Carl Levitian
member
Being retired gives one alot of time on your hands, sometimes. That is if you can find spare time in between range trips, canoeing out on the nearby lake, fishing, reading a good book or two from the library, and general screwing off. Hey, I worked for it, I'm takin advantage of it.
The other day I had some time, and being as thunderstorms were comming, I deceided to stay off the water and tinker around the house. I ended up doing some maintanence on my walking stick collection.
Being a bit disabled in the walking department from some arthritis issues, I take my sticks seriously. A few are oil finished and need a rub down with some linseed oil now and then, while others have a spar urathane finish. I have a few Irish Blackthorns, two hornbeam's with root knob handles I made myself, and a couple longer hiking sticks. One is a hefty hornbeam staff. I like that old staff, I made it from a stout hornbeam tree, aged it down my basement for almost a year before I finished it. But what make it special to me, is it has saved a life, and taken one in defence.
Okay, nothing human, don't worry. The life it took was a pit bull. The life it saved was our little pet welsh corgi, and maybe my own when the pit bulls owner went beserk.
Years ago, we were for a woods walk in a place called Meadowside Nature center in Montgomery county Maryland where we live. The 'ol lady and myself were walking in the woods having a nice day, and as we came out of the woods to the parking lot of the nature center with our welsh corgi on her leash as per the leash law, a white pit bull who was off leash saw us and attacked. At the first the pit and his owner was about 50 yards away, and the pit made a beeline for us, with the owner yelling at his dog to stay, come back and so on. The pit was in his own world, intent on our dog. I tried to place myself in the way and fend him off with the stick I had, but he was fast and strong, and shoved by me and got a hold of our little corgi. My wife was yelling, the pits owner was running our way, and our dog was yelping and screaming in pain, and I'm not real sure of what happened. There was some collidiscope fleeting images like a high speed slide show in my memory of the incident, and I do remember grabbing my hiking staff with both hands and doing a sledge hammer overhead swing down on the pit bull. I think with all the fear for my dog and stuff pumping in my system, it must have been a "John Henry working on the railroad" effort in that swing.
It came down on the pits head and he dropped to the ground not moving at all. I was flooded with mixed feelings, fear, anger, being most of it. Our dog was bleeding from a torn shoulder, and the big young guy who was the pit bulls owner was charging at me shouting all kinds of threats of doom. How he was going to tear my MF'ing head off for hittinghis dog, how he was going to beat my grey bearded old a-- into the ground.
I don't make any illusions to understanding the younger generation. I don't understand the shaved head goatee thing with barb wire tatoo's. But I do understand when somebody is a threat. I still had a good hold of the staff, and in that jumbled up collection of images that is my memory of that afternoon, I remember I just kept swinging. Like a fury that was fed by rage. Rage that this idiot let his dog attack a member of our family, like our dog is. Rage that he was being such an a$$.
When we lived in the city, before daddy moved us out to the more countryfied outer suburbs, there was this alley in back of our apartment building. We, the nieghborhood kids, would have big stickball games in that alley. I was really good at stickball. That day in the park, I kept swinging with my best alley stickball swing, and when it was over, the shaved head guy was down on the asphault, and I had people telling me it was okay, calm down, the police are here, take it easy.
With 2 park police and a couple county police officers there for good measure, order was restored, and it was only then it was discoverd the pit bull was dead. This did little to improve the temper of the pit bulls owner, but he needing an ambulance could do little about it exept yell at the police that he demanded I be arrested. This being a saturday afternoon at Meadowside Nature Center, there had been alot of people in the parking lot, arriving and getting out of thier cars, or leaving and walking to thier cars. Over a dozen people gave first hand accounts to the police of what happened, and the young guy was arrested for attempted assault, and having a vicious dog out of control in public, and being wanted on a failure to appear charge. He was loaded into the ambulance and taken away with a broken left arm, some rib cage damage and some head injuries. Our dog went strait to the vet for emergency care, and sticthes to close the wound in her shoulder where the pit bull had grabbed.
Doing my stick maintance the other day, I looked over my hornbeam staff, and gently gave it a buffing with 0000 steel wool, and a fresh coat of Helmsman Spar Urathane. It's been a good woodswalking companion, and it deserves good care, as does my blackthorn sticks.
Sometimes theres nothing like a good sturdy piece of wood.
