[ramonmark]

When my brother and I used to visit grandpa as youngsters we used to fight over who got to use his personal washroom. I know that sounds insane. He had so many cool things in there. I still remember the smell of shaving balm and looking at all his straight razors in awe. He had a leather strop hanging from the wall and a shelf with an old school tube record player on it. He also had two elephant feet (John had the other two) that were hollowed out and they had magazines in them. (as an adult now, I almost shake my head but I have to remember that these men were from a different breed). More importantly in amongst the numerous hunting mags was always hidden a smut mag. My brother and I used to spend a lot of time flipping through those mags while sitting on grandpa throne. I didn’t find out until after grandpa passed away that he used to put a smut mag in the elephant feet only when his grandsons were coming to visit.

My brother has a huge timber wolf rug that was at my grandpas. As kids my older sister and I used to drape it over us and hide in the dark basement. Then we’d call my younger brother down so see the cool things we found. We’d here him scamper across the room above us and make his decent down the basement stairs. I can still remember him stopping at the bottom of the stairs where the lights were turned off and say “Guys, where are you?” We’d reply with some other taunting remarks like “look at all the cool things grandpa has!” My brother would come running into the dark where my sister and I would lay in wait under the huge timer wolf. We’d chase him into rooms and eventually upstairs. It was all fun and game until grandma got out her wooden spoon and tuned us in for scaring the baby. Every once and a while my brother and I are having beers in his basement he’ll eye that rug and mention how we should call his boys downstairs and scare the bajesus out of them. We’ll laugh about it until I mention how ****ed his wife will be. And she has lots of mixing spoons to tune us in too!

From, what I remember about that wolf. When we were kids I can remember watching an old film of my grandpas. I still have his old slide with tons of slides and film projector with a bunch of rolls. It was a black and white film with no sound. Some of the shots were looking out a plane window at what looked like hundreds of wolfs running in the snow. I still remember one of the shots, it still gives me nightmares. It was a video of a huge fire on a frozen lake in the mountains. As the camera got closer you could make out bodies of dead wolves on fire. There must have been close to a hundred! The pile was taller than a man and wider than a truck. Grandpa used to get teary eyed when he talked about that night. I guess the Yukon had so many wolves at one time that they licensed him and a few other men to kill the wolves. As the story goes many people were on the hunt for this large pack but he had video footage of them and knew there routes. Some of the wolves were shot and a many of them were poisoned. There was this government official that told grandpa that they were to poison the wolves and no one was to keep the hides. This fella was the man in charge and ‘supervised the cull’ Grandpa argued with him and lost. The bait and poison was laid and left behind for the wolves to find. When the group came back numerous days later they got busy scouting and collecting bodies and making a large pile. There were a few wolves that were scouting the area and those ones were shot. Grandpa said that he spotted a huge heap of fur lying in the snow and made his way for it. He was carrying an axe as many of the bodies were either frozen or half burring under crusty ice. As he approached the animal from behind it rolled to its side and made an agonizing growl. Grandpa raised his axe to dispatch the animal and as the axe made its way down towards the animal’s skull the wolf snatched at the blade of the axe and stopped it dead in its tracks. Grandpa said he still remembered looking into that wolves eyes and seeing pain. He always got very emotional telling that story. As it turns out grandpa punched out that government official and skinned that wolf and brought it home for himself.