LETTER TO AN OLD FRIEND

Dear Glenn,
I thought you would be interested that this letter to the editor published in the Arlington Sun yesterday, 1/23/96. It was in response to an article, "Squirrels Go Nuts," by Stephen Henn. He was interviewing Alonso Abugattas, naturalist at the wildlife park on Military Road, Arlington, VA, near Glebe Road. The gist of the article was the problem with too many squirrels in Arlington. Alonso Abugattas stated, "There was not enough meat and that what was there was to tough to eat." (School lunch ladies take note.) "There is no solution for the squirrel over population. They are out of the woodwork county wide," Alonso said.

I wrote in response to the article:

Dear Editor:
I was a student at Washington and Lee High School (W&L) from 1945 to 1947. I used to hunt squirrels in the woods behind Art Brown's house on Military Road near Glebe Road or the woods along the Potomac at Lee Highway and Kirkwood Road before school during hunting season. I would ride my single speed, Speed King bicycle with big tires from my home at 1519 N. Garfield Street to the woods. I often arrived at W&L with squirrels and a rifle over my shoulder. Stephen and others may ask, What did a high school student do with a rifle in school? Simple, put it in your locker until you carried it out after school on your shoulder.

I would take the squirrels, gutted, skinned, and cleaned to the school cafeteria. Most times the school lunch ladies would take them home to cook, but if there were no takers, I would pick them up after school out of the refrigerator.

Our naturalist, Alonso Abugattas does not seem to realize that Virginia's squirrel stew can have more than one squirrel. My recipe calls for one per person. If every one in Arlington and Fairfax would eat their fair share, we would not have squirrels "Out of the woodwork." Maryland fried squirrel "is finger licking good" and tender too. (Squirrles taste nothing like chicken!)

Those days we had the Ten Commandments posted on the schoolroom walls, prayer in school and the pledge of allegiance to our flag. The biggest problems were gum chewing, spitballs, note passing, and talking out of turn.

We seem to have lost innocence.

End of letter.

Yesterday afternoon I was awakened from my daily nap by a sweet little older person (female type) who asked if I were Mr. Jack? I said I was Jack Rupert. She lit into me with both feet incased in Army Boots With Steel Toes and Hobnails. She said, "You must be retired with nothing to do but write stupid letters to newspapers?" I said, "It was my first ever letter to a paper." That was the last time I got a chance to talk. How dare I suggest that everyone in Arlington and Fairfax should eat her furry friends? What did I mean by fair share out of the woodwork? "I SPEND LOTS OF MONEY ON SQUIRREL FOOD AND THEY ARE MY FRIENDS!" About that time I was wide-awake and said, "Thank you very much for calling" and hung up the phone. She was a really smoking, a hot to trot old lady, and by not giving her the fight she was looking for, I'm sure I inflicted the most damage. She must have been a retired old lady with nothing to do but feed stupid squirrels.
Tonight after dinner I got another call. Ran Winter in Arlington invited me to go squirrel hunting in his woods of 1,500 acres, just outside Fredericksburg, VA. Mrs. Winter read my letter to the editor and told him to call me and go hunting for squirrels. It had been too long since they had squirrel stew. She would not let Ran go hunting alone.

What a life we live?

Call me when you return.

Jack
(Art Brown was a famous radio personality and lived four or five houses due north of the Wildlife Park on Military Road. The park displaced my hunting woods of long ago.)

Ten years later.

We did go hunting for squirrels a few days later. What a trip that turned out to be! It was the next to last day of the season in Virginia. Ran was a deer hunter and Mrs. Winter was tired of deer meat and wanted squirrel stew. He was 64 years old and worked as a bus and truck mechanic but could take a day off for hunting whenever he wished. He had gotten to be one of those indispensable people, and the bosses were afraid he might retire. They gave him complete freedom to come and go whenever he wished.

Ran's Dodge truck was a hunting truck, first class. It was the model tuck with the big rams head on the hood. I felt secure behind those big horns once we hit I 95. The body was held together with wire, duct tape and Bondo. What was left of the paint was dark blue with a white top. It was in perfect mechanical condition. For that I was grateful.

Ran was a chain smoker of cork tipped filtered cigarettes. Every ashtray was filled to overflowing with the overflow on the carpet-less floor. He had several open packs on the dashboard in easy reach. Ran was a 5'7", 135 pounds of wire and muscle of a man. (No Bondo or duct tape on Ran.)

We arrived at a gate off an old logger road. The combination was, 30.06. I liked that combination for a hunting club. Old hunters need an easily remembered combination and the caliber of rifles most of them used to hunt deer was perfect. The woods were cutover about 8 to 10 years earlier and not replanted. What grew was scrub growth. I didn't see a tree tall enough for a squirrel to build a nest. Ran said we would have to walk over a hill to get to unlogged woods.

