Eight Books By Patrick McManus
by
Patrick F. McManus

HOW I GOT THIS WAY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK Copyright (C) 1994
by Patrick F.

McManus All rights reserved Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Publishers
since 1866

115 West 18th Street New York, New York 10011

Henry Holt is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd.

195 Allstate Parkway Markham, Ontario L3R 4TB Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data McManus, Patrick F.

How I got this way / Patrick F. McManus.--1st ed.

1. American wit and humor.

ISBN 0-8050-3841-1

ISBN 0-8050-3482-X (An Owl Book: pbk.) Henry Holt books are available
for special promotions and premiums.

For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

First published in hardcover by Henry Holt and Company, Inc in 1994.

First Owl Book Edition-1995

Book design by Betty Lew Illustration by Andy Myer Printed in the
United States of America All first editions are printed on acid-free
paper.

Also by Patrick F. McManus Kid Camping from Aaaaiii!  to Zip A Fine and
Pleasant Misery They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

Never Sniff a Gift Fish The Grasshopper Trap Rubber Legs and White
Tail-Hairs The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw Whatchagot Stew (with
Patricia "The Troll" McManus Gass) Real Ponies Don't Go Oink!

The Good Samaritan Strikes Again How I Got This Way Contents How I Got
This Way, Part I...................................................1

Ethics, and What to Do About
Them...........................................33

Bambo..................................................................


....39

Get
Ready..................................................................


46

Toe....................................................................


....52

The
Bandage................................................................
60

The Big
Woods...............................................................66


Elk
Magic..................................................................


74

There She
Blows.............................................................83

Brimstone..............................................................
...90

The Blue
Dress.............................................................100

Warped
Camshaft............................................................109


The 400-Pound
Pumpkin......................................................"6

Tenner-Shoe
Blight.........................................................124

Letter From a
Kingfisher...................................................132

The Ultimate
Bull..........................................................138

My Greatest
Triumph........................................................144

Another Boring
Day.........................................................149

The Complete
Curmudgeon....................................................157

The Liars
Club.............................................................163

A Couple Pickles Shy of a Full
Barrel......................................170

Excuse Me, While I Get Out of the
Way......................................177

The Two Masked
Raiders.....................................................186

Mosquito
Bay...............................................................192

My Hike with, ahem, the
President..........................................199

Ed in
Camp.................................................................20


How I Got This Way, Part
II................................................214

How I Got This Way, Part I A few years ago, my friend Dave Lisaius and
I were in my pickup camper, waiting out a storm high up in the Idaho
Rockies.  Dave sprawled on the cab-over bed while I prepared lunch.

The conversation turned to hospitals, possibly because I was preparing
lunch, and I remarked that I hadn't been hospitalized since I was five
years old.

"How come you were in the hospital then?"  Dave asked, careful to
conceal behind a yawn his fascination with this intriguing bit of
McManus lore.

"Oh, I fell out of a moving bus and landed on my head," I explained.

Dave laughed so hard he almost fell off the bed and landed on his
head.

Eventually, his paroxysm of mirth subsided to a few spasmodic shrieks
and howls.

"I didn't think breaking my head was that funny," I said, still puzzled
by Dave's unseemly outburst.

"Oh, it isn't!"  he choked out, mopping up tears with his
shirtsleeve.

"But it explains so much!"

Dave, at the time, was a bank president but otherwise fairly decent,
often enjoying extended periods of lucidity.  Had I evoked this
mirthful reaction only from Dave, I would have thought nothing of it.

He is not exactly the epitome of normality himself.  The problem was, I
had provoked similar responses from other individuals on countless
occasions.

Melba Peachbottom, the prettiest girl in our high school, had almost
burst a gut when I casually asked her out on a date.  "You're so
funny!"  she cried.  When I turned out for baseball, the coach laughed
himself sick.

"Stop!  Please!  No more jokes, McManus!"

Sometimes in a restaurant I will glance up and notice a pretty woman
across the room smiling at me in obvious bemusement.  All I'm doing is
drinking a glass of water.  Suavely.  I smile back and dribble water
down my tie.  The woman laughs and returns to her salad.  I've never
been much good at flirtation.

Just this morning I rushed onto a plane at the Minneapolis airport.  My
boarding pass indicated my seat was 17F.  The rows of seats stopped at
16.

It's fortunate that they did.  Otherwise, I would have ended up in
Baltimore instead of Spokane, my intended destination.  No doubt a
flight attendant would have announced that the plane was headed for
Baltimore, but I never listen to those announcements.  They get on my
nerves.  It's possible that the flight attendants would have noticed
they had one more passenger for Baltimore than they were supposed to
have, but that assumes some guy bound for Baltimore didn't
absentmindedly get on the plane for Spokane--such a coincidence is
commonplace in my life.  Therefore each plane would have had the proper
number of passengers, and I would have ended up walking around an
airport parking garage in Baltimore looking for my car and eventually
reporting it as stolen.

"We've located your car, Sir," the police would say.  "The thieves left
it at an airport garage in Spokane."

I have a lot of trouble finding my car.  A few weeks ago, I came out of
our local library and checked every space in the parking lot, my
standard ritual, and my car wasn't in any of them.  Just as I was about
to report it as stolen, I remembered that I had walked to the library,
not driven.

My wife, Bun, doesn't like me to go out alone anymore.  Once, I
returned home from work, hung up my coat, dropped my briefcase on the
floor, and walked into the kitchen.  Bun was at the stove cooking
supper.  She seemed different.

"You're home early," she said, without looking up.  She sounded
different, too.  Oddly, she appeared much taller than she had that
morning.  Then she turned around.

There was a strange woman in my house cooking supper!  We went through
the usual leaping and yelling and feinting at each other that occurs on
such occasions, until at last recognition dawned, she being the wife
and mother of the family to whom I had sold our house the previous
month.  It was an exhilarating and memorable experience for both of us,
and I know it considerably enriched the lady's conversational
repertoire of humorous anecdotes, because I heard the story repeated
around town for some years afterwards.

It's that sort of thing that can easily give rise to a mistaken
impression in a person's community that he possesses certain
peculiarities.

No one seemed to believe that the fault lay with my car, which,
forgetting we had moved, returned to the same old garage it had been
using for the previous five years and deposited me at a house that was
no longer mine.  Stupid car!

During a hunting trip in the wintry mountains of Idaho, I injured my
leg in a fall through a tangle of fallen trees.  It soon became
apparent that I wouldn't be able to make it to the rendezvous with my
hunting companions, so I did the only sensible thing.  I built a
lean-to and a fire and prepared to spend the night out.  Every year
people die in the woods, because they don't have enough sense to follow
this practice.  I was perfectly safe and comfortable and enjoying the
experience, except for the occasional sounds of Sasquatches passing
by.

