Amour and the Veggie Aisle

 

I stopped at the local grocery store the other day to do my "man bringing home food" thing that I do when the only thing staring back at me from inside my refrigerator is a can of some sort of despicable beer that I never did like in the first place and I wish they'd never given to me but I had to take it because sometimes, well, I'm just too damn nice for my own good.  Up 'til that point I was totally capable of surviving on a few stale crackers, the scrapings from the bottom of a peanut butter jar and a decent can of beer.  And yes, in case you're wondering, the lack of decent beer was the motivating factor.

 

I keep promising myself I'm going to get better at some of this stuff, I always mean it and I always fail.  First things first was the beer aisle and then picking up some creamer for the coffee though I can drink it straight but a touch of cinnamon or peppermint does me just fine too. And dang if they don't have a sale on my favorite frozen pizzas.  A dozen eggs and some frozen home fry potatoes and let's get some southern style while we're at it.

 

Oh, that's right, I'm here to try to eat better so maybe I should head over to the produce aisle.  Oh dang, there's the meat aisle and I should get some hamburger 'cause it's quick and easy and I like it and I don't have to eat a whole bunch of it all at once and, aw heck, just pick up some hamburger and get over it.

 

The produce aisle is in sight and I'm pointed directly at it which is where I thought my intended destination was when I walked in.  I put my head down, keep my eyes on all that green and push the cart for all I'm worth.

 

The first stop is off to the side where they keep all the packaged lettuce and spinach and ready to serve coleslaw that doesn't have the cole or is it the slaw?  You know, the stuff that mom use to mix up in that green bowl of hers.  I remember the mayonnaise being dumped into the bowl in big spoonfuls and then I seem to remember some vinegar, sugar, pepper and a good shot of horseradish to finish it off.  Stir the cabbage and carrots and all the rest together and then throw it in the refrigerator until it all got cold.  Well, that's how I remembered it and what I was looking at that said coleslaw sure was missing more than a little in my humble opinion.

I've never been able to figure out which way to go, bagged or whole, so usually (unless I'm feeling abnormally daring and pick up real, honest to goodness heads of the stuff) I grab a bag or two of the hearts of romaine and a bag of spinach figuring that I've more or less got about as much as I'll use before it all goes bad.  And the truth is that it almost always does go bad.  And every time my thinking is exactly the same as I dump the brown and juicy bits of vegetation inside that plastic bag into the trash, "Well, the tamale lady came on Wednesday" or "I didn't have time to do the chicken for my salad" which is always a lie because quite honestly I almost always have more than enough for anything and everything including making a salad with chicken for the next day or "I don't want to bother with chopping all that stuff up," which is as close to the truth as it usually gets but on the other hand I turn right around and throw some long grain brown rice in a pan of boiling water and when it's done throw some shaker parmesan cheese on it with a big helping of soy sauce and call it lunch.

I'm pretty sure I'm the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of anything close to healthy eating habits but you should believe me when I tell you my intentions are truly admirable.  No really they are, but the  results are always little more than business as usual and highly disappointing.

So here I go and it's hard to starboard into the islands stacked high with bananas, apples, oranges, tomatoes, garlic, grapes plus a multitude of other things and stuff that I'm really not all that sure about.  And to port there's shelves full of broccoli crowns, red lettuce,  jicama, snow peas, bell peppers of all colors, purple cauliflower if you can imagine such a thing and so much more.

The thing is I suddenly realize I'm in a part of the store where it appears guys don't normally venture.  Heck, the beer aisle was full of them and over in the meat department there were plenty of guys and some with gals going along picking out this and that.  But not here, heck I don't even see any guys off on the side manning the cart while their women pluck the garden's gifts and bring them back to their personal ships of treasures.  No the fact is that everything I see spreading out before me tells me this is the domain of the female and the only way to venture forward is to screw up my courage, put one foot in front of the other and steer my own personal ship of treasures ahead into uncharted waters.

