WARNING: Matter of fact the following information is graphic and could drastically change your current view of me. Please this is not for young tender eyes & ears. So proceed at your own risk! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I struggled a little with the theme of this section of my book of life stories! At first I was going to call it \u2018The Dark-side – Puppies & Vietnam\u2019, then I thought about \u2018The Dark-side – Killing Made Easier\u2019, then \u2018The Dark-side – It Needs to Die\u2019, then the Dark-side – It\u2019s Going to Die Anyway\u2019, then \u2018The Dark-side – Making Dead\u2019, then \u2018The Dark-side – It Needs to be Killed\u2019 but I finally settled on \u2018living with Killing\u2019, dropping the term the Dark-side completely! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Killing seemed appropriate theme for this section and here\u2019s why! During much of my life growing up, from the Farm House in Oklahoma forward to today, killing (dealing with death) was as much a part of life as living & loving is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are a meat eater and we was, things had to die! The difference between back then and now is who did the killing….<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now most of the killing is done out of sight so that it stays out of mind and so we can enjoy a nice well cook steak dinner…. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that they can sell their meat, out of necessity, they must kill the fish, the chickens, the hogs, the cattle, the goats, the sheep, the llamas, the ostrich, the birds, the snakes, the alligators, and even the horses. In some countries even the dogs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words if it\u2019s some kind of meat and it\u2019s on your plate or on your table somebody had to kill it! In our family that responsibility fell on my dad\u2019s shoulders, then mine and occasionally my mothers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it started off killing out of necessity and as I grew up, as time went, I even killed for sport and at times even for money! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most likely the first thing I ever killed was a fish after catching it so that we could cook it! Soon after I killed chickens and eventually graduated to hogs and steers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t volunteer to do the killing! I was just there where killing was necessary and I often participated! Such things that required me to kill just came about. Sometimes I was asked to do it and sometimes I just did it without being asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me state right away that as far as I know I never killed anyone, any person directly, but no doubt indirectly I have contributed to the death of many people. To a large degree that\u2019s what this article is about! My view of death! Especially death from killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While we did hunt and fish for food we also hunted and fished for sport! Didn\u2019t matter. To eat meat something has to transition from being alive to being dead and for the first 18 years of my life we never bought meat from a market ever so we had to do the killing…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time I actually killed something myself besides fish to eat I had saw others kill just as I was about to do. It was more matter-of-fact than a big deal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most vivid memory of me killing something was on two occasions when I had to kill several little puppies before their eyes were open! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had to because that\u2019s what I was told to do! Twice on my dad\u2018s way out the door he said Rock I noticed that Lady (the one dog we had the longest as I was growing up) had puppies a few days ago and you need to get rid of them before I get home and before their eyes open. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By then I had been indoctrinated into the killing of animals! I didn\u2019t relish the task nor did I run from it! I would collect those little puppies into a toe-sack! Take them down near the creek! Dig a hole to bury them in! Methodically trying not to think about it too much I would grab those little puppies by the hind legs out of the toe-sack and quickly slam them against a tree trunk killing them instantly! They would seldom even jerk! Then I would throw them in the hole and when they were all in a hole I would cover the hole go home and take care of other chores just as I had taken care of that chore…. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have to admit the hardest life I\u2019ve ever killed was Akira! I had great affection for that dog! She was a good dog but she was suffering and it was time to end her suffering and death (in other word she had to die) so I took her out near Dog Canyon and took care of that chore just like I do other chores! I put her in a toe-sack, took her home, dug a hole in the backyard and buried her! She was my friend! Over the years I\u2019ve had a lot of friends die, some were human some were animals! Some were humans who acted like animals! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some wanted me to take her to the vet and let them put her to sleep but she was my dog and my responsibility and I refused to allow some stranger to take her life! I didn\u2019t want her last memory to be of some stranger injecting her with poison! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I took her out to Dog Canyon, got her out of the car and explain to her what I was gonna do, she walked over to the edge of the road looked up to the mountains and waited for me to do what I had to do! I didn\u2019t let her wait long!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My stent in Vietnam and taking pictures of hundreds if not thousands of dead bodies was just an extension of what I experienced being raised on a farm! