For two, perhaps three summers in my youth, I set clay pigeons on a trap at a now defunct hunting club.  The club went bankrupt because the demographics of the Valley went from farmers and hunters to yuppies with kids.  Regretably the wooded areas surroundind the club were shall we say, removed after the land was sold to someone who wanted the logging profits and apparently not much else.  I've not been on the land for ages, and as it's posted I doubt I ever will be, but if you look real carefully coming down the highway a quarter mile from the old entrance you can see where all the trees have just been clear cut.  I'm shocked that a McMansion settlement isn't up there now but who knows.

Anyway, this is not a tale about clear cutting precious forest land in rural Pennsylvania, this is a tale of yours truly and his first real job.  I remember clearly that I was in the front yard, doing something summer related.  It was near dusk, when Paul stopped on the road, and motioned for my Dad to come to the car.  Paul was looking for someone to set trap for the club, on Sundays when they had their tourneys.  He wondered, if perhaps I'd be interested in making a few dollars every week or so.  My Dad was okay with me getting a job, I was of that age I guess. 

Paul said that I'd be setting trap, and while not really dangerous it could be dicey.  At first I thought i was going to be checking traplines along the ridge near our house, and resetting any that had been tripped but had no animals in them.  It was an honest mistake because the name of the hunting club was also the name of the ridge where everyone did furbearer trapping.  I was saved the embarassment of asking what I should do if there was an animal in the trap, as he immediately started explaining what setting trap entailed.  I smiled, and told him I'd love to help them out. 

A few days later, he stopped by again, dropped off a schedule of the season's tourneys and said he'd pick me up about 20 minutes before the start time.  This was even better, i didn't have to rely on the parents to be around to drive me to work.  I know that the next Saturday that came around, I got a pair of earplugs from a neighbor of my paternal grandparents.  He and my Dad had been talking and he suggested I wear them because of the noise that the guns would produce.  I think he thought I was going to be shooting, as the noise was not anywhere close to being loud enough for ear protection.

On that first Sunday, after eating yet another awesome Sunday dinner cooked by my Mom, I went to the front steps and waited for Paul to pick me up.  He arrived a little after 1PM, in his.  I think it was a Scout, or something like that.  Might have been a Jeep.  The only thing I really remember about it was that it was a three speed, and it had the shifter on the steering column.  The club was a five minute drive away.  We pulled into the parking lot and walked to the clubhouse.  I can't remember much about the club house.  They had  pop in the fridge for sale.  I got one for free, i think.  Paul was the scorekeeper, and he did some stuff in the back office, and then we were off to the trap house.

We crossed the gravel driveway, walked past the roof covered area where the shooter and the guy who controlled the firing of the trap were located.  It was up on stilts.  The trap house was down a hill, buried into the side of the hill, so that from the top of the hill you could just see the roof.  We went beyond the trap house to a small shed, and carried three or four boxes to the trap house.  There were two heavy steal doors, locked with a single padlock.  Paul unlocked them, and we moved the boxes into the building.  I was tall, even then and it was a chore getting into the small building.  Once inside it was a little better, I was able to stand up.

To my left was a bucket with a 2x10 plank on top of it.  Almost in front of me, was the trap.  Just a small thing, electric powered, with exposed parts all over the place.  It seems to me that Paul pointed out that a safety guard was removed because it affected the trajectory of the clay pigeons.

He plugged it in, I think it had a power switch, but that was in such a location that you had to reach into the path of the platform that flung around at a break neck speed.  So the recommended that pulling the plug was safer.  He sat down and showed me how to operate the beast.  It had a manual firing switch.  After a few examples I sat down and quickly learned where the platform would come to a rest and where the pigeon should rest for optimal lift off.

I don't remember any specific day, or any of the actual people who came to shoot at clay pigeons.  What I do remember from that time of my life was how I absolutely dreaded Sundays.  Sitting here just thinking about it all, it seems silly that I had the dread.  I guess it was because A) I really needed the money, we were in the middle of the 'poor' phase of my youth and not having to ask my Dad for a dollar to play Pac-Man at the arcade made me feel independent.  B)  The dire warnings from Paul about getting my fingers caught and ripped off, every time he picked me up.  C) It was hot as hell in that small building even though it was semi-underground.  D)  There were bees, and I had a fear of being stung, and then being swarmed and then running out of the building and gettong peppered with a shotgun blast.  This last part was irrational, yeah, but there it was.

There are other details I can remember, now 8 hours after I wrote the draft of this during lunch today.  There was a piece of cloth on a stick I could wave to signal I wanted to come out of the building and not be shot.  There were a few rows out of a box of clay pigeons that were inferior, and that would shatter before leaving the building.  these almost always were heading away from me.  There was orange dust every where.  Some Sundays there were three teams not just two.  That made the day really long.  So long the trap had to be shut down to cool a few times.  I don't remember what I was paid, nor what I actually did with the money.  I am sure some of it made it to the local arcade, but I have nothing of value to show for it.  I mentioned at the beginning it was two or three years.  I am leaning towards just two years, the third year I was asked to come back I declined.  I think my brother did it for a while, Paul's grown son did it for a bit as well.  There were like 8 teams in the group.  DuBois is the only one I can remember.

I did a Google search, and sadly there is nothing at least on the web about the club, or the Clay Pigeon shoots they used to host.  I wish my memory was better, and I wish that I had appreciated my youth a bit more.