The Ole Man: Episodes of the Heart

By James Killingsworth

This book is a about a young boy growing up under the influences of Mother Nature. With his father as the teacher, the boy had many experiences hunting and fishing that became the foundation of his indivduality. Each episode is based on a true story that became a lesson to the boy and aroused in him a search for the sense and significance of his life. Some of the episodes are very profound. As a result of his outdoor exploits, there was formed in him the desire to seek out others who could help him understand the states of concsiousness he experienced during these times. As he grew older he began to realize that these episodes were like a great teaching, the essence of which all humans could share if they opened themselves up to Mother Nature. These stories will penetrate the readers heart and reveal a spiritual epiphany that could affect their life

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496920522

James Killingsworth

James was born to Dr. and Mrs. W. P. Killingsworth in Port Arthur, Texas. With his dad being a pediatrician, James saw him very little during the week. His father loved hunting and fishing, however, and always had camp to go to on the weekends and holidays. It was there that the family spent their time together in the outdoors. It was during these times James experienced Mother Nature and came under her spell. The episodes in the book are lessons impressed on the life of a young boy, imparting a spiritual foundation that gave direction and purpose to his life. Some episodes were very profound, which caused him to seek out the sense and significance of his life and people that could help him understand the states that affected him in the outdoors.  He and his wife Sherry, who shared his search, found the Institute for Religious Development in New York. There they spent many years practicing and absorbing an ancient teaching that had been lost to the outer world.  As indicated by the teaching, they had to return to the ordinary world and practice what they learned in the midst of their lives. They came back to Texas and started a family. James’ profession was a pharmacist, but he also was a flight instructor, a plumber, an appliance repairman, and he became skilled in all the building trades. Realizing that there were similarities in the teaching and the practice of martial arts, James and Sherry added the journey of taekwondo to their lives. James and Sherry both achieved status of world champions, with James claiming ten world titles and fifth degree Black Belt.  As James approached the autumn of his life, he had the impulse to share his young life in the outdoors and commenced his profession as a writer. He felt a need to reconcile his relationship with his father, who passed away when James was young. He also wanted awaken people to the great value of their experiences outdoors under the influence of Mother Nature. And finally he wanted to hide certain principles in his work that would be felt in one’s heart and stimulate his readers to search for a deeper purpose to their life.  James and Sherry still share Mother Nature together. Taking the photography of Her beauty, Sherry transforms her visions into incredible paintings.

Book preview

Chapter I

Nothing should be prized more highly

than the value of each

day.

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The Boat, Beer and Grinnell

At four years old, I must admit, this one still has reality waving in it, if you know what I mean. I awakened, finding myself sitting in a green, wooden, flat-bottom boat. Denim overalls covered my bony knees, and I remember my butt itched. Later in life I would learn that fishermen would call this the beloved red ass, gleaned from sitting on a wet boat seat all day. To my left on the wooden seat was a can of beer, Shlitz, as I remember. Not that I could read, but the colors on the can and the logo were the same well into my adulthood.

My mother told me that I fished a lot before this, but I cannot corroborate it with my memory. She said when I was around four years old, they fashioned a rod for me from a cane pole, cut in half with a short line, bobber, sinker and crappie hook. While sitting quietly, every few seconds they would lift their bobbers then let them drop back with a plop in the water as an attractant to the crappie below. I, on the other hand, would troll my rig back and forth with rapid change in direction thereby creating lots of noise, bubbles and small waves on the surface. For me, I am sure that I was caught up in the virgin perception of the antics of the water and my ability to create action in this medium of reality. However crude and without technique, apparently I caught more fish than they did, for which I have photographic evidence. Today it was just my dad and I at a crappie hole on Choupique Bayou in the mid-afternoon sun. Get your pole Goober! my dad yelled as my infantile attention latched onto the wildly thrashing cane pole trying its best to leave the boat while being bent almost double. The water churned as Daddy caught me and the pole just before going overboard. The beer spilled in an explosion of froth when the boat rocked, almost throwing us both into the drink. Daddy crashed into the side of the boat with a resounding Oofhh, still holding me by the suspenders with one hand while desperately clutching to the now-broken and mangled cane pole with the other.

Sometime later, after a terrific battle with his half of the broken rod, interposed with oaths, odd-mouth manipulations, and amid a mass of the ever-present moss, my dad managed to boat something that looked like a bass. But it had thick scales, a flattened head and a mouth with wicked needle-like teeth. It was my first big fish, since I had stubbornly held onto the other half of the rod until the end.

