My Dearest Patricia,

Hi! My name is Hank Morgan. I got a big kick out of your story about carrying the sack. No way on earth would I carry a sack with a rattlesnake in it.

First, let me say that Wellsboro is and always will be my home. I am familiar with the land up around Holiday, Keeneyville, and Middlebury.

I stayed with my grandmother for about a year. Coming from Wellsboro up Highway 287, turn left at Holiday. About a mile or so on the right side, is where she lived. Her landlord promised to put in a septic tank and indoor plumbing. He didn’t keep his promise.

Grandma moved on up the road, around the bend toward Farmington. This house was the first one she ever had with indoor plumbing. We had a windmill and a cistern.

However, we had to put a sort of a sock-type thing on the faucet because we’d get earthworms in the water.

Anyway, this farm had a big outhouse about a hundred feet from the house, and we kids were told to stay away from it. We never did get far away from the house to play.
The outhouse had a huge hornet nest inside extending from the roof almost to the floor. Grandma had a bunch of porch kittens and they just seemed to disappear one by one.
One frosty morning, Grandma found three dead kittens near the outhouse. It was too cold for the hornets to fly but they were all over the dead kittens. This was when

Grandma discovered the hornets in the outhouse. What a big nest!

That night just around dark, Grandma set the outhouse on fire. The next day she found six partial adult rattlesnake carcasses and a herd of baby carcasses.

Grandma used to shop in a little country store in Keeneyville. The owner was behind the counter and saw a rattlesnake trying to enlarge a small hole in his screen door. This was just a few minutes before we got there.

There used to be a rail yard by Stokesdale. Across the highway and north a bit, there used to be a sawmill. They had a pile of scrap slats free for the taking and we used to load up the trunk of Grandma’s 1930 Chevy. Sometimes there were a few rattlesnakes in the wood pile so we had to be careful. Grandma later moved to Little Marsh where she met and married her fourth husband, Olaf. They later moved to Sabinsville before she died.

My favorite uncle had two hunting camps in Lycoming County, one at Browns Forks and the other one above Cedar Run, up on Beulah Land. In 1959, the Forestry Department trimmed out a lot of trees up along the Beulah Land road. They were there several weeks cutting trees. The wood that could be chipped from the chipper was blown down into Jacobs Run. The big blocks of wood were piled along the road, free for the taking.

Every morning after the sun came up, all of the stumps had a rattlesnake curled up sunning themselves. The forestry guys had big jars full of rattlers.

We always carried a Mason jar in all of our cars, trucks, and Jeep just for rattles. One fellow in our camp smoked Prince Albert and saved all of his cans. Made it nice to carry around for rattles and they fit in your pocket.

My uncle wasn’t too much for the snares that you spoke of. He just used a .22 revolver with shot. That did the trick and you didn’t have to get so close.

Around 1962 or 1963 they had a few rattlesnakes escape from that roundup in Morris.

Three of them that they didn’t miss headed across the highway and Uncle was there with his .22. Bang bang bang, and he had three more rattles to add to his collection.

Well, I think that I’ve “rattled” on long enough. I hope that you get as much out of this letter as I did your story in Mountain Home.

Sincerely Yours,
Hank

P.S. Did you ever see a rattlesnake giving birth to their young? It is quite a sight.