It is the end of Idaho snow goose season and I had gathered a group of guys to help pick up decoys. After hunting dark to dark for the past 18 days I felt it high time I call my folks. Mom was going to a birthday party at noon and was wondering if I would take Dad to lunch. I had one better. Take him to lunch then to help pick up 1,500 white decoys.
Driving to Parma I realized how often we had made that trip in the years gone by and now it had been one full year.
Dad has been my best friend all of my life. As a runner in high school I could always hear his soft voice above the slap of our feet as he always encouraged, "That a boy, your doing good."
Dad loved hunting and fishing and hauled my older brother and I all over the place to find new adventures. He was leading edge in wanting hunting vehicles, buying a jeep like amphibious for hauling out deer and elk. The silly thing just never seemed to run. He then bought a two wheel drive motorcycle that would almost climb trees.
Later in life, I found myself in the middle of a muddy divorce. That steady calm voice on the track field was in my ear once again through the wires of the phone line. Every day, without fail, Dad would call and always end with, "Ok, just checking on you."
Dad was one of the first recruits drafted in world war two. Like the movie, Hacksaw Ridge (I strongly recommend every one see it though I Never push movies on this blog) Dad refused to take up a gun against another human. He chose, like the movie, to enlist in the Medics division. He worked as a nurse helping the doctors save lives be they American or Japanese. To dad they are all humans with lives and dreams, families, and goals.
I did not know Dad before the war, but I grew up knowing a man who raised farm animals for food and money. He treated them with respect and kindness even though many ended up on our supper table.
At age of 19 I moved into my own house and our relationship changed a bit. I now see it as a debt meter.
Children, as a whole are racking up debt to their parents. Food, lodging, cars, gas, in my case shotgun shells, and rifle bullets. Teenagers rack up the most and quickest debt. Now it is clothes, girl friends, endless school activities that require almost endless funds from the parents.
My parents were so gracious in giving even though they probably could not really afford it, or it cut into things they were dreaming about. My brother and I worked on farms in the summer to help out, but our small earnings ran out way before the school year.
So I moved out and now I began taking my dad on hunting and fishing trips. I would have dad meet me each morning of duck or goose season for a hunting trip some where. I worked nights so days were for a quick hunt before bed time.
I bought a jet boat for running the river in search of ducks, and a bass boat for screaming across a lake in search of bass. Dad was a ride along on most of my trips.
I never hunted with a friend that I didn't ask if my dad could come along, most of them would quickly say yes.
The debt meter had stopped swinging my way and was swinging slowly to "repay".
The divorce years once again had that meter swinging wildly my way. Even on hunting and fishing trips, I was hard on Dad. I knew it but the anger inside would burst out aimed at him. How I regretted it each time it happened. He was meek and mild and would just grow quiet. My debt meter was pegging at the top.
I then headed to Alaska, the land of adventure, to the very town my Dad had fished out of after the war. I bought a boat eerily similar to the one he owned some forty years earlier.
I brought Mom and Dad up to Alaska as much as I could. For Dad, it was like living a dream, for Mom it was just a way to touch base with her son.
I wrote constant letters, then when email was invented, I flooded their computer with emails. The debt meter was swinging nicely back in repay.
My winters, after summers of fishing, were always back in Idaho and the hunting trips were endless. Dad and I did our best to keep the waterfowl migrating past our area.
I went from commercial fishing to guiding and once again I had dad up as much as possible. I still recall him catching a 90 pound halibut on his 90th birthday! Amazing.
Age comes calling to us all so quickly. A man in his 90's feels it so much. A friend of that man also carries that load. The tough hunting trips were replaced with less often simpler ones. I turned to my age friends for those grueling long hour hard work episodes.
Dad sat at home more and more. My hunting fire still burned almost out of control. I had nephews coming up and was channeling energy towards them. I was staying long in Alaska to partake of the nectar of that amazing land.
Dad and Mom caught up with me through phone and emails, and eventually I started this blog for them. Dad always love reading my writing pushing me to become an outdoor writer. Now he could read each experience tempered only by an internet that reaches all people. I try to keep the killing and the details to where all can read and enjoy.
My debt meter slowly worked its way past half and into his corner. For that I am so thankful.
Today, just a long month away from reaching 98 years old, Dad is helping stack snow goose decoys in a muddy corn field. I take him to the blind where we used to shoot mallards and Canadian geese. I explain all the improvements since he hunted it a year ago.
I had told mom I would put him in a chair to watch us work but Dad was not about to do that. I didn't want him falling in the pond so I placed him on the four wheeler and gave him his first ever lesson in driving a four wheeler. This was the machine he had dreamed of when I was a teenager. but it hadn't been invented yet.
Halibut, my dog, raced to her usual place behind the driver and I stood on the trailer as we circled the corn field picking up stacks of decoys the boys were piling up.
Dad got off a couple of times wanting me to take over but I insisted he finish the course. He could not hear me say, "That a boy, you can do it." over the slap of the four wheeler tires,
We then went from and ATV to a UTV to feed Wayne's cattle. The UTV is a three person side by side with a dump bed. Once again I saw the pleasure in Dad's eyes. "Wow," was his choice of words.
I dropped Dad off at home and then it hit me about the debt meter. I so hope my debt meter has pegged out on repaid!
I have tried to live my life with my folks so I have no regrets. At the end of it all I want us to be all squared up.
I try to call my folks every day. I usually end by saying, "Just checking up on you."
I love you Mom and Dad and thanks for such a great life.
Dad driving his first four wheeler at age 98 halibut riding shotgun
