Time Travel: I Just Went Back 40 Years

By Mike Faulk
Dad was a simple man with simple tastes. If there was an easy way and a hard way, he'd try the easy way first. And so it was with the selection of meals when in deer camp.

In 1967 as a fifteen year old boy, he and older brother Loy let me tag along on a deer hunt with a single shot 20 gauge Savage shotgun loaded with a 'punkin' ball. The firearm was my Christmas present the year before and I had put it to good use during squirrel season.

Shot shells were one thing. A round with a slug in the shell casing was another thing all together. In Barney Fife tradition, I was allowed to carry two extra rounds in my front shirt pocket "just in case."

While I didn't want for food, my selection was limited. All suppers were the same: fried bologna sandwiches and baked beans. Dad packed all the extras needed to fire up the taste buds when eating that fried bologna sandwich: mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato.

He'd bring the late season tomatoes still green on the vine inside before the first frost and let them ripen in the garage. They would be just about right by the time deer season rolled around.

Mayo and lettuce would usually keep outside in late November. Ice was just too much hassle to haul along when staying in a camper in deer woods of northeast Tennessee.

I had a fried bologna, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato sandwich for lunch today. The contrast between the succulent, hot bologna and the cool lettuce was striking. The smell and the taste of today's sandwich triggered a memory long lost.

The memory hit me like a ton of bricks. It hit me so hard that I was instantly transported back forty years to those glorious days in the woods with Dad and Loy to that time when - by merely letting me go with them - they acknowledged I was man enough to hunt.

I'm so grateful that he included me in his deer camp - that he made that memory for me which is so vivid and sweet today. While I surely miss him, I can't tell him thank you. He's been gone over 25 years now. Until I see him again, the very best way I know how to tell him "thank you" is to make a similar memory for my son - for any of our sons and daughters who are ready for their time in deer camp.

Take a child hunting this weekend during Tennessee's juvenile hunt. You'll both be glad you did.