I’m just back from a walk, taken in an attempt to digest our crazed world — from pardons, to rampant hypocrisy, to the prelude of World War III.
Along the way, I indulged in nostalgia regarding deer hunters out and about today in pursuit of the animals who have a nasty habit of crashing into our cars. It happened twice to me years back, in a six-week span.
I’m fairly certain one accident resulted in a deer fatality. The other, which happened along Route 22 between New Alexandria and Blairsville weeks earlier, had been a case of a Clueless Joe-like deer walking into the side of my car. I’d slowed probably to five miles an hour, having seen him coming, and he bumped into me and slid along the side of the car, pruning my driver side mirror in the process.
Said deer walked away seemingly none the worse for the experience, living perhaps to pardon his bad seed son down the line.
As a young man, I had ventured into the woods pursuing deer – unsuccessfully – with a firearm. I gave it up when other activities of life took precedence.
But, for those of us who attended the Greater Johnstown School District in the increasingly distant past, opening day of antlered deer season was the holy grail, the chance to skip school with parental approval.
We have written before here about holiday creep, which has turned Thanksgiving into a week off work or school, maybe longer. Similar expansion has seen other holiday celebrations swell to elongated weekends and the like.
Pennsylvania game officials, capturing the spirit of the thing, moved the opening of this particular deer season (trust me, there are too many other specialized deer seasons in the state to enumerate them all here) to Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Now, nimrods burdened by traditional jobs or school calendars and therefore are expected to be back in harness the Monday following Thanksgiving, can hunt the first day without shunning those obligations.
The state also identifies three Sundays that hunting is allowed and one of those was yesterday.
Bottom line, those who are off work or school today, are free to return to the woods if they failed to bag the elusive white tail Saturday or Sunday.
Ah, but what they missed from the old experience. We didn’t get the Monday off school following Thanksgiving. Period. End of discussion.
The former Johnstown High School was a sprawling structure, four full floors and a large fifth-floor multipurpose room know as the Audion.
The main office was Room 211. The attendance office, Room 422, was two floors up and at the rear of the building, overlooking the elevated highway. That was where one went to get a slip to return to class after having been absent.
On the Tuesday following the opening of deer season, the line from that office stretched well down the main corridor toward Napoleon Street.
The air was festive and although technically teachers didn’t have to allow students to make up work from an unexcused absence day, generally those of us who skipped school to go hunting were not penalized.
In retrospect, we were just a bunch of minor league Hunter Bidens, ahead of our time.
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