Bird Watching

Gramp used to have a friend by the name of Gus, though he always told me to call him Moe. Moe was a bachelor, preferring the call of adventure over the call to the altar. He could always bring out the best in Gramp, course it was those times when he'd laugh the hardest and let me take extra pulls off the ale jug. Moe liked to do what he called, 'bird watching' and admire the ladies sunning on the shore. One summer though, when I was about 17, Moe spent a heck of a lot of time with a woman named Mary Cudahy. She was the prettiest tomboy I ever saw. She used to sit fishing on the dock or off the pontoon of Moe's seaplane. She could spit a watermelon seed from 15 yards and make it ding off the door of the plane. Mary sure was something. She left just as the leaves began to turn to take a teaching job near Utica. After that summer Moe was never quite the same.