So, 2008 is over.
Good riddance, I would like to say, contaminated as 2008 was by the proximity of the 7 years preceding it. Its been a lousy decade in general, thus far, so the sooner we get one of the shitty years over, done and behind us, the better for all concerned. That's what I WANT to say, with a dismissive wave of the hand. Except that---as I get older and hear the whispers of mortality every so often in my ear---I sometimes measure out the years ever more carefully, wanting to hold onto even the shitty ones. That’s a bitch.
But, they pass anyway. The moving finger, having writ, moves on.
Some say 2008 ended in New York when that big, sparkling ball dropped in Times Square or maybe it was when that nut on a souped up motorcycle jumped over a fake Arc de Triomphe in Vegas. The fact that 2008 escaped into the mists of history is undeniable even though I admit to being asleep at the time...which says more about where I am in my earthly walk at this point in my life than anything else, probably. Its departure was in all the papers, I do know that. You could look it up.
Actually, I think the year started to make its getaway in the Atlanta darkness while the LSU Fightin’ Tigers were giving the Orkin treatment to a vaunted Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets top ranked triple-option team in the Chik-fil-A Peach Bowl. Let us not study upon that LSU victory too assiduously lest we find ourselves “living in the past,” like the old folks.
We should turn our eyes forward…..to the future.
Before we DO that, though, we probably should nonetheless mention that LSU won the nationally televised contest 38-3 and played the last quarter and a half with 2nd and 3rd Teamers. It probably wouldn’t hurt to recollect that the Yellow Jackets had the No. 3 offense in the country, with a finely honed, sparkling triple option attack – a menacing, relentless attack that had mowed down Tech’s opponents all year. I see no reason not to observe, in all humility, that the Bayou Bengals stuffed that triple option attack into an old brown grocery bag and beat these self-styled ACC Tech wonder-boys like a series of rented mules.
Truly, though, that’s enough.
We should turn our gaze toward the horizon and reflect upon the august majesty of the FUTURE, hoping that 2009 will usher in the beginning of a beautiful new era….except, before we get all paralyzed with forward-lookin' reflection, maybe we should remember that LSU started a true freshman QB, Jordan Jefferson, who was named the 2008 Peach Bowl MVP. After we do all THAT, we can embrace the future, plant our feet and affect a steely-eyed Robert Mitchum gaze and what not.
You don’t want to rush into those sorts of planted stares, however.
You might take a pre-stare moment to observe that LSU totally wrecked Tech early, building a 35-3 lead by halftime on its way to a 38-3 pump-handle beating, handing the 14th-ranked Yellow Jackets their most lopsided loss in three seasons of football. Then you can stare all you want.
I spend a lot of reflective, solitary hours in the woods hunting whitetail deer at the end of every year. Although I have a fancy-shmancy custom built rifle that’s a beauty to behold, I more frequently shoulder my old misbehaving 30-06 as part of my hunting get-up, which includes an orange cap with fluffy ear muffs. Sadly, I am not kidding. I expect to receive any day a cease-and-desist order from Warner Brothers for co-opting the trademarked Elmer Fudd “look.”
I don’t like to fire my rifle very much anymore. For one thing, it’s loud and I’ve come to appreciate silence far more than when I was a younger man. For another, killing living creatures has long since lost whatever odd allure it once occupied in my heart. Unless, I am out of venison. Then, all bets are off. I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to survive on vegetables.
I do like spending that special time with my Dad, however. Experiencing Jimmy Clary’s youthful 75-year-old exuberance while on the hunt or while we’re knockin’ around our camp keeps me constantly tickled. He says stuff that somebody ought to be writing down.
Like the time we were cooking white beans in the camp kitchen.
“Man, I love white beans,” one of the guys hunting with us observed, standing behind Pop as he stirred the pot. “But, white beans give me gas. Do white beans give you gas, Jimmy?”
“Sheeeit,” came Jimmy’s distracted reply. “I’m over 70. The purest Kentwood Spring Water gives me gas.”
See? Somebody needs to write that shit down.
Another reason why I rarely squeeze the trigger on my old Ruger 30-06 is because –somehow—the weapon comes with its own laugh track and is a near cousin to the Allen Pepperbox Revolver carried by a guy named Bemis, who traveled West by stagecoach with Mark Twain. As Twain recollected:
“George Bemis . . . wore in his belt an old original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply drawing the trigger back, one thence cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon--the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it…” ---- Mark Twain, Roughing It
I would say this adequately sums up my 30-06. Many a whitetail has looked up after I have loudly launched a round downrange toward his general area. As the ovine scampers unmarred into the thick woods, I can imagine him muttering: “What in the fuck was THAT whistling by my haunches, several feet to the left?!?”
But, I digress.
I must shed my Elmer Fudd persona and return to the Robert Mitchum glare….not the baggy-eyed look he had when he was arrested in a hazy swirl of marijuana smoke back in the day, but the dreamy gaze he had on the 1955 movie poster for Man With the Gun.
Good riddance, I would like to say, contaminated as 2008 was by the proximity of the 7 years preceding it. Its been a lousy decade in general, thus far, so the sooner we get one of the shitty years over, done and behind us, the better for all concerned. That's what I WANT to say, with a dismissive wave of the hand. Except that---as I get older and hear the whispers of mortality every so often in my ear---I sometimes measure out the years ever more carefully, wanting to hold onto even the shitty ones. That’s a bitch.
But, they pass anyway. The moving finger, having writ, moves on.
Some say 2008 ended in New York when that big, sparkling ball dropped in Times Square or maybe it was when that nut on a souped up motorcycle jumped over a fake Arc de Triomphe in Vegas. The fact that 2008 escaped into the mists of history is undeniable even though I admit to being asleep at the time...which says more about where I am in my earthly walk at this point in my life than anything else, probably. Its departure was in all the papers, I do know that. You could look it up.
