Big Thicket Legacy

Evie Brown

Introducing Evie Brown We first went to see Mrs. Brown because we heard she had a blue pig, and, as one familiar with hogs, Ihad never seen a blue one. It happened that she had some shoats foraging not far from the house, and, with a little corn, she got them up close where we not only saw "Old Blue" but got a color slide of it. "I've seen 'em off and on ever since me and my husband married," she said. "Something else you might not know: a duck won't eat corn if it's put in a circle so that each grain touches the next-so the circle's not broken . Iguess they're superstitious or something, but they'll not eat a grain of it." There were a few ducks at her place, and Isaid, "Mrs. Brown, Ibelieve you, all right, but could we try it on these ducks out there so Ican say Isaw it with my own eyes?" She got the corn and we shelled enough to make a circle thirty inches in diameter. Then she tolled the ducks to the circle, but they wouldn't touch it. Finally, she scattered the grain with her foot, and they gobbled it up, as though they were starved. Iwas curious about this but even more curious as to how she found out about it in the first place--just how would a person happen to learn that a duck wouldn't eat corn that formed a circle ? "My husband told me about it," she said, "and I know he knew it before we married in 1918, and he learned it from his daddy, and his daddy learned it before they left Alabama. If it's shelled corn, whole grains, as long as the circle ain't broken , they won't eat it." It was not the unusual, however, but the commonplace , day-to-day events, that give flavor to Mrs. Brown's account of life in the Thicket. Whether it was coons in her fig trees, a panther in the cow lot, or a rattler at the doorstep, this warm-hearted, straight-shooting, frontier woman could handle the situation and ask no odds. Mrs. Brown's husband died several years ago, and she and her son, Paul, live at the end of a road about halfway between Kountze and Saratoga. Paul is crippled but not incapacitated and, with his genial disposition, shares in the family responsibilities. EVIEBROWN y husband's daddy, Warren Brown, he wanted to raise hogs. That's how come him to work on the bear so much, 'cause the bear eat all his hogs up. We had lots of bear in here. He killed one with a big iron hoe once. He was goin' back to the garden spot, and the dogs was bayin' a young bear. His wife tried to talk him out of it She said, "That bear will kill you, Warren Brown." He said, "No he won't, not with them two dogs hanging around his hind end." He just kept aimin' that old hoe until he got his aim just right, and he hit that bear right back of his head and killed him with that hoecome up on him from behind. It was a young bear or he couldn't have done it so easy. Later on he was workin' the garden and his wife and babies was out there to help him, and the dogs jumped a bear-about half grown. Bear was just walkin' along fightin' the dogs when they'd come close. They're quick and they can kill a dog with one slap. He said the bear was goin' to crucify his dogs; that's the remark he always made if they got to hurtin' his dogs. So he got his gun and killed it That bear meat is good, and you can eat all that bear grease you want to and it won't make you sick. That's the truth. Grandpa Brown said he had a little dog that was mean to come to him every time a bear would get after him. He wounded a bear once and the bear started after that little dog, and it come straight to him, and he laid down by a big log and that bear run right over him, chasin' that dog. They won't bother a dog unless he's...