We looked forward to the day with anticipation.  It was kind of like Christmas time…though you always knew when Christmas was going to fall.  This day, this day of days in the summer time, was a little more elusive.

And was also a lot more work.

One day in late June or early July, usually over supper after a long day working outside.  Mom would casually say, “I called the berry farm today, they are picking.”

My Dad is a stoic individual, but you could sense the smile welling up deep down inside.  Something primordial, something good, something decent.  Something hungry.

“Oh really.”  He would reply.  “Well, I guess I really didn’t have anything for the boys and I do to do (which we all knew was a lie - Dad ALWAYS had things for us to do), I guess tomorrow might work.”

Strawberries.  Sweet.  Delicious.  Fantastic.  Scrumptious.  Delightful.  Glorious Strawberries.

Oh yes, and they are good for you too.

“Well,” we kids would say, “while we had hoped to pitch all of the manure out of the calf shed or get all of the moldy, musty hay out of in the scalding, unearthly heat of the hay barn, I guess we will suffer with the task of helping to clean and top strawberries, for the good for the family of course.”

It was hard to sleep on those nights.  Strawberries danced in our heads.

The next morning, Mom and Dad would be on the road early, leaving us kids with the chores and milking, unsupervised.  They knew we would stay in line.  They knew we wouldn’t fight.  For strawberries would be cleaned and ready for eating by tonight!

Typically, they would have to drive about forty miles to the nearest berry patch, then pick for hours on end in the early morning light, fighting off the mosquitos.

They would arrive back home about noon, with the car loaded down…with strawberries…

Typically, they would pick the berries into ice cream pails, then they would spread them out into shallow beer cases - so that the delicate berries wouldn’t be smushed.

Into the house they would come, like a hunter bringing in the kill.  Our faces would light up.  We would each grab the biggest one we could find and eat it.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Then the work began.

One person would be set to work cleaning.  Wash.  Strain.  Wash.  Strain.  Wash. Strain.  Three times each batch had to be washed.  A colander was filled, and at least two people, sometimes more were assigned the task of topping.  A potatoe peeler worked great, a knife worked if the peelers were all being used.

The washer had to strain to keep up when the toppers hit their rythme.

Mom would sort, cut, and sugar the berries.  A strawberry is good, but when you added a little sugar, the magic really happened.

The strawberries and sugar made juice.  You could use those sugared strawberries for hundreds of things.

You could freeze them and use them through the year.  You could make jelly and jam.  You could eat them with cake.  You could eat them plain, with creame, with ice cream, with milk.  Grandma used to tell stories of her Dad making strawberry wine.

By milking time, we had huge vats of strawberries in both of our refridgerators.  We milked cows, came in for a simple supper…and a lot of strawberries.

For breakfast, some sugared strawberries over Rice Krispies is fantastic.

For dinner, some sugared strawberries and fresh cream from off the top of the milk jar.

For a little lunch in afternoon, sugared strawberries and ice cream.

For supper that night all of the above.

Gradually, the strawberries came to an end. 

Mom set to working canning and freezing and we raced her to see who could put away more (her canning, our eating).

We knew strawberry season was coming to an end when Mom was making the last batches of jam.  While it warmed the house and made it uncomfortable, I know of no better smell then cooking strawberries. The sweet berry smell would fill the entire house.  She would skim the foam off the top of the cooking jam and place it in a special bowl.  Strawberry foam on crackers…

You know a food is good when even the FOAM makes your mouth water.

I am a landluber.

I am a landluber, not by choice, but by birth, by situation, by twist of fate.

I have swam in the ocean twice in my life.  I have beheld its beauty six times in my thirty-two years.  Even growing up in the land of ten thousand lakes, my family never owned a lake home.  Never fished.  Rarely spent time in, near, or around water.

Yet there is something alluring about it.

When my friend Todd offered me an opportunity to spend an afternoon on his new used sail boat, I leapt at the chance.  Sailing, to a histroy buff, connects us to the brave souls that plied the worlds water for most of the last five thousand years.

Off to Lake Waconia we went.

