This would have been Pop's 83rd birthday. I went out to the cemetery last evening with the cordless weedwacker, a bouquet of cut flowers and a bottle of water. I trimmed around the stone and swept away the trimmings as an umpire would sweep the dirt from home plate. I cleaned out the bronze vase and filled it with the flowers and water. Then I took some time to remember Pop.
I've told you about his passion for gardening. Pop planted a big backyard vegetable garden and guarded it jealously. He was up near the Big House, about seventy five feet from the garden when he spotted a rabbit eyeing up his crop of lettuce.
Pop picked up a stone from the mulched area around the deck. Like David aiming at Goliath, Pop watched that pesky rabbit as it took a bite from a head of lettuce. Pop threw the stone to dissuade the bunny from eating the vegetables meant for our dinner table. The rock found its mark hitting the rabbit square in the head! The hare flopped on its right side, his legs kicked a few times, and then oblivion. The rabbit was dead.
Pop turned to me with the most curious look on his face. A perfect mixture of surprise, triumph and regret. The kind of expression a young boy would have if he had just punted a football farther than intended and watched it shatter a plate glass window.
Pop hung his head and marched toward the garden shed. He fetched a shovel and gingerly pick up e dead rabbit with it. He acted as the bunny's lone pall bearer as he carried it down through the lawn and into the wooded ravine on the north side of the property.
Pop did not speak of his lethal throw the rest of the day. But such a restriction was not imposed on me and my brother. We bragged up Pop's arm, accuracy and cold blooded manner as he dispatched the rabbit.
A few weeks later, Pop rlented and accepted our praise. He was quite literally, a gentle man.
Dang! I would have added that rabbit to some fresh veggies and made a stew of it all. Shouldn't waste good meat, yanno!
That's exactly what I thought also !
I would have said a prayer for the beautiful creature and thanked the creator who supplied a wonderful meal.
I realize the prospect of a rabbit dinner appeals to some of you. I live in the heart of white tail deer country and many of my friendbors will have a buck or doe hanging from a tree in their yards come late November and deer season.
Pnted. I have never hunted. As my Brooklyn friend Lucille would say, "A salute" to the hunters. Go with God and be safe.
Wild game was never presented on our dinner table. Not for an aversion to it, but our collective ignorance on the proper methods of dressing and preparing it.
Twenty odd years ago, as we built the Greater Pittsburgh Area International Airport, my job was to over see the removal of a hazardous waste landfill just west of the site. A company began disposing of the most God awful chemicals in a ravine back in the 1970s. There it laid until a developer decided to construct a hotel and restaurant complex at the new airport.
One of the scariest things I found there was a barrel of naphthalene. Naphthalene is a coal tar derivative used in every thing from the familiar (mothballs) to the exotic (high tech cleaning solutions). Once naphthalene is exposed to air transforms from an amber liquid to a dark brown solid looking like beer bottle glass.
I would watch deer licking up that naphthalene every morning as I did paper work and prepared sampling kits for the day. I figured some hunter would eventually shoot, kill and eat that deer. I knew he would not have much of a taxidermy bill to pay as the epidermis of that deer would be pretty much preserved given the amount of naphthalene it consumed. I wonder if any hunter did bag that deer? I wonder if that hunter has a second head growing from his neck today?
