1942 Armadillo, 1987 Super Bowl, And Mongooses, January 29, 2015 # 1368
From my ledger. Tuesday, January 20, 1987. Rivercrest varsity came to town. Our girls won but the boys’ game had a few unusual circumstances. Bart Tatum got fouled and rolled around on the floor at the jump ball to start the game. Later in the game Bart broke for the goal on a fast break and bumped into an official. Bart yelled at him to get out of the way and got a technical. Jason Holcomb got mad about something and coach put in a substitute. Jason sat down on the bench and slam dunked a water bottle on the floor. It rolled out on the court and he got a technical. Freshmen Bam Morris and Stacy Miller played a lot. Cooper lost by thirteen.
Wednesday, 1-21-87. Stanley Mathews came from the Metroplex to visit. He is still talking about the big buck Jeffrey Preas killed. Stanley heard that Brad Phillips discovered half of a big rack back in February. When found it was still bloody where it had come loose from the skull. Jerry Lowry found the other half back in October. They were a perfect match and found near where Jeffrey’s buck was killed. Stanley traded a hunting knife to Jerry for his half and gave Brad Phillips twenty dollars for the other half. The two shed antlers had a lot of the same features as Jeffrey’s big buck and several agree that the two halves came from him the year before it was killed. Stanley is having the two halves put together and mounted.
Sunday, 1-25-87. Super Bowl Sunday. I watched the game at Cooper at Huck Elmore’s house along with Herman Woodall, Huck, David, Tim, and Dale Elmore. Dale got Herman to sneak out and pack my cab. (It was common back then to get a lot of stuff out of the back of someone’s pickup and pack it all in the front seat. No one locked their pickups.) I went outside at halftime and saw the packed cab. Figured out Herman did it and snuck out to his pickup where I smeared mayonnaise all over his steering wheel. Later he went out and put hand lotion all over my steering wheel. Denver was ahead 10-9 at the half but the second half was all Giants.
(Note from 2015. Armadillos have not always been in this area. Arguments have occurred about when the first one was found. I remember when my mother taught fourth grade at East Delta how we boarded with Paul and Maggie Slakey. One night about 1955 the Slakey’s dog got after something in the front yard flower bed. It was an armadillo, the first I had ever seen. Mr. Slakey was very strong and pulled the critter out of a hole by its tail. We put it in a box and I carried it to school next day. Old timers said one had been found years before. In my 1987 ledger I found a 1942 clipping from the Cooper Review. Following is information about a 1942 Delta County armadillo and some more from the same 1942 page.)
“Chandler’s Market Changes Hands. Louis Chandler, son of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Chandler, purchased the market belonging to his father, Monday, August 14, and assumed management immediately. Mr. Chandler is an experienced butcher, having returned to Cooper from Dallas where he spent 21 months as manager of the market in Safeway store number 3. He invites his friends and the public to call on him at his place of business.
Notice. Due to the shortage of help, the Delta county War Price and Rationing Board will not be able to discuss rationing problems on Saturday.
Four Delta Students Receive Degrees At ETSTC, Commerce. Among the 134 graduating seniors to be awarded degrees at the summer commencement exercises of East Texas State Teachers College are four from Delta County. They are Miss Mary Kathryn Cummings, Miss Eula Potter, Miss Ollie Pearl Arnold, and Mrs. Lucille Mora Perkins.
Armadillo Killed Near Charleston. Norvel Layer of Charleston shot and killed an armadillo Wednesday morning. The animal measured about two feet in length and weighed approximately ten pounds. It was found hiding in a brush pile in a ditch. The armadillo is a timid nocturnal animal, feeding on ants and other insects and its flesh is considered a delicacy by the natives of South America. The armadillo is not common in this section of the state.” More 1987 material later.
About eight kinds of woodpeckers are in our area. Jean keeps suet and sunflower seed available for birds in our yard. Four kinds of woodpeckers visit the feeders each day. They are the hairy, downy, red bellied, and yellow bellied sapsucker. You may remember Mrs. Grace Swenson that wrote articles in The Cooper Review years ago. Her husband, Paul, called me one day about a woodpecker putting pecans in a crack of a bois d’ arc post. I went to his house and observed a red bellied woodpecker at work. The crack in the post served as a storage place for a pecan until the bird was ready to eat it later. You know the big, life size, plastic, Canadian geese some people have in their yard? Jean has two of them thirty yards from our feeders. A red bellied woodpecker makes trip after trip from a feeder to one of the geese. On the tip of the goose’s tail is a pencil size hole that served some purpose in the construction process. The woodpecker places a tiny bit of suet or a sunflower seed inside the hole. Apparently it thinks it will come back someday and retrieve the stored food. We are afraid it will peck a hole in the side of the plastic goose. They cost about fifty dollars each I think.
Four men from the Dallas area came to hunt hogs with Johnny Hurley and me this weekend. Boars weighing about 150 and 100 were taken with a knife. Johnny put a video of one of the kills on Facebook. Little Zack is in there barking and biting.
The woodpecker/goose story reminded me of a joke about a mongoose. A man wanted a pair of them to raise young and sell. He didn’t know whether to order two mongooses or two mongeese. Finally he told them to send him a mongoose, and while they were at it, send him another one.
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