Owing to the responses to my “Old Swinging Bridge” postings, I feel obliged to offer the following tale from my errant youth. It has little to do with swinging bridges except that the “Old Swinging Bridge” previously mentioned served as headquarters for a bunch of ornery, teen-age country boys in the mid-forties who were looking for excitement and usually found it. Recently, when I revisited WV, Mr. Reuben Pack, a few years my senior and a friend from my young days, was quick to remind me of the watermelon story. A bunch of us were hanging around outside the Matheny Chapel Methodist Church one hot summer night in July waiting for the services to end, in hopes that we would be lucky enough to latch onto one of the girls inside and walk her home, when Butch showed up and gave us the good news. Mr. Hager’s watermelons were beginning to ripen. Butch and a couple of companions had visited Mr. Hager’s watermelon patch the night before and found that they were “ripe for pickin.” Mr. Hager (My apologies, Joel, if he was a relative of yours.) had rented a large parcel of land from Uncle Ott Stewart and planted it in watermelons. The field was located at the intersection of the Coon Branch road with Route 10 at Matheny next to Aunt Nancy and Uncle George Milam’s house. There were no other houses on that side of the road. Mr. Hager planned to sell the melons at a roadside stand that he had erected next to the patch as well as to markets in Oceana and Pineville. He obviously knew what he was doing as he was enjoying a bumper crop. Butch wondered if any of us was man enough to accompany him back to the site of his previous success and then participate with him in a midnight watermelon feast at the old swinging bridge. It was not in our nature to reject such a dare and a group of about five of us forgot about church, forgot about the girls, forgot about the eighth commandment and headed up the road to Mr. Hager’s watermelon patch. Mr. Hager was waiting for us! We had no sooner crossed a three- strand barbed wire fence into the watermelon patch than a loud boom rang out, whereupon Butch passed me and cleared the barbed wire fence in a single leap. The rest of us didn’t know exactly what had happened to Butch, but we knew it wasn’t good. We didn’t hang around long enough for Mr. Hager to reload for a repeat performance. As had been previously agreed, we reassembled at the old swinging bridge. Butch had fourteen number eight shotgun pellets in various locations on his body, both front and back. He had pellets in his hind end and chest and he later found a pellet that had penetrated a cardboard Prince Albert tobacco box that he was carrying in his front shirt pocket. * We took up a collection and sent him off to Oceana to visit Doc Hatfield, who removed the pellets. Butch was thereafter known as “Buckshot.” My friend Buckshot died June 27, 1994 in Wyoming County WV. (Note: During the war, Prince Albert abandoned their tin boxes for a cardboard version.) (TO BE CONT.) We seek revenge. STAN