Village Squire, 1979-11, Page 19Father was a problem.
In our gang, hunting was a status symbol. My friend Joe
Potter's father was an avid hunter. He had three hounds, a .303,
two shot guns and several .22's. My friend Joe had even been
allowed to shoot the .22 now and then at tin cans on the old
spy -apple tree stump at the edge of the orchard though he was
only 13. Joe'd been out with his father on Saturday in the
morning after the cows were milked and fed and the manure
taken out to the manure pile behind the barn, strapping on the
snow shoes and plodding back through the deep snow to the
swamp to hunt rabbits or coons or anything else they could find.
Other fathers along the line also hunted and if they didn't,
probably the older brothers of my friends did.
My father did not hunt.
The only gun in the house was a beat -up old shotgun without a
proper sight that hung on two nails in the back hall since my
older brother left it there several years earlier. He'd picked it up
cheap at an auction and only shot it a couple of times at pigeons
or rabbits. Probably that was enough to scare him from ever
using the ancient piece again.
But brother was gone and the gun just hung there, dusty and
neglected. My father did not even look at it except when he'd
bump his head on it now and then as he made his way from the
basement with a bag of potatoes from the storage area.
And that, in the uncertainty of puberty, was my cross to bear.
Hunting was the badge of manhood that I could not hope to
achieve while others around me hade it in their back pocket.
It was particularly difficult to accept my father's pacivity in the
light of the fact he has always been my hero, a status symbol
among my friends. In those days soon enough after World War II
that wars were still important, I was the proud possessor of the
only father on our line who'd served overseas during the war.
Father didn't talk much about what he'd done or said, but the
little tidbits he did reveal were enoi:gh, when embellished and
filled out by a boy's lively imagination, to provide the joys that
boyhood were made of.
If yousaw a child
starving to death,
would you
just stand and watch?
Well, that'd what you're doing.
Because of the worst drought
in centuries, every day millions of Africans
come a little bit closer to starving
to death. Please don't just stand by and watch.
Send a donation to support UNICEF's
emergency relief distribution of thousands of
tons of food and medicine in the stricken
areas of West Africa and Ethiopia. And please
be generous. We don't know how long the
drought will last. Or how long the children will.
UNICEF Canada (Africa)
443 Mt. Pleasant Road, Toronto
Ontario M4S 2L8
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November 1979, Village Squi-•