Good-Old-Day Stories - A Way To Spend Time Off
By MVP Outdoors, Special to the Pekin Times (01/09/07)

Most people on their day off enjoy going hunting or fishing or maybe just spending time in the great outdoors.

Since I spend most of my time doing that during my working hours I enjoy going to a local diner and having coffee with some of my old retired cronies - Lyle, George and Wally. I just enjoy hearing old stories of the good old days.

Most of us have a fascination with the past, an enjoyment of the present and concern for the future. Usually the present will greatly forecast the future when we act on those concerns.

Our Saturday coffee moments always start out light but in a short time get serious and informative. Lyle and George always seem to have important things to tend to, like picking up the mail.

This last time it was Wally and I solving the world issues.  I asked Wally what experiences he had that shaped the way he enforced game laws. After that question the stories started to flow.

“It was 1967 when I had to respond to my first drowning. A father and son had fallen out of their boat in a farm pond,” he said. “  The look of the bodies troubled me for days, I was unable to eat or sleep. Some time later I was at a sporting goods store and there was a mannequin wearing hunting clothes on display. The color tones of the mannequin looked too much like the skin tones of someone who had drown. That experience put into motion a mind set that affected the way I dealt with people who didn’t have life preservers. You just don’t know when you could have saved someone’s life.”

~Then this: “I was at the foot of the Pekin Bridge and there was a nine year old girl wading in the water when she stepped on some glass and cut her foot pretty bad. I loaded her up in the squad car and headed to the hospital. That instilled in me the idea to do something about littering and throwing bottles along the water ways.”

~And this:“There was an 8 year old boy shooting robins with his air gun in Creve Coeur, well he was too young to arrest so I took him home. My goal was that his parent and I would be able to educate the youth and get him on a positive course.

“ The boy’s father knew what the young man was doing and threatened me and wanted to fight. At the time I was on a committee to make recommendations to legislature for law changes. That parent’s disregard for the law lead to a change in the law that now allows for a parent to be charged with the same offense as the child in similar circumstances.”

~ Finally, this: “A father and son were fishing at Spring Lake and the young man caught his first fish. The fish was under size and the boy’s dad allowed him to keep it. The dads comment was ‘Yeah, but it was his first fish!’  It would have been better to teach the young man right from wrong.”’

There is a story behind every circumstance that shapes the way we think.