Friends,
As most of you know, I scribbled for gun/hunting/handloading magazines for about twenty-five years. I retired from that about ten years ago, but I've continued to write for myself and for a few friends ... Personal Writings, written simply to get wonderful experiences and thoughts down on paper.
Every Christmas I share one of these writings with my friends on the 24HCF.
The following story is totally true; Hank was my grandfather and I loved him dearly.
I sincerely hope you enjoy.
God Bless and MERRY CHRISTMAS,
Steve
PS. RicBin , if you think this is worthy, you have my permission to post it on the "magazine article" section of the 24HCF. Indeed, this story meshes beautifully with Shootout.
No charge, of course. This is a present to the 24 Hour Campfire. ST
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Grandpa Hank
My Grandpa Hank was born in Arkansas. I know nothing about his younger life, except that he hunted lots and didn�t have much schooling. I have several photos of his early years; the usual scene is three quite rotund women and a skinny, youthful Hank and a shanty log cabin in the background.
I hate it when folks leave ancient photos with no identification of where it was, who is in the photos, or even the year.
Hank served in World War I as both a medic and ambulance driver. Supposedly, WWI was a gentleman�s war, so at regular intervals, the armies would call a cease-fire. When everyone stopped shooting, the ambulances from both sides would dash out on the battlefield to pick up the wounded and the dead. Hank was one of those brave young medical men who daily risked their lives to save their comrades.
The problem was that the Germans had the nasty habit of waiting until an �enemy� ambulance was completely loaded. Then, they would cut the covered truck apart with Maxim machineguns. Hank told me that that didn�t sit too well with him, so he and his buddy Lloyd stole a pair of Lewis machineguns from the British Flying Service.
The next time Hank and Lloyd went onto the killing field, they got fired on. The firefight was only a temporary inconvenience, one that the two country boys stopped rather quickly. Literally, the dreaded Huns were Berlin city-boys and they were no match for the two hillbillies who knew what guns were about.
The two of them marked their wagon with a big black X, so that the Germans would know it was Hank and Lloyd. After a few skirmishes they were left totally alone. Strange about that.
Several months later, both Hank and Lloyd were in a low valley, saving American soldier�s lives, when they both got mustard gassed. Lloyd died in a single gasp, but Hank managed to load the ambulance full of Doughboys and motor back to safety.
Hank suffered horribly from the mustard gas and he had lung and throat problems for the rest of his life. The gassing was the end of Hank�s soldiering, so he was sent to an Allied hospital to recover.
I believe the military hospital was somewhere near Paris, France. I still have some of the papers from Hank�s service, including a map of Paris. The map clearly shows those places where obedient soldiers go and which were off-limits. Hank spent the nights in the hospital, while most of his daytime hours devoted to enjoying the local towns and villages.
I suspect Hank made it back Stateside in 1919 or so. During the time between then and the early-1939s, when he met my Grandma Vista, Hank held a number of jobs. He and I never talked about that, but he mentioned that, every chance he got, he and his hounds would head for the deep wilderness of the Sawtooth, Sapphire or Rocky Mountains in Montana.
Mountain life was great for his lungs and it was excellent hunting. Besides that, after experiencing the horror and bloody chaos that men call war, Hank was at peace in the mountains.
One funny story is that Grandpa Hank always wanted a Rocky Mountain goat. They lived in abundance in the mountains, so Hank left his hounds home on one hunt and concentrated on walking down a good billy. One morning was foggy and, as he approached a ridge top, a big billy goat suddenly appeared and looked down upon him.
The range was about 100 yards, so Hank got a rest, carefully aimed his .30 Remington at the goat�s chest cavity and fired. The goat was obviously hit and the head disappeared.
Hank climbed a couple of steps up the talus slope and the billy goat�s head reappeared. So, Hank took a rest, carefully aimed and fired the .30 Remington bullet into the goat�s neck. The head disappeared.
Hank was still resting his rifle over a rock when the head bobbed once again over the ridge top. Hank fired again and the head went down.
One more time, the goat head appeared on the horizon. By this time, Hank was convinced that this blasted goat was bulletproof, so he placed the rifle�s last bullet in the goat�s face. And it went down � not to appear again.
Hank reloaded his Remington Model 8 and slammed a round in the chamber. When he topped the ridge, he found an amazing sight. Hank looked over the ridge and saw FIVE dead absolutely huge Rocky Mountain billy goats.
Apparently, a herd of billies were over the ridge and they decided to peek at Hank, one at a time. Hank thought that he was simply repeatedly shooting the same goat.
