How to Skin a Bullhead by Terry Allen

“Hell, boy! I could ride that
all the way to California,”
Grandad said when I
showed him my very first
pocket knife and told him
to be careful it was sharp.

And he did ride it
all the way to San Pablo
and I never saw him again
until his funeral
when he was crated
and shipped back to Missouri
on the City of San Francisco,

a train remembered
for being trapped
in a 100 mph blizzard
in the Sierra Nevadas
and buried for six days
in twelve feet of snow
just west of Donner Pass.

And I like to picture
Grandad on that train,
a tough old Kansas farmer
and dry goods store keeper,
whose place was burned
to the ground
by the Klan in 1924,
a man who knew how to survive
on nothing but his wits
and a pocket knife.

And since estrangement ran in our family
and I never knew him…
mother saw to that…
she had a way of eventually
separating us from everyone,

Grandad remains carved in my memory
from an old piece of basswood
and real or imagined, I recall
him teaching me all the important
lessons of life
like how to skin a bullhead
with a pair of pliers
and a sharp knife by nailing
it’s head to the side of the barn
so as not to get stabbed by its spiny fins.
“Careful, boy, this guy’ll make you bleed
even after he’s good and dead.”

You know, I like to believe
Grandad got a fat discount
on that last train ride home from California
because he had once worked as a railroad
foreman for the Union Pacific
and I like to imagine him
getting off in Chicago
to air out a bit
and take in the skyline
and think about home,
while waiting for the Super Chief
to carry him in style
all the way to Kansas City
and on to Lawrence
and the Underwood cemetery
where he rests now in a plot
that has lost its headstone.

# # #

Terry Allen is an Emeritus Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he taught acting, directing and playwriting. He now writes poetry and plays pickleball and has been published in I-70 Review, Freshwater Poetry Journal, Skylark Review, Third Wednesday and Modern Poetry Quarterly Review.

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