Gerald Martin
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- Jul 3, 2009
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I had some time tonight so I pulled up an essay I had written some time ago about a special day spent with my Dad when I was a young boy. I hope you enjoy it.
"There is an instance in my childhood that seemed insignificant at the time but has made a huge impact on me as I've grown older. It made me see how much my Dad cared about being there for me.
I was eleven years old that fall. I was big enough to shoot a shotgun but I couldn't hit much of anything. I was a little fishing and hunting fanatic who would spend hours going through Dad's old Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines.
Somehow I had gotten into my head how wonderful it would be to hunt ruffed grouse. There are a couple of points to help set the stage here.
1. Dad was a very busy contractor with four kids to support. On the day this took place he was working to finish designing and drawing up a client's blueprint for a new house.
2. Ruffed grouse hunting in the mountains of Virginia is not a high success hunt, especially if you don't have dogs. You might be lucky to flush one or two birds per day, killing one is an amazing feat.
3. We lived about 35 miles from where I wanted to hunt.
Somehow during the fall I had gotten Dad to promise me that he would take me grouse hunting. As a busy father myself, I now understand the offhanded promise he made, probably expecting I would forget about it, and then he got back to more pressing things like work, bills, clients, responsibility.
Now it’s the last day of grouse season, the first Saturday of February. You all know how bleak the woods is in Midwinter. As the morning passes, I know if we don't go today, we'll have to wait a WHOLE YEAR until next season. I remind Dad of his promise. Dad is busy drawing the client's blue print.
Noon comes and goes, Dad's still busy. I'm getting antsy. I bug him about it some more. Now that I'm a parent, I know how I tend to react when my kid's have a totally unrealistic request that doesn't make logical sense. Usually I tell them "No and quit asking."
Two o'clock comes and goes. Dad's not done with his blueprint. I'm going over the logistics in my mind. It’s an hour's drive over rough mountain roads to the specific place where I "know" the grouse are going to be. It gets dark at 5:00. There's not going to be much time to hunt.
The rest of the details leading up to the time we left are a bit fuzzy, but I remember being in tears telling Dad in an accusing tone that "You promised!" I also remember him telling me (he is a very patient man) "Okay, go get our stuff and put it in the truck."
I'll bet it didn't take me five minutes to get the guns and our gear in the truck.
For the next hour Dad and I sat in silence as he drove and I gazed out the window. I was ecstatic that I was finally going grouse hunting. Never mind that we only had an hour to hunt and our chances of killing a grouse in early February were about as good as a snowman lasting a day at the equator. As for Dad.... Who knows what he was thinking, but I bet it was something along the lines of the foolishness of burning this much gas for a stupid bird and the blueprint that was sitting unfinished on his desk.
The sun was dipping low toward the horizon when Dad parked the truck and handed me my gun. The hunting area I picked had two old logging roads that ran parallel to each other up a gentle hardwood ridge. He asked me which road I wanted and I picked the high road while he took the lower road.
I don't know how far we walked. We must have covered a quarter mile or so. The entire time I was as tense and birdy as any Springer Spaniel has ever been, expecting at any time to see a grouse exploding out of the sparse cover.
Suddenly there he was! Behind me! Whirring wing beats that evoke the feeling of urgency that only someone who knows how quickly a grouse gets out of shotgun range can understand. Just as my ears were processing the sound and my body was starting to turn in response, there was a BOOM and I looked to see Dad shucking a shell out of his old Remington 870 Wingmaster.
The grouse had hunkered low, watching me walk past, before he made his escape. He couldn’t know that his flight path would give Dad as perfect a shot as one ever gets at a ruffed grouse.
I never even saw the bird flush and now I asked Dad if he got him. "I think so." Was his reply and the he guided me to the spot where the bird had fallen.
To this day I can remember the feel of that @#)(# grouse's feathers, the bird smell and the pin pricks of blood that were on my hand as I smoothed the feathers down.
As we walked out of the woods that night, my Dad seemed seven foot tall to me. I was impressed then that he could hit such a hard target.
Looking back on that day, my Dad still seems seven foot tall to me. Not because of the shot, because I know that in all reality it was probably luck as much as true skill. Dad never shot a case of shotgun shells in his life. Today, I'm not incredibly impressed that we had a special skill to find that grouse. Given the low densities of birds in the February mountains, I know that bird was a gift from God to help me understand. Even if I couldn't comprehend it at the time, now I know what that grouse was supposed to help me see. Now Dad seems seven feet tall to me because he laid down his blueprint, wasted a bunch of gas and time to take me to do something that was important to me. It didn't matter that my desire to hunt grouse was unrealistic, not to mention unreasonable, he still took me to fulfill his promise.
There was something about that incident, even though I didn't know it at the time, that day became a lense that helped me see years later, even when we didn't agree, I still knew he cared.
Who knows when that moment comes for our children? I'm sure Dad didn't know it at the time. I only know that if our kids never have a moment in their lives such as that our relationship will probably be bitter and tense. I don't know if or when I can ever give my kids a moment like that but I pray to God that somehow they will have a time in their lives when they can point to an incident and know beyond the shadow of a doubt their Dad loved them."
