Best reading

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

I believe that our attraction to art – to stories and songs – is because the best of them resonate with and go some way to help explain the eternal mystery of why we exist and why we have turned out the way we have. A great song can be a pilgrim’s companion and staff as we navigate through life’s slalom ride of fate and happenstance attempting to fashion a connected, meaningful life.
– Thom Hickey, from his blog The Immortal Jukebox, essay post titled Ordinary (Extraordinary) Stories

Best reading

The age of digital communication and information is both a blessing and a curse. We have access to some of the best writers, and we can read the incredible creative fiction and non-fiction they produce, most of it free and instantly available. Unfortunately, we have to invest much time and energy into the search for these stellar writers because we are inundated by a flood of poor-to-mediocre writing.

I want to speed your search. Read this blog: The Immortal Jukebox by Thom Hickey. You will be doubly rewarded. His prose is best-of-the-best, and he posts audio and video recordings of the music he describes and analyzes.

Visit his blog. You will be glad you did.

 

 

 

http://theimmortaljukebox.com/

st of the best

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Last of the old timers

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA“I am, beyond a doubt, the last of the old-timers.”
   – Jack Crabb, from the movie Little Big Man,based on the novel by Thomas Berger (1924-2014)

Last of the old timers

Bird hunting isn’t what it used to be. But then, it never was.

Except in the stories of the old timers. The curmudgeons.

Of course the true reason for our abiding belief the world was better forty years ago is that we old timers were better forty years ago. Life can be hard, the decades of toil and tears have worn us down and worn us out, and we are not the men we used to be. But again, as I say, we never were. Except in our stories.

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Happiest moments

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
After years of experience, I now take only twice as many things as I could possibly use. I used to take three or four times too much.

After years of experience, I now take only twice as many things as I could possibly use on a hunting trip.

It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.
                       – Margaret Mead (1901-78), cultural anthropologist

Happiest moments

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote that men are happiest when they are setting off on a hunt. Although Mead recorded this observation while she was studying the cultures and customs of primitive tribes in the tropical rain forest regions of New Guinea, she would likely have come to the same conclusion if she had investigated the habits and behaviors of the Over the Hill Gang, a semi-civilized tribe of the North Country.

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Bear hunt

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABear hunt

Remembering Dave Wade: A tribute delivered at his Celebration of Life Service, August 26, 2014

Dave Wade was the best and closest friend I have had in my life. His friendship was so precious to me, and his passing was so hard for me, that I struggled with what I was going to say today at this Celebration of Life gathering.

Then, while driving the 400 miles to be here today, I had an epiphany. The message of what to say came to me, clear as a bell: The Muppet Movie.

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Gone on ahead

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

Dave Wade with deerWhen I heard those words on the telephone – “Dave’s gone”- I did not feel the emptiness of death but only the loneliness of departure, as if I had been told, “Dave’s left on his elk hunting trip to the mountains.”

 

Gone on ahead

When the telephone rang early Friday morning I looked at the numbers displayed on the caller-ID screen and knew what the message would be. I picked up the receiver and a voice at the other end said, “Dave’s gone.”

Dave Wade, my friend and hunting companion for almost forty years had died.

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If I had a hammer

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABe ready, and if’n a bird flies in front of you, just poke yer barrel at it and pull the trigger. That gun probly feels pretty big, but don’t worry. She don’t kick. Much.
             – Advice from a well-meaning teenage cousin to a ten-year-old boy on his first pheasant hunt

If I had a hammer

If you were a boy growing up in the rural Midwest in the 1950s you remember single-shot shotguns. That was the gun we all carried on our first hunts for pheasants, quail, grouse – whatever gamebird you dreamed about in your part of the country.

Made by Winchester, Harrington & Richardson, Stevens, Savage, Mossberg and several other firearms manufacturers for more than a century, break-action, exposed-hammer, single-shot shotguns were sold at local hardware stores in every small town. The receivers of many were stamped with the names of companies that were supposedly reputable “gunmakers” –  Eastern Arms Company, Western Field, Springfield – which were really only gun distributors. Some even bore the name of the hardware store: Western Auto Store’s Revelation brand guns, for example.

