Ok, not outhouse humor, mostly.
Just a continuation of my hijacking of the other thread running. Kind of a Charlie Sherrill type story.
When I was a teen, actually before and a little after, we went hunting. Dad had a friend, so we had a friend. It was up on Eagle Creek where he had a plot of ground. Not a big place, maybe 40 acres total. But it was kind of landlocked. Two ways in. The front had a lane and road frontage of maybe the width of the lane. Same for the back entrance, but it was overgrown and nearly straight uphill and eroded gravel. We'd hunt our way in from that side. But right next to it was an old farmstead. It had an old farmer, too. I guess he'd been married, but was living out his life on his farm, with his small house.
He had a garden, pretty big for an old guy who didn't walk so well. He had neighbors who plowed it for him each spring. Remember when neighbors did that kind of thing? Anyway... We'd park at the place the lane went up. Squirrel season was good because I could get out of school and hunt till dark. Then on weekends I could go in early and start hunting squirrels 10' off the road. I'd seen the old guy going to his outhouse some mornings. He had a strange trait. If the weather was on his side, he'd go and "set" leaving the door open. It gave him a view of the garden and the field beyond, as well as a clear view (and later I learned shot) all the way down to the creek (crick.) Guess he liked the view. He just didn't care if someone saw him on the throne.
So one day he motioned me to come over and set for a spell with him. Dad always said make friends. Particularly out in the places I liked to hunt. So I went over to where he had his decrepit chair on the porch and took up a place on the wood floor, against a post. The guy was friendly and needed someone to talk to. Got to the point where I enjoyed it. He was full of information, and like me these days, none of it had much value!
Seems he liked his outhouse, and today I think someone would call it a deer stand.
He managed to pop a fresh young buck every year on the opening day (some neighbors admitted that maybe he pushed the season by a day or two.) His feeling was it was his deer, from his woodlot (a hillside, really). He didn't let anyone else hunt, but he offered it to me later. He just took his morning constitutional, hunting seasons mean little to old guys. All spring and summer and most of the fall, he was on the same schedule. The only thing different was he could shoot legally (a minor thing) one morning.
What he did was sit and watched the sun come up, the critters wander around, and the deer go down to the creek for a drink. Not a bad way to waste the end of your life. I haven't heard a better one. It seems each year he knew well in advance which deer he would harvest. Premeditated, he liked them, and knew just which he wanted. It wasn't the big buck, too tough. Because he was old, he didn't have a car or truck or tractor. His getting the critter up to the shed was work. And he didn't select the runts, he liked the young fat ones.
Worked for him.
But as we get older, things get in our way. My visits were greatly reduced when I got into college and met my wife to be. I still somehow managed to make a few visits to the old guy. He always liked friends.
But then I up and got married, and my wife got herself in a family way not long after. In just more than a year we had a son. So my travels were restricted. I had a baby to take care of while she did 2nd shift nursing.
One day, for whatever reason, and I'm going to guess it was maybe 72 or 73, I was up in that region. I just went off on a tangent and made the old familiar turn up the creek, across the iron bridge, and around the bend. Not good. The house was still there, but kind of boarded up. Clearly the old man wasn't there any more. Kind of a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. But I parked and walked around the house, then up to the overgrown outhouse. The door was even closed and the wood piece you could turn to hold it closed was turned. Ugh. But I opened the door and looked around the corner. Yep!
the old single barrel was hidden where it always had been.
On the hinge side he'd long ago put a new board into the door frame. It was because the hinges had pulled out. He just had planed the door a bit narrower. But the result was a fairly wide board that tended to hide the old shotgun. If you sat down, it was easy to see and reach. But from the outside, all you saw was some daylight streaming thru the gaps in the boards, and spider webs by the thousands. No one really liked outhouses. Least of all those with spiders. But the old shotgun was right there. On a cross board was a nasty old box of shotgun slugs. He liked the new fangled plastic ones. Weather proof (unlike the shotgun.)
But I heard a car drive up and stop. So I closed the door and walked around the house to see who it was. A neighbor and a game warden, both. They wanted to know what I was doing (a fair question). So I told them I'd been friends with the old guy and just wanted to walk around and refresh memories. I was really scared he'd died. Nope, he was in an old folks home in town a few miles away. So I left, kind of unhappy, but with a mission.
First chance I got I packed some cleaning stuff in the car and took another drive. I parked, got the stuff out and retrieved the old shotgun. It was pretty rusty from being outside for a few years. But the Liquid Wrench managed to open the action. The shell inside (what good is an empty gun?) was an even bigger challenge. The shotgun cleaning rod managed to dislodge it and I tossed it over into the weeds. I did a passable job of running rags and patches down the bore, then I oiled the living **** out of it. Took it back to the outhouse and put it back where I'd found it, with a fresh (if it can be called that) slug. Then I closed the outhouse up and headed to town. I found the "retirement" home, lots of oldies, all on their last legs.
And I found my friend. He remembered me and was pretty happy to have a visitor. So I told him of my earlier stop, and what I'd been up to that day. He wanted to go for a ride! Imagine that. The staff, not really nurses, just folks working there, agreed. I wasn't allowed to have him out long, but it only took us an hour total. We drove up, he was having a real hard time walking. He wanted to sit on his porch one more time. That was easy. Some scoundrel had thieved the chair. But the porch was seat height off the ground. So after a few minutes we stumbled thru the weeds to the outhouse. He just wanted to look at his trusty old shotgun.
Then back to the car and the old folks home. I made a couple more visits, each a few months apart. At one of them the lady in charge took my name and phone number. Not long after I got a call, he'd passed away. He'd left a note that I should recover the shotgun. I tried, but it was gone. Some trash had taken it. By about 1980 I was nearby again. Every darn thing had changed. Only the iron bridge was kind of there. The road had been moved and it wasn't being used. Where the old guy's house had been was the remains. I guess someone burned it. Even the overgrown yard had turned to saplings. I did manage to find where the outhouse had been. Just the two foundation stones still in place.
Times change. I haven't been back in 30 years now. Guess now that I'm retired I need to. But I'm equally sure its now a subdivision or trophy house. Dad's friend who owned the property is gone, just like dad. His wife lives at the same retirement center my mom lives at. I'd guess when he died they sold his farm for the money (I can't image his son or daughter hunting.)
But typing this has given me a mission. Google earth is my friend!! I'm going for a living room visit...if I can even find it from the air.
Like the Hawgs gone wild, but outhouse involved
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