Parting Shot

Hope you had a great bird season. Here's to the next one.

I have this near my desk to keep my mind in the right place.

From Guns and Ammo, December 1970

Gene Hills "Parting Shot" column.

Sing me the old songs.

Tell me the stories of times gone by.

I want to spend an evening or so with you to 

hear about your dogs.

I want to see your guns.

I want to read your favorite books.

I want to warm my hands in front of your 

fire and try your pipe tobacco and taste

your whisky.

I want to see the old brown pictures you've 

always saved.

The pictures of the stern-faced men wearing

hip boots and brown overalls with rusty

wool caps pulled down over their eyes.

The pictures of men who wore neckties and

soft flannel shirts and breeches and leggings

standing by braces of stiff-necked,

rib-sprung pointers with the quail wagons

behind them.

I want to see yourself in a blue work shirt

buttoned at the neck, with your kitchen

haircut and your .22 and that big-eyed pup.

Do you remember all the names?

Tell me them.

Talk to me about the horses.

Talk to me about the dogs.

And the L.C. Smith, the Parker, the Baker,

the Lefever and the Ansley H. Fox.

Tell me about the cold and the wind and the

sea and the river and the kettle pond.

Fill my mind with pictures of your prairies,

your swamps, your sedge fields, your

mountains and your endless plains.

Tell me too, about the times you didn't shoot

for some sweet secret reason of your own.

I want to hear the stories about Charley and

Jimmy and Ed.

Could they build a fire?

Did they get lost?

Could they track?

Make me laugh with the stories about the day

Irv never got a shot and old Belle brought 

him a quail, still warm, she'd found and

put in his hand.

Let me hold the puppy on my lap.

Let me scratch the old dogs belly while she

warms her backside by the fire.

Fill my glass again and pass me the wooden

bowl with the apples in it.

Talk to me about the bee tree cutting.

Tell me how deep the ice pond was.

Show me how you call ducks.

Tell me how you make a rabbit stew.

Who was the best shot you ever saw?

Who always got his buck?

What's your favorite excuse of all the ones

you've heard?

Why is it, do you suppose, that men have

stopped telling lies the way they used to do?

Take me with you to the places with the names 

I like.

Take me to the Superstition Mountains

where the white wing and mourning doves

come in flights like feathered clouds.

Take me along the gentle curvings of the

Tombigbee.

Show me the big horn sheep that feed above the

Prophet River.

And the elk along the bank of the Yellowstone.

And the Badlands bear picking berries.

And the woodcock flighting to the Merrimack.

And the wild turkey in the Dismal Swamp.

Time does not exist where these things never change.

Listen... don't you hear the same quail call 

and the mallard stutters as the men in the

faded brown pictures?

Sing me the old songs.

Tell me the stories of times gone by.