The boat is a beaut.  Twenty-eight foot, single masted sail boat - one of the finest on the water.  We sat on her for a while as the 35 mile per hour winds coursed around us.

“This is great!” I yelled over the roar of the wind and the top of my beer.

“Arrgh!  Call me Cap’n Todd!”  He shouted.

We discussed work, politics, the economy.

“Arrgh! Lets rush the shore and see if we can dig up some grub and wild women”  Said Cap’n Todd.

“Since we haven’t left the slip yet, how about we just walk up the dock to the marina and hit Lola’s bar and resturant.”

“Arrgh!” Said Cap’n Todd in argreement.

A good lamb bratwurst and a little cole slaw later (”Arrgh, pirates don’t eat with silverware” Todd said as he stuck his fingers into the shocked cabbage dish.) We were back on the boat.

The wind was still whistling at about thirty to forty miles an hour.

“Arrgh! A good stiff breeze for a cap’n of the sea!” Cried Cap’n Todd.

“Is it safe?”  I asked?

“Shut ye trap ye scurvy dog or I’ll keel haul ya.”  Stated Cap’n Todd.

We pushed out of the slip and into the open sea..er…lake.

“Now is when you work for ye rum.” Cried Cap’n

Todd.  “Stand by as I put this thing down under the boat.”

“The keel?”  I said.

“Arrgh.”  Said Cap’n Todd.

“Grab the line and haul like y have never hauled before.” Said Capn’t Todd.

“It seems stuck.” I said.

“Pull harder or I’ll make ye walk the plank.” Stated Cap’n Todd.

I pulled.  I looked up.

“What is that line that is still wrapped around the sail up there?” I asked.

“Arggh.” Said Todd.

Then at the exact some time, the rudder came loose and we managed to hit the good three foot waves at exactly the same time.

“Come down here and fix the rudder, I’ll try to free the top sail and try to secure it.” Says I.

“Arrgh”  Said Cap’n Todd.

As he climbed down from topside, I went up.

He fixed the rudder as I grabbed an eight foot pole and stood on the rolling ship trying to free the cords that had the sail half up and half down.

That is when Cap’n Todd turned sideways into the wind.

As the ship lurched sideways I grabbed the cross mast as my backend touched the water.  My eyes glared at Cap’n Todd.

“Arggh.” He said, smelling mutiny.

For the next fifteen minutes, on top of the fore cabin, I spent wrestling the sails and the rolling sea…er…lake.

Finally, the sail secure, I came down to the safety of the aft deck.

“Well that wasn’t too bad.”  Said Cap’n Todd.

I glared.

He cranked the outboard motor and pointed the ship in the direction of home.

I tried to cheer the captian up.

“Tis a fine day to sailing fer sure.” Says I.

“Tis a bit breezy, but oh the smell of the wind and spray of the sea is refreshing.” Says I.

Cap’n Todd just stared ahead, one had on the wheel, one hand on the throttle of the nine horse powered outboard motor.

We came into port and took a quick left turn heading straight into the berth.  Heading straight into the berth, very, very fast.

“Cap’n, you may want to put the old girl into reverse.” Says I.

Todd taps the throttle into reverse.

“FOR GOODNESS SAKES MAN THROW HER INTO REVERSE!” I calmly shouted as the poor people on the dock braced themselves as we appeared to be going at ramming speed with the wind directly on our backs and the little motor, while at full reverse, doing nothing but taunting the angry waves.

The people on dock grabbed the sides of the boat.  I grabbed the poles along side of the boat.

Thank goodness the dock was there too stop us.

Too bad it stopped us so fast.

“Bit o’wind today.”  Said the man that helped us guide us in.

“Yep.”  Said Cap’n Todd.

We tied her down into the slip, no major damage done except a little cosmetic when I almost fell into the drink and damaged the compass covering.

We sat drinking our water.

After several minutes Cap’n Todd says, “I may need a little more practice before I take her out in a wind like this again.”

“Arggh.” Says I.

