Raymond Ash, A Classic Man

Nodding in and out of sleep at 5 am in the middle of a cold Pennsylvania forest, a young boy and an old man sit up against a tree in camouflage clothing, each gripping a shotgun in their hands.

The boy awakes to a sharp whisper.

"Hear that?" the old man asks.

Rubbing his eyes a little, the boy tries to wake himself up a bit when he hears it, a turkey is gobbling a few hundred feet from where the two are sitting. Intently scanning the area the sounds came from, the boy can't make out anything other than vegetation.

"There" the old man exclaims in a whisper, "between the trees"

The boy's heart is pounding and nervousness fills his chest as he frantically tries to see the elusive bird. After a few seconds, he sees something move near a bush and notices a small head rise up above the bush. He slowly raises his shotgun and holds the cold metal to his cheek. Drawing in a long breath he steadies the heavy gun and closes one eye, "I see it" he barely whispers.

"Do it" says the old man. The boy feels the freezing cold metal of the trigger on his pointer finger and slowly applies pressure to it until it finally gives way. A shot rings through the silent forest and the recoil of the blast sends the young boy's shoulder into the tree.

Carrying the dead turkey by it's neck the old man and the boy walk cheerfully back to their car across a field from where they sat. They share their excitement with each other on the ride home.

Memories like these are what I cherish about the time I had with my grandfather. Though he was not perfect and was certainly a product of his environment, I greatly appreciate the contributions he made to building my character and being a role model to me. I was adopted into the Ash family, of which my grandfather was the patriarch. The culture of the family, therefore, was largely influenced by his upbringing. Outdoorsmanship, Respect, Hard Work, Frugality, and Family were all very, very important to my grandfather.

Besides his bright white hair, his muscular frame stood out and reflected his dedication to physical betterment through lifting weights. Building his own bench for pressing a cheap barbell with homemade cement weights and fastening his own pulley system to the ceiling of his basement workshop to do tricep pulldowns with a weighted cable.

"when it starts to burn that's when it's starting to work, you gotta get ten more reps out of that burn," he told me in a concentrated, earnest voice. This training approach ended up helping me a lot when I first started going to the gym regularly during my senior year of high school.

A tradition that has been upheld by the men of the Ash family is having a “den”. A specific room meant to display the manliest of belongings. For instance, my grandfathers had a myriad of taxidermized animals including turkey, deer, fish, squirrels, and grouse. The adjacent wall had a very ornamental cabinet with paintings of deer and handles of deer antler, the top of the cabinet was red felt and attached to a gun rack that spanned the entire wall, muskets, shotguns, and other antique firearms were placed in the slots against the wall while the more modern firearms were stored in the drawers. For most of my life I was raised by my grandmothers and mothers, of which I have two, so this spirit of masculinity, though some may call it outdated, was very important in shaping me as a person.