HUNTERS vs. GATHERERS

The Old Arrowmaker, w/c by KSR

Hunting season is practically a religion with some people.  My father was a deer huner.  He tried very hard to convince me that if the herds were not controlled, they would starve to death in winter.  That may be true, but if I were a deer, I’d rather go hungry than to see all those maniacs running through my forest dressed up in their camo and crazy red hats, and waving the latest model rifle my way.  Of course the deer do make a game of it by hiding behind bushes and trees and making the hunter work for every shot.

Hunters spend a lot of time readying themselves for the hunt.  Cave man simply had to pick up his club and grunt goodbye to his wife.  But today’s hunters go into a fervor getting properly outfitted in the attire of the proper hunt.

A number of years ago, two young grandsons retreated to their ancient memory of the Hunter.  Armed with new bows and arrows, camping gear and boys,  we set off for a spot near Lake Almanor in Northern Caifornia to take them on their primeval deer hunting experience.

Dr. Advice and I are not hunters, unless you consider a sale at Nordstrom in my case.  We have done a great deal of scrounging the depths searching for fish, and he did some pheasant and duck hunting in the past, but I don’t think we could be considered part of the Hunter economy.

Day One of the hunt.  With a number of other seasoned hunters readying themselves in the campground, the boys dressed in their new camo clothing, dirtied up their faces, pocketed their compass,and as a final addition, sprayed on  Fox Urine!  (It was described in more colorful language).  It is female fox hormone and smells so bad you will never forget it, but is supposed to attract prey.  However, how fox hormone can attact deer is beyond me, don’t they have their own scent?

We drove them to the dropping off point, and set the pickup time.  Since they had no watch, I gave the youngest one my “Rolex” watch to wear.

We arrived at the appointed time to find both hunters sitting on the side of the road, the youngest one with tears running down his face, saying he had lost my “Rolex”.

I could have let him suffer, but instead I told the truth, that it was a phony his Dad had given me anyway.  I told them the good thing was that some hunter was going to find it and think he had found the real McCoy, saying to his wife “Honey I didn’t get a deer, but I found a real Rolex!”

As a dyed- in- the- wool Gatherer, I fed them large plates of “Hamburger Helper” and told them to wash their faces.

ANOTHER WHALE TALE

Another wonderful “urban legend” is flying around the internet, and this one is really a peach.  It shows what a great tool photoshop can be.

I even photoshopped a friend’s husband completely out of the picture as she knelt to speak in Polish with Pope John Paul II.  After all, she is Polish, and Catholic to boot.  She keeps it in her office to impress clients.

Then on our 50th wedding anniversary, when I saw that no picture had been taken of us together, I got rid of the two other people we were standing with and now for the family history book, we are together with a completely different background.

We have done a lot of fishing, boating and some kayaking, and have spent a lot of time as well in Alaska, so this photo was pretty exciting.

You will see that the whale is taking a whale-sized bite out of the kayak with the man in it.  The trouble is, it never happened.  It’s the work of photographer Tim Shobe, who photographed the whale and the kayaker separately, and then tried to feed the  humpback whale with the paddler.  Good job.  Wish I had thought of it, as we have fished many times in those same waters, and have seen  lots of those fabulous denizens of the deep.  I never tire of watching for them, and the thrill of seeing them breach always reminds me of how insignificant man really is.

Sam fishing in Sitka, watercolor KSR

 

THE HAT THAT WENT EVERYWHERE

A Hat That Goes Everywhere/  watercolor/  KSR

She was my paternal grandmother’s much younger half-sister, and probably in her day, she would have been known as a “fine figure of a woman”.

She was large-boned, though not fat, with a full, well-shaped bosom, strong arms, and sturdy legs.  I remember her as a rather homely woman with large teeth who smiled a lot and was fun to be around.  On top of short, wispy grey hair she wore a hat that went everywhere, which was crocheted of an ecru string, and had a brim which was wired on the edge to make it stand out.  She looked terribly home-made and out-of-date, but I’m sure she felt she looked quite smart.

She belonged to many of the social clubs that country women often delight in and would plop her hat onto her head and head five miles into town for the day.  Since she owned a great deal of the town, she probably conducted business on a lot of those days.

She was a lover of animals, at that time especially a red Australian shepherd named Bounce, whom she insisted could talk.  I know we all say that about smart or clever dogs who live with us, but she actually believed Bounce could enunciate words.  He slept beside the old wood stove and groaned out his messages when she began a conversation.  Since she was also a devotee of Yahtzee, of which we played endless games, maybe the messages came through Bounce.  At any rate, Bounce was a jolly companion after her husband, Jean passed away.

Each year Bounce led the annual gladioli  parade through downtown Grants Pass, Oregon, carrying a basket of gladioli.  He was a town fixture, and everybody knew Bounce.

My grandmother and Aunt Hazel had the same mother though different fathers.  I always thought of her as being old, and was surprised to learn that she had gone to high school with my aunt Arlene, my father’s sister.

She had a brother, Uncle Charlie, who owned a pool hall in Grants Pass, where I remember going for an ice cream cone when I was visiting the Oregon relatives.   My mother said that Charlie’s daughter, Doris had been a prostitute, but to be fair, I don’t think that is entirely true, because no one really knew for sure.  My mother was prone to see a too-short skirt or bleached hair as being a sure indication of a loose woman.

