I measured success by empties left in the grass,
And stains on my shirt sleeves,
And feathers lofting across backyards,
Not just mine, but others' as well.

Failure was three,
yellow or red,
slipped inside, then pulled from within.
Same three from weeks behind,
Same three weekend next.

Failure was a pop in your ear,
and a kick to your shoulder,
And a straggling descent,
Just out of sight,
Just out of reach.

Finer is success
with its taste in your mouth,
And smoke twisting up
From a fire like you're Abel,
As you give thanks
and regards.

The Old Man and the Boy

Many times I have sat here and tried to write about looking down through a scope and seeing deer, or looking over a bead and seeing bird, trying to explain why and what it felt like to do so, but...

I've read the Green Hills of Africa by Papa, and thought, that was it. And it is a great work yet through the eyes of a grown man full of jealousies and wit. But this newly read book, this work by Robert Ruark, makes poetry of the hunt and tells of the whys and the hows that I haven't really been able to confer with you just so.

I can't tell you about it without reading it to you...

The gist of it is the author telling stories and memories of his grandfather when the author was a young boy. We see a glimpse of Brunswick County, North Carolina in the thirties, and how they made their way hunting and fishing and living before times had a chance to change.

Of course the Old Man is wise and the boy eager. So we learn about hunting from the Old Man just as the boy did. For those of us who hunt, we read things in print that we've only felt, or understood without ever having been told, yet recognize immediately when read.

And for those that do not hunt, there's the picture painted for you of how it feels, and what it means to be a sportsman and hunter and to take part in the ritual that still struggles on in the face of urban development and anti-firearm views that are pervading this over-crowded country.

I reckon I can't read it to you so I'll just grab and show you quotes that strike the "tuning fork" in my heart:


The boy on an early hunt gets schooled in gun safety. That too is an early subject for all hunters and the Old Man sums it up best with:

'The older you get the carefuller you'll be. When you're as old as I am, you'll be so scared of a firearm that every young man you know will call you a damned old maid. But damned old maids don't shoot the heads off their friends in duck blinds or fire blind into a bush where a deer walked in and then go pick up their best buddy with a hole in his chest.'

He writes of a problem most men still struggle with, most men who were boys too:

Like most boys, I was as bloodthirsty as a cannibal. I got my first air gun when I was just six years old, and the robins and the blue jays and the catbirds and the rain crows really took a pounding. I shot everything from English sparrows to the neighbor's cat. When we had nothing better to do, my cousin Roy and I went out into the woods and played Indians and shot each other from ambush. Why somebody didn't lose an eye will always be a source of wonder to me.

A big, old, sassy mocker lived in the magnolia tree alongside our house, and he used to sing late at night in the moonlight. He would scatter those notes around like a fisherman on Saturday-night payoff. He was a pet of my grandmother's; so it was natural when I took down the Daisy one day and removed him from the concert business, the Old Man took down my pants and applied a very limber lath to my behind. It was one of the few times I ever had a hand laid on me, and it made an impression.

'Hunting,' the Old Man said when my noise had slacked off, 'is the noblest sport yet devised by the hand of man. There were mighty hunters in the Bible, and all the caves where the cave men lived are full of carvings of assorted game the head of the house drug home. If you hunt to eat, or hunt for sport for something fine, something that will make you proud, and make you remember every single detail of the day you found him and shot him, that is a good thing too.

'But if there's one thing I despise it's a killer, some blood-crazy idiot that just goes around bam-bamming at everything he sees. A man who takes pleasure in death just for death's sake is rotten somewhere inside, and you'll find him doing things later on in life that'll prove it. I realize all young'uns get that first phase when they want to carve up desks and bust windows and shoot mockingbirds, but I aim to see you grow out of it, or I'll have every last inch of hide off your rear end.

'I want you to go to bed tonight and stay awake thinking about the mockingbird that sung so pretty and your grandmother loved, and then think of that little mess of dirty feathers even the cat didn't want. And then think a little bit about this nice air rifle that Santa Claus brought you to learn to shoot with, and wish you had it back again.'
Whereupon the Old Man took the little Daisy and busted it over his knee, and threw it over into the bushes where he had thrown the carcass of the mockingbird. That was Lesson One.

And I submit to you that another NC native, Andy Griffith, probably read this in Outdoor Life and thought it'd make a good episode.

Well, I can't keep stealing quotes or Henry Holt and Company, LLC are gonna have a cow. But I will close my mentioning that Ruark writes of fishing too, which though not as dear to my heart as hunting, fishing still makes me smile when my kids and I catch a mess of fish, then deep fry the hapless.

He says to the boy:

'Now, then, son,' the Old Man said, 'we ain't goin' to talk any, because fishin' is a silent sport and a lot of conversation scares the fish and wrecks the mood. What I want you yo do is set there and fish, and when the fish ain't bitin' I want you to listen and look and think. Think about heaven and hell and just how long is hereafter. Look around you and don't take nothing for granted. Look at everything you see and listen to everything you hear, just like you were brand-new come from another world, and think about all those things and how they got there. Now let's fish.'

