The Abundance of the Heart

From living many years on this earth, Ol' Dutch has noticed that if you give them the opportunity, people will pretty much tell you what they are going to do or have done.

In order to appreciate this phenomenon, you have to develop what is known as “listening skills.”

This is harder to do than one might think as it involves closing one’s mouth, which as Trixie is quick to point out, seldom occurs around Ol' Dutch. What she fails to realize is that I am trying to improve HER listening skills.

This week marked the end of the archery elk season locally and I had the opportunity to both hunt and to talk to some of the other brave hunters. Trying to be a listener was hard to do but I finally did enough to gain some real insight into people.

One guy I met had a disheveled appearance and quickly volunteered that “I have not had a bath in 8 days.”

To which I could only honestly reply “I know.” That was one piece of information he really could not hide.

Another weaving Nimrod confessed to looking for his elk in the bottom of some of Jack Daniel's finest and I have to admit now, after a not so successful season for Ol' Dutch, that technique is looking better all the time.

There was a man named Mathew who wrote some of the words contained in the Bible and one passage says:  “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

Whatever is inside you will come out, eventually. This is a well-known fact to all mothers and the main reason my pants were swatted often as a child.

That reminds me of a story. I knew a man by the name of Henry Krause, who was the inventor of the one way plow, which was revolutionary in its time. Back in the depression a man came to him and inquired about the costs of a new plow. When told how much it would cost, the gentleman remarked, “a guy would have to rob a bank to pay for that.”

Sometime later the police came to Henry and asked if anyone had flashed some money around as the local bank had been robbed. Henry related the story to the police and sure enough the man had the money in his mattress.

You see, what the man had in his heart came out in his actions.

Back in the early days of Ol' Dutch's life he was involved in the trapping trade and one night I walked up on a skunk in a trap and got the full effect all over me.

Now here I was, miles from town and had to strip down to my birthday suit, get in the car and go home to a tomato juice bath. You can imagine that smell was everywhere including in my car and for months thereafter, my then-girlfriend would swear up and down that she could not smell it.

Only later after many years of marriage to that same woman did I learn that she had lied all along and I had smelled long and hard like a black and white striped civet cat. But it finally came out in the divorce. That just goes to show you, the truth will come out.

During the recent elk season I used some high powered elk perfume and Ol' Dutch would shower and then ask Trixie if she could still smell it. Now this normally honest woman would lie through her teeth and tell me “no” but I soon found out that those were just words of a desperate bachelorette woman looking for a husband. I smelled like cow elk pee.

So no matter what secrets you carry, they will come out sooner or later. And, if you find yourself emitting wafting aromas of odiferous offerings, someone will tell you -- eventually. But until they do, enjoy the ignorance.