More Tales from Home & Around the Globe

By C. P. Tertius

Table of Contents

1949 Snakes
1954 Toilet Paper and the Rattler
1961 Highway Patrol Friend
1962 Trouble in the Tiger Den
1963 Mast in the Mud
1963 Snow on the Palm Trees
1964 Enjoyin' a Hurricane
1968 Coots for Dinner
1968 Double Concord
1969 American Beer
1969 Déjà vu
1969 Grilled in Spanish
1970 42 Above
1971 Around the Next River Bend
1971 We Do Not Have Liftoff
1973 Blond Diners
1974 Machu Picchu
1979 Transcon Train Ride
1986 British Jungle
1987 Love and Death in the Jungle
1987 Three Pagoda Pass
1988 8 8 8 8
1988 Welcome to Burma
1989 China Bow-Wow
1990 Sense of Humor
1991 Angkor Wat
1991 Return to Vietnam and Smile
1992 Swimming with Little Fish
1993 Ice Cream on the Moon
1994 C-130 Adventures
1996 Returned to the Battlefield
1997 What's in a Language
1997 Project Design Comparison
1999 Ma Ma Ma
2000 The Blues Brothers
2002 The Pig Princess
2004 Balloons Go Up and Down
2011 Plain of Jars
2012 A Good Sport
2013 Feet above the Floor
2017 Adventures in Good Music

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667890449

Book preview

1949:

Snakes

I do not like snakes very much and neither does Keith Miller because we both had nightmares about them as pre-adolescent children. I remember lying on my back in bed afraid to move because I was covered up with snakes, and they were going to bite me. I would wake up in the night just soaking wet from all the stress and sweat. I do not know what trauma exactly caused these dreams, nevertheless, I had them.

But from dreams we will go to some actual events that happened in later life. Let me explain Keith Miller’s aversion to the reptiles.

At Boy Scout camp, in one of the cabins, some of the bullies realized that Miller did not like snakes. While he was sleeping, they put a garden snake around his neck. When he woke up, he flung the snake across the room. He thought he was dreaming but then realized it was real.

The next encounter with a snake was also at boy scout camp, only this time it was at an outside campsite. This time the snake was alive and put into his sleeping bag. I did not hear what kind of snake it was, nevertheless, Miller came out of his sleeping bag and attacked the first person next to him. They had quite a long fist fight which resulted in black eyes, bloody lips, and a bloody nose. But the scout master let them fight for what seemed like an hour but was probably only three or four minutes. Yet they destroyed the campfire among other things and gave Miller a reputation of not being pushed around anymore.

Later in life when he was in college and working in the summers for the department of agriculture, he had a couple more encounters that he told me about. The first one was with a king snake which he saw ahead of time wrapped around a small tree with what appeared to be some kind of mammal or maybe a rabbit inside and it looked like he was trying to crush it to digest it better. Miller had a big map board, and he was checking out the terrain, and the next thing he knew, he felt something squeezing his leg. When he looked down, the snake had wrapped itself around his leg thinking it was a tree stump and it was bigger than the one he had been wrapped around to begin with. Needless to say, Miller kicked the snake away and went on about his business but was still in sort of a state of shock remembering the nightmares that he had,

These events were traumatic to him but nevertheless, no harm was done, until the next encounter. He again had the map board and was studying the terrain. It sounded as though someone was letting air out of one of their tires, but there were no tires out there in the woods. He could not figure out what was making all that noise until suddenly it felt like he got kicked in the leg. He looked down and low and behold he was standing on top of a hog-nose snake, sometimes referred to as the spreading adder. The snake is known for being ferocious and mimicking more dangerous snakes such as the cobra until he realizes he is not going to drive the threat away and then he rolls over and plays dead. But unfortunately for Miller, the snake could not roll over because Miller was standing on his tail. So he bit him. The bite was harmless. The snake was not poisonous, and the boots Miller wore in the field protected him.

However, the next encounter was in a similar manner, only this time it was a cotton mouth, also known as a water moccasin. These snakes do not have the greatest disposition and do not flee at the sound of someone tromping down the trail like most snakes do. It stands its ground and bit Miller again in the boots which were fortunately pretty thick. The fangs did go all the way through and scratch the skin causing an infection, but it was really Miller’s fault and not the snake’s. However, it could have been a very serious incident requiring a trip to the hospital as those snakes are quite poisonous.

