One Match →

Until I was 10 years old, my father was busy almost every day and night and had precious little time for his sweet wife "Cissy Pee" and only son Jack. We all, of course, wished otherwise.

The exigencies of the second World War required sacrifices from almost every citizen of the USA, and particularly from Earl Campbell May. Major May was an extraordinary organizer, teacher and educator. Training new recruits to man the ever-enlarging military necessary to overwhelm the Axis powers was a time-consuming and seemingly never-ending task. Fortunately, in August of 1945 this all came to an end. Major May was retired from the Army, and the world braced itself to return to peacetime.

My family purchased our first home that year—a summer house on the huge, manmade Herrington Lake in Kentucky near Chimney Rock. The lake was the deepest in the Bluegrass State and 35 miles long. The shoreline was shear, beautiful rocky cliffs. This summer haven for recreational activities in the winter was deserted.

Our new home, although basic in design and construction, was a mansion to our small family. It was located on an isolated spit of land sloping steeply down to the lake with a yard full of huge limestone boulders and shaded with gnarly old trees. For lovers of nature, it was a paradise.

Father was always an outdoorsman—a hunter and fisherman. Soon he was familiar with the entire area around our new residence. With me in tow, he went after rabbits, squirrels, doves and quail with enthusiasm. I had a new-to-me single .410 Winchester shotgun, so I was an eager nimrod.

At first light on the opening day of the squirrel-hunting season on our first year on the lake, father and son eagerly piled into our 16-ft wooden boat with a 5-hp Johnson outboard motor. We puttered along about two miles and pulled into a hollow that was a favorite place. (A hollow is an indented area on the perimeter of a lake where a creek enters the lake, typically with steep embankments.) I got to "drive" the boat. By then I was adept at finding an acceptable place to go ashore and secure the boat. Silently we tied up the boat and moved inland, all eyes toward the trees as we looked for squirrels. Broken nuts were plentiful, promising signs of recent feeding by our bushy-tailed quarries.

After a successful morning in the cold, clear Kentucky air, we had four sciurus carolinensis in our hunting jackets (he knew and used the Latin name, as he did for much of the flora and fauna).

At a picturesque setting along a small creek, my dad announced that it was time for lunch. From his hunting coat he pulled two neatly trimmed pork chops wrapped in wax paper that were soon sprinkled with salt and pepper and impaled on freshly cut pointed sticks. In a makeshift pan crafted from the wax paper, he mixed some dry Bisquick with creek water, forming a dough ball, which he rolled into a long rope and wound around a broom-handle-sized sapling limb. This will be "twist" bread, he explained. In a canteen cup he mixed some cocoa powder and water to heat for hot chocolate. He suggested I begin a small fire to cook our lunch.

I hastily gathered some damp twigs and broken branches and stacked them up. I lit one match after another but failed to get a blaze. My father watched with bemusement without comment. He took my box of matches and instructed me to observe carefully. With his ubiquitous pocketknife, he whittled a large handful of shavings from some old, dry twigs. Carefully, he arranged these neatly in a clump, leaving a small opening that I discovered was for inserting the burning match. Atop this construction, he carefully assembled a more than ample group of dry twigs about wood pencil size and then larger twigs. To the side, he accumulated a nice stack of even larger dry wood. Then, with the care of a surgeon, mindful of any possible gust of wind, he knelt by the wooden pyre, struck a match and carefully poked it into the prepared shavings. Almost instantly a nice flame erupted, and soon we had a campfire. I was impressed.

As we enjoyed our wonderful lunch in God's own setting, my wonderful father intoned the lesson he had just brilliantly performed.

"Son," he said, "campfires are just like most everything challenging in life—difficult if you are ill prepared, and possibly disastrous if you fail. In lighting a fire, as in everything, it is imperative that you are absolutely positive you have done your very best to make it light. For a fire, always assume you have only one match and you are in the bitter night cold of the Yukon. Fire will save your life. No fire will insure your death. You must make certain in all you attempt."

Father was not only a poet—an artistic talent that ran in the May family until I came along—but also was a great reciter of poetry. Robert W. Service, author of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” was his favorite, and the former Major May could recite most of his works.

As we walked back through the forest to our beached boat, squirrels in his hunting vest, he recited a bit of a Service poem:

"This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive."

To this day I am a "one match" fire maker.