THE ONE BAD MEAL I EVER HAD IN DEER CAMP

In the old days my hunting club was famous for one thing. No, it wasn’t the hunting. It wasn’t even our dedication to conservation. Hell no! It was our unbelievable dinners! You never headed up to camp and worried about being hungry. The thing you worried about was, if when you got home your uniforms and suits still fit.

We were blessed. We had a bunch of older members who did not participate much in the hunting anymore. Hell, one guy rarely brought a gun with him. These men were “socializers”. They did all the shopping, all the cooking, most of the drinking and they were the “liaisons” to the local townspeople. While way past their hunting prime, they were the first ones to open camp. These incredible men, who for most of the year were subjects of their own individual afflictions, would again come back to life, revitalized! The call of the wild was in the air. It was hunting season!

Every October at the regular club meeting, the president would gavel the members till quiet and under the “guise” of new business would ask for volunteers for the “housemother” position for the upcoming seasons. First the archers, Big Bob W’s hand would go up. “I’ll take the first week of Bow”. Back then, there were not a lot of guys “into” the archery season. In my early years (mid 80’s) there were about eight guys who would regularly schedule vacation time for the Bow Season. Big Bob W. was famous for his “leg of lamb”. Guys would start drooling at just the mention of it. The president again would slam the gavel. “What about Gun Season?” The old skinny irishman in the back of the room, who had been holding his own court, raised his hand. Thank God! Old Tommy Gordon stood and said, “hey ffffkco, I’ll take the first ffffing week of gun”. The howling would begin. Everybody knew Tommy, or FFFFing Gordon as he was usually called, ran a great camp. He got the job done and there was always plenty of tomfoolery. FFFFing Gordon could break a man’s balls and leave him scarred for life. The housemother designated chores. If you got the toilet, it better be clean. If you got firewood, it better be stacked neatly. If you were new and got the sink after dinner, you were in for a long night. FFFFing Gordon would have a couple of guys clearing the table. You’d be in the sink, another guy to your right drying the dishes that you handed him. He’d hand them to another guy to be put on the shelf; except instead of going on the shelf, they’d be handed to a runner out the back door of the house. He’d run them to the front door and hand them to one of the table clearers who would smear them with leftovers and the process would begin again. I’ve seen guys in the sink washing dishes for two ffffing hours before they realized that they had been duped. Laughs, unfffingbelievable! That’s the kind of man FFFFing Gordon was, he ran a tight ship. He was a great cook and quite a character, all 95 lbs. of him.

A typical meal in camp was a big roast (beef or pork, big enough for 25 grown men), three different fresh vegetables, bread, butter and gravy. I’m telling you, 45 minutes before the sun went down, you’d be in your stand salivating and hoping the sun would go down just a little faster. Just to get to dinner! The man could cook and no amenity was left unturned!

As is the custom in just about every camp, guys bring things. They bring stuff to make camp more enjoyable. Some guys would stop at the Entenmann’s factory and grab 20 boxes of different cakes and donuts. Some guys would bring huge bottles of Chianti, and some guys would bring fruit and candy. I would stop at a friend’s store and purchase his best Genoa salami. If you craved it, it was there. One guy had a son that worked in McDonalds. He clipped a big box of frozen hamburger patties. If you came out of the woods for lunch it was easy enough to slap a couple of patties on the grill and be enjoying your lunch in short order. We ate like kings. Every meal, you just could not wait to get to the table.

I remember one Saturday night towards the end of the season. There were about 8 -9 guys in camp, but most were leaving the next day. FFFFing Gordon was the housemother. He was in a conundrum over what to serve for dinner. There was lots of stuff still in the fridge, but since camp was closing down soon he wanted to make sure that the big freezer was empty and turned off. The only thing left in the freezer was about 30 of the frozen hamburger patties. The light went on in FFFFing Gordon’s head --- AAhhhhhhhh – MEAT LOAF!

Ya know the old expression that “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”?

FFFFing Gordon yelled “two minutes till dinner”. A couple of guys grabbed the vegetables from the kitchen and set them on the table. Others were in the bunkroom and hustled to the table. We were all seated except for FFFFing Gordon. From the dining room we could see FFFFing Gordon fussing and cursing in the kitchen over something. With that, he appeared in the doorway of the dining room holding a big roasting pan. Somebody yelled, “smells good, what are we having?” FFFFing Gordon laid the pan on the table and kind of backed away as he muttered “ffffing meatloaf”! One of the men leaned over and sliced about twelve 1” portions and filled each man’s plate. It was like poetry in motion. Almost simultaneously we all took our first bite. Almost simultaneously we all shrieked the same thing -- “FFFFING GORDON”! Yeccccccch! OMG it tasted like a combination of sawdust and corrugated ffffing cardboard.

Funny how unfair life is! Of all the great meals that man cooked. Of all the funny shit that man pulled. He will always be remembered for that ffffing meatloaf!

RIP Tommy