Opinion
4A
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Other Views
Claim the right to
dust off your gun
n the wake of recent mass shootings, President Joe
Biden managed to avoid being blown over by a
gentle breeze in the White House Rose Garden to
announce several marginal executive actions on gun
control that were met with tepid applause from the left
and bulging forehead veins on the right.
My intention here is not to wade into the brain-eat-
ing-amoeba-in-
fested waters
of the gun con-
JASE
trol debate, but,
GRAVES
instead, share a
HUMOR COLUMNIST
few anecdotes
related to my
own embarrassing history with the Second Amendment.
My earliest memorable encounter with a “firearm”
was in the 1970s when I was creeping around in the
backyard hunting birds and squirrels with my Daisy
BB rifle — while strategically camouflaging myself in
a pair of Sears Toughskins jeans and a Muppet Show
T-shirt. The soil of the surrounding area is still contam-
inated by the thousands of BBs from my missed shots,
but I did occasionally hit my mark and bring down a
specimen of the fierce and deadly East Texas house
sparrow. I may or may not have cried every time I killed
one.
Speaking of hitting my mark, as a kid with crooked,
Coke bottle glasses, I wasn’t exactly the Doc Holliday
of prepubescent dweebs — more like a myopic Barney
Fife. However, I did experience one surprising victory
in the world of sharpshooting when my dad took me to a
local hardware store that was holding an annual turkey
shoot for youngsters. I remember being a little disap-
pointed that there were no actual turkeys there to shoot
(or pet), but I did somehow hit a paper target with the
accuracy required to take home some Grade A frozen
poultry. (I’m pretty sure I sneezed when I pulled the
trigger.)
My feelings of triumph were cut short, however,
when I confidently challenged my big brother to a back-
yard BB-gun duel. (What could possibly go wrong?)
After we positioned ourselves behind a couple of small
bales of hay, the contest lasted for exactly five seconds
and consisted of one volley from my crack-shot brother
that landed dead center on my partially exposed right
love handle. My wails of anguish were only slightly
eclipsed by my brother’s repeated desperate pleas that I
“Don’t tell Mom!” Despite his appeals and my own fear
of punishment, I did bravely confess the incident to our
parents — shortly after I turned 30.
I didn’t have many experiences with firearms during
my teen years, other than my parents (and my girl-
friends’ parents) fantasizing about putting me out of
their misery. But when I began dating my wife, my
future father-in-law introduced me to the wonderful
world of sitting out in the woods at dawn and trying to
avoid ticks — otherwise known as deer hunting. It only
took two outings of sleeping in a rickety aluminum lawn
chair and being driven out into the wilderness on a four-
wheeler at 5 a.m. to be left for dead for me to prove that
I just wasn’t hunting (or fishing or camping) material,
and that he’d have to find some other way to get rid of
me.
Today, I possess two firearms, a .38 Special and a .22
rifle, both on loan from my dad — out of pity, I think.
And I only get them out to brandish around my teenage
daughters’ boyfriends, who usually ask why they’re so
dusty. I should probably take the guns down to the firing
range and see whether they still work — if I can figure
out how to get the safety off.
Who knows where the American gun control debate
will take us in the next few years? I tend to think that
gun violence is as much a matter of the heart and soul
as it is a matter of the law, but what do I know? For now,
I’ll stick to watching “Tombstone” and reruns of “The
Andy Griffith Show.”
———
Jase Graves is an award-winning humor columnist
from East Texas. His columns have been featured in
Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The
Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald.
Contact Graves at susanjase@sbcglobal.net.
I
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Other Views
There and back again: Where are we headed?
ALEX HOBBS
IRRIGON
n J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the
Rings,” Khazad-dûm is an ancient
dwarven stronghold used to mine
Mithril: a precious metal renowned
for its strength and beauty. Unfortu-
nately, the dwarves dug too greedily,
and from the depths of Moria rose the
Balrog.
What awaits the villages of Eastern
Oregon when they dig too deep?
When all that remains are concrete
bunkers, with their incessant tech-
nological whir and perpetual illumi-
nation? When all the treasure to be
found sits beneath the talons of the
Dragon in Seattle?
Let’s leave the Shire and find out.
The first smell to hit you will be
the camphor and terpenoids of sage-
brush. Perhaps you will be lucky
enough to experience its intense fra-
grance after rainfall.
