I have a confession to make. Over the course of this blog, I have made our adventure out to be one made of the bare essentials. This, I hate to admit, is not entirely true, mostly due to a man I would like to introduce to you. His name is Greg Cooper.
Greg has been here during most of our stay, and I can't explain to you how great he has been. First, he is one of the best cooks I have ever come across. Every other night, he invites us over to his trailer where we are treated to a meal that rivals my own mothers. This is down-home cooking at its finest: every night consists of some kind of potatoes, some kind of vegetable, and some kind of meat. The meat portion has ranged from possum (very surprising how good possum is), Northern Colorado elk, Iowa whitetail, West Texas mule deer, etc. We aren't talking throw some taters in a pot and steak on the grill, either. These meals take hours to create, but only 15 minutes for us to do our best backhoe impression. In addition to the cooking (which I feel I have shortchanged, but there is really no way to do it justice), Greg has extended his housekeeper's grounds to our trailer. Every three days, we come home to the dishes cleaned, our clothes washed AND folded (are you freakin' kidding me?), and the whole trailer vacuumed and dusted. Like I said, not exactly roughing it.
I mentioned Greg invites us over for dinner. These dinners contain some of the most illuminating and empowering conversations that I have ever been a part of. Please, let me include you.
One in particular comes to mind. My dad and the rest of the execs had left about two nights before, and Greg came over after work and told us (I have been using the word "invited," but "commanded" is perhaps more accurate) that he was making us dinner, and to come over around 6:30. So, Griffin and I shower, lounge around, waste time, etc., and head over fashionably late. We are greeted by Gunny and Grizz (read "The Council of The Titans"), and as they bark and slobber all over us, the food hits us. The meal consists of elk steaks, the best mashed potatoes the American South has ever seen, and snap peas. Now, I have already confessed that I can't do Greg's cooking justice, so please imagine the best food ever, and place it in front of the Imaginary Joe and Griffin at the Imaginary Dinner that you are envisioning. Okay great. So, we sit down (Fox News on silent in the background...), and while we're waiting for the steaks to finish, I asked Greg to teach me how to make some cocktails. Happily, he obliged, and wasted a lot of expensive liquor in doing so...
The food was ready, and as we sat down to eat, for some reason, Griffin and I got very very inquisitive and pelted Greg with question after question. Here is what we found out.
Greg was born and raised in St. Louis. He spent much of his childhood on farms, be it grandpa's or uncle's or neighbor's. He told us stories about how he and his cousins would have contests at night where they would place a match in between fence posts and light it with a .22. Read that again. One more time. Ok, lets move on. He would also spend a lot of time ice-hole fishing on said farms. When he played high school football, during two-a-days, he would walk to the field in the morning, practice, stay at the field until the second practice, and then walk home (his family had 1 car, and his dad took it to work). Thats 8 hours and 17 miles. What makes this even more incredible was the common football coach practiced a policy known as "water discipline," which is denying players any sort of hydration until after practice.
He started studying chemical engineering at a community college in Missouri (which would later become the University of Missouri). He had a full-time job, so he took classes at night. Add a girlfriend, and you have a borderline insane college life. The summer before his junior year, Vietnam went down, and he was drafted. At this point in the conversation, things got really good. Everyone knows that your drafted by the Army, except us obviously, and Greg took this as an opportunity to explain to us the REAL military. The branches are as follows: the Navy, the Turds (Army), the Chair Force, the Queen Berets, and the Wannabes. I left out the Marines. Greg described the Marine Corps as the "mens department of the Navy." This man is a Corps FANATIC. From here, he regaled us with 'Nam stories (P.S. war stories are sooooooooo awesome), gave us the skinny on the Army/Marine relationship in WWII, 'Nam, and Iraq/Afghanistan. Then, he brought out the guns. He schooled us on ammo, shooting technique, killing technique, shooting philosophy, all that good stuff. This moved us to hunting. We expressed a desire to learn how to handle a gun properly, as well as how to kill an animal properly. I could almost see Greg salivating; he loves all sorts of instructing and teaching. He continued to teach us about wind, sighting-in, the kill-zone (boiler-room and gourd), the relationship between gun barrel and scope, and at the end of the night promised that the next morning he would call us in (to work) and spend the morning teaching us the Marine Corps way to shoot. Griffin and I left shaking with awe and excitement. Seriously, we were shaking.
That night, I dreamt of a huge, fat old razorback, full of years and wisdom, waddling up to a feeder. Right as he bent down to refill his huge stomach with corn, his little offspring run up squealing and jumping playfully. They root and grunt and roll around, not a care in the world, basking in the indulgences of the ranch which they BOOMHEADSHOT. See ya pig.
True to his word, Greg called us in (since its his company and all, we still got paid for that day. I know, roughing it.) and brought us down to the rifle range. For the next two hours, he undid 19/21 years of sheltering and taught us how to destroy anything within 500 yds. And we can do it now.
What makes Greg seem so larger-than-life to me is his unwavering resolve to give away what is his. He routinely hosts a group of Marines down here at Lost Draw and lets them hunt, shoot skeet, and drink lots of whiskey (THAT, my friends, should be a TV show). He takes the board all over the US, and in two weeks he is taking the executives and their families to Yellowstone, all expenses paid. Like his cooking, I cannot do his generosity justice by writing about it. I simply cannot.
Greg left to prepare for Yellowstone yesterday, and before he drove off, he stopped by our trailer to shake our hands and thank us for all the hard work we had been doing for the company.
He thanked us.