(For the record, there is some artistic liscence taken with the above story.  I enjoyed the brush with dea…er…the day on the boat.  Thanks to Todd for the warm invitation.  Will drink a beer at Lola’s anytime and get on his fine boat…in calm seas…)

May 2nd.  There was no fanefare this spring.  No parades.  No speeches.  No reinactments.  Not even a cone raised in tribute.  The day past uncelebrated.

Few realized that it was the 10th anniversary of “The Great Ice Cream Run of ‘98.”

Like most Quixotic events, it started on a bar napkin.  Like other great memorable events, the Crusades, Columbus discovery of America, the American Revolution, Parachute pants - this too was to some, audatious, to some unthinkable, to others crazy.

To me, it was a good final chapter to a crazy four years in my life.

In a small college bar on the back of a cocktail napkin, the initial plans for “The Great Ice Cream Run of ‘98″ was born.

As a senior, a senior who spent more of my college time at Dairy Queen then I did at the local tavern, it seemed like the perfect send off.  Ten ice cream emporiums in ten hours.

We would start off sharpely at eleven at the Dairy Queen on University Ave, from their, procede down to the Frozen Yogurt shop, then to the Dairy Queen on the south side.  This would be followed by the A & W several blocks away.

We were just getting warmed up.

Stop #5 would be the Dairy Queen on the western edge of town.  Stop #6 would be the Mom and Pop Ice Cream Shop.  Stop #7 would be the Dairy Queen across the river.  Stop #8 would be Happy Joe’s - Pizza and Ice Cream.

We would be on the home streatch.  One Dairy Queen and one A & W left…we would celebrate with a beer…root beer…float.

I was reminded of a quote from one of my favorite movies, Lonesome Dove, as the two hero’s of that movie were discussing cutting a new cattle trail from the Mexico border up into Wyoming.  One of them states, “Hell, they’ll be writing songs about us for generations.”

This was the pinnicle.  My children and my children’s children would enter the hallowed halls of my alma mater and here the tale of the brave few that no cone could conquer, no parfait could melt their enthusiasm.

But it was about more then ice cream.  It was about comradery, it was about friendship.

All those trips to Dairy Queen were never alone.  It was with friends and fraternity brothers.  Some of the most serious, or most outlandish discussions took place in the parking lot of one of those many ice cream locations.  Problems were solved.  Fears were revealed.  Friends were made.

No hang overs, sometimes just an ice cream headache and a little bloating.

We started on time.  About fourteen hearty - and hungry - souls.  Most of them fraternity brothers, friends, and just curious folks that I had mentioned it too.

We paced ourselves.  Most had a small cone, some a Blizzard, others a parfait.

The numbers dwindled.

By stop #4, we were down to six people.  Dedicated…but ever filling…souls.

Stop #5, was the tipping point.  We were about four hours in.  The Dairy Queen in West Fargo. 

Maybe a break the final six said, maybe just a couple of hours off…lets go bowling!

I resigned myself to my fate.  No songs would be written, no children begging their parents to tell the story, no heros made that day.

Though they said the quest would go on, I knew.  I knew in my heart of hearts that the quest was over.

We bowled, we ate pizza, we talked, we laughed, we enjoyed the end of a school year.

With a bit of sadness, I realized that would be the end of an era in my life.

To those few, who stayed until the end:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that eats ice cream with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen throughout the land now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That ate with us upon St. Waldebert Day.

(My apology to Mr. Shakespeare…)

For in the end, it was not ice cream.  It was not about doing the deed, the audatious, the crazy, the quixotic…it was about friendship.

For that, I will gladly tip my cone.

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the spring of 1988)

I still have a little grease on my knuckles.

When the weather was nice last week I decided to be macho and change the oil in my pickup.  A lot of folks change their own oil all the time, but not me.  I usually take it to a handy mechanic and say, “change the oil and check things over.”

So I pulled on a pair of blue coverall, making me look like a pseudo-mechanic, and went to work.

It’s not like I’ve never done any mechanic’s work before.  I changed oil and did simple repairs on all kinds of farm equipment when I was back home.  I even managed to do an engine overhaul while I was in high school shop class.

Maybe I’m getting soft.  Here I sit, day after day, building sentences and paragraphs and tuning up the press releases that come across my desk.  The most mechanical thin i’ve done since I started my writing career is to hang some blinds in our last apartment.

I miss doing that kind of stuff.  It was a spring ritual at home to coax all those motors to life after a long winter of idleness.  We’d squirt oil and gas into the cylinders through the spark plug holes and pour gasoline down through the carburetor.   Then we would have to pull the tractors around the yard until they started.

So there I was, socket wrench in hand, coveralls on, ready to play mechanic.  I plopped down on the garage floor and wriggled under the truck.  My coveralls quickly picked up the dust that has been coating the floor for 20 or 30 years or so.  Our garage is rather dark so along with the socket wrench, I carried a flashlight.

It’s one of those fancy rechargeable lights. 

It went out as soon as I needed it and it wouldn’t come back on.  There I was on a dirty garage floor, in the dark, and as I soon found out, with the wrong sized socket.  I had two others in my pocket, but they wouldn’t fit the oil plug either.

So, I wiggled back out from the darkness under my truck, through the dirt and rummaged around in my tool box.

As a young boy I wanted a tool box just like my dad’s.  Now I realize that is exactly what I’ve got.  On top are some spark plugs that I replaced about two years age.  Under those is a distributor cap.  There is a frayed battery cable in there along a set of points and a condenser.  Mixed in with all these things is my scant collection of tools.  Underneath all of those things are some unidentifiable parts and pieces.

Mixed in with all that junk was the socket I needed.

I found it, got back under the truck, and drained the oil.   I was feeling pretty self-sufficient about then.  I managed to change the filter without much incident.

I was pretty proud of myself.  Just like back on the farm where we’d change the oil on all the tractors before spring field work started. 

While the oil was draining out of the engines we’d sit around and laugh at the stories about a guy down the road who drove his tractor without refilling it with oil.

By the way I did remember to put five quarts of oil back into my truck’s engine.  I may be out of practice, but I’m not a complete idiot.  Now the only problem is that I have grease, oil and dust all over those nice clean blue overalls.

Back home it didn’t matter.  I’d wipe my hands on my coveralls or my shirt.  “I’m working hard, Mom won’t care.  Clothes are washable.”

My wife cares,  “What am I supposed to do with these?” She said while holding them up with two fingers.

Anyway, I had fun.  It was just like being at home again.  Almost.

 This time of summer is the high point on the farm on the upper great plains.

 The cows are usually all fresh.  The young calves have been weaned.  The corn is reaching for the sky.  The beans are slowly covering the rows.  The wheat is waving in the wind as it heads out and storms to ripen.  Things are green and lush from the usual summer rain falls.

The fence rows, the meadows, the sloughs - everything seems to bask in the warmth of summer.

The reading from Isaiah 55: 10-11 certian warms an old farm boys heart too: “The rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and breat to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.”

For in the end, just as the Lord gives us the sun and rain, the fertile soil, and the wonders of creation - perhaps the most valuable of all of his gifts is his words of life for us - the words that unlock the mysteries, but that are the mystery.  The Savior and the Sacrifice, the Shepard and the Pascal Lamb, the Gate to Eternal Life.

While the Lord grants us the rain and sunshine, the warmth and the fertile soil - he also gives us a choice - what do with them.

We till the soil, nurture the seeds, clear the weeds and the clutter of the landscape to feed and nuorish out bodies. 

How many of us are prepared - prepare our hearts, our minds, our souls - to accept His word, to nourish it with thought, with prayerful reflection, by living it with in our daily lives, by actively seeking to sow the word and nourish the poorest of his children.  How many of us, like the farmer tends the fields, truely tend to the most precious of all the seeds - the seed of His loving word.

The Lord himself lays it out for us in Matthew - where the seed of His word lands is very important.  If our souls are well prepared, the roots will set down deep and it will be an unending source of nourishment.  If we allow doubts and fear to steal the word of hope from us, if we allow discouragements to steal that seed of hope, if we let worldly anxieties to steal the word - we will live a life without hope, a life without joy, a life devoid of the undying faith in Him that will sustain us in this world and carry us to the next.