Hot damn, it’s a grinnell! boomed Daddy as the ancient coelacanth-like fish pounded the bottom of the boat, spraying bilge and slime in my face. The gold, white perch hook still pierced a thin fleshy part of its lip and the hapless minnow dangled just underneath the lead sinker, which was followed by a wildly gyrating red and white cork. Amid all of this I still clutched the splintered cane pole.

Tough old fish, son, still around from the days of the dinosaur. They have scales like armor and bone for a head. Look at those teeth! Don’t ever stick your finger in his mouth, my dad narrated as he struggled to remove the hook from the grinnell’s jaw.

I don’t see how you landed him on a white perch rig…OOOWWWLL! Hot damn! howled Daddy. Then my old man went berserk, striking the grinnell furiously with the paddle. Whack, whack, and whack!

You son-of-a-bitch! he roared, raining blows on the grinnell’s head with the boat paddle until it splintered into pieces.

The son-of-a-bitch bit me! He turned to me and glared.

As quickly as it had begun, the action ended. We now sat in silence under Mother Nature’s objective view. It was a man sucking his bloody finger through the ever-present gloves he wore, and across from him was his son crouched in an old green boat, holding the stub of a shredded cane pole in the middle of Choupique Bayou. I can still see that ancient fish, eyes bulging from a terrific bludgeoning. Strewn here and about were pieces of splintered paddle, spattered by glistening scales shimmering in the mid-afternoon sun. Beer foam, blood, moss and slime collected on all participants, as the shattered cane pole was mute testimony to the previous struggle.

Daddy regained his composure and even his pride as he realized he had helped his son catch his first big fish. He wrapped his bloody finger with a red bandanna he constantly kept tied about his neck. Then I was the recipient of a long dissertation about gars, grinnells and other rough fish and their relationship to the life span of freshwater marsh lakes. Their appearance signaled the decline of the lake.

I always wondered what my mother thought when her men returned from their outdoor adventure, covered with slime, scales, blood and beer. We showed her the fish and she got to hear all of the lies we told about what happened. After all these years I still say it was a seven-pound grinnell, and that I caught it.

My first semi integrated perceptions of that day on earth was branded into what was then my clean consciousness. That memory serves as a reminder for me to strive to live fully each day.

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Chapter II

"No bird soars too high, who soars

with his own wings."

William Blake

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Afloat in the Boat

Choupique Bayou was a place out of a creature movie, deep in the swamps of Louisiana near Vinton. Its lazy, chocolate brown, serpentine waters wound their way to the intra-coastal canal, and from there it lost its identity in the tidal ebbs and flows that sweep Sabine Lake. Its brackish water was rich in nutrients that began as rain on the Louisiana farmland to the north and percolated through the soil. Thick masses of alligator grass lined the banks, absorbing the water-born manna. Giant oak and cypress spread their verdure, forming a canopy of chlorophyll that almost blotted out the light from the treetops to the roots nourished by the black gumbo. Creepers and vines interwove themselves between the Spanish moss that hung everywhere from a tangle of limbs that grew far out over the channel in their incessant search for sunlight.

Snaking its way through the fertile farmland, the bayou passed cypress swamps, oak bottoms, palmetto groves and marsh grass. Every creepy, crawly, slithery and slimy thing inhabited the shoreline where the water and land mixed. It teemed with snakes, frogs, insects, birds and small mammals while its muddy waters boiled with a myriad of minnows and small fish. Under the alligator grass, logs, brush and moss, lived bass, perch, crappie and catfish. They grew big and aggressive. Huge alligator gar rolled in the channel, alternately cruising for those fish previously mentioned and laying motionless just underneath the surface. Occasionally they would gulp air to fill their air bladders. This primitive lung aided their survival when oxygen levels fell in the sluggish water. Alligators, at the top of the food chain, floated completely submerged but for their snout and eyes, or lay on the bank or on thick mats of alligator grass near shore.

It was this foreboding crucible of life that weaned my consciousness into this world. Hacked from the undergrowth, my dad had a camp built near the shore on a bend in the bayou. There was an old boat dock built from creosoted telephone poles, railway timbers and planking that we called the wharf. It was adjacent to a short canal that received water from the irrigated crops nearby.

