The old farm house was about 150 yards from us, off to our right like I said earlier. The bear tracks went straight ahead and down into a little wooded vally. So me and Tom started to head up to the house. When we got there the place was pretty much run down, it looked like it was vacant for the past decade and was now the summer hang~out for the towns kids. There was a mattress on the floor in every bedroom with Goo filled balloons scattered haphazardly around them, who knows, maybe there was a future president, or even the next Motzart stuffed inside one of them balloons. There were empty beer and booze bottles laying every where, and in the kitchen, inside the cupboards there were cans of canned goods. Mostly soup, a couple of cans of spam. Well any ways I call Tom into the room, he was exploring other areas of the house, he comes in and says, "hey dude, theres a fireplace in the livingroom". I says "theres food in the kitchen", do you feel like an early lunch? So out the front door we went to call in Bart. Tom shouts, HEY BART   bart... bart.. bart, the echo went on for quite awhile, we waited 2 min. then I gave it a try. Nothing, so I fired a shot into the air, that'll get his attention. Right after I fired that shot, all hell broke loose, there was one hell of a rucus coming from inside the house. Things falling, things breaking, shit crashing to the ground, and then there was this god awful, it wasn't really a roar, it was more like a muffled growl and then there was total silence. Tom and I spun around so fast that I almost hit him in the head with my gun as I slipped and fell onto the porch. What the fuck was that Tom says. I'll tell you what that was. that sounded like that damn bear was down in the basement. Sure as shit, we walked back in the house and to the back window, looked out and seen his tracks, I mean trench going into the basement and then what looked like huge divets, spaced about 4 feet apart coming out of the basement, but no sign of the bear, it seems we scared the shit out of him more then he scared the shit out of us. Tom says "that was cool", and I had to admit it was quite the rush. That called for another cigarette which Tom was more than happy to lite.

  About 15 min. later along comes Bart. We see him crossing through an open field about 200 yards from the house so we go out to meet him half way. Did you get him he says. No I said, the fucker was down in the basement, we got one shot off at him, but it was to dark down there I think we missed him. No shit really, and Tom says "nah, It happened like this". Tom, that little bastard, we really could of had Bart going on that one. Well 10 min. later I was telling Bart about the fireplace and all the food in that old house and how about having us an early lunch. We got about half way back to the house when we jumped this snowshoe hare, big son-of-a-bitch, about a 20 pounder, biggest damn rabbit I ever saw, pure white. The damn thing would run then just dive into the snow and pop up about 20 or 30 feet away and start running again. Damdist thing I ever saw. Bart and Tom are running him down when he dives into a stand of grass that was sticking out of the snow. Toms got a stick (he left his gun up to the house) and is poking into the grass, I'm about 20 yards behind them when I see this big fucker come out of the snow about 20 yards to there left and just sits there looking at them, well thats all I needed, I put the cross hairs of that 444 Marlin on his head and squeezed. Well to make a short story shorter, we weren't going to have rabbit with are lunch. All that was left was his 2 back feet, I still have one of them floating around here some place. There was meat and fur scattered in a 20 foot radius. After a good laugh and another cigarette we headed back to the house for lunch.

  On our way back we had gathered some firewood, Tom and Bart were getting the fire going while I was scrounging through the kitchen looking for something to cook the soup in. I found a pot, bowls, Christ I found everything I needed to cook and serve lunch, hell I even found instant coffee and cups to boot. These kids had themselves quite the summer hang~out. Well I used my trusty John Wayne, military issue, P-38, multi-purpose can opener, that is still to this day, 30 some years later, hanging on my key ring. I Poured and chopped and put everything into the pot and put it by the fire to warm. We smokeed another one of them cigarettes while coffee and lunch was cooking and talked about that bear in the basement and where the bastard went. Coffee was ready about 20 min. later and the soup was on shortly after that. soup consisted of chicken noodle with big chunks of Spam in it. Yummy, but what the hell it's like my Grandpappy always said "anything that'll make a turd is worth eating". While eating lunch we all stood by the back window and looked out at the bear track, when Bart says,I wonder if the old bear is eating his lunch right now. With that said we cleaned up our mess, put out the fire and off to the dumps we went.

                                                                             to be continued: