Like most of us I have read about the brave dentist, Walter James Palmer from Bloomington, MN who paid $50,000 to shoot Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe.
It made me think about my father and his parents on an April morning in 1938.
Daddy grew up on a farm in Louisville, GA. Like a lot of boys who grew up in the rural South, he was given his first shotgun at age 11...April 6, 1938.
For a young boy in the South, this was a coming of age event...a step towards manhood...because guns were needed on the farm.
He knew roughly what he was getting...he and his dad, Gilbert Bell Hitchcock, the man in this picture, a man I called Papa, had visited a store in Louisville, Daddy had looked at various shotguns with him...they had discussed the merits of different models....so he knew he was getting one, just not which one.
April 6th, his 11th birthday dawned. My grandmother, whose first name was Marie, which for some reason was the name Daddy called her, as did I....possibly the best cook in the Southeast, made homemade yeast biscuits so light that they would nearly fly off the plates for every meal. Every meal.
So she had prepared a wonderful breakfast and the three of them sat down to eat and Daddy was presented with his brand-new shotgun. I can picture him, thrilled to be getting it....while Papa explained the rules.
"A gun is a responsibility. When we go in the woods and look for something to shoot, this is something we will be eating. You don't just go out and shoot anything that you see."
Daddy nodded his head. He understood...he really did. He finished breakfast, went outside in the side yard and promptly shot a blue jay. My grandfather, hearing the shot only a couple of feet from the table where he was finishing his breakfast walked outside. There stood Daddy with his new gun...and a blue jay at his feet.
Papa picked the blue jay up.
"Good shot Billy, you have learned well." Papa took the blue jay with him, along with Daddy's new shotgun.
Marie, used to serving just about anything on the table in those dark days of the Great Depression.....rabbits, squirrels, all sorts of birds, often almost anything that could be found in the woods... had never dressed and cooked a blue jay before. But she did it.
Daddy was outside in the barn doing some chores when he was called inside to lunch. Marie had outdone herself with fried chicken, those wonderful biscuits and all sorts of vegetables grown there on the farm. The smells were wonderful and Daddy was starved.
At his plate was the blue jay that he had shot. Fried.
Papa spoke. "That really was a good shot Billy. I am surprised you were able to hit him the very first time you used your new gun. I hope you enjoy lunch."
And so Daddy ate the blue jay, along with a lot of crow, but he had learned a lesson, one that took so well that he told me the story I now tell you many times. Sport hunting is not for real boys or men...you hunt to live, you hunt to put food on the table, and you eat what you shoot. That was the last blue jay Daddy ever shot...and he was a good shot, and helped put many things on his parents' table that they did eat.
It's too bad that Walter James Palmer didn't have parents like Daddy did.