Wedding Pheasant

A Wedding Pheasant


As 1998 was drawing to a close, the women in my life were spinning up into redline frenzy. The next summer, my eldest child, son and heir was to marry. The plan was for college graduation in June and marriage in August. It was clear to me that my part in the festivities would be the outwardly cheerful writing of checks, and benign approval of whatever my wife asserted to be absolutely necessary to the occasion. Twenty five years of marriage to the woman had taught me that she was usually right about such things in any case. Martha Stewart is not in her league.

After four years of college my boy was just about gone already. The last 3 summers he spent in Ann Arbor away from home. I didn’t have much time left for all the things I had to tell him, the final lecture. My input to the swatch colors and floral selection just wasn’t going to cut it for me. Then Walker called. My old crewmate from sailboat racing days. Walker and I had had a foredeck drill that was poetry in motion. We could jibe a 40 footer’s spinnaker in absolute silence, never losing the draw. Once we even accomplished it while the after guard (our venerable father’s) were still sorting out their lines. They didn’t realize the sail had shifted sides and with some annoyance repeated their order to jibe. With great satisfaction we respectfully suggested that they take note of the position of the pole and jibe themselves. Fathers and sons. The proudest moment in a father’s life is when he gets it in the teeth from his kid.

Walker was in South Dakota having newly accepted the chair of an orthopedics group in Souix Falls. The only thing I knew about South Dakota was Mt. Rushmore and that they were supposed to have pheasants. I am new to hunting, having started only a few years before while in Texas. Another lawyer had talked me into buying a shotgun to participate in the annual dove season frenzy. A couple of seasons of that and chasing pointers after quail and I was hooked. I need the outdoors and if I can’t have a sailboat and a lot of water I’ll walk in the woods and fields. I had never taken my son hunting. I was still learning how myself and at the time there was some teenage style distance between us. Walker was having his own brand of fatherly challenges with his 15 year old. Something clicked and I said “Walker you’re in South Dakota? We have to hunt pheasants. Lets take the boys!”

On the face of it, it was a little nuts. It was already November, the season was ½ over, and my son was in the panic of finishing out his semester papers and projects. Kalamazoo to Souix Falls was a 12 hour drive in good weather. There was a high probability of apocalyptic blizzard activity. I only had the one gun. But Walker and I had become friends rather than just crewmates when 25 years before I had called him up in January and said “ Walker you’re the craziest guy I know, I have to get out of this city. How about going winter camping in Wisconsin?” “Walker said “Yeah! Let’s do it.” Walker was just married to Yoshiko (he still is) and I was in love with but not quite married to Christine. The four of us went up and camped out in 14 below zero weather north of Green Bay and had a great time. We have had other adventures since. He is a doctor, I am a lawyer, we are both pretty conservative in most respects but we share the understanding that you have to go off the normal behavior chart to find the magic places. I was looking for the magic here. Walker understood.

There was this orthopedics supply salesman named Jody who helped set it up. He had already introduced Walker to pheasants earlier in the season. He was happy to press his contacts again. A cynic might say that he was happy to have the doc in his debt. I’ll give him more credit than that, he is a salesman, he was working the doc, but he is also a genuinely nice guy who enjoyed hunting and was good company. (Not real good at quiet though, Jody!). While Walker and Jody made tentative plans at their end, my son came home for Thanksgiving, I made the pitch, acknowledged that it was not the sensible thing to do, (I was always very big on sensible,) I caught the boy flat footed on that one and while he was trying to get his balance back we happened to stop by the “On Target Gun Shop” in Kalamazoo. “Just looking,” I said, “If this comes off I am going to need another gun for you to use.” We spent some quality time discussing the relative merits of doubles, pumps and autos; of 12s and 20s. I set the hook deep. I asked his opinion. We talked about it for a week. I bought a Remington 870 magnum pump 12 with a satin walnut stock and flat parkerized finish. I bought some snap caps, so my son could practice shucking shells through it in the living room. Good move.