About two o'clock in the morning, I was found by a search-and-rescue
team out of Bonners Ferry, Idaho.  Local weekly newspaper headline:
LOST PAT MCMANUS SAVED BY SEARCHERS, FAKES LEG INJURY.  That headline
could just as easily have read, SERIOUSLY INJURED PAT MCMANUS, USING
EXPERT WOODSMAN SKILLS, SAVES OWN LIFE AGAINST IMPOSSIBLE ODDS.  But
no, the headline writer had to contribute to the legend of Pat McManus
as inept person, lost person, absentminded person.  Once one becomes a
legend, it is impossible to outlive it.  I have always wanted to become
a legend, but this isn't the one.

People are always rushing to my aid when I'm not in trouble.  They seem
to relish rescuing me.  If you were to believe the stories, I have been
rescued by approximately 5,000 people.  Once I was standing at a candy
vending machine with nothing more on my mind than trying to choose
between a Milky Way and a Snickers.  A woman I scarcely knew came up to
me and put a hand on my shoulder.  "I don't know what's troubling you,"
she said, "but it can't be that bad, dear.  Sometimes problems can just
seem overwhelming.  Let's go have a cup of coffee and talk about it."

What could I do, tell her my only problem was choosing between a Milky
Way and a Snickers?  I went and had coffee with her and made up a
cock-and-bull story about an identity crisis or some such thing.  After
we had talked, she said, "Don't you feel better now?"

I said yes, and I did, too, because I had made up my mind.  I'd go for
the Snickers.

What got me to thinking about all this was Dave Lisaius's comment about
my falling on my head at age five.  "It explains so much!"  I decided
the time had come to reveal how I got this way.  Falling on my head had
nothing to do with it, but here's what happened anyway.

My family and I were transferring between trains on different sides of
a city.  The railroad bus that transported us had a door at each row of
seats, for what reason I don't know, unless for instant evacuation of
all passengers in case of a calamity.  As the bus sped on its way, I
began exploring the mechanism of the door handle.  Through no fault of
my own--even our lawyers said so--the door popped open and shot me into
empty space.  To this day I can remember the exhilaration of that first
flight, even though it lasted but a second.  I didn't land on my head
right away, choosing to put that off until the second or third bounce,
an early indication of my inherent good sense.  By the time I stopped
bouncing, I had pretty well concluded that tinkering with the door
mechanism hadn't been such a good idea, as various parts of my anatomy
seemed to have undergone major rearrangement.  The worst was yet to
come, however.

Although the visits to doctors and clinics and hospitals continued for
several years, the worst part was my imprisonment in a hospital.

Within a couple of days, I was up and around, much to the consternation
of the nurses, who were of the opinion that some of my essential parts
might fall off.  The nurses raised a big fuss, apparently for the
purpose of impressing upon me that I was supposed to stay in bed
instead of fiddling with the mechanism that opened the window above a
parking lot five stories down.  After being subjected to a frightening
display of hysteria by the nurses, I decided it was better to stay in
bed, rather than put up with their ranting and raving and screeching.

My only entertainment was a little man who marched around inside my
head beating a drum, and that quickly palled.  Endless waves of boredom
washed over me for hours, days, and weeks, with no end in sight.  I
began to make up little stories, often about nurses being eaten by
monsters, one of my favorite plots.  The nurses must have liked me,
though, because when the day finally came for me to leave the hospital,
a group of them gathered around laughing and smiling and applauding my
departure.  Several even leaped in the air and clicked their heels,
which I thought a bit excessive but appreciated anyway.

My father died when I was six years old, leaving my mother as the sole
support of our family, which then consisted of Mom, my grandmother, my
sister, Patricia "The Troll," and me, now the lone male in a family of
women.  Mom earned our livelihood by teaching school, an occupation
that at the time absolutely forbid its practitioners to smoke, drink,
or gamble, none of which my mother did to excess.  Well, at least she
never drank to excess or even much at all.  Two out of three ain't
bad.

In addition to her teaching, Mom also farmed.  She pretty much
single-handedly built a large farmhouse, then cleared the land, and
raised wheat and chickens.  I think that may have been why she gambled
and smoked so much, to take her mind off farming.  All by itself, you
would think farming might have satisfied her appetite for gambling.  It
didn't.  Then there was her other hobby: smoking.  Besides helping to
relieve stress, cigarettes at the time were considered particularly
good for the heart and lungs.  And they were.  Without sucking in great
deep draughts of smoke and tar and nicotine, most folks wouldn't have
got any aerobic benefits at all.  A good coughing fit served as a
workout.  Dedicated smokers could work up a good sweat just from
coughing.  When they got done with a coughing fit, they relaxed with a
cigarette.  Smokers didn't worry about getting killed by cigarettes in
those days, mostly because they figured something else would get them
first.

Usually it did.  As Mom used to say, something's always stalking you.

I doubt most of the people in our little logging community thought much
about death or were even terribly concerned about it.  Dying was fairly
common among members of our family, and our friends and neighbors did a
fair amount of it, too.  I don't mean to imply that dying ranked high
on anyone's list of favorite activities.  But when Death knocked, the
person went along with it as best he could, and tried not to raise too
much fuss.  Death didn't have quite the bad reputation it does now,
probably because people were more familiar with it, as if it were some
eccentric character in the neighborhood who made a pest of himself.

"Oh, for gosh sakes, weird old Mort is knocking on the door again.  I
wonder who he wants this time?"

I should point out, by the way, that I'm not writing about death merely
for the purpose of depressing the reader, nor to get one to stop
smoking, cut down on cholesterol, wear a seat belt, take out a
membership in a health club, avoid late-night walks through the park,
nor jog five miles before work every morning.  It seems that if you
even mention the word "death" today, your listeners immediately burst
into a frenzy of healthful activity.  No, my only purpose here is to
set in perspective a way of life in a distant time and place that may
seem to the modern reader to be crude and harsh and uncivilized, but
which in truth was a way of life that was, well, crude and harsh and
uncivilized.  It explains to some degree how I got this way.

Our lives in those years alternated between famine and famine with an
occasional feast as a surprise.  Mom taught mostly in little one-room
schools scattered throughout the mountains of Idaho.  The Great
Depression was still under way, and a great many people had retreated
into the mountains for its duration.  They built little cabins, cut
their own firewood, grew big gardens, and harvested fish and game from
the streams and forests.  They got their light from kerosene lanterns,
their water from the creek, and their entertainment from wherever they
could find it.  It was not a bad life and required very little money,
which was a good thing, because that's what most people had.