The single-shot handed to me for that first euphoric pheasant hunt on which I was permitted to carry a gun was a 12 gauge with a 30-inch full-choke barrel. The buttstock was cut down to fit a boy, it had a drop at heel of about three inches, and a rock-hard red rubber recoil pad was crudely attached. The hammer spring was so stiff that I could barely cock it back with one thumb, and the trigger pull was about as hard as clipping barbed wire with a dull wire cutter. The gun weighed more than seven pounds, which was a load for a small boy to carry on a cold morning’s march through a muddy cornfield.

That break-action gun was functional, inexpensive, and ugly as sin, and with the possible exception of a best-quality Purdey sidelock gun I handled at a custom gunmaker’s shop forty years later, it was the most exquisite firearm I have ever held in my hands. There was no doubt in my mind as I headed out on that first hunt with a gun that I would wield it with a natural grace and talent, kill at least three rooster pheasants stone dead in the air, and win praise and fame across the county.

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Heaven’s roads are gravel and sand

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA …the street of the city (of heaven) was pure gold…    – Revelations 21:21

Heaven’s roads are gravel and sand

When the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelations at age 92, a prisoner of Rome on the island of Patmos, his vision of heaven was said to have been divinely inspired. Maybe so, but I think he was mistaken about the streets being made of gold.

The streets of heaven are country roads of gravel and sand.

Everyone is entitled to his own vision of heaven. Let me tell you mine.

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Bird dog art

Posted on July 26, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

setterShooting afield without the aid of a trained dog is very poor sport indeed…  …for it is not only the large number of birds brought to bag that inspires and gratifies, but rather it is the fine performance of his faithful dog that leads to the highest appreciation and enjoyment of the sport.

            — Ed F. Haberlein, from his book The Amateur Trainer, first edition published 1893

Bird dog art

It was love at first sight.

My love affair with bird dogs began in my childhood when I first saw those romantic illustrations of pointers, setters, spaniels and retrievers that were featured on the posters and calendars published by ammunition manufacturers. Most memorable are the wonderful hunting scenes commissioned by the Winchester, Western, Remington, UMC, and Peters companies.

Spellbound and mesmerized by those idyllic images, I became an acolyte of the credo of bird hunting and a devotee of gun dogs of all breeds. To this day I remain a sucker for gun dog art.

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Twinkies, Bering Imperials, and Schlitz

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all.

–  Martin Luther (1483-1546), German monk and Catholic priest, key figure of the 16th century Protestant Reformation

 

 

Twinkies, Bering Imperials, and Schlitz

Unable to finish my third cup of coffee on a hot and humid July morning in the North Country, I rummaged through the bureau drawer and took out my ever-growing list of Things I Used To Enjoy (TIUTE). Reluctant to admit that “strong coffee on hot days” has become a TIUTE, based on a single bad experience, I did not immediately enter it as item number 94 on the crumpled page, but I left the list and red pen on the table in case tomorrow’s tests confirm today’s diagnosis.

The TIUTE (pronounced tie-yoot) list has been cobbled together over the past four or five years as my aging body has forced me to concede that the enjoyment of certain passions and pleasures is not worth the pain of recovery. Right at the top of the list are:

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Random advice

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

We get too soon old and too late smart.
    – Appalachian folk saying

Random advice

Following the example of Benjamin Franklin in America’s colonial the era when he published snippets of wit and wisdom in his annual Poor Richard’s Almanac, I have decided to share some bits of common sense and practical advice with readers.

Franklin’s collection of folk sayings, adages, and truisms has been called “sage counsel with a dash of cynicism.” Mine may be better described as “bitter vetch with a dollop of skepticism.” Ben was a young and optimistic Poor Richard whose advice theme was “I want to tell you…” I am an old and pessimistic Curmudgeon whose advice theme is “I told you so…”

Ben said “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” I say: “Early to bed and early to rise and your girl goes out with other guys.”

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