Uncle Dale and the wolf calls

My father's next older sister married a man from very humble beginnings who, through perseverance and hard work, gained his doctorate and was for over two decades the head of the Entomology Department at LSU. Even though he was Dr. L. D. Newsom, an eminent scientist, he was great fun to have as an uncle for several reasons. He was great with children and he could find bugs anywhere and could tell you everything you wanted to know about them. For example, he taught my sons that the fuzzy black spiders you see in Arkansas are not tarantulas, but wolf spiders, and are harmless. So, he got my boys to play with them by letting them crawl up their arms, much to my wife's dismay.

My grandparents lived near Magazine, Arkansas, and at one of our family gathering,s some of us children were playing out in the yard. (My grandparents had 32 grandchildren.) One of us noticed a sound coming from down in the woods that sounded ominous, so we all gathered at the back discussing what we ought to do about it. It was a wolf call - no mistaking it. (We were not old enough to know there are no timber wolves in Arkansas.) We shivered and shook, but finally through courage derived from numbers, we decided to walk timidly down the lane to investigate the noise. As we got closer, the "wolf" finally could hold it no longer and broke out into a guffaw. It was Uncle Dale, who was delighted that he had been able to put over his trick. We loved it, and loved him for it. He tried it a couple of years later, however, and we remembered and saw through the trick.


Dr. L. D. Newsom (Uncle Dale)