Drum Circle history story...............

Way back in elementary school I wanted to be a trapper. A friend’s dad was a janitor at a school and brought us crows he had shoot and we would skin and stuff them. As time went on I kept up on my skills learned back then, so you figure I would be the natural to put a hide on our new BIG drum from the log we had gotten as a gift. I remember Gary calling a local butcher shop and asking about cow hides. As it turned out they were just getting ready to take the skin off of one and we could buy it now. So, Gary and I headed to Woodlake, to but a “green” cowhide for 35 bucks. When we got the skin, it was so big and heavy it took a forklift to put it in the truck, so far so good, we hadn’t even touched it yet. As we headed back up to Three Rivers, it lay in the back of the truck, still steaming and warm from the cow! We had rounded up several of the drum circle gents to help and we were going to prepare the hide to sing again on our drum body. When we got there it took several of us just to lay it out with the flesh side up, it was as big as someone’s living room floor. It looked like a murder scene, the skin all red and covered in blood. It just so happened we had the OJ trial going on the radio at the same time! All the volunteers opted out after this gruesome experience and it got down to Tom, Gary and me to do the grim task at hand, scrape the flesh off of the hide. What I really remember is the overwhelming smell…….It stunk really bad! We wore surgical gloves and held our breath during the several hour hits we took to clean the flesh and fat off of that hide. Finally, after mounting it on a big iron hoop we had it dried and we were able to put it on and it became the Biggest Drum in Tulare County!! That’s the story of the first head, the one in the picture now on its second head we need to put another on, as many of you know that the one currently on is cut up. Anyone have a cow hide we can have????