Dog_Posted_Donovan_Richard_LufkinTX_14May2020_Reel4011.mp3

Richard Donovan [00:00:03] "Pines won't grow where my...", let's see, "pines won't grow where my dogs don't go", and those kinds of sayings that they said back in those days. But yeah, that was mostly in the 40s, and the very early 50s that that attitude prevailed.

Richard Donovan [00:00:15] But the timber companies were trying to force people off their land. You know, they, they had hunted that land for all their years and used it just like it was theirs.

Richard Donovan [00:00:26] Well, then the timber companies come along and start painting it, put paint around their land is the first thing they did. Temple's paint was blue, and Angelina County Lumber Company's paint was orange, and government land is, was red. And you could hunt on government land all right, but the national forest had red paint around their land.

Richard Donovan [00:00:48] And so but then they put "posted" signs in addition to that paint that they put up, and they wouldn't let you come on.

Richard Donovan [00:00:58] But then they would turn around and lease that land out to hunting clubs. And you could be a member of that hunting club, and that way you would defend the company's land against me. I mean, you would. You were a member of that club and you wouldn't want me coming on there. So if I came on on there with my dogs or something, you would report me to the authorities, because you were now a member of that club and that was part of your club. You paid money to be a member of it. So you'd have the timber companies enforce the law of no hunting on their land.

Richard Donovan [00:01:38] And so then I'm real resentful of that, because you've, the timber companies, have boxed me out. And I would find a place that, particularly, I'd want to find a place where the little pine seedlings were up maybe a foot or so tall, you know. Then I would slip in there I'd set that on fire, and I'd burn up several thousand acres that you just got through planting, or several hundred acres of it, that you had just got through planting, or the timber companies had just got through planting.

Richard Donovan [00:02:07] And it was revenge.

Richard Donovan [00:02:11] And a lot of that went on, an awful lot of it.