All this time we kept up a constant stream of e-mail correspondence as the trip shaped up. My son agreed to steal 4 days between the close of classes and his finals and due dates. He might have to work on a paper in the car but it was just possible. I should explain that we could have flown and saved a lot of time and weather pressure, but that would not have allowed the magic. There is an element of doing it the hard way that is critical to the mix. (Or maybe I am just crazy.) I do think it is important though, in the right proportions, I didn’t want to walk out there. It isn’t doing the impossible that I wanted. It is just doing the “hard” that makes the memory. I became obsessed with packing and repacking the Jeep in my mind. How do you prepare for being stuck on I-90 in a blizzard halfway across Minnesota?

Three days before we were to leave I get an anguished e-mail, cold feet crisis! He couldn’t bring himself to call and talk directly. I call him. I am calm as I explain that this won’t come around again. Not in this form. I am not judgmental, it is his life, his decision, his grades but I do think the trip has its own importance on some weird mystic plane. He must decide, but no pressure, I understand either way. I call his mother, I am less calm. Wonderful woman, she understands. At least she understands how important it is to me. I am not supposed to know but she calls him and changes his mind. Cool.

Inexplicably, winter does not arrive. My son rolls in from school Friday night, December 11, confident that if I promise to get him back for class at 11:30 A.M. Tuesday the 15th he can clear his academic responsibilities. It is just possible. We set out. We talk and drive for 12 hours through the night. He says “I love driving at night.” “I remember being little and you would get us up in the dark and put us in the car and we would go on a trip somewhere, I always liked that”. I am happy. As we cross the state line into South Dakota, Orion is standing there in the road on the horizon. I did not plan that. We arrive about 3 hours ahead of schedule. So what if its 6 in the morning, ring the bell, this is my oldest friend. Sleepy welcomes and we collapse on the floor of the den until noon.

We regroup and reorganize on Saturday, still no sign of winter, 65 degrees and sunny in mid December. Walker and Yoshiko have to make an appearance at the medical center Christmas party so I take both sons to the new Star Trek movie. Walker’s son is 15 and has run into trouble at school, sufficient to make him available for the Monday hunt as well as just Sunday. Hmm! My son is 21 and now out of the rough water that Walker’s son is entering, also he is planning a career in Psychology. So, the boys ride together in one Jeep and talk about their fathers and the fathers ride together in the other to talk about the boys. Another good move. Jody rides with the dads and tells us how to hunt pheasant, we don’t talk about his available stock of assorted replacement body parts until the trip back.

We arrive in Plankinton at 9:00 and ask directions to Don Reeves Pheasant Ranch. South Dakota pheasant hunting doesn’t commence until 10 am (noon in the early season) a very civilized practice that lets people sleep in or get their chores done or get breakfast and still make the first drive of the day. We get some bad directions, and the place to buy licences is inexplicably closed but we arrive at the ranch anyway and find nobody home. Hmmm! So we head into White Lake and buy the papers, some shells, and ask if everything is ok out at the Reeves place. Everyone knows everyone out there and there was some concern, but maybe they were still at church? Ah yes! It was Sunday! So we drove back out, fully documented now and met Don and his wife as they were coming in. Salt of the earth would describe them well and they were “sure glad to see us!” Don was grand fatherly and Mrs. Reeves kept the books and cooked us up a big pot of chili for lunch with grace, ice cream and cake.

The plan was to shoot a few clays to get the boys used to the guns and then go shoot the birds. We were saving the wild birds for Monday when everyone would know better what they were about. We shot clays for an hour had chili and then went out to the fields with Hugo the yellow lab. Good dog, a thorough professional but still having fun. The 5 of us brought down 19 birds between 2 o’clock and sunset. My son makes his first kill and christens the 870 “Dakota”. (I guess that makes my Browning “Dallas”.) Don picked us up and dropped us off at various spots around the ranch and with Hugo’s help we got the hang of things pretty quickly. The Reeves introduced us to a lady who would clean the birds for us at the ranch house and put them in the freezer. We left promising to be back the next day on our way back to pick up the frozen birds. Great day, still no winter!