In the end, the Lord is a master farmer, all we must only have faith, pray, and act that he might show us how to reap a bountiful harvest.

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the spring of 1988)

Every farm has a “Tractor form Hell.”

I give you as an example my father’s Farmall “Super MTA” with the “TA” standing for “ torque amplified.”   According to the operator’s manual, the torque amplifier was designed to provide extra power when needed without having to use the clutch or gearshift.

Nifty idea.  It rarely worked.

The tractor was the farm “loader tractor.”  To the uninformed this means simply a tractor with a front-end loader.  Not so.  To those with a farm background, “loader tractor” means  “a Tractor we must use everyday, but rarely functions properly.”

“Super MTA’s” did not come equipped from the International Harvester Company with power steering.  The added weight of a front-end loader made the tractor extremely difficult to steer.”

So dad scavenged a power steering unit from a junked Farmall 400.

I remember well that cool evening when we clustered around the pickup truck.  Dad pointed to a greasy object with hoses and levers protruding.  “What do you think of that,” he said with pride in his voice as the thing oozed oil.

“Neat, dad. What is it?”

He looked at me in obvious disappointment.  How could his eldest offspring fail to recognize a power-steering from a Farmall “400?”

“It’s a power steering unit from a “400”, he would say.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Put it on the loader tractor.”

Now I was impressed.  Up until then it took two of us to steer the loader tractor and then the job wasn’t easy.

The unit was installed and the hoses were connected.  As if by magic, the steering wheel could be turned with a single hand.

But then the hood wouldn’t fit over the unit.  The hood was necessary to keep dust, feed and hay from building up on the hot engine.  The answer?

A hammer.  We pounded the hood down around the unit until we could get the hood clips clipped.  It didn’t look good, but it worked.Those years of sitting in a junkyard, didn’t do that power-steering unit any good.   We soon found that it leaked oil.  The oil would leak out and down onto the engine where it would smoke and smell and cause the engine to overheat.Try as we might we could not get the connections to stop leaking, so we settled for the next best thing.  We washed the tractor about as often as we put oil into the hydraulic and power steering system.

St. Louis Park, MN - A local Minnesota man has successfully returned after an arduous ten day trip that took him 1700 miles across Minnesota, North Dakota, into Montana and back to the Minneapolis area (with one brief excusion into Canada).

“The trip was pretty good.  It was mainly about family and friends.”  Stated the traveler.  “It was a good time to get caught up as most of my friends have families and I haven’t seen them in some time.  Plus, we wanted to show our support for the American brewing industry.  We wanted to give them ALOT of support.”

Sources indicate that the first two days (June 25th and 26th) were relatively tame.  Visiting with his older brother and some family friends, only one beer and one margarita were consumed.

But then came somewhat of a marathon session of parties, picnics, and outings.

A picnic with four fraternity brothers and their families on Friday night, June 27th in the Fargo area, a party with six fraternity brothers and their familty in the Kindred area on Saturday, and boating the Missouri River in Bismarck with other bachelor friends were the high water mark for mass demonstrations of support for the brewery industry.

The balance of the trip was marked with more road time and more quiet gatherings with friends and family.

“My old liver ain’t quite what she used to be.”  Said the vacationaire with a hint of sadness in his voice.

We all have our heroes.

In times past, we have lionized them.  The George Washingtons, the John Adams, the Winston Churchills, the John F Kennedys, the Abraham Lincolns.

More recently, we have become disillusioned with our heroes failings.  Juicing in baseball, our statesmen leaving principles for politics, our football players getting involved with drugs, leaders of all kind getting involved in things they shouldn’t.

Our media has ripped down the once sacred veil between the privacy of the individual and the right of the general public to know about the character of the people we place upon the pedestal of life.

The general public isn’t usually happy about what they see.

A smooth talking politician may have one bad speech.  A sports hero may be pushed too hard and lash out in front of a cell phone camera.  In the age of internet, cell phone camera’s and the multimedia age, we see our hero’s with warts and all.

We generally don’t like it when our hero’s look too human.

