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From: cmsix <cmsix@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSD} If you're not going to do anything else, you might as well review this one too
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Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:23:33 -0600
===================
At the first sight of another review request I'll quit until the review is
over.
Tell me anything you want to about it. Expecially, is the guy curmudgeonly
enough? cmsix
----------------------------------
Damned if I Do - by cmsix
----------------------------------
Chapter 1
I hated my life, OK. Hated it. I didn't hate living and I really had no
complaints about my situation, but I hated this life. Life in these United
States had just got on my last God Damned nerve, that's all. Going to work
and going home was just about the extent of things for me now.
My job was ok, and even though the pay was good I didn't like it. I know, I
was bitching about a free meal, or lots of meals that didn't take much
effort to earn, but it was boring. I guess that kind of thing is bound to
happen when you're already in your fifties, divorced, and not out looking
for another wife. Hell, one was enough for me, and though our divorce was
friendly enough, we were both glad to be shut of the other.
So now I went to work, went home, watched the idiot box, and knew it was
getting more and more idiotic as the years rolled along. I just couldn't
give a shit about anything.
We currently had a fool for a president and he brought scores of fools into
government with him. He was engaged in trying to make up for his Daddy's
perceived fuck up a few years ago, and he was spending young soldiers' lives
like water to do it. Not a single son of a bitch in his administration knew
horse piss from wild honey when it came to running a war, and it wasn't the
time to remember the _Boy's State_ motto and _Learn by Doing_.
If I had any sense I'd take a week off to get drunk, but I didn't. I just
kept going and going and going to work and then back home, kinda like an
Energizer dumbass. I couldn't even get interested in deer hunting anymore.
By now the shit load of yuppies from Dallas had discovered killing innocent
deer was the manly thing to do, and they were leasing every decent hunting
spot anywhere near my part of East Texas.
I probably couldn't even find a place to hunt if I wanted to. On opening day
they'd descend on our area for their weekend safaris, and if you weren't
parked in your stand before daylight, intending to stay until dark, you'd be
taking your life in your hands walking around on the ground. They were the
damnedest bunch of _shoot anything that moves_ assholes I'd ever even heard
of. I didn't want to spend eternity with my head mounted on some
renta-hunter's wall.
What the hell? Maybe bow hunting could be something to do. There was a
special season for it that came before the regular season. I hadn't had a
bow in my hand since before they came out with the compound type. Maybe I
could at least entertain myself learning to use one of those properly. Hell,
it might be fun, for a while.
Asking around down at the feed store got me onto a lucky break. Seems the
owner's preacher, up in Cass Texas, had opened a sort of sporting goods
store in his back yard. I was a little skeptical about wandering up to Cass
to find a bow and other equipment, but what the hell; it was less than ten
miles. Whooper said it was a nice place and maybe it was, it's just that
Cass has a population of about six or seven. Wouldn't hurt to check it out
though.
Surprised wasn't the word for it when I found the place. The building was
nearly a hundred feet wide by a hundred and fifty feet long. Who in the hell
did Brother Bobby expect to buy all the merchandise it must take to fill
that place up?
As soon as I was inside I found out why the building was so big. More than
half of it was an indoor archery range. Hell, you could try a bow out before
you bought it. Nothing wrong with that. Since I was the only prospect, or
suspect, shopping at the time - I got a lot of personal service from Brother
Bobby and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
To say that bows had changed since I'd last fucked with them was not even
worth doing. The bows here didn't look a damned thing like I remembered.
Hell, in the first place there were things hanging off them all over.
Finally Brother Bobby confessed and told me that extra stuff wasn't really
necessary.
"It's on there to sell, Jake. It does help out for target shooting, but
plenty of practice will do you more good than most of that stuff will,
especially for hunting. You don't look like much of a target shooter
anyway," he said.
"I ain't. Did you ever try to cook a target?" I asked, and I should have
been ashamed of myself for smart-alecing the preacher like that, even if he
did laugh.
Brother Bobby might be a hell of a preacher but he wasn't a salesman. I must
have looked around and fondled sixty bows and he never tried to close once.
Not a time. It was just as well, since I had more questions than anything
else and I wouldn't have bought a thing before I got my answers. Finally I
felt sorry for him and said I'd take the RedHead(r) XSC-33, the most
expensive one he had. He promised to help me learn to shoot it.
Of course I had to have arrows, practice points, broadheads, and dozens of
other things to go with it. I even bought a target stand so I could practice
in my back yard. Then I needed a special little wrench to change points and
a kit to sharpen the broadheads and on and on.
After I figured I had just about everything I needed, including a hundred
Carbon Max arrow shafts, we went to figure up the bill. I laughed when I
looked into the knife display case that did double duty as a checkout
counter. There was a Buck Buckmaster Rambo model knife in it.
