I have a highly trained ear. It is a quality that has served me well in the outdoors over the years. Friends who turkey hunt with me can attest that if I “think” I hear a turkey gobble, it’s best to head in that direction, and if I hear a longbeard drumming, even if my hunting companion doesn’t, there’s usually a gobbler nearby.
As I am only in my 50s (an age that once seemed old, but no longer), I haven’t really seen a noticeable decline in my hearing yet. My wife might disagree with that statement from time to time. According to G, it seems that I often suffer from what’s known as selective hearing.
A late evening package delivery this week prompted the thoughts about my auditory abilities. I heard the UPS truck well before I saw it. In fact, as soon as the truck started up our driveway, I got up and walked to the door, well before our three-dog alarm system ever sounded.
I grew up in the country at the end of a gravel road, and the sound of the UPS truck shifting gears and heading down said road was, for me, the sound of adventure. It often meant a new hunting knife or bow from exotic faraway places like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, or Gander Mountain.
That sound heralded the fact that I would soon be outfitted like one of my outdoor heroes, Fred Bear for instance, and the means to do so lay waiting for me behind the brown roll-up door of the UPS truck.
Most often, the packages were supplies for my mom’s beauty shop. However, if I had placed an order in the weeks prior, my ears were trained toward the road each afternoon, listening for that distinct engine sound in the distance.
As I helped the driver unload our packages Monday night, I thought about the day in my teens when a Bear Magnum Hunter compound bow arrived from Cabela’s. It was a magical day.
In most homes today, daily deliveries have become commonplace. You also typically know your delivery date as soon as you place the order and e-mails, text alerts and step-by-step updates via various apps keep you in the know from start to finish.
Kids miss out on so much these days. Who needs a trained ear for the delivery truck when you can follow along in real-time on a map via the app? Where’s the sense of wonder, the thrill of anticipation? In the words of the great B.B. King, “The thrill is gone.”
On that note, it’s always around this time of year when I begin to long for the thrill of the “Christmas Catalog.” My mom tagged me in a post last week with a picture of the Sears “Great American Holiday Wish Book.”
Her words, “you wore this out every year,” reminded me of the excitement of opening the mailbox to find that tome of the terrific waiting. Those were some of the happiest days of my childhood. Let the list making begin!
If the sound of the UPS truck can be credited with honing my hearing skills, then the Wish Book can be credited with improving many of my skills as a writer, chief among those being imagination, organization and revision. I wonder how many hours I spent going through those enchanted pages, imagination running wild, making list after list?
It’s no doubt that the Wish Book is the reason why, to this day, I still love a catalog. Let me open the mailbox to find an Orvis, KUIU, or Mack’s Prairie Wings catalog waiting and watch the smile form across my face. Truth be told, I still love making a list from those catalogs from time to time, even if that list is on my iPhone.
A quick Google search revealed that Sears first published the Wish Book in 1933 and stopped publishing it in 2011, although they did bring it back for one year in 2017. Originally, it was published as a Christmas catalog and received the “Wish Book” title in 1968.
My readings also uncovered the fact that I’m not alone in my nostalgic love of what was for 78 years a Christmas staple. A 2017 Akron Beacon Journal article entitled “The Sears Wish Book, a ghost of Christmas past,” aptly points out that “for many kids, the arrival of the annual Wish Book was nothing less than the unofficial herald of the holiday season.”
Such was the case for me. The Wish Book kicked off the dreams of Christmas and, as the Beacon Journal article points out, “by Thanksgiving, the catalog was dogeared and mangled, its pages circled and scissored out, to act as helpful illustrations for wish lists to Santa. You had months to wish.” I did just that.
It makes me sad to think about kids missing out on the experience of watching, waiting, and listening for the UPS truck to appear with their prized package or combing the pages of the Wish Book while making endless revisions to their Christmas lists, but such is the way of life, things change.
Until next time, here’s to the anticipation of things to come, to the dreams and wishes of the holiday season, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.
Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.