Many apologies for having taken such a long time between posts. Thanks to
those of you who have encouraged me to reboot by telling me how much you’ve
enjoyed my observations. My original intent was to sort of take a chronological
approach, but if I can get back into this, I’ll just kind of make random
observations from my 37 years at the Place.
The confluence of two different bits led to this memory, another in my
cultural dissonance with Hancock. Veterans Day (upcoming) makes me think of my
father, of course. Although he liked the outdoors and took us on camping
vacations (although those may have been motivated as much by frugality as a
desire to commune with nature), apparently he had gotten his fill of guns
during the war, to the point that they were not a part of our lives and hunting
never was on the family radar.
I’ve noted elsewhere my disconnect with guns, so you can see why I was
confounded in my first few years at Hancock High School by the annual
disappearance of a significant number of (male) students during deer season.
Apparently it was a not uncommon Lemay (and elsewhere, no doubt) family
tradition to take off a few days or even a week when the season opened. I didn’t
get it, but the administration just kind of shrugged their collective shoulders
and took a “What you gonna do?” attitude. Maybe there was some subtle
discouragement at play of the practice, or a suggestion that weekends would
also work for that foray into manhood, because I don’t remember it being any
kind of issue as the years wore on. When it actually faded away I don’t recall,
but only remember it as an issue for the first maybe 3-5 years. Or maybe I
got use to it.
Perhaps it had something to do with attendance being
more closely tracked and monitored, rather than the early-years procedure of Mrs.
Dougan asking Mr. Messner or Mr. Eichhorst what our attendance was on any
particular day, followed by a pause and the shouting of a (clearly) fictional
number, e.g., “93%” or whatever. Ah, the good old days.
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