I don't know if you will recall,

but several years ago, I wrote a column about my Aunt Maybelle Giles.

I said nobody can hold a candle

to the likes of her.

That was before I spent the

day with her sons, Gene and Jimmy, on a quail hunt, or shoot, or never-to-be-forgotten

all day excursion of sorts. In other words, I made a memory!

Gene and Jimmy are 64 and 61

respectively, going on 19 and 16, respectively, and eternally. They are

extremely good-looking. And I suppose, to date, that was the one thing

that I consistently thought of when the two came to mind.

I readily concede now that

my shallow thoughts did not begin to do justice to these two rambunctious

offspring of the South.

I must spare you much detail

of my day with the two, as this paper could never print so many of the

stories I heard. Daniel had hunted with them the day before I joined them

and he assures me they all cleaned up their act for me! In all honesty,

I wish I had been a fly on the wall the day before.

And what a wall it was! The

day started out in a 75-foot "shed" as they referred to it.

A roaring fire in an old potbellied stove greeted me. I sat before it

on what appeared to be some kind of plow or disc what do I know that had

been converted into a bar stool of sorts. Red-neck wind chimes tinkled

off to my left.

Thank heaven there were no

horses or mules. The thought of riding in a buggy behind them all day

held no appeal to me. I'm a four-wheeling woman through and through and

was very appreciative of the jeep that would pull our wagon that day.

Jimmy built the wagon. As a

young cousin, SEVERAL years younger, I always thought he could do anything.

Now I know he can.

We pulled ourselves away from

the warm wood heater for the guys that would be Gene, Jimmy and Jimmy

Moree, their buddy to give me a tour of the flight house. Picture a more

sophisticated, better looking and tad more intelligent threesome as in

Curly, Larry and Mo ... and you can begin to imagine how my day unfolded.

That flight house was the 100-plus-foot-long

pen where the birds are raised. To be invited in was clearly an honor.

Some degree of reverence is what I found myself feeling as I observed

the threesome at work. The boys (forget age here!), tenderly shooed or

herded or maneuvered the birds toward the light.

That would be the light in

the tunnel that led to the room where they were held until Moree went

in there to shoo them into the chutes through which they walked to the

cages in which they were loaded for the ride to the fields.

If you are an animal rights

activist, don't even think about going there with me. Like Daniel said,

"At least, they were about to give them a flying chance."

And that they did! I didn't

shoot. Didn't even carry a gun. I rode in the jeep with Gene all day.

He's the doc, as in M.D. He's had a number of celebrities down for hunts

in conjunction with Quail Unlimited activities and they always want to

know what he does. He prefers not to say.

As I listened to him talk,

it appeared that country music stars are among his favorite past guests.

I wondered how Daniel and I were measuring up.

Gene likes to play the guitar

and sing, too. He used to perform live at some kind of Saturday night

shindig in Panama City, when he owned a condo down there.

I want to try to describe for

you the moment-by-moment action of the day, but I can't. I don't know

how. The threesome kept teasing Daniel and insisted that if he would put

his shotgun in his right hand he might could impress them a bit. But my

leftie did me proud; I'm eating birds this week!

I think what most fascinated

me was watching the dogs perform. Observing their different personalities.

Feeling their excitement. You can do that, you know, really feel what

they feel if you let yourself. I could.

I let myself feel everything.

To the fullest. It was the 14th anniversary of my dad's death. At last,

I was making a memory that could compete positively with that February

day in 1988.

Gene had been my dad's doctor.

He had done all he could before he had sent him