The last encounter he told me about involved a non-poisonous snake, but it was a 12-foot Burmese python. It was in the town in a friend’s back yard. This friend had small children and dogs and cats, so it could have been a pretty bad situation. Miller knew how long the snake was because it was stretched out along a wall, and he could measure it using the concrete blocks in the wall. It was the biggest snake he had seen in the wild, and he and his friends tried to get rid of the snake but only succeeded in chasing it up a big banana tree. It did not want to leave, so the only way they could get the snake out of the yard was to cut down the banana tree so that it would fall against the wall. That did persuade the snake to let go and slither away into someone else’s yard. That could have been a serious incident if the snake had gotten hold of some small animals or even the children.

Miller saw the same size snake in someone’s house up in the rafters. It took three or four people to get the snake down so they could kill it. They stretched it out and it took five people to hold it from head to tail. This was a pretty big snake but was rendered harmless.

The last incident involved a cobra which could have been quite serious. Miller was riding his bicycle on a small street in town when a cobra shot out of some weeds on one side of the road right in front of Miller. He swerved hoping he did not hit the cobra’s tail so that it would not rare up and bite him. He passed about 20 meters and stopped and looked back along the road and there was no sign of the snake, but there was a wall in the direction the snake was headed. There must have been a hole in the wall because the snake had disappeared and that was fine with Miller.

It is truly amazing how one who has an aversion to reptiles must have so many close encounters with them!

1954:

Toilet Paper and the Rattler

When Keith Miller was a young boy of eleven, he was allowed to go to deer camp with his father which he thought to be a big deal. He was even allowed to have a 410-guage single-shot gun and a couple of slug rounds in case he was close enough to hit it in the dense swampland forest. He was happy to ride the horses to go scouting; especially after manning his deer stand before sunup when he dare not move a muscle even though he was cold so early in the morning.

However, one Indian summer afternoon during the Thanksgiving holiday, he was scouting for deer trails on his horse when the horse shied and almost threw him off. He could not understand what was wrong because this horse was usually quite gentle. He dismounted to see if his horse was hurt but could find no injury. Then he looked at his surroundings and there it was stretched on the ground, seemingly stunned. It was a 6 ½ long timber rattler!

It was fortunate for the young boy and the horse that it was stretched out, not coiled for a possible strike. Apparently, the reptile had come out in the warm weather to enjoy the afternoon sun and was quite groggy. The horse had apparently not noticed the snake camouflaged in the leaves and kicked it and rolling him over. Yet he still had not coiled.

Miller dismounted at a safe distance, pulled his shotgun out of the scabbard on his saddle and shot the snake cleanly through the head. Then he had to decide what to do with it. At that point, he thought that he could put it on the horse and take it back to camp to show the men what he had found. However, the snake was quite long and the horse did not care to have it wrapped around its neck. Nevertheless, Miller was finally able to tie the tail to the saddle horn. He noted the large snake had 12 rattles-a big ’un indeed! Finally, he was able to mount the horse and head back to camp with the snake’s head swinging barely above the ground.

When he got back to camp, a lot of the men were relaxing in the sun by telling tales with their bourbon whisky in the sun. They became quite silent at first on seeing the huge rattler and the grinning young boy. Then Miller dropped the snake on the ground and it started writhing, much to the dismay of the onlookers and Miller.

The ruckus brought the old cook out and he said,

Well that snake ain’t going to die until sundown.

Miller thought that was crazy, but sure enough at sundown the snake stopped writhing. Probably, it was because the temperature had fallen low enough at the end of that fine November day.

Later that evening, the snake was skinned and deep fried. While many of the hunters enjoyed a special dinner Miller was not crazy about the taste of the snake. It did not taste like chicken to him!

If one is wondering how toilet paper fits into this narrative, then look no further. The deer camp was quite primitive back in those days so there really was no bathroom or toilet facility. It merely had a shack for the kitchen and a rundown house for sleeping. Both buildings were heated by a wood fireplace in the bunkhouse and a pot-bellied stove in the kitchen.

As crude as it may seem, the rough and ready deer hunters just did as their prey did. They used the woods across the small dirt track from the buildings. One could find the toilet by looking for the wadded and folded paper about 30 yards out in the forest across the road! The upshot of this story is that the next day, after Miller brought the snake in, the toilet paper was now all in the middle of the dirt road.

1961:

Highway Patrol Friend

A bunch of college students were headed for the Gulf Coast for spring break. While riding down the two-lane highways back in the 60’s. They were drinking a few beers and unfortunately throwing the empty bottles at the road signs along the way. As they approached a small town in central Mississippi, they saw a red light flashing and heard a siren behind them and thought they had better