The Turkey Shoot
By Bill Shepard
Here I sit at the beginning of a brand new year, pen in hand and wondering what to write about. As anyone reading this paper knows, I’ve written about everything there is to write about the old mill village in Darlington. The old mill has been removed a long time and some have written to say that there is work going on where the mill once stood. No one seems to know what is in the future for the site.
The old mill and its workers left many memories behind and I have enjoyed so much relieving some of them on the pages of this newspaper and the publisher has been so gracious to allow me to do so.
Bill Shepard
Is there anything that I have not written about, I ask myself. The answer came and here it is, the turkey shoot! How have I missed it? After all the years of my writing I have never written about this event that happened each year when I was a small boy on the mill village in Darlington.
The turkey shoot was held on Christmas Day or on New Year’s Day at a spot near the house where I lived. I never took part in the shooting but I had a clear view of all that happened from a spot nearby. A big bonfire was kept burning close by where the shooting took place. The men and the boys would stay warm while watching each participant take the position to shoot. I recall their faces as I write, and could write a long list of names as through my mind’s eye each prepares to shoot. It is doubtful that one of them is alive but my memory of them is!
The men of that time knew how to shoot a shotgun and most owned one. They used them for shooting wild rabbits and squirrels to be used for food during the harsh period known as the Great Depression. I liked to hear the men folk laugh and tell tales as they stood around the blazing fire. Many of their stories I still remember.
The turkey shoot was held in the cow pasture near the village. The pasture bordered the swampland that was created by Swift Creek that flowed through it. The pasture land was part of the village and was furnished by the mill owners to the villagers who owned a cow. None did!
As a boy, I often wondered why the event was called a turkey shoot; I never saw a turkey! I suppose it was like the pasture being called a cow pasture even though there was no cow to be seen! I suppose the men enjoyed the shooting; the prizes being offered really didn’t matter that much. No, I never saw a turkey but I saw the following: chickens, roosters, hens and frying size. Once I saw a guinea! I saw cakes and pies that were baked just for the occasion by the wife of a shooter. A shooter might offer a gun or a rifle that they wanted to get rid of. A good pocketknife might be offered. The person offering the prize would set a price for his offering and each shooter would pay for a chance to participate. I reckon all turkey shoots are the same, at least in principle. I don’t know for sure; I have never been to another! I was too young to participate in the ones I have written about; I was still in the slingshot age! We would line up tin cans and shoot at them with our slingshots, using small rocks from the railroad track nearby.
As the years of the 1930’s advanced, life on the village took a change for me. When the war in Europe began, 1939, I had laid aside my schoolbooks and began what I thought was to be my life’s work at the big mill. There were many surprises ahead, many I have written about in this paper. Now that I have included the turkey shoot, I wonder what’s next! It has been a lot of enjoyment, and hearing from many of you has added to my pleasure in the writing. Straight ahead into the year 2017! May your traveling be smooth, but as a caution, watch out for the bumps in the road!
Mr. Shepard is a native of Darlington, S.C., and a current resident of Piedmont, S.C. He is the author of “Mill Town Boy” and “Bruised”. He has been sharing his tales of growing up in Darlington for decades, and we are delighted to share them each week.
His mailing address for cards and letters is: Bill Shepard 324 Sunny Lane, Piedmont, S.C., 29673
