Me, I don't have any ground-swatting stories from my Grandfather. He was a bird hunter and responsible for my love of the outdoors and sporting life as well as my own spotty regard for sporting ethics.

Far as I know he always shot'em flying. I know once when I was tagging along with my single-shot .410 a bird lit in a pine tree on a covey rise. He said shoot it out of the tree, and I threw a rock at it and then missed it flying off. He said I should of taken the limb shot, but he was glad I didn't.

One thing needs to be clear in this discussion. Judging something that happened in another, different time by today's standards is stupid. An old lady named Barber owned the old public pool in my hometown. Her father back in the '30s, 40's and early 50's charged admission to swim there. I swam a lot there as a kid.

He had a "whites only" policy which was the community standard back then. He could not have run the business any other way.

Anyhow, when his daughter died she had no heirs and left the pool in her Will to the city. The city opened a park and called it by its old name Barber Pool Park.

After a few years, times had changed and activists made a big deal out of having a park named for a 'racist'. Naturally, the city renamed the park for some black hollywood actor who didn't even grow up here. The point is the city applied current racial attitudes to something that was perfectly normal for an earlier time.

I drew a great number of similar Last Will and Testaments for old ladies after that. Some wanted to donate property to the city. I never drew another Will that made a public donation without it having a reversion clause in it to make the property go back to the testator's heirs in the event the city changed the name or used it for any purpose other than what was specified in the Will.

There's a city park and a school here in town named after my family. I sometimes wonder how long that will last...Geo