Ghosts: They Circle Around Me When I'm Surrounded by Pictures and Hunting Gear

 

WHAT TOOD HATH WROUGHT — Brian Loveland of Sand Springs used to catch and sell for fifty cents apiece, bullfrogs. He has since worked his way up to Lake Keystone catfish which are not for sale. 

Last week I was an idiot. Maybe. I told you that. Well, if you read the column.

Thanks for that kindness, and the time spent. I never take it for granted.

This week, I am an idiot one year older, with a perpetual idiot’s smile. Happy New Year.

Because I am an idiot, I told you once that I believe in ghosts. That hasn’t changed. They come and circle ‘round me in this room where I am surrounded by old family pictures, old hunting and fishing gear, and this keyboard in front of me.

They sneak up on me. The ghosts, I mean. Dickens talked about the “ghosts of Christmas past.” Really. Was he serious? What kind of ghosts was he talking about? The same kind as me, I think.

They’re real, believe me. Never doubt it, and whereas they may come to me at any time, even while driving down the highway, anytime during the year, they make the most noise right here in this room at the end of a year.

Hey, I hear a rustling in here right now, somewhere behind me. Someone has come into the room. Let me turn around and look.

Well, well, well. Looky here, looky here. It’s Tood Harlo. Tood, come over here. I want to introduce you to some folks.

Folks, Tood became a friend of mine by way of Brian Loveland, a man, not yet a ghost, you have met many times in this space. Tood, a full blood Osage Indian, lived down a dusty road about a mile from the Loveland place tucked away back in the woods ‘bout five miles east of Rock School north of Sand Springs.

Folks, Tood, here, took a liking to the boy Brian when he was seven or eight, and used to give him fifty cents apiece for bullfrogs, delivered alive, so that you, Tood, could stock them into your pond, have I got that right? Well, yes, I thought so.

Didn’t you used to drink your morning coffee out of a saucer, and use a wooden Dixie Cup spoon to ladle snuff onto your lower lip? Of course you did. Look folks, that wooden spoon is still right there in his breast pocket. Smell the Copenhagen?

Well, no, Tood, folks don’t know what a wooden spoon looks like today, let alone what is a Dixie Cup. It’s a different time, Tood and... well, wait a minute. Here comes someone else into the room. Move over a little, Tood.

Well, good gravy, it’s David Campbell’s dad, Harold, and Harold’s brother-in-law, Fred. Harold, Fred, step up here. I want to introduce you to some folks. Tood, move over this way a little bit. Jeeminy Christmas, I could use a little more room in here.

Harold, didn’t you and Fred used to kill boredom out in western Kansas, working the oil patch there, by lassoing prairie dogs? My gosh, look at you laughing.

Well, yes, your boy, David, told me about it. He’s still laughing, too. David was watching, remember, and don’t ever forget, ever, ever, that little boys remember ‘til the day they die the stuff old men in their lives did, and forgot.

Well, yeah, the way he told me you noosed ‘em was you had a couple loose fishing rods knockin’ around in the back of your truck ‘case you came up on a pond to fish out yonder, and when you didn’t, you made a loop out of the monofilament, placed the loop over the opening to the prairie dog hole, stepped back, and waited for a “bite.” Is that about it?

When the bite came, you jerked the noose, and the fight was on. And, Man! Can those prairie dogs pull drag! And jump! And who gets to “unhook” ‘em?

Oh, my gosh. Look who’s coming in now. You know Leon Mears, right? Outa’ Mannford? The guy that knows every rock in Lake Keystone (a story yet untold) and finds long lost bottles with notes in them? Well he’s trying to get in here, and it appears there’s not room for him, yet. Too many others. He ‘n Tommy Childers got too many stories still workin’, anyway.

Me, too, I hope. In the meantime, I’m still alive, and want to thank all of you that continue to read my scribbles, and wish you the same Happy New Year that I am looking forward to.

The memories, and stories, don’t exist without you, and those (ask them) standing around me right now. All the time.

© 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen


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