Sadly, Uncle Charlie committed suicide by running a hose from his exhaust pipe into his car.  I never heard what happened to Doris.

Finally the old cabin Hazel and Jean had lived in was torn down and she built a new place of cement brick which was a bit larger than the first and even had a studio.  I think the only art work she ever did in it was some pressed flowers, but nevertheless, it had lots of windows looking out over beautiful fields toward the Rogue River, and she could have done more had she wanted to.

After Bounce died, Hazel began collecting cats.  I never knew how many there were at any one time, but my daughter says there must have been a hundred, which probably is a childhood overestimation.

I don’t think it would be a stretch of the imagination to say that Hazel was a true eccentric.  My cousin called her  a “nice ‘ol Auntie”, which is a lovely tribute, and I hope someone says that about me someday.

BURNED AT THE STAKE

 How many other people have a relative who was burned at the stake?  That is, unless it was a Salem witch of course.  Once while visiting in Oxford, England, I was interested to see the memorial to my ancestor, Bishop Nicholas Ridley,  one of the Oxford Martyrs who was burned at the stake in 1555.  The Martyrs Memorial is an imposing stone monument in Oxford at the end of St. Giles Street, commemorating three Anglican bishops who were burned at the stake under Queen Mary, or Bloody Mary as she was fondly called.

Bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer were tried for heresy and burned at the stake just outside city walls.  The execution was the result of King Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church.  Archbishop Cranmer had annulled Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon,  and then married him to Anne Boleyn instead.  Catherine had been Mary’s mother, so understandingly there was a bit of bad blood to begin with.  Of course Henry in turn, chopped Anne’s head off a bit later, so you never want to disagree too strongly with royalty.

The three Bishops went along with Henry when he left the Church and started his own Protestant version, but Mary stuck with the Catholics, and cleared out a great many people who disagreed with her.  An interesting fact, is  that a good high school friend of mine, who became one of the bridesmaids at my wedding, was descended from Archbishop Cranmer.  What a small world.

So much for my ancestor.  Another time we went to a small cemetery in Northern California to find the gravesite of my husband’s Great-Grandather, who had walked across the Isthmus of the Panama Canal before the water went in, on his way to California.  The clerk in the office told us someone else had inquired about this same gentleman a few days before, so she brought out the file and we were amused to find that the fact  he had shot and killed a man had been conveniently omitted from our family history.  Nothing like a rip-roaring Wild West story to liven up the geneology.  It seems that a field hand he had recently fired tracked Grandfather down in the local tavern and drew his knife to forcibly remind him he was still owed some salary.  So Grandfather drew his trusty sidearm and eliminated that problem.  Now Grandfather was a prominent citizen in the town, belonging to the right organizations, and holding public office, so true to “honest” old West law, Grandfather was exonerated, thus assuring there was no messy history to deal with.

Martyr’s Memorial

TRAVELERS VS. TOURISTS

 There are two types of people in this world; travelers and tourists.  Tourists can’t wait to come back home.  Travelers never want to come back.

“But why do we travel, really?  If we are of a thoughtful nature, we may wish to improve our minds, to examine the manners and customs of others and compare them to our own.  For these reasons, we study guidebooks and make lists of the churches, palaces, galleries, and museums we’ll visit.  We take photographs and write our impressions in diaries.  We might even justify the expense of the trip by planning to share our knowledge with others upon our return.

But is it really an education that we yearn to acquire when we travel?  Or–be honest, now–do we more sincerely desire souvenirs?  What tourist returns with lighter bags than those he packed at home?  We want something to display, a memento, a “conversation piece” that will silently inform a guest that ‘I have traveled’.  We look for a painting, a sculpture, a vase that will whisper: I have shopped in foreign countries, and I have this to show for it.

Of course, one could buy such objects ay home.  After all, there are importers, antique shops and art galleries.  Why then do we undertake the expense and risk of travel?  Why leave the comforts of home for flies and disease, heat and dust, crowds and the risk of theft?  Because souvenirs remind the traveler of his journey.”

We do not take a trip.  Often a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck says there is a Spanish word for which there is no English counterpart; vacilando.  It means you are going somewhere but you don’t greatly care if you get there.  My aunt was very much like that.  She loved travel, and she was good at it.  I think she would have chosen to be perennially on the road.

There are map people who delight in being navigators, expecially on a road trip.  While the driver is enjoying the scenery, he/she is busy reading the maps.  There are also people who are terrified of being lost, whether on foot or in a car.  They never veer from the preordained plan, or take a sudden look at a point of interest off the beaten path.  Then there are people who set a daily goal for themselves and come hell or high water, they plunge on until they arrive at their goal, even if their passengers need food or bathroom facility.  The use of the GPS means less random–but not nearly as much fun travel, if you can stand the annoying female voice ordering you to “turn left in one mile”, or “you’ve gone too far”.

When you return, friends ask “Did you have a nice time on your trip?”  We want to answer in full.  We want to tell about all the interesting and educational things we have seen, but they need to hurry away.  We say we will invite them over to see our pictures, but somehow that never happens.  So we slip right back into our cosy and comfortable lives as if we had never left them, and file all those wonderful memories away in our mental banks to be drawn upon at random.  But travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry.  We shall get there some day.”  A.A. Milne