Prologue: OK, so this artist goes hunting with a businessman, a hat-maker, and two priests. Seriously, this is not a joke, it really happened. I had asked my friend Pete Lien, CEO of Pete Lien and Sons, (named after his grandfather) if he’d take me hunting so that I could write a “learning curve” article about the experience. A couple of days later he called me and asked if I wanted to go pheasant hunting with him and two friends of his, who happened to be priests, or whether I’d rather wait until sometime when he and I could go alone. I told Pete I had no objection to the priests (actually, I figured they might come in handy, given my lack of experience with guns) so it was agreed that I would meet the three of them for breakfast the next day and then we’d head down to Oral (near Hot Springs) for the hunt. In the morning I found Pete and two men at a table in Minerva’s, a popular Rapid City restaurant. Pete introduced them as Brian Lane and Kevin Achbach. They looked so un-Fatherly, so, well, normal, that I assumed two additional friends had been invited to join the expedition and we were still waiting for the priests. “So what do you guys do?” This was my brilliant conversational opening gambit. “We’re priests,” replied Brian, the older of the two men.
“Oh,” I said, feeling rather foolish.
(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘08 FACES)
