yellow jackets bee"s (standard:adventure, 1818 words)
Author: stanley mcqueen kentucky backwoods writer	Added: May 10 2009	Views/Reads: 3577/2109	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
back wood yarn

Yellow Jackets bees" 

Folks here in Muddy fork all worship at the little goose chapel church
house that sets in the hollow not too far from  the sawmill , mountain 
saints has and old custom concerning their faith in the almighty God, 
as it is written thy shall take up serpents and they shall not harm 
thee, but paw is not a member of the little good chapel saints and he 
kills ever copperhead he can strike at with a corn hoe,  but my maw she 
is a saint of the church here, and she believes in handling shakes , My 
given name is Jake and paw name is frank maw she bears the name of Sara 
our last name Is Bishop,  and I just  turned twenty last week, our 
little hillside farm isn't much to speak of its' so steep and all and 
rocky , it hard to raise corn on a hard rock paw always declared” It 
was near that time of year that the pastor of little goose come to our 
shack and asked me if I could ketch him a mess of copperhead and 
rattlers for the snake handling service, he told me to get my friend 
Walter north to help me set shake traps and that he would give me and 
Walter five dollars for ever snake we brought him, 

Walter and I were the best shake catchers in these part, and we made a
heap of money each year catching a mess of new shakes, we both love 
that time of the year and knew that it was easy to catch snakes with 
the good traps we had, all we had to do was bait  them with mice and 
the mice was harder to catch that the shakes, I was scared that maw 
would get bite some day and die and I tried hard to get her to stop 
handling shakes, but her faith was strong in the lord, and she has 
handled more snakes that anyone around , my friend  Walter said they 
had to be some sort of trick to handling shakes , and not getting bite, 
and that some day he would figure it out somehow, 

Walter and I leaf off early and set traps along the old bluff that was
around history ridge, and put mice in the trap we had caught in paw 
corn crib, that next morning early we went to the ridge and discovered 
we had twenty five snakes caught, ten rattlers and fifteen copperheads' 
this year we had done real good on the number, we had made us fifty 
dollars each and was happy about that, We took them all in one big tin 
bucket we had got off of paw that some corn seed had come in year 
before last, the good preacher paid us and we both thanked him, and we 
both headed off to the saloon  that was located in our little township 
of Muddy Fork,  which was no more than a wide place in the wagon road , 
it has few crude shack and a small jail house and small boarding house, 
and the red coon saloon,. And a black smith shop,  Walter and I love to 
drink and every time we made some money it ended up going to the saloon 
keeper pockets, we enjoyed drinking and laughing and getting drunk, but 
maw never knew that I drunk and paw never neither, and that was the way 
I wanted to keep it that way, because of maw being a member of the 
little goose chapel church, we set and drank to about near dark and 
tonight was shake handling  night at the church and we both got to 
drunk to think right, Walter wanted me and him to attend the church 
meeting, us feeling so good and  all on the whiskey spirits it seem 
like a good idea to go and watch the saints handled the shakes we had 
caught  just the night before , Walter and I knew where a big nest of 
yellow jacket bees were and Walter come up with the idea of capping the 
nest with a fruit jar and threshing the ground so the bees would fill 
the jar and that we had found alongside the wagon road that lead to the 
church house, Walter had a idea in that mind of his , that might make 
the night's meeting a little more interesting for the two of us to 
watch from the pine thicket  that was just outside the church house, 
Walter told me that we would let the shake handling get underway and 
that we would slip up on the porch stoop of the church and roll that 
jar of bees inside the church and see how the saints would take to 
yellow jackets joining the nights worship service, we both had mean 
streaks in us both of us young and mischievous, and  drunk making us 
the more meaner,  Walter said he would lose the jar lid just lose 
enough that when he rolled it inside the door that it would uncap the 
bees and they would join the folks at little goose chapel church, and 
Walter wanted to know if the folks could handle bees being loosed  in 
the church , he told me it was an experiment. I being drunken it made 
the idea seem a good one and why not add a little something to the 
shake handling service,. It was quiet a walk from the township to the 
church and we caught ever one of those yellow jacket bees and had 
nearly a gallon of mad bees in the gallon fruit jar, it was a moonlit 
night making it better to walk and see our way to the church house , we 
made it to the thicket and hide and it was not long till folks starting 
arriving at the church house,  wagon and mule teams were parked 


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