Dudleys Diary

Years ago one late spring or early summer night, my wife and my father in law went down to the farm in East Texas to go look for deer. I had a Q-Beam spotlight and we did not have any guns with us, we were not hunting, just looking. We did not see any deer at the farm so we took off down a dirt road that crossed the Neches River. We had the top off the Jeep, I was driving and my wife was in the front passenger seat and my father in law "Sparky" was in the back seat. I was going real slow in first gear. Sparky had taken his boots off and was standing on the back seat in his sock feet. He was holding the light in his right hand and was slowly scanning the pasture looking for deer. We did not know it but we were approaching a small shotgun shack just down the road. Suddenly without warning we heard POW, POW...POW POW POW. Oh Shit somebody was up in that house shooting at us with a .22! I hit the gas pedal and floored it trying to get the hell out of that place. I turned the headlights off and drove down the narrow dirt road about 100 yards before I slowed down and stopped. I just knew sparky had to have fallen out of the Jeep and I turned around and Sparky was curled up in the back seat. I asked him how he kept from falling out when I took off and he said he lost his balance when I took off and he lost his grip on the roll bar but he somehow managed to stay in the Jeep as he was falling. I think the spare tire may have saved him from being ejected out the back. We went home the long way after a several mile detour as we all agreed we were not going to go back down the road by the river. We have no idea who was in the house but they did not want us around and we were more than happy to oblige them at that point. I remember hearing the bullets striking the tree branches overhead. The next morning I went out and looked the Jeep over and was relieved there were no bullet holes. I guess who ever was doing the shooting was just trying to scare us. They did a good job of it too, you never feel more alive than when you are being shot at. Trust me on that one!