George Singleton recounts wonderful times of hunting wild muscadines

Muscadines, aka bullises.

(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere in Time.” The column below, which was titled “Eating my way out an oak limb” was originally published in the Oct. 30, 1975 edition of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)

Every year when the hot sulky days of August are over and the cool crisp air of Indian summer settles over the hills, I think of the  wonderful times that I used to have as a boy hunting muscadines.

I was one of these urges that came over me a few Saturdays ago, and I decided to take to the woods once again. I had seen muscadine vines on many of my excursions through the hills to the north, so it wasn’t long before I was looking up at the finest, ripest, sweetest muscadines I had ever seen.

To be a successful muscadine hunter (some call them bullises) you have to be able to climb almost any kind of tree. And then you have to be able to throw a two-foot long stick, sometimes the distance of 60 or 70 feet straight up. I don’t like to think of myself as getting old, but it didn’t take long before I decided that I had lost some of my talents that I had as a boy.

Slow climb

After a dozen or so unsuccessful attempts to knock the ripe muscadines off the vine by throwing sticks, I decided that if the mountain wouldn’t come to me, I would go to the mountain. Leaving my shoes at the bottom of the tree, I began a very slow and back-straining ascent up the tree, to a limb about 30 feet from the ground where I could reach the muscadines.

I didn’t see a lot of difference in my climbing now, than when I was younger, other than I had to rest about every foot of the way up. And too, I seemed to have put on a little weight here and there, over the years. After reaching the safety of the large limb that I was going to sit on, I caught my breath and began to sample the wild rich taste that was squeezed from the dark firm muscadines that hung in clusters at my finger tips.

The difference between an amateur and a professional muscadine eater is that an amateur puts only one at a time in his mouth. After the juice is crushed from the muscadine, the hull is taken from the mouth by hand.

Crushes muscadines

A professional usually puts from between eight to 20 muscadines in his mouth at one time, depending on the size of his mouth. The professional crushes all of the muscadines at one time, thus enabling him to swallow more juice at a sitting. The professional also is able to discard the hulls out the side of his mouth without losing a drop of the delicious juice.

After an hour or so had passed, I felt that I regained my status as a professional muscadine eater. The bullises were getting harder and harder to reach, as I ate my way farther and farther out on the huge oak limb that I was sitting on. Satisfied that I was good as ever, and feeling quite proud of the success of my venture, I reluctantly left my perch on the strong limb and slid to the ground and my awaiting shoes.

As I bumped along in my jeep on the way home, I felt a little remorse about the many underprivileged kids who had wasted this Saturday afternoon watching television, when they too could have graduated from the ranks of the amateur to the select group of us professionals.

(Singleton, the author of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of 79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime resident of Monroeville, he was born to Vincent William Singleton and Frances Cornelia Faile Singleton, during a late-night thunderstorm, on Dec. 14, 1927 in Marengo County, graduated from Sweet Water High School in 1946, served as a U.S. Marine paratrooper in the Korean War, worked as a riverboat deckhand, lived for a time among Apache Indians, moved to Monroe County on June 28, 1964 and served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from June 28, 1964 to Dec. 14, 1987. He was promoted from the enlisted ranks to warrant officer in May 1972. For years, Singleton’s columns, titled “Monroe County history – Did you know?” and “Somewhere in Time” appeared in The Monroe Journal, and he wrote a lengthy series of articles about Monroe County that appeared in Alabama Life magazine. It’s believed that his first column appeared in the March 25, 1971 edition of The Monroe Journal. He also helped organize the Monroe County Museum and Historical Society and was also a past president of that organization. He is buried in Pineville Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and all of Singleton’s other columns are available to the public through the microfilm records at the Monroe County Public Library in Monroeville. Singleton’s columns are presented here each week for research and scholarship purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work and memory alive.)