The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-10-15
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

quarter to slO, my boyhood favorite was not among them.
 Isn't it funny how a little thing will bring up flood of memories. I daresay every man over 40 years old who reads this and came from the country or village will recall how when he was in his teens his proudest possession was a single-bladed Barlow.
 About this time every year I get me Barlow, for there is no better knife for people who love it better than I do; not to buy it out of a store, but to go down into the field by the branch or creek and walk up and down the rows to pick out just the right kind of stalk.
 There is no sound which tickles the appetite and starts the saliva to flowing like the snapping made on a frosty morning when one bears down on a stalk of cane unless it be the same cracking music which starts up on moonlight night resting from possum hunt and about to begin the homeward journey, one steals into cane patch and breaks down an armful
 To my dying day I will joy in the fact that I was born in the south. I, take pride, of course, in being a southerner, with all of it's precious history, but the pleasure of which I speak is not asso- ciated with this form of sectional feel ing, but is far simpler being born out of the mere facts of environment which gives lad this side of the Mason and Dixon line such q chance to lead an out door life.
 suppose boys find compensatons in other parts of these United States For instance, those in the north can reye1 in ice and snow and feel the thrill of skat- ing and sleighing and tobogganing, while to us they are out of the question; but here there is not day in the year when lads cannot find sport out of doors Baseball opens up weeks and months | ahead of the time when it can be played even in the middle states
 1 I am also sorry for the city boy who is deprived of the joys of country life. was reared at Eufaula, but when I was coming cp we lads lived in summer time in the Chewalla creek or Chattahoocha | river, or Shelly's or Guice's mill ponds. 1 It was the thing to do, and nobody seemed to put any restraints on their of the swimming holes. I swan the Chattahoochie, treacherous stream, at 1 Il years, and my younger brother, Paul, when he was 9; but at these ages the average city boy is coddled to death and glutted with the movies
 1 Then we were allowed the use of fire arms at an early age I can hardly re- member the time when I wasn't shoul 6ering gun and tramping over the fields in and around the city for miles and miles. I carried a single-barrelled ham mer gun and used a ramrod and had to wad down the powder and shot and use G. D. caps. Little did dream that one
 day there would be hammerless shotguns and repeating rifles.
 But sometimes I fear things are made too easy for the boys Of the twentieth century. Too many conveniences are apt to make soft characters. There is certain kind of virtue in having to get up in cold room and go out on a back porch and bathe ones face and hands in water just drawn from we'll or 1 fetched from the spring under the hill. The turning on of faucet in heated bathroom may be pleasanter, but it is not so hardening.
 l I just slipped in the paragraph above
 or rather it just wrote itself, for what meant to say was that a boy in my day 1 had to be more resourceful than in these 1 days of luxury. You older men who read this will know how you used to big spoon and poured it into moulds, and how careful you were with the bullets after they cooled off. can shut my |eyes and live it all over again. the joy
 and excitement of having score of lhand-made shot.
 Then some bought store made powder carriers. but how much fun used to get in haunting the slaughter house lot in search of just the right kind of horn to take home and work over with broken glass until it had been shaved thin and made ready for the stopper. There was always quite 8 rivalry as to who had the prettiest one. I'd like to sit out under tree this very minute and see the shavings fall as scraped with glass
 and catch whiff of the horn, an odor not at all unpleasant
 ! But times have changed Last Christi mas I put into the hands of my two boys beautiful lightweight hammerless guns of a standard make. They looked mighty fine and dainty. With them were
 boxes of loaded shells. All they had to
 do was to go out in the woods and shoot
 to their hearts content, without having
 had to make any preparation, as had to
 do as boy. Oh, yes, a few hammer
 guns came along, and then later ham,
 merless ones. But most of the boys in
 my set loaded their own shells, as it was
 cheaper, but even this is a thing of the lpast.
 l Then hunting was not such compli-
 cated thing as it is today. John Wallace
 had not come on the field, and game |wardens I read about only in English novels. We hunted at will and it was