sm
January 22, 2005, 05:43 PM
[ One of my friends here on THR sent me this. I really do appreciate it and wanted to share with all]
Thinking of you-
A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the
scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He
remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead
for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.
After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side
of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it
was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was
standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked
like Mother of Pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like
pure gold.
He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a
man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough, he called out,
"Excuse me, where are we?"
"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.
"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.
"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought
right up." The man gestured, and the gate began to open.
"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the
traveler asked.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."
The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and
continued the way he had been going with his dog.
After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came
to a dirt road which led through a farm gate that looked as if it had
never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he
saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.
"Excuse me!" he called to the reader. "Do you have any water?"
"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."
"How about my friend here?" the traveller gestured to the dog.
"There should be a bowl by the pump." They went through the gate, and
sure enough, there was an old fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.
The traveler filled the bowl and took a long drink himself, then he
gave some to the dog.
When they were full, he and the dog walked back
toward the man who was standing by the tree. "What do you call this
place?" the traveler asked.
"This is Heaven," he answered.
"Well, that's confusing," the traveller said. "The man down the road said
that was Heaven, too."
"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope.
That's Hell."
"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"
"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave
their best friends behind."
Fred Fuller
January 22, 2005, 09:37 PM
Here's one of the all time great stories, IMHO. Used to read Corey Ford's stuff in _Field & Stream_ with great joy, even though I was nothing but a kid. I am enough of a sap to still enjoy his writings today....
lpl/nc
=====
The Road to Tinkhamtown
by Corey Ford
(originally published in the old _Field & Stream_ magazine, which is IMHO now a mere shadow of its former self- don't recall the date it was originally published and this site doesn't cite it, but at least it IS on the web... fair use applies as always- enjoy.)
-----------------------------------------------------------
It was a long way, but he knew where he was going. He would follow the road through the woods and over the crest of a hill and down the hill to the stream, and cross the sagging timbers of the bridge, and on the other side would be the place called Tinkhamtown. He was going back to Tinkhamtown.
He walked slowly at first, his legs dragging with each step. He had not walked for almost a year, and his flanks had shriveled and wasted away from lying in bed so long; he could fit his fingers around his thigh. Doc Towle had said he would never walk again, but that was Doc for you, always on the pessimistic side. Why, now he was walking quite easily, once he had started. The strength was coming back into his legs, and he did not have to stop for breath so often. He tried jogging a few steps, just to show he could, but he slowed again because he had a long way to go.
It was hard to make out the old road, choked with alders and covered by matted leaves, and he shut his eyes so he could see it better. He could always see it when he had his eyes shut. Yes, here was the beaver dam on the right, just as he had remembered it, and the flooded stretch where he had picked his way from hummock to hummock while the dog splashed unconcernedly in front of him. The water had been over his boot tops in one place, and sure enough, as he waded it now his left boot filled with water again, the same warm squdgy feeling. Everything was the way it had been that afternoon, nothing had changed in ten years. Here was the blowdown across the road that he had clambered over, and here on a knoll was the clump of thorn apples where a grouse had flushed as they had passed. Shad had wanted to look for it, but he had whistled him back. They were looking for Tinkhamtown.
He had come across the name on a map in the town library. He used to study the old maps and survey charts of the state; sometimes they showed where a farming community had flourished, a century ago, and around the abandoned pastures and in the orchards grown up to pine the birds would be feeding undisturbed. Some of his best grouse covers had had been located that way. The map had been rolled up in a cardboard cylinder; it crackled with age as he spread it out. The date was 1857. It was the sector between Cardigan and Kearsarge Mountains, a wasteland of slash and second growth timber without habitation today, but evidently it had supported a number of families before the Civil War. A road was marked on the map, dotted with X’s for homesteads, and the names of the owners were lettered beside them: Nason, J. Tinkham, Allard. R. Tinkham. Half the names were Tinkham. In the center of the map-the paper was so yellow that he could barely make it out- was the word “Tinkhamtown.”
