Dove Season aka Where were the beer cans?

The older we get, the older "middle age" becomes.

We have been seeing a "middle aged" man riding a bicycle down our street lately. We saw him again today as we headed towards the park and exchanged "good morning" greetings. There were runners out as well, but we were just trying to finish the walk before the sun had a chance to get after us.

We had slept late again (I love holiday weekends, but really, it is too hot to walk when we sleep so late.).

The sounds of fall in central Texas were all around us. "Pop, pop, pop......pop....pop..........poppop..."

It is dove season. 

It was already past sunup as we headed towards the park. We live in a small town surrounded by undeveloped land. The hunters were afield. And the doves were out and about as well, as the sound of discharging shotguns (all around us) continued through the entire walk.

The gunfire made me think briefly about what it must be like to have fighting all around  one's town, one's home. But I did not want to go that next short step this morning - to Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq or Egypt. They are all too immediate, too present, too emotional and exhausting. I was that kind of coward today.

As DH and I discussed how near the hunters might be (half a mile? a mile? two?)  I directed my thoughts back to the stories of my great-great-grandfather, a man sent to medical school because a birth defect (club foot) prevented him from doing physical labor on the farm. During the Civil War he lived in Tennessee, near some of the fighting. In addition to his bum foot, he was too old to serve, but when he heard the sounds of battle near his home, he loaded his saddlebags with medical supplies and rode towards the cannon fire. 

What was he thinking? What was his wife thinking as he rode away? Did his children know where he was going?

Had he been called on to help by the local militia? Had someone come by the house to enlist his services? Or did he, as family history holds, simply hear the gunfire and know he was needed?

What horrors did he experience as he tried to save those who could be saved? Did he pray over those who could not?

Enough. 

The guns were still sounding as we arrived home. It was sunny and hot already. We had picked up beer cans and plastic bottles left along the street from Saturday night revelry.

There would be no need to leave my cool house again today.

NOTE:   Family tradition holds that while treating the wounded on the battlefield, Great-great-grandpa picked up a cannonball, keeping it with him all his life. That proof traveled with him to Texas and has since passed through a different part of the family and has been documented during my lifetime. [Where it is today is anyone's guess.]