In 1938, I was invited to watch Chicky Hunt's dad kill a pig penned in the middle of their orange orchard. I was ten and had seen my father kill chickens in our back yard. First Mr. Hunt pointed a 22 gauge rifle close to the pig's face, and I heard a loud crack as he pulled the trigger. A small hole appeared on the pigs nose just below and between its eyes. The pig looked this way and that, but he did not stagger, and the bullet hole did not bleed. Then the pig squealed and ran around the small pen until it was cornered by Chicky who made it stand still. Two more shots were fired. Mr. Hunt wasn't sure where to point the gun in order to hit the brain. The third shot rang out, and the pig dropped like a sack of potatoes. The pig was hung by its heels from nails on the side of the shed. A knife was used to cut its throat to let the blood spill out into a bucket. The dead pig was cut open to remove intestines before the skin was peeled off by pulling down from the back feet over the creatures head. Watching was not pleasant for me. I knew that knowing about killing was part of growing up, but I was not in a hurry to grow up.
At age twelve I learned to make a sling shot using a strong fork from the branch of an orange tree. I tied two long strips of an inner tube rubber from a car tire. I tied each piece of rubber to the tips of the wooden fork. Then I tied leather from the tongue of an old shoe to the two long strips of rubber. I practiced shooting pebbles at tin cans. Sometimes I could hit a can twenty feet away. Then my friend and I went hunting in our neighborhood and in the orchards of orange trees three blocks from my house. My friend, Dickie was a very good hunter and was usually able to kill a brownie bird. Once in a while I was able to kill one too. Sometimes we built a little fire on the ground, cleaned the feathers and gutted the bird. We roasted and ate the meat. I felt killing and eating birds was wrong, the meat was not tasty without salt, but I did it anyway.
As I entered my teens, my Uncle Tom gave me some rabbit pens including a white buck and a pregnant doe. Soon I had several does raising more baby rabbits, and as they grew I learned to kill them. Our family ate the meat, or I sold the rabbit meat to neighbors. I learned to stretch the hides and hang them in the sun to cure. Sometimes a rabbit screamed when I killed it, and my older sister complained to me about it. I had several nightmares about killing. Within a few months I felt guilty about running a rabbit farm. I gave the rabbits and pens away. I was still shooting at birds in the trees but hardly ever killed any. Then I had a nightmare about shooting a neighbor boy while he was high on the branch of a tree. The dream woke me and I felt guilty for having dreamed that I killed somebody.
Dickie gave me a twenty gauge shot gun and we went rabbit hunting in the orange groves and at the Santa Ana river-bed. We skinned the rabbits and left the heads on to sell to an old German lady. She cooked rabbits or pigeons with their heads left on. I thought it was sick. When I was sixteen Dickie moved away and I stopped hunting rabbits.
Skin diving for fish became my hobby at age twenty. The object was to dive down holding my breath using a face plate and fins searching for fish. Small fish were twelve inches long, and I was proudest killing fish all the way up to two feet long. Fishermen said fish and other animals had no pain when we shot them. We said it, but I never believed it.
I joined the Navy when I was twenty one. My first year was spent as an airman learning to clean and assemble machine guns, load bombs and airplane rockets on fighter planes. I felt this job was a waste of my time. I wrote letters to be transferred to a hospital corps school. In my second year I was given the opportunity to become a hospital corpsman. I hoped never to be asked to kill the enemy. I was lucky during the Korean war, and only used unarmed guns. Guarding Marine and Navy prisoners at San Diego Naval Hospital brig was one of my jobs, but we never used guns even when we went outside for exercises.
After the Navy I continued to spear fish often using home made spears. I married Barbara Cohn after spending three years in a nursing school. We had two boys and two girls, and I speared a lot of fish and gathered abalone to help feed them.
Now that I am older I try not to kill anything except bugs. I realize people enjoy hunting. There are a lot of thrills sneaking up on something to kill. But now I feel satisfied sneaking up to fish or wild animals just to see them. We travel the world to snorkel. We just look at the fish.
I know that killing needs to be done at certain times. Someone has to kill the meat we eat. I don't mind paying someone else to be the butcher. If someone comes to kill me or my family, I will kill them. I hope nobody comes to kill us. I hope I never need to kill people.