Time flies when you’re having fun. Back in the fall of 1960, two good old boys came driving into Arkansas, which doesn’t really seem that far back. Lots of roads weren’t paved back then and the two of us and a big German Shepherd dog was waiting for an adventure.
I met my future wife Pat and her sisters at a VFW dance in Huntsville back then. We had a 78 record player and a stack of country records, the Donahoe girls asked us to bring it over for their brother Charles’ going away party. That evening I met Charles, a tall lean guy with an Arkansas drawl, big smile and a quick laugh.
A short while ago we lost Charles Donahoe to a heart attack, a quite way for the 73-year-old to go. While at his sister’s house Charles had a heart attack and there was nothing anyone could do.
Charles was drafted in 1960 to serve in the U.S. Army. I think because of his coon dog hunting, he ended up becoming an MP with a guard dog at a missile silo in Nebraska. Charles had been born in Kansas and his family moved down to Arkansas in the 1950’s when he was 14 years old. He always had horses and kept some cows. There was the notion then, if Charles would have had a big bank loan and farmed, he would have not been drafted. But, Charles was way too conservative to ever do that.
When he came in on leave, he spent lots of time with Monty, Pat and I down at the Winslow Place. Charles even bought a horse and kept him on that place while in the army. We had his small herd of cows and horses to care for at our ranch.
My first coon hunt with a lantern and carbide light was over on Bohannon Mountain in Madison County. A frozen hard night and some good treeing hounds had us hiking up and down steep hills, shooting coons and a few possums all night long. Those dogs on the track really could make your heart pump, dodging briar patches and finding ways to get to the hounds.
“Old Spot’s got one,” Charles would shout when his best dog started barking.
Those are times that are clear as the cool night air. Chasing rabbits with his beagles was another great sport. On Thanksgiving we always went to visit Charles’s family to pursue cottontails.
We put up hay with horses and mules and forked it on trucks to haul. Charles showed me how to stack hay around a pole, and he could sharpen a chainsaw sharper than any machine and knew how to make one run.
Once coming home from the sale down at Alma, the generator fell off our Dodge ton truck with a load of calves, and Charles invented a bracket to keep tension on the generator. He cut a green hickory sprout and made a “u” out of it. With baling wire to hold it in place we drove on home.
To his family and friends I send my condolences, but I don’t think I could have had a better brother-in-law than Charles Donahoe. I think I’ll always hear him say, “Now by golly…”
Until we met again…
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
