[Granville-Hough] 31 Aug 2009 - Witsol Stories

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

I will be off the grid in Yosemite for a few days.   I'll catch up next week.


Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:27:27 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: WitsolStories - 31 Aug 2009


WitsolÆs Stories. 

One of my grade school classmates was Witsol Robinson, 
who must have been of Scotch Presbyterian heritage, though his family 
belonged to our Concord Baptist church. Witsol, in his youth, spoke with 
a definite accent, probably from his grandfather Noah Robinson. When he 
said ôballs of fire,ö an outsider would surely have heard it as ôballs 
aÆfar.ö It was from Witsol that I first heard about ball lightning, a 
phenomenon which has been documented through the years. According to 
Witsol, his grandpa Noah had been chased down a rail fence by balls 
aÆfar. Now, I would guess that Noah did see ball lightning follow a rail 
fence, causing him to run down the opening made by the fence. According 
to other witnesses, the activity only lasts for seconds. I would guess 
if one saw ball lightning on a fence moving toward you, you would run 
quite a distance without looking back.
"Have you ever seed fox far?" The only time you can see fox fire is at 
night when you come across decaying wood in which a luminous fungus is 
growing. The first time I ever saw it was on a fishing trip to Okatomy 
Creek when I was trying to sleep in a hollow tree. It was all around me. 
My dictionary tells me now that one of the funguses to produce this 
effect is Armillaria mellia.
Another favorite story of WitsolÆs was about hoop snakes. Grandpa Noah 
had definitely seen hoop snakes with more than one head. They seemed to 
roll along and pay no attention to humans. Many people have talked and 
heard about hoop snakes, but others just listen with skepticism. 
Recently, some species of snakes have been televised during copulation, 
when several males wrap themselves around the female, all vying for a 
chance to fertilize her eggs. During this activity, they roll and tumble 
as they joust to get into mating position. They might well look like 
hoop snakes. They pay no attention to humans or other predators. Grandpa 
Noah, being a piney woodsman, must have encountered snakes in the midst 
of copulation rolling about, and he passed that story on to his 
grandchildren as hoop snakes. I personally never had such an encounter, 
and I would prefer not.
Grandpa Noah also told about his desperate escape from the conscription 
agents during the Civil War. The Piney Woods people had no slaves and 
little incentive to fight a rich manÆs war. They hid out to avoid the 
draft, and conscription agents were hired to bring them in, dead or 
alive. When they came looking for Noah Robinson, he ran for the woods, 
dodging from one big longleaf pine to the next. He described that the 
trees he dodged behind caught the bullets, but he had been able to 
disappear so that the conscription agents rode away.
(My own great grandfather, Sampson Arender, guardedly told the story 
that a conscription agent chased him and another man into Strong River 
swamp. He and the other man came out of the swamp, but the conscription 
agent did not. Great Grandpa Arender or someone else said he immediately 
went over into Rankin County and enlisted in a company where he was not 
known.)