As the sun went down we headed south down route 281 to the Indian run casino and hotel at Fort Carson. Being Sunday things were pretty quiet and we were pretty well tired out. They fed us well and we didn’t cause any trouble, apart from quickly returning the free $10 for the slots they provided with the room. My son actually won $10, (that is to say he exchanged my money for theirs which to him seemed the same), he split the take with his underage partner who wasn’t allowed in. Regardless, we were more interested in the nice clean rooms and the rented Nintendo and some package beer we bought at the gas station.

Bright and early Monday we headed across the Missouri to Winner. On the way we took pictures at the giant concrete pheasant at the roadside park in Gregory, “Ground Zero of Pheasantdom”. At the Winner airport (I told you we could have flown!) we met “Griz” a former 500 pounder, Griz could probably make his fortune writing diet books, he now happily only eats “half of what he sits down to, once a day”. Griz says, “Eating is highly overrated”. Still looking over our shoulder for winter, we head out to Griz’s fields. Pushing 70 degrees on December 14th, we are in t-shirts and vests and looking at hundreds of birds running and flying for cover as we march up the corn. Griz’s dog was hurt earlier in the week and so he couldn’t hunt, and we should have had twice as many as our 5 to block the birds. We were told that if it were only colder the birds would stick tighter and explode up around us as we walked up on them. We were told that it was late in the season and the birds were pretty nervous and picked over, generally not as good as it could be. Regardless, it was glorious. Wide open scenery, beautiful weather, birds all around, I got two. Wow. Then we had to get back.

The 11:30 Tuesday deadline was looming without much leeway and we were about 5 hours further west. After lunch in Winner, Griz got us some frozen birds in trade for the ones we shot and we headed back to the Reeves, we were welcomed as family, and picked up the rest of our birds. I traded my “On Target, Kalamazoo” orange hat for a “Don Reeves, White Lake” one and we again headed east. We stopped at Walker’s place, Yoshiko packed us some sandwiches and we broke out of Souix Falls about 8 P.M.

Orion was there before us as we left, with a meteor shower thrown in gratis. We tore through the night in turns, talking sleeping and driving. Still no winter! Tagged home and sent my son on with plenty of time to make class with whole minutes to spare. I get the report back later that his professor thought the final paper was the best work he had ever done. I feel great. I think he’ll be fine now.

Fog, and the luck of the Irish

May 15, 1976, Saturday. I know the date exactly because it was the weekend before my wedding, Christine, my wife of now (do the math) years, was in tears most of the day because she knew we were all going to die and all her plans for the coming festivities would come to nothing. I was never really worried about dying, but the day had a sense of the strange about it that I can still feel these many years later. This story is a testament to the power of her prayers or some kind of uncanny luck which really happened to me but really belongs in Ripley's.

The plan was to bring the Andrea, a 39 foot long racing sloop, down to Chicago from her winter storage at the Palmer Johnson yard in Racine, Wisconsin. We drove up early, very early in the morning. Bob the Owner was aboard with Andy his wife and I think Duncan was the other seasoned crew member along with my father, who had been sailing with Bob for years. Chris came because they wanted a strong back, (mine), and in those days I didn’t go anywhere without her. (I admit that its still pretty rare to find us apart if we can help it). We quickly got down to rigging the boat for the trip and not wanting to waste travel time we shoved off and started south without completing a check of all navigational instuments. There was no Loran on board and satellite nav had not yet been invented. Racine to Chicago is some 70 miles which would take all day under the best of conditions. The day was cool but with a light breeze from the SW and fog on the lake.