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though I\u2019ll have a whole chapter on my one year in Vietnam what you\u2019re reading now may explain why Vietnam did not affect me like it did many young men and women. I saw a lotta dead bodies in Vietnam. It did make a difference that they were human bodies but there was such a volume of it that I soon became as used to seeing them die or being killed as I did the animals on the farm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might say my life on the farm prepared me to survive somewhat mentally and emotionally intact a year (68-69) in Vietnam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As mentioned above I saw the consequences of killing, death, daily in Vietnam. I took a lot of pictures of a lot of dead bodies, but the finality of death really hit home, about how bad killing humans really is and how final death caused by war is, during a 2 week stent I spent in a morgue in Tan Son Nhut AFB Saigon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can you believe I volunteered to sort, clean & if possible help identify bodies dead bodies that came in from the field. The deal the Air Force made soldiers that felt they could handle the job was one month in the morgue would earn you a extra 1 week of R&R. i.e. if I could do one month in the morgue I could spend an extra week of R&R in Hawaii where our mom and I was about to spend our honeymoon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I made it a week. The smell of death was overwhelming to me. The smell was even more all-consuming and hard to endure as was the visual affect. You can look away if something is repulsive but a smell no matter how repulsive can only be dampened but removing oneself from the stench. In that morgue I learned I wasn\u2019t as calloused to death as I thought I was or at the least what I thought I could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first job after Vietnam was at the Okmulgee Daily News as the papers photographer and Sports Editor. I was the only one who could take pictures of car wrecks, hunting accidents, suicides & murders and the dead victims associated with such news worthy stories and then go back and get a good nights sleep! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All this I\u2019m telling you now may explain to some degree why few people could be trappers like your Grandpa Brunson and I once was. Trappers don\u2019t kill animals that have a running chance they kill animals that have no chance escaping death! We killed them humanely with a 22 pistol shooting them between the eyes! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of people wanted to go with your Grandpa and I when we set out & run our trap lines but many would only go once cause they couldn\u2019t stomach the reality of what to do once the animal was caught and now had to die so that we could sell their skins. Even the hides stretched on a stretcher was hard for some to look at but to me and your grandpa just part of business as a Marine in World War II and as a archives photographer in Vietnam! To be of that frame of mind, I think you have to feel like end justified the means! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With me death is sad but no more than that! I don\u2019t lament over others getting killed or dying<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others must\u2019ve been able to sense that about me because Perry Brunson, when he was dying in the hospital in Alamogordo, asked me to beg the nurse to just let him die and if she saw fit to cause him to die. And I promised him I would talk to nurse and I did and maybe just maybe she listened and understood (as I think many nurses do) cause he died two days later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I cry easily I cry with almost the same intensity for a good song as I do for a sad story as I do when someone dies… i\u2019ll cry just as quick over someone\u2019s touching success in living as I will from someone tragically dying. I\u2019m touched emotionally the same for someone who suddenly dies as I am when someone dies as expected be that slowly or suddenly! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t wanna die and I don\u2019t want those I love to die but if this old system lasts much longer I\u2019m gonna die and many of those I love may also die and that\u2019s just the way it is! Unlike your grandma Camilla I don\u2019t lament such facts. Such thoughts are not Pleasant to me but I don\u2019t lose sleep over them either! Your grandma does… she is like Jehovah she didn\u2019t want anyone to be destroyed! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one tries harder than your Grandma Camilla to help others live! She thinks maybe just maybe that the right words at the right time can save others & to a degree I agree! Its just that with me most of the people I know have heard it before, some accepted it & some didn\u2019t and both have to face the consequence accordingly! God may not totally agree with my way of looking at the consequences of ones who\u2019ve chosen to stop listening! If I\u2019ve got God wrong so be it; if Grandma\u2019s got God right so be it; it is what it is! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though my Dad asked me to do things that some would consider horrific I disagree! What I think is horrific is hating (if even for a moment) and yelling at people you love & when I do that or when those I love do that to those they claim to love I\u2019m very disappointed in myself and in them! At times like that such things, to me, right or wrong, becomes as important as the right to life….. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to death by destruction be that from God own hands or from a so-called act of God like a storm, or an act of war, that kind of death to me emotionally is no different than dying by some other means other than destruction. I understand how to many people that\u2019s not true because death by destruction, generally speaking, is a preventable unnecessary death. Much of the dying is inevitable until God (The owner and creator of life) decides to do something about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No individual or group of people can stop anything from dying. Sounds like a fatalistic view but I would prefer to call it a realistic view of life not dying\u2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I decided years ago I prefer God did not kill me! I do my best to stay in his favor but I don\u2019t fear death by God and I don\u2019t fear death by anyone or by any means!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The way I see it is that like animals\u2019 people are going to die. Some will be killed. Some by their own hands, some by the hand of God, some from so-called natural causes but no matter the means those killed are simply dead! And for how death is something we all must live with!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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