Christmas is always a time of mixed emotions. There is great happiness in watching kids’ excitement about Santa, spending time with family and friends, eating great food and renewing your faith. But there is also great sadness in remembering those gone from your life, past joys that can never happen again and the ending of another year of your life.

Those of us that love the outdoors and spend time in nature seem more attuned to the cycle of life since we see it first-hand so vividly. In 1985 I built a simple deer stand between two sweetgum trees. Hunting that stand season after season, year after year, the changes in the woods really comes home.

One very noticeable fact is that tree trunks grow out, not up. The spikes driven so laboriously in to the tree as steps are still spaced the same distance apart but the spikes that once stuck out two inches further than your boots’ width are now barely wide enough to get a good foothold.

And although the steps are the same distance apart, thirty years later it is a struggle to raise your foot from one to the other where 30 years ago it was an effortless climb. And there is a soreness in your arms and legs after a hunt that was not there even a few years ago.

The woods themselves go through changes both natural and man-made. I picked the site for the stand because it was on an edge where big pines with a good bit of undergrowth changed to more open hardwoods. Over the first ten years the undergrowth thinned in the pines as they got bigger and provided more shade.

Then the pines were thinned for lumber, opening up the ground to more sunlight. Brush and vines grew and got so thick that it was hard to walk through it. But the deer loved it and I saw more deer for about five years after that than I had before the thinning.

Another man-made change was an accident. I hunted with a lever action Marlin 30-30 with a scope mounted on see through rings. Those rings allowed me to use the iron sights if needed, but raised the scope very high.

One morning a doe moved into the open about 50 yards down a shooting lane I had cut. I eased up my rifle, put the crosshairs on her chest and pulled the trigger. She jumped about ten feet to her left then stood there looking around, wondering what had happened.

Fortunately, I had immediately ejected the spent shell and loaded a live one while the gunshot still made it difficult to locate the source of that sound. While she looked around I aimed and pulled the trigger again, and this time she dropped. I could not figure out how I missed such an easy shot the first time.

The next trip I found out why. While standing in the same position and looking at the spot she was standing, I noticed a three-inch-thick limb on the adjacent water oak was splintered. It was about four feet from where the end of my gun barrel had been when I shot.

You learn as you age, too. Looking at that limb I realized my scope was so high I could not see the limb in it even though the crosshairs were on the deer. My bullet leaving the barrel hit the limb as it rose to intersect with the point of aim of the crosshairs zeroed in at 100 yards.

I watched that limb die and fall over the next two seasons. I didn’t know you could kill a limb with a 30-30 but I did. When it fell I got it and it is still in my garage, bullet hole and all!

For a couple of years a ground squirrel had a hole at the base of a nearby tree. I enjoyed watching it scurry around finding food and watching out for danger. But it drove me crazy when hawk flew over and it would sit in the mouth of its home whistling a warning. Cute for a few minutes, the sound got very irritating after several minutes of it.

That cute little animal emphasized the shortness of life. It was gone the third year and I found their life span is only two to three years even if not eaten by a hawk. Our life spans are about 30 times that long, and we don’t have to be wary of hawks, but even that amount of time does not seem to be enough, especially for those you miss so much this time of year.
A pile of rocks on a small ridge near my stand made me dream of the past. The small ridge is an old field terrace.

At first I thought of some rich farmer making his slaves clear the land, build terraces for flat ground to plant cotton, and move rocks out of the way and pile them. Then I realized this hillside was not prime land that a rich farmer would own. Rather, it was most likely a family farm with the father, wife and children laboring to make terraces to scratch out a living from less than ideal land.

Those rocks tell a story of their own. They sat in one place for hundreds of years, then were move to their current location where they will sit for hundreds more. Eventually they will be worn down into sand by rain and lichens growing on them. Although they last much longer than we do, they, too, will some day be gone.
Life changes. It is too short to worry about the things that don’t matter. Instead, spend time with those you care about and make happy memories for future Christmases.

Cutting a watermelon last week brought back great summertime memories. Since we had a commercial egg farm there was a big walk in cooler at my house. It stored eggs year round but during the summer there were always some watermelons in it, getting icy cold and ready to eat.

It was always a festive time when everyone gathered, usually in the middle of the hot afternoons, under the big pecan tree beside our house. There was an old outbuilding roof there on the ground. It sat on concrete blocks about two feet off the ground and its plywood cover was perfect for cutting and eating watermelon.

