Leukemia had ravaged Pop's body for more than a year. On October 2, 1991, he fell into a coma. It was then that I made a desperate attempt to bring him back to consciousness by slapping his sallow face. At first, the strikes were temperate, but they grew harder. I was hoping he would come to at any moment and hit me back. I thought I could hear Pop calling to me like he always did, "Boy." "Kid." "Son." Images of our many shared experiences, undervalued during my adolescence, paraded across my mind. My mother reached up to stop my hands, "Ricky, it's not helping. We have to let him go." At that moment, I understood Pop's fatherly goal - to teach me how to be a man. The struggles of maturation had kept us at odds most of my formative years. Now it was too late to show my appreciation and make amends. He was gone.
As a boy, I did not understand the extraordinary value and importance of the time-sacrifices that Pop made for me. "Good times" were when he could be outdoors, especially during hunting season, no matter the weather. It seemed as if I was no more than a gofer. Always "going for" stuff made me angry, so I tried to reduce Pop's enjoyment of hunting on occasion by acting like a petulant child.
The lower part of the Palmetto State is full of swamps and marshes, a waterfowler's paradise. Pop and I spent many weekends around Rimini Swamp, Lake Marion's northernmost area. South toward Charleston and Georgetown's coastal regions is a wildlife refuge teeming with fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. It's a wilderness wonderland, fuel for a growing boy's imagination and sense of adventure. Join me on a quacking good trek to manhood!
Sprache
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
mit Schutzumschlag
Maße
Höhe: 222 mm
Breite: 145 mm
Dicke: 18 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-7372975-0-5 (9781737297505)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Richard C. Meehan, Jr. was born on July 18, 1960, near the end of the Baby Boom. His mother trained to be a nurse, and his father was a chemist. Richard grew up in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The language of that time included comments such as "Peace, man," "Cool, baby," and "Groovy!" Televisions were black-and-white. The day's big news stories were the Vietnam War, the Peace Movement, and the lunar landings by NASA's Apollo spaceships. People of the era witnessed, with amazement, the advent of color T.V., air conditioning, and cordless phones. Young Americans saw the time as inspirational.
Richard Sr. was an avid outdoorsman by hobby. He took his son along on many duck hunts and fishing trips into the historically significant Santee Swamp in the Low Country of South Carolina. The number and depth of Nature-based experiences provided by Richard Sr. and his hunting and fishing best friends were incredible. Nature, the best environment for learning and growth.
In 1982, after graduating from Wofford, his hometown college, Richard Jr. became a full-time employee of Marko Janitorial Supply, his parents' business. Over the next thirty-eight years, he performed all jobs at the company but was primarily a marketing expert. Richard's writing appears in fiction and nonfiction magazines, e-zines, newspaper columns, and novels. He enjoys making music with his voice, the saxophone, and the piano. He lives in Spartanburg, S.C., with his wife, Renee, a teacher, and Indy, an antisocial indoor cat who has little to do with him, even though he feeds her daily.
