NH Sayings

Tickling Orion
by Bucky Lewis
We have all heard 'em.

The sayings. As old as the hills they are .

As right as rain too.

Pertaining to life as real as, well, you get the idea. It's always been more entertaining to come up with a good saying to make light of a situation. It would be somewhat boring to say when asked how things were going: "I'm broke", but to say: "I'm so poor that if Cadillacs were selling for five dollars, I couldn't honk the horn on a Yugo", now THAT'S entertainment!
Or if someone asked you how you were feeling, "OK" certainly wouldn't be as good as: "I'm like a dead horse, I can't kick" or, "I'm so broke I couldn't even pay attention".
Thus we arrive at our story.
Herbert and Byron were two longtime northern New Hampshire Yankees. Friends from the get-go, they were "not the brightest lights on the Christmas tree" or, "when brains were being passed out they thought it was trains, and they got out of the way". They definitely "couldn't hit the floor if they fell out of bed", having "holes in their screen door" as it were.
It all started years ago when Herbert and Byron happened to be born at the same exact time on the same exact day. Coincidentally, at that same time, way up in the sky there was mischief afoot. It seems that the constellations were playing and recreating a little too boisterously and there would be hell-to-pay. Virgo the virgin was playfully tickling Orion the hunter just as he was shooting at Draco the dragon. This caused Orion, who never missed, to do just that, hitting the Man in the Moon instead. Orion's arrow shot the Moon with such force it veered it off course, affecting all the tides of the world at that moment, the moment when Herbert and Byron were born. The moment when the gene pool happened to be in extremely low tide! If ignorance is bliss, then Herbert and Byron were extremely happy individuals. And they were always looking to make the most money out of the doing the least amount of work. They had even tried inventing things trying to get rich quick, but for some reason these "clever necessaries" as Herbert called their inventions, never took hold. Inventions such as:
Air Bag Motorcycle jackets, Avalanche prevention goggles, Electric banana straighteners, and ejection seats for helicopters, just didn't take hold. They did have limited success with one of their inventions, a Cat Flap for refrigerators, but it was only popular in a certain local restaurant, so they gave it up. Their biggest passion, other than taking naps, was hunting and fishing. They seemed to be in the woods all the time dipping a line or squinting an eye. This enjoyment led to their latest venture: the "Great Expectorations Guide Service". Herbert figured that as long as they enjoyed the outdoors so much they might as well try and get paid for it, by guiding other folks to some of their favorite hunting and fishing spots. It was a simple thing to do really, to start this outfitting service up. Byron had a shack up in the upper valley on Deliverance Hill that had been in his family for a while, and he had gotten used to cooking after his cousin's wife's sister had left him for a curling instructor from New Brunswick.
This was not to be just your ordinary guiding service. It had a definite advantage over every other one in the County - in that it had the motto: If it's brown it's down, if it flies it dies" - for the discriminatin' sportsman.
Their non-conventional, non-conformist philosophy was simple: harvesting game not necessarily adherent to the game laws would increase the possibilities of clients going home with what they came after, therefore making them happy clients.
And a happy client is a return client. So as an 'alternative hunting specialist', Herbert would guide his customers accordingly. 'No Trespassing' signs meant that the area was a good place to hunt because the game would be less spooked from lack of hunting pressure there. And since most of the game they were after were nocturnal, it made more sense to hunt them at night when they were more apt to be out and about. Even getting a jump on the season - hunting a week before it officially opened - just eliminated the hassles of meeting up with game wardens in the woods. It was a can't miss plan guaranteed to make them rich. Now they just had to figure out how to get the "sportsmen" there.
Their first customers came to them quite by accident in a tremendous stroke of luck. It seems that a group of guys from New Jersey had come up to enjoy a week of hunting at one of the nearby lodges, and were turning onto the dirt road that led to the lodge, just as it was going up in flames. As they watched the Deliverance Volunteer Fire Department battle the blaze, one of the sportsmen in the group asked one of the firefighters'- who happened to be Herbert's cousin - where they could go, since their plans were now ashes and smoke, and so he gave them directions to the Great Expectorations Hunting Lodge.
So that is how Herbert and Byron did their business, by doing what they did best, sitting on the porch contemplating their next move, letting Lady Luck bring it right up to their door, in the form of a Suburban from New Jersey.
There were lots of laughs that week, lots of cribbage games, inflated stories, alcohol consumption, mystery meat casseroles, and flatulence, but no success. Nothing hanging. The group from New Jersey left for home with no blood on the hood and no empty, vacant, glassed over eyes staring out from the back or the top of their vehicle. No tongue drooping unnaturally out of a stiff jaw. Disappointment reigned, not just for that week but for the whole season. For it was a remarkable one at the Great Expectoration Hunting Lodge that first year, in that not one animal was dressed out or tagged and weighed, even with the increased harvesting tactics.
No one saw any game. Lots of squirrels chattering and blue jays mocking yes, but no one saw even as much as a flag, or a movement. For Herbert and Byron had done it again. Been stupid. They had wanted so much to make sure that they had enough meat in the freezer to feed as many clients as they could handle, that they had gone and shot all the game they could in a 30 mile radius of camp, never thinking that the hunting would suffer.
The Great Expectorations Hunting Lodge was never opened to the public after that first season, and Herbert and Byron's guide service was officially no more. There had been too much aggravation from disgruntled customers and angry game wardens, and it had taken way too much time away from things they loved, such as napping. Besides, Herbert and Byron had to devote all their time now to their new venture, which was sure to make them rich this time:

Ice House Time-Sharing

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