The Trapper’s Helper

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Instead of delivering newspapers like most young boys, my entrepreneurial brother, Harold, trapped muskrats and beaver to sell their skins to a St. Louis, Missouri company. He set his traps at 4 a.m. before commuting to his privet school. He employed me to pick them up because I went to a local school and got home around 2:30 p.m. each afternoon. 

So off I went into the woods two or three times a week to collect his animals wearing my father’s huge hunting jacket with BIG pockets.  

Even though I was only seven, I carried a pistol and knew how to use it! I would walk for more than a mile, carrying heavy, wet, dead animals in those big pockets. I was very proud to help my loving borther–and he paid me a nickel instead of a dime because it was bigger!