On those rare occasions when Kevin and his brother Tim didn’t attend school, they went hunting together on their dad’s farm located in Raywick. They walked along a country road that ended in a cul-de-sac, where they hopped a gate and headed toward the river bottom, Tim packed his Stevens 410 single-shot shotgun and Kevin always had his reliable Remington nylon-66 .22 LR(rifle). The fescue was about waist high and very close to cutting for hay but about a hundred yards past the vaulted gate up sprang a bird, Kevin in a split second raised his rifle, aimed, and fired and feathers scattered everywhere and the bird was dead before it hit the ground. Tim screamed out, “ you got him!” Kevin grinned all day because it was a real piece of shooting if not a remarkable shot, he in a nanosecond raised his rifle and shot a small bird with a .22 rifle and not a scatter-gun, still humbles his brother Tim to have witnessed this feat, Jesse James had nothing on Hondo.
The element of time expired and whence life begat that miracle it bestowed upon this blessed family. The Hardesty family were proud, honest, and diligent, yet, the only weakness was they were poor though very rich in family values and love. They managed to live in unity, unmoved and undivided by poverty and greed. The farm rearing consisted of watching the life of corn turning Lincoln green in the Springtime that towered above the fence rows toward the sun in the humid Summer and then turning into a majestic death of gold in the late Fall, this consumed their bucolic dull world and somehow took the blow of depression away from the woes of their alcoholic father.
The brothers often had chores to do, feed the cattle and mend fences but the very first time Kevin showed any weakness was when Tim and he were cleaning out a matted and vine-riddled fence roll when Kevin became very ill, this scared Tim to death, and he thought, was the cistern water foul and poisoned? But, he too drank from this well, Tim pondered, was it my cooking, yet, we ate the same biscuits, eggs, and bacon. Tim ran for help about a half a mile back home, Kevin was too sick to move, Tim told his dad and they both returned in their 1965 Chevrolet green truck and their dad immediately took action, loaded Kevin up, and headed back to Bardstown, farm work was over with for now, the school opened anyway in two weeks.
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