My old man was a factory worker and a part time farmer. He had fifty acres he had inherited from his grandfather. Between the job and the farm, mom didn’t have to work, and we had a good life. He raised three kids, and if we didn’t always get what we wanted, we always got what we needed. He taught us early if we wanted something, go out and earn it rather than waiting for someone to give it to you. A lesson I valued more the older I got.
We were all grown, Jimmy was seventeen, when my mom got killed when a train derailed at a crossing. Mom wasn’t even the first in line, the coal car rolled over four vehicles waiting to cross the tracks.
It nearly killed my dad. They had married when she was sixteen and her parents had to sign for her. He often bragged that his best accomplishment was not spending a night apart. Not once. Thirty three years spent in the same bed with the woman he loved. He almost died from grief.
He moped around for almost a year. Jimmy graduated and had joined the Navy. He read that people alone often led fuller lives if they had something to take care of, and he bought a bluetick hound pup from a friend of his.
Dad took to the pup right away. He got into coon hunting, big time. He took some of the insurance money and built a few kennels and started breeding coonhounds. He learned how to train and run them. He spent many weekend nights perfecting his techniques.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when he called and asked me to help him get a computer. By then I had graduated and had a decent job. I had a friend in IT build him a nice package, took it home, hooked everything up, gave him basic lessons and showed him how to use email. When I left that afternoon, he was pecking away with two fingers, having a ball.
Following his belief that if you were going to do something, do it the best you can, he signed up at the community college and took a course.
Soon he had his own website. His reputation was solidified when two of his dogs were named Grand Champions in different classes the same year.
I was shocked when I found out how valuable those dogs were, and how much money he was making. He retired from his factory job, farmed a little, and concentrated on raising his champions.
To get to Grand Champion, you start out local, go to district, then state, then region, then national. To qualify for all this you through the trials. Dad was doing fine until he tripped one night during a trial, and broke his leg in two places. It healed, but couldn’t stand up to an all night hunt or the stress of competition.
That’s where Jimmy and I came in. He would train the dogs and we would handle them at trials. In the spring and summer, when the preliminary trials were held, Jimmy would handle one weekend, and two weeks later I took a turn. At the national events, Jimmy and I would both attend, and take turns handling the dogs. A lot of bullshit, dog trading, and drinking took place, but we left that to the old man.
Sarah found out and thought the whole thing was hilarious, and insisted on coming. One time cured her. It was all about dogs, dogs, and anything related to dogs. There was no nightlife because it was spent in the woods with the dogs. The women there usually looked like the men, jeans and ball caps. She was almost screaming in boredom in two days. She almost screwed one of the judges[she said he looked the cleanest, just to have something to do]. When we got home, she kissed me, told me never again, and went out to do her own version of hunting. I pity the one she caught.
…………………….
“You still do that shit?”
“Yes, Sarah, but we’re training one of my sisters’ boys, so I should be able to stop in a year or so. Dad has three Grand Champion bitches that he breeds, and one Champion male that covers twenty five bitches a year. Dad is making more money than I am.”
Sarah looked odd, probably thinking about getting ‘covered’ twenty five times.
“So who was the bitch, and I mean that literally, that you were out with the weekend Jenny freaked?”
“Her name is Amanda Lee the fourth. He likes to name them in honor of my mom. I wonder if she’d let him if she was still alive?”
My dad had become her drinking buddy the weekend she went with me.
“I think she would. You know he still shows pictures of her at the trials?”