The Nance

 

There is not a finer sport for those that like the drift of feathers in the air than a good hot dove shoot in the waning days of hot, hot summertime. It’s a different hunt than a duck hunt in December, or a quail hunt in November. 

Before the infirmities of age, and its accompanying medical machinery, overtook me, I spent the greater part of my late summer dove days in southwestern Oklahoma, the land of the purple sage, twisted mesquite, shimmering cottonwoods, and no water. Desert country, if the state has any. 

The doves love it. Plenty of harvested wheat on the ground to eat, windmill tanks for water, and all those mesquites to nest in and make more doves for Conrad to shoot. 

For many years I bunked in the old Nance Hotel in “downtown” Granite. The Nance was a place right off a Hollywood, western movie set, complete with varnished wooden handrails and columns leading up wooden stairs to a series of small, sparsely furnished, but neat-as-a-pin, rooms; spectacularly clean. Each room with an old-fashioned pitcher and bowl to wash hands and face. Good mattresses. Fresh sheets everyday, sun-dried on a line in the driest air in the state. Tubs, no showers. Too old for that. Twenty bucks a night. 

The labs that retrieved my birds out of that dry cactus country, loved the old Nance because its owner, Jack Nance, a friend of mine, would let them drink out of the toilet in the middle of the night if they got thirsty. Me, too, if I wanted. He told me that onetime. 

Downstairs, not far from that pretty old staircase, was a small room about the size of your kitchen, furnished with an old wooden card table and set of matching six chairs that you would have paid a thousand dollars for, had they been for sale. Around noon every day but Sunday, the oldest men in the community would assemble there and play dominoes. 

You could hear the click of dominoes hitting the table clear upstairs in your room, and after a bit smell the drifting smoke of cigars, cigarettes, and old, briarwood pipes starting about eleven everyday. I was usually back from the morning hunt by then, and liked nothing better than following the sound and smoke downstairs to sit-in and listen to the talk of men that had known one another practically all of their lives. I was the only stranger there. 

Some were war veterans. That would be WWI. Their talk was full of cattle drives, dust storms, no rain, rain measured happily in tenths of an inch; good crop prices, bad crop prices; more droughts, folks going broke, shoot outs, and close calls with rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes everywhere, even stuffed in bales of hay. Just the place for me. I have never met a boring old person. 

I got to know several of those men over the years on a first name basis. I was always careful not to wear Camo when I sat in on the games and kibitzed, as I knew such garb made them nervous. 

That all ended when Jack died, the place sold to a guy that didn’t like dogs in the rooms, went broke, and sold again to a guy that turned the old hotel into a residence. What a fool. The place is bound to be stuffed with ghosts, some of whom I know personally. Ghost dogs, even. 

I couldn’t give the country up though, so good was the hunting in every direction. I set up “camp” in the old Duffer Motel on the north edge of Mangum, Okla. maybe ten miles from Granite, and the dove adventures continued. 

I think they washed the sheets; I’m pretty sure they never did the bedspreads, those you would not want to look at under a black light. The only place I have ever spent a night where the five second rule did not apply. But the rooms had roaring, window box air conditioners, and some kind of showers. If the mattresses sagged... well, by then so did I. The mattresses and I understood one another, being nearly of the same age. 

No dogs allowed, though I snuck them in anyway as they appeared to me to be at least as clean and mannerly as some of folks I saw coming in and out of the rooms. 

The last time I was in that country, I found doves swarming a sunflower patch, killed a limit in a little under fifteen minutes, and then a big rattlesnake as long as my leg and as big around as my forearm, blocking my way to the truck. I skinned him, and put him in the cooler with the dove breasts. It was great, and so much better than sitting at home in front of a TV where all the snakes have microphones in their hands. 

In case you’re wondering, I was put to thinking about former dove days as a result of some recent driving around Lake Keystone’s public hunting areas, many of which are being managed for dove hunting. I’m finding birds, too. Lots of them, some fields better than others, but nearly all with a few birds in them. Properly licensed, you’re welcome to hunt there. Spend the night at home, I suppose. 

I have not found another Nance Hotel, and believe me, I am looking hard all the time. Those old guys with the clicking dominoes, strong tobacco, and hard-bitten stories? They’re gone. History. Which is not to say that they don’t come around sometimes late at night for a little visit.

© 2013 and 2020 Conrad M. Vollertsen