Childhood memory of a farm in Illinois

My father certainly didn’t hunt as much as I do, but from the time I was 9 or 10 years old he always made sure to include me when he did go hunting.

One trip we took every fall was to his cousin’s farm in Illinois where we’d stay in an old camp trailer out back behind the barn.

Dad would pick me up early from school on a Friday, and I’d settle into the backseat with our beagle Patches while he and Mom’s cousin Carlton, who was like an uncle to me, sat up front telling stories and smoking cigarettes.

We always got to the farm well after dark, and I remember shivering under the covers next to my old man until I fell asleep.

In the morning, after Dad and Carlton cooked breakfast, we’d start hunting. Actually, they hunted and I followed behind.

It was pretty country. The farm sat on the edge of a wide creek bottom bordered by timbered hills. In my mind’s eye I can still see the thickets where Patches would roust rabbits, and the ditch at the edge of the cornfield where we sometimes flushed coveys of Bobwhite quail.

Although still too young to hunt, I fired a shotgun for the first time there, nailing a hedge apple Dad had pointed out.

It was always a magical trip to a special place, and it planted a seed in me that grew to an obsession.

I hope the same happens to my friend Erik’s sons who join their dad each fall on a visit to our place in Malta.

This year was extra special. Henry shot his first pheasant and his little brother, Kasa, got his first bird, a sharptail grouse.

The birds, though, are only the icing on the cake. Erik says the boys look forward to the trip as much for the food and a football game or two on television as they do the hunting.

The accommodations are certainly a step up from that camp trailer behind the barn. We give them the run of the second floor of our old house and every year the boys complain when it’s time to leave.

Erik told us that Henry says Malta is his favorite place. I don’t often hear that, but I share his sentiment.

That farm in Illinois was always one of mine.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]