Stay to starboard, stay small and maybe you'll survive.  In another life and in another time long ago I'd experienced taking the helm of a US Navy destroyer both in calm seas and in times when you couldn't see the bow of the ship for the water cascading over the bridge as we slid down one more wave into a trough that would ultimately lead to us trying to climb up the wall of the next wave as its' top came crashing down on us.

I noticed I was gripping the handle of the shopping cart a bit more firmly than normal.

It seemed the only logical thing to do was to find a safe port and venture out on my own away from the relative security of my wire mesh ship of treasures. And so I did.

 

There was no question in my mind that these women were intent on plucking from this well lit indoor agribusiness garden only the finest for their families and themselves while all I was interested in was grabbing a bunch of broccoli and if it had some brown on it so be it because I'd just cut that part off.

And that's about the time I found myself losing focus on what I was there for. I mean in an instant my thoughts were quite literally jerked from lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes to something far less accessible and far more tantalizing.

She comes in from my right and seems to be looking for the very same broccoli I hadn't been aware I was thinking about. She stretches out beside me to pick up a bunch of perfect broccoli crowns and then straightens up never saying a word. And then she's gone but her scent remains. A scent that sends waves of inner emotions and desires through me.

The green onions are a must and as I take up my station another woman stops to scoop up green beans right beside me. And as she leaves her scent remains. A freshness lingers that I'd forgotten and suddenly realize how very much I've missed.

Another woman, another scent, and inwardly I sigh that sigh of the lonely. I feel I'm so very close to that which my memories tell me was all that was good and right and which now, in this moment and place, is so very far from my reality. I silently curse my fortunes, bag up  a bunch of bananas, and head for the checkout aisles.

 

I suspect it's one of those urban myths of sorts but I swear that even in the days of "Happy Days" the Fonz once made reference to going to the vegetable aisle of the grocery store to meet women.  I'd be lying if I said the thought never crosses my mind when I make my way through that part of the store.  Maybe while reaching for a green bell pepper I'll hear a feminine voice say how she so likes them on a freshly tossed salad with just a splash of vinaigrette or how she has this amazing recipe for stuffed bell peppers. In my mind that could be the very beginning of something so very special and magical and wonderful. And in my mind she would smell the smells I've just walked away from. She would smell fresh and pretty and, well, she would smell like a woman.

For all I know the vegetable aisle might very well have been the Fonz's Holy Grail of dating but not for me. It is however a place I both love and hate to venture into simply because there's more than just potatoes and watermelons and cantaloupes waiting for me.  There's memories of wrapping a towel around her after she's bathed. There's memories of her gliding past me as she slides into the car while I hold the door. There's memories of dancing close. There's memories of her and me side by side on a couch and her head on my shoulder.

The scent of a woman is something one does not easily forget.

Penny Loafers in the Snow

“I sure wish I’d worn something more than this,” I thought to myself as I shoved my hands deeper into my letter jacket. And though the letter jacket was made with wool for the cold and a decent lining it wasn’t made for the temperature I was subjecting it and myself to just now.

Walking along the side of the road my shiny brown penny loafers didn’t offer much in the way of protection from the elements either.  What with the Levi blue jeans and the white cotton socks nothing below my waist seemed to be fairing all that well just now.  And even though I was walking along the edge of the road for the most part there was just enough snow here and there that I ended up stepping in that was now making my feet all that much colder.

The moon was shining and there seemed to be more stars in the sky than I’d ever seen before.  The cold of the night just seemed to make all the light from the heavens above just seem brighter.  Folks like me knew that tonight wasn’t what the natives called cold but rather it was pretty much a touch on the brisk side.  I was a native and I knew how cold the nights could get this time of year and so what wasn’t maybe more than fifteen or twenty above zero wasn’t really cold but in the moment it was damn brisk for sure.