The other day I had some time, and being as thunderstorms were comming, I deceided to stay off the water and tinker around the house. I ended up doing some maintanence on my walking stick collection.
Being a bit disabled in the walking department from some arthritis issues, I take my sticks seriously. A few are oil finished and need a rub down with some linseed oil now and then, while others have a spar urathane finish. I have a few Irish Blackthorns, two hornbeam's with root knob handles I made myself, and a couple longer hiking sticks. One is a hefty hornbeam staff. I like that old staff, I made it from a stout hornbeam tree, aged it down my basement for almost a year before I finished it. But what make it special to me, is it has saved a life, and taken one in defence.
Okay, nothing human, don't worry. The life it took was a pit bull. The life it saved was our little pet welsh corgi, and maybe my own when the pit bulls owner went beserk.
Years ago, we were for a woods walk in a place called Meadowside Nature center in Montgomery county Maryland where we live. The 'ol lady and myself were walking in the woods having a nice day, and as we came out of the woods to the parking lot of the nature center with our welsh corgi on her leash as per the leash law, a white pit bull who was off leash saw us and attacked. At the first the pit and his owner was about 50 yards away, and the pit made a beeline for us, with the owner yelling at his dog to stay, come back and so on. The pit was in his own world, intent on our dog. I tried to place myself in the way and fend him off with the stick I had, but he was fast and strong, and shoved by me and got a hold of our little corgi. My wife was yelling, the pits owner was running our way, and our dog was yelping and screaming in pain, and I'm not real sure of what happened. There was some collidiscope fleeting images like a high speed slide show in my memory of the incident, and I do remember grabbing my hiking staff with both hands and doing a sledge hammer overhead swing down on the pit bull. I think with all the fear for my dog and stuff pumping in my system, it must have been a "John Henry working on the railroad" effort in that swing.
It came down on the pits head and he dropped to the ground not moving at all. I was flooded with mixed feelings, fear, anger, being most of it. Our dog was bleeding from a torn shoulder, and the big young guy who was the pit bulls owner was charging at me shouting all kinds of threats of doom. How he was going to tear my MF'ing head off for hittinghis dog, how he was going to beat my grey bearded old a-- into the ground.
I don't make any illusions to understanding the younger generation. I don't understand the shaved head goatee thing with barb wire tatoo's. But I do understand when somebody is a threat. I still had a good hold of the staff, and in that jumbled up collection of images that is my memory of that afternoon, I remember I just kept swinging. Like a fury that was fed by rage. Rage that this idiot let his dog attack a member of our family, like our dog is. Rage that he was being such an a$$.
When we lived in the city, before daddy moved us out to the more countryfied outer suburbs, there was this alley in back of our apartment building. We, the nieghborhood kids, would have big stickball games in that alley. I was really good at stickball. That day in the park, I kept swinging with my best alley stickball swing, and when it was over, the shaved head guy was down on the asphault, and I had people telling me it was okay, calm down, the police are here, take it easy.
With 2 park police and a couple county police officers there for good measure, order was restored, and it was only then it was discoverd the pit bull was dead. This did little to improve the temper of the pit bulls owner, but he needing an ambulance could do little about it exept yell at the police that he demanded I be arrested. This being a saturday afternoon at Meadowside Nature Center, there had been alot of people in the parking lot, arriving and getting out of thier cars, or leaving and walking to thier cars. Over a dozen people gave first hand accounts to the police of what happened, and the young guy was arrested for attempted assault, and having a vicious dog out of control in public, and being wanted on a failure to appear charge. He was loaded into the ambulance and taken away with a broken left arm, some rib cage damage and some head injuries. Our dog went strait to the vet for emergency care, and sticthes to close the wound in her shoulder where the pit bull had grabbed.
Doing my stick maintance the other day, I looked over my hornbeam staff, and gently gave it a buffing with 0000 steel wool, and a fresh coat of Helmsman Spar Urathane. It's been a good woodswalking companion, and it deserves good care, as does my blackthorn sticks.
Sometimes theres nothing like a good sturdy piece of wood.
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, and that the pit had been roaming (though not far- he hadn't gone more than 50 meters from where he had been kept). They said the neighbors were supposedly keeping the dog for a friend who was in jail. 
They let me put the dog in a fenced yard they had, but he was out again this evening when I was driving back to school. :banghead: