by John Ford
Islandport Press, 2012
“I’ll be darned; the little critter is sharper than I give him credit for,” writes now-retired Maine Game Warden John Ford of a young warden recruit. Together, with another warden wanna-be, the men work in the pitch dark of night to catch a couple of poachers who’ve set an illegal rope snare on the ground to capture deer.
Warden Ford praises the “little critter” when the recruit locates a fishing line that runs from the rope snare to a nearby cabin. The fishing line is attached to an aluminum can filled with nuts and bolts inside the cabin – an alarm of sorts, sure to rattle like crazy when a deer (or anything else) steps into the rope snare.
And so Ford sets off the snare and begins blatting like a deer in distress. Minutes later, the poachers are hoofing it through the woods to their trap to see what they’ve caught, and the warden finds himself with only a few feet of night air between himself and a shotgun, pointed right at him by one of the now-disgruntled poachers. Ford pulls his .38 sidearm (or “peashooter,” as he calls it), and tells the men they’re surrounded by wardens – a slight exaggeration, but enough of a threat to get the poacher to drop his weapon and for the illegal trappers to cooperate with Ford from there on out.
Warden John Ford has got more than a few such tales up his sleeve – ranging from the precarious and dangerous to heartwarming and comical – which he recounts in Suddenly, the Cider Didn’t Taste So Good: Adventures of a Game Warden in Maine.
It’s not so much the stories Ford has to tell that makes the book enjoyable, it’s the simple, good-natured tone in which he tells them. Reading one of Ford’s stories is akin to listening to your favorite grandpa recall the glory days of his youth. Even the more scandalous tales have a bit of the “good ol’ days” in them, with plenty of “old pals,” “scuttlebutts,” and the occasional “gawd-damned turkey.” Ford lets readers know the many lengths to which people will go to get the wildlife they feel they are owed – permit be damned. Whether it’s nighttime deer-jacking or filling one’s waders to the brim with illegally caught smelt (really, one guy smuggles a mess of wiggling smelt in his waders), Ford takes pride in catching the criminals and enjoys a good laugh at their antics.
At times, Ford’s the butt of his own jokes. In one story, on one of his first days as a warden, he joins the local warden pilot on a floatplane flight above Walden County. When the pair spot a couple of women fishing in Unity Pond, they decide to dip on down and check the ladies’ licenses. Upon landing, rookie Ford exits the plane, planning to jump out of his seat to the pontoon below. He grossly misses the pontoon, though, and instead plunges straight down into the lake.
“There was no way in the hinges of hell that I wanted to resurface from the bottom of the pond,” Ford writes. “I could only imagine the fiasco this incident was about to become. It was a matter of sheer survival that forced me to finally bob back up to the top,” where, he writes, the pilot’s hysterical laughter and one woman’s howling awaited him.
When he finally does resurface, Ford’s goodnatured character shines through as he announces, “I guess they’re legal, Dick; I didn’t see any hidden stringer of fish beneath their canoe.”
In another story, a friend of Ford’s confronts him upon seeing Ford’s short, clumpy hair. Unbeknownst to the friend, the new ‘do’ was the result of chemotherapy treatment he was receiving for a malignant lymph node.
“By the damn, I was only 41 years old,” Ford writes of finding out about his cancer. In response to his friend’s comment on his hair, he writes about his new style: “I got it from God. I’m going through chemotherapy, and it’s the best he can do for now!”
While Ford’s friend was both “embarrassed and apologetic,” Ford reminds readers that, “It’s never a bad thing to share a little humor, no matter how severe the circumstances are.”
That, in a sentence, sums up John Ford and his 20-year career as a game warden. While I don’t think Ford’s writing will win him any prizes, there is no time wasted in reading the words of an honorable man doing good work.