Calves, steers, they were steers after we did it. I’d grab a whole one by the tail to hang in there. Bob Joles, he was the biggest bootlegger in all of East Tennessee, a very nice guy, but very wealthy, made all the Moonshine. My family made Moonshine. I remember… Read More
How old were you?… Read More
My first real job was working on a friends’ farm and castrated bulls. Read More
And when did you get your first real job, where they’re paying you money?… Read More
I went to high school, yes. I was a sophomore and we moved from Madisonville to Knoxville. Then that’s where I had water in the house and toilets in the house, and things like that. Read More
Then from there, were you able to go to high school?… Read More
Yeah. Read More
So this was when you were in Tennessee?… Read More
Yeah. No air conditioning, it’s two grades, sometimes three in one room with one teacher and had an outhouse. In fact, the outhouse was out near the playground. I remember Halloween, we played tricks on things like that. So we tied a rope around the outhouse at school and tied… Read More
School?… Read More
What schooling did you have?… Read More
He’s gonna break horses and fool with animals. Can you believe anybody could do something like that?” Well, that’s what I did, and I was very blessed by it. Read More
In fact, my first wife, my first ex-wife, at her home, her father said, “What are you gonna do for a living?” I said, “I’ll train animals and break horses.” He said to his wife, “Peg, did you hear what he said?” And this is a city boy from New… Read More
Well, as I said, I used to catch everything I could catch and I’d observe everything I could. I’d crawl on my belly for a half a mile just to get a look at a coot in water. I never had to worry about or give a thought about what… Read More
How did that start to come about?… Read More
What did you think about what you wanted to do in life?… Read More
Is that the career you thought?… Read More
But did you think you were gonna be working with animals?… Read More
Because most people in those days in the hills, they all raised their own foods, hogs, cows ate, slaughtered them. I helped clean hogs every October when it got cool. We put hogs in boiling water and scraped them and butchered them. Read More
For some reason, I was fascinated with things in nature, for some reason. But my mother helped me along with that. I always wanted to be… I would go out and catch something like a possum or whatever. I’d bring it back on a pole like Frank Book, bring them… Read More