But when it comes down to it, our hero’s - even the mythical hero’s of time past had their fair share of warts.

George Washington was very self conciense about his clothing.  He wanted to be seen as a gentlemen.  Many of the pictures that we see, he isn’t smiling - part of it is the way portraits were drawn, but part of it too was the fact that Washington hated the look of his false teeth.  You never hear about Washington’s overbearing mother or his crush on his best friends wife.  Or the letters that he sent to Congress, pleading for money and support.  You don’t hear about the rare times he lost his extremely voletile temper.  Nor the fact that he lost more battles then he won.  Instead, he is the stately, calm, cool, wise father of our country.

John F Kennedy is seen as the robust war hero, athlete from a family that pulled themselves up by the boot straps.  The master mind that saved us from the brink of war during the Cuban Missle crisis.  His one vice was his love of women.  But rarely do you here about how his family made their fortune.  Or how very sick he was as a child, or the fact that his father (a rich and influencial man) got him special permission to join the navy.  How his father pushed him hard and made the family compete against each other - playing them off one another.  How he was very alone and very scared in his decision about Cuba - it was only recently before the crisis that he had suffered some embarrassing defeats - one being the Bay of Pigs fiasco.  Instead, he is the young president of Camelot fame.

Winston Churchill was blamed for one of the worst defeats the British suffered in World War I, was cast out of political society in the 1930’s and was voted out of office after World War II (before winning the office of Prime Minister once more before his death) - but we only want to remember the man that gave the “lion his roar.”

We don’t want to know about Abe Lincoln’s politic defeats, his bouts of depression, his lack of self confidence.

In the end, it is good to have hero’s - and these hero’s must know that the world, or at least a few people - are watching them for leadership.  But we must not forget that all our hero’s have failings, all our hero’s where imperfect people that made bad decisions.

But the one thing they all had in common - they never gave up.

As much as they doubted themselves, they kept on trying.

As much as they felt they lacked education, they kept on trying.

As much as the world called them fools, they kept on trying.

The age of the hero, the age of the great leaders, statements, business person, athletes is not dead.

The crown may be tarnished and the pedestall may be a little shakey - but the hero’s live on in people that do the deeds, make decisions, push forward into the unknown and fail - but keep on trying.

That is the nature of progress.

That is the nature of being human.

In a surprising action last week, dispite repeated denials that he would visit Canada, a vacationing Minnesota man did in fact cross the border in a clandestined strike meant to strike terror and fear among the three other people in the general area.

“It would have been fine eh.  Except he told this joke see, and we are still kind of discussing here along the other border communities.  I mean, was he making fun of Canada or North Dakota eh?” stated one confused Canadian resident.

“Yeah, vell, ve vere justing standing there and he comes up and by yimmy, he crosses that border just a lickety split which is no big deal ya see, but then he tells this joke, and at first we laugh…but den, ve tink, hay, could he be making fun of us?” Stated a North Dakotan also present on the site.

The event took place at the International Peace Gardens, about 45 miles north of Rugby, ND which is the geographical center of North America and also known more commonly as the middle of nowhere.

The offending joke was about a Scandiavian immigrant who was plowing his field when the international surveying team was crossing through the area, upon quizing the survey team and finding he was inside North Dakota by a whopping 100 feet exclaims, “Whew, good thing, I’ve heard those Canadian winters are really something.”

“If this was a crack against Canadian cold winters, we stand appalled as a nation,” Stated a Canadian spokesperson as she stood warming herself by a fire.  “I mean, we are one of the warmest countries at this lattitude.”

“How could this happen?” Cried one Canadian resident.  “They said they would be on gaurd for thee!”

“Thee, not thou.” was the response of one Canadian official. 

The Scandinavian Society of North Dakota is silent on the issue at the moment.  They are still trying to decipher the meaning of the joke.

Man Prepares to Invade Canada

I am no hunter.

Growing up on a dairy farm when milking cows had to be done morning and night - the prime hunting time for most animals - it was hard to get into the sport of hunting. 

But guns were still a part of our lives.

If you had to dispatch a wild dog or coyote, a good 22 caliber gun in the tractor cab was just the ticket.