Next, and if your immune system
can handle it, you’ll smell the Rus-
sian olives. Though not in bloom until
August, their sweet scent is unmistak-
able, their khaki-green leaves a juxta-
position upon a brown horizon.
Perhaps in the distance, you’ll
catch a whiff of a body of water. A
pond that has long gone eutrophic. At
its bottom, an organic alchemy you
can practically feel smush between
your toes. It is home to a dizzying
assemblage of life.
Above you are stars. Millions of
them. Constellations that bear little
I
resemblance to their namesake burst
out of the sky’s inky fabric. They pul-
sate so vibrantly it becomes easy to
forget the objects that tether us to life
back home. Somewhere, the Milky
Way greets you shyly like an old
friend. Its gossamer belt of color still
shimmers faintly in Eastern Oregon.
The click and flit of bats. The
chirrup of the katydids. A silence and
darkness not often found elsewhere.
But the village leaders tell us this
land is cheap and worthless. Crops
can’t be grown here. After all, it’s
just sagebrush. What better use for it
than to tear it away. To build a monu-
ment to man’s ever-decreasing atten-
tion span.
They begin to rip the earth apart.
Suddenly, a behemoth erupts from
the ground like the cataclysmic lava
flows that once carved this land. Hard
and angular, bending the earth to its
will. Its teeth bared and gnashing.
Its black spikes, an armor around its
stony perimeter. Its electric buzz is
wholly unlike the hoot of a burrowing
owl.
The monster comes under the guise
of a gift. But its perfume is too strong,
its smile too saccharine, and beneath
it lingers something rotten. It is not
like the sage, which offers us the gift
of stars and sweetness. With hands
outstretched, the inhuman monster
offers the parched desert dwellers a
long drink of water.
Some of the local village leaders
drink heartily from those gnarled,
cupped palms, their tongues lapping
up the cool water greedily.
“I am smart,” they think. “I
have water to drink while others go
thirsty.” And so the village leaders let
the monster smash his way through
a land that offers up other gifts. Gifts
of mutuality. One by one, other mon-
sters take root, like the noxious thistle,
choking out the stars with their eternal
illumination.
Soon the stars recede from their
velvety home in the night sky. Dust
rolls across the land, choking out
the sun. Homes become inundated
with the perpetual, electric din of the
monster and all its progeny dredging
up water from their poisoned wells.
But someday, the wells will run
dry. The monsters will no longer have
any cool water to offer the insatiable
village leaders. Their tongues will
cease lapping. Unlike the Balrog, who
sits and waits, these monsters will
uproot themselves in search of other
village leaders to beguile.
In the end, the monsters will run
out of room in Northeast Oregon.
Their life source becomes cheaper
elsewhere and eventually, they have to
pay taxes. Above all else, the monsters
loathe paying taxes.
The village leaders try to figure
out what to do with the exoskele-
tons left behind by the monsters. But
they are too vast. Within, the defunct
internal organs begin to collect dust.
Absent from this silence is the sound
of wind rustling through the sage. In
its stead, the sterile silence of absolute
nothingness.
———
Alex Hobbs lives in Irrigon and
is a former educator turned full-
time homeschooling mom. She has
a degree in political science from
Oregon State University.
Letters
Citizens need to stand up
for what we believe in
For those not familiar
with the second paragraph
of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, this is what is
said: “We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal,
that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, that
among these are life, lib-
erty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
“That, to secure these
rights, governments are
instituted among men,
deriving their just powers
from the consent of the
governed. That, whenever
any form of government
becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right
of the people to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute
new government, laying
its foundation on such
principles, and organizing
its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their
safety and happiness.”
Well, methinks that our
leaders are all professional
politicians. Not statesmen.
That being said, the
pandemic is a tragedy.
It has exposed issues in
America that endanger the
freedom and order that
we take for granted: the
extortion of power; uni-
lateral decrees closing
churches, restricting
movement, closing busi-
nesses, directing behavior,
suspending schools, and
indefinitely stopping
basic freedoms.
By the way, I spent
34 years on active and
reserve time in the mil-
itary. I once would give
my life for this country
for what I believed our
country stood for. At this
time, I will give my life
to protect my family from
what this United States
has become.
I am not professing to
overtake this country, but I
am saying it is the time for
all good men to stand up.
Roesch Kishpaugh
Pendleton