New book published by Amazon out this month

Glynn Harris

I’m as excited as a kid with a new toy. My third book, “Fathers, Sons and Old Guns” was recently released by Amazon and is now available for purchase from Amazon.com with book signing sites to be announced and shared. The book is a revised edition of my “Talking Outdoors” released in 1995 and includes articles I have written over the past 50-plus years. Here is the title story in the book.
FATHERS, SONS AND OLD GUNS
It began for the boy along about the Christmas of his sixth or seventh year. Dawn was still an hour or more away when the youngster crept out of bed. Peering sleepily around the corner through the living room door, his eyes scanned the brightly-wrapped packages spangled with tinsel and glitter beneath the tree.
His breath caught in his throat when he saw it – twinkling colored lights reflecting off the blue steel barrel and walnut stock. His first gun….the .410 he’d dreamed about.
That was thirty Christmases ago. Today, the boy is a man; a father with a son of his own. This Christmas, the old .410 will be passed down along with the memories it helped create; like the tomato can he peppered with holes the first time he shot it….the surprise he felt when his shoulder was whacked from the recoil….the rusty fox squirrel he rolled off a hickory limb….how he rushed up to it, picked it up and held it up for his proud father to see….remembering the expression on his father’s face was one he’d never seen there before.
Before he takes his son out with the old .410, there’ll be time for instruction; for answering youthful questions fired out from behind eyes wide with excitement. He’ll hand the boy the gun, unbreached, chamber empty, explaining how it functions; how it can be a faithful companion; how it can turn on you coldly if handled carelessly.
After the lesson, they’ll walk out back and prop a tomato can against a clay bank. The father will watch his son’s startled expression change to one of pride as the can spins and careens wildly when pellets perforate it.
It’s Saturday, and the man and boy make preparations for this, their first hunt together…..the teacher and student.
Dawn brushes the eastern sky in a blend of delicate pastels as the two wait in the woods in suspenseful silence. A fallen log serves as a comfortable seat in the hardwood glade. On all sides of the ridge are hickories, the ground littered with fresh cuttings. At the foot of the ridge past the thicket, a creek meanders out of the hills to course lazily at the feet of silvery beeches and ancient cypresses.
The raspy rattle of a brown thrasher serves as a woodland wake-up call and a wren, scolding softly, hops to the end of the log where the two sit. Blue jays argue and fuss over acorns in an oak overhead.
The boy is drinking it all in when his dad touches his elbow and points to movement in a nearby hickory. It’s a squirrel, the boy spots it and then looks at his dad with a perplexed expression that says, “What do I do now?”
Regaining control, he remembers his dad’s instructions and waits until the squirrel scampers to the opposite side of the tree. Standing slowly, he eases forward a few steps. As the squirrel reappears and begins whacking away on a hickory nut, the youngster slowly raises the old gun, nestles the butt against the hollow of his slender shoulder, aims…..and touches the trigger.
There is no startled expression from the recoil this time. He feels no jolt but is aware only of the squirrel tumbling in a shower of leaves to the ground. With a whoop, the youngster rushes to it, picks it up, and grinning, looks back at his dad. For a moment, the man doesn’t speak. He can’t. A unique bond has been created, an intangible essence of oneness that needs no explanation. It can only be experienced by a man and boy – teacher and student – together under the hickories.