On the opening day of deer hunt, my dad would put our lunch in a saddle bag, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for both of us. That is where I learned an important thing about peanut butter and jelly: they taste better after you smash them. My dad would make them, carefully wrap them, and then smash them.
He watched my response the first time, and then he explained the ritual. They are going to get that way anyway, so why not just get down to it, and besides, he would explain, they taste better that way. The funny part about that was the fact that they are better when smashed.
The ritual was the same for years. Sometimes we were successful, each of us shooting and tagging a dear, but mostly, it was a day of riding horses in the mountains, listening to the occasional distant rumble of a rifle. Whenever I smell sagebrush, I think of those great times with my father. But my dad always reminded me that the work started after you shot a deer. It wasn't that I was lazy, because I am not, but I also had this thing about gutting the animal. I would have to leave the area, because I would start to get light-headed: a sure sign that I would never have been very good in any branch of the medical profession.
People told me that deer meat was great. That statement is a classic. It's right up there with the phrases like "fun run" or one describing the new age grocery product that is a scientific mystery: fat free potato chips. Running is never fun, and fat free potato chips taste like thin wooden shingles passionately tenderized with who knows how many chemicals. People devour masses of them in good conscience, thinking they will magically make them thin by sacrificing themselves on the altar of a fat free diet.
To make a long story short. Deer meat sucks. I tried to soak it in buttermilk. I cooked it with onions and herbs. I even tried spicy sauces as a marinade, but whenever I tried to cook it--regardless of how I did it--dogs began barking near and far, not because they were hungry, but because they sensed something more hideous than Alpo.
Because I refuse to eat deer meat, I find no inclination ever to hunt again, because my best friend, my hunting partner, and my maker of peanut butter sandwiches passed away in February of 1991. Those trips with my father remain only in my memories now.
I kept my guns, because my father gave most of them to me. The rifles and shotguns will eventually go to my son, because he actually wants to hunt. I have no problem with that at all. However, no one in my family will ever get my handguns, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why people have them.
Call me a liberal, but I figure that if it takes a gun to defend myself on a daily basis, I am living in the wrong place. And given my family's temperament, I will not give any of them a handgun.
So at this point, I decided to go to a gun show in our town this past weekend to see if I could sell my Smith & Wesson .357, a pistol that I bought when I was young. At the time, Ann and I decided I needed it before going to the cabin my father owned one weekend. At that time I had ten days to finish a Shakespeare home study course in order to graduate from ISU in 1979, and there had been a number of attacks by a black bear in the area of our family cabin. I bought the gun, and the pistol is still in the original package in pristine condition. Given the present economic situation, I figured some extra money would be nice at this point, but I learned an important lesson.
As soon as I arrived at the gun show, one very nice man saw me and motioned for me to take his parking place, since he was leaving for home. I was about to find out that he was the only nice person at the little "get together" for right wing radicals. I walked in the door.
There were hunting rifles, and I don't have a problem with that. But no one seemed interested in any of that, or at least not many did. They gathered and salivated at this table with automatic weapons. And yes, they were officially semiautomatic, but everyone knows that people there know how to alter them. The vendor spoke loudly, "Why, after the Obama-na-tion, these have tripled in value." He was trying to be funny in his appraisal of the inauguration of America's new president, whose politics he obviously didn't like. I guess he wanted everyone to know that he believed the democratic process was an abomination, because he didn't agree with the majority of voters. Regardless of how unfunny he was, and how stupid he and others were, I really hated the wretch. And I hated his customers too. I had seen enough.
See, I have a difficult time understanding why a person would want an Uzi or an AK-47 or any automatic weapon. It's because I saw three kids shoot a deer once. It fell against a large chunk of brush, and they continued firing their 30-30's. The animal had long since hopped into another dimension, and the carcass had forty or fifty holes in it. Why would a person need an expensive weapon to do what I watched three idiots complete successfully so many years ago with their own deer rifles? And if these "Great White Hunters" think they need more than two rounds to shoot wild game, they should practice before going into the hills. That's why it's a sport. My father only needed one shot. But he was an incredible shot and an exceptional hunter.
Every one--those buying formidable weapons and those resenting the fact they are accessible--knows why people want them. They are not for hunting. Once I saw this couple in a store, the husband admiring an expensive assault rifle with a bayonet. "It's shaped like this so the blade entry wound does not heal."
The salesmen then told the customer, dressed in tatters like his wife, about the price tag of the weapon: almost $2000, and that was almost 20 years ago.
So in this time of economic difficulty when I figure I could get $600 or even more for a pistol, which I have rarely used, I decided that I will not place it into the hands of those people I met at that show. Not only are they crazy, but their parents were never married.
In the town where I grew up, there is a word, used immediately after "crazy," that locals once used to describe Utah fishermen and hunters who invaded our reservoirs, fields and mountains every year. They still do, but now because of the large number of people living in Utah, many new residents of my hometown are Utahans, who chose to live there permanently to get away from newcomers in the state. Or maybe they just wanted to get away from large cities. Regardless of their reasoning, many of those "crazies" now live there.
The people I saw at the gun show, who deserve being called both of the words I mentioned, are kind of like a particular Utah fisherman, who reportedly went into a highway rest stop for a bathroom break. He leaned over to pick something up, and his glasses fell into one of those toilets that once existed. It was the kind that still exists in most parks, the chemical kind which doesn't need flushing. This fisherman could see the glasses floating in the horrific dark waters below, so he went back to his truck to retrieve his fishing pole.
While dangling hook and line into the abyss, another motorist accidentally opened the stall and saw him with his fishing pole trying to retrieve the glasses. The embarrassed fisherman reportedly had an interesting comment. He looked at the puzzled bystander. "I've been here all day without a single tug on my line."
The traveler shut the door of the stall and returned to his car, probably to speed away in horror.
Like I said, I refuse to consider selling a pistol to any of the fine people I met that day at the gun show, all clamoring to arm themselves against imaginary adversaries in order to keep safe. I hope someone will protect the rest of us from these people I met at the gun show, young and old and all buying automatic weapons and boxes of ammunition instead of food and clothing and necessities for their families.
No terrorist in their right mind would want to meet people like this.
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