Don't marry a woman who won't make you go to church
The Uncle NoPass Chronicles
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Don't marry a woman who won't make you go to church The Uncle NoPass Chronicles |
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30 October 2003 Don’t marry a woman who won’t make you go to church Was some advice Uncle NoPass gave me as we rolled in a light rain toward Mr. Murty’s place out near the Salem-Shotwell Covered Bridge near Bleeker, Alabama. The bridge is falling into disrepair and Lee County, Alabama residents should be ashamed. While I would like to see it stay where it is, I fear some idiots will burn it down one day in it’s current isolated site. Maybe a local fund drive could be started to save it. The rabbit hunt last Saturday in Wedowee was a bust. I jumped one small rabbit all day long and instead of shooting as it sprinted down a trunk of a long fallen sweet gum, I called for the dogs. They milled around where I had last seen the rabbit, unable to pick up the track. The only real highlight of the trip was the dirty look Brag gave me when I suggested we send in the kid. Uncle NoPass said our first hunt in Wedowee the weather was to windy to hear the dogs. The second hunt in Wedowee, he said it was to hot and dry for the dogs to pick up the scent. As I pulled into the yard of the abandoned house where we would hunt, I wondered if todays excuse would be “to wet“. Well, they are handy excuses, but I hated the thought of having to use all three on consecutive hunts. After the first forty five minutes or so of fruitless briar beating, brush kicking I began to rehearse the excuse in my mind. “It was to wet after all that dryness and wind” when Kate started to squeal. This was followed by Robyn’s deeper voice and then Lady joined in. The overgrown clear-cut, which had never been replanted, was thick with briars, vines and various sapling’s and the rabbit walked under them followed by the low-crawling dogs. The rabbit held tight in the cover, stubbornly refusing to come out and play. Realizing that once again I was the kid, I waded into the briars and vines. Working my way toward the dogs, I discovered a draw back in the snake chaps briar shedding ability when I got my feet tangled and fell into a sitting position on some blackberry vines. GF was busy last night with the tweezers. Ain't she a saint? Under pressure, the rabbit left the thicket we were in and headed across a large patch of low growing brush. As the dogs milled around with their backs and white tipped tails showing above the brush, I wondered how they could have possibly lost the trail. The reason was simple. The rabbit, a small sager, had stopped next to three or four small (really small, as in tiny) sweet gum saplings and let the dogs pass him. I saw him as he exploded from under the trees headed back into the thicket I had just kicked him out of. Demonstrating my lightening fast reflexes and keen hunting instincts, I extended a pointing finger and yelled “rabbit”, instead of shooting. I don’t have a clue why. The dogs knew he was a rabbit. The rabbit definitely knew. Knowing the rabbit would circle again, I told Uncle NoPass to wait where he could see the clear area leading into the small field while I went up the old logging road another thirty yards. I watched my uncle as he saw the rabbit. He had to look down at his lap to cock the hammer, taking his eyes off the rabbit. He then raised the old twenty gauge single shot and fired his single shot as the rabbit seeing NoPass dove back into the wet weather creek bed. A clean miss. If he was disappointed, he never showed it. Nor did he make excuses though he had plenty of legitimate ones ranging from age to strokes to eye sight. I, on the other hand, was the one disappointed. I, so badly, wanted him to make the kill. Thirty minutes later, we quitely talked as we listened to the dogs running the rabbit down in a bottom even I wasn’t fool enough to go in. While he told me again of far off times and places, I noticed something move toward us. The rabbit was back and skidded to a stop only a couple of feet from us. He froze in shock at our sudden appearance. “Shoot the rabbit Ted shoot the rabbit” “Where is he” said my uncle as he looked off into the distance. “At your feet” Just as he looked down the rabbit took off , running down a long straight trail. Uncle NoPass made no effort to raise his gun. Instead came a command ”Shoot him” I raised the old 16ga. Fox and tracked him for a few seconds, letting a gap build so I wouldn’t shoot him to pieces since Mr. Murty wanted one for supper. I walked over to him and waited till the dogs came up the trail and smelled him. NoPass came over and said “You forgot your game bag. Here put him in mine and tell me how you got him to stop so you could hit him”. After I finished my fifteen minute discourse, Uncle NoPass said “Lets go home, it‘s been a good day” even though it was only eleven. “I’m stiff all over cepting my peter. Did I tell you I spent three years, nine months and twenty two days in the South Pacific without a pass. I wanted to be a driver but they said I shot to good for that……………”
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