The Crush of Fame

    Every job has its irritations. If you’re a construction worker, for instance, you have to deal with drivers unmindful of speed limits and with the oppressive heat of the summer months. If you’re an office worker, there are the endless committees and sub-committees and sub-sub-committees, combined with all of the other nuisances of cubicle culture. And if you’re an outdoor writer, there is the constant crush of female attention. I don’t know what brings it about—perhaps camouflage combined with the overpowering allure of Hoppe’s No. 9—but it is endemic to the trade. In fact, Paul Wait, WOJ’s editor, recently e-mailed me that he couldn’t get a thing done due to the caterwauling of female admirers outside his office window.
     For me, it’s actually been a lifelong curse. Take, for instance, this typical phone conversation from when I was in high school:
Mom (yelling upstairs to my bedroom):  “Honey, you have a telephone call.”
Me:  “O.K., Mom. Hey, Denny. How many walleyes did you catch?”
Caller:  “Uh… this isn’t Denny. This is Rachel. You know me, right? I’m the head cheerleader. Listen, I know I’ve been dating Biff, the extremely good-looking star quarterback with the full ride to UW next year. But I saw you at the spelling bee, and the way you used “chrysalis” in a sentence just blew my mind. What are you doing for the prom?” (In all actuality, none of this occurred. I was a serial non-dater back then, although there was a cute freshman I asked to the prom when I was a senior and she sat adjacent to the percussion section during band. She said yes—which was cool—but her father wouldn’t let me in the door and sent me packing, corsage and all. I called my friend Denny, and I exchanged the corsage for a couple of dozen fathead minnows at a local bait/liquor store. Oh yes, and a bottle of Yukon Jack. We were eighteen, but we looked fourteen. Hard to see how they lost their license.)
     Which brings me, more or less, to turkey hunting. I enjoy it. I haven’t been at it too long—this will be maybe my sixth or seventh season—but already I’ve built a record of futility which I’ll stack against anyone’s. A couple of years back, my wife and I were living in Whitewater, and I worked as manager of a shooting range near Eagle in the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. A friend and customer heard my tales of missed and cut-off toms and took pity on me.
     “Why don’t you come out with me?” John said. “I’ve got some private land we can hunt on.”
     I accepted, and we made a date for early on Saturday morning of the fifth period, before I had to be at work.
     We slipped into the woods at 5 a.m. and set up on a little knoll, with John facing south and me facing north. As mosquitoes bored through our headnets we were surrounded by the booming gobbles of toms greeting the sunrise. John yelped a little on his slate, and me a little on mine, but we had no action until 8:30 when a tom gobbled once in answer to John’s yelps, and then shut up.
     “Get ready,” John whispered. “He might be coming in silently.”
     Long minutes passed, and at this point I should have repositioned myself on the other side of the knoll with John, so as to have a view of a field edge, which is after all where our decoys were. But I stayed facing north, not wanting to get caught flat-footed if the bird came around behind us.
     “Tom! Field edge!” John hissed suddenly.
     Because I was below the top of the knoll facing the wrong way, I had to swivel around and crawl a few feet to John.
     “Lay your gun on my legs,” he said. John knew that any further movement on my part would expose us to the bird.
     I aimed, but couldn’t get my head down far enough on the gunstock. The tom was nearing the outer limits of range.
     “BOOM!”
     That gunshot was the opening whistle to another year where my turkeys would come from the grocer’s freezer case, wrapped in mesh bags. I was in a black mood about my miss all day long at work, while I endured the teasing from friends familiar with my turkey-hunting exploits.
     On the way home, I stopped at a gas station to fill up my tank and pick up a six-pack of beer. Inside at the magazine rack was an absolutely stunning young woman. She had red hair and green eyes, if memory serves, although in hindsight it could have been green hair and red eyes. Whitewater is a college town, and in college towns you can never be too sure. I paid for my gas and beer, and when I turned from the counter she approached me, carrying a copy of Bridal Monthly.
     “Ahh, getting married,” I thought. “Good for her. I’d hate to get a reputation as a homewrecker, but it is free country.”
     “I’ve been trying to place you since you walked in,” she said, as the scent of her perfume reached my nostrils.
     “Here it comes,” I thought. “Probably read one of my articles.”
     She continued:  “… and I’ve just thought of it. You’re the guy who came out when my septic system overflowed.”
     So much for the crush of fame.
     Oh, and by the way, I’m no longer charging for autographs.