An Hour At Cabela's

My son Matt is in town with his wife to attend the wedding of one of her friends and when I invited him to go to Cabela's with me this morning he jumped at the chance. Cabela's, for those of you who don’t know, is a giant toy store for men. Not only can you buy toys there, you can also buy all kinds of costumes. Rustic camouflage costumes seem to be the most popular. In fact, Cabela's carries so much camo gear that you really can’t see it. You can even purchase a camouflaged porta-potty so you can poop in the woods and not even the bears will notice.
Hunting season is fast approaching and it appears there was a sale on shotguns and rifles. Either that or the entire male population of the county was trying to arm themselves. You have to take a number to be served at the gun counter and the count was up to 2345 when we walked by, so my guess is there are going to be a lot of dead ducks and deer around here or else there will be a huge upswing in the number of armed bank holdups in the next few days. It also appears like the ammo shortage that materialized last fall is finally easing and so I bought 200 rounds of 22 ammo to replace what I shot last week. The shortage was caused by Seth, Rupert and their idiot third cousin Beauford. It seems they have been roaming the country since last November. They would go into any store that sold ammo and asked how much was on hand and proceed to buy every round. The perceived shortage caused ordinary hunters and plinkers to clean off the shelves in self defense. Looks like the Three Amigos may have been arrested on bootlegging charges because I am now able to find ammo for my 22’s in most of the usual outlets. Either that or they returned to their regular seasonal jobs as your children’s 3rd 4th and 5th grade teachers.
Matt and I wandered through the store past dozens of tables set up for the manufactures of duck calls. Each table had at least two reps blowing on their respective duck calls, looking and sounding like two five year olds trying to best the other in the age old game of “Let’s see who can get Mom to scream first”. Matt asked if I wanted to attend a class. Picture this: Thirty chairs set up in rows, filled with old and middle aged men, each blowing on a duck or goose call, trying to imitate the calls being made by the representative from Get a Goose or Duck Quick or Call It In and Blow It Up, Waterfowl Calls LLC. We watch for a couple of minutes but I started to laugh and bring attention to myself so we moved on.
Matt wanted to know if I wanted to sit in and learn how to call a duck. “Are you nuts” I said, “I already know how to call a duck.” “Watch this…..Heeeeeey Duuuuck!!! “ At that point we were asked to leave the store.
I was again struck with the unfairness of life and the prejudice that surrounds those of us who are past 65 and are rapidly picking up speed on our way to the reading of our wills as we walked down the giant stairs to main checkout area and passed an attractive young female employee who was headed up the stairs. She looked at me first, since I had on a bright yellow shirt and a red hat, but there was no indication she even noticed I was there. Her eyes quickly passed to my son, who is young and handsome. Her eyes widened, she broke into a warm smile and began to immediately drool.
I stood naked in front of the mirror the other day after my shower and said to myself. “Johnston you better die before Barbara because this is not dating material and you wouldn’t survive on your own.” Next time I go to Cabela's I will wear camo, and then I will have a reasonable explanation, in my own mind, for why no one notices. Come to think of it, no one ever did.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better.