The old man bought a barrel of apple cider every fall, just about the time the hunting seasons started in New England.
It wasn’t one of your piddlin’ little make-believe barrels you could drink up in a single sittin’ party, but a big wooden multi-gallon cask that took two men to wrestle around and get in place.
The old gent owned a beat-up car that sophisticates would call a “vintage” vehicle. It was a very old Maxwell. Its canvas top was gone, and it was colder than the devil away from home when we used it during rabbit season. But, he could afford it, it started faithfully in zero-degree temperatures, and it took him where he wanted to go.
Every fall, the old man went somewhere in the Maxwell with his empty barrel in the back seat. When he came home, the barrel had a new head on it and it was filled with fresh cider. Several times I helped get the barrel into its cooling spot. It was an onerous job. His Maxwell was no pickup truck, tailgate rigged. Somehow, we always managed to get the barrel up and over and onto the ground without springing hoope or stave.
We’d roll it around to the back of the cabin and onto its weather-worn hemlock plant supports.
“There!” the old gent would say, “you set there awhile and think. We’ll talk to you later?”
Unless you have been up and about early mornings in northern New England in January and February, you simply cannot understand how bushed you can get during a two- or three-hour morning trek.
We were up and away some January mornings by 6:30 or 7. I mean, in the woods at that hour. By shooting the light, it was often so cold that our dogs, good and proven hounds, couldn’t hold a trail. We took no stands on those frigid days — just pushed a frosty way up and over hemlock hills in a vain effort to get warm.
The two of us returned to the old gentlman’s cabin at mid-morning one of those 5-degree days. There’d been no cheating up on the mountain. We had answered the call to hunt, but there’d be no gunning. By 11, we were bone-tired and frosted through.
We sat on the edge of his bed until we could flex our fingers again. Then, the old man said, “Paul, let’s have a word with that barrel.”
We took in hand a rusty augur and a length of iron pipe. He told me to bring along a piece of firewood. Together, we plowed snow around back of his cabin, where the barrel was. The first time I took part in this annual winter ritual, I didn’t have the slightest idea what the old man was up to.
We bored a hole a bit off center in the barrel’s head. Nothing but a little slush came out when the augur was pulled out. Then, he set the iron pipe in the hole and commenced to drive it in with the piece of firewood. After several vigorous whacks, it was apparent he’d struck home.
After the first hitch and halt of slush-mash came through, the clearest prime liquid trickled out of the pipe and into the snow. In jig time, we swapped auger and mallet for a couple of tumblers, carrying them back brim-full into the cabin’s warmth.
What the chemistry was that converted some orchardists’ drops into that affecting brew, I shall never know. Whether the old man doctored the barrel before he put a head back on, remains a mystery.
My guide is long gone at this writing. We rarely swapped questions. Hunting, just hunting, was the whole bond in our affections. So, his liquor recipes are, like him, only another piece of the ages.
One sip made music and two produced poetic melody and pattern. One more pull brought about whole symphonies taking over to create dramatic overtures grandly written upon hunting themes.
Further imbibing put you shoulder to shoulder with Boone and Crocket and Lewis and Clark and, well, every mountain man, hunter and explorer whose name has ever appeared in the glorious pages of derring-do outdoors history.
The morning was cold no more.
In the winter of 1942, the old man came down to our home shortly before I went overseas. He said he had something for me.
“It’s only the left hind foot that’s any good,” he said, and put the broad furry thing in my hand. “It’s for good luck.”
He spoke about the hunting we’d do when I got back. Then he shook hands and left.
Two years went by. The rabbit’s foot that had been damp and limp at the joint dried out when it became part of the duffel sailors carry with them. The rabbit’s foot and I got home safe and sound. But, the old man was gone. I still have his rabbit’s foot tucked away among my socks.
But, I often wish, when I take out that memento of times past, that he’d left me his secret for getting up that cider smash we so joyously shared those man-chilling, deep-freeze days.