Quote:

---

redleg said:
I can't be there(dayum I wish I could) in person,,,headed to Laredo,trust me I'll be there in heart.
Bailey,,,Gordon,, I'll never forget either post...
Dawg the last one,,,,It's goin on the wall...
Every line on that face held a memory... True American nuff said..

---

Quote:

---

It takes the kind, the evil, the best, the worst among us. It takes our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters...and every time it takes a part of those left behind with it. Last night cancer took our friend John 'Foots' Schuh.
Some years ago I joined with a band of four brothers and we spent the better part of a decade traveling the country hunting together. We spent days, weeks, months and seasons together. Three of us were prior military, the other two hard men, that were two of the more naturally predatory people I've ever known. Nobody got any slack...it was a tough ass crowd, but we came to respect one another and our friendships became the kind that will last as long as we do.
To be frank, it was a group of incredibly surly people, that just liked to kill stuff. And a lot of it. It's what we had all always done. I know in this era of gun hating and PC crap, that may not be all that popular to say...but I promise at the time none of us cared. Far as that goes we still don't. We unloaded out of the truck with one thing in mind, and it sure wasn't to witness a beautiful sunrise. It was to spread some misery from the end of a gun barrel.
'Foot's was the oldest of our group...and believe me when I say I don't mean any disrespect, but he was one of the most onery, toughest sumbitches I have met since I've been on this earth. And we would tell him so....often.
He was a United States Marine until early this morning...until he went to sleep for the last time. He fought in some of the more hellish conflicts in Vietnam. But I never saw him meet another veteran of that war that he didn't hug and tell them, "Welcome home brother."
We used to watch him in the woods, etc. Another of our group, Griff, a Marine himself noted one time, "How about the way ole Foots walks...like he's still over there slinking through that damned jungle."
I will leave this with one story of the 'Legend of Foots'...
Two days prior to all of us leaving to drive and hunt for a week together in North Dakota, Foots reports that he has had a heart attack. Two days later Foots loaded up in the truck and basically said, "Let's roll." But he also put a bundle of rope in Griff's tote bag, saying to keep it in there in case it was needed to drag him out. Griff told me this morning that rope was still in there.
We were all like, "Look Foots, you can't be going with us if you're gonna jack up our trip by dying while we're up there! He had actually talked to his wife, and reported to us that if he were to die, we were NOT to bring him back until we were done hunting, and that she had agreed.
So for the rest of the trip we gave Foots hell about what we were gonna do with him if he did indeed die while in North Dakota.
I remember us telling him several times as we trudged across some godforsaken, boot pulling mud that he was too damned ornery to die. Of course he would curse us ruthlessly.
We eventually concluded we would just sit him up in the truck with a seat belt on, his binoculars around his neck, and tote his dead carcass around with us everywhere we went. He would be like somewhat of a 'scout'. He cursed us but said that would work for him. And that in a nutshell was Foots.
We love you brother and will never forget you. You were along for some of the greatest rides any of us will ever take.

---

--------------------
It’s better to be hated for who you are, instead of loved for who you aren’t.

Post Extras