I spent many happy afternoons sitting on that old roof, a crescent of watermelon in my hands and cold juice running down my chin. It was the perfect way to cool off and tasted so good!

I usually ate the red flesh from the rind by biting off chunks of it. The adults were more decorous, using a knife to cut off bites size chunks, not wanting juice running off their chins onto clothes. Since I usually had on a pair of shorts and no shoes or shirt I didn’t care.

When I was eight we were eating watermelon and the big butcher knife used to cut it was lying near me. I decided to be a big boy and used it to cut off bite size chunks. When I finished, for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to stab the rind laying on the plywood.

I will never forget seeing my hand slip off the wood handle and slide down the blade. There was no hand guard on the knife and my fist went all the way to the end of the knife. It didn’t really hurt for a second and I opened my hand to see a gash across my palm that instantly filled with blood.

Of course my mom freaked out and they rushed me to the emergency room eight miles away. I remember lying on the table with my right arm stretched out and my hand open while the doctor worked on it. My mom stood on my left holding that hand and keeping my face turned toward here. I wanted to watch what the doctor was doing but she would not let me.

Just as he finished up my mom asked why I was staring into her eyes, then she realized I was watching the reflection of the procedure in her glasses. It took eight stitches to close it up and I still have a faint white line across my palm from the scar.

I should have known better than be careless with a knife since I always had one in my pocket from the time I was about six years old. Back in the 1950s and 60s boys would rather go without pants than leave their knives at home.

We used our pocket knives for everything from playing games to cleaning game. We took them to school every day with no problems, and at recess we often carved or played games with them.

Almost all of us had “jack” knives with two folding blades that came out of the same end. One was longer than the other. That was good for what we called mumbly peg – a game where we used a piece of wood between two of us. You would open your knife with the long blade straight with the handle and the short blade at a 45 degree angle to it.

With the point of the short blade on the wood and the handle resting on your fingertip, with the handle and long blade parallel to the wood, you would flip the knife into the air. The trick with to flip it up high enough and spin it just right so the long blade point stuck into the wood.

You had to flip the knife high enough to come down with enough force to stick without flipping it off the board. Points were given based on which blade stuck. There was some skill to it and we could do it for hours.

Another game was split. Two of us would stand facing each other about two feet apart. You took turns throwing your knife, trying to stick it in the ground out from your opponent’s foot. When it stuck he had to move that foot out to it. When one of you could not get your foot out far enough, you lost. One twist in the game was if you stuck the knife between you opponents feet, usually after they had been spread apart some, they had to turn around backwards for the rest of the game.

To go full circle today, cutting the watermelon last week also reminded me of using my pocket knife to cut open citrons while dove or quail hunting. Citrons grew wild in many of the fields we hunted and after a hot afternoon of walking in the fall anything to drink sounded real good.

Citrons look like small watermelons but everyone considered the noting but hog food at best. The flesh when cut open is white and tougher than a watermelon, and dryer. And it tastes more like rind than the flesh. But on a hot afternoon with a parched throat even that bad tasting, tough flesh that was almost boiling hot from sitting in the sun, was a welcome treat!

Without my trusty pocket knife I could not quench my thirst very easily.

Happy birthday USA!

The July 4 holiday should always put the birth of our nation first. The freedoms and rights that exist nowhere else in the world should be on our mind and we should remember the sacrifices made to get them. And we should be determined to keep them.

I am afraid there won’t be many more Independence Days where those freedoms can be rejoiced. Right now many of the rights in the Bill of Rights are under siege. It is unreal to me that so many people are willing to completely ignore the 2nd Amendment and try to ban guns, and destroy the 4th Amendment by taking guns and magazines that were legal purchased away from citizens.

They are also willing to violate the 6th and 7th Amendments dealing with the idea of being innocent until proven guilty. They want to violate your rights because some government official put a name similar to yours on a list. Seems like none of our rights mean anything.

Some of those same folks want to destroy the 1st Amendment on free speech by locking up anyone disagreeing with their prejudices on things like climate change. It amazes me some want to lock me up for talking about the weather in a way they don’t like.

The people we elect are not our leaders, they are our servants. But they ignore their own rules, pass laws that violate the constitution and seem determined to change the US to a country unrecognizable by those living here.

My daddy always said don’t elect an honest man, he will become a crook. But even with that pessimistic opinion it is unreal that many politicians seem incapable of telling the truth. Even when confronted with solid evidence they lied, they just tell bigger lies.

