With an active mind you never know what might pop into your head. Today I was driving along in my old pickup with the radio tuned to an AM station and heard an advertisement from a farm supply store that took me back to my youth. They wanted to sell me things like curry combs, shears, halters, etc. It's been a long time since I held a curry comb in my hand. I always liked using one in the spring when animals were shedding winter coats. Gypsy, the dog, looked especially good with her thick, matted fur combed away. I was probably too energetic while pulling it through those clumps since she'd turn around to snap at me whenever I pulled too hard. She always looked so much better, though, when I'd hurry her shedding process along.
An image of our silage pile popped up, too. And it wasn't the act of feeding cattle from it that came to me. It was me hanging one of Dad's empty red tin Velvet tobacco cans on the pile and shooting arrows into it. Rollie Sandvig sold me his 45 # aluminim recurve bow for a few dollars, and then I was Robin Hood shooting apples from somebody's head or maybe it was Fred Bear shooting grizzlies in Alaska. Memories of whom I became have dimmed.
The aluminum bow wasn't very accurate since it didn't pull evenly, but with some luck and minor windage adjustment, I could hit the can enough to satisfy my marksmanship. It took awhile before I concluded that my sore forearm resulted from the bowstring twanging against my skin, but when I started wearing buttoned, long sleeve shirts I solved that mystery. Target arrows weren't particularly expensive, neither was the waxed string, both of which I could buy in Enderlin at Bjerke & Nygaard's. I spent a good deal of time shooting arrows at cans, but somewhere along the line I decided to be done with archery. I don't remember who bought the bow from me, but I hope he had enjoyment with it, too.
