by John Jefferson
Ever wanted to play Santa Claus?
I’ve got a way you can help restore a teenager’s belief in Santa – without having to grow or rent a white beard.
Somewhere in your family or circle of friends is a kid who would love to go hunting if he just had someone to take him. My mother sensed that right after the big war. My father had died in Africa, and she started asking around. She told me a man who belonged to a duck hunting club said he could take me. I was ecstatic!
But he never called. Then she asked the man who had been a hunting and fishing buddy of my grandfather’s. He had a “camp”, as he called it, on Beech Creek, west of Silsbee. That worked.
“Uncle Josh,” as I called him, began taking me up to his camp on weekends. Many moons later, I still cherish that wonderful little cabin without electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing, at the edge of the Big Thicket. When we ran out of washing water in that bucket on the back porch, he told me whose job it was to carry that bucket to the creek for water. I felt useful handling that.
We hunted, fished, shot guns, and sat by the fireplace – our only heat – while I asked questions about everything in the woods and the creek.
His answers whirled around in my head on cold nights until sleep finally won out. He changed my life. Those memories still comfort me on stress-produced sleepless nights.
A friend from grade school through high school, Bobby Edmonson, also had a father in the field artillery, like my father. They never got to hunt together. Bobby’s now Dr. Robert Edmonson, M.D., a cardiologist. He killed his first deer on his uncle’s ranch near Camp Wood.
This year, he spent the second week of deer season taking his grandson and another teenager to his deer lease. All he talks about is what a pleasure it was watching the two boys being out in the brush near Santa Anna in a small deer camp with older hunters. Bobby didn’t mention cell phones or iPads. He did, however, say his grandson asked him if they could listen to music enroute from Dallas to Coleman County.
He ASKED Permission? That showed respect.
It didn’t end there. Bobby said the boys didn’t wait to be asked to assist with camp chores. They, of course, gladly waded into dressing their game – and I don’t mean a computer game! What they lacked in butchering skills, they made up for with enthusiasm for the task. Both lads had just killed their first deer.
When time came to pack up, the boys dove into cleaning the cabin. They then loaded sleeping bags, backpacks, and everything else into Dr. Bob’s truck.
As I learned from guiding youth hunts with game wardens and other TPWD guys, Bobby felt the satisfaction of helping kids enjoying being in wild country.
Those memories could stay with THEM forever, too.
JJ
