Jimbo
11-22-2023, 12:28 PM
Some great stories posted. I haven't visited the site as much as I would have liked lately. Since we landed in Yarmouth in May, I joined a group of local writers, Rising Tide Writers. I've been stuck in the corporate world, biding my time for 45 years waiting for this opportunity, so hopefully you'll enjoy some of the stories and some memoirs that my fellow writers thought were good. Here's one my daughter described as "deep":
A Bittersweet Trout Memory
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote. The droghte of March hath perced to the roo,,,”
“Barks, hey, who the hell are you talking to in here? Ya got a phone call. What the hell is droched of March?”
“Ah,Squire Pennypacker I do owe ye my heartfelt thanks on notice of my mysterious caller.”
“Barks, I’m an accounting major, I know debits and credits not whatever olden language you’re speaking. Hey go answer the phone, I think it might be your dad.”
“For the record, it’s Middle English, an assignment for my class on Chaucer. That hag Siegal is making us read it, speak it, if she had her way we’d probably have to…”
“...Shut up and go answer the phone.”
As I walked down the hallway of my fraternity house to the phone closet, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually received a call since I had arrived on campus for my freshman year. “Hello.”
“Jim, it’s dad. I only have a couple of minutes and I probably shouldn’t be calling long distance on the school’s phone, but I have some bad news I didn’t think should wait until later. I learned this morning that your friend Tom Ieda died in a car accident last night. Apparently, he was pretty drunk and he was going over the speed limit in his parents’ Volkswagon bus when it went off the road and crashed into a tree. They think he died instantly, maybe he had passed out and lost control, I just don’t know. I hate to drop this on you and hang up, but I know…”
I felt a wave of numbness coming over me as the voice on the other end of the line faded into white noise and my mind reached back to April of my senior year in high school. It was seventh period, the Basic Electricity elective I had taken, and I was sitting at the lab pod I shared with Bob Luongo and Tom Ieda. While those guys weren’t part of the group I usually “hung out” with, I found them to be nice guys and ones in whom I’d find shared a great passion.
One rainy afternoon, waiting for the bell to end the period, after finishing our lab, turning down the voltage and ohm meters and returning the red and black jack wires to the equipment closet, Tom reached down to the floor and picked up a small scrap of bundled copper wire with a piece of the black jacket still wrapped around it. He twisted and worked it for a minute before announcing, “Hey, look, it’s a mayfly dun!”
Bob and I looked at him, but it was Bob who spoke, “Tom, you a fly fisherman?” I didn’t understand, I only heard ‘fisherman.’
Tom responded, “#^&#^&#^&#^&-yea I’m a flyguy. How ‘bout you, Jim? Bob?”
“I fish for blues and stripers on Cape Cod all summer. Never tried fly fishing.” The truth was I really didn’t know much at all about that form of fishing. I probably had caught a show on TV about flyfishing a total of once. Bob, it turned out was an accomplished fisherman like Tom.
“Well, I think we have the makings of a future trout bum,” he said referring to me. “I think we need to plan a trip to one of the Island’s freshwater rivers…in the meantime, outfit the guy for trout.” I soon learned that trout stocking in rivers and ponds on Long Island took place in late April and early May, I had no idea what outfitting meant, but it sounded expensive.
Tom ‘guided’ me in spending some of the money I had earned shoveling snow, on a 10’6”, telescoping flyrod and reel combo that Modell’s had on sale. I still needed a pair of waders, and the only place I knew that had them in the Northport area was Bowman’s Sporting Goods…I wasn’t going to get out of this part on the cheap! But when Mr. Bowman learned I was getting into the fly game he bent over backwards to help me on my limited budget. When he got done with me, I had a pair of heavy, used, vulcanized waders he found in the basement, backing and line on my reel, my license and trout stamp, and half a dozen flies and streamers that he insisted on tying and throwing in, gratis, if I promised to come back and report to him how they had performed.
Everyday at the end of seventh period we’d finish our lab work as fast as possible and huddle to discuss fly casting techniques and if there was any word of trout stocking plans. We couldn’t really practice with a rod during school, but occasionally one of us would breakout in an air-casting movement, waving a stiffly fisted hand and forearm forward and back like the tick-tocking pendant of a metronome. My other friends probably thought I’d lost my mind, but for the first time in my life I didn’t really care what they thought.
In late April the Long Island Press finally printed the trout stocking schedule and Carmans River, just a little farther out on the island from Northport, was on the list; a prime target for our first outing. We probably would have skipped school, but one of us needed to drive and seeing as I was the only one with a driver’s license, it would have to be a Saturday when my folks’ VW Beetle was at my disposal. This was going to be the longest trip I’d ever made in a car, yet only around twenty-five miles from my home.
I picked up Tom and then Bob and then we made our way out to Brookhaven, to a pull-off Tom had very indistinctly described, but surprisingly, we managed to find. “Stooooooop!” he shouted as the gravel path disappeared and the front wheels came very close to being in the briskly flowing waters of Carmans River. “Used to be we had more room, but I guess that recent rain raised the river some. Better backup a little.” We got out, got on our waders and grabbed our gear. “Water’s a little cloudy,” Tom mused, “Might be tough getting a rise, but let’s do it.” And then he did something that completely surprised Bob and me, opening a pouch in his fly vest and pulling out a pipe and tobacco.
We both burst out laughing and Bob asked, “Tom, you think you’re on an episode of The American Sportsmen or what?”
Tom just smirked and shook his head and puffed up a cloud of smoke. “OK, Barker, let’s make you a fly fisherman,” and he stepped off into the river. Bob and I were close behind, then we began separating ourselves so as not to interfere with each other’s casts or the subsequent drift of our flies. I watched Tom and Bob for a bit, then tried to imitate the casts they made, pulling off line on the backswing and letting it slip through the eyelets of the rod on the fore-cast, until thirty or forty feet of line stretched over the water, the fly on the end of the near invisible tippet gently dropping onto the surface as though it was an aquatic insect that had emerged from its larval stage, then floating along letting its wings spread and dry before flying off to mate and die, completing the cycle of its life.
I suppose there may come a time in the life of a fisherman when the presentation of his fly becomes an art form, perfectly matching what occurs in nature. That day on Carmans River, it was my turn. I felt it! I was in the “zone”, the rod like an extension of my arm and the fluid, cadence of my casting, placing my fly exactly where I intended. The others may have called out to me, but I didn’t hear them. The sun was warm on my back and I was slowly pulling line back through my fingers, guiding the fly into the shade of an overhanging branch when the stocked, rainbow trout hit.
Instinctively, I raised the rod tip, holding the line tight to the rod with my left hand, releasing it only to pull back with my right, retrieving an arms-length at a time, then pinching again with my left to stop the fish’s attempted escape. I was careful to keep that tension on the line, rod-tip high, as we were using barbless hooks, designed specifically to protect the fish for a safe and quick release after being brought in. It wasn’t an epic battle by any means, and it ended shortly after it began. I briefly cradled it in my hands in the water, letting the current flow through its gills, rejuvenating the young fish while I marveled that ‘rainbow” didn’t even begin to describe the beauty of my catch. As it disappeared into the river, I turned to see my two friends perched on the river bank, Tom pulled that silly pipe from his mouth and said, “Now that’s what it’s all about, Jim, welcome to the club.”
“Hey Jim, you still there? Hello? Jim? Jim?...”
“…Oh hey, Dad, I’m here. My mind just wandered for a minute. I’m sort of new to this dying thing, ya know. Well, not sort of new, I’ve never had anyone close to me die before…ever, it’s really…”
“…I figured as much. How about I get you the details of the funeral and such, then you can decide what you want to do.”
“Thanks, Dad. Hey, I know you have to get to your next class, and I have to recite something from Geoff Chaucer in class in about an hour. I need time to process all this, but I think maybe Tom might have appreciated my tying on a Mayfly dun and visiting a local trout stream in his memory rather than standing around at his funeral. I can visit him in the cemetery when I’m home on break. I better get going, you too. Hey, say hi to Mom. I’ll talk to you soon.”
A Bittersweet Trout Memory
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote. The droghte of March hath perced to the roo,,,”
“Barks, hey, who the hell are you talking to in here? Ya got a phone call. What the hell is droched of March?”
“Ah,Squire Pennypacker I do owe ye my heartfelt thanks on notice of my mysterious caller.”
“Barks, I’m an accounting major, I know debits and credits not whatever olden language you’re speaking. Hey go answer the phone, I think it might be your dad.”
“For the record, it’s Middle English, an assignment for my class on Chaucer. That hag Siegal is making us read it, speak it, if she had her way we’d probably have to…”
“...Shut up and go answer the phone.”
As I walked down the hallway of my fraternity house to the phone closet, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually received a call since I had arrived on campus for my freshman year. “Hello.”
“Jim, it’s dad. I only have a couple of minutes and I probably shouldn’t be calling long distance on the school’s phone, but I have some bad news I didn’t think should wait until later. I learned this morning that your friend Tom Ieda died in a car accident last night. Apparently, he was pretty drunk and he was going over the speed limit in his parents’ Volkswagon bus when it went off the road and crashed into a tree. They think he died instantly, maybe he had passed out and lost control, I just don’t know. I hate to drop this on you and hang up, but I know…”
I felt a wave of numbness coming over me as the voice on the other end of the line faded into white noise and my mind reached back to April of my senior year in high school. It was seventh period, the Basic Electricity elective I had taken, and I was sitting at the lab pod I shared with Bob Luongo and Tom Ieda. While those guys weren’t part of the group I usually “hung out” with, I found them to be nice guys and ones in whom I’d find shared a great passion.
One rainy afternoon, waiting for the bell to end the period, after finishing our lab, turning down the voltage and ohm meters and returning the red and black jack wires to the equipment closet, Tom reached down to the floor and picked up a small scrap of bundled copper wire with a piece of the black jacket still wrapped around it. He twisted and worked it for a minute before announcing, “Hey, look, it’s a mayfly dun!”
Bob and I looked at him, but it was Bob who spoke, “Tom, you a fly fisherman?” I didn’t understand, I only heard ‘fisherman.’
Tom responded, “#^&#^&#^&#^&-yea I’m a flyguy. How ‘bout you, Jim? Bob?”
“I fish for blues and stripers on Cape Cod all summer. Never tried fly fishing.” The truth was I really didn’t know much at all about that form of fishing. I probably had caught a show on TV about flyfishing a total of once. Bob, it turned out was an accomplished fisherman like Tom.
“Well, I think we have the makings of a future trout bum,” he said referring to me. “I think we need to plan a trip to one of the Island’s freshwater rivers…in the meantime, outfit the guy for trout.” I soon learned that trout stocking in rivers and ponds on Long Island took place in late April and early May, I had no idea what outfitting meant, but it sounded expensive.
Tom ‘guided’ me in spending some of the money I had earned shoveling snow, on a 10’6”, telescoping flyrod and reel combo that Modell’s had on sale. I still needed a pair of waders, and the only place I knew that had them in the Northport area was Bowman’s Sporting Goods…I wasn’t going to get out of this part on the cheap! But when Mr. Bowman learned I was getting into the fly game he bent over backwards to help me on my limited budget. When he got done with me, I had a pair of heavy, used, vulcanized waders he found in the basement, backing and line on my reel, my license and trout stamp, and half a dozen flies and streamers that he insisted on tying and throwing in, gratis, if I promised to come back and report to him how they had performed.
Everyday at the end of seventh period we’d finish our lab work as fast as possible and huddle to discuss fly casting techniques and if there was any word of trout stocking plans. We couldn’t really practice with a rod during school, but occasionally one of us would breakout in an air-casting movement, waving a stiffly fisted hand and forearm forward and back like the tick-tocking pendant of a metronome. My other friends probably thought I’d lost my mind, but for the first time in my life I didn’t really care what they thought.
In late April the Long Island Press finally printed the trout stocking schedule and Carmans River, just a little farther out on the island from Northport, was on the list; a prime target for our first outing. We probably would have skipped school, but one of us needed to drive and seeing as I was the only one with a driver’s license, it would have to be a Saturday when my folks’ VW Beetle was at my disposal. This was going to be the longest trip I’d ever made in a car, yet only around twenty-five miles from my home.
I picked up Tom and then Bob and then we made our way out to Brookhaven, to a pull-off Tom had very indistinctly described, but surprisingly, we managed to find. “Stooooooop!” he shouted as the gravel path disappeared and the front wheels came very close to being in the briskly flowing waters of Carmans River. “Used to be we had more room, but I guess that recent rain raised the river some. Better backup a little.” We got out, got on our waders and grabbed our gear. “Water’s a little cloudy,” Tom mused, “Might be tough getting a rise, but let’s do it.” And then he did something that completely surprised Bob and me, opening a pouch in his fly vest and pulling out a pipe and tobacco.
We both burst out laughing and Bob asked, “Tom, you think you’re on an episode of The American Sportsmen or what?”
Tom just smirked and shook his head and puffed up a cloud of smoke. “OK, Barker, let’s make you a fly fisherman,” and he stepped off into the river. Bob and I were close behind, then we began separating ourselves so as not to interfere with each other’s casts or the subsequent drift of our flies. I watched Tom and Bob for a bit, then tried to imitate the casts they made, pulling off line on the backswing and letting it slip through the eyelets of the rod on the fore-cast, until thirty or forty feet of line stretched over the water, the fly on the end of the near invisible tippet gently dropping onto the surface as though it was an aquatic insect that had emerged from its larval stage, then floating along letting its wings spread and dry before flying off to mate and die, completing the cycle of its life.
I suppose there may come a time in the life of a fisherman when the presentation of his fly becomes an art form, perfectly matching what occurs in nature. That day on Carmans River, it was my turn. I felt it! I was in the “zone”, the rod like an extension of my arm and the fluid, cadence of my casting, placing my fly exactly where I intended. The others may have called out to me, but I didn’t hear them. The sun was warm on my back and I was slowly pulling line back through my fingers, guiding the fly into the shade of an overhanging branch when the stocked, rainbow trout hit.
Instinctively, I raised the rod tip, holding the line tight to the rod with my left hand, releasing it only to pull back with my right, retrieving an arms-length at a time, then pinching again with my left to stop the fish’s attempted escape. I was careful to keep that tension on the line, rod-tip high, as we were using barbless hooks, designed specifically to protect the fish for a safe and quick release after being brought in. It wasn’t an epic battle by any means, and it ended shortly after it began. I briefly cradled it in my hands in the water, letting the current flow through its gills, rejuvenating the young fish while I marveled that ‘rainbow” didn’t even begin to describe the beauty of my catch. As it disappeared into the river, I turned to see my two friends perched on the river bank, Tom pulled that silly pipe from his mouth and said, “Now that’s what it’s all about, Jim, welcome to the club.”
“Hey Jim, you still there? Hello? Jim? Jim?...”
“…Oh hey, Dad, I’m here. My mind just wandered for a minute. I’m sort of new to this dying thing, ya know. Well, not sort of new, I’ve never had anyone close to me die before…ever, it’s really…”
“…I figured as much. How about I get you the details of the funeral and such, then you can decide what you want to do.”
“Thanks, Dad. Hey, I know you have to get to your next class, and I have to recite something from Geoff Chaucer in class in about an hour. I need time to process all this, but I think maybe Tom might have appreciated my tying on a Mayfly dun and visiting a local trout stream in his memory rather than standing around at his funeral. I can visit him in the cemetery when I’m home on break. I better get going, you too. Hey, say hi to Mom. I’ll talk to you soon.”