By Guest Writer, Levi Brake
Levi and Mil, spring of 1950
My earliest memory in life is of my mother wielding a garden hoe,
killing a rattler on the front steps of our house in Sweetwater,
Texas, another renowned "Rattlesnake Capital”of the world.
I went on in life to kill every rattlesnake I saw wherever I
lived until many years later, while living with my family in
a nice house on the desert outskirts of Phoenix, AZ. During
the hot summer months I would occasionally rouse my family
from their sleep well before dawn and gather up the
necessities for cooking breakfast in the desert and we would
head out to one of my favorite places. There I would cook
bacon and eggs and we would eat while listening to the
desert wake up around us.
A narrow trail led from where I parked the truck down to a
flat area near the bottom of a large arroyo. Just before
daybreak on that particular morning, my son Johnie, then
about eight years old, started down the trail first and very
quickly came running back up excitedly saying "Dad, there's
a snake on the trail!". I grabbed my pistol and he and I
went back down and sure enough, there was this big rattler
coiled in the middle of the trail, his head sticking up and
his tongue darting out menacingly. It was too cool for him
to strike and he was lying there waiting for the sun to come
up and warm him.
Standing there and looking at one of nature's proud
creatures completely at my mercy, I guess I realized that it
was we who were the intruders there. I sent Johnie back up
to the truck and told him to bring me a shovel. I picked
that rascal up on my shovel and carried him back up to the
desert floor and took him off a ways and set him down to
wait for the sun. Though I've had many opportunities since,
I haven't killed another snake.
That's my best snake story, although I have others, as do
most folks who have lived in the Southwest for any period of
time.*************************
by Guest Writer, Levi Brake, CHS '51
1933-2018
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