We didn’t even take the time to swing (or calibrate) the compass, but the depth finder was operational and no one was terribly concerned about a little early morning fog in our home water so we set off. We were initially in company with Condor, a 41 footer and friendly competitor, but we quickly lost them in the mist as it closed over us. We proceeded Easterly into the lake until the depth finder showed 39 feet which we arbitrarily picked as a familiar number (same as the boat's length)and then turned South, unpacking the gear from winter storage and setting up the running rigging as we went. There was a nice breeze so we set the main and no.1 Genoa. The boat leaned into her work and we were off, doing 7 knots in eerie silence, in a Lake Michigan no more than 60 feet across, to look at it.

Hours went by without change. The offshore wind raised no waves to speak of. No sensory input of any kind but the rushing water past the bows. No sky but the misty blanket that surrounded and covered us. We called Condor a couple of times on the radio and they were in the same soup. So we continued south. As mid afternoon approached we were all getting a little skittish with no good idea how far we had come. The dead reckoning of elapsed time, times the speed along the suspect compass course gave us a clue, but we wanted to know. Poor Chris was on the foredeck peering into the mist sure that we would hit something or something would hit us and that would be it. No wedding. I tried to comfort her but she wasn’t buying it, with everyone on board hiding some concern. Someone made the suggestion that perhaps if we took a peek inshore the fog would lift and we might get a glimpse of something we could recognize. This is a pretty odd thought in retrospect but maybe you had to be there as all agreed it was about time for some kind of change of scene. Condor was not answering the radio.

We dropped the sails and very cautiously headed West under engine power. I was steering and Duncan was posted at the depth gauge reading out the numbers as the bottom came up to meet us. Tension was high and things were real quiet. Still no waves to speak of, no danger of pounding surf. A gentle offshore breeze to take us out of trouble. Still could see more with my eyes shut than open. Then something was wrong. I called out to the skipper that something had changed but I didn’t know what but I knew I didn’t like it. Bob told me to put the wheel over and I did. We spun around on a dime and headed back out into the lake the way we had come. Suddenly a dark shadowed mass appeared very, very close, about 2 o’clock high and off the starboard bow.

An instant of sharp fear was followed by relief when the object did not move, and we were still afloat and steering. The steel skeleton of a breakwater light resolved out of the white gloom. Consulting the Great Lakes Pilot and crew memory confirmed that we were looking at the terminus of the South breakwater at the entrance to Great Lakes Naval Training Station. We never saw the North end or its light. All unknowing we had motored into, turned around inside of and were on our way back out of the Training Station harbor. I know that this is not really possible but it did happen, and to me, I was steering at the time. Condor was not so lucky. Who could be? Obeying the same instinct we had, she also turned West to look for land and piled herself onto a seawall. No one was hurt but they spent that whole of that next season in repairs back up at Palmer Johnson.

Our adventure was not quite over though. Much chastened, we continued to feel our way South until we reached a point in the lake opposite the city where the depth demarcations are far less clear. The Lake bottom kind of flattens out. Once again we slowly turned to the West. The wind had dropped and we were moving though a glassy calm still wrapped in cotton. Again I was steering, now in the dark and fog when the hair stood up on my neck and a glow materialized again about 2 o’clock high off the starboard bow. Same place but this time a light! It resolved into a streetlight, what was a streetlight doing out in the middle of the lake? Then more clearly it was a Chicago streetlight on the end of one of the municipal piers. We heard voices and called out to them asking where they were. They laughingly let us know they were on a pier. We asked which pier and they replied “This pier”. By then we had smelled the pungent odor of burning herbs and knew we were not going to get much more out of these particular sirens. We thanked them and moved on, feeling our way along the seawall like a blind man holding a railing and eventually into a secure berth near the Columbia Yacht Club downtown late, very late that night.
Chris and I got married the next weekend and for the most part have lived happily ever after. Do draw your own conclusions, but Chris admits she was praying very hard most of the day. I think she has some pull with someone up there.

Looking for the Buttons, Play among yourselves

Still looking, really. Want to send Xavier a comment about a disaster I had with dogs and wheeled conveyance. I hope to figure out how soon.