Well, I got a chance to visit one of my old hunting partners last week. He don’t get around as much he used to so the game wardens don’t see as much action as they did 10 years ago, and they don’t see as much action at the Moccasin Bend Hunting Club and Chigger Emporium.

Although he can’t get around like he used to he still maintains the honors accorded to his position of best liar in North Mississippi and East Arkansas.

He surprised me because he was reading a letter on his front porch. I never knew he could read.

I noticed the address on he envelope was from Paris, France. After he had read the contents he threw it in the barbecue grill and laughed.

“My ex wife wrote me the second Dear John letter after 25 years,” he said.

I said, “Mr. Frank, I didn’t know you were ever married.”

He said, “Yeah, we had a few good years before it all went to @*##.”

I said “What was she like?”

“Well,” he replied, “she was the best squirrel hunter in the hills and the ugliest woman alive.

“Sometimes I would walk around with a sack over my head so I wouldn’t have to look at her, but she sure could bag them foxes and greys and she could cook too.”

I was intrigued.

This was an aspect of the old man’s history that I’d never suspected.

“What was her technique for baggin’ all them rodents?” I questioned. “What did she shoot?”

“Aw she didn’t shoot em, she’d just look at em real hard and they’d fall out of the tree and break their neck. She could bag her limit and mine too. Some days I wouldn’t even take the sack off my head.

“She was that ugly and that good, and her cooking kept getting better. We had it goin’ on.”

This was getting better and better, but what happened to this marriage made in the deep woods, I wanted to know?

“Well,” he said, “she kept getting older and uglier and it go to the point I had to start wearing two sacks to protect myself, and she finally got so ugly she was tearing them squirrels up so bad you couldn’t eat ‘em. I wish I could show you a picture of her but, God bless her, she busted out every camera that was aimed at her, and after she got near sighted she would sometimes miss the squirrel and ruin a cypress tree.

“What the last straw was, she got ran over by  an Illinois Central freight train at the crossing at Henchcliff, Mississippi. She survived it, but the cowcatcher scalped her and scarred her up to no end. She was beyond ugly by then, but the railroad ‘paid up’ and covered the medical bills.

“Well, they had to pretty much put her face back together (or reinvent it) and carved about 15 pounds of ugly off and rescalped her platinum blond. She was so pretty she bought a rifle and left me for a Frenchman.

“He obviously didn’t stay young and pretty himself because she wants my sacks back so she don’t have to look at him  so often.”

Now, old Mr. Frank may not be the woodsman he once was but he ain’t lost his touch in the liar department.

Standin watch,

Ricky Harpole