Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/590511
rom left, Tommy Mock, Brian Hays, and the author on a 2005 hunt for wild bobwhite quail in Georgia. F T hat's how it was . . . bird religious and happier than a Wednesday night, Southern Baptist tent meeting . . . and here, my friends, is how it happened: Upon any occasion that serves notice, Loretta will tell you "there's nothing more miserable than a miserable man." This comes from living with me, of course, and I suppose a woman should know. "Guilty, Jedge. I got to go. The Lord may serve up our daily bread, but I'm the one that's gotta bake it." Bonaventure, Dear Bretheren, rescued me, came along spiritually, kinda like a bright ray of light filtering through a wildwood chapel window. A just-in-time departure of profound happiness that turned into a scarlet-and-golden season of about a half-dozen years when I never took sick, or got incarcerated in social prison, when by anticipation or fact the world was bathed year-through with the incomparable colors of a Canadian autumn sunrise. As I went down to the river to pray, studyin' 'bout that good ol' way . . . Oh, Brothers, Let's go down, come on down, don't you wanna go down. Down to the river to pray. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 5 Mostly it's when something drags me off somewhere the fish don't bite and the birds don't fly. Or to some quasi-essential social ceremony that has transposed itself smack-square onto dove day, or the height of the stonefly hatch. Lord knows, in the 51 years of our communion, I (and she) have suffered more-than-a-many occasion for misery. That time it was an impending period of judicial wretchedness called jury duty. I had the dreaded summons, laid inconveniently upon the glorious doorstep of October, and I was about as squashed as a bottle-cap under a boot-heel when an editorial writ elicited my presence for a trip report on a reputed cover bird-gathering on the Bonaventure River. Mike Gaddis i r s t L i g h t F