Thursday May 5th, 2022 "That's BS! You Never Did That!"

    

      I enjoy reading Word Wednesday’s blog post. And May 4th’s post was again, exceptional for some reason I can’t put my finger on, owing perhaps to the Word-Wednesday feature: Obscure Emotions introduced thusly, that made me smile with every emotional word definition: “Having lived through April 2022, on the tail end of a pandemic, Wannaskans find themselves searching for the right word to describe the novel emotional states that come with ill winds and turbulent times.”

      I could well imagine all those Wannaskans, aside from myself, hurriedly scribbling on their scraps of paper (or napkins at the Fickle Pickle), ‘the right word to describe [their] novel emotional states’ after reading this joyous find in of all places, the ridiculous on-line Wannaskan Almanac. Ooyah.

    I chose “exulansis: /ek-s(y)ü-LAN-səs/ n., the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it,”  because it hit on a subject for me growing up, aside from writing, the earliest of which was talking about going ‘Uphome’ to Wannaska during the summer as a 14-year old youth, and shooting several different caliber firearms.

    The act of shooting, as in recreation, was not of their worlds (except in maybe a future drive-by opportunity). Guns during the then-early 1960s; albeit a growing concern in Chicago and New York City, were still just the imaginary fodder of TV Westerns and 1920-era gangster shootouts with the FBI, for kids in the midwest. Des Moines kids, at least the ones I grew up with until high school, were a dull bunch who just brought on kuebiko: n., a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence; (not to say I didn’t participate occasionally just to fit in.)

    As a gunsmith, my uncle Raymond Palm had a virtual armory when I was growing up. This included guns he owned outright, those guns he had repaired for customers and ‘had to test fire;’ or other guns he had in his possession that he was contemplating purchasing. So never fail, on every road trip out of Roseau, the Palms and/or Davidsons had guns in the car, those being pistols and rifles mostly, all year around.

 

    Ground squirrels along roadsides; upright woodchucks, waddling skunks, and hapless field rocks up to and including 400+ yards off were not safe. Woe be a unsuspecting fox along a field edge or crow high upon a branch — and, as I too regretfully remember, vividly, a redtail hawk, for I had no say in such matters. 

 

   In deer season (and sometimes those gray times between) a few ungulates fell at ridiculous distances; night or day, and were always processed and never wasted by semi-expert knife wielding passengers, who were dropped off and picked up in due time, the very next opportunity. No waiting.

     In addition were also a few select or happenchance moose, where in one long ago-told story, the "Colonel Bogey March” theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx96NLBAahk in the 1957 movie, “The Bridge Over The River Kwai,” figured an important, yet humorous element. As, in part as the children at home were hustled off to the show hall, presumably in Roseau, and the individuals back at home, busily participating in the clandestine operation, were said to have whistled the then-famous tune as they went about their gristly business of butchering, transporting, and packaging the large cow-sized animal away from deploring eyes of children, and neighbors alike. Subsequent ‘whistlings’ from that point on, brought knowing smiles and laughter.
 

    My friends just wouldn’t believe me, so I gave up.