Hillbilly Table of Contents in the Truck Bed



Disgraceful and embarrassing?  My wife is s-o-o-o wrong.  This is a living history book of outdoor memories.  So says the One-Eyed Hillbilly.

 My wife and I don’t see eye-to-eye. They say opposites attract and I guess it’s true. She can look at something and see a completely different picture than what’s actually there. Case in point – my pickup bed. She says it is a disgrace and embarrassing. I, on the other hand, see a storybook Table of Contents of the past several years in the Great Outdoors. I’ve determined LaDonna (my wife) just lacks proper perspective.

There’s a little motorcycle back there. Each time I look at it I think of my past ventures in Alaska. You see, that motorcycle is owned by my Alaskan hunting and trapping compadre, Steve Neff. For the past 3 years I have been to Kodiak Island, Alaska taking Steve the last contents from his house in Dent County, Missouri. The first trip in ’08 my wife and I drove a UHaul truck 4,500 miles while seeing the Inside Passage, British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and the Wrangle St. Elias National Park. We camped in a tent for two nights on a ferryboat the size of a cruise ship. We walked the spit and boardwalk at Homer, AK. We camped on the beach on the Pacific Ocean. We pinned a dollar bill on the ceiling at the Salty Dawg Saloon for our kids to find many years from now. We fished the salmon run on Kodiak Island. It was the adventure of a lifetime. LaDonna sees a little motorcycle cluttering up the pickup bed; a total lack to imagination.

There’s a tackle box, a fishin’ vest, three fishin’ poles, and a trolling motor. Each time I see them I remember all the fishin’ trips this spring with Ladonna and the kids. Alex and I got caught out on the lake during a storm and we liked to never got back to the dock because the trolling motor battery went dead and the wind and lightening was treacherous. On one trip LaDonna, Coleman, and Ashley cooked dinner on the grill on the lake dam while Alex and I fished around the lake. On another trip Ashley gave us a lesson (a very funny lesson) on casting an open-faced reel. It was casting pot-luck; you never knew whether the spinner was going to land in the boat, in a tree, on your hat, or in the lake. We looked like a bunch of campers ducking for cover in a hail storm while trying to avoid getting hooked by her spinner! On yet another trip Ashley got her first lesson in driving as she drove the Tahoe down the mile-long driveway back to the road. After that trip I’m not sure if I can afford the insurance of teenagers driving! The trolling motor belonged to my dad and it brings back more fishing memories than I have space to write about. LaDonna just can’t understand the whole nostalgia thing of the truck bed.

There are several 330 conibear traps, a kneeling pad, and a trapper’s trowel. When I see those items I remember trapping a nice otter and beaver at Moose Head Lake. My son Alex and I had dug the beaver dam-building debris away from the spill way on several occasions and it was getting a little old. The beaver seemed to be thumbing his nose at me. My trapping mentor, Kenny Wells, probably would have been disappointed at how long it took to catch that big flat-tail! Anyway, we finally caught him – about a 50 pounder. In the process we had caught a nice otter as well. Those two critters can really take a toll on a lake. LaDonna just can’t appreciate the story in all the stuff sitting there.

Finally, there’s a chainsaw, log chain, shovel, and come-along. Each time I look at those 4 things I remember this past spring’s opening day squirrel hunt with my son Alex and our family friends, Camron and Zach Erway. What started out as a quick squirrel hunting trip turned into an overnight muddy episode stuck in the foot-deep mud of an old ridge road. We finally abandon the vehicles on the ridge after dark in order to get a better perspective the next morning in the light of day. The kids will never forget it. And there was a moral to the story – my old Ford 4x4 pulled out 2 dodge 4x4’s. You make your own conclusions… Again, LaDonna is not buying it.

I guess it really is a good thing opposites attract. If they didn’t I’m not sure she would tolerate the story in the pickup bed. And that’s not even to mention the garage, shed, back yard, and mud room. Ain’t she lucky to be married to a hillbilly with a vivid memory of the Great Outdoors? Maybe she’ll finally see it and thank me by our 50th wedding anniversary. What do you think? So says the One-Eyed Hillbilly.

Greg Stephens is a 35-year veteran & life-time student of the great outdoors. His column appears weekly in print & online publications. You can email him at gregstephens@one-eyedhillbilly.com. For more columns go to www.one-eyedhillbilly.blogspot.com.