I don't know if you saw the movie, but suffice to say that Rambo had a
survival knife to end all of them. The damned thing's blade looked like it
was a foot long and that was just the beginning.
The back of the handle had a screw off waterproof cap and the handle was
hollow. There was a tiny compass in there; a few fish hooks, and some nylon
fishing twine. It even had a little rod, made out of God knows what that you
could makes sparks for starting a fire by raking the back of the knife blade
down it. I laughed again when I saw that.
To me the knife was just stupid, but damned if I didn't buy it too. It was
so silly looking that I couldn't help myself. I didn't plan to start any
fires with it either. I had a perfectly good Zippo for that crap.
Don't get me wrong; the _Rambo_ was a quality knife. It was easy to see that
everything they'd done to that stainless steel had been done right. They'd
really taken pains to make sure it was well made.
Just tell me though, what normal person needs a fighting knife, especially
one with two grappling hook attachments for the hilt and a stout tab on the
end to tie a rope through, as if you were ever really going to need it for
actual climbing duty. The whole damned knife was useless for what you might
end up needing a knife for in East Texas, not to mention it was too damned
big.
Anyway, with my checking account lighter to the tune of more than two
thousand bucks, I made my excuses and left. No doubt about it, one of the
things my X-wife had always complained about was true. I'd spend more time
and money getting ready to do something than I actually spent doing it. I
was on a shopping spree _getting ready_ to do some bow hunting. I'd already
spent ten times the amount of money to bow hunt than I'd ever be able to
justify with the meat I might end up with. That wasn't really the point
though. This was entertainment, or I hoped it would be.
The next three months went by with my spare time spent learning to use my
nifty-keeno bow and arrow set. Hell, I got pretty good with the thing if I
do say so myself. I also spent some time trying to find a decent place to
hunt and came up a winner on that score too.
Gee, an old dope smoking buddy from my time at Stephen F Austin State
University - from back when I was dodging the draft and pretending to be
getting a higher education - had actually finally earned a degree during
that time and become a Forester. I saw him in Miles Drug Store one day and
we had a cup of coffee and shot some bullshit. Gee was managing twelve
thousand acres of timberland for a forest products company that shall remain
nameless. When I started bitching about trying to find a dear lease he made
me glad I'd run into him. It wasn't the normal feeling I had when I saw him.
"You don't have to pay for a deer lease. You can hunt on their timberland.
They never lease it because they're afraid some young yuppie dumbass will
burn it down trying to start a campfire. It's fine if I want to let someone
hunt on it, as long as I'll vouch for them having good sense. I can stretch
that in your case. Let me go out to the truck and get an aerial map. I'll
put you down for a thousand acres during bow season," he said, and damned if
he didn't do it.
Gee marked me off a spot and he even gave me the GPS coordinates, so I could
find it and be sure I was in the right place. That meant I had to go buy a
GPS unit, but what the hell, I'd kinda wanted one for a while now anyway,
and I had to get ready for the hunt.
"I really appreciate this Gee," I said, as I was leaving.
"Hell, you're welcome, and if you see anybody out there that don't look like
they belong, just call the game warden. I'll put you down as a part time
watchman," he said, and laughed.
Now that was a stroke of luck. Gee even said I was welcome to drag my camper
out there and just stay, not only during the season but anytime I wanted to.
He did tell me he wouldn't mind a little venison if I came up with any
extra. It wasn't like I needed the meat, so I intended to fix him up. Don't
tell anyone, but to me venison can't hold a candle to beef. I wasn't going
hunting for the food.
Running into Gee and scoring a place to hunt did turn out to be a doubled
edged sword though. Hell, he'd said I was welcome to use the land for
camping too, so it looked to me like I should spruce up my little camper,
just in case.
It was a nice little twenty-foot camping trailer; not an Airstream by any
means but a sort of knock-off that looked a little like one. I gave it a
good cleaning, replaced its maypop tires, and serviced the little dynamo
that let its lights come on. I had to scramble around a little to find a
place for my new bow and the arrows and such, but I put in a few big cup
hooks and hung it above my reloading bench.
I know it, believe me, I know. It sounds stupid to have an up to date
reloading set up shoe horned into a travel trailer. It got there when I was
married and we had our first house built. My wife had her _study_ and I had
my reloading room, which also held all of my guns and knives and such. I was
pleased with the setup, but when my wife found out those cylindrical boxes
contained gunpowder, the shit hit the fan.
Reloading was banished to the trailer. Hell, she hated that trailer too and
I think she was actually hoping I would burn it down. Even though we'd been
divorced for fifteen years now I never bothered to move it back in the
house.
Yeh, you're wondering how I got to keep the house and fifty acres. It was
simple. She found fifty more acres she liked better, even closer to town.