Actually, I think the year started to make its getaway in the Atlanta darkness while the LSU Fightin’ Tigers were giving the Orkin treatment to a vaunted Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets top ranked triple-option team in the Chik-fil-A Peach Bowl. Let us not study upon that LSU victory too assiduously lest we find ourselves “living in the past,” like the old folks.
We should turn our eyes forward…..to the future.
Before we DO that, though, we probably should nonetheless mention that LSU won the nationally televised contest 38-3 and played the last quarter and a half with 2nd and 3rd Teamers. It probably wouldn’t hurt to recollect that the Yellow Jackets had the No. 3 offense in the country, with a finely honed, sparkling triple option attack – a menacing, relentless attack that had mowed down Tech’s opponents all year. I see no reason not to observe, in all humility, that the Bayou Bengals stuffed that triple option attack into an old brown grocery bag and beat these self-styled ACC Tech wonder-boys like a series of rented mules.
Truly, though, that’s enough.
We should turn our gaze toward the horizon and reflect upon the august majesty of the FUTURE, hoping that 2009 will usher in the beginning of a beautiful new era….except, before we get all paralyzed with forward-lookin' reflection, maybe we should remember that LSU started a true freshman QB, Jordan Jefferson, who was named the 2008 Peach Bowl MVP. After we do all THAT, we can embrace the future, plant our feet and affect a steely-eyed Robert Mitchum gaze and what not.
You don’t want to rush into those sorts of planted stares, however.
You might take a pre-stare moment to observe that LSU totally wrecked Tech early, building a 35-3 lead by halftime on its way to a 38-3 pump-handle beating, handing the 14th-ranked Yellow Jackets their most lopsided loss in three seasons of football. Then you can stare all you want.
I spend a lot of reflective, solitary hours in the woods hunting whitetail deer at the end of every year. Although I have a fancy-shmancy custom built rifle that’s a beauty to behold, I more frequently shoulder my old misbehaving 30-06 as part of my hunting get-up, which includes an orange cap with fluffy ear muffs. Sadly, I am not kidding. I expect to receive any day a cease-and-desist order from Warner Brothers for co-opting the trademarked Elmer Fudd “look.”
I don’t like to fire my rifle very much anymore. For one thing, it’s loud and I’ve come to appreciate silence far more than when I was a younger man. For another, killing living creatures has long since lost whatever odd allure it once occupied in my heart. Unless, I am out of venison. Then, all bets are off. I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to survive on vegetables.
I do like spending that special time with my Dad, however. Experiencing Jimmy Clary’s youthful 75-year-old exuberance while on the hunt or while we’re knockin’ around our camp keeps me constantly tickled. He says stuff that somebody ought to be writing down.
Like the time we were cooking white beans in the camp kitchen.
“Man, I love white beans,” one of the guys hunting with us observed, standing behind Pop as he stirred the pot. “But, white beans give me gas. Do white beans give you gas, Jimmy?”
“Sheeeit,” came Jimmy’s distracted reply. “I’m over 70. The purest Kentwood Spring Water gives me gas.”
See? Somebody needs to write that shit down.
Another reason why I rarely squeeze the trigger on my old Ruger 30-06 is because –somehow—the weapon comes with its own laugh track and is a near cousin to the Allen Pepperbox Revolver carried by a guy named Bemis, who traveled West by stagecoach with Mark Twain. As Twain recollected:
“George Bemis . . . wore in his belt an old original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply drawing the trigger back, one thence cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon--the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it…” ---- Mark Twain, Roughing It
I would say this adequately sums up my 30-06. Many a whitetail has looked up after I have loudly launched a round downrange toward his general area. As the ovine scampers unmarred into the thick woods, I can imagine him muttering: “What in the fuck was THAT whistling by my haunches, several feet to the left?!?”
But, I digress.
I must shed my Elmer Fudd persona and return to the Robert Mitchum glare….not the baggy-eyed look he had when he was arrested in a hazy swirl of marijuana smoke back in the day, but the dreamy gaze he had on the 1955 movie poster for Man With the Gun.
Now, THAT’S a “look,” an affected countenance appropriate for peering into 2009.
Being in the winter woods is a good time for peering too. You can hear your own breathing when you quietly slip into the pre-dawn loam. I like watching the new day seep silently into the forest, waiting to hear the first bird announce his presence with some distinctive call, which ---I am reliably informed by the bird experts--- is an announcement roughly translating into: “Hey, all you other dickhead birds. This tree here is mine and so is everything else I can see. I mean EVERYthing. That worm? Those bugs? Those dames? ALL mine! Capish? If any other of you pissbubbles come into my territory, I am gonna open a can of whupass on you similar to the brutal beating given to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets by a rejuvenated LSU Fightin’ Tiger Team in the 2008 Chik-fil-A Peach Bowl!”
I believe I have the translation recited correctly.
Anyway…the point is that the end-of-the-year holidays have relaxed their annual grip around my windpipe. I feel the clammy fingers receding, as if 2008 is whispering to me: “OK, OK….you win for now, J.R. We’ll let you make it through another winter…but…..one day you’ll be tired and we’ll be game. As Joe Louis said about Billy Conn, J.R., you can RUN but you can’t HIDE. Not forever. One day we are gonna open a can of whupass on you similar to the brutal beating given to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets by a rejuvenated LSU Fightin’ Tiger Team in the 2008 Chik-fil-A Peach Bowl.”
That’s what I hear in the woods.
Or, maybe it was just a bird.
---J.R.
Ok Boss,
ReplyDeleteYou have taken a few days off for the inauguration and all... Its time to get back to blogging
remy