Mom got a job teaching in a little log-cabin school in a remote
mountain valley near Priest Lake in the Panhandle of Idaho.  It was
there that I entered first grade.  I learned to read in approximately
one day, and from then on took an extended vacation from the tedium of
school.  While the other kids were hunched over their books, my mother
cracking the whip of learning over their heads, I would wander outside
, roam the woods, try to catch trout from the creek, and enjoyed a
great sense of freedom.  It was a nice way to spend first grade.  Mom
didn't seem to mind.  During the long winters, I exhausted most of the
books in the school, not one of which was particularly interesting but
better than nothing.  Mom spiced up each day by reading for fifteen
minutes from books by Mark Twain, Jack London, Herman Melville, Charles
Dickens, and other of her favorite authors, thereby giving me a taste
for actual literature.  During my second grade at this same school, I
again roamed far and wide while school was in session, returning to it
only when I felt the risk of being subjected to education had
sufficiently diminished for the day.  Once again, Mom showed no
disapproval of my free-wheeling ways, and it began to appear that she
and I shared the same theories regarding the proper schooling for a
young boy.  The next year, however, Mom got a job teaching in town,
where I assumed I would attend third grade.  "Nope," Mom told me.

"Second grade."

I was astonished and enraged.  My own mother had flunked me!  The
reason for this act of maternal treason, as she wrote on my report
card, was "Too many absences."

Since we had lived right in the schoolroom, I eventually regarded my
flunking second grade on the grounds of too many absences as being a
major achievement, and I still do.  Much later, as an adult, I realized
that my mother had given me a great gift in allowing me to wander in
joy and wild abandonment during my first two years of school, and that
gift was a sense of freedom.  From then on my life was set on a course
of someday achieving that same actual freedom once again.  I haven't
succeeded, but I'm still trying.

The following year we returned to live full time on our farm, where my
mother attempted to achieve total self-reliance.  She had no faith in
the beneficence of government and would have grimly starved us all
before accepting charity in any form.  I for my part would gladly have
voted for charity, but our family didn't operate under a democratic
form of government.

Mom despised weakness, not of body but of will.  She was not
particularly fond of order, either, but thrived on chaos, confusion,
and crisis, all of which are bountiful in the lives of people who
attempt to achieve total self-reliance.  Take chickens for instance.

Every year Mom and Gram and Troll took dozens of chicken lives there on
the farm, committed these tiny murders and never even thought twice
about it.

Probably never even thought once about it.  I myself was much too
sensitive to participate in the callous slaughter of chickens and
rabbits and the occasional hog or steer.  In fact, when I was six, I
was ridiculed at length by the women for crying over the death of a
flower, a trillium I had found growing in the woods.  The real reason
for my tears, however, I never revealed to anyone.  I figured it was
better to stick with the trillium and not stretch my luck.

The winter of 1939, the year of first grade, was a particularly hard
one, even for North Idaho, and we had been snowbound at the log-cabin
school in the mountains for at least half a century, probably longer.

Then, suddenly, in early April, chinook winds came up and almost
overnight wiped out the snow.

Soon bright green blades of grass shot up in the pools of sunshine
scattered through the woods, pussy willows budded out along the banks
of overflowing creeks, and robins drifted in to check out the new worm
crop.  Finding ourselves free from winter at last, my mother cranked up
our cantankerous old Chevy sedan, and we set off for a wild spree in
town.  Ten miles or so down the road, the car stopped, possibly because
the radiator boiled over or one of the tires had gone flat.  I can't
remember the exact cause, because I paid little attention to calamities
not of my own making.  We piled out.  I saw right away that this was a
problem Mom could solve, whatever it was.  She shook a Camel cigarette
out of her pack, tapped it on the back of her hand, lit up, and blew a
cloud of smoke up into the blue spring sky.  Seeing her smoke a
cigarette during a predicament always had a calming effect on me.  I
knew whatever was wrong, she and her cigarette could fix it.  Thusly
comforted, I wandered off into the boggy woods to explore, and there I
came upon the little white trillium.  I gouged it up, bulb and all, and
carried it back to the car.

"Look, Mom!"  I yelled.  "I found a flower for you."

Mom glanced up from repairing the car, took a drag on her cigarette,
wiped some grease off her face, and, squinting hard through the stream
of exhaled smoke, said, "Thanks."  She was not one of those gushy
mothers who go overboard in expressing gratitude for small cheap gifts
clutched in grubby little paws.

On our way back from town, a terrible thing happened.  A blizzard blew
in.  I was sitting in the backseat of the car with the trillium resting
on my lap.  Our car was a very basic model, and I'm not sure it even
had a heater, but if so, it was not one that had worked in my
lifetime.

Pretty soon we had about as much blizzard inside the car as there was
outside.  The family started to succumb to frost, as did the
trillium.

The flower gasped, gave a couple of shudders, wilted over, and died in
my lap.  As I stared down at it, a great sadness engulfed me.

"My trillium died!"  I yelled at my mother.  And that's when I began to
cry.  Mom squinted out through a quartersize hole she had scraped in
the frost on the windshield.  The car alternately bucked through
snowdrifts and cut figure eights on the icy road.

"Let me get this straight," Mom growled, the tip of the cigarette
clamped between her lips glowing brighter in the dark.  "You're crying
over a stupid flower?"  That was when the womenfolk burst into gales of
laughter, forgetting for the moment that we might all be found frozen
solid in a snowdrift on a remote road in the mountains some weeks
hence.  I stopped crying, pleased to have introduced a bit of levity
into an otherwise tense situation.  It occurred to me I might have a
talent for humor.

There was something about this incident I never explained to my family,
and which has remained a secret all these many years of my having to
listen to the story being told about that trillium: I wasn't crying
over the death of a flower, but over the death of spring.  Anyone with
an iota of sensibility could have perceived that.

I recount this miserable anecdote only for the purpose of establishing
my own keen sensitivity.  Otherwise, I wish to hear nothing more of
it.

The women in my family, by contrast, possessed approximately the same
emotional makeup as a sack of nails.  My grandmother, Gram, a short,
stout pioneer woman, had spent most of her life cooking in logging
camps, where breakfast consisted of five gallons of coffee, fifty
steaks, five dozen eggs, ten pounds of bacon, a hundred pancakes, a
flatcar of fried potatoes, and a truckload of toast.  She got up at
three in the morning to prepare breakfast and went to bed after washing
the supper dishes.  Both her arms would be blistered to the elbows from
the wood-fired cook-stoves and the huge hot pans and kettles and
splattering grease and scalding water.  After Gram came to live with
us, I'd run in the house yelling, "Ow!  Ow!  I'm hurt!  I'm hurt!

Ow!  Ow!"  Gram would leap up in a panic, crossing herself and
murmuring a brief prayer.  She assumed anyone making that much of a
ruckus must have broken at least two legs and an arm and be bleeding to
death for good measure.

"Look, Gram!"  I'd yell at her.  "I skinned my knee!  Ow!  Ow!"

"You scared me half to death over a skinned knee?"  she would snarl.

"Why you big calf!"  After a while, I realized there wasn't much point
in expecting a lot of sympathy from an old woman who had spent so much
of her life cooking in logging camps.