I’d driven this stretch of US 12 & 16 countless times since I’d gotten my license some two years ago but I’d never walked it.  From New Lisbon to Mauston it was seven miles and I was never sure of whether that was from city limit to city limit or center to center.  But no matter I was doing my best to figure out how far I was from New Lisbon and a warm bed just now and as near as I could figure I likely had a good four miles to walk yet.

There isn’t really any place along that road that you can get a good long look in front or behind you but I was certain of one thing that Saturday night in December and that was that there hadn’t been any traffic on the road my whole walk and there didn’t look like there was any coming any time soon.

And so I did the only thing I could do, I just kept walking away from Mauston and toward New Lisbon all the while longing for the warmth of the car that had taken me there.

 

“Hey, you want to go to Mauston to the dance with us?”

She was an old girlfriend who very honestly it still hurt to look at or think about to any large degree.  Thing was in a school as small as ours you saw everyone pretty much all the time.  She’d gone on to doing other things with other folks and so had I but still there was a history with us and even if she’d gotten past it I certainly hadn’t.  So when she asked of course my first thought was that maybe, just maybe, she wanted to get back together with me which was something I sure hadn’t seen coming.

“Who’s going?” I asked hoping I didn’t sound too eager.

“Paula gets to use the car and so we were going to go to the dance in Mauston and I was wondering if you wanted to go along.”

“Yeah, sure, I don’t have anything else I’m doing so that would be great.” And now I was likely sounding a bit too eager but for all I knew there was a chance and a chance was more than enough when it came to the ladies and me.

“OK, it’ll be fun.  Meet us at 6,” were her instructions and then she was gone.

The next twenty-four plus hours took an eternity what with all the thoughts running through my head which at the time was the head of an eighteen year old male which is almost never a good thing.  The thought of getting back together with that blonde haired beauty was almost too much for me to imagine though imagine I did.

This was the girl that I had stood on top of that old dam across the Lemonweir River right in the center of all the while watching the water flow from somewhere I didn’t know to somewhere I wanted to know and singing to her. And though I don’t know if it would have ever made any difference in our relationship the fact was she never knew about that pathetic attempt at hoping somehow she would hear me and would know my heart.

But just now she was asking me to a dance.

Finally it was time to meet up and head out to the dance in Mauston which was something new for me.  Oh, I’d been to plenty of dances since I’d gotten my driver’s license as soon as I’d turned 16 but they were all in Hillsboro. 

And the truth was I was a bit apprehensive about going to Mauston especially since my chosen wardrobe in those days revolved solely around my letter jacket.  I was as proud of that letter jacket as I was of anything I called my own and I wore it with pride every place I went. Nothing had ever happened that might have suggested I shouldn’t be advertising where I was from and the like but still Mauston was a place I wasn't fanot so much for the town or the people but because they were almost twice our size and we could never beat them in anything we played against them.  To this day I wake up in cold sweats thinking about having to face that left handed throwing Bob Smart but that’s another story. And still as I left home that day I remember feeling a bit hesitant about going though I couldn’t put my finger on just why.

It took only an instant for me to understand loud and clear that this trip to a dance was not about “us” getting back together again since seating arrangements worked out to her and Paula in the front seat and me in the back.  If there was one thing I’d learned over my years as designated driver to the dances the only way something, anything was going to happen was if she was sitting next to you.  And in this case I was sitting very much alone.  Oh I did my best leaning forward and sticking my head in between their shoulders but it did me no good and in the end I settled back for the brief seven mile drive.

“Dang that heater works good,” I remember saying at one point.

To be honest with you the rest of the evening was and still is a blur only because we no sooner got there than I found myself alone.  I had no clue where the girls had gone and the fact was I didn’t know anyone though I recognized several of the guy’s faces from having gone up against them in football or basketball or baseball. 

I had dated a girl from Mauston the past spring and summer and part of me hoped to see her there while the other part dreaded the possibility.  She was the girl I’d made the right decision about and always wished that somehow I could have made the other choice with.  You see when on that fateful night I had kissed her and said no she’d not taken it well at all.  A few days later a letter was delivered to my house from her and that was that.

In the end the night was a complete waste for me in whatever way one can imagine a wasted night being.  From my perspective I was alone in enemy territory with no options evident to me.  I couldn’t even go up to a girl, ask her to dance and then ask her out for a burger and a Coke because, oh yeah, I didn’t have a car.  All the while my letter jacket seemed to be drawing more attention than I was comfortable with.  And still I wasn’t willing to take it off.

And that’s about the time I decided to go looking for the car since I sure couldn’t find the girls.

I knew where we’d parked, I knew exactly where we’d parked, and I was thinking that maybe the girls had found a couple guys and I’d find them in the car.  Yeah, that’s what happened, they met a couple guys and I’d find them out in the car.  I didn’t have to bother them, I just wanted to make sure of where my ride was.  I walked out into that December night only to find the space where the car had been parked empty.  Nothing.  No one.  Empty as empty could be.

Walking back inside I figured that they’d be back soon enough and everything would turn out alright.  So I’d just wait for them. And that’s what I did, I waited until the gym was empty and the band was packing up their equipment and I waited just a bit more.

When I was younger I’d had an aunt and uncle who lived in Mauston but they’d since moved on and the only other person I really knew there was Dawn and as a prideful eighteen year old male I sure wasn’t about to go knock on her door in the middle of the night.  So I started walking away from Mauston and toward New Lisbon.

 

“I sure wish I would have worn more than this,” I said to myself yet again.

“One foot in front of the other and stop thinking about how the toes are starting to smart just a bit.  It isn’t that much further and once you get to that hill by Walker’s place it’s all downhill anyways,” was the sort of dialogue I had going with myself now. 

“Yeah mom’s gonna be pissed big time but the important thing right now is to just get home.”

 

I’d given myself over to watching my feet as much as anything.  One step and then another. I knew it wasn’t like I was going to die out there or something but it was damn cold and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how I was in this spot anyways and so I kept watching my feet when I wasn’t looking out ahead of me or behind me.  For all I knew the girls didn’t know where I was either and so pretty soon they’d be coming along. I could hope if nothing else.

The night was truly brilliant in the brightness of the moon and the stars and the snow truly did shimmer and shine.  Even in those days I wasn’t opposed to admiring those sorts of sights which likely is why I didn’t notice the car coming up behind me.  I was looking at the stars and the moon and thinking that I was getting closer to Walker’s place with every step.  The combination of ice and snow and gravel all crunching under my feet were the only sounds I was concentrating on as I wondered how I’d gotten myself in this mess.

The car passed by me slowing down as it did.  The brake lights came on and then the backup lights as it rolled back to where I was.  Stopping next to me I opened up the passenger’s door and felt the blast of the warm interior heat escaping past me.

The driver didn’t say anything at first and I stood there not sure what I to do.  He seemed to be studying me as if he wasn’t sure if he was going to give me a ride into town or not.  And I sure didn’t recognize him so I couldn’t just blurt out that I was glad to see him and thanks for stopping for me. It was one of those moments when you just stand there hoping for the best but figuring the worst is about to happen.

“You play basketball for New Lisbon don’t you?” he finally asked. “You’re a starter right?”

“Yes sir I do and I am,” I replied.

“Well, hop in and let’s get you home.”

With a very genuine thank you I jumped in and closed the door.  The warmth of the interior of that car was almost too much but I wasn’t about to complain.

“I go to most all the home games and I thought I recognized you.  Not sure I would have stopped otherwise.  How come you’re out here in the middle of the night walking along like that?”

I told him what had happened and he just nodded his head.

Walker’s place went by in a flash and then we were in the middle of New Lisbon between the old post office and the Times Argus building. He let me out, I thanked him and said I’d look for him at the next game.  He smiled, said OK and drove off.

