When they were children, my sons regarded me as a barbarian.\u00a0 I have a little better status now, but I am still suspect.\u00a0 I should not be surprised, they are city kids.\u00a0 They grew up civilized.\u00a0 When I was a kid, if you called me civilized I would have punched you in the nose.\u00a0 Worse than being called a sissy.<\/p>\n
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Not too long ago Mark was showing me a fancy bottle of expensive, single malt Scotch.\u00a0 He wanted me to try it.\u00a0 I pulled the cork and took a swig.\u00a0 I thought he was going to choke to death.\u00a0 If it hadn\u2019t been expensive I think he would have thrown the bottle away.\u00a0 Hell, I didn\u2019t backwash.\u00a0 How was I to know I was supposed to use a glass?\u00a0 I can imagine what would have been said, when I was a Smokejumper, if I had passed a bottle and expected them to use a glass.<\/p>\n
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They grew up in suburban New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.\u00a0 Their mom was a teacher; their dad was an FBI Agent.\u00a0 They never really had a chance.<\/p>\n
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I grew up in a small lumber town in Northern California.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t have a BB gun by the time you were five you were a social outcast.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t know how to dig BB\u2019s out of your hide, without your mother, by the time you were six; you were doomed.<\/p>\n
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My aunt and uncle lived on a ranch by a lake. \u00a0 We loved to go there.\u00a0 We always took our BB guns.\u00a0 My brother and I would hide in the haystack, allegedly hunting for birds or rats.\u00a0 When I got a chance, I would shoot the bull in the nuts.\u00a0 He would go about six feet straight up if I made a good shot.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know until a few years later that a bull, or steer for that matter, could walk right through about any fence it wanted to.\u00a0 If that bull had realized it was me shooting him, he probably would have killed me.<\/p>\n
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I mentioned this to my brother a few years ago.\u00a0 I thought we had competed to see who could get the bull to jump the highest.\u00a0 He denied all knowledge.\u00a0 He became a teacher and raised daughters. Perhaps that civilized him.\u00a0 I bet he even has a pink shirt.<\/p>\n
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We could not wait until we were old enough to get a hunting license at the age of twelve.\u00a0 Many of my peers had their own .22 rifle by the time they were eight.<\/p>\n
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We lived for hunting and fishing.\u00a0 Our house was on the edge of town.\u00a0 Nearby the river emerged from a canyon.\u00a0 There was an old abandoned rail line that went along the river, up the canyon, to the next lumber town about 35 miles away.\u00a0 \u00a0 That canyon was our playground.\u00a0 We could not wait until we were old enough to go \u201cup the tracks\u201d by ourselves, to fish and spend the day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By the time I was twelve I had my own .22 and could take it \u201cup the tracks.\u201d\u00a0 I went through a 500 round \u201cbrick\u201d of ammunition in about a week.\u00a0 Needless to say we got to be pretty good shots. \u00a0 It was a good thing I had a paper route, I had the funds for fishing tackle and ammunition.\u00a0 The Army Navy Store provided us with everything else we needed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
REI and North Face were not around when I was a kid.\u00a0 The good stuff was army surplus.\u00a0 I had a down mummy bag that only had a few holes in it.\u00a0 We were in Boy Scouts too.\u00a0 Their gear wasn\u2019t that great.\u00a0 The army stuff was a lot better.\u00a0 I remember buying a Boy Scout pack and blowing it out on the first camping trip.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the early 90\u2019s we took our sons camping in West Virginia one weekend.\u00a0 Joe, the oldest, had just started Cub Scouts.\u00a0 He was a Tiger Cub.\u00a0 Of course it was raining when we got to the campground.\u00a0 I surprised them, and Terry, by setting the tent up in the rain while keeping the inside dry.\u00a0 Soon we had a nice cozy camp.\u00a0 We sent the boys out to get some firewood, explaining that the wood on the ground was wet.\u00a0 I told them to break the dead limbs off of trees to get the dry wood.\u00a0 After about a half hour they came back with a small bundle of reasonably dry twigs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I told them to come with me to learn how to get wood. \u00a0 We found a small dead tree about fifteen feet high.\u00a0 I broke it off and used the long stem to knock the high dead limbs off the taller trees.\u00a0 Pretty soon we had a big pile of wood.\u00a0 Then I showed them how to break up the big pieces of wood by levering them between two close standing tree trunks.\u00a0 It made a lot of noise and splinters.\u00a0 I was pleased to have taught them some woodsman-ship.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Later when we were in our sleeping bags I could hear them whispering about dad killing trees…<\/p>\n
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When they were children, my sons regarded me as a barbarian.\u00a0 I have a little better status now, but I am still suspect.\u00a0 I should not be surprised, they are city kids.\u00a0 They grew up civilized.\u00a0 When I was a kid, if you called me civilized I would have punched you in the nose.\u00a0 Worse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}