The latest article on visiting old friends reminds me of a close friend that I I had in high school and haven’t seen since we graduated. I don’t know where he is or even if he is still living. I look back and see him as a high school kid. I’ll give you his real name in case anyone is an expert at finding people.
From grade school, one of my passions was hunting rabbits in the fall. I used my dad’s single shot 12 gauge shotgun. It was lightweight and had no frills. Later I received a three shot bolt action 16 gauge for Christmas, but it was heavy and not nearly as much fun. My dad taught me never to point a gun at anything or anyone, unless you intended to shoot, even when we thought the gun was not loaded. If we got a rabbit we always ate it. There is a surprising amount of meat on a rabbit. Of course you can always carry a foot for good luck. We owned two woodlots and there were several woods adjacent to ours.
In those days there were always brush piles from cutting firewood. Also the railroad track was a good spot to hunt. My high school friend owned a beautiful trained beagle and lived adjacent to the wildest country I have ever seen. Much of it you couldn’t walk through. Seems like every time we went hunting we always were successful.
If you ever hunted with a Beagle it is the most fun. You simply wait till you hear the Beagle start to brey and you know it has spotted a rabbit. You would hear it going through the woods. The funniest thing the rabbit would eventually come back past where you were. Something about rabbits are curious, and I’ve heard deer are also. I’ve never hunted deer and can’t believe people would actually shoot them.
We also had some good social times even though we never went anywhere. Larry and his mother were the only two people in a large two-story house. I would always stay for a visit before leaving and his mother would always have something for us to snack. Their drink of choice was Morgan David wine. Probably the cheapest money could buy, three dollars a gallon. It was the first time I was exposed to alcohol. I particularly remember one time that I was there just before Christmas.
We must have hunted for years after high school because I took my girlfriend, now my wife, hunting with us, an experience witch she still remembers. We must have had a lousy day hunting, so we let her shoot my 12 gauge shotgun. I guess you can say it made an impression on her.
The boy’s name was Larry Jack, and I don’t recall his mother’s name. I had heard he moved to Minnesota but I don’t know who told me. One of our classmates tried to contact him all these years when we had class reunions, but never found him. There is a gentleman by the same name at Pleasant Lake, Indiana, that does auto and tractor repair. I have spoken to him and he is not the lad I knew in high school.
I still wonder what happened to Larry. At my age I would not be able to travel to see him but it would be nice to speak to him.
—James Neuhouser