He had drawn a rough sketch on the back of an envelope, noting where the road left the highway and ran north to a fork and then turned east and crossed a stream that was not even named; and the next morning he and Shad had set out together to find the place. They could not drive very far in the jeep, because washouts had guttted the roadbed and laid bare the ledges and boulders. He has stuffed the sketch in his hunting-coat pocket, and hung his shotgun over his forearm and started walking, the setter trotting ahead with the bell on his collar tinkling. It was an old-fashioned sleigh bell, and it had a thin silvery note that echoed through the woods like peepers in the spring. He could follow the sound in the thickest cover, and when it stopped he would go to where he had heard it last and Shad would be on point. After Shad’s death, he had put the bell away. He’d never had another dog.
It was silent in the woods without the bell, and the way was longer than he had remembered. He should have come to the big hill by now. Maybe he’d taken the wrong turn back at the fork. He thrust a hand in his hunting coat; the envelope with he sketch was still in the pocket. He sat down on a flat rock to get his bearings, and then realized, with a surge of excitement, that he had stopped on this very rock ten years ago. Here was the waxed paper from his sandwich, tucked in a crevice, and here was the hollow in the leaves where Shad had stretched out beside him, the dog’s soft muzzle flattened on his thigh. He looked up, and through the trees he could see the hill.
He rose and started walking again, carring his shotgun. He had left the gun standing in its rack in the kitchen when he had been taken to the state hospital, but now it was hooked over his arm by the trigger guard; he could feel the solid heft of it. The woods grew more dense as he climbed, but here and there a shaft of sunlight slanted through the trees. “And there were forests of ancient as the hills,” he thought, “enfolding sunny spots of greenery.” Funny that should come back to him now; he hadn’t read it since he was a boy. Other things were coming back to him, the smell of dank leaves and sweet fern and frosted apples, the sharp contrast of sun and cool shade, the November stillness before the snow. He walked faster feeling the excitement swell within him.
He paused on the crest of the hill, straining his ears for the faint mutter of the stream below him, but he could not hear it because of the voices. He wished they would stop talking so he could hear the stream. Someone was saying his name over and over, “Frank, Frank,” and he opened his eyes reluctantly and worried, and there was nothing to worry about. He tried to tell her where he was going, but when he moved his lips the words would not form. “What did you say, Frank?” she asked, bending her head lower, “I don’t understand.” He couldn’t make the words any clearer, and she straightened and said to Doc Towle: “It sounded like Tinkhamtown.”
“Tinkhamtown?” Doc shook his head, “Never heard him mention any place by that name.”
He smiled to himself. Of course he’d never mentioned it to Doc. Things like a secret grouse cover you didn’t mention to anyone, not even to as close a friend as Doc was. No, he and Shad were the only ones who knew. They found it together, that long ago afternoon, and it was their secret.
They had come to the stream- he shut his eyes so he could see it again- and Shad had trotted across the bridge. He had followed more cautiously, avoiding the loose planks and walking along a beam with his shotgun held out to balance himself. On the other side of the stream the road mounted steeply to a clearing in the woods, and he halted before the split-stone foundation of a house, the first in a series of farms shown on the map. It must have been a long time since the building had fallen in; the cottonwoods growing in the cellar hole were twenty, maybe thirty years old. His boot overturned a rusted axe blade and the handle of a china cup in the grass,that was all. Beside the doorstep was a lilac bush, almost as tall as the cottonwoods. He thought of the wife who had set it out, a little shrub then, and the husband who chided her for wasting time on such frivolous things with all the farmwork to be done. But the work had come to nothing, and still the lilac bloomed each spring, the one thing that had survived.
Shad’s bell was moving along the stone wall at the edge of the clearing, and he strolled after him, not hunting, wondering about the people who had gone away and left their walls to crumble and their buildings to collapse under the winter snows. Had they ever come back to Tinkhamtown? Were they here now, watching him unseen? His toe stubbed against a block of hewn granite hidden by briars, part of the sill of an old barn. Once it had been a tight barn, warm with cattle steaming in their stalls, rich with the blend of hay and manure and harness leather. He liked to think of it the way it was; it was more real than this bare rectangle of blocks and the emptiness inside. He’d always felt that way about the past. Doc used to argue that what’s over is over, but he would insist that Doc was wrong. Everything is the way it was, he’d tell Doc. The past never changes. You leave it and go on to the present, but it is still there, waiting for you to come back to it.