See it seems the boy had been ditching Sunday school and had been caught shooting craps in the church basement, so the Old Man saw fit to take him fishing to jog the boy's perspective a little. And it seems to work, for the boy, Ruark, writes a little further on in the chapter:

...I got to thinking about eternity, and how long something that never ended would be, and I got to thinking about how much trouble Somebody went to, to make things like cocoons that butterflies come out of, and seasons and rain and moss on trees, and frogs and fish and possums and coons and quail and flowers and ferns and water and moons and suns and stars and winds. And boys. Especially boys.

I have a boy myself, and this summer he'll be working the pages of this beautiful book before he gets on the odious Wii or the PsP or leaves the house to shoot his friends with airsoft guns...yes, somethings never change.

-rbm

2009 and what I learned last year

Early on I learned about facebook thanks to the powers that be that were trying to organize our 25th year high school reunion or as I like to call it, Brett's drunken night out. So thanks for that Lisa Cook and Keith Dillon. It's awakened the frustrated writer in me again.

I learned that we human people can get parvo viruses too! Hell, you beat the fever and you come out of that, only to get the rash. Then you itch like hell but then you beat the rash too, only to have the most ungodly joint pain you've ever had in your life!

I gobbled street vicodin like a fiend and was left alone in a house where I really had trouble feeding myself for one weekend. Anyway, they call it fifths disease and it was no fun.

I also learned that chicken pox can come back to haunt you! I thank my immune system for beating it in the second or third grade AND for keeping this new hell out of sight of the rest of the world though it looks now like someone shot my right butt cheek with a .410 shotgun.

I learned that money can buy happiness. We've always known it; it's only the ones who do not posses it who say it cannot buy happiness. I reckon I always knew that.

I'm in a poetic mood...

You Don't Have to Read It 1

Who here feels, like me, that you're living in the wrong time?
Like your worth shouldn't be measured by 1040's and sheepskins (which rarely relates to one's chosen profession), but by the wits you live upon.

How well I can manage my vehicle in a crisis and afterwards repair the damage I have inflicted should be my sole benchmark, not a long-sleeved T-shirt a customer asks us to wear so as not to appear sub-contracted.

I won't get started on self reliance since anyone that knows me knows I'm rough and ready to eat your dog if I have to.
The redneck song says to be proud that you can run a trot line or skin a deer or be polite to total strangers and I have to agree.

Should I need to get on a phone and explain myself to the powers that be? It's irritating to say the least. trust me, I always say.

The benefits of living in this age of soulless consumers are many. For I cannot remember the last time I split some wood to stay warm inside. I don't even have the shutzpah to mow my own grass, but I can. And of course, I thank those before me for modern medicine though they failed my parents.

But what a treat it would be to get up, do work, real work with one's hands then to be paid with real money in lieu of promissary notes (checques) and promises to, "take care of you guys soon."

Then not have to share with governmental policies that I was never consulted upon before "asked" to participate within.

I can make my own policies as to whom I am indebted. Indeed, I can also choose charities with great ease as they all three live closely with me here in my warm home.

I felt like writing so I did. And I'm sorry if it isn't brilliant.

And, yes, I know I would die if I had to put hay up all summer long for the winter so the milk cow would give us milk all year and the horse would truck us around all year. I know my gardening would take up copious amounts of time equalled only by the canning of produce, again for the winter leaving little time for fun.

But, I'd have a hell of a house and barn and a literal ton of meat in the smokehouse...

Brett's quick and easy FREE cures

I am not a doctor. I am just a simple carpenter. But:

If you have gas, fart.
If you have diarrhea, poop, lots, then fast a day.
If you're bloated, burp (or stop eating/drinking)
If you have heartburn, sit or stand up straight. Drink copious amounts of water and eat a biscuit.
If you have greasy hair, wash it more often.
If you have dry hair, don't wash it as often.
If you're itchy, scratch (lightly, with your wife's hairbrush).
If you can't sleep, make yourself tired during the day--exercise*.
If you're constipated, drink MORE water, eat MORE fresh, raw jalapenos, run a mile, wait four hours, get a good book, then go in there and do what you have to do.
If Tiger Woods' personal life makes you sick, then turn your TV off.
If you can't get out of bed in the morning, then hit the sack earlier.

*of course i don't mean walk the dog around the block...i mean sweat or at least make your heart pound.

Well, that's it for now. Next week I'll tackle PMS and erectile dysfunction...and how they often coincide.

-rbm

Typewriter work

Dusted off the hand-banger again, been so long. Nice to know i haven't lost my touch.

The WIld

Wilderness breathes,
And shirks sickly people,
With belching machines,
That choke down the weakly.

Laws of the Greenhouse
Predate the Carta,
But bright blinking panels,
Kill just as quick.

Wilderness hides,
You mustn't just chase it.
Sit on a sidewalk,
Until you can't take it.

Laws of the Greenhouse
Will make you a target,
Lunch from your wallet,
The magic of plastic.

Wilderness hides,
In with Greenhouses,
Not dreamy lakesides,
In grandmothers' houses.