If you had a flock of black birds descending on a field or near the feed bins, a good shot from the single barrel 12 guage shot gun got the job done.

Perhaps the sadest task, if you had a pet that was just in too much pain or that got the taste of blood - a taste that once it seemed to get it, never seemed to leave the calves or even the cows alone, the quickest, most humane way to take care of the animal was a quick - painless shot to the animal - a painful shot to the pet owner who had to pull the trigger.

Needless to say, guns were a part of growing up and gun safety was a must, even if we never took to the sport of hunting.  Gun safety training was a requirement of growing up.

After Dad sold the cows and coyotes and wild dogs were no longer a problem, I got a job at the local golf course.  Being one of the only farm boys on the grounds crew meant two things 1) some one that didn’t mind sitting on the rough mower for two days at a time (just like cutting hay!), and 2) someone that could safely use the BB gun to dispatch the many pocket gophers from the course.

Since I had three older brothers, I could even withstand the taunts from the retired teachers as they golfed each morning as I set out with the gun in hand as they would shout, “Gopher Patrol! Gopher Patrol!”

I was no hunter, but I could get the sights lined up and usually hit what I was aiming at.  Nuisance birds and a few cattle chasing coyotes had met their end at the end of my gun.  The gophers on the wide open rough on hole #6 were thinned out pretty good by the end of the summer.  Only recently I went to an international conference where their was a skeet shooting contest.  Being one of the only Americans, I did our country proud and proved to be a crack shot - winning the contest.

I can still remember walking through a sporting goods store some years back with a college friend.  I asked to see a gun off the rack and the clerk handed it too me, I eyed it up, checked the sights, checked the chamber.  I handed it back and said, “Its got a nice feel to it.”

My buddy who is a big hunter said, “I didn’t know you were a hunter?”

“I’m not,” I said, “But everyone should know how to handle a gun.”

To which he said, “You have no idea how much I respect you at this moment.”

This last weekend brought me back up to the farm where I learned about Dad’s latest plague of chipmunks.  A couple of pan traps had dispatched one of the foe (who tend to a do a fair amount of damage around the homestead), but there was still a few that were brave enough to come right up to the door and the front porch.

The BB gun, a live trap, and nearly everything else my Dad could think of had been deployed to rid the farmyard of these pests…and yet they lived.  Worse, they seemed to be taunting my poor father…

No chipmunk taunts my father.

Sunday morning as I was doing some chores, I spied one climbing into the old recliner we had moved onto our front porch to give my Dad a good - comfortable - view of the world.

I grabbed the BB gun, put a pellet into the chamber, pumped it up twenty times, and slowly opened the door.

He was nowhere to be seen…but I sensed him…

I kicked the chair…and it chirped at me.  Bingo.  I couple of more swift kicks, and I stood back.  He made a quick run for the end of the porch and freedom.

He paused only briefly at the end of porch.

But that was enough for me.  One shot to the head, and one more to make sure that the poor little fellow was out of his misery.

I proudly went into the house to proclaim my victory to my Dad.  He actually seemed a little disappointed.  While he hates the little critters, Dad himself was never a hunter and always had a hard time killing any animal.  Plus, I think he liked the challenge facing off against them himself.

The other thing that struck me is, I’m not a big fan of killing things myself.  Sometimes its a necessary thing and for the ecosystem, hunting, fishing, and trapping are good things.  But for as destructive as those little buggers can be…well, shucks, they are pretty cute.

It made me realize that hunting may not me in my blood after all.

That afternoon, I spotted another one on the porch.  I grabbed the BB gun and aimed to kill.  Because as John Wayne says, “A man’s got to do what a mans got to do.”

I may not like hunting, but it sometimes remains a necessary part of life.

My crack shot was a little off, I missed the little guy by about a quarter of an inch.

Dad seemed surprisingly forgiving, he even laughed about it a little bit as he plotted how he might set the live trap in just the right spot.

Just don’t tell him the reason I know that I missed him by a quarter of an inch is because the pellet is firmly buried in the solid plastic tire of his grill…