"There is an instance in my childhood that seemed insignificant at the time but has made a huge impact on me as I've grown older. It made me see how much my Dad cared about being there for me.
I was eleven years old that fall. I was big enough to shoot a shotgun but I couldn't hit much of anything. I was a little fishing and hunting fanatic who would spend hours going through Dad's old Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines.
Somehow I had gotten into my head how wonderful it would be to hunt ruffed grouse. There are a couple of points to help set the stage here.
1. Dad was a very busy contractor with four kids to support. On the day this took place he was working to finish designing and drawing up a client's blueprint for a new house.
2. Ruffed grouse hunting in the mountains of Virginia is not a high success hunt, especially if you don't have dogs. You might be lucky to flush one or two birds per day, killing one is an amazing feat.
3. We lived about 35 miles from where I wanted to hunt.
Somehow during the fall I had gotten Dad to promise me that he would take me grouse hunting. As a busy father myself, I now understand the offhanded promise he made, probably expecting I would forget about it, and then he got back to more pressing things like work, bills, clients, responsibility.
Now it’s the last day of grouse season, the first Saturday of February. You all know how bleak the woods is in Midwinter. As the morning passes, I know if we don't go today, we'll have to wait a WHOLE YEAR until next season. I remind Dad of his promise. Dad is busy drawing the client's blue print.
Noon comes and goes, Dad's still busy. I'm getting antsy. I bug him about it some more. Now that I'm a parent, I know how I tend to react when my kid's have a totally unrealistic request that doesn't make logical sense. Usually I tell them "No and quit asking."
Two o'clock comes and goes. Dad's not done with his blueprint. I'm going over the logistics in my mind. It’s an hour's drive over rough mountain roads to the specific place where I "know" the grouse are going to be. It gets dark at 5:00. There's not going to be much time to hunt.
The rest of the details leading up to the time we left are a bit fuzzy, but I remember being in tears telling Dad in an accusing tone that "You promised!" I also remember him telling me (he is a very patient man) "Okay, go get our stuff and put it in the truck."
I'll bet it didn't take me five minutes to get the guns and our gear in the truck.
For the next hour Dad and I sat in silence as he drove and I gazed out the window. I was ecstatic that I was finally going grouse hunting. Never mind that we only had an hour to hunt and our chances of killing a grouse in early February were about as good as a snowman lasting a day at the equator. As for Dad.... Who knows what he was thinking, but I bet it was something along the lines of the foolishness of burning this much gas for a stupid bird and the blueprint that was sitting unfinished on his desk.
The sun was dipping low toward the horizon when Dad parked the truck and handed me my gun. The hunting area I picked had two old logging roads that ran parallel to each other up a gentle hardwood ridge. He asked me which road I wanted and I picked the high road while he took the lower road.
I don't know how far we walked. We must have covered a quarter mile or so. The entire time I was as tense and birdy as any Springer Spaniel has ever been, expecting at any time to see a grouse exploding out of the sparse cover.
Suddenly there he was! Behind me! Whirring wing beats that evoke the feeling of urgency that only someone who knows how quickly a grouse gets out of shotgun range can understand. Just as my ears were processing the sound and my body was starting to turn in response, there was a BOOM and I looked to see Dad shucking a shell out of his old Remington 870 Wingmaster.
The grouse had hunkered low, watching me walk past, before he made his escape. He couldn’t know that his flight path would give Dad as perfect a shot as one ever gets at a ruffed grouse.
I never even saw the bird flush and now I asked Dad if he got him. "I think so." Was his reply and the he guided me to the spot where the bird had fallen.
To this day I can remember the feel of that @#)(# grouse's feathers, the bird smell and the pin pricks of blood that were on my hand as I smoothed the feathers down.
As we walked out of the woods that night, my Dad seemed seven foot tall to me. I was impressed then that he could hit such a hard target.
Looking back on that day, my Dad still seems seven foot tall to me. Not because of the shot, because I know that in all reality it was probably luck as much as true skill. Dad never shot a case of shotgun shells in his life. Today, I'm not incredibly impressed that we had a special skill to find that grouse. Given the low densities of birds in the February mountains, I know that bird was a gift from God to help me understand. Even if I couldn't comprehend it at the time, now I know what that grouse was supposed to help me see. Now Dad seems seven feet tall to me because he laid down his blueprint, wasted a bunch of gas and time to take me to do something that was important to me. It didn't matter that my desire to hunt grouse was unrealistic, not to mention unreasonable, he still took me to fulfill his promise.
There was something about that incident, even though I didn't know it at the time, that day became a lense that helped me see years later, even when we didn't agree, I still knew he cared.
Who knows when that moment comes for our children? I'm sure Dad didn't know it at the time. I only know that if our kids never have a moment in their lives such as that our relationship will probably be bitter and tense. I don't know if or when I can ever give my kids a moment like that but I pray to God that somehow they will have a time in their lives when they can point to an incident and know beyond the shadow of a doubt their Dad loved them."
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