hunter accuses franksolich of being an anti-gun primitive. This morning, Thursday morning, I had a visitor here, a guy from the other end of the county out hunting waterfowl. The neighbor and the caretaker both know him, but warned me that while he’s kosher, he’s a little off.
He came in shortly after eight in the morning; he’d had some luck, but wasn’t impressed.
While having coffee, he asked me how I liked hunting.
I told him I’ve never hunted in my life; when younger, my three older brothers used to take my younger brother along when they hunted, but I myself never bothered.
Why don’t you like to hunt, he asked.
Well, there’s practicalities involved here, I illuminated him. I’m deaf. Deaf people make a lot of noise, which isn’t good when hunting. Deaf people have a precarious sense, if a sense at all, of balance, which isn’t good for trying to shoot something. And deaf people are notoriously impatient, which again, doesn’t help when hunting.
franksolich has nothing, nothing at all, against hunting. In fact, I encourage it, if practical.
Then he inquired if I fished. Aha, I said, now that’s a sport a lot of deaf people do, although I don’t do it myself, as the stench of dead fish churns this stomach. But just about every deaf person I know up here on the roof of Nebraska (which is all of them; we’re not exactly numerous) fishes.
Then he got back to guns, asking if I were afraid of them.
Ho-hum, I thought, although I didn’t illuminate him. Millions of dollars of firearms have passed through these very hands, back when I was in college, and working for a wholesale hardware distributor in Lincoln.
Because of restrictions involving firearms, the inventory was kept in a secured and locked area of the warehouse. Only the president of the company, the warehouse foreman, and I had a key to it. I was in charge of the whole bit, which also included non-firearm hunting, fishing, and camping gear.
An older brother of mine had gotten me the job, and I suspect I got the job because firearms were of no interest to me. I received, checked in, inventoried, and checked out firearms; they were just pieces of inventory to me. If it had a long barrel, no matter what it actually was, it was a “rifle†to me. If it was a firearm one gripped in the hand, no matter what it actually was, it was a “revolver†to me.
My only interest was in serial numbers; that they were the correct ones, and that their location was accurate, and all movements properly recorded.
This wholesale hardware distributor did all sorts of business not only with retail hardware stores, but also local, county, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies. And so I wasn’t dealing with just for-retail-sale firearms.
Whenever a shipment came in, as I was checking things out, other guys from the warehouse would wander into the secured area. They weren’t supposed to be there pawing at the merchandise, but these were either guys who’d been working for the company before I had been born, or friends of my brother—so I let them look and touch, but not mess up.
I received firearms from places as far away as Italy and Belgium, and some pretty big pieces too. Judging from the comments of the “window shoppers,†apparently some of these firearms were rather impressive or unusual or remarkable or awesome. But all I cared about was that the serial numbers were right.
None of this, I told my guest; but he had challenged my manhood (I was fully dressed at the time, by the way), and in self-defense, I pointed out that two years ago, I had actually tried to learn how to use a firearm, costing a dealer from the big city a great deal of hope and expectations and trouble.
But it didn’t work out; he finally decided I was the sort who’d use a gun to hit with, rather than to shoot with. And I agreed with him; I’m not a stand-and-take-aim sort of person; I’m a jumper-on-and-pummeling-into-a-bloody-mess sort of person.
Different temperament, different skill, demands a different form of self-defense.
Well, he wasn’t convinced. He thought I had something against guns.
“These are bad times, and they’re getting worse, and all sorts of people are wandering the highways, jobless and drug-addicted, looking to make trouble. [Insert anti-0bama comment here.] You’re deaf, you don’t know what’s going on, you’re out here all alone…..â€
He was of course talking about primitives stalking franksolich.
Oh, but I said, I already had, and have used, an effective means of self-defense, looking at the 1-3/8†S/K adjustable wrench on the dining room table (the other two are kept elsewhere in the house).
“I know how to scare primitives off. It’s worked every time.â€
