Fall Just Feels Right

The Old Man has been spending some time out in the garage over the past few days.  The weather is finally beginning to break a little and my motivation has started to sneak back like a dog who knows he shouldn't have turned over the neighbor's garbage can.  Every year the heat of summer gathers me up by the collar and smacks me around until I just want to crawl back into the house and beg for mercy.  The first few cooler days of fall become my heroin and I clamor for more.

The Old Farmers' Almanac says we're going to have a colder and snowy-er winter.  I believe them, for their accuracy rate is difficult to dispute.  Other substantiating evidence supports their theory.  The acorns  falling on my garage roof from the two huge red oaks that shadow my workshop both startle and comfort me.  Startling because of their unannounced randomness and comforting because of their prediction of nature's care for her own creatures.  The leaves are just beginning to "color up" as the old people used to say.  The air is crisper, the sky bluer, the apples are redder, and the plants are starting to hang their heads as they prepare for their hibernation.  The anticipation of a roaring fire on a day when sleet pecks on the windows and darkness comes early, generates an inner coziness.

My dad was not an avid hunter.  In his earlier days, he trained bird dogs and did some quail hunting back when "Mr. Bob White" was plentiful, but never moved up to game larger than squirrel and rabbit.  After I came along, he attempted to pass along some of his lore to me.  I confess, some "took" but most did not.

In Bedford, "fall" and "hunting" were as tightly wed as The Old Man and his Miss Martha. Hunting was a big deal when I was a boy.  I'm sure it still is, even in spite of the encroachment of progress into some of the areas I remember so vividly.
I remember going out with Dad on his quest for "pot meat"......rabbits...from time to time.  We got a few and Mom would fry them up.  Hard to beat, as I recall.  Down both sides of the backbone is some of the tastiest  meat I've ever had.

I recall my first shooting lesson with the old single-shot 20 gauge.  Schooled on a steady diet of Saturday westerns at the Liberty Theater, I figured I had that shooting thing licked.  I was 11 or 12, and as you know, knew all there was about everything.  Dad said, "Well then, OK, what kind of pattern can you put on that fence post, there?"  I said, "Watch", and proceeded to sight 'er in.  BLAM!  The fence post was unscathed and my right eye was watering like it had been poked with a stick.  A right proper "shiner" was already starting to form.

Dad said, "I could have told you not to wrap your thumb over the breech, but to lay it along side, but you seemed to know that, I thought".  "At any rate, I guess you'll remember that from now on, right?".  Then he put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Are you alright?".  That's when I cried.

I don't hunt now.  But I love the feel and the smell of a well oiled and maintained shotgun.  I still have that 20 gauge, and on the rare occasions when I have the opportunity to shoot it, the smell of gunpowder is as enticing as any holiday kitchen aroma.

The acorns on my roof keep falling and sometimes seem to send a message......"Are you alright?".
Yes, I am.