Jack O'Malley Interview w/ Dave Richey
The burning question is: do you believe in premonitions? Those quirky little things that niggle at your neck hairs and tease your brain.
They steal silently into your mind, planting seeds of doubt or questions. They are the things that make you stop, look around, and try to sdetermine if you are in sudden or unexplained danger.
Call 'em early warning signs. Call them hunches. A premonition, even. They all mean much the same thing. They are those little things that make us secretly wonder if there really is something out there that goes bump in the night.
Kids were seemingly haunted by grave yards or cemeteries when I was a youngster. You were one tough hombre if you could walk past a cemetery after dark while owls hooted under a full moon as the wind moaned softly in the crooked-branched trees as bats fluttered overhead while grabbing insects.
It conjured up thoughts of Dracula, werewolves or zombies accompanied by a family of the living dead. Got the picture?
I conquered my fears as a kid when people told me that a monster lived in our attic or basement. Scared? You bet, but living in fear is no fun so I walked down the basement steps one night in the dark.
I took myself into the darkest corners of the coal cellar, into the old pantry with big hulking wooden cabinets, and sat on the bottom step next to a squat old wringer washing machine. This was a time to prove to myself that I could face up to any monster, real or imagined.
Sat there for 30 minutes, staring into the darkness and waiting for the haints to arrive. None ever showed up.
The boogyman didn't snatch me up that night. Nor did he grab ahold and tear me apart when I climbed the stairs up and into the musty dark attic.
So, by now, you are probably wondering where I'm heading with this thing. Can't blame you much, but it's about hunches, premonitions or bad vibes. We all get them if we pay attention to our brain and body.
My wife and I flew to Houston, Texas, and our plan was to jump onto a shuttle flight to Lake Charles, Louisiana for an Outdoor Writers Association of America conference a few years ago. I had three seminars to give, and was looking forward to it.
Can't remember when that first little niggling of a thought troubled my mind. It was somewhere just before we reached Houston's Bush Airport, and looking out the window revealed rolling clouds. The weather looked nasty as the tires chirped as they kissed the runway.
It began raining hard, and walking inside, we were greeted with the wonderful news that our connecting puddle-jumper flight to Lake Charles had been canceled. It seemed a tropical storm was camped over everything along the Gulf of Mexico from Lake Charles to Houston.
We couldn't fly and couldn't get our luggage so we snapped up a Hertz rental car for an exorbitant fee for a 150-mile one-way drive. It rained on us some, but we made it to the convention center. Our clothes arrived 36 hours later from a disgruntled Continental baggage crew.
That little bit of wonder about my concerns slowly died away, and it rained hard for three days. It cleared somewhat on Wednesday morning when it came time to fly back to Detroit and then on to Traverse City. The drive to Houston was easy with some good friends, and we chattered about the conference.
We boarded our flight to Detroit on time, and were informed that we were on schedule. Halfway to Motown, that little worm began crawling up my spine again, jangling my nerves awake, and sure enough, 30 minutes later the pilot announced bad weather straddling Detroit like green and black arches. We landed amidst torrential rain, lightning and thunder.
The next leg to Traverse City required a two-hour wait. Those two hours eventually stretched into seven hours of heavy rain, vertical lightning and thunder that seemed to move Detroit Metropolitan's new airport terminal.
The flight that should have left the airport at 9 p.m. took a major detour, and it was 3 in the morning when the plane was pushed from the gate and 4 a.m. when we touched down in Traverse City.
The point to all of this prattle is this: I had premonitions of something going wrong on the way to Houston, and it did. The same doubts jumped on my heck hairs midway to Detroit on the return flight.
Mind you, there are mild premonitions and severe cases. Once, while hunting during a wind storm in Ontario, it was as if someone whispered in my ear: "Move now or die!" I moved 30 feet away, and watched the top of a dead elm break off and land where I'd been standing.
That is a severe case of how the human brain works. Sadly, some people have it, and others do not. Those that don't often meet a sad fate. I honed my instincts, if you will, on the raw and nasty streets of Chicago near west side in 1957-1958 while attending college. You paid attention or paid a very nasty price for your ignorance. Today, it's called street smarts.
I've seen three people killed because they walked through life trusting people to be as nice as they were. It cost them their lives on the mean streets of Chicago's near west side. Learning to live by my wits — my instincts — kept me from becoming a statistic during a year there.
These little hunches, for lack of a better word, can work the other way as well. Sometimes they can lead to some great fishing or hunting or they can lead to a dramatic or deadly situation.
Learn as much as possible about yourself by trusting your instincts. When it comes to gut instincts, your first thoughts are usually right. Argue them at your own peril.
Learn to believe in your premonitions, and act accordingly. Mother Nature can be an unforgiving and formidable opponent for those folka who become clueless, stupid or take chances when they should be giving due diligence to thir ourdoor endeavors.
