Before I Got Old…

 

I was 22 years old when I hunted with a compound bow for the first time.  Ben Pearson himself gave it to me when I visited a plant of his in Pine Bluff Arkansas.  Sure enough, like the rest of them back then in the seventies I was married and had two little girls.  I can darn near still pull it to a full draw… but not quite

 

            In Dad and Grandpa McNew’s country pool hall, the old timer’s they called the front bench regulars were the same age then that I am now.  I recognize the similarities in them that I now figure is normal for me and others in their seventies.  Out of 15 or 20 of those men who fit into the category of ‘old-timers’, there were men who still coon-hunted, trapped and paddled down the piney.  Then there were some who could have, but didn’t.  

            That was a puzzlement for me, a thirteen-year-old kid back then who always wanted to and could have, but had the problem of what Dad would allow. I didn’t always have enough money either when it came to buying ammo, and many of the old timers had that problem too. And of course there were those who would have been out in the woods or on the river as they had always been, but age gave them a bad back or a ruint knee or an ‘ol lady’ who wouldn’t let them waste the money.  None of those fellows called their wives a ‘wife’. Along the front bench in various conversations they were collectively called ‘my ol’ lady’.  Like “ I went to church yest’iday with my ol’ lady,” or …”My ol’ lady made some biscuits this mornin’ thet you could have used to hunt rabbits with.”  

            A few of those men still had a great affection for their wives, like my grandpa.  Some were single and didn’t like women.  Some were single and did like women but couldn’t find any who liked them, and some were married and liked all the women but the ones they were married to.  But several of those old timers were healthy enough to hunt coons all night and climb up and down Ozark hills until daylight and still come in and milk cows or fix fences. Those men got along with their old ladies better.  I noted also that those men were the ones who didn’t smoke or chew or drink alcohol.  So I never did any of those things either and I sure enough can hunt coons all night if I just had a good coon dog.  You get to where you don’t want to do that as bad though.  Maybe it has to do with fur falling to such low prices.  A friend of mine who use to love to hunt ducks wouldn’t go with me last year because he said he wasn’t as mad at ‘em as he once was. Older hunters don’t need that explained.

            As I said, when it came to wandering around in the woods trying to find a covey of quail or a rabbit or a squirrel or duck sitting on the creek, there were those back then who still could but wouldn’t, and there were those who still wanted to but couldn’t and those who still did it but wondered why at the end of the day, when they couldn’t hardly get their boots off or put wood in the stove.  I am starting to fit into that last category.  Skinning and frying a squirrel becomes more of a job than fixing a baloney sandwich.

              Deer hunting is something old timers did ‘til they couldn’t drive into the woods and carry a rifle.  Leaning against a tree was no problem if you had brung along a cushion.  Ol Bill killed a nice buck when he was really old…just a few months before he went to glory.  His wife was still alive I think.  I heard a comment or two back in that day about how some of the fellows on the front bench feared that situation, dying before their wives did.  A man whose wife died before he did always came into the pool hall smelling better, with what hair he had left neatly combed.

            But bow hunters were all young… looked upon in that day as a little bit dumber because of their age.  Most bow hunters were in their twenties, worked at the local factory and got married just out of high school and had two or three kids before they killed their first buck.  Arthritis kept old men from bow hunting, not so much a greater amount of intelligence.  I killed my first buck with a bow when I was in my early twenties, married and had two little girls.  So I guess you could say I was pretty close to normal.

            I was told when I was in the pool hall to someday marry a young girl who was beautiful and not nearly as smart as I was.   That advice has stood the test of time.  My first wife, Gloria Jean, was indeed beautiful, and still is today!  But she has, over the years, become a tremendous amount smarter!!  She believed things when she was 18 that I can’t convince her of now.

            When I graduated from high school, Ol’ Bill told me something I never forgot.  He said “Son, I never got past the third grade but as educated as you are, I know something you won’t know for a long, long time.  I know how fast 50 years goes by.”  

            Well if I didn’t know that then, I know it now.” And I have learned what they all found out at or before my age… fishin’ becomes a lot more easier than huntin’.  I sure do like fishin’ more and more each year!