If mom heard me get home I never heard about it.  Maybe having just turned eighteen put a different perspective on our relationship for her.  I walked upstairs, went to bed and though I did wonder what had happened to the girls and my ride that was about it.  I closed my eyes, went to sleep and in a few short hours was up and headed to church.

 

I never asked the girls about that night in Mauston and they never told me what had happened.  It didn’t matter mainly because the one real reason I’d gone was because I thought that maybe, just maybe, something old would be made new again.

 

It was my senior year in high school and I’ll always believe our basketball should have been better than what it ended up being.  We were never bad but we were never that good either and it always puzzled me.  True our center had gone through this growth spurt and what some of us took for granted was at times a bit of a challenge for him when it came to moving side to side and the like.  Our forwards were both, in their own ways, fine high school basketball players.  The one was almost hard as nails and could jump like gravity didn’t concern him.  The other had been my best friend and as far as I was concerned he was as good as they come.  Besides, as the point guard the one thing I always knew for certain whether I could see him or not was where he would be on the court.  Our other guard was a year younger than the four of us but he was as tough as they come, quick as greased lightning and when he had the chance as good a shooter as we had.  We were good or so I thought but it seemed that in the end there were a lot of other teams that were better so our record sure didn’t end up looking that good.

 

It wasn’t until much later that I ever stopped and thought about that night walking home in the cold and snow from Mauston to New Lisbon that it hit me. I never saw the man that gave me the ride home at one of our games.  He’d said he recognized me as a starter and that he went to most all the home games and yet when I looked for him I never saw him. 

In looking back on it all I have to be honest and tell you I sometimes wonder what really happened that night out there on US 12 & 16 just about halfway between Mauston and New Lisbon.

A Fly Rod and Life

For the first time ever the fly line did exactly what I thought it should do as it looped backwards in a long folded arc and when I swept the fly rod forward with the rolling of my wrist I knew without seeing that the line with the small popper attached would follow the trajectory I had intended for it.  And so it did.  I watched as the line sailed forward following the direction of the tip of the pole and began to fall gently on the surface of the water.  The brown line stretched out away from the boat and directly toward the right side of the lily pad where I’d just seen a swirl on the surface of the water.  The red bodied and yellow feather tailed wooden popper came to rest exactly where I’d aimed.  And there it floated as I admired my skill at casting with a fly rod.

“Not half bad,” I thought to myself, “for being self-taught.”

How many times had I watched folks like Curt Gowdy or Jim McKay standing in the middle of some Colorado or Montana or Wyoming river fly fishing for trout and wondered what it would be like to pull out yards and yards of line, create that long loop and manage to drop the lure right where you wanted?

Well, now I knew.

The popper lay there motionless exactly where I’d seen what I was certain had to be a bluegill that had just sucked some hapless insect off the surface of the water.  It sat there for seconds and more seconds as I waited for what I knew had to be the perfect end to a perfect cast.  And I waited some more.

The problem with being self-taught in any expertise is that far too often you don’t really get all the little things that go along with making the big thing look so easy.  You know those little nuances that have been learned over years of trial and error and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.  When I watched this guy or that on television throwing their line out at their target spot it always seemed to me that no sooner had the lure landed than they were setting the hook in whatever it was they were fishing for.  It never occurred to me in my earliest of teens that what I was seeing came from hours of filming and then editing to get the exciting stuff out there on the air while the rest of it lay on the cutting room floor.  There would be cast upon cast until finally there was the one that landed just so and drifted past that rock where that rainbow was just waiting for its’ next meal.  It was all those other attempts at winning the prize that I never saw and thus came to believe that they were simply that much better than me. 

I’d never be that good.  I’d never be able to read a river like they could.  I’d never make that perfect cast to that perfect spot.  So why was I even trying?

But just now I’d made what I’d swear was the perfect cast to the perfect spot.  I waited as patiently as I could with nerves on edge and muscles taunt for that swirl I knew had to be coming.  And I waited.