We loaded our rifles and packed our lunches and drinks. He packed a few packs of cigarettes. Whenever I go into the woods, I always take a compass. I took a bearing with the compass on the road and our leadoff direction. Noted which side the sun was on my body and we were off for the big squirrel hunt going southwest. Ran said he knew exactly where we had to go because he hunted these woods for years. Squirrels were always barking at him while deer hunting. We meandered but mostly kept going southwest during our trek to the woods.

We didn't find the woods nor did we hear a squirrel bark. I was beginning to think Ran was lost or the uncut wood didn't exist? He decided we should go back to the truck and call the day not successful. I agreed.

Off we went back to the truck? I didn't think so. We had been going mostly southwest for three hours and to continue with the sun in our face at that time of day, meant he was lost. After a few minutes on the return, I stopped him for a conference call. I got out the compass and we took a bearing. After much conversation he had to admit I was right. I said, "Keep the sun on our backs and go." Each time we crossed back through a patch of easily remembered unusual landscape, I'd say, "I remember this going the other way do you?" He'd answer, "Yeah."

When we got to the road, we could see the truck to our left. That was when we heard a squirrel barking at us from way down hill in one of the only trees still standing from the clear cut of years past. I wondered if that might be the uncut woods he referred too? Those one or two trees?


Now I knew for sure why Mrs. Winter wouldn't let Ran go hunting alone.

TALK ABOUT FAITH?

Evolution is a belief about the past based on the words of men who did not know everything. Who weren’t there, who try to explain how all the evidence got there.
Ken Hamm.

THE THING I HATE MOST

I hate blister packs the most. They cannot be opened without a sharp tool. They never have the correct number of anything inside. It seems to me it is a way to sell more or less of something than is needed. D cell batteries come two to a blister or ten in the economy size. My radio takes six and my three-cell flashlight takes three, that is nine batteries needed and one leftover. To me that is not economy.
A hinge takes six screws each; times two hinges per door, that totals twelve screws. Try to get a blister pack with twelve screws. A walkman comes in a blister pack that is heat sealed, and so hard that it takes a sharp knife to open and that is not safe and should have a warning; “Do not open this blister pack at home,” or “Keep all blister packs out of the reach of children,” or “Open this blister pack at your own risk,” or “The Surgeon General Warns; Blister Packs Cause Cancer.”

Yeatman’s Hardware Store was located on the corner of Wilson Boulevard and Highland Street in Clarendon, the capitol of Arlington, Virginia. The store was only a half block from my house. Yeatman’s was housed in a wood framed building with three entrances. In the summer they had screened doors that banged when you went in and out. The windows opened to attract any breeze, and those sticky fly strips hung from the ceiling.

In winter there was a wood or coal potbellied stove, red-hot most of the time. There were three wooden steps up off the dirt and gravel or mud and gravel Wilson Boulevard to a porch then into the most exciting store in the world. There were shined brass spittoons on squares of linoleum strategically located around the store. The place smelled like smoke since everyone smoked, as did the stove. I cannot remember the walls, since merchandise hung all around and even from the ceiling. It was beautiful.

They sold every thing but food. The ground floor had two wheeled bikes by Speed King, Flexible Flier sleds, Lionel Trains, red wagons, Dazy air guns, all of which we got as Christmas gifts over the years. Remington rifles, Colt pistols, Ithaca, Savage, and Remington shot guns from .410 to 10 gauge. Yeatman’s had Case hunting knives and all kinds of pocketknives, even one to fit the little pocket on your lace-up boots. Dollar pocket watches that kept perfect time unless you forgot to wind or it got busted in a game or fight. There was no repair cost with a one-dollar watch. I had a small brass anchor over which I wired a pot metal arrowhead with an Indian face in relief on a leather thong as a watch bob. Really neat. They had pots and pans, dishes, tableware, kitchen supplies, all sizes of canning jars, everything from gadgets to toasters. The toasters were the type you put over the burner on the stove and toasted one side at a time. I see them today for campers.

The basement was a wonder in itself. There was an outdoor tool supply section with every size of the latest two man crosscut saws to cut down any size tree. They even had brush axes, two edged axes, hammer axes, all types of hatchets, sledge hammers from one to nine lbs., malls, picks axes, wedges, and I could go on about the tools but I would not have space to mention the nuts, bolts, screws, nails from half inch wire brads to 12 inch spikes. Every one of the above sold each or by the pound in a bag or keg.

Plumbing supplies: all sizes of iron pipes, fittings, faucets, washers, pipe cutters and thread cutters. Dad made an adjustable light for his drafting table from 3/8-inch pipe that preceded goose necked desk lamps. I still have some of pipes and fittings in Dad's old steel workbench in my basement. Can’t throw them away. Who knows, I may need to make an adjustable light someday?

