Woods, Water and Wonderment

By John Alan Negich

If you, as a child, have ever watched a bobber floating on a farm pond during a bluebird summer day, or learned to appreciate quiet hours sitting silently in the woods on beautiful fall afternoon, or ever shared a week with friends at a remote cabin deep in the mountains on deer season, this book will help shed a little light on why you and I are hunters and fishermen. However, above all, hopefully it will help rekindle all of those precious memories of days gone by that we all cherish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Alan Negich
• Release date: Dec 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463987896

John Alan Negich

John Alan Negich still lives in Export, a small Western Pennsylvania coal town where he grew up. He has been writing most of his life and cut his teeth on reading the classics by authors like H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. His most recent work Retribution; reflects the influence that his home town, its people and its memories had on his writing. John is a storyteller who paints a picture with his words that gives the reader the sense they are standing in the locations where the novel takes place and actually seeing, hearing and touching the characters.

Book preview

Woods Water and Wonderment

Short Stories and poems

Honoring hunting, Fishing, Nature and Other Things I treasure

Written and illustrated by

John Alan Negich

© 2018 John A. Negich. All Rights Reserved

Other books by the author

Available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle

Retribution – A dark tale about a WWII army ranger’s fight to protect, defend and right the wrongs done to the ones he loves

My Life in Rhymes – Is a book of poetry that depicts the times, people and places that have impacted the author’s life.

Many times a poem leaves the reader to wonder what message the author is trying to convey.

The poems contained in this book were written well before these stories were penned. I hope the stories will provide a glimpse into my intended thoughts and feelings when I wrote them.

This book dedicated to

My parents, John and Margaret Negich

My in laws, Walter and Mary Jane Coldren

The aunts, uncles and cousins that helped shape me

All my friends, family and extended family that shared many of these memories with me

We must treat our planet as if it was our only child and remember that human progress is not always Mother Nature’s friend

Fencerow

Fencerow in the snow

Bleached gray by countless days

Your borderline determined

By the ground on which you lay

Your purpose is long since gone

And now you stand forlorn

Dividing now progress and past

Not pasture fields and corn

Table of Contents

Memories of My Father

Morris’s Pond

Hunting with Uncle Moose

The All-Nighter

A Tree in the Woods

Poker Flat

The Monday after Thanksgiving

Crossbow Buck

The Old Man’s Gun

A Rainy Day Jake

Black Raspberries

Wyoming Fish on Ranch

Christmas Morning

My Day at the Gym

Sergeant Michael F. McHugh

Memories of My Father

1957

The love of the outdoors is like a seed, which when carefully planted in an individual, and properly cultivated, will through the years, blossom into an infinite number of truly unforgettable experiences. Some of which will linger in a special place reserved for only the most precious kind of memories. Remembrances of stepping into the woods before sunrise on a freezing cold frosty morning the first day of buck season, the sound of beagles running a rabbit on a rainy and chilly day in the fall, or sitting in the woods waiting for a bushy tail to appear from hiding on a bright sunlit November afternoon.

The following story of recollected memories is for those of us who were lucky enough to have had that seed planted by a father, uncle, cousin or brother long ago. A seed that has bloomed into a deep appreciation of hunting in the fields and forests of Pennsylvania and the gift of being able to look back fondly and recall the people and moments that shaped us as hunters. Great memories of special times that can easily be relived simply by leaning back in your easy chair, closing your eyes and recalling the good times that were part of Days Gone By.

I was just a fuzzy headed kid with dirty rolled up jeans, a pair of high top black tennis shoes and a Davey Crockett t-shirt roaming the woods and fields near my home. I recall having a mason jar tucked snugly under my arm, a long straight walking stick in my hand that served a multitude of purposes, and there was always a pen knife in my pocket. The jar, of course, was for any interesting specimen I would manage to catch, or for the frog eggs that I hoped would finally be in the pond near the old deserted farm house. How proud my teacher would be if I was the first one in class to capture such a rare prize. She would surely display them on the window sill so we could watch as they became tadpoles, and I would have the opportunity to describe the metamorphosis to all of my interested classmates. The stick on the other hand could transform into a tool of many purposes. It could become a climbing aid if I decided to attempt to scale the steep slope of the slag pile at the edge of town pretending it was Mount Everest. Or it might magically become a shiny new Ithaca pump shotgun if I happened to bounce a bunny from the thicket or flush a rooster out of the brush during my trek into the wilderness. The knife was of course for protection from any and all dangers or imaginary creatures that a boy of my age might encounter while I explored the countryside. It might simply be used for carving my initials into the bark of a tree or shaping the end of my walking stick into a spear. I feel so fortunate to have experienced many such days during my youth in the outdoors, with the sun, the woods, the abundance of game and the wonders of nature so close at hand. They stick in my memory and are as vivid to me now, as the day they happened.

The room was dark when I awoke, with just a faint glimmer of light that slid under the door of my bedroom to disturb the darkness. I snuggled deeper into the warm softness of the bed and pulled the covers snugly around my body to shut out any cold air that would try to creep in. I knew someone was awake because I could smell the mixed aroma of coffee and bacon coming from the kitchen. But knowing that it was Saturday, it was still dark outside and there was no school, the bed felt just too comfortable to leave.

Saturday!!!!! I was suddenly wide awake as I realized that today was the first day of small game season. To a young boy of nine going on ten, this day held as much joy and excitement as any day could ever hold, even if I was not old enough to hunt myself. I cautiously, but quickly slipped out of bed trying not to wake my little brother who was sharing the bed with me. A brief chill ran through me as my feet hit the cold linoleum floor. Today I did not give it a second thought as I dressed quickly and made my way to the kitchen as fast as possible and said, Good Morning Dad.

Hey kid, He said without looking up from his breakfast. Dad was not much for idle conversation, especially when he was eating.

Where are you going to hunt today? I asked with all the enthusiasm I could muster.

He slowly leaned back in his chair, thought for a moment as he picked bacon from between his teeth. I think I’ll go out to the Karp farm and hunt the apple orchard behind the house where it meets the corn field. Maybe I can catch that old rooster we saw crossing the road there the other day feeding in the corn. I knew the place well as we had spent a lot of time in the area picking wild black raspberries in July and collecting walnuts in the fall. Can I go with you please Dad, please, please? I pleaded.

I had asked to go with him many times before and had always been met with the same response. Maybe when you get a little older, I will let you walk along with me he would say. He was a man of few words and his usual answer to any of my other questions were usually Whatever it is you want, the answer is no.

However, this time he hesitated just a bit and my spirit began to soar. He walked over to the white porcelain stove, poured another cup of coffee and said, Dress warm, put on your rubber boots and wear my old orange vest. My mother of course was hesitant, but he assured her we would only be gone for a couple hours and he was growing tired of me pestering him about going. It’s time the boy gets a taste of it to see if he really wants to be a hunter. He snapped.

She reluctantly agreed, so we piled into the old Chevy and I was off on my first real hunt.

I walked behind him tracing his footsteps and watched as he moved along the thick hedgerow that separated the apple orchard and the harvested corn field. I could hear the dry autumn leaves crackle under Dad’s boots as he walked slowly and alertly through the brush, searching out and kicking every possible piece of cover that the big bird might be hiding in. Suddenly there it was, a brilliant thundering mass of color and blurred wings climbing through the now barren limbs of the apple trees. With a quick and rock steady movement Dad raised the JC Higgins 12 gauge pump, took quick and careful aim and sent the ring necked bird plummeting to the ground.

After he retrieved the bird, he turned, and with a sly grin on his face, he winked at me. The experience was all and more than I could ever have imagined and I knew that on that overcast morning in October of 1957, a new hunter was born.

It was a hot and bright August afternoon in 1958