I think this has something for the whole family.

Ok, It's a friggin' CRIME to wreck an old TA like that. Criminal!

Gonna have dinner with dad again tonight, and now that the snow has melted we've added a new wrinkle to our normal Friday routine. Before we go to the Chinese food place, we go to the local driving range. He watches me as I hit a bucket of balls, and he hits a few and gives me little lessons and hints to help my swing. After that, having worked up and appetite (like that's necessary) we go hit the buffet line.

Dad was a huge golfer when I was growing up and he's wanted to get me to like the game ever since I can remember. He was taught to play in Germany right after WW2. He says this German POW showed him how to hit correctly in a large derelict opera hall. It was a rich mans game back then, and I think my dad, the son of a tenant framer, saw golf, and being an Army officer (eventually in the Air Force) as a path out of his old life. He became a shark on the golf course, and played all the time, as long as I can remember. He made me a cut down driver when I was very little, and still tells me and everyone else that I had a natural swing when I was a kid. I don't know. I never have felt comfortable in that swing. Can't feel it well enough to be able to feel like I know what I'm doing, if you know what I mean.

I was always more into archery as a kid. Used to watch all those old movies about medieval times, and always wanted to be Robin Hood, or the guy shooting arrows out of the arrow loops in the castle, or the guy in the formation at Agincourt, shooting arrows up into the air into the French army formations. When we moved to Missouri in 1970 I found other kids there who loved it too, and we'd shoot arrows into anything. That place was paradisaical. We'd stand at one end of the field that stretched out through and connected averyone's back yard and shoot arrows into the air, just to watch them fly and see how far they'd go. There was an old tree in the woods there that we'd shoot arrows into, rotted and missing half it's bark.

We got a huge amount of enjoyment out of walking down the trail, pretending to be surprised by a bear or something, and then shooting arrows into that old tree. They would always make a cool thud as they hit it. We'd cross over the creek and pull them out, and then go through the ritual again. We called it the elephant tree. I think I'd seen an illustration in National Geographic showing Alexander the Great defeating the Indian Army elephants by filling them with arrows. That Image is still in my head.

Never forget looking at my first issue of Bowhunter magazine, picked up at the local T.G.& Y., and seeing that there was a world out there where adults shot arrows, and it wasn't silly kids stuff, as my folks always seemed to think. We moved away from that house and into base housing before we moved back to Texas, and mom and dad told me that I couldn't have the bows and arrows on the base. It all had to be put away. Seems like they were always tryin' to get me to do that. They didn't value it, and saw it as kids stuff. Wanted me to give it up and grow up and play football or somethin'. I don't think the gear made it into the moving van. It was like closing a book on a huge part of my childhood.

Next time I picked up a bow was about five years later in San Antonio. I tried to shoot someone else's arrow into a neighbors tree only about 10 yards away, a shot that I would have easily been able to make earlier, and I missed it. Shocked the hell out of me. I guess I accepted that it was over then. There weren't any woods to play in there, and I'd lost whatever talent I'd had, but dad was still there wanting me to play golf with him. Maybe refusing was my way of getting back at him, or my way of differentiating myself from him. Same thing went with other sports too. He never could get me interested in anything, and I could never get them to take anything I loved seriously. You'd think I was switched at birth or something.

I finally relented and started playing golf back in the late 1980s while I was in graduate school and worked at the Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth. Most of the other employees played, and they got to play the course once a year. I guess I picked up the interest vicariously, listening to them talk around the club, wanting to be included and play the club myself. Dad was beside himself. He made me a set of clubs and I started practicing and playing. Loved it, but never got too good at it. Then, when I got the job teaching on the ships, and was gone all the time, I never had a chance to practice. When I did play, I was always loosing balls and feeling like an idiot when I hit a lousy shot. Never seemed to take to it the way I did archery as a kid. Never became easy and effortless the way archery had. It sucks too, because it's no longer a rich mans game. Hell, everyone plays golf now.

Anyway, Dads old as hell now and can't hit the ball very far anymore. Depresses the hell out of him, but he's always asking me when we're gonna go hit some balls. For a long time I'd think to myself "How many times did you take me to shoot arrows, you old jackass? When did you ever show interest in anything I wanted to do?" But he's old as hell now, and it seems wrong to be petty about it, to hold the crap from the past against him. so I finally decided a few weeks ago to start taking him to the range, incorporating it into our Friday routine. Weather permitting, we'll go out there and I'll let him give me hints. I doubt that I'll learn anything, but he'll enjoy it, and that's what matters now.

I'm also supposed to go shooting (guns) this weekend in Gatesville, so I'll be able to sight in the new .22 rifle and maybe shoot Civil War muskets. I've evolved from arrows to bullets (another thing my dad's not into), but I still have archery in my blood. One of these days I'll post pictures of the sets I've built. It's a fun hobby now and then, when I'm not busy with other things. So, enjoy your Friday and take care of yourselves. Ya know I will.