dontravis.com blog post #623
The impetus of the story for the next two weeks is sort of complicated. My father has been gone for many, many years (he died of a heart attack when he was only fifty-three), but for some reason, he’s been on my mind a great deal lately. Most of my memories of him are not great ones. We all know some marriages are a mixed bag, but I don’t believe most of us consider father/son relationships that way. Ours was. For the most part, I blame it on my childhood tuberculosis and dismiss it as: he was physical; I was cerebral. Naturally, it’s far more complicated than that. The following doesn’t attempt to explain our tortured relationship, merely highlights a bit of it.
****
BUDDY,
THE GRAY SQUIRREL
A Biographical
Story in Two Parts
My
father was a sportsman. Football, basketball, baseball, it didn’t matter, so
long as it had a ball attached to the game.
I was not.
Dad was a man’s man, hunter,
fisherman, gambler, drinker, good-old-boy, hail-fellow-well-met.
I was not.
I was tubercular—at aged
six—and grew up as far away from sports fields as I could get. The library was
my dueling arena, not courts and turfs and fields. Any wonder then we grew up
with a strained relationship?
Not that he didn’t try. Tried
to make me into his image, that is. I don’t know how many times he dragged me
out of bed and hustled me off to sit—cold and unhappy—in some boat with a
fishing line over the side wondering what I’d do if some poor bass grabbed my
bait. Never happened. I do remember catching a sun perch once, but that was the
extent of it.
The best fishing trip I ever
took—one I about halfway enjoyed—was on a warm summer day and extended
overnight. Turned out, it was an excuse for a poker game. Dad and five or six
of his buddies came in off the lake and started playing, with me left to stare
at the men, the woods, the water, or whatever. I was too chicken to go
exploring on my own, especially after nighfall. But I soon discovered something
to occupy my time and hold my interest. One of the players asked me to bring
him a beer from the cooler. I did, and was rewarded with a one-dollar tip. Someone
else asked, and rewarded me similarly. By the time I ran out of steam and headed
for bed in the back of Dad’s pickup, I had fifty of those one-dollar bills
stuffed in my pockets. That was more money than I’d ever seen in my whole life.
I was rich. But as soon as I settled into my blankets for what was left of the
night, my dad showed up and talked me out of it, saying he’d had a bad run of
luck and needed it to finance his recovery. Needless to say, that was the last
I saw of my fifty dollars. Last mention of it too.
Frog gigging (a big thing down
in my part of Oklahoma) was the worst. Somebody’d stab one of the unfortunate
creatures, and sometimes I’d have to crawl into the water to make sure it was
firmly impaled before drawing it into the boat. Then—ugh!—I’d have to rip the
poor frog’s carcass off the prongs. Not for me.
My father managed to get me at
bat in a softball game once—as a substitute for some other guy. The pitcher
threw, I closed my eyes and swung… and hit a two bagger. I was so shocked, they
had to tell me to run. The pitcher threw two more outs, so I never got past
second base.
Dad insisted I go him hunting
with him, and the worst jaunts were for squirrels. He hunted squirrels in the
cold of autumn, and in the mountains, the falls were cold. I was skinny as a
rail, and the wind whipped right through me, didn’t matter how many layers of
clothing I had on. Miserable from start to finish.
On one such trip, Dad planted
me at the foot of a big oak and told me to go on watch for the squirrel we
heard chattering but couldn’t see. He went on to a spot he considered more
likely and was soon out of sight.
I sat on the cold ground, as uncomfortable
as could be, and concentrated on keeping warm. An impossible task, by the way. I
had no interest in or intention of watching for that noisy critter hidden
somewhere in the tree limbs. But after a while, when I caught movement in the
branches, I automatically threw up my single-shot, twenty-two rifle, closed my
eyes, and pulled the trigger.
To my astonishment, the little
rodent fell out of the tree and landed on the ground with a plop. That’s where
my dad found me, standing over the dead squirrel gaping at it. He’d heard the
gunshot and came to investigate. Should have been a real moment for me. A
turning point for us. I’d been man enough (even though I was still a child) to bag
and carry home dinner for my family.
Not for me. I’d killed
something I didn’t want to kill, and now it lay still and stiff and bleeding on
the ground. He made me gingerly pick it up by the tail and put it in a bag with
another couple of dead animals, and we went home.
That evening, we had squirrel
for dinner. And my poor victim was served to me on a platter. The critter was almost
inedible because my lucky shot had entered one eye and run down the spine, splintering
vertebrae throughout the pitiful creature. It’s a wonder I didn’t get lead
poisoning from the few bites I managed to get down. My dad, of course, ate my
victim with relish.
I only recall going on one other squirrel hunt in my life, and that was in the following spring. Next week, I’ll tell you about that one and introduce you to Buddy the Gray Squirrel.
****
Hope you stuck
with me on my journey back into my past. The second part of this particular
trip is much lighter.
See you next Thursday.
Now my
mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say… so
say it!
A link
to The Cutie-Pie Murders:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ambxgy7e5ndmimk/CutiePieMurders%5BThe%5D.zip?dl=0
My
personal links:
Email: don.travis@aol.com.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3
See you next Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment