A Place Called Pucky Huddle

Back in the early 1990's, we contracted with the U.S. Forest Service to do a bevy of road surveys. These were basically compass/chain/clinometer surveys, down existing log roads, in preparation to widen/cut/fill/ditch them into public access roads. 

Some of these roads were in the Salem-Potosi district of the Mark Twain, and it was there, we ran on to the most unique store I'd ever seen.

We were about 30 miles northeast of Salem Missouri (or 30 miles southeast of Cuba - not Castro's) at a wide spot in the road called Davisville. An old store stood at the busy "downtown" area, which reminded me of the old fashioned country stores from my youth.

Pucky Huddle store as I remember it in the early 1990's 

We walked into the store, and at first glance, its appearance and smell was like the other stores I had visited. At second glance (actually a bug-eyed stare), something was definitely different.

Down the middle of the open area of the store, there were two long tables with 3"-4" "sides", setting end to end. And on those tables...

There was heaped every kind of new merchandise you can imagine. Pairs of new blue jeans, new skillets and pans, cans of pork-n-beans, corn and tomato juice, boxes of candy bars that were just ripped open and thrown up on the pile, shoes in the box, boxes of corn flakes, sacks of dog food... If you wanted a particular item, you just had to root through the pile to get what you needed! It gave a whole new meaning to the term "Rummage Sale"!!

With stunned looks on our faces, we wandered to the back of the store. And got another surprise...

There was a post office area in the back-left part of the store and a sign above it that read "Post Office - Pucky Huddle, Missouri"!

The post-mistress was a short, feisty, older lady and when we questioned her about the name, she replied "Well, it IS officially Davisville, but we can trace Pucky Huddle back farther."

I worked on a project near Davisville recently and detoured over to show my crew the Pucky Huddle store. I didn't know that the old store had burnt down in 2013. A new store has been built on the old foundation site but alas, it was no longer in business.

I found a few pictures on Facebook of the store building which show it in the different stages of its "life". (I searched for the owner(s) of these pictures to request permission to publish but was unable to locate them.)

A Very Fowl Comet

 

This is Merriam-Webster's definition of a Comet: "A celestial body that appears as a fuzzy head usually surrounding a bright nucleus, that has a usually highly eccentric orbit, that consists primarily of ice and dust and that often develops one or more long tails when near the sun."

However, if you want to hear Ray-Ray's definition, you'll hafta keep reading!

A few days ago, I decided to burn a big brush/trash pile behind our house. Over the course of a month or so, we had accumulated several large limbs, cardboard boxes, sacks of old clothes, boards and other trash.

Unbeknownst to me, we had also collected something else in the big mound of refuse...

We had several "free range" chickens that had been roaming around our property that I guess belonged to our neighbors to the west. And... it appears that one of these chickens was sitting on a nest, somewhere up in the middle of the BRUSH PILE!

I grabbed my lighter fluid and proceeded to soak three or four places around the pile, then touched it off with my trusty lighter.

For a minute or so, nothing happened except the flames went higher and higher. When the inferno reached fifteen to twenty feet in the air, something spectacular happened.

Out of the scorching, blazing, pile of fire and brimstone - A Very Fowl Comet appeared!!!

It was a flapping, squawking, smouldering, smoking white comet that came shooting out of the flames, headed for Arkansas or other parts south!!!

This was all pretty hilarious!... Until I realized that this flaming terrestrial comet was flying right into the neighbors dry hayfield!! Yikes!!!

Ole Leghorn must have burnt out before hitting the ground and I haven't seen nary a chicken around the place for a few days now!