A Slice of Life
Bill Lites
When I was around 6 years old our family took one of their many summer vacations to the beautiful Alto Frio Encampment near Leakey, Texas. Even though the Encampment was established in the early 1920’s, by the mid 1940’s, it was still fairly primitive. Our rustic cabin furnished only the basic eating and sleeping needs.
The south Texas summers were hot, so one of the joys of the trip was the afternoon swim in the Frio River. On this particular day, Mother, Dad, my younger sister and I headed down to one of our favorite swimming holes on the banks of the river. Being a frisky lad, I was running out in front of the others. As I reached the edge of the water, and started to wade in, I felt something on my left shin and reached down to brush away what I thought was a deer fly. My hand came back with blood on it. About this time, my dad yelled for me to stop, he ran up to me and began to wrap a bandana tightly around my thigh. He tied it with a knot then picked me up and ran for the cabin. I had no idea what was going on, but my dad and my mother who had been right behind me, had seen what happened.
Evidently, I had scared or stepped on a snake (water moccasin) in the shallows and he bit me, and then he was gone. When we got to the cabin, my dad used a razor blade to make small cuts over the fang holes. He then sucked on the wound to get the poison out. He picked me up again, rushed to the caretaker’s house, and asked him to take us to the hospital. I remember feeling dizzy and a little sick to my stomach, but that could have been from the smelly exhaust fumes coming through the firewall of that old Model A pickup we rode in.
The closest hospital was too far away, so we ended up at a doctor’s office where the doctor used a glass suction device to remove any poison that might be left. Hardly anything came out and the doctor praised my dad for having done a great job.
I learned later that my dad had been a medic at the front during WWI and I understood that was how he knew what to do in case of snake bite. I also learned that sucking the poison out of my leg, could have been dangerous for him because of the fillings in his teeth. If there had been even a pinhole cavity around in one of them, the poison could have entered and made him sick or even killed him. Of course, he wasn’t thinking about himself at the time, only me, the little boy that he loved so much. Thanks, Dad.
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