It was almost unheard of for anyone in our family to go to a hospital
or even a doctor.  My mother's view seemed to be that either you got
better or you didn't.  Once, Troll got a thorn stuck in her hand, which
swelled up into the general shape and size of a catcher's mitt.  The
swelling soon went up her arm, turning it a nice shade of blue-green,
one of my favorite colors at the time.  Troll's arm became so ghastly I
would usher my little friends into her room so they could look at it
and see if it made them sick to their stomachs, as I had predicted.

"There's the arm."

"Yeeesh!"

Still Mom refused to take Troll to the doctor.  Even at that young age,
I could see that the Troll's condition might be terminal, and so I
tried to be as nice to her as I could, being careful to shield her from
the fact that bit by bit I was moving my belongings into her room.  One
tries to be considerate.

Mom eventually hauled the Troll off to the doctor, who said she only
had a bad case of blood poisoning, and, for a couple of bucks and a
modicum of pain, he cured her arm.  Typically, Troll had been fussing
about nothing.

Troll, six years older than I, was a powerful creature, fond of picking
me up and bouncing me against a wall or a tree, apparently as a form of
entertainment or, in later years, merely from force of habit.  I was
defenseless against her onslaughts, which could occur at any time of
day or night.  She knew magic, too, basic troll magic.  She could
create illusions out of nothing more than thin air and a shadow or
two.

Once, as the two of us were tramping home in winter along a narrow
wooded trail, she stopped and pointed into the shadows.  "Shhhh," she
said.

"What is it?"  I whispered, peering intently into the shadows, knowing
from experience it wouldn't be anything good.

"Wolves.  Don't you see them?"

"N-no!"

"Are you blind or what?"  she hissed.  "Can't you see that big shaggy
one with the spit dribbling off his jaws?"

"Cripes!"

Not only could I see the wolf, I saw it in perfect detail, a big ol'
red tongue lolling out from between sharp white teeth, the frosty fur
bristling on the back of his neck, the mean, fiery eyes.

"And here he comes!"  the Troll screeched.

My feet spun down through the ice on the trail, found traction in the
dirt beneath, and sent me on a flat screaming trajectory toward home,
the wolf snapping at my heels all the way.  Bursting into the house, I
told Mom about the wolves, that they must have got Troll.  She said,
"Well, in that case, set the table for only three tonight."

Troll strolled in a half hour later, claiming to know nothing of
wolves.

It's a terrible thing for a boy to have a sister six years older than
he, and one that does troll magic besides.  To this day, many of my
lesser organs believe in ghosts, even if my mind doesn't, apparently as
a result of Troll having shown me so many apparitions during my
formative years.

"See that old man?  He's not real."

"He isn't?"

"No, he's a ghost."

"How do you know?"

"'Cause you can see right through him, dummy."

"You can?"

"Yes!"

"He looks just like old Mr.  Ferguson."

"It's his ghost.  Mr.  Ferguson died last week, you know."

"Cripes!"

A week later I'd almost died myself, bumping into Mr. Ferguson coming
out of a store.  "What's wrong, son?  You look like you've just seen a
ghost."

A night at home alone with my sister was like being trapped in a
Stephen King novel.  So many ghosts, monsters, maniacs, and werewolves
would show up, you would have thought they were holding a convention of
things that go bump in the night.  Oddly, Troll never seemed the least
bit disturbed by all the phantoms flitting about.  She carried on a
running account of their hideous doings, much like Edward R. Murrow
broadcasting radio reports of the London blitz.

On one of our dark and stormy nights alone, Troll as usual was doing
her spook report for my benefit.  "Hear that creaky sound up in the
attic?

Restless human skeletons often make that sound when they-" Suddenly,
she emitted a scream so filled with quavering terror that I had not the
slightest doubt of its sincerity and authenticity.  If ever I needed
proof of the existence of actual ghosts, this was it.

"Cripes!"  I thought.  "This has got to be a real bad one, if it scares
even a troll that much."

Actually, that is only the gist of the impression that zapped my
nervous system and short-circuited my brain.  That poor tormented organ
was instantly rendered incapable of any thought whatsoever, let alone
regulation of normal bodily functions, which were left to their own
devices.  Typically under such circumstances, my legs would have
assumed command and propelled me home, without awaiting orders from
higher authority.  Since I was already home, however, they apparently
became confused as to a proper route of retreat, with the result that
they degenerated to a consistency somewhere between that of jelly and
spaghetti al dente.

The true culprit was presently revealed to be nothing more than a
mouse, which, for reasons known only to itself, had charged across the
living-room floor and attempted an ascent of one of Troll's legs.  I
recovered my senses just in time to see the mouse ricocheting about the
room, although at that point I was still unclear as to its involvement
in the affair.  Maybe it had seen the ghost, too.  If my legs hadn't
been in such bad shape, I would have joined it in ricocheting about the
room.

I have always been fairly religious, not so much in my mind as in my
blood and bones.  It comes from being raised a Catholic.  A novelist
friend recently asked me whether I got my load of guilt from being
Catholic.  I said yes, that was it.  "Where do you get your guilt from,
Peter?"

"From being raised an Episcopalian."

"Ha!"  I said.  "You don't even know guilt!"

I spent much of my early life in the company of priests.  For the most
part, they regarded me less than highly, not that they should have been
exceptions to the rule.  I regarded them at best as nuisances and, at
worst, as spoilsports.  Most of them loved hunting and fishing, and our
farm offered them easy access to both.  They freely and frequently made
use of that access.

At least once a month Mom invited the parish priest out for Sunday
dinner--chicken dinner.  Perhaps that is why my memory tends to
associate priests and chickens, no offense intended toward either.

Every spring my mother ordered a hundred or so chicks from the coop
farm store.  The fluffy yellow balls arrived sometime in March, long
before the outside temperature permitted putting them in one of the
unheated outbuildings.

To solve this problem, Mom built a pen in the unfinished upstairs of
our house, carpeted it with newspaper and straw, and installed a
lightbulb-heated brooder for the comfort and well-being of the
chicks.

Within a few weeks, the weather warmed and the chicks had developed
enough to be moved outside.

One spring, however, the weather remained cold and wet well into May.

As the weeks passed, the cute little yellow chicks evolved into homely
little white chickens.  Day by day the chickens got bigger and bigger,
homelier and homelier.  Busy with school, Mom had only enough time in
the evening to extend the sides of the pen up to the ceiling, try to
close the gaps in the chicken-wire fencing, and capture any escapees,
who had spent the day exploring the nooks and crannies of the
upstairs.

Having cute little chicks in the house was one thing; having adolescent
chickens was another.  The chickens became a major embarrassment.  What
would the neighbors think if they knew we lived with our chickens in
the house?

Despite constant cleaning of the pen--my job--the upstairs began to
take on the unmistakable odor of a chicken pen.  And the chickens
continued to grow and grow and grow.

Mom canceled all social activities at the house, and I was forbidden
even to have friends over, for fear they might discover our terrible
secret and broadcast it to the world: "The McManuses keep their
chickens in their house!"

