I hate snoring, as both a participant and a victim. My family tree carries the gene. Hence, I am a victim and a villain.

There is nothing worse to me than trying to sleep in a room or a house with a snorer. I cannot get to sleep, or stay asleep. My hatred of snoring has its root in one fateful night.

It was the Friday night before the opening of deer season in Texas. I was 10-years-old. My father, grandfather, two uncles, two cousins, a friend of theirs and me gathered at my uncle’s ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

The usual excitement and activity the night before opening day occupied the evening. A meal was cooked, guns cleaned, safety lectures given in turn by all four adults, which became more garbled as the bottle of adult libation dwindled.

The house was the original dogtrot, log cabin modernized to the point of having running water. Cooling was by open windows, while heat came via a wood burning fireplace. Two bedrooms on the other side of the open dogtrot had no heat. The eight of us decided to sleep in the one bedroom and living room that were near the fire. Grandpa and the uncle, who owned the house, shared the double bed, dad on the couch, youngest uncle on a cot, and the four boys on the floor.

We were all tired, and the adults had further liquid incentive to sleep. No one had a problem except me.

I knew my father and grandfather snored. Either could rattle the glass in the picture frames on the wall, but together, oh my, nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. Anesthetized by joy juice, the four men fell asleep before I could close my eyes. The snoring duet of grandpa on bass and dad as baritone was joined by the altos of uncles.

As I struggled to get to sleep, I fancied the four were a choir and I was the conductor and put the noise to music. I imagined myself saying, “a little late there Grandpa, keep up, or we will find someone to take your place.” There was no one who could take his place. If there was a snoring championship, my grandfather would win, but Dad would be a near second.

The cabin grew colder … miserably cold. I stoked the fire. Being up made me colder and sliding back into my frozen sleeping bag compounded my shivering. The fire died, the cold deepened, the snoring increased, as did my misery. I tossed around on the floor trying to get to sleep. I knew then what hell would be.

The burning spoken of in scripture is intense, inescapable cold. The wailing and gnashing of teeth is snoring. Those who wrote otherwise were not with me that night.

Merciful sleep finally came. In that sleep, I saw the cabin torn down, and rebuilt by my grandfather and father, and they never lifted a hand. They accomplished the feat only with the percussions of inhalation and exhalation.

I awoke with the devil in the guise of my father asking, “How did you sleep?”

I laughed and in the most manly way, I answered, “It was hell, pure hell.”

It is now my responsibility to pass on the legacy. I am doing an excellent job. I am certain that the other members of the family choir are smiling from afar as they hum to my contribution.

David Wilson Atwood is a local freelance writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be e-mailed at david@starchasers.us.