In One Era … and Out the Other

Dad always hunted squirrels with an old 22 cal. Remington that took shorts, longs and long rifle cartridges. Depending upon whose timber we were hunting, he’d choose between shorts and longs; “I don’t like to tear up the meat,” Dad would say.
Fortunately for the family --- unfortunately for me --- Dad was a fine shot (head shots). There was always “plenty of eatin’ for everybody.” But I had to lug them all over the timber and back to the car during the course of the hunt.
Back then the limit was ten of those plump, red, bushy-tailed nut cutters. But often times the “bushy tails” would disappear from the first kills of the day. The red hair would slip away because of my gripping and re-gripping and laying them down and picking them up all morning long. By noon -- back at the car -- two or three of them looked more like big red rats than red squirrels.
Once back at home, I became one half of the skinning team; I held and spread the hind legs and dad did the rest. Once cleaned and washed he would select three or four of the best ones, wrap them in waxed bread paper and then have me deliver them to certain other hunting families or friends. Nobody we knew had refrigerators, so in the early fall you sort-of “passed ’em around.” When they went hunting, they’d return the favor in squirrels, rabbits, pheasant or whatever. Nobody ever “kept book” on who gave what to whom.
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Times sure are a-gettin’ on.
As I get up from my big chair to check the thermostat, I am reminded of something I read a couple of days ago in the local paper: “These terrible, turbulent, trying times of today are the ‘good old days’ for somebody forty years from now.”
Through the mental cobwebs of nostalgia, I am aware that a car has come in the drive. One of the automatic garage doors open. A car drives in. An engine is switched off. I hear the wonderfully familiar sound of sacks of groceries being deposited on the kitchen counter. I hear the diet colas clunk into their spot in the rear hall.
“Dad ...... dad, I’m home. Where are you?”
“I’m here, in the family room, Mother.”
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