The Story of Delta View and the "7 year old"

There is an old Jesuit maxim, "Show me the boy at 7 years old and I will show you the man!", attributed to St. Francis Xavier.  In the United Kingdom a documentary film series, 7 UP was made, to try and prove the premise that we are all products of class struggle by following individuals from the time they were 7 as they grew into adults of 49 years.  The series was actually pretty accurate in proving that there is truth to it and my own story, I think, bears it out some too.

I was a "free range" 7 year old.  That's the way kids were raised in the 60's, and I am thankful for having had that freedom in my youth.  I came along late in life for my parents, they were both 42 when I was born.  I was a "surprise" to them.  My brothers grew up hunting and fishing with my Dad, but he had given all that up by the time I came along, largely due to his health being poor, due to a life of hard work and hard smoking. My nearest brother is six years older than me and my oldest brother is eighteen years older than me, so my brothers were usually off on their older boy exploits.  With my parents almost fifty, not in great health and tired after raising my three brothers, at 7 years of age, I was often on my own.

With the freedom to explore the neighborhood on my own, without a "helicopter parent" hovering over me, my travels would often take me to the end of our street.  There, I would often be hailed to come to the screened in porch of the home of an older gentleman.  Luckily for me, he was a nice and harmless older man with a sweet and wonderful wife.  He had suffered an injury somewhere in his past and was very limited by his disability.  His injury had left him with what must have been a difference in the length of his legs, forcing him to use a cane and wear one shoe with a very thick sole.

This man, for some reason, (I figured out the reason after I was an adult) took it upon himself to mentor me some in living the outdoor life.  And literally, that is what he used to mentor me with, the magazine "Outdoor Life", giving me his copy when he was through reading it. But he didn't just give me his copy, first, we would sit on his porch, looking through and enjoying the magazine together.  Sometimes we would go out to garage where he had an enormous assortment of fishing gear which he would show me.  He would tell me in great detail about each piece of gear and of course, include some stories.

After a visit, I would take the magazines home, reading the stories over and over again and marveling at the photos and artwork.  In those days, Outdoor Life had great outdoor stories, before it changed to the "how-to" articles that it mostly consists of now.  With writers like Earnest Hemingway and Zane Grey as contributors, truly the articles deserved to be called literature. 

And so the writing seed was planted. I began drawing my own crude depictions of outdoor scenes and wildlife, and even began writing some short, fictional stories.

As an adult I was absorbed in my computer software business for most of my life.  In my fifties I  dabbled with outdoor writing as a hobby for a local paper and some outdoor magazines.  Writing the book Delta View, was a lark.  I just had to get some of that 7 year old out of me and as a grown man with a lot of experiences, it seemed like a good time.

Windsor ruins, the Freeland cemetery, Longwood, Mont Helena, the Shaifer House, my nearby hunting club in the loess hills, Panther Swamp, the Mississippi River, the delta of the Mississippi/Yazoo rivers, the Civil War,  the wildlife of the region, not any one of these things is the inspiration for the book, but, rather, all of them.  And I owe it all to a gentleman at the end of the street that I later found out from my Mother just a few years before she died, was once my Dad's fishing buddy before he had his accident.

Of course, some may say that this all makes sense, that they suspected the book was written by a seven year old...   and that's OK, because I am sure most of those folks are my friends!

Delta View, a new book by a new Mississippi author, David Allen Aultman

In 1979, a convict serving time for robbery, Marion Albert “Mad Dog” Pruett, was placed in the witness protection program for testifying against an inmate for a murder that Pruett himself later admitted to committing. In 1981, as part of a week-long crime spree, Pruett kidnapped a bank teller in Jackson, MS. Forcing the teller to drive to a rural area and then walking her into a heavily wooded area, he killed her by shooting her.

This terrible event made the author wonder what might have happened if a skilled hunter had been in a position to intervene when “Mad Dog” followed his victim into the woods. The setting and added storyline came from the author’s own experience of encountering an Indian mound while hunting near the ruins of a Civil War plantation.

Anyone that has visited the ruins of the Windsor mansion or seen Mont Helena, a mansion built on top of an Indian mound, has probably had the same stirrings of imagination about what went on in the past.  Mont Helena has its own, true story, and a splendid one at that, but the story of Windsor, burned after the Civil War by a careless workman, leaves one wishing for more. The Indian mounds, Mont Helena and the Freeland Cemetery near Windsor are ancient mysteries anyway, but the added non-Indian, antebellum use of them just adds more mystery.  Delta View is a fictional story about what could have happened.

The story begins with the Natchez Indians in the 1700’s and ties the earthen mound of those people with the kudzu covered ruins of a Civil War mansion and family cemetery. The Indian mound is the hub of the story, connecting the deaths of an Indian princess and a plantation owner’s wife and daughter to the modern day victims of a serial killer who are young, female dancers at a Delta strip club. Secrets of the Indian mound and cemetery are revealed.

Bush pilot and sometimes covert operator, Deke Desmarais, must solve the murder mystery by first solving a 152 year old riddle and then tricking his suspect into a confrontation that includes wild hogs in an underground environment. Deke becomes involved with multiple love interests and at one point is forced to protect his young and attractive half-Indian daughter, Nikki, in a life-or-death situation.

