The tree is up and strung with lights. The presents are all wrapped with ribbons and bows. Soon the smell of roast turkey will fill the house. We are waiting for that famous Christmas snow Frosty talked about in the original classic Christmas cartoon.
Christmas traditions vary. When my kids were very young, it became a tradition to read “A Visit From Saint Nicholas” on Christmas Eve. They seem a little too old for that now, but I often think I should just sit down on Christmas Eve and start reading it aloud just to see if anyone looks up from the video games long enough to pay attention. But I digress.
This is the outdoor column. It should be about snowshoes under the Christmas tree and youngsters longing for the Red Ryder BB gun with the compass in the stock. We should be talking about making venison chili for Christmas dinner and hosting ice skating parties on the farm pond down the road. Who out there reading this right now has ever been to a Christmas bonfire? Don't you just love a great informal gathering of friends standing around drinking hot cider and talking about the good old days?
During my formative years (up until age 10), I spent each Christmas Eve at the family celebration in my grandparents' tavern. My grandmother would erect a huge Christmas tree on the tiny stage and we would all open our presents on the pool table. Grandpa Bruno would always wear his blue turtleneck and chuckle as my brother and I would tear into the wrapping paper with wild abandon. By the time we were done, the pile of paper would fill a couple plastic trash bags and pieces of toys and ribbon would be stuck in every pocket of the pool table.
One of the best memories from those old days is the look on Bruno's face when I tore open a toy plastic shotgun that actually fired some sort of plastic projectile. It wasn't really a rubber dart; it had more mass than that. The shotgun kit came with a foot pedal-operated launching device that would fling rotating discs into the air. The discs were really propellers and they stayed aloft just long enough for a 6-year-old to get off one poorly aimed shot.
Consider this for a minute. You have a 6-year-old boy with a toy shotgun that launches a pretty stout plastic bullet. About every 10 seconds this boy is shooting at a flying propeller disc in a room filled with hanging lights that has one wall covered with drinking glasses and bottles of booze. What could go wrong?
That was my introduction to trap shooting. I would step down hard on the launching device and a disc would whirl into the air. Shouldering the little plastic double-barrel, I would try desperately to get a bead on the target before slapping at the trigger and sending a single projectile down the length of the bar, past the jukebox and toward the pool table. There was lots of ducking and dodging going on that Christmas Eve, but I don't remember breaking anything or hitting a single target. I do remember that gun disappeared not long after the New Year and I was encouraged to play with the toy carpenter's set Santa had brought me. That didn't work out much better. Who gives a kid a saw and expects that he won't try to cut things?
Those days, and sadly most of the people I spent them with, are gone now. They have faded into just another memory in a long line of Christmas memories. Still, it is amazing what sticks with you. For me, it was a toy plastic shotgun and flying propeller-discs. I'm hoping my kids will remember tramping through the woods to cut Christmas trees and nighttime readings of Christmas classics.
Happy Holidays.
Kevin Michalowski is a former American News outdoors writer who now lives in Wisconsin.
