.” It was all I could do to hang on to him.

With my left hand and leg, I kept the coon at bay. Rick had him at the end of a long pole with a loop on the end. The loop went around the coon’s neck. I had to keep the pole with the coon on the end away from Sandy.

Although that may sound easy, it was not. A coon hound has only one instinct when it comes to a coon. That is to kill it. For more than four and a half miles of the five mile trip, I struggled feverishly to keep Sandy at the back of the white cover and the coon at the front.

About the time that we got to my great-grandmother Massingill’s old home place (about half a mile from grandmother Johnnie’s house), Sandy finally broke loose and took hold of that coon in his mouth. His powerful jaws crushed the life out of the coon. Blood squirted everywhere. It was all over me, the coon, Sandy, and the white cover of the pickup. It nearly made me sick.

I began to scream and cry. I pleaded with Rick not to be mad at me. I told him that I had done my very best, but that Sandy was too strong to keep away from the coon. I apologized profusely. Of course, Rick could not hide his amusement. He grinned and said, “Aw, that’s okay. He was gonna kill him after a while anyway.”

I was relieved that Rick was not mad at me. What I should have been was furious at him for putting me in that position knowing what was going to happen. Brothers!