Fulks Run Follies

Here we are, May. We made it through those windy, cold winter days. May has an average daytime temperature of 73 and nighttime low of 49. Weather like that would be good for fence making, if it is such a thing as good fence making weather. One of my favorite quotes was from Will Rogers, he died in a plane crash in Alaska on August 15th, 1935, at the age of 55. It went like this, “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” So be careful with those fences!

Another thing to do in that weather is to clean out those sheds and buildings that have accumulated that unwanted junk over the cold months. And with that you load it up and take it to the dump. Now depending on your age, the term “take it to the dump” may be something you’ve never heard before. I think the official name now is container sites. They might call them container sites, but on the right days they still smell like a dump. It’s hard to believe, but I know of a place that could possibly have hundreds of thousands of dollars of antiques if you excavated it. Where in the world would that be? A lot of you drive past it every week, maybe every day. Well of course, Kingsley’s dump as you round the turn coming to Fulks Run from Broadway there at the shale pit where all that rebar welding is being done. There once was a road that went straight up that steep hill, to the right of where those cut out shapes of bears are against the side of the hill. Up that hill and when you came to the top you would back up to the edge of that deep hollow and toss your trash over the side. No restrictions. No separating ones and twos and fives from each other and if you had tires or old motor oil, just give it a toss. Now I want you to know this going to the dump was a trip a young country boy didn’t want to miss. I’d grab my Daisy BB Gun, and in the truck, I would jump, and why was this? Because when you arrived, there would be rats as big as house cats running everywhere. Now the older boys would take their 22’s and go just for the opportunity to shoot the rats. Instead of a Saturday afternoon at the park theme, it was a Saturday afternoon at the dump adventure. (Yeah, it wasn’t a lot to do in Fulks Run in the 60’s). And the big event, occasionally you would look and see a big, black, bellowing plume of smoke rising into the air, and people would come into the store and ask what’s on fire? Oh, it’s just Kingsley burning off the dump. Some families had their own private dump. I can remember a secluded road that went down past the river and people would back down until the rose briars got too thick and throw out their trash. That was just the way it was.

Now for the feature story, this young Fulks Run man and an older gentleman were going to Timberville to the bank. On the way he spotted a ground hog in the field across the road from the dump. Well, every good country boy keeps a gun and a fishing pole in his truck, and sure enough he had his 222 Remington rifle with him. He laid down on top on that shale bank and took careful and steady aim at the groundhog. When the crosshairs were on the target, he squeezed the trigger and POW. He could have tried that shot another 100 times and never would have been able to hit that same spot again. BECAUSE, when the gun cracked, down went the electric line along the road. Sparks flew like the fourth of July, and the fire started to fly. “Good Lord! Let’s get out of here!” The young man was sweating bullets (pardon the pun), and what made it worst? When he was almost in Broadway, here came the Broadway Fire Department up 259. And it got even worst when they started down the bluff and met the Timberville Fire Department out on the call. The old gentleman didn’t help things when he said, “Oh my, I wonder how much of Fulks Run you burned down.”
He conducted his business at the bank and started back toward Fulks Run not knowing what to expect. As they got closer and closer, his nerves got worse and worse. He rounded that turn at the shell pit, and NOTHING absolutely nothing. It turned out the fire was a house fire up Hisers Lane. He still can’t figure what kept the fire from spreading. The only thing possibly was when the line fell, it threw the breaker in the transformer. But it was still bad enough that most of Fulks Run was out of power for several hours. Once the electric company made the repair, he went back down to see how he could have done such a thing. It turned out that when he sighted through his scope the horizontal line in the crosshairs of the scope completely covered up the electric lines along the road, and he never saw them. Oh, by the way he doesn’t know if he hit the groundhog or not. He didn’t have time to check on that. Now who could this have happen to, or well you will just have to guess.

Until Next Time
Believe it or Not
Ronnie