Neanderpundit

Vman reminisces, and I can hear the tune pretty clearly, it plays hard in my heart sometimes too. Anyway, he asks, what are my three best things?

I don’t have pictures at present, but I may come back and get some.

Dad’s watch. A South Bend Railroad watch. Nothing fancy, plain nickel case, but a hard wearing workingman’s pocketwatch. Dad bought a suit secondhand to give my aunt away, my grandfather already being an insufferable bastard at that time. The watch was in the vest pocket of the suit. Dad paid two dollars for the suit, and still had it when I was in my teens, a bit threadbare but still hanging in the closet. And the watch is still in my dresser drawer. I wind it once a year, and have a Stroh’s, for Dad.

Uncle Calvin’s Troy Bilt. Still runs like new, though this one is so old it has a four digit serial number. Calvin put five kids through Catholic schools farming with that little red tiller and a pair of Gravelys.

Dad’s Remington. A plain-jane 870, so base model it didn’t have a rib- bought for $80 at a time when $80 was the price of new shoes for a family of four. Came with a box of shells, Montgomery Ward #6 shot. Ten shells are missing, each one represents a rabbit. Of all the firearms I own I never take it out, rarely does it get uncased, I just know it’s there and like it fine like that.

Those are my three best things.

Impala liver pate. Ate this at a small private game ranch in Zambia. Also sampled a half dozen different game meats in a kind of a wierd mixed grill. This post by Elisson jogged my memory.

The pate, as well as the Impala, were incredible. SO I know the chef was capable.

Today I found a website that showed me how to make a cable for my GPS, another place that had a free software download to look a the tracks.

Looking at the places I’ve been, looking at the google earth aerials of the locations.

And now I miss Africa. I miss waking up in the cool morning and putting on a kettle for tea, miss making bacon for the guys, miss drinking tea with a healthy dollop of sugared African honey. I miss the mosquito nets. I miss the smell of the bush.

I miss carrying a rifle everyday. I miss sitting down at the end of the day in camp, eating a piece of something I killed earlier that day, cleaning a rifle, sharpening my white hunter, drinking tea,writing in my journal.

When I got to Zambia my first reaction was ‘What a shithole”.
Now I long to be there again. I want to see ndola during a rain. I want to drive an airboat across the bangueulu flats. I want to see Mike Fisher and sleep in a grass roofed hut in a low dambo surrounded by impala and blue balled vervet monkeys.

I don’t know how Africa got undermy skin, but it did.

Update: because grammadeece asks, here’s a link to a picture of a vervet monkey. I didn’t take a pic myself, but this is a good one, that demonstrates their- er- unique appendages well.