Green and growing on warm spring days, thunderheads shaking the summer aspen leaves; beaver ponds flooding with autumn rain; and snow as high as a middle sized tree in the winter.
We each had a coonskin cap and could start fires with flint and steel (and on a good day by rubbing two sticks together). We fashioned bows and arrows; slingshots, and even attempted carving boomerangs a time or two. We were constantly outside, hunting, fishing, and chasing anything that moved, be it rabbit, butterfly, or automobile.
Rather like a pack of rabid dogs some of the neighbors were known to mutter under their breath.
Our father told stories of running a trap line with his brother Dave in Michigan as a boy. And we read about the Hudson Bay Company and other fur traders at bedtime. Our favorite play was to choose up names; Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and of course, Jim Bridger. Then we would tear off to scout the arroyos for victims, I mean potential pelts.
But the Livermore Valley in the 60’s really wasn’t the snow covered landscape of our trapper dreams.
Sure, there was some muskrat in the arroyos around town, but we never found any beaver. And while there were fox in the hills, there was no sable that we knew of. Try as we might, we never found any clawed up bear trees; and of course, the mountain lions were just too dang smart to get caught by us heathens.
There was another issue too. And I don’t mean to be casting any aspersions on the rest of the stalwart youth of the Livermore Valley, but we had a natural concern about what would happen if we bought and set a nice string of traps. Neat things like that just shouldn’t be left lying around unguarded for fear that they might be appropriated by some other kid.
All in all, we came to the conclusion that we were destined to be fur-less all of our lives.
Then, one day, like manna from heaven, our dreams were answered.
Back then, all manner of magazines had several pages of classified advertising in the back. Rather like the garage sale ads in newspapers today.
Only maybe not quite as reputable.
Charles Atlas Muscle Building – “Don’t be a 98 pound weakling” accompanied by a cartoon of a sickly looking kid getting sand kicked in his face while his girl stared longingly at the muscle-bound “sand-kicker”. Never mind that most the boys reading the magazine didn’t have a girl, and probably had no idea what to do with one if they did. It was an impressive Ad.
Indian Craft supplies – Special Eagle feathers (dyed turkey feathers), Wampum (broken bits of shells, that looked suspiciously like the crunchy pieces I spit out of my Clam Chowder), and assorted Medicine Bag items (tufts of rabbit fur and bits of bone).
Go-carts – plans, kits, and engines. Yep, buy their supplies and all you needed was an arc welder, a little time, and a degree in mechanical engineering to be burnin-rubber around town.
Survival Knives – with 10” Bowie blades, and compass embedded screw caps on hollow handles to hold matches, fish hooks and whatnot (what the name really meant was “it will be a miracle if your son’s ten fingers survive owning this knife”).
Book Safes – metal boxes with plastic combination dials to store your valuables, typically with clever titles like War and Peace, or A Tale of Two Cities; just the thing to hide innocently among a stack of comic books and outdoor magazines.
And Smoke Grenades – Don’t even get me started on the glories of buying smoke grenades through the mail.
In any case, there in the back of Popular Science or maybe Boy’s Life, we found it; glorious day, the penultimate knowledge for boys like us; an ad for a mail order taxidermy course.
Yep, for just a few of our hard earned paper route dollars we could get a full course on how to skin, prepare, and stuff birds, and mammals. Talking it over, we realized if we pooled our money, all three of us could learn for the price of one…..after-all, the mailman wouldn’t know it wasn’t just one of us reading and doing the lessons. And if the mailman couldn’t narc on us, there was no way the taxidermy company was ever going to figure it out. Perfect.
You are aware we’re Dutch, right? I mean, no self-respecting Dutchman in his right mind is going to pass up a three-for-one deal like that.
So, we each pitched in, and sent off the envelope and impatiently awaited our lessons, tools, and supplies to come in. We spent a bit more buying glass eyes, tanning solutions, and some excelsior to fashion animal bodies out of; but we didn’t buy any of the needles and thread. We sneaked those from Mom’s sewing basket.
In the meantime, we started looking for critters great and small to drag home in order to have something to skin out as soon as the first lesson arrived. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to acknowledge that there was some varied unpleasantness about some of the dead things that were drug home, especially that gopher.
