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When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Shopping—for Guns

M
y brother-in-law Dave hunts pheasant and deer. A week before hunting season a gigantic new store for outdoorsmen opened and Dave took me along for a quick shopping trip. The store looks like one of those giant rustic log hotels you see in the national parks. It is made out of immense peeled logs, sixty or seventy feet long, as thick around as one of the oddly, prissily clean, brand-spanking-new pickup trucks in the parking lot. The building almost screams “Teddy Roosevelt Slept Here,” except for the fact that it was obviously built yesterday. The testosterone is still wet.

Massive, twelve-point deer heads hang along either side of the main aisle, which leads to a forty-foot-tall man-made mountain in the center of the gigantic store. Climbing the mountain are stuffed trophy kills from raccoon to grizzly, from big-horned sheep to a giant sloth. It had one of everything that could be shot and stuffed except a Sasquatch.

“Why is it that being stuffed and mounted is good enough for a grizzly, but not good enough for, say, Grandpa?” I ask Dave. “I miss the old guy, but I’ve never visited his grave. Now I’m thinking, why did we spring for a stone, when for the price of a mid-range coffin we could have had him stuffed and put in the TV room? I think he’d go as well with our décor as any stuffed elk or mountain goat.” Dave said nothing. He has learned not to listen to me.

Past Mount Mounted on the right is the Cold and Wet Department—an endless variety of canoes, kayaks, fishing rods, tackle, waders. On the left is hunter’s paradise—rifles, shotguns, bows, arrows, deer stands. In between the two departments is everything the camper could desire—camp stoves, lightweight pots, flashlights, bug spray, tents, sleeping bags. Face it, if it’s not in this store, it doesn’t exist. An outdoor lover could drop a paycheck in here faster than you can say, “Hand me that brand-new snakebite kit.”

I’m feeling a little uncomfortable in here. It is sooo manly. Even the underwear they sell has a camouflage pattern on it. I saw a guy walk by pushing two toddlers in a camouflage stroller. It’s not like I’m Truman Capote, but I am an indoorsman. To me, game is something you play, not something you shoot. The only thing I have ever stalked is a dust bunny. And it got away. This is so far past my macho comfort level it’s off the charts.

As we’re walking around, I spot a rack of fleece jackets with a nylon shell on the outside for nineteen dollars apiece. I wear those synthetic fleece things around the house all the time because, unlike sweaters, they have pockets and you don’t have to take them to the dry cleaners, you can just toss them in the wash.

Nineteen dollars? These things are a deal. So I take off my jacket and slip one off the hanger. Just as I stick my arm into the sleeve, a salesman rushes up and says in a megaphone-like voice, “Sir, those are women’s jackets!” The moment he speaks there is one of those strange moments when everything for half a second goes deadly quiet. You can hear him from the front of the store to the back.

I guess I should have known from the camouflage pantyhose that I was in the Women’s Department, but I honestly didn’t see them. They blended in too well with the camouflage bras and camouflage thongs.

To the store’s credit, they didn’t ask me to leave. It was Dave who suggested I might be more comfortable waiting for him in his truck.

It’s My Lucky Day

T
he state lottery jackpot this week was one hundred and fifty-five million dollars. The line to buy tickets at the Gas ’n’ Go Away snaked out the door and into the parking lot. Last week the prize was “only” eight million dollars. There was no line to buy tickets then. You could have walked right in and bought as many tickets as you wanted. But it seems gas station gamblers don’t have much use for eight million dollars; however, they think that a hundred and fifty-five million might come in handy.

“Eight million? Chump change,” says the guy in line in front of me. “If you think I’m going to stand in line for a lousy eight million dollars you got another think coming. You couldn’t even quit your job with that kind of money. When you split it up between me, the wife, and the seven kids—why, it hardly comes to anything. If I was the kind of person who could be happy living on next to nothing, what the hell, I’d get a job.”

Me, I was there just trying to buy a half-gallon of one-percent milk. There are only a hundred or so people in front of me, and the line is moving pretty quickly. Talk about luck; I’ll be able to get out of here in half an hour or so. Meanwhile my line partner fills me (and everyone near us) in on the finer points of lottery betting.

“Now, I’m taking a big risk buying $200 worth of the hundred and fifty-five million tickets. What if I have to split it with someone? That would make me crazy. When I think of the time I’ve spent coming up with these numbers, and then to share the prize with somebody who just reached up and pulled the numbers out of thin air—I don’t think I could handle it. To have to split the pot with an amateur? That would practically kill me. And then there’s the taxes. That’s the government for you. Always sticking their hand in your back pocket. They want to take half my money. It ain’t fair. Who did all the work? I did! So between the taxes and the bum I have to share the prize with I’m down to thirty-nine million.

“Thirty-nine million. Is that supposed to make up for all those years I did without? Well, I didn’t do without so much, but the wife and kids sure have. I’d hate to think they went without shoes and food for all those years for nothing.”

My milk is room temperature. It’s turned into some kind of gooey liquid cheese. I would go back and get more but the line has gotten longer. Besides, it’s one-percent milk, who’s going to know the difference?

Since I have been standing here the jackpot has gone up to a hundred and seventy million dollars. What happened to the fast, friendly service that the Gas ’n’ Go Away is known for? You used to be able to come here buy some overpriced gas and some overpriced milk and get shoved right out. This is taking forever. My line mates are starting to quarrel over the best way to spend their winnings.

“Then, do I take it as a lump sum or spread it out over twenty years? Sure, the lump sum is a lot less cash, but then I can invest it myself instead of the state.”

“What do you know about investing?” the guy behind us sneers. “If you know so much about the stock market why are you in line with the rest of us? Take the yearly payments. That way you’ll never have to worry about money again.”

“Either way will be fine with me,” chimes in another guy, “as long as you don’t tell my wife I won.”

It turned out that none of them had to worry about how to spend the money. The winning ticket was sold a thousand miles away to a man who had bought his first and only lottery ticket on a dare from a friend.

Thanks to

Josh Oswald and the crew at United Media

The Franklin Stage Company for letting me work this out on their stage

The Franklin Free Library for letting me abuse my privileges

Travis Williams for the title

All my friends in Delaware County, New York

David J. Krajicek, who pushed me to do this

and

Sue Mullen, who insists I get out of my pajamas by noon