All a playmate would have to do was open the door to the stairwell, and
he would instantly hear chicken sounds drifting down, and chicken
sounds were the least of what might be drifting down.

As bad luck would have it, Mom stopped to chat with the parish priest
after Mass one Sunday, and he mentioned that he hadn't been out to our
place for dinner in a long while, a hint that hung heavily in the air
while Mom, smiling fixedly, searched vainly for a way out.  She found
none.

"Oh, we'd love to have you out for dinner," she finally blurted.  "How
about next ..."

"Today would be perfect!"

"Today.  Yes, that's nice.  See you this afternoon then."  Smile.

Smile.

Father O'Toole, a redheaded Irishman, had a particular fondness for our
farm and visited it every chance he got.  He was a good deal less fond
of me, for what fault in his character I can't imagine.  Clearly, he
perceived of me as a wild and undisciplined child, and no doubt a
practitioner of sins I hadn't even discovered yet.  My older cousin
Buck was a terrific mimic, and I eventually came to suspect him of
imitating my voice at confession.  I could never prove anything, even
though the priest clearly viewed me as a little sinner of the first
order, for whatever reason.  There certainly was no sex in my life.  I
hadn't even heard of sex yet, although I did have the distinct feeling
I was missing out on something pretty darn interesting.

It was Buck who explained the birds and the bees to me, although
without reference to either.  I couldn't believe it.

"Nooo!"  I said.  "You're pulling my leg!"

"Yeah, really, that's how it works."

"Go wahnnn!  You expect me to believe that?"

"I'm tellin' ya, dummy, that's how it is."

"No way," I said, giggling.  "The church wouldn't allow it."

"It don't!"

"So where does the stork come in, tell me that, Buck?"

"So where does the stork come in?"  Buck said, mimicking me
perfectly.

"Gimme a break!"

"Yeah, well I bet you get a whole lot worse penances than I do, if you
go around telling nasty lies like that."

"Something on the order of an Act of Contrition, an Our Father, and two
hundred Hail Marys."

"Wow!"  It was pretty clear Buck had a lot more fun than I did.  "But I
bet you're pretty embarrassed when you meet Father O'Toole outside the
confessional.  He can recognize your voice, you know."

"I wouldn't bet on it."

Whatever the reason, whether Buck was the problem or not, Father
O'Toole simply didn't seem to believe I met his standards for young
boys.  On this particular day not only did I have to spend the
afternoon in excruciating boredom, but Mom insisted that I try to act
normal.  No relief was in sight.

A whole Sunday shot, and beyond that another endless week of school!

Cripes!

Father O'Toole showed up for dinner fairly bursting with good humor.

It was my impression that the church didn't feed priests during the
week, and that they survived only on prayer and eating dinner out on
Sundays, which possibly explained Father O'Toole's jolly mood.

"What's that I smell?"  he roared cheerfully.  "Chicken?"

"Chickens?"  Mom said.  "I don't smell chickens.  Anybody else smell
chickens?"

I thought maybe I smelled chickens, but I shook my head dutifully.

"Must be ham then," the priest said, removing his coat and tossing it
over a chair.

"Oh, yes, ham it is," Mom said.  "Ham for dinner.  What ever was I
thinking?"

Upstairs, the feathered horror pressed restlessly against the bulging
sides of its prison.

Dinner moved along at the pace of a lethargic snail, with Father
O'Toole occasionally looking me up and down as though trying to place
me in the context of some of the sins he had heard mentioned in my
voice during confessions.  "Is the boy rather advanced for his age?"

he asked my mother.

"Goodness no," Mom said.  "Rather the opposite.  He flunked second
grade.

Why do you ask?"

"No reason."

About then a muffled fluttering sound came from behind the staircase
door.  Father O'Toole glanced idly in its direction, then turned back
to his ham and the account of a strange experience that had happened to
him as a young boy in Ireland.

I was but a wee lad when the awfullest thing happened.  My brother Sean
came in with an injured bird he'd found in the yard, held it out for me
to see, and the bird suddenly revived and flew right into my face and
began to peck at me and beat me furiously about the head with its
wings.  Oh, it was a terrible shock!  Even now that I'm a grown man, I
can't stand to have a live bird near me.  Constricts my throat, it
does, and I break into an awful sweat.

Nearly pass out, I do, like a timid wee schoolgirl in a faint.  It's a
dreadful burden and an awful embarrassment at times."

Little did he realize that he was on the verge of one of those times.

He dabbed with his napkin at a few beads of perspiration the mere
telling of the story had raised on his forehead.  "But I do love a nice
piece of fried chicken now and again!"  He led us all in a rollicking
laugh, his a bit more rollicking than ours.

Another muffled fluttering sound came from behind the door.  The priest
glanced again in the direction of the fluttering.  "What is that
strange noise?"

"The wind," Mom said.  "Must be a window open upstairs."

"Could be a ghost," I said, trying to be helpful.  "The upstairs is
haunted."  The priest gave me a stern look and shook his head.

More fluttering sounds drifted out from behind the door.  The women
darted little puzzled worried looks at each other.  Then we heard faint
scratching sounds.

"I do believe you might have a rat in the house," Father O'Toole said,
leaping up.  "I'd better check this out."

Mom uttered a startled cry and tried to fling herself between the
priest and the door.  Not quick enough.  Father O'Toole hurled the door
wide, as if hoping to catch the rat in the act.

There, compressed, filling the doorway, was a white feathery wall of
chickens, with dozens of little beaked chicken heads protruding and
looking about in amazement at the wonders of the world that had
suddenly been revealed to them.  No less amazed was Father O'Toole, who
gave a small hop, and then staggered backwards, clutching his throat
and making strange gurgling sounds.

Mom, too, made strange gurgling sounds.  The rest of us watched in awe
as the great white wall of chickens began to topple forward into the
living room.  A moment later, there were chickens everywhere,running
and flying, chirping and squawking, a half dozen or so perched happily
on the prostrate body of the priest, who had collapsed backwards stiff
as a board against an overstuffed chair.  As sheer spectacle, it was
better than anything I could ever have imagined, my elation dampened
only by the possibility that we might be held accountable for our
chickens having snuffed the parish priest.

We rounded up the chickens one by one and hauled them out to the
chicken house where they might freeze, but, as Mom said, that was
nothing more than they deserved.  Father O'Toole finally revived, and
we finished dinner and even dessert without further distractions,
except for blowing the occasional feather away from our plates.  Mom
explained how the situation arose that we had chickens in the attic,
and the priest thought it all a rather good joke.

By the time he left, he was once again in a jolly mood and even patted
me on the head.  I knew what he was thinking, though.  Better slow up,
young man.

Two hundred Hail Mags is a bit much for a boy your age.

Dang that Buck!

Father O'Toole could very well have overdosed on chickens and died on
the spot.  No doubt he thought the birds were plotting to kill him,
possibly because they had something against organized religion.

