Birds in the living room, in the cornfield, and on the kitchen table

I am one of those lucky guys who grew up in a stable family with a father who was an excellent role model. Dad grew up in rural Iowa in a town called Goldfield. The toilet was out-of-doors. His mom was a sweet lady named Alice. Alice lived across the street from her sister, Nell, and Nell's family.

We had frequent extended family get-togethers, usually in Goldfield. We would be gathered in the living room of Alice's small house. Nell would start whistling like a bird singing, then she would pretend there was a bird somewhere in the house, and ask me to find the bird. I would persevere, looking in every nook and cranny of the house to no avail, while the family members would snicker. That Iowa sense of humor, good-natured, but nevertheless at someone's expense, was commonplace in my seventeen years of growing up there.

My uncle Bud would be at those gatherings. Bud had been a tail-gunner in the Air Force in World War II, shooting at Germans and being shot at by Germans. His nerves were a bit frayed after the war, and Dad felt great compassion for his brother, helping him buy a cafe in Des Moines. My most vivid memory of Bud was from a time when I had just turned sixteen. Dad and Bud were avid hunters. They decided to go pheasant hunting, and asked me to go with them. Usually when Dad asked me to go hunting with him, I rapidly came up with an excuse: "Thanks, Dad, but I have a basketball practice I've got to attend in order to get ready for next week's game." I knew that going duck hunting with Dad meant crawling on our stomachs in a blizzard.

Well, this time, I had an idea. If I could be the driver of the car, I could learn some skills needed to pass my driver's license. They agreed, since we would be on country roads and not likely to meet another car. As I was driving along on the beautiful autumn day, Uncle Bud, who was seated in the back seat of the Buick, started screaming excitedly, using words I can't repeat here. He demanded I stop the car, as he rolled down the window and pointed his gun out the window at a beautiful pheasant in the adjacent cornfield. "Bam!" We had pheasant for dinner that night, far and away the best part of hunting.