The Tin Cup

My grandfather was a rather large man. He stood 6'4" and when he went to the kitchen sink to get a drink, he filled an old tin cup he had purchased at a hardware store for less than a dollar and drank from it. Since large men usually require a lot of water, my grandfather's cup was enormous, well, at least in my eyes.

He used the cup for the last 15 to 20 years of his life. When he died many years ago, the only item among his possessions that I really wanted as a keepsake was that old tin cup.

It's really is just an old tin cup; not very pretty to look at. It has a red rim painted on it and some funny-looking peaches painted on the sides to add appeal to would-be purchasers like my grandfather. If you could buy one like it at a hardware store today, it probably wouldn't cost you more than a couple dollars - if you could find one. That's my way of saying this cup really isn't worth much to anyone but me.

But since the cup belonged to my grandfather, and because I'm rather sentimental about such things, I value this old tin cup.

My grandfather, like his father before him and mine before me, was an outdoorsman in his own right. Continuing that tradition has been a lifelong goal of mine and I feel it only right to keep a small token of those men with me when pursuing my outdoor passions.

You see, I have plans for that old cup.

Somewhere in the northern half of the Rocky Mountains, on a little-known mountain range, in a quiet,  uninhabited area, there is a bull elk with my name on it. Not just any bull elk, mind you, but a special one whose path and mine will cross one day. After he and I have looked each other in the eye and I have made the decision to squeeze or not squeeze the trigger on my rifle or bow, I'll hike back to camp, dig out that old tin cup and celebrate that bull.

I'll sit around the campfire, drinking slowly from that old cup, remembering that bull and toast my grandfather, who never saw an elk in his lifetime except in the pages of outdoor magazines.

In a harvested field in eastern South Dakota where the pheasants are thick as flies in a barnlot in July and they fly slower than I can type (which is pretty slow), I'll celebrate with that cup again.

After the day is over and the guns are cased, I'll sit by the fire and drink from that old cup. I may even call Gus, the shorthaired pointer, and take a walk, just the two of us, down the field road, slowing just a bit when we reach the spot where the double flushed, and I missed, twice. Somehow those misses will seem unimportant and the shots that connected will be all the more sweet as I drink from that old cup.

Other, less sentimental persons might say that my old tin cup really doesn't heal any of the hurts or make the joys any sweeter. And, they might be right. But I don't think so. Somehow the rack on that big elk will grow bigger, the pheasants' flights will be more erratic just because of that old tin cup.

Maybe there isn't any magic that makes that old cup special. But I like to think there is. And, if you are anything like me, you think so, too.