Whatever he thought, he did manage to get his revenge.  He owned a big
old Irish setter, Butch Garrion, who had a significantly better family
tree than I did.  One day Father O'Toole asked my mother if he could
leave Butch at the farm for a couple of weeks.  Mom said sure, the dog
would be no problem.  Scarcely had the priest driven off than the dog
sneaked into the henhouse and killed most of the chickens.  Mom was
furious, possibly suspecting that the dog had been acting on orders.

If that were in fact the case, the priest probably hadn't told Butch
that he was being sent on a suicide mission.  When Mom found most of
her chickens slaughtered, she headed for the shotgun, clearly intent on
turning Irish setter into Irish Stew.  The only thing that stopped her,
in my opinion, was the thought that killing a priest's beloved dog
might result in excommunication.

Father O'Toole excused away his dog's murder spree on the grounds that
Butch was merely acting on an irresistible impulse, a popular defense
nowadays but rare back then.  Mom would have preferred plain old
vigilante justice, and during our many chickenless meals that year, I'm
sure she regretted not resorting to it, even if it meant becoming a
Baptist.

Just looking at a live chicken for the first time you would not suppose
it was anything good to eat.  This theory can be tested out.  Take any
two-year-old child and show him a live chicken running around pecking
at bugs, and tell him, "Tonight you get to eat that thing for
supper."

The child will immediately fly into a screaming, crying, kicking fit.

I used to run this experiment on my own children, and, until my wife,
Bun, made me stop, it worked every time.  A live chicken simply does
not look like anything a normal person would care to eat.  Suppose a
fast-food restaurant kept a cage of live chickens near its entrance
with a sign on the cage bragging "This is how fresh our chicken morsels
are!"  That fast-food business would be sucked into oblivion quicker
than you could say, "I think I'll have a Big Mac instead."

Or suppose a waiter brings a live chicken to a diner's table.

"Sir, this is the chicken we'll prepare for your supper tonight, if you
approve.  Notice how plump and firm it is, the healthy pink of the
comb, the luster of the feathers, the sparkle of the eyes."

"I'll have the prime rib."

"Very good, sir.  Hey, Tony, bring in the cow!"

My point is that the typical modern eater simply does not have the
stomach for confronting his dinner eye to eye in its live state.  Maybe
it's the guilt thing, with people simply not wanting to share directly
the responsibility for killing their own food.  People get enough guilt
at the office, without feeling remorse over their Chicken McNuggets.

Or it could be a combination of guilt and the fact that the typical
animal protein doesn't look all that appetizing in its natural state.

"And these are the snails, madam, for your escargots.  Notice how nice
and frisky they are."  Americans nowadays generally insist that their
food come suitably disguised from its origins.  They don't like to
think of the B of their BLTs wallowing about in the muck of a pigpen.

It was different when I was a boy.  First of all, you had a long and
meaningful relationship with most of your food before you got around
to, uh, breaking off the relationship.  Chickens started out as cute
little yellow balls of fuzz, cuteness being one of Mother Nature's
major ways of protecting the young of various species.  Countless
puppies are rescued each year from the pound precisely because of their
cuteness.  A year later the rescuers are thinking, "Now, exactly why
did I get this mutt, which is more trouble than the average child and
just as expensive, if you count a college education?"

Chickens, however, stay cute for only a couple of weeks at most, and
soon reach that lanky, homely stage referred to as "spring fryers."

Mom could hardly wait for her chickens to reach that stage, which,
depending upon the level of our poverty in a given year, could be very
early indeed.  I remember wishbones so small you had to use tweezers to
perform the wishing ritual.

As I mentioned previously in this report, I was a very sensitive child,
and for that reason alone one might think that I would be excused from
participating in the executions of chickens.  I cannot even imagine
saying to my four daughters, "Come on, girls, you have to help me kill
a chicken for supper."  Why, there would have been such shrieking and
hollering and banging shut and locking of doors that surely the
neighbors would have called the police to report rampant child abuse in
progress.  And, of course, their mother would have yelled at me, "Stop
with your teasing!  You'll give the girls nightmares!  Don't you know
how sensitive women are about such things?"

To tell the truth, no.

My grandmother was the chief hatchetperson in our family, and she had
absolutely no regard for my tender years or feelings.  I was no more
than six when I first became an accessory to one of her chicken
murders.  I say "murder," because the act had the necessary
requirements.  There was premeditation, Gram and Mom having previously
planned the hit.  And there was motive, fried chicken for supper.

"Get your nose out of that comic book," Gram ordered me.  "I want you
to help me kill a chicken."

"No, I hate killing stuff.  Do it by yourself."

"You will, or I'll teach you a good lesson.  I ain't gonna tell you
twice."

"Don't you remember how I cried when that trillium died?"

Gram burst out laughing.  "How could I forget!  Now, I want you out
here in five seconds.  And I ain't gonna tell you twice."

"You already told me twice."

"Why, that's right."  Whap!  Thusly did I learn not to quibble over
didactic details.

I had no choice.  I knew Gram was too slow to run down one of the
flighty creatures, and I, too, wanted fried chicken for supper.  Gram
and I walked out to the chicken pen.  The chickens watched us approach,
suspicion furrowing their very limited brows.  "What do they want?

Feeding time isn't for another three hours.  This doesn't look good.

That weird old lady and the kid are up to something.  Watch out!  The
crazy old lady's got the hatchet!  Run for your lives!"

There was nothing for me to do but chase down a chicken and haul it
back to Gram for execution.  I tried not to think about my helping her
to end that chicken's dreams and desires, its hopes and aspirations,
its future.  Probably all we ended was its future, which, to the s
probably more than enough.  I doubt it was the Einstein of chickens,
poised on the brink of discovering the poultry equivalent of E=MC^2. 
But who knows what mysteries lurk in the chicken mind?

Few Americans associate closely with chickens anymore, and those who do
generally work in chicken factories, where their charges are scarcely
more than feathered zombies.  Our chickens, by contrast, ran wild and
thus had the opportunity to acquire individual identities and
personalities, not that it did them much good when chicken was on the
supper menu.  A chicken could have been tap dancing across the yard
with top hat and cane, and Gram, hatchet in hand, would have ordered,
"Get me Fred Astaire over there."

There was one notable exception--Old Biddy.  This little disheveled hen
learned how to talk.  When spoken to, she would respond with a
chickenized impersonation of human speech, often going on at great
length, presumably about the latest doings in the henhouse.  Head
cocked to one side, she would listen attentively as her human
conversationalist responded to her gossip, and then she'd take off
again on some rambling discourse.  Biddy also took on the duty of
protecting the family from intruders, perhaps because she had observed
that my dog, Strange, ignored this responsibility, as he did all his
other responsibilities.  The hen started patrolling the road that led
to our house.

Troll once waited at home all day for a friend to come over and spend
the night, but the girl never showed up.  When Troll later asked her
why she hadn't come over, the girl replied, "I tried to, but some
stupid chicken kept attacking me and wouldn't let me walk down the
road, so I went home."  Old Biddy knew a criminal when she saw one.

