As a young man growing up in southwestern PA, I wasn’t really a team sports player., I tried but failed miserably. It was a popular theme that I just didn’t fit in. I spent a lot of time alone listening to heavy metal music and had “decorated” my room with black light posters and a strobe light. Adolescence, for many, is a painful experience defined by desperately trying to find oneself. I was a perfect example of existential teenage angst. Girls didn’t notice me because I didn’t play football, baseball, basketball, or any kind of team sport that required me to shower with boys more physically mature than I. I would walk to school through the woods behind our house. There was a well-worn path down a steep decline and at the bottom the path cut through someone’s yard. But along the path there were mysteries to be uncovered. The soil was strangely musty. I could smell it even through the incredibly polluted air from the steel mills in the next town. There was a lot of shale that would disconnect from its base layers and cause one to slide over top of the remaining plates. The walk downhill was figuratively similar to the precarious journey of finding myself in the morass of adolescence. But those woods were where I began to find my footing. My brother and I built a tree house on a mature sycamore that we estimated was about forty feet in the air. I’m sure that since we were smaller then, it was probably only twenty feet high, but it seemed like a skyscraper to us.
When my brother became the top running back and tight end for the local football team, our time to play in the woods dwindled into obscurity. Once again, I had to find my own entertainment.
Then one marvelous snowy Christmas morning I awoke earlier than my three siblings and tiptoed down the carpeted stairs to the “wreck room” which was the more accurate moniker for “recreation room.” I stopped on the landing where the stairs turned and my eyes grew wide, my mouth was gaping, and I stood on the landing stunned to see two Marlin Glenfield Model 25 .22 caliber rifles leaning against the bay window. One for my brother, who was now ten years old and one for me. I was fourteen. I turned and ran back upstairs to wake my brother. The scene bore a striking resemblance to Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” when he discovered that he had received a Red Ryder BB gun. I shook my brother awake in his bunk bed and said “Miles! Wake up! You’re not gonna believe what we got!”
Miles bailed out of the bunk and we ran together down the stairs in our pajamas. Was this going to be the catalyst that brought us back together by learning to hunt in the woods behind our house? My hopes were high. We were both excited, but when he opened his other presents – one of them an NFL licensed football- the rifle was left leaning against the window. I loved my brother and would look for a way that we could play together. I’d join him in the front yard running patterns and throwing his new football to him as he leapt into the air to pull the spiraling pigskin down in front of the imaginary defensive player. I became a decent quarterback from throwing so many passes, but again, when I tried out for Mighty Mites, the other guy, was more confident and frankly more popular, so once again, I resigned myself to the woods where I belonged.
I started to notice things. Like hollow logs where cottontail rabbits could hide. And then, as I sat under an oak tree, I began hearing a chittering noise and felt small pieces of some kind of debris falling on my head. I looked up and saw a large gray squirrel jumping from limb to limb. As he confidently walked out onto the end of a branch, I could see him stretch out his body as his front feet would reach for an acorn. He pulled it back toward his balanced position, sat up on his rumpled haunches and held the acorn in his front feet chipping away at the outer layer, dropping small bits of shell that landed all around me. I listened to his joyous chirping and could hear his sharp teeth scraping into the shell. His big bushy tail flickered back and forth as if signaling other gray squirrels that he had claimed this tree as his own. I watched him for almost half an hour and became curious about his life in the leafy canopy.
I went home and began asking questions about how to cook squirrels. The reactions I received were less than interesting and bordered on the unpleasant. But Grandma would know. She came from the “old world” where resources were scarce. I tried to imagine a planet with no SpaghettiOs or Frosted Mini-Wheats. How did they survive? When I asked her, she told me that they grew their own food and hunted their meat. “What about squirrel?” I asked her. “Of course!” she replied. “Rabbit and squirrel were a staple.” Wow! “Grandma, do you know how to cook squirrel? If I kill it and clean it, will you show me how to cook it?”: “Of course” she said.
The very next day I took that new rifle into the woods and sat under that big oak with all the acorns. I didn’t have to wait for long, when the old bushytail appeared seeking breakfast and a private stash for winter. I leaned against the trunk of the tree and steadied my forearm against my knee aiming straight up. The scope was a cheap Tasco 4x magnification and sighting in was difficult to get a clear picture of the crosshairs and the prey. I searched through the wooded tunnel of branches and found him sitting on a branch that offered a perfect shot. I placed the crosshairs on him and slowly squeezed the trigger. A moderately loud “snap” and the squirrel plummeted to the ground with a thump. A clean kill. I picked him up and admired his thick coat and puffy tail. His feet were like small hands with miniature claws for fingernails. His belly was tight and I could feel the solid chunks of partially digested nuts. I asked him for forgiveness and said a short prayer.
Walking up the steep hill toward home seemed to be easier than before. The feeling of accomplishment brought me a sense of confidence I had not felt before. Arriving home, I dissected the body with curiosity, examining all the organs and being careful not to burst any of the sacks containing vulgar smelling liquids. I skinned him out and quartered him, then called to my grandmother. She congratulated me. I was truly proud and felt accepted by her and her “old world” ways.
She located an oven ready bag and added breadcrumbs, herbs, and spices that to this day I cannot identify by flavor. She roasted the meat in the oven bag and when it was done, she opened the bag and offered me the first piece. I remember thinking that others had shared that ubiquitous phrase “it tastes just like chicken!” I immediately dismissed that cliché. It tasted nothing like chicken. It had an interesting quality to it that made it palatable but it did not rise to the level of haute’ cuisine. None the less, my grandma and I agreed that it was edible.
It’s been fifty-five years since grandma and I shared that first meal in the wreck room of the old house. It was also the first time that I felt pride and confidence that I was good enough to stand tall, even if I didn’t ever score a touchdown under the Friday night lights of the high school stadium.
This Sunday will be September first and I will awaken before the sun. I will rub my eyes and drink a cup of coffee at the kitchen table by myself. My wife will still be sleeping. As I head out the door. I will grab the same old .22 I received for Christmas fifty-five years ago and head for the hardwoods behind our house. As I lean against the trunk of the oak, I will close my eyes and think of my grandmother as I listen for the “chip-chip-chip” in the branches above.
Perhaps tonight we will have Brunswick stew. And without telling my lovely bride what kind of meat is in the dutch oven, I’ll just mumble “Don’t worry. It tastes just like chicken.”