Meditation on Drain Cleaner

I went to buy drain cleaner yesterday.

I know, it is not "Call me Ishmael" nor "It was the best of times, it was the worst of time."  It is a farm.  Regardless of what you might have seen on Pintrest, farm life is not all towheaded children on hay rides and destination weddings.  Ninety percent of the time is is a lot of crappy work. When I walked back from watering the garden, I noticed that the drain vent resembled Old Faithful, and I knew I had a problem. So...

 I went to buy drain cleaner. I set it on the counter, and the cashier asked for my driver's license. I thought it was odd, but I gave it to her and she copied it. 

"You need a driver's license to buy drain cleaner," I asked. 

"Yeah, you make meth with it."

"I should have bought two bottle."

"Only one per transaction."

I am now in some sort of drain cleaner database.  Presumably, if I had gone to several other stores and purchased a bottle of drain cleaner at each one, by the time I returned home, the DEA would have been sitting on the porch.

I am OK with that.

In addition to drain cleaner, I need a gun on the farm. Yes, I am one of those people who will tell you that you can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand.  Last year we had a rabid raccoon roaming about.  He was tearing up things and killing chickens. He had been quite elusive, but one afternoon, he decided to be aggressive and I walked outside with my rifle and a single shell.  I won. On a farm, you often have to kill things.  This is not a popular hashtag on Pintrest. 

While I love my guns, and while I have hunted since I was a child, and while I believe in the Second Amendment, I have no business owning an AK-47.  It is a military weapon meant to kill people, not raccoons.  And that is what it does kill people, and cops, and school children, and bar patrons, and co-workers.  Watch television. And I don't need an oversized mag to take out a raccoon, either. And I don't care who knows I have guns. 

To buy one bottle of drain cleaner I had to have my driver's license copied.

To buy a half dozen AK-47's all I need is cash.  

Even if I am on the Terror Watch List, which I am not.

Even if I am on a No Fly List, which I am not.

 Even if I am on the Drain Cleaner Buyer List, which I am on.

Think about it.  I need documentation to buy drain clean but not an assault weapon. An that is just stupid. 

Girls and Guns

Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway

 Our recent post about Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn brought to mind the above photo.  We thought it was time for another installment of Girls and Guns.

Slim Keith

Marlene Dietrich

Carole Lombard

Helen Mirren

Hunting Season

Today is the beginning of deer hunting season in West Virginia. Hunting is a polarizing issue.


One of the most vivid memories I have of being with my father was hunting with him. I was four-years-old and he got me up before dawn and we went off in search of pheasant. It was bitterly cold and the sun was blinding. The stood me in front of his body and aligned my shoulder to touch his thigh and braced my body. I had watched him enough to know how I was supposed to hold the gun, and being left-handed, mirrored his position. He checked everything with the gun and with me and told me I could fire when ready. Of course I fired immediately, because what I wanted to do, more than shoot an actual bird was to just shoot the gun. I bagged no pheasant that day, but I will never forget those moments with my father.


Last year a young man that worked for me off and on told me he was going turkey hunting. His cousin was going lend him a rifle so he could hunt. He wanted to shoot three turkeys, so he could give one to each of the mothers of his children and have his own Christmas dinner. He was hunting to put food on the table.
I don't believe that the NRA, with its lobbyist in Armani suits, speaks for my handyman, or for me. In Washington, D. C., a city with the strictest gun laws in the nation, barley a week passed that I didn't hear the fire of an automatic weapon. The people firing them were not looking to put food on the table.


In her introduction to Women on Hunting, Pam Houston wrote:

"To hunt an animal successfully you must think like an animal, move like an animal, climb to the top of the mountain just to go down the other side, and always be watching, and waiting, and watching. To hunt well is to be at once the pursuer and the object of the pursuit. The process is circular, and female somehow, like giving birth, or dancing. A hunt, at its best, ought to look from the air like a carefully choreographed ballet."

You don't have to go with me... but I thought I would share with you some of my favorite actresses and a former First Lady "packing" along with a lovely song from Hem...

A-Hunting We Will Go