I could not have been more than five when I found myself on the wharf, looking into the old green flat-bottom boat that I was to know well in the coming years. The imagination of the child was pulling in giant bass and pretending to fish for the big gar that constantly broke the surface. Somehow I managed to lower myself into the boat and become a great sailor, a captain, sailing the seven seas in my ship, guided by the gentle wind caressing the bayou. In my play I must have loosened the rope that held the boat to the wharf, and it slipped out into the channel before the fickle summer breeze. Absorbed in my play, I did not notice my predicament until I was in the middle of the channel. I will never forget the wave of emotion that overcame me when I discovered myself loose amid all of the terrors of the gloomy swamp. I screamed for help and cried and cried and cried. Hearing my screams, my mom rushed down to the bayou, followed by my dad, brother and sister. Even Ring and Blackie, our two dogs, knew something was up and barked at their heels as they ran. My whole family was yelling and gesticulating. My mother was starting to shuck her clothes and dive into the bayou to swim out to me. My father was a small man, but his voice could silence thunder when aroused and in no uncertain terms everyone ceased to make noise.

LISTEN TO ME, SON! Listen to me. It’s OK, it’s OK! You’re going to be all right. Calm down and listen to me! Daddy yelled.

Pick up the paddle and stick it in the water, then pull it backward like this. He made rowing motions.

Shaking like a leaf, I fumbled with the odd-looking thing and tried to mimic my dad’s motion. Stumbling on the wet bottom of the boat, I landed across the gunwale and dropped the paddle in the water. Hurt and scared, I started crying again as the boat lazily drifted down the bayou. Again my father’s voice came to me.

It’s OK, son, it’s OK. Go to the back of the boat and get the other paddle and try it again. Sit on the seat and straddle it so you won’t fall.

The first strokes were tentative as my body tried to convert my thought into a rowing motion. From that very moment this motion would become impressed into my memory.

Dip, pull, lift, dip, pull, lift, he repeated. Gradually the turning motion of the boat halted, and she pointed steady into the breeze.

THAT’S MY BOY! Now slide to the other side and row, row hard!

My dad’s voice comforted me and reassured me as to the results of my efforts.

S-L-O-W-L-Y the heavy wooden boat inched its way forward, as I would paddle on one side until it began to turn and then scoot over to the other side and paddle again. My mother said she bit into her lip for the entire twenty minutes or so it took for the boat to clear the ripples in the channel and slide over the calm surface to the shore. Somewhat of a celebration occurred as the two-hundred-pound, fourteen-foot boat nudged against the wharf to end the fifty-yard journey with its young first mate at the helm.

I had never handled a paddle before that day. Through the child’s terror and helplessness of the unknown came the father–calming and confident–the trust, the teacher and the supporter that beckoned me unto him. Deep into his arms came the five-year-old, who could now pull himself up by his bootstraps, take instruction and control his destiny. This lesson would serve me well more than once in my life.

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Chapter III

"God alone is real,

all else illusory."

Sri Ramakrishna

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Animate Disguised as Inanimate

If my father and mother were the cause of my arising, my first teacher was Mother Nature. Under her guidance, a young human being was given lesson after lesson until the human race reclaimed its own and I grew up.

Anticipating our arrival at Choupique wonderland, I could hardly contain myself as the 1950 Plymouth station wagon rolled to a halt in the soft sandy loam underneath a giant cypress tree. It grew just inside the hog wire fence that bordered the yard on which our camp house rested. It was so big, it shaded the front entrance to camp and grew out over the fence and shaded part of the driveway as well. High with excitement, my older brother C.P. and my sister Ann piled out of the back seat and ran down to the wharf that stood over the bayou. I decided to play hide and seek from them and ran through the gate into the yard and around the back of the old cypress. Here I hid between the buttress-like roots that were large folds in the trunk of the tree and sunk deep into the earth. Here I hugged the big tree and looked down into one of the natural, almost circular pockets formed by the cypress knees that grew up from the earth and usually held water after a rain. For the first time, my eyes beheld one of the great truths of Mother Nature and of perception, of which the animate is camouflaged as the inanimate. I knew the coiled, circular object with a black bull’s eye was not a cypress root. But nothing in my short childhood experience could make sense out of it.

It was then that the bull’s eye opened, and a pure white buccal cavity flashed, accompanied by a putrid smell. That odor was to become an everlasting memory. I would be downwind from its origin many times in the outdoors and with it would come an instinctive fear of mortal danger that was embodied by its producer, a cottonmouth water moccasin. My body recoiled as if a powerful force jerked me from my navel backward. Later in life I would seek out and explore the significance of that sensation, which manifested itself in me in moments of danger or fear. My studies in martial arts cultivated this extraordinary function allowing my body to perform super movements in the ring when an aggressor attacked with a threat to my internal organs. Speechless, I began to make reality out of nature’s perfect mimicry as my mother, rounding the tree, took in the situation and leaped into action. She pulled me away from the tree and shouted.

Water moccasin, cottonmouth water moccasin!