There were just about enough things that I was doing wrong in that moment as any kid who thought he knew it all and then some could have been doing wrong.  For starters I probably shouldn’t have been out there in that slough behind Rothe’s Ice Plant in my father’s boat.  I shouldn’t have been standing up in that 14 foot aluminum boat with a 5 horse Johnson motor and trying to become an expert fly caster.  And I sure shouldn’t have had my father’s split bamboo fly rod with the South Bend automatic reel out there in the middle of the water backed up by the dam just northwest of 80 on the Lemonweir River.  I had raided my dad’s tackle box, sneaked out the door with his fly rod and reel which I’d never seen him use, pushed the boat off the bank of the river and paddled out to an opening in the lily pads maybe fifty yards from shore.  It was there that I was doing my best to become an expert fly fisherman and having zero luck.

On that warm summer day I was not alone on this particular piece of the Lemonweir River.  Some 100 yards off to the west was another boat with another fisherman standing up in their boat and casting not a fly rod but a good old casting rod and reel. Even from this distance it was obvious it was the sort of gear you used to go after the larger fish in this river, the walleye and the northern pike in particular though a bass might be found on occasion.  From the glint of the lure being used my guess was it was something metal and that almost had to mean they were using a Daredevil of one sort or another.  And that meant only one thing; they were looking for Northerns. Oh yes I had spent hours in the back of Robinson’s Hardware Store studying the array of lures all neatly packaged and organized and I was confident I knew my lures even from a distance.

From this distance I couldn’t be certain who the other fisherman was but I had a pretty good idea.  Even though the town was small by most anyone’s standards the fact was I didn’t, nor would I ever, know all the folks living there but sooner or later I’d hear something about just about everyone.  In this case I was pretty sure that the fisherman (these days the term fisherperson seems to be the acceptable description) almost certainly had to be Gertie.  One thing I knew about her was that she was a fisherman but I’d also heard other things that didn’t really make a lot of sense to me but because they were said in hushed tones I was fairly certain there was something “bad” about her.

And that’s how it was in that little town, in that impoverished county, in that state and most of the nation in those days.  If a person was somehow different according to those around them then there was going to be problems and nothing anyone did was going to change that.  The looks and the whispers would go on and on and in the end I’m not so sure that even the strong could truly survive.

I went back to my fly rod and the popper I’d thought I’d so expertly laid out there for that pound plus bluegill that I knew was circling somewhere just beneath those lily pads and right under my lure.  I twitched the line ever so lightly causing the popper to dance on the water just a bit as if injured and ready to be Mr. Bluegills’ next meal.  Nothing happened.  So it was called a popper for reason so let’s see what happens if I give it a short, sharp tug.

“Gullup,” is what I heard which  pleased me but ultimately seemed completely unimpressive to that state record bluegill I knew had to be lurking out there and was only there to taunt me.  And taunt me it did as again and again I cast to this spot and that spot out there around those lily pads and every time the same result, nothing.

I was certain I’d heard my dad say something one time about Gertie being about the best fisherman there was out there on the Lemonweir and I’d finally worn myself out enough that I was thinking I needed a new plan but I had nothing.  Maybe I could row over to where she was and if she was as good as my dad said she was I might get some pointers and before you knew that state record bluegill would be mine.  That’s what was going through my head as I sat there more than a little frustrated and watching back over my shoulder to see Gertie casting and reeling her lure in over and over again.  She kept at it with an obvious purpose as if she knew that sooner rather than later that river would give up one of its’ treasures from beneath the waters’ surface.

I didn’t know her and being young and not knowing someone older than yourself and wanting to just go up and talk to them was not done I had been told time and time again and in fact it could be a very dangerous thing to do.  You didn’t talk to strangers no matter what and that was simply that.  And so I didn’t give in to what my gut was telling me which was to hoist up my anchor and just row over to her, introduce myself and ask her how I was supposed use this fly rod and the popper out there at the end of my line.  Somehow I knew that she would know and I would be the better for having asked and learned from the expert.  Still, she was the unknown and for me that meant danger.