Delta View, now available for Kindle at Amazon

Wild Hogs, Unlike Rodney Dangerfield, Get Respect

Wild hogs hold my interest even though, unlike deer, they are not a clean, graceful and beautiful animal and they aren't indigenous to America, having been brought here by Spanish explorers like Hernando Desoto.  Their domestic barnyard cousin is tasty and therefore highly sought after, but as a wild animal, hogs are a nuisance. The wild hog is unwelcome by almost everyone and in many southern states they are a huge problem for farmers and homeowners. As a result, wild hogs are typically not protected by the local wildlife agencies and are even the target of eradication measures. As mentioned in the book, Delta View, Louisiana includes them in their "outlaw quadruped" list.

My experience with wild hogs only began within the past five years or so, but I have learned to have a healthy respect for them. The first up-close encounter came while hunting in the Palmetto swamplands near Yazoo City.  One day, as I made my way with friend of mine into the woods for a deer hunt, we inadvertently walked into the midst of a sounder (group) of them.  The head-high palmettos hid the short-legged hogs completely. I guess they must have been sleeping.  Hogs appear to sleep in an almost human-like deep sleep.  Deep sleeping is something most wild animals do not do, deer, for example, only doze lightly, tending to remain alert.  I have had to listen to the loud snoring of a large boar from my deer stand on one occasion! I am pretty sure he was deep in dreamland!

These hogs, surprised and upset at having their nap interrupted, first reacted by running but quickly stopped, choosing to hold their ground. They were hidden to us by the palmetto palms, but were making their presence known,  shaking and rattling palms all around us, grunting and making a woofing sound.  We had split their sounder up and they obviously intended to "leave no hog behind".  My first reaction when I realized what was happening, as it was my first experience with wild hogs and I just did not know any better, was simply, "oh, cool, wild hogs!" My lack of alarm was due to my being accustomed to deer, which always run away harmlessly, even the biggest antlered bucks usually don't make a stand.  But as we stood there I noticed the hogs making a strange "popping" sound.  Curious but still unafraid, I asked my friend, whose facial color was somewhat lighter than normal, what the popping sound was.  He replied that the hogs were "popping their teeth together", to warn us of potential consequences.  It was at that moment that I suddenly acquired a very healthy respect for wild hogs.  The guttural growls and woofing noises also helped.  My friend and I slowly backed out of their midst, leaving the way we came in.

In defense of discretion when encountering wild hogs, the beast's capacity to attack humans has been substantiated by many attacks on humans here in the South. Most of the accounts of these attacks have been provided by hunters.   From ancient history to current times, the courage and ferocity of the wild hog is unquestioned.

Hogs are omnivores, meaning they also eat meat, even scavenging on carcasses of their own kind.  With respect to their presence in the tunnel, hogs will occupy underground cavities, when they are available.  It is no stretch of the imagination that in the book, Delta View, the hogs are responsible for consuming a murderer's victim within an abandoned tunnel.

So, wild, meat eating hogs, in an unknown pre-Civil War tunnel within an Indian mound, with no way out and a treasure seeking killer waiting for you. What I'm saying, in cliche movie terms is, "Hogs, it had to be hogs!"

Now available for Kindle at Amazon

Chopper, the Mississippi River Gator

The gator in the photo above is Misssissippi's new state record, taken in the 2014 gator hunt by permit holder, Brian Montgomery of Starkville and his team. The gator weighed in at 792 pounds and was over 13 feet long.  In 2013 I was lucky enough to win a tag in the Mississippi alligator hunt.  Our alligator hunting team consisted of myself, my son, a good buddy and his young son.  We managed to bag a 10 foot 8 inch gator.  The experience gained in taking that gator was used to write the hunt for Bent Gambrel hunting club's "pet" gator, "Chopper".

Our team's 2013 gator, (left) was two feet shorter than the 2014 state record, but was still quite a monster.  In the novel Delta View, outdoor writer Clint gave Deke a short lesson in judging gators:

“If you measure between a gator’s eyes to the front of the snout, that measurement in inches will be approximately equal to the length of the gator in feet”, said Clint.

Deke looked at the gator making some mental calculations.  It looked like it was more than a foot and half between his eyes and his snout though it certainly had to be shy of that.  The gator was enormous, probably weighing as much as 800 pounds.

One more thing that is interesting about alligators as they relate to humans.  There is a gland in humans which resembles a pine cone which is in fact called the "pineal" gland.  This gland is in the very center of the brain and no one quite understands its function; however, many suggest that it is through this gland that the physical world of our bodies connects to the more virtual world of our consciousness, our self-awareness which some would say is our "soul".  An interface in other words, and French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), even called it "the seat of the soul".  Many ancient sculptures and artwork include a pine cone, symbolizing the pineal gland and more importantly, "the soul".  Most other animals have a pineal gland, but the alligator does not.  So, the alligator is a beast without a soul?  If you've ever handled them, you might already think so.
Available for Kindle at Amazon

The Mississippi River, Tugboats and the Rumble of the Engines

One of my favorite pastimes is fly fishing the jetties of the Mississipppi. No surprise the tugs made it into my book as when Sherry describes to Deke her love of watching tugboats push their load of barges on the Mississippi river:   Available for Kindle at Amazon

The Loess Bluffs East of Mississippi's Delta

"The loess soil of the region (loess, pronounced ‘lurse’), had been perfect for tunneling.  Loess is able to hold its form almost indefinitely if cut vertically at right angles.  Even natural erosion will diminish once the soil erodes into right-angled bluffs.  This characteristic of loess is responsible for the steep banks of the Old Natchez Trace." - Delta View

Available for Kindle at Amazon