This story is true and it happen either right before I was born or right after I was born.
My father Royce Kyle "Bunk" Jackson was over at Maw's house. I need to add at this point that Maw and my Great Grand Father Rufus Edward "Buster" Ashworth, mostly raised my father.
The story goes this way. There was two brothers my fathers age, that was passing in front of Maw's house. They were traveling at a high rate of speed for a gravel road. Back then they had "Open Range". This is where all the cattle and other animals had free run of the woods.
These two men hit one of our family cows and killed it and never even stopped. They just kept right on going. Well that is where the problem started. Back then if you did something like that, most folks would have stopped and said they were sorry and also most of the time help dispose of the animal and nothing more would have been said. But no, these two men didn't think they needed to stop, much less say they were sorry for what had happen. My father was very "Hot Headed" as they would say, it didn't take much to set him off. He was very easy to be made mad. When these two didn't stop. He took off and ran and jumped into my his old 56 chevy truck. And as natural as anything, Maw was right behind him and in the truck right along with him. They took off after the two brothers. They caught up to them down the road a bit. Some how they got the two brothers to stop. My father jumped out of his truck and ran to the driver door of the other truck and proceeded to pull the driver out and as the said in those days, "Started Whipping His Butt".
The other brother wasn't going to let that happen. So he got out and started around the truck to help his brother out. Well he didn't get to far, Maw saw what was about to happen. Now, to picture this you have to know what Maw looked like. She was no more than Five foot to five foot one inch tall and never weighed over 100 pounds. She was hard to anger, but when angered she was a hand full to handle, even more so when it came to her family. Well, when the other man bailed out to help his brother, Maw jumped out of the truck and reached over into the bed of the truck and grabbed the double bit ax that almost everyone in those days carried. She ran up the other man and drew the ax back and told him, "Child take another step and Maw will chop your head off". She held him in check until my father got through with the other brother.
She was such a small woman, sweet, lovable,kind, and loving. But when it came to a fight she could hold her ground no matter who it was she was facing.