We even missed dinner one night on account of that gopher, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
The lessons arrived and we read and practiced under the watchful eye of our father. At the time I thought he was worried that we might cut ourselves with the scalpel and he was there to protect us. Time does funny things to your memory. Sometimes it makes things fuzzier, other times it clears things up.
Nowadays I suspect dad was just being hopeful back then. I mean, considering the amount of pain and discomfort that we caused him over the years, I can’t help but think he was a sitting around waiting on some payback.
And the next door neighbor Mr Peck, he was keenly interested in the taxidermy venture too. He spent hours and hours sitting on his back porch, looking over the fence and chuckling under his breath. I tend to think that it was because he had been retired so long that he had run out of hobbies.
But that was before we had moved in.
It is with no small sense of pride that I claim that watching my brother’s and I were better than anything on TV back in the late 60’s. Yes siree, Bob, every retired person in the neighborhood seemed to be keenly interested in whatever we three were doing.
Of course, that just might of had something to do with our mother’s hysteria when she learned we tied the babysitter up one day, but again, I digress. Where was I, oh, yes, so while we were working our way through the lessons and practicing intentional skin cutting, we were also on the lookout for something to use as our first, full-fledged stuffed critter.
One day we found it. A nice dead gopher. Long yellow teeth sticking out, sharp claws, and lying dead as you please on top of the grass one morning without a mark on its body.
Manna from heaven.
Again.
The only problem was that we were not far enough along in our studies to cut it open and get on with it. So, we decided to save it for when we would be ready. We skipped ahead and read the section about freezing and storing critters for later work. We carefully followed the preparation instructions. We carefully wrapped the small body in protective layers. And in freezer paper. And placed it in the freezer out on the back porch.
We did everything perfectly.
Well, almost perfectly.
Guess if you get right down to it we did make one questionable decision, oh, and there was that one ritual we hadn’t paid any attention to.
I know; “One questionable decision?” you’re thinking, “What about putting a dead gopher in your mother’s freezer?” We were sensitive to that, honest. In fact, we were so sensitive that we decided not to write “dead gopher” on the package. We didn’t label it at all, just kinda stuck it way in the back on one of the bottom shelves.
Unfortunately we had never paid attention to how our mother made the food that we voraciously consumed each night. We had no idea that she pulled a package of frozen meat out of the freezer each morning and left it to thaw on the counter during the day, so as to be ready to unwrap and cook when she got home from work.
I have to say, our extreme sensitivity caused our mother no minor distress when she got home from work, pulled out the cast iron skillet, fired it up with some oil for browning...and unwrapped our prize gopher.
But the Livermore Valley in the 60’s really wasn’t the snow covered landscape of our trapper dreams.
Sure, there was some muskrat in the arroyos around town, but we never found any beaver. And while there were fox in the hills, there was no sable that we knew of. Try as we might, we never found any clawed up bear trees; and of course, the mountain lions were just too dang smart to get caught by us heathens.
There was another issue too. And I don’t mean to be casting any aspersions on the rest of the stalwart youth of the Livermore Valley, but we had a natural concern about what would happen if we bought and set a nice string of traps. Neat things like that just shouldn’t be left lying around unguarded for fear that they might be appropriated by some other kid.
All in all, we came to the conclusion that we were destined to be fur-less all of our lives.
Then, one day, like manna from heaven, our dreams were answered.
Back then, all manner of magazines had several pages of classified advertising in the back. Rather like the garage sale ads in newspapers today.
Only maybe not quite as reputable.
Charles Atlas Muscle Building – “Don’t be a 98 pound weakling” accompanied by a cartoon of a sickly looking kid getting sand kicked in his face while his girl stared longingly at the muscle-bound “sand-kicker”. Never mind that most the boys reading the magazine didn’t have a girl, and probably had no idea what to do with one if they did. It was an impressive Ad.
Indian Craft supplies – Special Eagle feathers (dyed turkey feathers), Wampum (broken bits of shells, that looked suspiciously like the crunchy pieces I spit out of my Clam Chowder), and assorted Medicine Bag items (tufts of rabbit fur and bits of bone).
Go-carts – plans, kits, and engines. Yep, buy their supplies and all you needed was an arc welder, a little time, and a degree in mechanical engineering to be burnin-rubber around town.
