My colleague and friend Gus Broucaret celebrated his 90th birthday this year.
He also wrote a memoir of his life’s adventures and travails. Here is a link to the book if you’d like a copy:
And here is an excerpt,
from a time when it was all open land down by Serramonte shopping center and highway 280, San Mateo county
when you could go hunt rabbits there before sun up, and still get to work on time
then later enjoy a good cottontail and polenta dinner, after pruning a mile of hedges and mowing countless lawns
the chapter is titled – “Hunting”:
My hunting memories started when I was about nine years old. We went to
an old school house on Stony Point Road in Santa Rosa sometimes to eat
lunch, and so that my brother & I could play on the playground equipment.
This day it was blistering hot. I went over to the monkey bars as I had often
done, spit on my hands (as my dad always did), jumped up and grabbed the
bars. Instantly I fried the small calluses I had on my right hand. The skin
stayed on the bar. Nine years old – a crying kid. My mother put alcohol on my
hand, gauze and some tape. Soon the pain went away but still some leaking
blood. We then went to “The Ranch” and my dad took me out into the corn
field to shoot doves. He got a few and I carried them and lots of feathers
stuck to my bloody hand. Mom cleaned my hand again and redid my
bandages. All was well, It took two weeks or more for my hand to heal.
I went hunting when I was thirteen with my grandfather, who was the first
person to teach me how to fish. This was my first time to shoot a gun. We
were using Gigi’s 410 bolt action shotgun. It shot 3.5” 410 shells. My
grandfather was very frugal and would not shoot unless he was sure to have a
dead bird or rabbit. He would always put the gun up but not fire. He would say
“Too far”. After a while he handed me the 410 and said for me to walk in front
of him and take a shot if something jumped or flew. I had been taught how to
handle the gun, its safety, its bolt action, and how to load it by my Uncle Gigi.
We were walking along the bottom of the dry creek bed when on the top bank
a skunk came sauntering toward us and grandpa says shoot it. I didn’t shoot
as I thought it was just a skunk moving along. Grandpa yells “Shoot- Shoot!”.
I shoot and kill the skunk. We walk three feet more and the skunk smell is
everywhere. If I hadn’t shot we would have been sprayed. For the next few
days whenever we passed that spot it really smelled.
Here is the whole rest of the chapter to download and enjoy:
Mission Azul 
The book looks intriguing, but you stink for teasing us…