It was late at night. Actually, it was early morning, ‘round about 1:00 am or so. I remember that much, although on a normal ride home, I probably would have remembered very little other than walking in the door and going to bed.
My buddy and I, Kenny Fulk, had spent most of the evening at another friend’s house in Paragon, IN, playing music. We’d made this trek a few times before, but we always had a good time playing guitar at Dan’s house. And so, this Friday night we’d decided to head down again for the jam session.
If you know anything about Paragon, IN, then you know it doesn’t matter where in Paragon you find yourself — either out in the ‘burbs, or in the beautiful, downtown Metropolis — you are out in the sticks. Paragon is one of those small southern Indiana towns that is rural no matter where you go. Even though IN State Road 67 runs right through the middle of town, there’s nothing uptown about it. Paragon is in the woods.
The home we visited when playing guitar together is not in the downtown Metropolis. It is off the beaten path, to say the least. So the drive home, at one in the morning, involves a lot of backwoods roads that, save the headlights of the van, and maybe the moon, are bathed in darkness. “Pitch” black is the term we like to use.
After a night of singing and playing guitar, as the passenger in the van and not old enough to have my license anyway, I was nodding off to sleep, and quick. Kenny was driving.
Just as I was almost out completely, I felt the van swerve suddenly, and vaguely heard Kenny exclaim, “Oh man, that’s a $20 bill!”
The van came to a screeching halt as I was instantly snapped awake. By the time I realized what was going on, Kenny was exiting the van — in a hurry. “Come on!” he yelled at me.
It’s here where I should digress a bit and tell you that Ken Fulk is a hunter. And while he’s good at hunting many things, he is, beyond measure, a raccoon hunter of the highest order. I mean, this guy’s a pro! Raccoon hunting, as you may or may not know, involves hunting with dogs. Coon hounds, to be more precise. Really, one doesn’t necessarily hunt raccoons in and of itself. One actually releases Coon Dogs into the wild, and THEY hunt the raccoons. The hunter, in turn, just chases the dogs around in the woods until they “tree” a raccoon, which means they’ve chased the raccoon up a tree. And now, as the coon tries to hide up in the tree, the hunter then tries to shoot the raccoon out of the tree. It’s big fun.
And Kenny is a master. He’s also a maniac — when it comes to coon hunting, I mean. When he’s hunting raccoons, he’s absolutely ruthless. Yelling and cussing and kicking and screaming, mushing the hounds like an Iditarod racer, rambling head on through briars and bushes and thickets in search of the kill. Kenny is a great man of God, and one of my dearest friends and mentors, and I can say this without any reservation whatsoever: When he’s huntin’ coons, he’s an absolute madman!
Now, you can’t really eat raccoons. Or so I’m told. But raccoon hunting is popular, A) because it’s big fun, and B) there’s money in the pelts. Skin a raccoon, and good coon fur is worth some money.
And that brings us back to our story. It was the aforementioned “…that’s a $20 bill” exclamation that caught my attention. Apparently, as I slipped off into dreamland, an unlucky raccoon had rambled across that Paragon backroad right into the path of Kenny’s van. Recognizing the financial opportunity, Kenny had swerved the van and ran him down!
To secure his bounty, Kenny stopped the van and jumped out to retrieve the dead coon from which he could extract the $20 pelt.
Except he wasn’t dead.
Apparently, the run-in with the van — literally — hadn’t killed the raccoon, but rather had merely wounded him. And now, though injured, the little critter was making a break for it down the dark road. Kenny opened up the back of the van, shoved a big, black flashlight into my hands, and, not having a hunting rifle in the van, grabbed a hatchet. Once again yelling, “come on!” he gave chase.
Now get this: the van — running, with the lights on and the doors open — is sitting cockeyed in the middle of this dark road. Here I am, still barely awake and not really sure what’s going on, following a hatchet-wielding wild man as we’re running right down the middle of the road chasing a limping and retreating raccoon.
At 1:00 am.
In my memory, it looks like a chase from the TV show, Cops. Just as we reach the raccoon, in a last ditch effort to escape, the little critter darts off the road to the right, down a ditch and up the other side, and get’s stopped by a fence. Kenny, of course, heads into the ditch in full chase. Realizing the only option is to turn and fight, the raccoon spins and snarls. Before the little guy can launch the attack, Kenny pounces.
Remember, I’m holding the flashlight.
Kenny leaps upon this spitting and snarling and scratching and biting and screaming and injured critter and starts pounding away at his head with the butt end of the hatchet. Through it’s squeals and Kenny’s grunts, I can hear it’s little skull cracking. And I stood there and watched Kenny beat this thing to death.
When the carnage was over, Kenny turned around, all sweaty and out of breath, and said, “I can get $20 for this guy.” Or something of that nature.
And so, he picks up his prey, and we trudge back to the van. Not surprisingly, not one car had driven by to witness the battle, not that they could have gotten by anyway, what with the van blocking the road as it was.
Lest you forget, we’d been playing guitar together earlier in the evening, singing songs that were loving and touching and meaningful. Now, Kenny dumps this dead, bloody carcass in the back of the van, right alongside our guitars and amps. It was a touching tribute, I thought, to the valiant fight the little guy had waged.
We got back in the van and drove off. We didn’t say much to each other, and I didn’t fall back asleep. I was never really the same after that.
That was over 30 years ago, and in case you’re wondering, Kenny and I are still best friends. He and his family mean the world to me and my family. We still play a lot of music together, and yes, he’s still a maniacal raccoon hunter. This is just one of probably a hundred hilarious stories I can tell involving experiences with Kenny.
Most of my friends, and virtually all of our mutual friends have heard the story about the time Kenny beat a raccoon to death with the butt end of a hatchet in the middle of the night. As it is seared into my memory, I’ve told it many times, often in the presence of Kenny himself just so people know I didn’t make it up. There are other raccoon stories as well. Funny ones. But none as fascinating as this one.
Tonight, Ginger and I had the pleasure of having dinner with him and his wife, along with other great friends of ours. We sat and ate Japanese food together, and laughed as we told old stories. And yes, the infamous raccoon story was mentioned. As we’d all heard it before — and Kenny and I lived it in all it’s glory — I didn’t have to retell it. I just had to mention it. And we laughed.
It occurred to me that I had never written the story down, to save it, you know, for posterity sake. So here it is. And it was all true. I promise.
We look forward to our good friends coming to visit us in our new home. There’s no raccoons where we’re going to live in South Carolina. Well, actually, I don’t know if that’s true or not. What IS true is that where we’re gonna live, its not uncommon for alligators to ramble around, even out in the middle of the road.
And what a story that will be when Kenny tries to get money for some alligator boots!
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