That was Hank�s first and last mountain goat hunt. He figured that five goats, five absolutely trophy-quality goats, were enough for any man�s lifetime. Being a country boy, he backpacked the meat from all five of the goats out of the hills and back to his cabin. In later years, Hank recounted to me that eating the meat of all five of those stinking goats was enough goat meat for any man�s lifetime, as well.
Having eaten Rocky Mountain goat a time or ten, I agree with Hank�s judgment. Domestic goat is delicious, mountain goats � let�s just say that it must be an acquired taste.
I have no idea how Hank and my Grandma Vista met. I suppose it was near Hamilton or Corvallis and it must have been in the early-1930s. The details are lost to history, but the fact remains that the bachelor-man, the war hero, the hunter, the quiet man of the wilderness � Hank, somehow met, courted and married my widowed grandmother.
Henry Aishe was a bachelor of about forty years of age who ended up with a wife and a brood of three children. Literally, my Grandma and my mom�s siblings were saved from the ravages of the worst Depression America has ever known.
I�ve marveled at Grandpa Hank�s love and compassion. What manner of man, what sort of bachelor man, falls in love with and marries a widow lady who has three young children, smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression?
For sure, it is only the finest, most wonderful type of man � and you can be assured of that. You can probably tell by now that I love Grandpa Hank and admire every facet of his being. I speak of Hank in the present tense because he will never be dead to me.
Hank lives on in my mind.
After they were married, Hank and Vista moved to a little farm west of Woodside and Corvallis. For those familiar with the area, it was in the canyon, up Dutch Hill Road. The area is literally on the east slope of the rugged and majestic Sawtooth Mountains, at the very edge the Lochsa Selway Wilderness.
I can see why Hank loved it there. And to Vista, her new little home in the wilderness must have been pure Heaven. She had a peaceful, quiet, loving simple-believing Christian husband and a wonderful father for her three children. Life was good and they could fare for themselves.
Often, the family would be in need of a deer or an elk (no mountain goats, please). It was the Depression; hunger and need took precedence over the legalities of proper game tags. Grandma would walk Hank down to the edge of the property, kiss him and watch her good man as he walked up Dutch Hill Road and disappeared into the trees.
Then, she would make sure the butchering gear was ready. Sometimes it took ten minutes and occasionally it took a half-hour, but Vista always knew when a buck was down. When she heard the report of Hank�s .30 Remington, she opened the outbuilding and strung the hanging rope.
And directly, Hank would be back with another few week�s meat.
Hank did some farming at that time, but earlier in his life he'd done a decent amount of market hunting and, well, I guess we�d call it poaching. Even in his early married life with Vista, he ran hounds, killing cougars and wolves and grizzly bears.
The lions and bears are really great meat, as well, so I have little doubt that the Aishe family of five ate well. Hank also liked rattlesnake meat, a taste I happen to share with him. He told me that the west side was lousy with rattlers and he dined regularly on them � a taste my grandma never acquired.
At some time before World War II, Gram and Hank bought a gorgeous small farm a couple of miles east of Corvallis, Montana. If you know the area, you go east on Quast Road, turn south on Nordheim Lane, make the right turn and the farm is halfway down the lane.
The couple ran maybe twenty head of dairy cows, mostly Holsteins and jerseys, and milked them twice daily. Grandma also had a henhouse full of fifty or more chickens; for both Sunday dinners and eggs. During the war, Hank raised some pigs and they had an orchard of gravenstein apple trees.
Hank had about a half-section of alfalfa, which is a perennial, and another half-section that he planted either in wheat or barley. The southern half-section tapered down into the Big Ditch. Hank owned �three feet� of the Big Ditch and I helped him irrigate and work the fields for many summers.
I also fetched the cows every morning and brought them to be milked; then, we�d milk them and I�d take the cows back to their pasture. Every afternoon, it would be more of the same; get the cows, milk them and drive the cows back to their pasture.
Oh yeah, and I mucked the cow crap and urine out the barn both morning and night. I also milked half of the cows, washed the milking machines and bottled the raw milk. It was work, good hard, sweaty, dirty work and I learned the satisfaction that comes from a job well done.
If you think you might enjoy reading more about the gopher-control work, you might enjoy my short story, Shootout. It�s a story about two farm kids and two critters, enjoying life on the farm.
Just simple stuff, like laying on their backs under that impossibly blue Montana sky; looking for castles and dragons and stallions in the clouds. And snaring gophers, of course.
I spent every summer back at Gram and Hank�s from the time I was nine until I was fifteen. Actually, it was seven years in total and I can honestly say that my grandparents and I always shared love. There was never an unkind word, never a bad moment, we simply loved and respected each other.
All good things eventually come to an end, and so it was with Gram and Hank.