If you needed a thing or a whats-a-may-jigger, they had those too. A person only had to take the thing in, describe it with hand jesters, draw a picture, or my favorite way was to rummage through the store until it was found. One sure thing was that Yeatman’s had it?

In 1946 the old store was ripped down and a new brick and block building was built on the sight. The new building had glass doors; show windows, central heat and the new thing called air conditioning. It may not have a potbellied stove, spittoons, and light bulbs with shades hanging down, and stuff hanging off the ceiling or walls, and they may have lost those wonderful smells, but they still had the stuff only neater.

The only thing Yeatman’s did not have was blister packs, the very thing I hate most.

COMPUTERS ARE HELL

My computer quit and had to be striped down to it's bare bones and refleshed with all the internal organs. Now I can't find all kinds of missing files. Much like my own memory.

BROTHERS

Brother Bud loved school, and did very well in math and science. He liked the whole experience. I cannot remember him having any problems from start to finish. He loved junior and senior high school with a passion. The cadet band and school orchestra kept him busy as a bee and happy as a skunk. There were two years between us in school, so having him in the 9th grade when I started 7th grade and again (he in the 12th and I in the 10th) protected me. For some strange reason, all my best friends were in his class. By the 9th grade, I was full grown, 6' 1" with big blue eyes, a widow’s peak and a trace of a wave in my beautiful brunet hair. A 180 lbs of hunk, with a ruddy complexion with few zits. I was beautiful even then.

Poor Bud was 17 years old, a senior in high school and would tip the scale at 115 lbs and stood 5' 10" if he were wet and stood on his toes. He was blonde headed and fair skinned and had acne problems that left scars. He was so skinny that to pass the physical for the Navy he had to stoop and shrink as short as he could to pass the weight to height requirements. His heart always raced and the doctor had Bud sit and rest to the point of going to sleep so that the heart could slow down enough to pass the physical. His waist was not more than 22" if that. Clothing was passed from younger to older.

I was fearful of Bud going into the Navy at 17 1/2 years of age. How well I remember that time in our lives with Bud fast talking for all the reasons he had to go and Mom and Dad making sure he was not being their flighty 17 year old. Bud was so single minded about flying that there was no other choice for Dad but to sign his enlistment papers for the Navy V-5 training program. WW II was almost over, and I am sure Dad thought that would be the safest place for his namesake and eldest son.

V-5 Program was a Navel Reserve program that gave Bud a two year Georgia Tech college program, then on to flight school and chance to get his wings and a commission in the Navy Reserves. He remained on active duty in the Reserve for the next 27 plus or minus years. That must be a record for a reservist to remain that many years on active duty. He had to give up his active flying and go into the active Navy in order to be promoted to CAPTAIN his final years to the big 30. He was Commanding officer of the Naval Air Reserve Unit at the Naval Air Station, Alameda, California. 1976 was his retirement year, and the beginning of a new life as a retired gentleman on the sometimes slippery hill side of one of California’s slippery hills in LaFayette CA.

I remember going to school and crying for the next 16 years. I did not like school and school did not like me. I was always the big kid in class and got the B’s and D’s mixed. Then they called it dumb, so I was the big dumb kid in class. The teachers were not helpful until 6th grade when I had Miss Dolly Smith. She let me ring the bell and help the janitor. For that I had to work and try harder. She also told me that I could at least be on time and not miss any days. From that day on I had perfect attendance and was on time for the next ten years. And somehow got through it. I still remember as I packed the car to leave Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) for the last time how happy it was to be free at last.

The best description that I can give of our difference is our approach to the edge. When we were Boy Scouts, (he was 14 and I was 12), we went on a hike along the Potomac River. When we had climbed to the top of the gorge Bud would walk out on the edge of the ledge and hang his toes off into space to get the best view. I was so afraid he would fall to the rocks below and end up hamburger that I never went on another hike with him. I was not afraid of heights but only got six foot close to the edge, so that if I tripped my head would not hang over into space. Besides I did not know if that solid rock ledge would not fall due to my weight. All the rocks below came from above sometime in the past. How many reasons do you want? I thought of those too. But BUD never had a thought like that in his life. He knew that solid rock ledge had always been there and would always be there, and those rocks at the bottom were created at the bottom. I believe he could have flown without an airplane.

For years, I had a running dialog with Bud. Whenever we got together, I’d always say, “You have always been luckier than me our whole lives.” I don’t remember how many years, but it was many, it took for him to ask why I always said he was luckier than me? I said, “Because you have me for a brother and all I have is you.” Talk about devious little brother--I was it.

Bud kept growing long after his enlistment. Eventually he reached 6 foot and the waist never stopped growing until it reached about 36 to 38 inch. But he never was as handsome as I. But then he was luckier than me.

He died at 63 from Colon cancer. It was a long battle, and he fought his best in good spirits. It would have been so much fun to become old together. We had a lot of fun and good times as kids and would have had more fun as old kids.

I miss him more each year.