Survival Knives – with 10” Bowie blades, and compass embedded screw caps on hollow handles to hold matches, fish hooks and whatnot (what the name really meant was “it will be a miracle if your son’s ten fingers survive owning this knife”).
Book Safes – metal boxes with plastic combination dials to store your valuables, typically with clever titles like War and Peace, or A Tale of Two Cities; just the thing to hide innocently among a stack of comic books and outdoor magazines.
And Smoke Grenades – Don’t even get me started on the glories of buying smoke grenades through the mail.
In any case, there in the back of Popular Science or maybe Boy’s Life, we found it; glorious day, the penultimate knowledge for boys like us; an ad for a mail order taxidermy course.
Yep, for just a few of our hard earned paper route dollars we could get a full course on how to skin, prepare, and stuff birds, and mammals. Talking it over, we realized if we pooled our money, all three of us could learn for the price of one…..after-all, the mailman wouldn’t know it wasn’t just one of us reading and doing the lessons. And if the mailman couldn’t narc on us, there was no way the taxidermy company was ever going to figure it out. Perfect.
You are aware we’re Dutch, right? I mean, no self-respecting Dutchman in his right mind is going to pass up a three-for-one deal like that.
So, we each pitched in, and sent off the envelope and impatiently awaited our lessons, tools, and supplies to come in. We spent a bit more buying glass eyes, tanning solutions, and some excelsior to fashion animal bodies out of; but we didn’t buy any of the needles and thread. We sneaked those from Mom’s sewing basket.
In the meantime, we started looking for critters great and small to drag home in order to have something to skin out as soon as the first lesson arrived. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to acknowledge that there was some varied unpleasantness about some of the dead things that were drug home, especially that gopher.
We even missed dinner one night on account of that gopher, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
The lessons arrived and we read and practiced under the watchful eye of our father. At the time I thought he was worried that we might cut ourselves with the scalpel and he was there to protect us. Time does funny things to your memory. Sometimes it makes things fuzzier, other times it clears things up.
Nowadays I suspect dad was just being hopeful back then. I mean, considering the amount of pain and discomfort that we caused him over the years, I can’t help but think he was a sitting around waiting on some payback.
And the next door neighbor Mr Peck, he was keenly interested in the taxidermy venture too. He spent hours and hours sitting on his back porch, looking over the fence and chuckling under his breath. I tend to think that it was because he had been retired so long that he had run out of hobbies.
But that was before we had moved in.
It is with no small sense of pride that I claim that watching my brother’s and I were better than anything on TV back in the late 60’s. Yes siree, Bob, every retired person in the neighborhood seemed to be keenly interested in whatever we three were doing.
Of course, that just might of had something to do with our mother’s hysteria when she learned we tied the babysitter up one day, but again, I digress. Where was I, oh, yes, so while we were working our way through the lessons and practicing intentional skin cutting, we were also on the lookout for something to use as our first, full-fledged stuffed critter.
One day we found it. A nice dead gopher. Long yellow teeth sticking out, sharp claws, and lying dead as you please on top of the grass one morning without a mark on its body.
Manna from heaven.
Again.
The only problem was that we were not far enough along in our studies to cut it open and get on with it. So, we decided to save it for when we would be ready. We skipped ahead and read the section about freezing and storing critters for later work. We carefully followed the preparation instructions. We carefully wrapped the small body in protective layers. And in freezer paper. And placed it in the freezer out on the back porch.
We did everything perfectly.
Well, almost perfectly.
Guess if you get right down to it we did make one questionable decision, oh, and there was that one ritual we hadn’t paid any attention to.
I know; “One questionable decision?” you’re thinking, “What about putting a dead gopher in your mother’s freezer?” We were sensitive to that, honest. In fact, we were so sensitive that we decided not to write “dead gopher” on the package. We didn’t label it at all, just kinda stuck it way in the back on one of the bottom shelves.
Unfortunately we had never paid attention to how our mother made the food that we voraciously consumed each night. We had no idea that she pulled a package of frozen meat out of the freezer each morning and left it to thaw on the counter during the day, so as to be ready to unwrap and cook when she got home from work.
I have to say, our extreme sensitivity caused our mother no minor distress when she got home from work, pulled out the cast iron skillet, fired it up with some oil for browning...and unwrapped our prize gopher.
Later that night, while my stomach growled incessantly, I decided we should have been a little less sensitive.
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