I’m writing this on May 18, fifteen days into the New Hampshire turkey season and counting. I went hunting earlier today. Thankfully, I didn’t get a turkey. Why “thankfully” you might ask? Well, late in the morning I realized I was hunting without a license. And without a license I wouldn’t be able to attach a tag to a turkey if I had managed to outsmart one, something I haven’t done a lot of so far this season.
Why no hunting license? Well, it was in my wallet along with my driver’s license and the other stuff you always want to have with you. And my wallet was in my other pants. Not the work-in-the-yard pants I use for stuff like gardening and chain sawing firewood, but the good unstained going-out-in-public-clothes without holes that I wear to the store and bank and other public places. Of course, lately I’ve been seen in my camouflage-turkey-hunting-clothes in a lot of public places as I stop to take care of important errands on my way home to take a nap. Naps are a priority item when you’ve been repeatedly getting up at 3:30 a.m. when the alarm clock hollers that it’s time to get out of bed and get ready to go hunting.
While I may occasionally wear my camo to the grocery store or the bank (where they sometimes look at me like they expect me to pass a holdup note), I draw the line at going to the library dressed to hunt. It just seems kinda loud. I put on my good going-out-in-public clothes yesterday to return a book and bring a fresh one home. The problem was my library card was in my wallet, which, you guessed it, was in my work-in-the-yard clothes back at the Poorhouse. Being well-known, almost infamous you might say, at the town library, they let me take the book on good faith. The fact that they still recognize me after two weeks of sleep deprivation tells me I must not look as bad as I sometimes feel.
Speaking of looks, I got a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror when I stopped to do some business at the town office the other day. And I must say my beard was looking rather snarly. I reached for my pocket comb—which, of course, was at home in the pocket of my hunting pants. I straightened out the whiskers best I could with my fingers, thinking that maybe they need a trim sometime prior to the end of turkey season (the whiskers not the fingers).
I don’t know why this is all so difficult, keeping track of the stuff I need. It’s only three sets of clothes after all. I feel like I’m playing Three Card Monte and I never pick the right card. A good case in point is the pickup truck key. It seems like every time I go out and get in my truck I discover the key is in the pocket of some other pair of pants and I have to go back in the house and search for it in my other two sets of clothes. This has become a regular 4:15 a.m. practice. My wife hears me leaving the house to go hunting and says: “goodbye, hon, good luck.” Then a minute later she hears me reenter the house. “Forgot your keys again?” she asks.
“Yes, dear.”
“You’d think you’d learn.”
I will; just in time for the season to end and I’m back to just two sets of clothes again. Then I’ll be good until mid-September when the archery season starts.