Call Of The Mild
My dad and his grandfather ca 1944. Click to engorge
Just read a nice piece in Brevity Magazine by a woman reminiscing about accompanying her dad on a hunting excursion when she was pre-tomboy, and it reminded me of similar rituals my dad took me on (although I was probably never as tomboy as the author of that piece, as I reveal later).
My dad didn’t hunt with his father, who was not a real outdoorsy type, he downloaded his hunting and fishing genes from his paternal grandparents. My great-grandmother was a fisherwoman, and often would show me scars on her hands earned decades prior when she cleaned catfish and was impaled by their dorsal fins. I only knew my great-grandparents in their dotage, and only have fleeting bits from anecdotes of my dad’s recall.
One such anecdote has stuck with me. One time my dad and his grandfather were going hunting, and my dad borrowed a hunting jacket from his grandfather. As they proceeded, my dad reached into one of the myriad pockets on the jacket and pulled out a substantial roll of (late 1940s) $20 bills. As he gawked at it, his grandfather sternly admonished, “Don’t you ever tell your grandmother about that!”
My dad continued to hunt after I was born, and took me along a few times, perhaps thinking to kindle a relationship similar to what he had with his grandfather. He did, for a brief period, call me his hunting and fishing buddy. For duck hunting forays, he would wake me before 5am, and we’d head to the Maumee River, where he had a rowboat chained up under the Ohio Turnpike bridge. He’d row us across the as-yet-unfrozen river to a spot below the old Children’s Home, place his decoys and set up the duckblind that he’d pre-fabbed using burlap and dowel rods. Then we’d hunker as day slowly broke over the fog-enshrouded decoys and wait, Dad sipping hot coffee from his thermos and offering me a bitter slug now and then. And, as was the father in the Brevity article, Dad was a Jim Beam loyalist, and I’ll bet he had a grog ration of it secreted in one of his jacket pockets
Dad had preparation rituals the night before. His grandfather had handed down a flotilla of wooden decoys, and I recall him melting lead and pouring it into a mold in order to fashion anchors for the decoys. He also at some point bought a duck call from Herter’s, which came with a 78-rpm record, and he would spend nights practicing calls along with the record, probably with more commitment than I have practicing my trumpet.There was a certain call that was to be used when the ducks were far aloft, in order to entice them to descend and check out our delectable collection of decoys, a call that sounded a lot like Phyllis Diller laughing. A whole lot. As the ducks approached our feathered rave party, a different, sort of low chuckle was meant to seal the deal.
As much as I wanted to assimilate the manly mantle that I was being offered, it was freaking cold sitting in that duck blind with not much to do, and my only takeaway was hypothermia and a dose of guilt. Dad never did teach me to shoot, which was probably wise, knowing me, but that may have been the one thing that would have piqued my interest.
I remember the last time we went duck hunting together, and I believe the last time he ever went. That morning he employed his duck-call virtuosity several times and had some birds circling in. Each time, however, other hunters started opening fire while they were well out of range. We packed up in disgust, and that chapter closed for good.