He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he had not realized that Shad’s bell had stopped. He hurried across the clearing, holding his gun ready. In a corner of the stone wall an ancient apple tree had littered the ground with fallen fruit, and beneath it Shad was standing motionless. The white fan of his tail was lifted a little and his backline was level, the neck craned forward, one foreleg cocked. His flanks were trembling with the nearness of the grouse, and a thin skein of drool hung from his jowls. The dog did not move as he approached, but the brown eyes rolled back until their whites showed, looking for him. “Steady, boy,” he called. His throat was tight, the way it always got when Shad was on point, and he had to swallow hard. “Steady, I’m coming.”
I think his lips moved just now, “ his sister’s voice said. He did not open his eyes, because he was waiting for the grouse to get up in front of Shad, but he knew Doc Towle was looking at him. “He’s sleeping,” Doc said after a moment. “Maybe you better get some sleep yourself, Mrs. Duncombe.”
He heard Doc’s heavy footsteps cross the room. “Call me if there’s any change,” Doc said, and closed the door, and in the silence he could hear his sister’s chair creaking beside him, her silk dress rustling regularly as she breathed.
What was she doing here, he wondered. Why had she come all the way from California to see him? It was the first time they had seen each other since she had married and moved out West. She was his only relative, but they had never been very close; they had nothing in common, really. He heard from her now and then, but it was always the same letter: Why didn’t he sell the old place., it was too big for him now that the folks had passed on, why didn’t he take a small apartment in town where he wouldn’t be alone? But he liked the big house, and he wasn’t alone, not with Shad. He had closed off all the older rooms and moved into the kitchen so everything would be handy. His sister didn’t approve of his bachelor ways, but it was very comfortable with his cot by the stove and Shad curled on the floor by him at night, whinnying and scratching the linoleum with his claws as he chased a bird in his dream. He wasn’t alone when he heard that.
He had never married. He had looked after the folks as long as they lived, maybe that was why. Shad was his family. They were always together – Shad was short for Shadow- and there was a closeness between them that he did not feel for anyone else, not his sister or Doc even. He and Shad used to talk without words, each knowing what the other was thinking, and they could always find each other in the woods. He still remembered the little things about him: the possessive thrust of his jaw, the way he false-yawned when he was vexed, the setter stubbornness sometimes, the clownish grin when they were going hunting, the kind eyes. That was it: Shad was the kindest person he had ever known.
They had not hunted again after Tinkhamtown. The old dog had stumbled several times, walking back to the jeep, and he had to carry him in his arms the last hundred yards. It was hard to realize that he was gone. He liked to think of him the way he was; it was like the barn, it was more real than the emptiness. Sometimes at night, lying awake with the pain in his legs, he would hear the scratch of claws on the linoleum, and he would turn on the light and the hospital room would be empty. But when he turned the light off he would hear the scratching again, and he would be content and drop off to sleep, or what passed for sleep in these days and nights that ran together without dusk or dawn.
Once he asked Doc point-blank if he would ever get well. Doc was giving him something for the pain, and he hesitated a moment and finished what he was doing and cleaned the needle and then looked at him and said: “I’m afraid not, Frank.” They had grown up in the town together, and Doc knew him too well to lie. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to do.” Nothing to do but lie there and wait till it was over. “Tell me Doc,” he whispered, for his voice wasn’t very strong, “what happens when it’s over?” And Doc fumbled with the catch of his black bag and closed it and said well he supposed you went on to someplace else called the Hereafter. But he shook his head: He always argued with Doc. “No, it isn’t someplace else,” he told him, “it’s someplace you’ve been where you want to be again.” Doc didn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain it any better. He knew what he meant, but the shot was taking effect and he was tired.
He was tired now, and his legs ached a little as he started down the hill, trying to find the stream. It was too dark under the trees to see the sketch he had drawn, and he could not tell direction by the moss on the north side of the trunks. The moss grew all around them, swelling them out of size, and the huge blowdowns blocked his way. Their upended roots, were black and misshapen, and now instead of excitement he felt a surge of panic. He floundered through a pile of slash, his legs throbbing with pain as the sharp points stabbed at him, but he did not have the strength to get to the other side and he had to back out again and circle. He did not know where he was going. It was getting late, and he had lost the way.
There was no sound in the woods, nothing to guide him, nothing but his sister’s chair creaking and her breath catching now and then in a dry sob. She wanted him to turn back, and Doc wanted him to, they all wanted him to turn back. He thought of the big house; if he left it alone it would fall in with the winter snows and cottonwoods would grow in the cellar hole. And there were all the other doubts, but most of all there was the fear. He was afraid of the darkness, and being alone, and not knowing where he was going. It would be better to turn around and go back. He knew the way back.
