The Bastrop Rod and Gun Club

The Bastrop Rod and Gun club is not a proper Rod and Gun Club such as those that exist all across the nation. I've been to a few Rod and Gun Clubs in my time, in several states, and they range from basic organizations to near Country Club like outfits. Most of the Rod and Gun Clubs I've visited over the years have a headquarters with a meeting hall or building, usually air conditioned, where members can gather *and drink alcohol* and talk about hunting and fishing. Several of the ones I've visited had small ponds or lakes and skeet shooting ranges on their property.

In the olden days, before the issue of lead contamination and the EPA became business concerns, lots of these Rod and Gun Clubs had shooting ranges, for everything from pistol shooting to long range hunting rifle sight-in ranges. But the advent of our understanding of how large lead concentrations can damage certain types of groundwater basins and sources led to the demise of many a public and private shooting range in this nation.

I even visited one hoity-toity Rod and Gun Club where they had a restaurant and big swimming pool and clubhouse for the members and their families to enjoy, and certainly those memberships cost near as much as country club or yacht club memberships.

The Bastrop Rod and Gun Club is none of those things. It really only exists in my mind, and is about the trials and trails of my friends and neighbors in Bastrop. They're a good bunch, and a funny bunch as well. As a good friend of mine, Dr. MacReady often says, there's "blogging gold" in the stories I tell him of my friends and the townfolk in and around Bastrop.

Bastropians: Those who live in the Bastropian paradise.

And the friends of mine that I run with here in town are indeed blogging fodder. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty alike. Some of the folks I write about are combinations of folks, but most of my friends are so individualistic as to defy combining characters.

These friends of mine that I plan to write about are the "members" of my club. Most of them hunt and/or fish for recreational pursuits, and those that don't hunt and fish often golf. Some who hunt and fish also golf as well, so golfing and fishing and hunting seem run like a common thread through my friendship circle. To a certain extent, quilting is quite common among some of the females in my group of friends, but I'm not aware of any of the male members willing to admit that they quilt.

So anyway, the stories are *mostly* real and the names are *mostly* changed. The opinions expressed are sometimes mine and sometimes parody.