“Copperline” is my favorite James Taylor song.
It’s about a stretch of woods near his boyhood home in North Carolina. The song talks about this place that was very dear to the local community, and where Taylor would go on little adventures with his dog.
The dog’s name was Hercules, and the line in the song that goes “Hercules and a hog-nosed snake” is in reference to the one snake the dog never managed to kill.
My dog Hercules killed snakes, and there were lots of snakes where we lived-Hercules, not the God, the dog….He wouldn’t kill a hog-nosed snake because it was appeared already dead. But you would walk away and come back later, and it would have slithered off. It survived by pretending not to be.
It’s a shame there aren’t many childhoods spent like this.
Dogs and boys and woods just sort of go together.
But now the boys aren’t allowed to go into the woods for fear of the Jerry Sanduskys that lurk behind every tree.
And an off-leash dog is something that must be shot.
But at one time, a boy could get a pretty good education with just a dog and some time in the woods alone.
I know it was a good education for me.
It certainly was for James Taylor.
Gosh, it’s sad that most kids don’t get a chance to grow up running the hills like m brothers and I did. My sisters too, but they were a little too young to be in on our “gang” – my three brothers and me. We had various dogs at different times, but we always had Bobo, our big old-fashioned black-and-silver GSD. He was a huge dog, acquired as a puppy when we lived in a small town in western Michigan. His ears never came all the way up (possibly because his ear leather was so heavy; his littermates & mother all had perfect ears. Or maybe there was a monkey in the woodpile somewhere, although in appearance and behavior he was pure GSD.) Anyhow, we kids had him and a big liver-and-white pointer named Pal, and a little black part-Chihuahua feist named (of course) Blackie, and whatever other dogs we happened to have at any given time – mostly foxhounds or coonhounds that we caught & kept for the hunters until they came looking for them & strays we took in. We roamed the hills in and around the hollow where we lived from daylight til dark, with our little pack of dogs. Mom never worried about us if the dogs were with us; Bobo would have killed for us or died for us. It was an amazing childhood and I treasure the memories dearly.
I didn’t have dogs growing up but I did grow up playing in the woods. And now I’m a girl in the woods with her dogs (& pretty soon goats as well, lol). 8-)
Making rafts, hanging out in a tree house, swinging over the brook on a rope, climbing the giant beech tree, and running through the woods with my dog… Such a rich childhood.
Well I grew up in the inner city of Chicago, so my adventures were a bit different. But I did have a huge spider collection every year and Humboldt Park w/ all its natural attractions was w/in walking distance. Fortunately, for me, I also spent many (most?) of my summers on a small farm in S. WI, picking berries and pomes, marking wild asparagus beds for the next spring, fishing and harvesting fresh water clams, watching huge flocks of cedar wax wings strip the various trees and shrubs of their berries, spying on the flying squirrels that lived in the top of outhouse–all the good stuff. And of course we always had dogs–mutts every one, but good dogs.
My clearest recollection from those times is standing in the midst of an oat field and seeing nothing but oats in every direction, blowing in the breeze like waves on the sea (in that flat terrain the horizon was a full 35k.) Of course there were country roads running through the fields here and there but from my 10-year old vantage point I couldn’t see them. It was magnificent–golden oats, bright blue sky, temps in the 60’sF (got down near frost at night even in July), and other than a kettle of buzzards, not a single other living being in sight.
BTW Scottie, thanks for this, I haven’t heard that song in a long, long time.
[…] Source: http://retrieverman.net/2013/02/11/james-taylors-snake-killing-dog/ […]
Hey – don’t forget girls and dogs too! I was brought up in an old coal mining area so we were kind of urban facing a busy road, but with plenty farmland, wildlife, streams, lakes, copses of trees and long grown over spoil heaps just outside the back gate. I was always being told off for going over the top of my wellies in the mud or water. All the local kids were allowed to wander at will, alone or together, with no fear of a paedophile abduction around every corner like the poor kids today have drummed into them. We were just told not to talk to strangers (even if they claimed to need help or have puppies for us to see) and left to get on with it as long as we were home for meal times. No wonder British kids are getting obese as most of the time they are up in their bedrooms glued to a games console of some type, being bullied on facebook or going sken eyed texting friends who only live round the corner rather than talking to them face to face. But all the parents can think is at least they are safe and won’t get abducted, raped, stabbed or shot. It’s a more paranoid world than it was 35 years ago.
Sadly and despite my incessant pleadings, we never had a dog, but one of the latchkey dogs often tagged along with us or I was with my great aunt and her wonderful dog. I do think it’s great that people take better care of their dogs and don’t let them roam, but the kind of people that used to let their dogs roam now just keep them locked in the back yard as they can’t be arsed walking them daily. Also, that wonderful dog was mostly staffordshire bull terrier, which somehow have now become child eating devil dogs rather than the nanny dog according to the tabloid press.
[…] Source: http://retrieverman.net/2013/02/11/james-taylors-snake-killing-dog/ […]