Michael A. Sawyers
Cumberland Times-News
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On Monday, I bought my 2010-2011 Maryland hunting license. It is an annual ritual that I very much enjoy.
I usually make the purchase at the Department of Natural Resources Regional Office in the William Donald Schaefer Building on Pershing Street. It is a structure that I usually refer to as the old post office building, but which now can also be called the old district court building. For me, it’s easy to get to, being across South Mechanic Street and a door or two up from the Times-News.
You can buy the hunting license online now. It’s really easy, but it is not the same.
I like to go to a place to buy the license the way I did in 1960. The way you did too. Maybe you bought it at Storer Brothers at the corner of Virginia Avenue and Second Street or downtown on North Mechanic Street at Wilson Hardware.
In those days, you could buy a statewide hunting license or one that was good for just your county. My father and I always opted for the statewide version because a time or three each fall we would drive up to Whiskey Hollow area of Big Run in Garrett County and defy gravity by climbing those slopes to shoot squirrels.
Buying a hunting license is a harbinger of great things to come, but it also is a time machine that always makes me look back.
I remember working in the 1960s as a cashier at People’s Drug Store at the corner of Baltimore Street and Centre, in the building that now houses Downtown Dollar. Isn’t inflation something. In the old days just up the street was the 10-cent store, Murphy’s version. I bought a red hunting cap there. Maybe another 50 years from now there will be an establishment in Cumberland known as the Downtown Ten Dollar.
As I worked at People’s, I would fidget, waiting for my shift to end, hoping I still had enough daylight to make it to Polish Mountain to hunt squirrels for at least a little bit.
The majority of those trips were to a small piece of land owned and lived upon by John Crock. It was sandwiched into the Green Ridge State Forest and it held a lot of hickory trees gray squirrels.
A part of the day was always spent with John on his rural front porch where he would describe to my dad and I the evils of whomever was in local political office at the time. Seated there with his dog du jour nearby, John would opine, very strongly, about this or that.
My dad was a very successful salesman. Part of that success came in learning that opinions could be contrary to the one held by the person you are trying to get to spend thousands of dollars on your product. Thus, it was difficult to get Sawbuck, as he was known in his native cental West Virginia, to take a stance about whether or not poo-poo had an offending odor.
As dad’s hunting days dwindled, he would park near John’s where he would use his hunt-from-vehicle permit and often bring home a limit of bushytails.
These are the kinds of things that buying a hunting license makes me remember.
I have kept a lot of my hunting licenses, though they were more colorful and keepable than the relatively nondescript version now offered by Maryland.
I remember vividly a hunting trip in 1960 in Lewis County, W.Va., my birthplace. I was either 13 or 14 depending upon that trip’s relationship to Oct. 19.
I was sandwiched between my father, who was behind the wheel, and my great-uncle Sam Posey in the passenger seat as we waited for daylight to break. The big talk of the day was the upcoming presidential election.
Much of the talk was about John F. Kennedy and his religion. My mother was a devout and doctrinal Catholic. Religion was just something that my father didn’t deal with. It wasn’t a part of his life. He didn’t say anything against it. He just didn’t say anything about it.
As the talk about the election went on, my great-uncle said, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. I sure ain’t voting for no (expletive deleted) Catholic,” where upon my father gently elbowed me, which I took to mean two things.
One — “Hey, old uncle Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Two — “Don’t say anything.”
Anyway, I killed my first ruffed grouse that day so I really didn’t care who got elected.
Buying a license makes me think of numerous years in the 1990s when Sept. 1 meant I would get with Gary Carpenter, Bob Phillips and the late Doug Buckalew for our annual trip to open the dove season in Washington County, topped off with a filling dinner at the Park-N-Dine in Hancock.
I like buying hunting licenses. Next year I get all those memories for just $5.
Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
