The Freshley Boys, Oysterville Duck Hunters – a generation or two ago

We’ve had our share of rain the last few days.  Lake Little has taken over the meadow east of our house.  There are soggy spots on the lawn on the way out to the chicken coop.  Day before yesterday, I don’t think I ever could see the bay shore at the end of the lane  — not through the sheets of downpour.

My mother would have said, “Nice day for ducks!” with that cheerful note in her voice that meant “no big deal.”  Dad would have remained silent.  He was more the “It’ll burn off by eleven o’clock” kind of guy, but only if he thought it would.  He was often silent in the winter, but seldom wrong in the summer.

From the sound of things out there yesterday, it was a good day for duck hunters, too.  There was a lot of pop-pop-popping out in front of our place and toward the south.  The sound reverberates so much around our yard that it’s hard to tell just where it’s coming from.  But, as I’ve said before, it’s a nostalgic, reassuring sound to me — one of those ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world” kind of sounds.  Or at least “…all’s right with Oysterville.”  (Which reminds me of what my Uncle Edwin is said to have remarked during a very loud thunderstorm, “God must be out hunting!”  He was three or four.)

My father, “a proper Bostonian” as my mother sometimes said, was not a hunter, but my mother’s brothers were — especially Edwin.  We still have his 12-gauge, double-barrel (side-by-side) shotgun    It was also Ed who dug clams commercially  during high school when times were hard.  I don’t know how much of the local bounty found it’s way to the table, however.  There are recipes in my grandmother’s “Receipt Book” for clam chowder, for baked oysters, for poached salmon, and for cooking live crab — but little else.  I have the feeling that they’d had enough of all those “treats” by the time the Great Depression was over.

Wiegardt Father and Son, South of Oysterville, 2018 — A Chinook Observer Photo

Too, my grandfather was a dairy farmer and there was always butchering to be done in the fall, so beef was plentiful.  He kept a few pigs, too, and of course, chickens.  Those provided the staple meats that I grew up with and are still the mainstays of our menus.  But I do miss the days when Nyel was one of the folks out pop-popping away on the bay and I’m so grateful that, occasionally, some of our hunter friends share their bounty with us.  Always a taste of Oysterville at its best!