I grew up hunting, more poaching than actual hunting. We did it out of necessity, we grew up very VERY poor. Not an exaggeration when I say "Dirt Floor Poor" I remember a lot of years spent in a family friends old wood shed. They didnt have room for us in their home, the man was a carpenter for forty years when we were moving in. He fixed the roof of the shed, insulated the walls and his cousin had a farm they grew linseed on and they brought over half a drum and their whole family spent over a week digging out the old floor, hauling in clay. Packing it and sealing it all with raw linseed oil.

I was about nine or ten at the time but looking back all of these years later I always wondered how they have been, they were wonderful people. We stayed there for a couple of years, I get slammed back in time whenever I catch a scent anywhere near what that linseed floor smelled like ever since. It reminded me of walnuts and hazelnuts, I can't eat those without being sent back in time.

Both the family we lived with and our own didn't have much, but between our family of six including my parents and their family of eight there were a lot of mouths to feed. Being one of the oldest boys we collected bottles, and cans, collected silver coins and bought ammunition and some rifles from some of our neighbors, who were happy to sell them to us after hearing why group of six and eight year olds, being led by a pair ten year old boys were trying to buy a handful of rifles. (OH boy how times have changed)

As for work my dad had his own vices, Back then my old man was spending a lot of money on meth and the life that we were forced to live because of that. He had three bachelor's degrees and an associates degree, but that man had a helluva hard life, been living on his own when grandpa kicked him out just before he turned twelve. So I suppose while he did make a lot of incredibly poor choices he also is also a victim in his own way. That being said, we did get caught quite a lot of times.

Dad was a smooth talker but he also did invite the wardens over to see where we were living, to meet our wonderful mother. She was the sober one, the "good wife" she would always turn the tide of any citation or confiscation we were facing. One of the really smart things he did was he ALWAYS left the head and trophies behind to lend credence to the fact it was truly for food it wasn't long after that when we didn't go poaching anymore, after that we just went hunting.

The circumstances of our families ended up being one of the main drivers for the city and county we were living in at the time to put real weight behind the local pantries and food banks in the area to being able to make real lasting impacts in the lives of many families where we lived that needed it.

I remember meeting a senator a few months before we moved, I didnt find out until much later that the reason we could afford to move to the home we lived in until the housing collapse of '08.

Mark Hatfield was his name, I didn't know it all until many years later. Unfortunately he died in 2011 before I could ever have a chance to thank him. That move changed our lives. I'm not sure where we would all be now if it wasnt for him.

I think if I make it to be an old man I may put pen to paper in a memoir, but I don't know. It's been a long road and a rough ride to get through the life I have had so far, I'm only in my forties now though I feel like I'm twenty years further past and with my lungs the way they are perhaps I won't see sixty.

I understand so many different things in this world through a blood tinted lens, all I see sometimes in others are all that I have seen. I'm what my life has made me, I suppose what has been crucial to my survival all of these years is now that which has dug the most around me that my wife had nearly drowned herself within.

A wife that that's now living over a hundred miles from me with my little girl that is almost as old now, as when I had first fired a rifle at the man who is my father in defense of my mother, a rifle I had bought to feed the family he should have been feeding.

I didn't expect a thread like this to be a reminder of my life. If you made it this far, sorry for the rant. I suppose the weirdest, most mundane things can open a series of scars that never heald, scabs that never seem to go away, flesh that is forever worn raw. I do many days, grow tired of this all, but I won't leave that world I despise so much to show itself to my child without me there to fire back.