I see myself, in my idle dreaming hours, in an old red Buick convertible with the top down. I am wearing a faded corduroy cap that I heavily favored (now long lost), enjoying a big curved Dunhill pipe (also favored and long lost), with my bird dog sitting up on the front seat with me, grinning into the breeze as dogs often do.
This, to me, is a soft picture reflecting a sweeter time. I would have been headed for a bird cover that I know now is checkered with cheaply built houses.
I am looking for a time when a fine, or at least good, side-by-side cost less than a car. A time when you were allowed to go out wearing whatever seemed suitable and not a required minimum of plastic fluorescent orange.
A time when you could drink from a spring, without fearing instant hepatitis or worse. A time when a lost dog would bring a friendly telephone call saying that Jeff was in a neighbor's kitchen eating corn bread, and I could come fetch him--instead of being sick with worry about dog thieves.
A time when a farmer whom I didn't happen to know would be pleased to have a chat, warn me about the pasture where the bull was kept, and more often than not insist on a cool glass of sweet (or better yet--hard) cider from a frog-sprinkled spring house...instead of being threatened with arrest for trespassing or treated with fearful suspicion.
A time when you could set up a fly rod and leave it by the car and expect to find it when you came back from gunning a morning cover.
I liked it better when my hunting license was a little green or orange pin that I fastened to my hat instead of a three-page legal document that I have to display pinned to my back like a prison number.
I deeply miss the afternoons when we could get together at the trap club and swap a gun, or take another one home to try out without being in violation of Lord knows how many state and federal laws threatening us with confiscation, massive fines, and jail.
I miss the excitement children had at being allowed to tag along to watch Bess work a cover and maybe take a shot or two to see how far along they were in growing up--when the fathers and mothers were trusted to teach them good gun manners instead of well-meaning strangers who put them through what's optimistically called a Hunter's Safety Course and give them a paper that makes them much more confident than they should be.
I don't like to have to sign half a dozen forms to buy a box of .22s. I resent being fingerprinted and forced to carry a permit that remarks on my sanity and questions my civil obedience.
Where did everything go wrong? What happened to us? Why did our society make us display ourselves as moronic, dangerous, destructive, and law-breaking? Our glowing plastic vests flapping with tags, our serial numbers duly registered with the national and local authorities, our morals questioned, and our intentions scrutinized?
I don't know. But I can't resign myself to being legally classified as an equal to a house thief, an armed robber, or a potential murderer. But that's the case, like it or not, before we can enjoy a round of trap or a sunrise from a duck blind.
My nongunning neighbors equate me with the disappearance of everything from the great auk to the passenger pigeon. They accuse me of being a factor in the diminution of the trumpeter, the osprey, and about everything else but the saber-toothed tiger and the mastodon. Television and popular magazines portray me as a blood-covered savage with instincts that would be demeaning to prehistoric man.
My children are abused in school, and my neighbors send the police over if I pattern a shotgun in the backyard or mess with a few clays and my hand trap.
My empty gun case in the room with the big fireplace mocks my reflection in the glass. And I stand there--looking at myself--and dream of the days you could drive through town with the top down, smoking your pipe and wearing your favorite old corduroy cap, your dog sitting grandly in the front seat. The neighbors all knew you were going bird hunting, and they would wave and wish you well. The gravel roads crossed and recrossed our brooks, threaded through our woodcock and partridge covers, and led us home again with a lovely song that added a sweetness to those little travels.
But, as many poets tell us, there are roads we may have traveled once that we can never take again.
This story originally appeared in Hill Country by Gene Hill. Copyright (c) 1974-78 Gene A. Hill. All rights reserved.