This Saturday, the 26th. Hope you all can come!!
A Duck-Shooting Event
I was at
an outdoor event held in a big convention center in Mt. Home, Arkansas when I
came across a place back in a corner where ducks were flying around in a circle
and kids were shooting at them with a little gun that fired nerf- balls. I couldn’t believe how good those kids
were. I
had this overwhelming urge to stand in line and take my turn, but there were
some things I had to think about.
For one thing, what if I couldn’t hit any? There
were adults standing around watching the kids shoot! What if some of them recognized me… a guy who wrote a book
about duck hunting standing there with a bunch of kids trying to figure out how
to lead a mallard flying in a circle? I chickened out!
But
I will have my chance this weekend when the same rig will be back in the corner
at our grizzled old outdoorsman’s swap meet. Some of you wing- shooters ought to come out and join
me.
That
may be one of the most exciting thing we have ever had happen at our swap meet, except
for the time my executive secretary, Ms Wiggins, tried to cook pancakes and we
had that little fire in the back of her old Datsun pick-up.
If
you have a little money in your pocket you will likely go home broke because
you will never find better buys on old sporting arms, fishing gear,
whatever. I can’t really give a
list of all the things you will find there because it would run right off the end
of this page.
We’ve
held this event for six or seven years at the Brighton Assembly of God
gymnasium and the youth of the church fix biscuits and gravy and coffee and
donuts for breakfast, then hamburgers and pork sandwiches and pie and cake and
drinks for lunch.
So
folks can spend hours there, sitting around our big round tables up front,
drinking coffee and visiting or milling around looking at 40 tables worth of
stuff, some antique stuff, and some new stuff.
This
year Jerry McCoy, who owns a nice outdoor antique store down at Bull Shoals,
will bring about 500 lures, all new and in boxes, which he will sell for three
dollars apiece. That’s less than
half of what the same lure would often sell for at Wal-Mart’s sporting goods
counter.
I
am going to offer my books for ten dollars, a forty percent discount, and inscribe
and sign them, which adds a nickel to their resale value. There are eight of
them now, with the new one published last summer. I also intend to give away a bunch of my Lightnin’ Ridge
outdoor magazines, probably four or five of the recent issues.
I
expect to see all sorts of things there, outdoor art, and taxidermy, furs and game
calls, bows and hand-made wooden gifts. One of the most popular tables is the
one where Dale Olsen sells beautiful wooden cutting boards and there’s another
where Vernon Myers sells his hand-made knives and another where Billy Green
sells hand- made turkey calls.
As
of yet we do not have a table where ladies sell canned goods and baked goods
but I am working on that. And my old college roommate, radio personality Woody
P. Snow, will be there selling his books and artwork. People who have listened to him for years get a kick out of
meeting him.
I would love to talk with you, so come by and
see me if you can. Most of the
calls I will get this week will be from folks wanting directions, so I am
posting a map for you to see.
The
church is at the little community of Brighton, which is about 16 miles north of
Springfield on Highway 13. You
turn there at Highway 215 going east and follow the signs. It is easy to find. Just listen for quacking and the sound
of those nerf-ball guns shooting at ducks!
The
following Saturday, April 2, we will take a day-long trip over to Truman Lake
to hike through a wilderness area and have a noon-time fish fry and look at
eagles and migrating waterfowl on a short pontoon boat excursion. We do that each spring and fall but
here’s what’s new about that.
You
can come up and stay at my Panther Creek lodge on Friday night, get up and have
breakfast with me on Saturday morning and then follow me over to the lake, only
thirty minutes away. That sure
beats leaving your home in the early morning hours to try to get there on
time.
Some
folks come from Arkansas and Kansas to take this trip with us and have to drive
‘a fer piece’. Now we have a place to get a good nights rest and breakfast. Let
me know soon if you want to go along because our pontoon boat will only
accommodate about 15 hikers. My
lodge is big enough for everyone who wants to go.
The
lodging and breakfast is free, the cost of the trip is 40 dollars per person,
and that money goes into our fund for the Panther Creek underprivileged kids
summer camps.
This
is a good place perhaps to thank an awful lot of generous people who have
contributed to our Panther Creek Project. It’s a big tract of land along a
little creek that I am trying to make into a place where churches can bring
trouble youngsters, especially boys without fathers, free of charge.
There
is the cost of annual electricity, insurance and taxes, and we do not solicit
any help with that. If God wants
something to work, and a man does his part, He helps you find ways to come up
with the needed funds. I figure on
holding some special wild game dinners there to raise money to pay the bills.
I
am so sick of seeing these people on television with their phony schemes where
the money they beg for goes into administration, conventions, or somebody’s
pocket. Sometime in May or June we
are going to have a day at the Panther Creek project with a big dinner just for
those people who have wanted to help by donating money.
Two
of those people there will be Robert and Larry Sitton, brothers from Lamar
Missouri who heard me advertise on a Stockton radio station that we wanted to
buy affordable bunk beds for boys to sleep on.
I
still can’t believe what those two did.
They went out and started finding bunk beds, which they fixed up and
painted, delivered to us and assembled them. Seven sets of bunk beds and two single beds, enough to fill
our lodge and cabins for visiting kids.
Those
brothers don’t look like angels, but they must be. Folks in the area heard
about what they were doing and they started giving them new pillows and sheets
and blankets and towels. As much as I hope
to meet all who have helped in so many ways, there is one elderly lady I just
have to go see. She made several
quilts and gave them to us. Do you
know what hand-made quilts are worth?
Can you visualize the hours she put into those precious gifts?
I
look at the world through the eyes of our lop-sided liberal news media and
television and often get the idea that evil people have taken over our
country. Then I meet people like
the Sitton brothers and a hundred others who send ten dollars and tell me to
apply it to the electric bill or a hundred dollars sent to help pay the
insurance bill and I realize that there is another side of the coin.
This
Panther Creek Project has showed me how wonderful common country people can be.
Someday I hope this changes a lot of little boy’s
lives. It has already changed
mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment