Grandpa Chet Blogs: March 3 | January 24 | January 10
Today's Quote:
"We ask a simple question
And that is all we wish:
Are fishermen all liars?
Or do only liars fish?"
~William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954
My Grandpa Chet wanted me to apologize for his long absence from updating his storytelling page. He and Grandma took one of those senior vacation tours, and spent a bunch of time in Des Moines and around Missouri. Here’s his tape recording from the day he got back:
“Well, Clara and me had a lot of time on the bus on our vacation for me to do some thinking, and I ran into a fella that was a big fisherman himself. He was from the Madison area, and he’s done a lot of fishing on the lakes around Madison: Wingra, Mendota, Manona, um, Malappa, and, uh, Harappa or something.
The guy did so much talking that I didn’t get to tell many of my stories, and when I did, he didn’t seem to want to listen. He was that classic blowhard city type, more interested in telling answers than finding any.
That got me to thinking about talking about fishing, and why people talk about fishing, and this here list. (Editor’s Note: on the tape, you here Grandpa Chet pull out and uncrinkle a sheet of paper). Lots of people give tips on how to fish, but not so many give tips on how to talk about it. Soon as we got home, sittin’ at the South Fork Café for breakfast, I scribbled down my top two tips for how to talk about fishing.
Number one: You ain’t more important than the fish. Most guys don’t seem to get this: your listener wants to hear about the fish, not about how good you were to catch it.
Number two: Keep your embellishments simple. Most people will believe that you caught a 23 inch trout if you really caught a 21 inch trout. People will not believe that you caught it barehanded while falling down in the river in 40 degree weather, or that the fish talked to you and told you to be a Jehovah’s Witness. Embellishments make stories better, but no one likes a liar or a donkey.
So finally, I’d like to say to Harold from Madison, and I won’t use your last name because we’re better than that here in River Falls, here’s to hoping you fall out of your boat this summer and ruin your suit, cellular phone, and them winged tip shoes!Today's Quote: "There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot." - Comic Steven Wright
All right, here's the deal. It took so long to read my Grandpa Chet's cursive handwriting and fix his bad grammar last time that I refuse to type up things he writes anymore. You'd swear the guy was a doctor or something, because I could barely read a thing. That, and it was written on a bunch of coffee-stained napkins from the South Fork Cafe, which is where he meets his old work buddies every morning for coffee, who aren't from the doctors office, but from the city dump.
Working at the city dump made Grandpa Chet a pack rat. The other day I was complaining about doing all this writing, and how I'm not gonna be able to play any infield this summer with a sore hand, and he said, "Let me go out to the garage."
Usually that's not a good thing. Either he gets lost in all the junk, he gets stuck under a box I gotta peel off him, or he comes out with all kinds of stupid stuff, like old Bing Crosby records, mason jars with canned peaches from 1992, or some old power tool from the dump that is "still good, just missing the safety features" and makes me take them home, because I'll "never know when I might use 'em."
Anyway, yesterday from the garage he brought out an old tape recorder. "It only works for five minutes a time, but that'll have to do," he said.
Works for me. So from now on, here's the stories from Grandpa Chet, with nothing changed, on a 1985 tape recorder courtesy of Sony and the city dump:
"So one time me and my buddy Bill were up the Kinni fishing for brown trout. I 'member it was a real hot day, day we used to say even a nekkid Amazonian would duck fer cover. So, we wasn't catching much and decided maybe we oughta just head into town for some sodas and see about some girls.
"We went down to the corner store, bought a couple sodas for a dime, and took to just hangin out there on the street corner.
"Well, as we was just passing the time, there came along these two girls, sisters, in matching sun dresses. I never seen em before, found out later they had just moved in from Sheyboygen. Well, they came walking down main street across from us, and just the same time, Jeb Atkins and his brother come walkin the other way.
"Jeb and his brother were a couple of dirty fellows, and they started givin' these ladies a hard time, see, whistlin' and hootin' and hollerin'. So Bill and me walked on over there, and before Jeb could say another word, I'd smacked him a good one across the face an' knocked 'im down.
"And the older girl, she said, 'Now you didn't have to do all that," and I said, "Miss, them boys was disrespectin' you, an' that ain't no way to treat a lady. I figure I got two choices: watch 'em do it and just stand there like an idiot, letting it happen, or do somethin' 'bout it. Too many men round here just standing around, doing a lot of watching these days."
And that, young man, is how I met ya Grandma.
Today's Quote: "Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary." ~Patrick F. McManus
A talk with my grandson a couple weeks ago has brought us together here on your computer monitor. It went something like this:
"What kinda name is the Fightin' Fish?" I asked him over our steaming plates of my wife Marilee's famous Christmas leftover hot dish. "Sounds like a buncha pretty-colored angel fish swimming around in a Petco tank."
"Well Grandpa, we wanted a name that could reflect the city of River Falls," he replied, not looking up from his plate. (I'll tell you what, Marilee's hot dish is really good stuff.)
"Well, there ain't no Petco in River Falls," I said defiantly, at least as defiantly as an 82-year old man can.
"I know, but we're thinking about trout, Grandpa. Big trout, fighting at the end of your fishing line, and there's no one in the world that knows more about trout fishing than you, Grandpa Chet. So will you do it?"
"Well, I don't know anything about uplinking, or webloading, or whatever, but I guess I could write you up some fishing stories for that web page of yours if you show me how to put it on there."
So here we are, and here's my first story. Since we're talking about River Falls, I'll tell you the story of the first time I went out on the Kinnickinnic River alone in River Falls, back in the summer of 1938.
I was ten years old, and though I'd been on the river before with my older brother John, my parents hadn't trusted me yet to go by myself. But for my tenth birthday that June, I got a brand new pole, my mom packed me my own lunch, and my dad sent me off into the woods with just a little bit of advice, "Keep yer line in the water, yer eyes on the tree line, and get yer be-hind home in time fer supper."
We didn't see too many bears in those parts, but my pop was always skittish of them. When he was a young man, he had a bad experience doing some lumberjacking up north. He got attacked by a big old bear and lost one of his ears. Mother used to say it must have taken his good ear. He would usually just shake his head and tell us to watch the tree line again.
"Them bears is nothing to laugh about," he'd say.
It seemed like a short trip to the river that day, probably because I was so excited I ran the whole time, my pole bobbing up and down and my lunch pail banging on my leg. I had my line in the water in five seconds flat once I could see the water, and sure enough, the fish were biting like crazy, and it seemed like I was pulling in monster fish after monster fish, but I was ten, so more likely they were all small. The trees looked big, the rocks looked big, even a little painter turtle across the way looked like grandest daddy sea turtle.
Everything looks bigger when you're ten.
I stayed at the river for hours and let the sun set on me. I knew I was in for it when I got home, but as far as I was concerned as a ten year old boy, I'd found Heaven itself.
I waited until I could barely see my hands in front of me, and then I was satisfied and thought it might be about time to get on home. Of course, every good fisherman knows that when it gets dark and you think you should go, you should always make one last cast into the river, just in case that monster fish was just ready to take your bait. So, I bent down and tied on my biggest lure, in hopes of nabbing the biggest fish in all the Kinni. I stood up, reared back, and cast as far downstream as I could.
The river, instead of responding with its typical plop, responded with a loud roar, and something big, black, and furry stood up on the far bank. My new pole shot out of my hands as the big black shadow started running into the woods. Seems that I had snagged whatever that big furry shadow was was with my big white lure.
Well, I wasn't just going to let that pole go. That was my brand new pole! It was my new freedom, my independence, and my folks were going to be mad enough that I missed dinner, let alone come back without my new pole. So I took my Davy Crockett pocket knife out, as if that would protect me from something that wanted to eat my ear off, and took off into the woods, following my pole as it banged from tree to tree.
After a couple minutes of running, I got ahold of the pole, but darn it, I wanted that lure, too. I know I should have cut the line, but there's lots of things I should have done in my life, and that doesn't mean I did 'em. So I just started reeling up that line, hoping whatever I'd snagged had gotten loose of my lure, and I could snatch it up, and head on home for supper.
So as I'm reeling up, I hear this real hard breathing, like a horse sounds on a cold morning of the Kentucky Derby. But there was my lure, laying right out in the middle of a small clearing, and I had to keep going.
I looked around, thought the coast clear, and dashed to the lure. I took one last look around, and bent down to pick it up.
Something put its hand on my shoulder.
"Don't scream," it said.
"F-f-f-ather?" I stammered, terrified. I slowly turned around.
It wasn't my dad. Sure as the cheese on your hot dish, it was a darn Bigfoot. It spoke perfect English, too, but with a French accent.
"Be still, boy. I will not hurt you. It's just that I haven't had anyone to talk to for three years now."
I peed my pants. I would later tell my mother that I fell in the river.
"You're a . . . you're a . . ."
If you saw a Bigfoot, you would have trouble speaking too.
"A Bigfoot? Or a Yeti? Or Sasquatch? Yes, you people have given my people many names over our long history together. But I am afraid our relationship is coming to an end, boy. I am the last one left, and I'm very old. My wife died three years ago, and we were unable to produce any offspring."
I didn't reply. I'd love to say I was contemplating whether or not Bigfoot operated on the modern calendar, or their own special calendar, like dog years, but really I was just scared and couldn't get words out.
"Boy, I have a message I want you to bring back to your people, and it is this: 'A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.' Go and tell them that."
Something inside me told me I needed to speak, to participate in this exchange of cultures between between man and Bigfoot. I tried to remember something wise-sounding that my father had said once as the Bigfoot started to move off towards the trees.
"I will," I called out, hiding my fear and mustering all my strength. "And nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught!" The Bigfoot laughed, and coughed.
"Good luck to you, boy," he said quietly, as he slipped off into the woods.
I don't blame you for not believing me, and as an old fisherman, I'm used to people not believing me. But what I will say, as I see the cars zoom past the river on highway 65, and people walk down main street River Falls without even thinking about the river behind it, is that maybe that last Bigfoot knew something that we've forgot.
But that's just the crazy talk of an old fisherman.