TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

From a hunter's or fisherman's perspective, Black Friday isn't so bad. Most of the local lakes have been heavily stocked with rainbow trout and this year's bumper crop of quail and dove opens the doors for some outstanding gunning. While the shoppers are bumping heads, credit cards and purses at a thousand different stores preparing for the holidays, the hunters in the family can load up the SUV and head off to wilderness pastures a whole lot greener than the linoleum floors the better half of the family is already pounding into submission.

Growing up in Buttonwillow, the tiny agricultural community 25 miles west of Bakersfield, Thanksgiving and the weekend following the holiday were always special days. But those days had nothing to do with shopping, believe me. The term "Black Friday" had not as yet been coined, and none of the family shoppers were even vaguely interested in trekking into the big city to do a little Christmas sale shopping.

Christmas? Heck, Santa and his reindeer were still over a month away and people were just getting over full stomachs from the day before. Bicarbonate of soda was far more interesting than any clothing spectacular in town, and besides, there weren't any big retail stores like we have nowadays. Very few people actually shopped the Noel until a week or two before, and even then, we often made a lot of our gifts by hand, special presents that would always be cherished.

Back then, when we shopped, we spent most of our money locally, at places called Kemp's Emporium, Ghilarducci's Department Store or, if we got into Bakersfield at all, Brock's, Fedway, Sage or Bruce's Department Stores. If we were really on a roll, the boys would get to shop at Gene and Joe's or Vincent's, the largest sporting goods -- meaning hunting and fishing supplies only -- stores in town.

Venturing into either place became a gift all its own, and dreaming from shelf to shelf exploring the huge assortment of rifles, shotguns, ammo, shells and rods and reels became a hunting or fishing trip all of its own. Dad always managed to buy his sons a box or two of shot shells or can of pellets for our Sheridan and we'd try to shoot them up before the weekend was finished.

Back then, pheasants were always at the top of the hunting menu Thanksgiving weekend. Thousands of birds were planted the week before around town and hundreds of hunters showed up to hunt them, some from as far away as San Francisco or Los Angeles. Cotton, rice and Milo-maize crops were king back then, and huge lines of shooters pushed through the harvested fields trying to flush the ring-necks. A late season dove hunt had not even been thought of yet, but we managed to kill plenty of quail along with the long-tails.

Every once in a while, usually around Thanksgiving, Dad would get an invitation to hunt Karl Twisselman's private property in the nearby Temblor Mountains, and if we were lucky, huge coveys of chukar partridge would be on hand to fill our hunting vests. After the hunt, sitting on the tailgate of the old International pickup, we'd gorge on leftover-turkey sandwiches on French bread that had been smothered in cranberry sauce and mayonnaise.

By the time I hit my mid teens, the wonders of duck hunting had found their way under my skin, thanks to the efforts of the Tracy Brothers, Cecil, Daryl and Tilton. One or the other would always invite my dad, brother and I to hunt on their extensive holdings and private ponds out on the Goose Lake bottom, and believe me, the waterfowl suffered and the local cooks prospered. Quite a few of those hunts began the weekend after the holiday, so that this time was always very special.

One Black Friday many years ago, we found a small flock of tule geese, a distinct and somewhat rare, long-legged subspecies of the white-fronted goose (speckle-belly). My father drove around the large pond to stay within the bird's sight and not alarm them while his sons snuck up on the unsuspecting geese. We got so close that when we crested the bank, all five were literally sitting ducks. When they flushed, our five shots brought down all five, and Dad could see the splashes they made when they went down, a memory cherished to this day.

Gosh, the list of Thanksgiving memories in the field goes on forever, it seems. But even so, no matter how good the hunting and fishing will be this weekend, let's not forget to really give thanks to for all we have been given by a Power far larger than ourselves.