Ruark's List

I'm in the middle of reading Robert Ruark's famous books The Old Man and the Boy and The Old Man's Boy Grows Older. Good books, I'm sorry it took so long for me to discover them.

Many of you are familiar with Robert A. Heinlein's list of things that describe the Competent Man, as described by his character Lazarus Long:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Well, long before Heinlein, Ruark had his own list, published in The Old Man's Boy Grows Older:

I could throw a cast net, shoot a gun, row a boat, call a turkey, build a duck blind, tong an oyster, train a puppy, stand a deer, bait a turkey blind (illegal), call the turkey to the blind, cast in the surf, pitch a tent, make a bed out of pine needles, follow a coonhound, stand a watch on a fishing boat, skin anything that had to be skun, scale a fish, dig a clam, build a cave, draw a picture, isolate edible mushrooms from the poisonous toadstools, pole a boat, identify all the trees and most of the flowers and berries, get along with the colored folks, and also practice a rude kind of game conservation.

A list like that makes a modern city boy like me feel inadequate. It would probably make most modern rural boys feel inadequate, if it came down to it. I have to wonder if Heinlein had read Ruark, and had Ruark's list in mind when he wrote his more famous one?

I'm definitely going to have to pay more attention when I'm in Southport again. I'll photograph Ruark's house while I'm there, certainly. It's a bed and breakfast place now, I've passed by it when Sara and I drove about the town.