The sketches of the characters who dominated my childhood would be
incomplete without further mention of my dog, Strange.  As I have
written in other places, a stray dog showed up at our farm one morning
wagging his tail and begging for a handout.  He seemed harmless
enough.

My mother called him Stranger, in hope, as she said later, that he was
just passing through.  He stayed on for nearly fifteen years, biting
the hands that fed him and criticizing my grandmother's cooking: "You
expect me to eat this slop, old woman?"

Gram hated the dog, although the neighbors were fond of him.  No matter
how bad their own dog might be, even a scruffy, smelly, barking,
biting, whining, chicken-killing, egg-sucking, deer-chasing mongrel, he
seemed like a regular Lassie when compared with Stranger.  Mom later
shortened the dog's name to Strange, which, given his character and
tenure, seemed much more appropriate.

Few things shape a boy's character more than his close association with
his dog.  My friend Merle had a fine old dog named Bo.  That's a great
name for a dog, Bo.  It's limited to a single syllable, so the dog
doesn't have to take a course in linguistics to know that he's being
called.  "Here, Bo!"

Merle would call.  "C'mon, boy!  Here, Bo!"  And good old Bo would come
tearing in and leap up on Merle and cover his face with kisses, his
tail doing sixty wags a second from sheer happiness that his boy, his
master, had called him.  I'd go home and try the routine on Strange.

"Here, Strange!  C'mon, boy!  Here, Strange!"

Strange would stick his head out of the doghouse.  "What?"

"C'mon, Strange!  C'mon, boy!"

"Would you knock it off?  I'm trying to get some sleep here.  What a
dope!"  Then he'd go back to bed, muttering.

Strange was an embarrassment to the whole family.  My mother gave him
away once to a lonely old man who lived way back in the mountains.  The
man said he could use a companion.  A few days later he brought Strange
back, explaining that he guessed he preferred his own company.  Strange
watched him leave.  "Crazy old fool," he said.  "Cooked worse than
Gram, if you can believe that!"

The best thing that could be said about Strange was that he didn't kill
chickens.  An intelligent dog, he apparently understood that such a
crime resulted in capital punishment, after a very brief trial.  He
would occasionally slap a chicken around, though.  "You stupid chicken,
this'll teach you not to drink out of my dish!  Take that!  And
that!"

He was suspected of being on hand when Father O'Toole's dog, Butch,
killed Mom's chickens, although Strange was not regarded as an actual
participant.  He probably stood by with his hands in his pockets and
watched, though, grinning, occasionally calling out bits of advice.

"There's one you missed, Butch, hiding over in the corner."

Strange regarded squirrels as terrorists, and frequently came into the
house wagging and bragging that he had just saved the whole family by
chasing one of them up a tree.  "He was carrying a grenade," he'd
say.

Gram would sweep him out of the house with her broom.  Strange hated my
sister's big yellow tomcat, Matilda Jean, even more than he did
squirrels.  He also feared the cat, who would tear into him at the
slightest provocation, and Strange was nothing if not provocative.

Matilda Jean enjoyed lying in ambush for the dog, often on top of his
house.  For this reason, Strange's standard mode of leaving his house
when he smelled the cat overhead was to streak out, tail tucked between
his legs, jaws snapping wildly back over his shoulder.  A friend who
observed one of these exits, after the cat had long since sneaked off
the doghouse roof, wondered aloud if maybe my dog didn't have rabies or
a nervous disease of some sort.  "Probably," I said.  I didn't want a
friend to think my dog was afraid of cats.

Despite his slovenly, cowardly, and generally despicable life, Strange
died a hero's death.  By then we had acquired Tippy, a happy-go-lucky
dog who bounded hither and yon without a care in the world, and with no
more brains than he had cares.  Strange now hobbled about complaining
loudly about his arthritis, Gram's cooking, Tippy, chickens, the
weather, me, and just about anything else that crossed his mind.  He
had not improved with age.  Whenever we thought he couldn't get any
worse, he did, perhaps because he felt challenged to do so.  He had no
use for Tippy, and would have taught the young whippersnapper a good
lesson for getting on his nerves, if he could have moved fast enough to
catch the pup.  Oddly enough, the brainless Tippy proved the undoing of
Strange.  One morning the sappy pup pranced out to engage in
conversation with one of the timber wolves our neighbors kept for
watchdogs.

The wolf snarled and lunged at Tippy, who immediately flipped over on
his back in the traditional posture of canine submission.  Tippy was
dumb but no fool.

This disgusting display proved too much for Strange, which was odd,
because he all by himself had raised disgusting to record heights.

Forgetting his arthritis, his aches and pains, his old age, and that he
probably would come out second best in a fight with a squirrel, he tore
into the wolf, who was at least four times his size.  It was a fatal
mistake.  I carried the mortally wounded Strange back to the house.  "I
must have been out of my mind to pull a dumb stunt like that," he
muttered.  "Gimme a cigarette."  And then he died.

Nothing improves character so much as death.  I once knew a man, Pete
by name, who abused his family unmercifully, stole, robbed, lied,
cheated, and was suspected of at least one murder.  Pete himself came
to a violent end at the hands of an unknown assailant who may have been
of the opinion he was performing a public service.  Others thought
so.

Within a day of Pete's demise, however, somebody recalled a good deed
the deceased had once performed, possibly an incident in which he had
met a stranger on a lonely road and hadn't robbed him.  Soon, even his
victims were concluding that he hadn't been such a bad sort after all,
merely misunderstood.  Then someone recalled that the fellow had been a
good worker on occasion, and someone else remembered his actually
having repaid a debt.  By the time of the funeral, the man's character
had improved so much that he had become one of our town's leading
citizens, widely revered for his acts of charity, courage, honesty, and
kindness, and if he had a fun-loving tendency to pull the occasional
prank, why that was to be forgiven on the grounds that nobody's
perfect.

Well, that was the case with Strange, too.  My family and friends now
remember him as a fine, upstanding dog, friendly, brave, loyal,
affectionate, a dog for all seasons.  "Good old Strange," they say.  As
for my own relationship with Strange, all I can report is that he helps
explain how I got this way.  If I'd had a real dog, I might have turned
out differently.

In contrast to my own existence, my friends in town led orderly and
peaceful lives.  Their fathers worked, their mothers stayed home, they
took piano lessons, did their homework, studied, got good grades,
played basketball after school, went on family vacations to the
seashore, mowed the lawn, got a weekly allowance, and never had
chickens upstairs in their houses.  I felt sorry for them, but who ever
said life is fair?

From age twelve on, I ran traplines, hunted with my own shotgun, fished
every spare moment, roamed wild and free in the woods and mountains,
and cultivated the company of ornery old men who smelled of tobacco,
whiskey, and hard living.  It was nice.  My friends and I often went on
expeditions deep into the mountains, and it was there I first explored
the fine, sweet, secret terror of wilderness and the night, and the
heavy tread of Sasquatches passing near.

