A magic place
For fifty years
For bird dog folk
Where quail live wild
Neath every pine
And run when pointed
Before they fly Read more
Chinquapin
Category: Prose
When You Ride a Borrowed Horse
When you ride a borrowed horse
At a bird dog field trial
You are thirty seconds away
From a mishap
Unless the horse beneath you
Is that rare breed that protects you
From your own ineptitude Read more
On Being a Farm Boy
I would take nothing
For my days as a farm boy
Days waking up
To chores with the cows and sheep
The hay and the pasture
The fences around them Read more
How Many Miles
How many miles
Did the Big Man ride
Behind a bird dog
Puppy, Derby, All-Age?
Through heat and storm
On prairie and in pines
From Canada to Florida
From boy to aging man Read more
Chinquapin in January’s Second Week
Chinquapin
Where it all begins
As dawn emerges from dark
And quail awake
From their huddled sleeping state Read more
Hawfield
Captain William Crenshaw’s Farm
Until he died in 1897
In 1948 its 2760 acres lay abandoned
Its antebellum manor burned
Read more
Remembered on D-Day 2019
I remember today
A night long ago
At the N&W passenger depot
At Cambria Virginia
I was six years old it was 1944
I rode there with my father to visit
His friend the Station Agent Read more
Roll In
When the boys roll in
To Chinquapin
In their dually trucks
Pulling goose-neck trailers
Loaded with long-stepping horses
And quick stepping pointers
Raring to race for
The front where the birds lurk Read more
Ambitions
At 80 I often reflect on my ambitions
Many unrealized but not for lack of trying
Many secret until now
So here is my confession
My first ambition was to be a farmer
But recurring droughts and collapse of cattle prices
Taught me in the 1950s
That I could not make a living from the soil Read more
Races ~ 5
None who saw it
Will forget it
Silverwood’s hour at Chinquapin
In January 2002
If an hour race
Can be called magic
This one was it
Plus it was Hunter’s first year as scout
The judges were Luke Weaver
And Vernon Vance
The bracemate
Last year’s Champion Million Dollar Man Read more