Haven't had whiskey for a long long time. Sitting in my little house, rural Sweden, snowy winter. Listening to the songs I loved back then. Sipping irish gold. The heartache is like an avalanche. Blessings to all lovers of beauty and truth. "We have a war to fight".
When I was around the age of 12 I went to summer camp in the Uwhrarrie. We camped in Hogans with wooden floors, but the bath houses were cinder block. One morning while walking the path to the bath house I was shocked into paralysis by a snake so big I couldn't even call out. It seemed like time stood still and passed before my eyes all at once. The snake was stretched across the path but began to rattle and coil up. I managed to take a couple of steps back and finally yelled out SNAKE!!!!.
Well here they all came. My camp counselor and several others kept everyone back all the while flipping out at the size of it. One came up with a boulder and bashed it a few times. They gathered it up and took it to the main lodge. A few days later I was preparing to go home and was called to go to the lodge where my counselor told me he had something for me to remember, as he called it, "my near death experience." From a freezer he produced the butchered snake, dressed to grill. "That wasn't for me" he said. Neither was the head, which he produced in a small box, mouth open and inch long fangs out.
"This is for you, Chipmunk." Hey, everybody had a nickname in camp and I had my Mom's chubby cheeks so that was a given.
He had another small box and put it in my hand and told me that this was the largest rattlesnake that had ever been seen or killed in the area as far as anyone around there knew.
This last year I realized that I had lost or misplaced a container containing some of my most personally valuable treasures including that box, and I have fretted over it as I continued to look for it. I let doubt creep in and it really got to me if I let it. I'm not so clingy to most things but I do have some treasures and this is at the top of the list.
Well, to make a long story short, yesterday I struck childhood gold.
Gosh I wish somehow that snake could have been left to live another day...
