On a chilly November morning, it did not take much imagination to picture the troop trains, pulled by coal-powered steam engines. Here they refueled and brought on water: Aberdeen, South Dakota, was the natural hub. It was a vibrant railroad city, with travelers headed to both coasts, as well as north and south.

My grandpa enlisted in the military in December 1941. Tojo had set Pearl Harbor on fire and National Socialism was on the march in Europe. The Army shipped grandpa and hundreds of thousands of other farm boys from the Upper Midwest south to boot camp. Along the way, grandpa most likely stopped in Aberdeen. Fourteen rail lines intersected there and ran to every point of the compass.

Aberdeen was about as far from the war as a place could be, but the residents of the Mount Rushmore State city knew they could touch the lives of soldiers who would soon fight and die in places like Normandy and the Philippines. Every day, the troop trains rolled in and it was not long before the locals organized an effort to make sandwiches, which they passed out with chocolates and a glass of milk.

What Aberdeen had a lot of was pheasants. Someone decided it would be a good idea to make pheasant sandwiches.

It was the first weekend of February, the customary time for Paul and me to quail hunt with William on his farm in Early County, Georgia. All afternoon William had been on a rant about Tom Pollard.

For many years, Tom’s family owned a nearby farm and he and William grew up neighbors and friends…of sorts. Tom went to law school, and when his parents died he sold the farm and moved to Columbus, where he practiced law.

William dropped out of college after his dad died and returned home to run the farm. There were a number reasons William felt rancor toward Tom, and he generally enumerated them to Paul and me during our visits: Tom was a lawyer, a rich one, a member of the exclusive Marion Country Club, lived adjacent to the ninth green, drove a BMW, and wore fancy clothes. Those things torqued William’s jaw, but the thing that really ticked him off was the condescending way Tom talked to him, like calling him a hick or a yokel or William Hudspeth, RFD. Worse than that, he lived close enough to come quail hunting with William a few times each season.

Imagine learning to ride horses and beginning to master equestrian techniques, while learning to fly fish and enjoying shooting five-stand and sporting clays and also, in season, working with sporting dogs or hunting five species of gamebirds-in your very own national-park-sized parcel.
Okay, technically, you’ll have to share this Western wonderland with your own family and other guests. But it’s just like having your very own national park for as long as you stay The High Lonesome Ranch, outside DeBeque, Colorado. The working cattle ranch is situated on more than 408 square miles of deeded and permitted land-framed by alpine mesas, the North Dry Folk Valley, the Kimball Creek Valley, and Cow Mountain with elevations climbing from 4,000 to more than 9,000 feet. The Ranch offers endless recreational opportunities and is a place where bird hunters, fly fishermen, and equestrians can get their fix.