Tornadoes, Turkeys, Ghosts?

 

I swear, weather changes move me in the middle of the night just the way they do critters in the woods. My company, I fear, is no longer suitable for mixed gatherings. Pam has as much said so.

She is on me all the time to cut my hair, shave (I hate it), and to change my clothes (underwear included) at least once every five days. It’s not fun. My own dogs bark at me whenever I do any of those things.

Incredibly, I received a round of applause one day this past week after having delivered a little talk on women’s use of guns for protection to a garden party gathering of the same. I mentioned the applause to Pam later in way of justifying my rough and rowdy ways not being an interference in my delivery of one liners, one of which was, “When seconds count, the police will be there in minutes,” which seemed to strike a chord.

She said it had nothing to do with clever speech, but that all women, the world ‘round, knew when a man had made a special attempt at cleaning up his personal appearance, and liked the smell of the aftershave. It was so rare, she said, that it was worth a round of applause. And so it goes around here. At this writing, I have not had a bath or shaved in three days. Pam has not spoken to me yet, today, but then the dogs did not bark at me when I stepped outside at daylight, either.

Weather moves me to a window at midnight as quickly as anything I know, especially during turkey season. Oklahoma’s spring turkey season starts April 16 and runs through May 16. If you’re interested in those dates, and I am, then you’re also likely to be interested in the weather usually associated with them. Storms, storms, and more storms, which then translates into mud, mud, and more muddy roads. Storms and muddy roads, two of the most important components to any spring turkey season in this country.

The word “storms” doesn’t quite catch it in this country. When we say “storms” in this country in April and May, we really mean “tornadoes.” They haven’t kept me away from a turkey hunt yet. I mean, either muddy roads or tornadoes.

I do not have four-wheel drive. What I do have is the time to watch the long range forecasts on TV, and then drive to my turkey hunting spots ahead of time on dry roads, set up camp, and then hunt until the roads dry out if the rain comes. I carry plenty of water, canned goods, an aluminum folding chair, wooden matches for the campfire, extra bullets for the boogeyman, and a worry-free heart. If I smoked, I would carry cigars or pipe tobacco for the evenings but I do not.

Not everybody can do that, but I’m retired, and escaped weekend hunting several years ago, now.

That last lets you know that most of my hunting is done alone. Many of my hunting (and fishing) buddies still make the sad Sunday trip home to show up for the Man’s benefit on Monday. I did it for years. But, we were talking about midnight storms.

“I woke last night to the sound of thunder. How far off, I sat and wondered. I started humming a tune from 1962. Ain’t it funny how the night moves…”

That line from the old Bob Seger song haunts me almost every night, but never more than during the spring storm season. This country is stitched together by the golden lightning of midnight storms in April and May. If you’re nearly half critter, such will pull you out of bed and to the window almost every time it happens. What is so glorious as a midnight storm in April or May, is what the poet should’ve asked. I like to watch ‘em boom and flash by, and I have since a kid.

We had a storm roll over us about midnight out here on Baker’s Branch last night, which is why I was standing in the dark looking out into the dark at that time. That quick, the storm pulled me out of the house into another time and another place, say sometime in the mid-1970’s out around Vici (say, “Vy-sy”) in northwestern Oklahoma with John Glass, Dwain Bland, and Dwain’s son-in-law Tom Preston.

We were camped in a blooming locust grove in rolling, short grass prairie country. Hunting in pairs that morning, we had had some unfruitful “go-rounds” with the turkeys that left no meat hanging on the pole, but which had been fun anyway. That afternoon after lunch, we decided to split up, hunt individually, and try to either kill a bird or locate others for future dirty tricks. A good turkey hunt is all about men playing cowboys and Indians like little boys.

The country around Vici is good country to split-up in: Long, rolling, green grass hills laced with turkey-loaded cottonwood draws, patches of shinnery oak, and red clay erosion cuts. You are quick to sense that you can stay split-up just as long as you want to out there, and don’t have to come back unless you really want to. It’s country that makes a lone man’s heart feel big and strong.

An hour out of camp, a huge spring storm like a purple bruise with yellow streaks in it began to loom on the horizon to the west. It caught all four of us separated and well away from the dry safety of camp. Any one of us, experienced though we were, would have been lying to you if we had said getting caught out like that didn’t worry us at least a little. Remember, above all else, in the springtime, this is tornado country.

That night around the campfire, T-bones nibbled clean, the separate stories began to roll out. “Any port in a storm,” the sailors say, and certainly we were adrift an ocean of grass when this one rolled over us. John found a nice dry pumper’s tin shack complete with a door he closed behind him when the storm hit. Never felt a drop. He laughed when someone said, “Lucky dog,” because he knew it was true.

Dwain found a downed, hollowed-out, cottonwood trunk big enough for him to crawl into after he had carefully checked it for snakes. He was only a little damp, and certainly none the worse for wear as it’s well known you can’t hurt steel.

Tom found refuge under a cut, red bank in a dry creek bed which completely sheltered him except for his left leg which got wet right up to his wallet, and then stopped. Not so bad at all.

Conrad got caught a good quarter-mile from any cover at all, the last lightning bolt striking the ground so close he could smell a burnt ozone smell in the air, causing him to jump square into the middle of a thorny, sand plum thicket about 30 inches high. He gave his shotgun, a lightning rod, really, a little shove farther away from his body into the middle of the thicket, and hoped the storm gods didn’t think they were related or even friends. There he hunkered on his heels for half an hour like… well, like a wet turkey in a shower until the storm boomed on to the east.

He followed a rainbow all the way back to camp, and found John making coffee at the end of it.

Two of the people in that story that came back to me last night as I stared out into the stormy darkness, are hunting on the other side of The River, now. Presumably they are not wet, nor too warm, either. It always amazes me the numbers of people that don’t believe in ghosts. They gather ‘round me every turkey season.

© 2010 Conrad M. Vollertsen