My dad raced around the corner and we all stood there as a rather large moccasin lay coiled in the circular pocket formed by the tree. In the center of the coil lay its head. His mouth was wide open exposing deadly fangs and a tiny red tongue flicking through a fleshy fold in its glistening white mouth.

No, Ring! No! shouted Daddy as he sunk the toe of his cowboy boot into old Ring’s side. Get away dammit!

The cross between a Labrador and something-or-other backed off in surprise but still kept his eye on the snake. My mother had me by one hand and held Blackie, our Airedale, with the other hand while the dog strained against her grasp. Dad went back to the car and pulled out the H&R single action revolver he always carried on our fishing trips. The .22 pistol was filled with ratshot for just such occasions. He eased up to the snake and fired.

When this gun was fired, it was so loud that the blast caused a shock wave that would smack your eardrums like someone slapping you with his palm up beside your ear. I always suspected that the shock wave contributed to the death of its victims as much as the fine ratshot. Even if missed, snakes would writhe with agony from the blast. I am also convinced the ringing I have in my ears now can be traced back to that damned pistol.

All hell and bedlam broke loose. The report of the pistol mixed with flying pieces of snake, water and cypress bark as Blackie broke free from my mother and dove in. She grabbed the snake and shook it furiously, flinging it about like a whip amid hideous growling that caused us to scatter. Then Ring entered into the fracas, not to be denied. I wonder what C.P and Ann thought as they raced back from the dock to see our two dogs growling and tearing at each other, and the snake, which was being flung about. My mom was screaming at the dogs, and Daddy was yelling and kicking at them. Finally his blows separated the dogs and they backed off warily. They still wanted to grab at the snake. But their eyes cast a wary look at my dad, for they were unwilling to run the gauntlet of the infuriated pediatrician in cowboy boots. Their ribs were already beginning to ache.

Thank goodness Daddy’s shot had mangled the head of the moccasin and he was dead when Blackie attacked, otherwise she would have been bitten and maybe even Ring too. That night at the dinner table, my daddy launched into a long tirade at us kids, admonishing us to be careful and always look before we stepped or to where we put our hands in this country.

Never go barefooted; always wear shoes and preferably boots, he emphasized. Never stick your hands into varmint holes, and check the entire yard before unpacking. Always look first under anything you pick up, and be careful when lifting up the boat or stepping over a log. A snake that size would have probably killed Goober or, if not, he would have lost an arm or a leg, for water moccasin venom is very necrotic and causes tissue to die and gangrene sets in. When that happens the only thing you can do is to amputate to save their life, he warned.

Then he spoke of the time he went on maneuvers at Fort Polk in the spring of 1943 when C.P. was born. They were doing river landings up an old bayou when one of the men fell overboard into the thick alligator grass that lined the shore and grew well out into the channel. It lay like a blanket on the water and snakes, turtles and gators would lie on it and sunbathe. He said that by the time the landing barge turned around and picked him up, he was dead.

When they dragged him from the water all they could find were two puncture marks on his neck. He gestured by touching his neck with two fingers. He must have been bitten by a moccasin and the venom entered his jugular vein and killed him so quickly, he did not even call out.

My dad’s warning and his story affected me deeply, and thank goodness it was so. For in the years of hunting and fishing in the swamps and marshes, the tapestry of my young life was woven with many snakes, warped with moccasins and other poisonous snakes upon whose turf I trod, waded and swam.

As I grew older, I developed some aptitude for seeing Mother Nature’s way of manifesting. Then I began to see much more than I bargained for.

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Chapter IV

Every step

you have ever

taken

has led you to

where

you are now.

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Of Snakes, Frogs and Fate

C. P. was five years my elder, so he was turning nine and my sister Ann was eight as we all walked together down the sandy loam path that led from the camp to the wharf. It was well worn because it was the straightest path to the wharf and if you happened to step off of it, copious quantities of large goat heads would attach themselves to your pants or boots. We never went barefoot, for my dad would not allow it. He had sewn up too many young feet that had stepped on broken glass, nails, barbed wire and even catfish. We would get a butt whopping if we went barefoot, and we always remembered because of the snakes. We were allowed to go off together just to the wharf and back, and our dogs usually accompanied us. This time Ring and Blackie were up to something else and our gang skipped merrily down the trail. C.P. was the ringleader and in the lead; Ann came second, and I struggled to keep up in the rear. Hearsay had it that if you came upon a snake while walking in a line, the first person disturbed it and the second or third person was likely to get bit.

Eeeeek, eeeeek, eeeek! came a shrill, horrible bleating-like scream, the kind that sets your nervous system on fire and causes you to instinctively leap up and back without knowing what the danger is. Looking