sl.blog

In less than a month’s time, Notre Dame laid waste to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and have tried to schedule the Marines for next year. That soft November, complete with a helping of Carolina Tar Heels thrown in for good measure, could prove to be like the feast of the fattening bird that will lose his neck come Thanksgiving. In short, I’m fearful of how these boys will withstand the Trojans of California.

I spent the Army game testing my own manhood. Not really. I inhaled beer (a doobie-free weekend) and sipped whiskey while my brother and a handful of his brothers-in-law hunted deer in Michigan. My only sights and sounds of the ND-Army game were a late first half scoring drive that would affectively put the game out of reach and beyond worry in my mind. So while the men squatted with rifles in pup tents and atop various tree stands, I stoked the fire, smoked cheap cigars, and sampled bear meat (it’s like summer sausage with bullets).

These hunters, these brothers mad for the blood of deer, have made a history of such journeys. Forty years ago, two brothers who begot sons and even more daughters who got husbands, turned their attention to thinning out herds in the north. I’d heard many tales of these campfire adventures, but this was the first of which I partook. An opportunity, thought I, for another fish-out-of-water perspective. But I was granted neither pistol nor shotgun. My lone contribution may have been keeping several of the sons awake with my monster-like snoring on Saturday morning. I’m just glad they didn’t sleep with firearms.

A buck and a doe hung bleeding in the barn with care by the time of our arrival. But no more were had thereafter. At least not by our party. My brother shot five or six times at one fleeing fawn, but he ain’t never got no deer. I was satiated by the fire, tickled by the camaraderie of friends and family, and not yet troubled by a Trojan horse running circles around a chubby leprechaun, realizing too late that he’s untested in battle.

* I figure my pompous Roman calendar reference could use a footnote. We all know (or should) Shakespeare’s warning about the Ides of March. The ides is the 15^th day of March, May, July, or October, but it’s the 13^th day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar. Google it, bitches.