GREEN GABLES

THE FIRST TIME

Memory is not static, but much more dynamic than you might suspect. Memories resemble a stack of 45's[that's rpm's for you youngsters]; you stack them onto your turntable's spindle first, and then they will play in the order you have selected; there are many more tracks that you could have selected, and these too are stacked off to the side[perhaps you will play some of them tomorrow]. Perhaps the first to drop is your all-time favorite; how many times have you heard that recorded version?

When I was seven, Dad gave me my first shotgun[kind of a Southern-thing]; the first time I discharged the weapon, the recoil made an impression on me, that darkened in color over the next several days. There would be many more shells expended by successive pulls on the trigger-mechanism, but that first memory of a smoky explosion, followed-quickly by a jolt to the upper-body, is one track the DJ doesn't play all that often.

The young marksman must learn to sight down the barrel, focused on some target at a reasonable-distance from the muzzle; he knows what is coming, but is trying to see what happens when the discharged load[of lead pellets] has traveled that distance to his target. Then the DJ plays the track that always comes next; breach the gun[automatically-expelling the spent shell] and reload for another shot.

Then, there was the first time that a cottontail lost his life, when the pellets tore through the vital tissues in its head. Enter the instructor, to modify the record, by requiring the young shooter to draw his knife, and disembowel the lump of dead tissues. Blood on his hands now, from the first kill. A modified song of death, which goes to the stacks; even if never played again, it is the hearing of it, that colors the hearing of these subsequent killshots.

When my Dad saw that bruise on my right-forearm, he asked me to aim my weapon, and he showed me where the 'pocket' was, that the butt of my shotgun needed to be firmly-planted, before the violent recoil. I was a small boy, with a man's weapon in my hands. We took that .410 into a workshop, and shortened the stock by about two/inches with a bandsaw. Problem solved!

Your turntable can be reset to play the track at 78/rpm's; the same information now heard at a higher frequency. These first time-memories can have an altered time-sequence; other 'edits' may be made, in an effort to make it more 'playable.' An emotional dimension creeps into the editing-process. All those grown men[with their 16/ga. cannons] were observing the child's ability to make the appropriate edits.

Dad provided the box of ammunition[25/shells; #6 birdshot], so economy was not a contributor to my use of this resource; at some point in my development as a rabbit-hunter, I began carrying only ten shells into the woods. By that time, we were hunting marsh rabbits in the swamps of South Georgia[having killed-off the cottontails in several North Georgia counties]; they weighed nearly twice as much as the slimmer cousin I had been killing. Ten gutted-logwalkers filling your game-pouch was quite enough of a load to bear back to the parked cars.

All this time, the grown-ups had been lying to me[& each other], about their killshots; one tried to explain how to lead that bunny by a wagon-tongue; there were some 'hunters' along for the trip, that 'busted' a whole box of shells[and brought-in fewer carcasses than I did]. These shameless liars would inspect my game, while drinking hot CocaCola's at the parking place for 'lunch[you don't come in, when the dogs are still running game back towards the shooters],'

Examining the meat for stray-lead in the hind-portions, told them the truth regarding my killshots. They would never let-on, that I had seen-through their lies, and quit shooting at moving targets. One day I'd brought-in ten dead-ones, and still had an unexpended-shell in my .410; my explanation involved waiting until I had two of them aligned for a two-for-one killshot.

That was the day I became a big liar too; the day I was accepted into this fraternity. I was not just grown-enough to see through the deception, but had chosen not to expose this tale-spinning. I grew out of this bloody-passtime, and my .410 obtained a rich-patina of deep-brown rust. Perhaps being required to buy my own ammunition was a factor in this abandonment.

Who were these men? I'd been watching them for years; each hunter had a stack of 45's dedicated to him, and filed-away with each other. One day, one of them hound-dogs got peppered with lead, to teach him not to chase foxes. "Don't worry,...  at that range, it just stings a bit!" Daddy told me one day, that the guy that was hired on the same day my Dad went to work[as his boss], had once set atop a saddled-pony, with a shotgun across his lap; he was guarding the inmates on a chain-gang roadcrew.

In later-life, I'd find this man[now duly-elected President of my Local Union] was a worthy adversary. I knew that gun in his lap could be aimed at me. What I had yet to learn, was that my Dad and this 'prison-guard' were 'frat-brothers,' and both would be adversaries. Welcome to adulthood!

The only question to be answered is, "Who am I?" No time spent determining who those men were, can really help answer my burning question, but one cannot ignore those stacks of dusty, unplayed 45's. I still think shooting an errant hound-dog is the wrong way to train him; I still think that holding a shotgun on a colored-man requires a demotion in his status, that is not excusable.

Dad played his cards, with the confidence that the other frat-boys would back his play; my cards did not win the chips piled in the center, but I had a seat at the table, as long as I coud ante-up for the next jackpot. When Dad died in '87, he threw-off his 'apron,' and requested cremation. I was left alone, to figure him out; figure out what he'd made of me!