Double Elder Days Story Time: Shotgun Adventure

Northern Maine, circa 1965. My father, age around 13, and a number of his friends were out in the backcountry, at a set of sporting camps my grandparents used to have up there, intending on a spot of bird hunting. On the morning of the first proper day of the expedition, young pre-Dad had retired to the outhouse for some preparatory activity. While sitting there tending to business, he was glancing idly around, as one does, and happened to look up at the two-by-four running along the top of the wall above the door.

Where, gazing back at him contemplatively with its eight eyes, was the biggest damn wood spider he'd ever seen in his life.

What would you do in a situation like that? I'll tell you what my father did: He grabbed his shotgun, which was leaning against the wall waiting for him to finish up operations, and engaged the enemy at point-blank range.

Yeah, that's right. My 13-year-old bubba of a one-day-to-be father took a loaded shotgun into the shitter with him, and when he saw a large spider in there, he picked up said gun and shot at it. Inside the building.

Eight years later, this man would be trusted to father a child by a woman who, if I'm being completely objective here, really ought to have known better.

In fairness to young Pete, he didn't just shoot at the spider, he hit it. Squarely. No trace of it was ever seen again. Presumably its mortal remains had been first pulverized, and then ejected through the large hole Dad had just blown in the wall of the outhouse.

Meanwhile, Dad was still sitting on the can, contemplating his future and wondering, in an abstract kind of way, whether that future would involve ever hearing anything again. Eventually, as he regarded this prospect, he did begin to regain his hearing, and when the input level reached the point where he could make sense of the outside world again, he heard his friends outside the outhouse, furtively arguing about who was going to have to open the door. He hadn't heard them come running up and yelling inquiries, so they—logically enough—concluded that he'd gone in there and (either deliberately or through incompetence) assassinated himself.

I don't think I had ever heard that story before, somehow. I tell you what, though. Between that and the various pre-adulthood exploits of his I had heard about before (which mostly involved crashing cars and having things not go according to plan on motorcycles), I'm sort of vaguely amazed I exist at all.

--G.
* OK, it's actually one of those not-quite-a-nursing-home senior housing things, but it's very minimum-security-prison-like. I quite hate it and I don't think Gramp's all that pleased either. But that's another matter.
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