And then he heard it, echoing through the woods like peepers in the spring, the thin silvery tinkle of a sleigh bell. He started running toward it, following the sound down the hill. His legs were strong again, and he hurdled the blowdowns, he leapt over fallen logs, he put one fingertip on a pile of slash and sailed over it like a grouse skimming. He was getting nearer and the sounds filled his ears, louder than a thousand church bells ringing, louder than all the choirs in the sky, as loud as the pounding of his heart. The fear was gone; he was not lost. He had the bell to guide him now.
He came to the stream, and paused for a moment at the bridge. He wanted to tell them he was happy, if they only knew how happy he was, but when he opened his eyes he could not see them anymore. Everything else was bright, but the room was dark.
The bell had stopped, and he looked across the stream. The other side was bathed in sunshine, and he could see the road mounting steeply, and the clearing in the woods, and the apple tree in a corner of the stone wall. Shad was standing motionless beneath it, the white fan of his tail lifted, his neck craned forward and one foreleg cocked. The whites of his eyes showed as he looked back, waiting for him.
“Steady,” he called, “steady, boy.” He started across the bridge. “I’m coming.”
Larry Ashcraft
January 22, 2005, 09:39 PM
Steve, thanks!
Made me think of my Springer, "Daisy" who was my best buddy for 17 years.
:(
I don't know how many predicaments she got herself into, and I got her out of, but it was a bunch. One day, pheasant hunting, she followed this 'ditch' looking for birds. The ditch went from three feet deep to about ten feet deep. She was lost, so she called for me. Between her jumping and stretching herself out, and me reaching for her collar, I finally got her out.
The girl had a way of looking at me that said: "Thanks, dad".
sm
January 23, 2005, 12:21 AM
Thanks for posting Corey Ford's The Road to Tinkhamtown .
I was born in April of '55. I have 4 issues of F&S from that year. I don't have the month of April - I really want one.
Elders , Mentors, and an Uncle would see that I got to read / have the old Copies of F&S. I thumbed quickly to read Robert Ruark, always the first thing I read. I had to check on Tapley's Tips, then of course Corey Ford.
The North Forty is another classic work by Ford. If someone has that one to post - please do so.
I apologize to no person about the way I was raised, the lessons learned from Ruark, Ford, Hemingway, and others in reading. I don't apologize for the lessons learned from my elders and mentors. Hell - I was raised right!
It is always the shooter - not the firearm. One is supposed to learn the right way; safety, courtesy, respect. One learns from the Quail, the hunting dogs, being out in Nature. Elders and mentors pass this forward to you - someday you pass this forward to another.
Even back in '55 folks knew this, took on the responsibilites to do so. Didn't need gummit meddlin, restrictions, fancy guns or clothes. Some things money cannot buy, like skill , targets and respect. One has to earn these. Always been this way - always will be.
Yep - I have read The Old Man And The Boy by Ruark, and the next book too . I still read it. Do not ask me how many copies I have given away to folks...I still recommend it to Expectant Parents, these folks read it to each other, then the newborn.
Yep read all of Ruark's works, I have most of 'em. Ironic...Use Enough Gun is missing...
---
There is a bond b/t a man , shotgun and dog. Either one knows it or they don't. Some stuff cannot be explained.
Fred Fuller
January 23, 2005, 09:30 AM
Steve,
You're welcome. And I didn't mean to hijack your thread, your post put me in mind of this and I looked, and it was up on the web. My only intent was to introduce the story- and the author- to some folks who might not be familiar with either. Ford's books are still available, and well worth the shelf space in any sporting library. So are those by other great authors, Ruark, Havilah Babcock, so many others. If I can't _be_ hunting or fishing a close second is _reading_ about it, and nothing suits me better than those great authors from my childhood.
An odd result of whatever it was that went wrong with my brain a few years back is a lessening of emotional control in some areas. I have seen it happen in folks I knew who had strokes, they cried easily over things that hadn't affected them that way before. I have found that there are some songs I just can't sing any more because my voice breaks, and some things I cannot read about or think about without my eyes misting up or worse.
This story is one of those things...
lpl/nc
vBulletin® v3.8.6, Copyright ©2000-2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.