stories

We used to drive around in a club cab pick up truck. There were eight of us, mom, dad and six kids. Mom and dad sat in the bucket seats, two kids sat on the tiny fold out seats in the back, one kid sat on a wood seat dad built for between the bucket seats in the front, and the rest of us just sort of crammed in wherever else we could.

Our favorite game at the cabin was when dad took a rope and tied a plastic orange sled behind the green monster station wagon. His job was to make us spill and land face down in the ditch. With two or three kids in the sled, it was pretty easy. The more snow down your coat, the more crumpled and upside down your body, the more dad laughed.

The first time my dad took my brother hunting, when Pete was about four, they were around a mile from home, and my brother turned to my dad and said, "maybe one of us oughta keep mom safe at home." So my dad pulled over and let Pete walk home.

In those days, dad had a pigeon coop. I guess he still does, anyways, when my brother was five years old my dad sent him in there to get what he thought was a crow that had gotten in there and was stuck and couldn't get out. Pete was in there for a really long time, but my dad figured he was OK. When he emerged, bloody and scratched to bits, holding an owl upside down by the leg, my dad felt kind of bad. Or maybe proud, that his little boy became a man after killing an owl with his bare (maybe mittened) hands. -And owls are nasty creatures.