Personal memories . . .
It's an early memory, at the edges of understanding. I couldn't have been more than 4 or perhaps 5, I know I wasn't in school yet. Grampa, my father's dad, said we should go squirrel hunting so I stayed the night with him and Gramma because we had to get up at dawn to catch the rascally squirrels when they first wake up.
In the morning it was still dark when he woke me for a quick breakfast of Cracklin' bread and farm butter. Coffee for him and milk for me. He took the shotgun off the nails in the wall that served as a gun rack and we walked the quarter mile or so into the woods in the still-dark morning.
He found a good tree and we sat on the ground leaning against the rough bark of that old pecan to await our quarry. The first blush of dawn lightened the sky and then slender shafts of sunlight pierced the heavy foliage making the dew sparkle and showing the light mist of morning fog that caressed the grass.
"Grampa! There's one!" I whispered. "Naw, that's just a baby. We'll let him grow up and get him next time . . ." "Grampa! There's another one!" "Naw, he's too old and tough. He's not good eatin'." And so the next few hours passed as we watched the dew twinkle and mist lift while listening to the birds take credit for the sunrise, whispering about the squirrels and rabbits we saw. We found no suitable game that day.
Finally Grampa allowed as how it was time to go and I watched as he turned from sitting to his knees and used the tree to rise to his feet. Gramma was waiting at the house with still-warm homemade bread and dew berry jam.
I remember as if it were yesterday; the sights, the sounds, the smell of fresh baked bread.
So many years later, after I was grown and had a child of my own, I inherited that old shotgun. It was a 16 gauge Montgomery Ward, patented 1870. The breech was stiff with rust and the barrel badly pitted. I pulled the hammer back to find that the spring that made the hammer strike the firing pin was broken. It was impossible to shoot anything with that old gun. I suspect it was like that so many years before as we sat with our backs to an old pecan tree whispering about squirrels in an early morning mist.
= new reply since forum marked as read
You set the scene so well that I can almost literally see it in my mind's eye. All the details make it real.
Perhaps your Grampa was reliving his boyhood by taking you with him on those occasions. A memory passed from one generation to the next?
Thank you for sharing this poignant bit of your life.
