Out on the Mudline

A Nice Buck Gets Bumped On Busy Deer Run

 By W. P. Sissell

Deer Runs

This morning, in the East Oaks Shopping Center’s (located on Hwy. 6 in Batesville) parking area, there was a sudden burst of excitement   

Several people were standing, gesturing  grabbing and aiming cameras and laughing.  A pickup with a trailer load of four wheelers came from the area we could not see from inside the Rehab building.  We could, however, see a deer on the tail end of the trailer as it left.   

In a few minutes several people came in telling us that a deer trying to cross the highway from the north side (Western Sizzlin’side) to the south side, a 12-pointer, got hit by a car.        

That buck was probably following an old deer run. A number of times I’ve seen, as I went to work at the schools, a deer crossing the strip somewhere around the 6-51 intersection.     

That deer run I referred to is along the banks of “The Sand Ditch” which meanders through the Batesville valley from the southeast to the northwest moving the water toward Tallahatchie River.  It is somewhat comparable to Water Valley’s Town Creek

The volume of traffic along Highway 6 at 7 to 8 a.m. is heavy and the highway there has come to be called by many “The Strip.” It does not move at a slow pace. One of the exercisers remarked that the deer, after making the crossing through the heavy traffic, just had a heart attack.

Cousins?

Miss Betty you gave me half of today’s column when you mentioned the Rose Parade Queen being kin to my Aunt “T” (she would not have her little nieces and nephews calling her auntie). The young woman (at the time) was Martha Sissell a very beautiful red head—yes we do have red headedness in out family.  My Dad’s older sister, Ethel, was a red-head.

Martha was the grand daughter of one of my Dad’s double first cousins, Lloyd, who made many visits to his Mississippi kin, a little more often than the rest of the family.  When he bought a new car he always went to the factory and picked it up—put all those miles on it himself.  

He introduced his young  nephews and nieces to the first GM  Oldsmobile, automatic transmission, yellow, convertible, with a ride down the Mud line to Robinson’s Mill, across that and back to our old home place.  In a later year on a visit to California, Lloyd, taking me along to get tickets to a baseball game, muttered—I’m “gonna” make that light (it was already on amber)—we slid through it on red—but that was Lloyd. He parked by a fireplug to run in and get the tickets.

Those double first cousins never really lost contact with one another—visiting back and forth—one of these weeks I’ll treat you to the story of Reuel and Sadie, Ray and Myra, and Ruth on their trip to the  west coast.  You see Reuel and Ray and Clarence and Evelyn (I think) were born when Will and Annette and George and Ida were proving their claims in western Kansas—Goodwater, Kansas, living in sod houses.  That was in the days on which the stories of “Gunsmoke” and Dodge City are based.   

I remember them telling about one of the early trips in the thirties: Uncle George asked, as they crossed the river at Greenville, “How long will it be before I get to see Will?”  He was elated, excited—clapping his hands, when they told him, about an hour.

They, they are in a new age, came by plane to my mother and father’s golden wedding anniversary.  Always, when they came, they wanted/had one meal at Sadie’s and Reuel’s house. Most of those meals were at the home on the Mudline but Nannette and I, got to do one at our new home in Panola County.  

Our wish for you is a happy week and new year.  May your troubles be few and far between.  Don’t forget, you can always reach me at 23541 Highway 6, Batesville, MS 38606, 662-563-9879 or wsissell@bellsouth.net.