Mom's Moose—or Was it Two?

Like veterans, hunters and fishers can regale you with their stories for hours. My mother just sent pictures. For three decades, she lived ten miles from the nearest paved road and thirty miles from the nearest store. The 60-mile backroads route we sometimes took to her house concluded with a 17-mile stretch through deep woods that could be a lump in your throat challenge if you ever met a vehicle coming your way. Of course, you seldom did.

Not far from my mother's house was a lake with bass, perch, hornpout, and pickerel. There was also a stream filled with trout. Mom would look out her kitchen window in the morning and see deer, bear, moose, and a host of smaller animals. Since there was plenty of meat and fish close to home, there was little reason for going to the meat department of the grocery store in the nearest town. Besides the woods and lake, the only places to go were neighbors' houses, a fish hatchery with no trespassing signs, and, out on the paved road, a highway department depot and a fire station. My mother got to three out of four. When it got icy, she went to the depot. She would back her car up to the storage building where they kept road salt and shovel what she needed into a box in her trunk. Apparently, the highway department never objected. At the fire station, she found camaraderie, entertainment, and, sometimes, extra spending money. Those benefits all came from "Friday Night Bingo."

There was no mistaking the role bingo played in my mother's life. She did regale us with bingo stories, including how one night's winnings provided the five-hundred-dollar down payment needed for her and my father's first house. Whenever we visited Mom, we were expected to go with her to the firehall so we could meet her bingo buddies. Once, we followed her to a service station at which she planned to leave her car. On the back bumper was a sticker that said, "Support BINGO—keep Grandma off the streets!"

My mother’s hunting style was both novel and leisurely. It required a stack of ladies’ magazines, a lawn chair, and a 30-30 rifle. It began with a strategic location and setup. The strategic location was usually a clearing near a water source where she had previously seen the cloven prints of deer or moose. The setup involved unfolding her lawn chair just out of sight in the woods at the edge of the clearing. The ladies magazines were to pass the time until an animal came into view. You can guess the rest.

One year, when my mother’s name was drawn in the regional lottery for a moose-hunting license, she shot an 800-pound moose the first day and sent us a Teddy Roosevelt-like photo of the moose, herself, and her rifle. A year later, her husband’s name was picked and another moose was shot—even though, beyond a few feet, her husband was as blind as tree trunk.

My mother died a few days back. She was nearly 89. She lived her last few years next door to my brother on the edge of a city through which two Interstate highways pass and where people frequently encounter herds at malls but never a solitary moose.