You see that big cypress tree over there by the bayou edge?" He pointed to a large tree, maybe twenty-four inches in diameter at the base. I told him, yes.
"You see that big limb sticking out over the water about half-way the tree?"
"Yes," I said.
"I shot a wild turkey gobbler off'n that limb one morning at first light when I was just a lad of a boy," he said, "and if I remember right, that was "fore the turn of the century."
Will Ferriss, who lived near Hog-Pen landing on Corney Bayou in Union Parish, Louisiana, was telling me about old times. Now, more than fifty years later I'm telling you about old times.
When I first knew Mr. Ferriss, Gene Fulmer was county agent in Bienville Parish and it was on one of our fishing trips to Corney Bayou, a premier bass fishing stream, that he took me by Will's home and we listened to him tell us about the over-sized bass caught by such fishermen as Dr. Marvin Green of Ruston, Louisiana, and his brothers Reagan and Felton. He also told us about the biggest bass he'd ever seen caught, "'bout eight pounds," he said. Mr. Blue Hogg, also a Ruston native, caught the big one.
Will Ferriss had spent most of his life roaming up and down the woodlands along Corney Bayou fishing and hunting. He had a small farm and in addition to his farming and hunting and fishing he said he trapped raccoons and mink back when raccoon coats were popular and "picked up some pretty good money." At the time I knew him he was taking it easy, just occasionally guiding people who wanted to fish in Corney Bayou. Paddling is what he called it. There were no electric troll motors then.
Getting back to that turkey and that cypress tree. Will said he saw that tree a dozen or more times a year for about fifty years and he couldn't tell if it had gotten any taller or bigger in that length of time. What he was saying was cypress trees grow very slowly.
I was busy trying to catch fish while he paddled the boat and talked. That was about 1947 and I was thirty-three years old and not too interested In olden times, but later in life I began to get concerned about things as they were years earlier and I remembered what Will Ferriss told me. As I fished in Corney Bayou during the next fifteen or more years, every time I passed the big cypress tree I pictured in my mind young Will, long-legged and bare-footed, slipping along the shoreline of Corney Bayou and shooting the big turkey as he gobbled to attract a prospective mate 'fore the turn of the century (if he remembered right). During that time I couldn't see any change in the size of the big tree either.
Time moves slowly for a cypress tree but for a sweet gum tree time moves much faster.
When Edna and I acquired our fishing camp on Lake D'Arbonne twenty-five years after Will Ferris showed me the "turkey tree," I noticed a small sweet gum sapling near the lake by my boathouse, no larger than young Will's wrist "fore the turn of the century. I intended to chop it down but changed my mind because I could use it to tie my boat to when I came in from fishing. That sapling is still there and now twenty-five years later is about twenty-four inches in diameter and towers above the boathouse and the camp.
Will Ferriss has been gone a long time and that big cypress tree is now nothing but a big black stump in the water way up in the Corney fork of Lake D'Arbonne. A crapple fisherman may catch a fish or two near it on occasion as he passes by. But that gobbling wild turkey still lives in my memory and he gets bigger and bigger.
The article above, "Louisiana Tales, " is from the book b y W.C. Abbott of Jonesboro, retired County Agent of Jackson Parish. The book is available for $9.00 plus $2.00 mailing, from W.C. Abbott, Jr., 122 Dale Drive, Jonesboro, LA 71251.