In the summer of 1965, Karen and I drove our brand-new Volkswagen from our home in Milwaukie to my grandparent�s dairy farm. Both of my grandparents were elderly by that time and they were not able to attend our wedding in 1964. Anyway, I drove back to Montana just so Karen could see the farm of my youth. I also wanted Gram and Hank to meet my wonderful new bride.
When we arrived, it was quite obvious that my grandparents were not really able to take care of themselves. Grandma Vista was seriously headed for dementia. Hank was a little better, but his arthritis made daily living an exercise in pain. Sad as it was, they simply could not live on the farm any more.
Karen and I called my Mom and Dad and explained the situation. My parents talked to the other children and the decision was made to sell the farm and move Gram and Hank to Milwaukie.
We returned with my parents a month later and emptied the house so the new owners could move in. The treasures from the farm came home with us in two overloaded automobiles and the rest was burned.
I was in charge of the burn pile and I will never forget the look on Hank�s face. He was so sad as he watched load after load of the artifacts of his life being thrown into the fire. And he watched as his life turned into smoke that climbed straight up and disappeared into the impossibly blue Montana sky.
It was sad. It was necessary.
Both Gram and Hank made it to my parent�s home and they lived there for a while. Both died within a year or so.
On September 11, 1966, my friend, Dave and I, left several hours before dawn for a half-day hunt for blacktail deer. It was the very first year for the High Cascade Hunt, so we thought we�d just bump around and see if we could get a buck or two.
As luck would have it, the snow was falling lightly when we reached Skyline Road and it was several inches deep on Pinhead Butte. It was a beautiful scene, made immeasurably more attractive when I bumped into a huge, heavy-antlered 3X3 blacktail buck.
I was shooting a Mannlicher-Sch�enauer carbine in 7X57 Mauser and carefully placed a 140-grain Barnes between the buck�s nostrils. He fell, slid in the snow and bled out perfectly.
Then, Dave and I gutted, skinned and bagged the huge old fighter. Let me tell you, getting a 200-pound buck in the back seat of a VW Bug is no small task; it was then that we decided that one deer was enough for the day.
When we arrived home that noon, we found out that Hank had gotten up at some time in the pre-dawn and he�d fallen in the entry hall of my parent�s home. As he fell, he hit his head on a piece of petrified wood that was used as a doorstop.
Whether Hank died and fell or fell, hit his head and died � well, that was never determined.
The point is that my old hunting mentor, the man I admired so much, the man who had shaped my Christian spirituality and hard work ethic, was dead. He was so strong, so vital and his body had withered to a wisp of it�s former self. There is a season for all things and it was Hank�s turn to meet Our Lord.
I have no doubt that the meeting was a cordial one. Hank, that good and faithful servant was returning Home.
Hunters, good hunters, are usually superstitious and I am no exception. After all, when we�re stalking around in the bush, there is so much luck involved. Literally, catching a game animal unawares is more luck than skill.
Truly, I�ve always thought that Hank, who had been dead by less than an hour at the time, used a good bit of providential pull to guide that gorgeous blacktail buck into my rifle sights.
I�ve thought about that double event hundreds of times in the last forty-five years and I�ve always come up with the same conclusion: Hank gave that beautiful buck to me on that snowy, cold morning. Absolutely.
Of all his accomplishments, I believe the role that Hank enjoyed most was simply that of being a �Dad.� He was a loving and compassionate father to my widowed grandmother�s children. In a very real way, Hank was a Dad to me, as well.
Hank naturally understood that the most important things in life are love, selfless giving and family. This world would be an enormously better place if we all saw life with such clarity.
Hank truly loved me like the son he never had and he was never a shy one to give me a big hug, a smack on the top of the head and whisper, �I love you, son.�
To my eternal discredit, I never told Hank how much I loved him, how much I cared.
Sadly, amongst young, quiet, strong men, there are some things that are often left unsaid. Talking about love is one of the things that is commonly avoided. I guess we�d rather show our love by our actions and deeds, rather than by talking about it.
As I grow older and (hopefully) wiser, I feel more and more compelled to let the folks around me know how very much I love them. Somehow, that seems so natural now.
I�m sure that the �Young Steve� would see that change in behavior as a weakness. The �Old Steve� prefers to think of it as reaching a more mature state of life. Whether it�s weakness or maturity, I know for a fact that Grandpa Hank approves and that makes all the difference to me.
In thinking about this, I�ve come to the conclusion that Grandpa Hank�s lessons will last throughout my entire lifetime. I truly believe that as I grow older, I�m still learning from him.
I often think of Hank, watching from Heaven and smiling at all the fine children he raised. Hank was not a proud man, but I have no doubt that he is incredibly proud of us, his kids.
In truth, the richest, most privileged man in the world could leave behind no finer legacy.
by Steve
