My greatest fear this time of the year is being found dead, stuck in the
mud!!!
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| New partners here at Lightnin' Ridge Publishing… Veronica Zucca, Rob Latufo and Sherry Leverich. |
You know what I
would like to see out of this new year? I would like to see it last
longer. February lasts long enough
and so does August. But April and
May and October and November are way too quickly gone. Every time I watch one of those
wonderful months pass, I realize that as I age, I have a good chance of not
seeing another of them come again.
At least there will be fewer of those wonderful months than I could once
count on.
There are some
things I have a hard time keeping up with as I grow older. It is not as
easy as it use to be to clean a deer and skin it. When I hunt ducks and I
get out in the water and hit a spot where my chest waders sink down in the mud
over my ankles, it is much harder to get out. For the first time, I fear
my obituary will say that I was found dead from hypothermia, stuck in the mud
somewhere. It is harder to sit for hours in a tree-stand, and when a
turkey gobbler is off gobbling like a fool a hundred yards away and won't come
closer… I have to fight the overwhelming urge to try to sneak up on him.
All this is the
result of too darn many good years gone past, and I see no sign of anything
slowing down but me. Twenty years ago I jokingly referred to myself as a
‘grizzled old veteran outdoorsman’. Now I really am one!! But I ain't as mad at ducks and
pheasants anymore, nor deer. Now I can go home at the end of the day
without cussing when I don't get anything, simply because I saw a real pretty
kingfisher light on my boat blind or a chirping osprey doing stunts in the air
above me, or because I found an arrowhead.
I can live with the
fact that I sat in my boat last week watching green-wing teal whiz over my
decoys at a hundred and forty-five miles an hour without really being that
upset because I brought my shotgun without remembering the shells. I
never really watch ducks over decoys that well when I am shooting at them.
I forgot to change
the spark plugs on my boat motor, forgot to fix the trailer lights, forgot to
pick up a bag of dog food for old Bolt, the world's third or fourth greatest
Labrador. I forgot my boots the other day, remembered them only after I
was two miles into the woods and had to wade through a mud puddle in my
camouflaged low-top ‘around-the-yard’ shoes. I intend… this next year…
to get myself back into the same kind of fish-catching, duck-shooting,
dog-training, tree-stand sitting, boat-paddling expert I was back thirty years
ago. But I think I intended that
very same thing last year about this time. I can’t remember for sure.
I would also like to
do a better job of producing a top-notch pair of magazines, the Lightnin' Ridge
Outdoor Journal and the Journal of the Ozarks which we put out for readers of
this newspaper columns. But I need to step back and rethink how to do that.
For that reason, I am asking you readers to be patient as I skip winter
issues and make new plans for 2016. To do that, I have asked for help,
and got it. I have three new magazine partners who know what they are
doing, Sherry Leverich, Veronica Zucca and Rob Latufo. Thank Goodness.
These magazines
started small but now they are growing out of my magazine-producing ability.
In fact as an outdoor writer I never really had any magazine-producing
ability, I just was just flying by the seat of my pants. So here is what I am
planning; all the material used in each magazine will be my decision;
articles, art and photos will only be what I have selected. But my partners
will take care of the rest, stuff called layout and design and a bunch of other
stuff they know about and I do not. I really like these people and
respect their ability, so I think it is time to put out more publications per
year rather than the four seasonal magazines I have been doing recently.
Our last magazines
were called Fall Editions, 2015. The next ones will be February-March,
2016 and then next April-May. If we can pull this off there will be no
more seasonal editions. So if you are a subscriber to one or both, be
patient. I haven't quit, I am way too young to retire (and too
financially inconvenienced because of all the ammo and fishing gear I have to
buy).
Besides
that, I like doing these magazines, writing these newspaper columns, doing
public speaking and trying to get some more books finished. It's just that I
can't let all that get in the way of hunting and fishing and exploring and
taking pictures and floating down the river. If I do I won't have
anything to write about. Wait 'til you get a load of these magazines in
2016. It seems like I wanted to say something else, but I can't remember
what it was!!
Oh
now I remember! Our big Grizzled
Old Outdoorsman Swap Meet Event will once again be held at the gymnasium of the
Brighton Missouri Assembly of God Church which is located five or six miles
south of Bolivar and about 15 miles or so north of Springfield on Highway
13. This year we will have the
biggest event ever, with about fifty tables of outdoor stuff of all kinds. As usual, it will be all day, the last
Saturday of March, and I am going to put up much of my private art collection,
probably 20 or more pieces of beautiful paintings which anyone would love to
have in their den or living room. These are signed and numbered wildlife
paintings by nationally known artists.
I
am going to do this to help finance the retreat we have made for
underprivileged children near Collins, Mo, out in the middle of nowhere. To pay
for everything, (electricity, insurance and taxes) we need to raise about 4000
dollars per year. About a dozen
readers have donated nearly 2,000 dollars already and we will have open books
on whoever donates money and how it is spent.
At
the Swap Meet we will set up a room where items from the old home will be
displayed and offered to visitors without any prices. You can take whatever you want there for any donation you’d
like to leave in a bucket. Someone
might find an antique dish worth a hundred dollars for only a quarter
donated! In my February-March issue
of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal you can read all about that place and
see photos of the first bunch of youngsters who came in December, fatherless
boys from a Baptist Church in Springfield who spent a weekend there.
I have finally settled on a name for this place
where I hope we can actually change the lives of some kids without fathers, or
underprivileged kids. Panther Creek and Brush Creek flow together there. I like
the sound of ‘Panther’, better than ‘Brush’, so it will be called, “Panther
Creek Wilderness Adventure Retreat.”
We will make a big sign to sit out in front, but I do not want to
mention ‘fatherless’ or ‘underprivileged’ children, even though that is what
the place is for. When they get
there, I want them to feel they are special. I’ll say a great deal more about this place in the next issue of our magazine. I'll also tell you about the neighbor and his lawyer who are trying to put an end to
this dream. I hope you will find a
copy and read it. It will be sent to our subscribers, and should be on the newsstands, towards the end of January.
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