After hunting on a steep side hill for many hours I bagged a deer near the
base of a mountain. It was a perfect brain shot, and my dilema afterwards
was, what to do now. It was the afternoon and the person who suppossedly
supplied the sperm for my existance was hunting the ridgeline. I thought
I'd drag the carcass a few hundred yards downhill across a half frozen
stream and fifty foot up to a dirt road then hide it under some brush and
snow, afterwards hiking back to the jeep instead of dragging it five miles
most of it uphill back to the jeep.
Low and behold a neighbor, Brazz Shelmire, came driving past and offered to
take us both home, but not back to the jeep as he was in a car with tire
chains and didn't think it could climb up there. Brazz died several years
ago fighting a tree for home heating fuel with a chainsaw, leaving wife and
children behind. Other than my Grandmother dying it was the saddest news
I'd ever heard from home. He's the only person in the entire Shelmire
family I'd ever genuinely respected. From start to finish he was a man to
stand next to, not behind or in front of.
Together we hoisted the deer into my legal fathers front yard tree to hang
and he left. Daddy dearest came home about three hours after dark thirty
and the only thing that stopped him from ripping me a new one was that deer
hanging in the tree.
Tune in next time and I'll tell you why I wasn't crying because I wasn't
lost in the woods or I'd love to know how to make my diseased Irish
grandmothers creamy fried potatoes, even though she probably wasn't my
grandmother.