And the claim about government being transparent is a joke now. One of the worst examples of our federal government lying to us by hiding information is with the radical Islamic mass murderer in Orlando. The so called Justice Department first released transcripts of his 911 call that had most of the words he used redacted, or blacked out.

That stirred up such an outcry that another release was done, with fewer words blacked out. But how many words in the transcript were what he really used? Even though the law requires release of the actual recording of the call the “in”justice Department, to this day, will not release it. What are they hiding from us?

According to Dr. Richard Beeman, professor of history and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, after the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The US is the worst country on earth – except for every other one that exists or has ever existed. But how long will it last? We seem well on the way to losing it.

A few years ago a popular song said “you don’t know what you got till its gone.” For years I have been complaining about being worn out after fishing a tournament but I managed to fish two to three a month, as well as fishing some other days.

I had neck surgery on May 26 and have been out of the house exactly four times as of July 1 since getting back from the hospital, and I should not have ridden into town one of those days. Spending 22 to 23 hours in a recliner, trying to find something on TV worth watching, has made me wish for aching muscles and tired body after a day fishing.

Some things stand out. After a rain last week I woke up around 3:00 am and looked out my office window where I have had to sleep. There are no curtains or blinds on those windows and I was amazed at the number of “lightening bugs” in my front yard. I have never seen so many fire flies in one small areas. The bushes and trees seem to glow with lights flashing everywhere, much like an over decorated Christmas display.

I think the rain made them more active, probably bringing them out to mate. That is what the flashing light is – a display of light to attract a mate. Seeing them brought back memories of growing up on a farm without air conditioning and spending evenings after dinner outside where it was a little cooler.

Fireflies were common around the house and I spent many nights catching them and putting some in pint Mason jars, after carefully punching holes in the lid with a ice pick. I wanted to keep them as pets but their lights always faded fast after being imprisoned, and they were always dead the next morning.

It was funny to catch toad frogs and put a lightening bug near them. I guess some would find it cruel but frogs eat bugs, and when one slurped in a lightening bug the light would continue to glow off and on inside the frog, lighting its stomach from inside.

I have also spend more time than usual at the computer. Even though five or ten minutes at the time are about all I can sit, I watched a good bit of the weigh-in at the BASSFest on Lake Texoma in Oklahoma last week. This Elite series event is live streamed during the day with cameras in several of the top pros boats, and weigh ins are streamed live. I could lay back in my chair and listen to weigh in without trying to see the angler holding up a bass.

I usually don’t sit at a computer or TV and watch someone else fish, I want to be out there in the boat myself. And I have been lucky enough to spend time in the boat with many of the top pros. The day the field at Texoma was been cut from 108 fishermen that started on Wednesday down to the final 12. Of those 12 I have spent the day in the boat with two of them, and with several more that made the top 50.

Lake Texoma was several feet above full pool due to flooding rains in the area. Several of the fishermen shared pictures of picnic tables, bathrooms and road signs almost completely underwater. Most of the fishermen were flipping or pitching jigs to bushes that were normally on dry ground but now in up to four feet of water.

Those guys are good but they fish the same way all of us do, they just do it better and more efficiently. It is amazing watching one of them flip a jig to a bush three times in the time it would take me to make one pitch to it. And they can make a one ounce jig enter the water by a bush 30 feet away without making a ripple in the water.

Watching them fish that way reminded me of the way I caught a lot of bass back in the 1970s at Clarks Hill. We would fish around coves, casting Texas rigged worms to button bushes and willow trees in the water.

I did that for hours this past April at Clarks Hill in the Sportsman Club tournament and practice and never caught a fish. How those Elite Bass Pros manage to catch five bass per day weighing 15 to 20 pounds each day in a four day tournament amazes me. They make it look easy, but those of us that do it know it is not.

Watching those guys fish is driving me crazy wanting to go fishing. But the doctor said at least six weeks, which means I will miss all three club tournaments this month. The Flint River Club is at Lanier today and I really want to be there trying to hook some of those three to four pound spotted bass like I caught the Sunday before my surgery.

I try to never miss a tournament in a club and have not missed many since starting to fish with the Sportsman Club in 1974. My goal each year is to win the point standings in the club and it is almost impossible to do that if you miss even one tournament during the year. I will be trying to catch up the rest of this year.