She let me buy it and build her a house of her own. It didn't piss me off
too bad when she found a new man a year later and he ended up sittin' in the
porch swing with her, drinkin' beer, and smokin' big cigars. Well not very
much anyway, at least it didn't give me a stroke.
Still, reloading in the trailer was handy to me now and she might have been
right. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to replace a trailer than a house.
Most of my change of attitude on this matter had come along when my Lyman
Mag 20 Electric Furnace shorted out once, as I was casting bullets, and
started a fire that would have made a lot of noise if I hadn't had a
dry-chem extinguisher real handy.
By now my trailer barely had room in it for me to lie down. I had lost a
twenty-five by forty foot workshop because of a fire that burned it to the
ground. It was caused by a malfunctioning light socket, of all things. The
fire did for all my tools, my _work_ pickup, and hundreds of other odds and
ins. The workshop had devolved into a catchall building. I didn't mind so
much. The fire let me sell the burned up workshop and everything in it to my
insurance agent. That didn't mean I was careless about fire around the home
now though.
All in all, my hunting expedition was shaping up nicely about now. It was
still six weeks before the season opened and I thought a little practice
camping trip wouldn't hurt a thing. I nearly decided to take a Thursday and
Friday off to make a long weekend out of it, until I remembered something
else I needed, a pickup. My last pickup had gone up in the workshop fire
since it was parked right along side the thing.
I'd saved myself a shit load of money over the years by never buying a car
or pickup that had any kind of semiconductor controlled anything. Of course
that held me back to 1976 or so models, but it didn't bother me in the
least. You could have a lot of work done to a 1976 Chevy car or pickup and
still be thousands of dollars to the good upside the price of one of those
new pieces of shit.
Looks never meant much to me in a vehicle as long as it wasn't rusty or bent
up, and you could pay for a lot of paint and bodywork before you spent up
what you saved over something brand new. There was also the benefit of not
risking thousands of dollars worth of repair bills just from using a set of
jumper cables. I can't even count the number of cars I'd seen with their
expensive _brains_ fried from an attempted jump-start.
The part of Texas I lived in helped me out a lot during my pickup search. We
got three or four inches of snow around here every four to five years, and
most years we got none at all. If Texas Highway Department Area Seventeen
needed to put salt on the roads, they'd have to go down and buy it at the
grocery store in those one pound round boxes. Cars and trucks didn't get
corrosion from salted roads 'roun here.
It didn't take me a week to find a 1976 Chevy half-ton short wide four-wheel
drive with a four speed. Since the number seven rod was sticking out the
side of the block; it was pretty cheap. The guy that owned it had used it as
a hunting truck until he tried to take it down Baker's slough for some _off
roading_ fun. He let the throttle get away from him trying to get out of the
deep water he drove into.
I didn't bother to point out the Warn winch he had built into his front
bumper would have saved a lot of wear and tear on his engine. I talked him
down to seven hundred and fifty bucks. I'd already heard through the
grapevine that his wife said the truck had to go or he did.
All in all, the truck was a steal for me. He'd already had it repainted and
the dents ironed out, and he'd also paid good money to have the wheel wells
enlarged so he could hang a set of ten by fifteen aluminum wheels with
thirty-six inch tall Monster Mudders all around. Naturally the brand new
Warn winch had never been used in anger, and he swore he'd just spent three
hundred bucks having the air conditioner re-done. I think he'd got it into
his mind somehow that with it all nice and clean and with working air he
could convince his wife that it really was fun after all. Go figure.
After the deal was done, my buddy with the small town speed shop helped me
drag it to his place. I bought a naked three-fifty block, a good crank, some
nice forged pistons and a set of aluminum heads along with assorted small
stuff from my buddy, and he let me use his shop to do most of the machine
work. He did the balance job for me and cleaned up the head's ports a little
and soon I was in business.
After I cranked it up I drove it straight home, pulled it onto the concrete
slab left over from my burned up shop building, put it up on jack stands,
and pulled every bit of the running gear apart. I already knew the previous
owner didn't know which way you turned a boot to pour piss out, so I was
sure he hadn't washed the mud out of the wheel bearings, brake assemblies,
et al. I was right too.
When you see 'em advertise a four-wheel drive plowing down some muddy road
on TV, they never mention that there will be muddy gritty water in every
place there is a place underneath. Apparently no one else had bothered to
mention this to my truck's former owner either.
Hell, just from the short ride home I was sure the transfer case already had
plenty of _extra_ clearance in it's main gears and bearings and I was
betting that the front and rear differentials weren't in any better shape,
not to mention the inner and outer wheel bearings all around. That didn't
matter to me because I knew how to fix the transfer case myself and I was
already planning on changing out both differentials' 3.36 gears.
Two weeks later I was ready to go. I hooked my camper and headed out for a
long weekend of fun in the piney woods of East Texas, just south west of
Bivins, population four hundred and fifty three.