12:05PM
Standing(rather than sitting much) around waiting for football Saturday to get started....OSU Buckeyes are on at 3:30 vs a dangerous Michigan State...being at home, I do expect Ohio State to prevail.
I am sick of typing about my "back"...but right now it is a major part of my day. Went in early this morning before dawn to get another treatment, and a look at my X-Rays...no surprise there, my lower two disks are rubbing bone against bone, but a crown is starting to form to ease the pain....starting the key word. Still hurts for sure, but more movement and things appear to be improving, the CP says by the end of this coming week he expects much improvement...but no sitting for more than 10 minutes at a time, hard to do on Monday and Tuesdays, plus my trips to his office, since they are anywhere from 25 to 40 minute trips....but will do the best I can...keep on walking, and keep on icing the back.
Still bound and determined to do the Rec League playoff double header tomorrow....won't be mobile, but I think I can make it up and down the field in a fast walk for 3 hours...and why not? He does want me to walk as much as possible......
The weather continues to be Global Warming like....after a cool, but seasonable, day yesterday, today sunny and 70 and tomorrow slated for near 80 and plenty of sunshine...gotta love that "Global Warming" and screw you Al Gore.....I'd rather die in tropical weather than in the freaking "Ice Age"
Blueticks
___________ After posts about Airedales and a passing mention of other dogs, I can say I've had my share of dogs, most good, some evil, and some just a pain in the ass....back when I got out of the Air Force and bought the first house(just a block from where I live now, but after another half dozen or more moves around the country), I decided I needed a dog or dogs....I already had a couple of mutts...Jenny and her daughter Dixie, a couple of small "Heinz" dogs...but being the macho wannabee, I figured a Coon Hound or 3 would be the right mix.
Me and a couple of buddies Nick Hromish, and Rick Tester, headed out I-70 to Effingham, Illinois, we headed to a kind of "redneck" looking little town called Cowden, Illinois. A man named Dewey O. Sarver, lived outside of Cowden and was a wholesaler of genuine "Coon Hounds"...Ol' Dewey looked like Santa who lived in a trailer...he had a large selection of hounds who were "Guaranteed" to tree Coons. We stopped in Cowden and rubbed elbows with the locals at a little coffee shop. The town and people, now that I look back, reminds me of the movie "Hoosiers" starring Gene Hackman. After a quick breakfast, we got directions to Dewey's dog farm and headed out.....'Santa' was there to meet us three youngsters(we were all 23 to 25 years)...we talked hunting and dogs...what Dewey didn't know was none of us knew squat about Coon Hunting, we just wanted to give it a try. Nick had a half breed cur dog, and we needed a solid nose hound to hunt with him...after an hour or so of looking, I decided on a nice looking male Bluetick named "Drum"....the dog was about 7 years old, and Dewey promised he would tree Coon..."Guaranteed!"....$75 was the price.
We took off in the top covered pick-up of Nick's and made our way back the 275 miles to Celina....I'm sure we were drinking beer and not following the speed limit...not something to be proud of, but, why lie, we were not bad guys, but we were not angles, or even close.
Drum was the first of my many hounds, and my future wife's favorite, because she had to take care of him, after I decided to head off to college a year later....We took Drum and the other dogs on many a night's hunting...the dogs hunted, we watched and bullshitted, drank a few beers as the dogs ran the woods and fields around Mercer County....they treed a few coons, very few, killed a few Opossum...but for the most part, they ran, and we partied....as I had said on an earlier post...I own guns, support the 2nd Amendment, and the right to hunt...but as for me.....well, I just don't have the heart in it....I did years ago, but no more. The fun was being out in the woods at night with some friends away from it all....the actual hunting and killing was never something I enjoyed, the times I did.
Drum was with us a few years before passing away at the age of 10...he did produce a batch of 13 pups with my friend Jim Olson's bitch "Belle"....those were the days....no money, plenty of beer and smoke, and not a care in the world....of course living that lifestyle for too long a time, will kill you sooner or later, so a few years of it, is more than enough for anybody.
Charlie Daniels song "Long Haired Country Boy" kind of fit our little group's lifestyle, right up to the "Kind of like my old Bluetick Hound":
{photos: Me, the long haired one...1974 with our old Bluetick Drum, and again with his and "Belle's" baker's dozen Bluetick Pups in 75}
.jpg)
3 comments:
That was a great post. Your take on hunting is right on the money. It isn't about killing. It's about bein' in the woods with your buddy, and your best buddy will always be your dog. Elemental stuff. Primal. Great stuff.
Good memories with photos to match. Nothing like a boy and his dogs...mine is lying here beside me as I comment.
You'd better soak-up these nice days! They're about to end this week, here in my neck of the woods! Supposed to return to "normal" weather!
Post a Comment