<TITLE>02. Par 5-9</TITLE>L-5 So up there one day, I had a little pup tent setting up. And I'm not a good cook. I couldn't boil water without scorching it. I'm telling you, I just... I just a bad cook. But I--I can cook flapjacks, or excuse me, I--I--I mean pancakes, you know. We--we call them. Well now, we call them everything. Out west, we call them "sweat pads." You know what a sweat pad it? Goes under the horses saddle, you know--you know.

L-6 And so we always called them, down in Kentucky, flapjacks. And 'course, really, they're pancakes. And you don't have to mix up anything, put a little of this powdered milk with them, mix them up, and pour them out, and... Of course, you all know that I'm a--was a Baptist, and I believe in immersing. I don't like to sprinkle them; I really like to pour it on them, you know, cover them up real good with honey. And I like honey, because that's good for Baptist moral, you know. They like John, you know, that eats the honey. And so then, I had me a little half a gallon bucket full of honey there.
And one morning, way down along the creek, I had a--a place, a hole there where just full of little Brown Brook, about twelve fourteen inches long. And oh, they were just like a team of mules almost, in the end of one of them fly lines. But there was some bushes in my way, I couldn't whip that Coachmen fly enough, you know, to get up there to where they see my shadow in the water. So then, I took my little hatchet and went down there that morning, early. I thought, "I'll go down, chop them bushes down, so I can whip the fly and get back there and get some of them big ones out from under that--them place where the water poured in. They get back, hide in the deep water.

L-7 So I went down, and chop it down, catch a few, and was on my road back. I brought two back for my breakfast. And 'fore I got up to my little tent, I heard a noise, and that country's full of these little old black bear. Oh, don't get... Some of them get pretty good size, five or six hundred pound. But it was long in last of May, and there was--there was an old sow, or, which mother bear and her two cubs had got into my tent.
Well, it isn't what they eat; it's what they destroy. They just love to destroy anything. So I had a little stove up there cooking. They just got down, and got that stove pipe, and jumped up and down on it, like that, just to hear it crack, you know. And they had tore up everything there was in there. And one of them had found my bucket of honey. So they love anything sweet, you know.

L-8 And so, when I come up, the old mother bear she heard me coming. So very sensitive, and she run off and she cooed to her cubs. Well, the little, cute little fellows, usually when something like that, you haven't got your camera, you know, to get it. And the little cub, one of the little cubs run off, the other one just set there. Well, I thought, "What's the matter with the little fellow?"

L-9 And she cooed again. But he--he didn't come. He just set there had his head down. I thought, "Well, what's the matter with that little guy?"
Well, I had an old axe in my hand, and an old rusty rifle laying in the tent, but I guess it was tore all to pieces by that time. And I wouldn't want to have killed her anyhow, because it would've left two orphans in the woods. So I thought, "Well, now..."
And I kept a tree in mind, because with them cubs, she'll scratch, you know, so I--I thought, "Now, if I could just see what that little fellow is so curious, he was just... Why?" I said, "Why didn't he come when his mammy called him?"
So I kept stepping this way and watching a tree, so, walking around. I thought, "What's the matter?"
I said, "Hey, get out of there." And he just stayed there. And I...


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