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It
is mushroom time in the Ozarks. Just last night my daughter found six up here on Lightnin’ Ridge. The best of the mushroom hunting will
be between April 14 and April 20th in the northern Ozarks and a week
earlier in the south Ozarks. On
the first of April they were finding a good number in north Arkansas.
Southern
Iowa woodlands will have good mushroom hunting in early May, and when I am in
Canada in early June, I figure I will find at least a dozen or so along the
lake where I fish. Those Canadian
morels are monstrous. They average
twice the size of the ones I will find in the next week or so. But the Canadian bush country where I
fish, is so thick that you can’t get out there and walk a mile or so looking
for them. You have to look along
lakeshore timber.
I
am not going to try to sell mushroom seeds as I have in the past. Too many people complained that they
didn’t get enough seeds for a dollar. The thing is, mushroom seeds are tiny, and if you put 500 or so in an
envelope, it may seem like only a few.
I
always told the folks who bought them to go out in the woods where they have found
wild mushrooms before and scatter a few pinches here and there and within a
couple or three years, maybe four or five, or six…there will be mushrooms
growing… and maybe some lettuce and carrots!
I
can’t help it if no one has any patience and can’t follow directions
anymore! So I am phasing out my
mushroom seed business and since I only have a few envelopes left I am going to
reduce the price of each envelope filled with hundreds of seeds, to fifty
cents, plus shipping and handling, which comes to five dollars!
Mushroom
seeds must be sown from late March, to mid-April and it is best to cover them
with dead leaves so they won’t be eaten by ground weasels and hickory
rats. Don’t harvest small
mushrooms, give them a couple of days or so to grow taller!
Well
I have come up with a great idea. But you will have to act upon it before school is out. Years back my first wife, Gloria Jean,
was involved in teaching young boys who were having trouble learning to
read. She said they just didn’t
have an interest in what the school had for them to read. So she took a book I
had written about 10 or 12 years ago and gave it to some of them to try. It was a book of outdoor short stories,
mostly about boys, entitled, “Dogs, Ducks and Hatrack Bucks”. She said it changed the way they looked
at reading, wanting to read the stories to conclusion and understand each.
It
came to me, as parents began to tell me how much one of their boys had enjoyed
the book, that I might oughta make it easy for kids to get it, so I am going to
make copies available free of charge, to boys and girls who want it. It is best suited for kids from 9 or 10
years old to 13 or 14 years old, maybe even older.
If
you are interested in getting a copy, notify your school or school library and send to this site (Larry Dablemont Outdoors). I will bring
them a number of books to give away to kids who want it. It is too expensive to just mail one
book at a time, but I can send several to a school without a great deal of
postage.
In
grade school, I remember being able to buy books through a publication they
gave kids called, “The Weekly Reader”. The books were only a quarter or so, but my parents were poor and
couldn’t buy many for me. So I started selling mushroom seeds to raise enough
quarters so I could buy those books, and I remember how much brighter the sun
would shine for me when one of those little books arrived in school. Those books did something to me as a
kid that is hard to put in words.
Mrs.
Frost, my first and third grade teacher, actually put together a little booklet
of my poems with a blue cover, which I have today, since my mom saved it. Then in the fourth grade I wrote a book
entitled, “The Adventures of Chippy the Chipmunk”. I have that too, stored away in stuff Mom saved. I read it once and won’t do so
again. Nor will anyone ever read
it! Chippy was a real ne’er do
well.
As
I got to the sixth and seventh my teachers would have class writing assignments
where we all hand-wrote stories on Big Chief tablets. The teachers would always pick a couple of the best stories
to read to the class, and I would go to school with great anticipation on those
days hoping that they would read my stories. They never did. I remember that the stories they selected were really boring and mostly
by girls who made good grades. There were none you could sell to Sports Afield
or Outdoor Life, where great literature was published in the 1960’s.
I
remember one teacher reading something Nolan Don Akins wrote called “Our Family Shangri la”. Me and Virgil Postlewaite and Butch
McNew had no idea what a ‘shangri la’ even was. I knew Nolan Don would never make a writer. He had to settle for becoming a United
Airlines pilot! What a
disappointment that must have been, flying all over the world while I was
floating the Piney trapping muskrats and catching black perch.
In
the eighth grade I tried so hard to write something the teacher would read in
class. I spent hours working on the story of a female bird-dog who fell in love
with a big lobo coyote, and their life together until he was shot through the
guts by a cattleman and she was so brokenhearted she drowned herself in the
river and all her pups starved to death in a dark cave. I
was sent to the principal’s office for that one. The teacher didn’t like my graphic portrayal of woodland
reproductive acts, and you were not allowed to use the word ‘bitch’ back then
in describing a female dog. In the
eighth grade, entrails are not referred to as ‘guts’ either!
My
writing career nearly ended. I never ever wrote a story or essay in
grade school, high school or college that was read in class. Life isn’t fair. But I think I sensed that, when I wrote
about the life of Chippy the Chipmunk, long, long ago. Nothing ever went right for him
neither.
If
you have an interest in receiving my magazine or reading any of the nine books
I published, or want to get that book for a youngster just call my first wife,
Gloria Jean at 417 777 5227. Email
me at lightninridge@windstream.net
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