No. 92 May, 2009
Harold Ratzburg was born at the start of the Great Depression and raised on a Dairy Farm in Wisconsin. He served four years in the US Air Force in the 50's and was stationed in Germany, where he met his wife Anneliese, who helped get him through College to become a Civil Engineer. After a time as a Highway Engineer and College Instructor, he wound up as a City Engineer of a small town in New Jersey. Twenty four years later he retired to become an old geezer telling old stories on his new fangled computer.
You Collect What ??? ....
Critter Heads and Tails ???
By Harold Ratzburg
Back about 1940, when I was about eleven years old, my Dad, Louie Ratzburg decided that I was now old enough and responsible enough that I could take the good old trusty Remington Rifle single shot .22 cal, Model 9, Serial Number 491163, (I don't know why I remember that number, but I do, probably because that old rifle was the first gun in my collection of many, over the years.) out hunting all by myself. At that point, I became the fearless 'Bounty Hunter,' the scourge of all varmint critters in Dupont Township, Waupaca County, Wisconsin.
As a practical matter, there had to be a way to keep score so that bounty could be paid for the killing of those varmints that ate up so much produce on a farm. Collecting and counting the heads or tails of the varmints was the solution.
The bounties were as follows--- five cents for each gopher head, starling head, or rat tail, --- ten cents for each crow head --- and twenty-five cents for each hawk head. I would stalk the sneaky gophers on our hill and the starlings and rats around the farm buildings. The heads and tails came off easily with a hatchet on the chopping block. (Every household back then had a chopping block, but you certainly don't see them around much anymore, especially in the cities.)
Since a box of fifty bullets, .22 shorts, only cost twenty cents, if I was lucky and shot straight, (and didn't burn them up shooting sparrows or tin cans or telephone wire insulators off the poles,) I could turn those 50 cartridges into some serious money by shooting those varmints, collecting the trophies, and going for the bounty.
Over time, I was pretty lucky at bagging gophers, rats, and starlings, but I was never good enough to hit the big time and score with a crow or hawk. Just couldn't get close enough to them, they were too danged smart for me.
On one occasion, I was actually handed a five cent bounty by mother nature. It was during one of Wisconsin's really harsh winters when a rat, whose tail had frozen into a hook shape in the corncrib, crawled out of the corncrib through a slot between the boards. That poor rat's hook shaped tail got hooked on the top board and he just hung there, upside down, until he froze to death, and later I came along and harvested the tail for the bounty. The rat's scratches on the board below were visible for years but he was fair game, so I took advantage of it.
Keeping the collection of dead meat as physical evidence of my victories was a problem, since they tended to become rather smelly after a while as they decomposed, like all dead meat does without refrigeration. Most of you city slicker readers have probably never experienced the aroma of rotting dead meat, but believe me, it is distinctively awesome. (Try standing down wind from a horse that has been dead for a week or two and you will know what I mean. I speak from experience as an old Geezer who lived 'way back when', when real live horses were the major source of horsepower on a farm. And sometimes they died in the pastures of the 'back forty', away from the buildings, so people let mother nature take care of the carcass. Digging a hole big enough to bury a horse back then was a big job because there were no backhoes yet in existence, only hand shovels.)
I tried a number of things, like keeping them in a jar of kerosene or other experimental stuff, but none of the ideas worked very well. Even trying to keep them in an old Karo syrup can or a fruit jar with a tight lid was still a smelly affair.
But--then came--"PAYDAY".
Dad would take me over the hill to my Uncle Bill Zillmer's house, where Uncle Bill was the Town Clerk in charge of the bounty money. He would take us out behind the woodshed, kick off a board covering a hole, and carefully count out the heads and tails of my victims into the smelly disposal hole that he used, and make his calculations.
Then we would go around to the big safe on the enclosed front porch of the farm house and Uncle Bill would pay me off in cold hard cash for my endeavors. I could afford another box or two of the .22's to keep me in the bounty business and usually there was more than enough left over to buy a ten cent comic book or two. So life was good,---what eleven year old farm kid could ask for more?
I have been a Gun Nut (a.k.a. collector) as long as I can remember, so before I was old enough to be trusted with the .22, I had always desperately wanted a 'genuine Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action BB gun' with a compass in the stock, just like the boy Ralphie in the movie 'The Christmas Story' wanted, but I never did get it as a kid. How I dreamed about it as I paged through the Sears Roebuck catalog in the two holer out house. Dad's excuse, year after year, was that they were digging the iron for it, but they never dug enough iron to make my Red Ryder. So I never shot my eye out. The truth was, times were hard and Dad just couldn't afford it. But looking back, I can truthfully say, those were the good old days.
But, guess what I got for Christmas a coupla years ago? I got my very own Red Ryder Carbine Action BB gun from my kids and grandkids. I guess they just got tired of hearing this old geezer's story of how I was so much like Ralphie in the movie.
Still, every year now, we watch that movie at Christmas time and I can still see myself in every scheme that Ralphie uses to try to get a Red Ryder from his father. That movie has become a Christmas classic to me and the rest of America. Unfortunately however, my family still hears, year after year, how I as a kid, was just like Ralphie in the movie. I'm sorry about that-----(but not very.)
As a parting thought from the ole Geezer, I have found this to be true. My Dad always taught me to respect my elders, but at darn near eighty, it keeps getting harder and harder for me to find one nowadays.
copyright 2009, Harold Ratzburg