And so I sat there anchored in one place while behind me Gertie would take an push an oar and turn her boat one way and then the other oar to shift slightly the other all the while working with the little bit of current that was in this bit of back water.  She was slowly working her way toward the main channel but she was in no hurry.  There was this patch of lily pads to cast to and around and there was that old log that had made it to this spot in the river that needed more than a little examining with her Daredevil.  And she would cast, wait a moment and then begin to reel the lure back to her with a quick twitch of the pole this way and a jerk of the pole the other.

“I should go,” I thought to myself and grabbed the rope to pull up the anchor.  I wasn’t going to catch anything today and I wasn’t going to go ask Gertie if she could help me.  She was getting closer now anyways and I was probably in her way so I really should go.

She’d drifted within thirty yards of where I’d been trying my level best to coax the new state record bluegill from when I turned to look at her.  She was wearing bib overalls with short hair and wearing a ball cap.  Women didn’t wear ball caps as far as I knew.  And so now I knew for certain that she was different, that the whispers had something to them and I probably didn’t want to get too close to her.

I sit back and grabbed the oars to head for the safety of shore when suddenly I hear her grunt and her pole suddenly dropped toward the waters’ surface.  She pulled back and the water erupted twenty feet out from her boat.  The battle is brief and somehow amazingly efficient as I watch her reach for her net and with one hand on the pole and the other on the net she lifts the Northern Pike out of the water and into her boat.  Today I would say it was all very businesslike and nothing like the sorts of fish versus fisherman I’d seen on television.  But in that moment I didn’t have words for what I’d just witnessed.

And almost as quickly she lifted her catch up out of the net with the lure still in its mouth and her fingers in its gills.  She held it up to me, this young boy who was afraid to even come close to her, and standing there in her overalls and baseball cap she smiled at me.

There are so many moments in life you wish you could relive and maybe, just maybe, you might do something different.  That was one of those moments when I wish the prejudice and fear that had been placed in me by a world of simple people with unfounded fears and prejudices of their own might have been replaced by a courage I couldn't find within me.  But the truth is I know I wouldn’t have done anything different.  I would have done exactly what I’d been programmed to do when faced with something or someone different and that was to row back to the shore as quickly as I could and find the safety of solid ground and believe that I was safe.

My path never crossed Gertie’s again.  I never saw her on the river and I never knew what she did in her life.  I do seem to recall that she got a photograph of her and that Northern Pike in the local newspaper as I would that summer with a sucker I caught just below the dam that was almost as big as me.  But mine was a sucker and Gertie’s was a Northern Pike in that four foot range and everyone knew who the fisherman was.

The fly rod and the reel now reside with me and the truth is I’ve never caught a thing with it though I cherish them dearly.  I love the memory of pulling out the line and first with a large swing of the wrist and arm and then smaller, more gentle ones, I would work the line and the lure as close to my desired target as I possibly could.  The flow and the rhythm and watching the line curl up and out only to softly, almost silently fall out and away from me on the waters’ surface.

Still more than that I love what that fly rod taught me all those years ago though it took me a very long time to understand what I’d been taught.  I learned that those moments to learn, to experience something new in my life, to drop my defenses and take a chance, to let go of my fear if only for a moment come seldom at best.  To have simply smiled back at the woman wearing the overalls and baseball cap, holding her catch up to me and smiling at me might have broken down walls that would instead remain upright and strong for years to come. 

I never knew the real story of Gertie but I came to understand that the things that had been whispered, whether I understood what they meant or not, didn’t matter when it came to the person.  I could very likely have learned a lot about fishing from Gertie had I only rowed over to her when my gut told me it was the right thing to do.  Yeah, I might have learned a lot about fishing and maybe a bit about life as well.

Dad said she was the best fisherman on the river but that smile as she held that fish up for me to see said she was a whole lot more than that.