Some persons may find it strange that major influences on how I came to
be this way consist of such mundane things as chickens and dogs and
trilliums and mountain trails and lakes, with the occasional wolf or
ghost passing through.  I wish there were something of more
significance, some great mystery to reveal, but there isn't.  My family
performed me a great disservice in its failure to be dysfunctional,
when it had every opportunity to be so.  Oh, what I could have done
with that!  Instead, it chose to be happy in its sublime chaos and
confusion, even when we didn't know where our next meal was coming
from, or sometimes worse, when we did know.

It may be, as my friend Dave surmised, that the fall on my head
contributed something of significance to how I came to be this way.

Ever since that bonk, I see everything twice.  It can be a distraction,
seeing everything twice, because it requires more time, and by then
you're lost, or have forgotten to pick up the dry cleaning, or return
home to find a strange woman cooking supper in your kitchen, or land in
Baltimore when you were supposed to land in Spokane.  But seeing
everything twice has its advantages.

When I return from an outing with friends and report to our wives what
happened, my friends think they have been on a different trip.  "I
don't remember it like that," they say.  "Is that how it happened?"  Of
course that's the way it happened, if you see everything twice.  Their
problem is, they see everything only once.  It's a pity.  And it's just
a darn good thing they have me along to tell them how it was.

Otherwise, they would miss out on so much.

Ethics and What to Do About Them Today's lecture is on ethics, with
special emphasis on situational ethics as opposed to regular ethics. 
As you no doubt are aware, situational ethics differ considerably from
regular ethics, which prescribe such old-fashioned restraints on human
behavior as Don't steal, Don't lie, Don't cheat, and so on.  You can
see how confining regular ethics are.  Situational ethics, on the other
hand, are much less confining and therefore more fun.

If you don't know which brand of ethics you are operating under, here
is a little test.  Simply ask yourself if your behavior is as good when
you're alone as it would be if a bunch of blabber-mouthed witnesses
were present.

Okay, so you flunked.  Don't worry about it.  Almost everyone flunks
that test, except for Extremely Boring People, who enjoy displaying
their honesty by confessing every tiny indiscretion.

Boring Person to Grocery Clerk: "I must tell you that I ate a grape in
the produce department and wish to be charged for it."

Clerk: "That's very honest of you to tell me that.  Not many
people--yawnnnn--are so honest nowadays.  Because you are so honest,
the grape's on us."

Boring Person: "But I insist!  I just wouldn't feel right if I didn't
pay for that grape."

Clerk: "Oh, all right.  What kind of grape was it, concord or green
seedless or red seedless?  They're all a different price per pound."

Boring Person: "Green seedless I think.  I know it was green but it may
have been a red seedless that wasn't ripe.  How many red seedless
grapes in a pound?  Are there more in a pound than-" At this point,
Next Person In Checkout Line tries to stuff a National Enquirer down
Boring Person's throat, thereby demonstrating one of the flaws in
excessively ethical behavior.

A less rigorous test of your own ethics is simply to ask yourself if
what you are doing might be featured as a hidden-camera investigation
on "60

Minutes" or "20/20."  This standard leaves you free to pilfer the
occasional grape in the produce department but limits your ethical
behavior to acts that don't result in, as the ethics scholars phrase
it, "hard time."

Let us now consider a few situational-ethics situations.

Situation: Suppose you are out fishing with the president of your
company, and he catches and keeps one trout more than his limit.  You
have caught and kept one less trout than your limit.  Both of you
simultaneously notice a game warden approaching.  Your company
president gives you a wink and slips his extra trout into your creel.

You each now have a legal limit in your creel.

What is ethical in this situation?  The answer is obvious.  You should
explain to the game warden that your company president caught one more
trout than the limit and slipped it into your creel.  Furthermore, you
should insist that the president be ticketed for the violation.

That is the ethical response, however, only if you are the chairman of
the board, own more than 50 percent of the stock in the company, or are
independently wealthy.  On the other hand, if you are only an executive
vice-president with a family to support and a large mortgage, such a
response is described by French ethics scholars as tres bite or, as we
say in English, "really stupid, you idiot, particularly in this economy
and with middle-management job opportunities being what they are!"

Thusly does the appropriate situational-ethics response depend upon the
particular situation.

Situation: Suppose you are mountain climbing and your partner, with
whom you are roped together, slips and falls.  He jerks you into space
with him.

The two of you are suspended from the rope, with him on the bottom
end.

You could climb up the rope, but you can't climb up dragging your
partner behind you.  If you cut the rope beneath you, your partner
falls.  If you don't cut the rope, both of you will freeze to death.

The ethical question: Should you cut the rope and save yourself, even
as your partner watches in horror, or should you say, "Hey, look, Fred,
a bald eagle!"" Under boring old ethics, honesty is absolute.  That is
to say, it is no more dishonest to steal a pencil from your employer
than it is a million dollars, even though the theft of a pencil is
easier in that it doesn't usually require a valid passport and some
fluency in a foreign language.  Many people go through life considering
themselves honest, all the while knowing that they have stolen
countless pencils and paper clips from their employer.

But what is the difference between them and the people who have stolen
a million dollars, except the latter have a much better tan?

If asked, most people would probably say that the thing of ultimate
value in the world is human life.  Let us suppose, then, that the
hypothetical situation arises in which you know with absolute certainty
that you can save the life of some mean and nasty stranger on the other
side of the globe merely by walking down Main Street at high noon
without a stitch of clothes on, and without benefit of first losing
fifty pounds and working out in the gym for six months.  The only
consequences to you will be a few minutes of stark-naked embarrassment,
and, of course, listening to the story told at hunting camps for the
rest of your days.  In exchange for those minor inconveniences, you
will save the mean and nasty person's life.  The ethical question:
Should you send flowers or only a card expressing condolences?

Situation: As a young boy, George Washington was asked by his father if
he knew who had chopped down the cherry tree.  "I cannot tell a lie,"
replied George.  "It was I, Father.  I did it with my little
hatchet."

Ethical question: Because George obviously realized his father wouldn't
consider him only one of several possible suspects, why hadn't he
prepared a suitable alibi before he chopped down the cherry tree?

("About three o'clock this afternoon, Father, I noticed that my little
hatchet was missing and ...") Situation: A Girl Scout mistakenly sells
you two boxes of peanut butter cookies for the price of one.  Ethical
question: Should you keep both boxes or exchange one for chocolate
chip?

Situation: You are hiking in the mountains with your best friend, when
he is suddenly attacked by a bear.  Ethical question: Should you
instantly flee back down the trail while the bear is occupied, or
should you pause long enough to ask your friend to toss you the car
keys?

Situation: A neighbor shows up at your door with a pail of morel
mushrooms and asks if they are safe to eat.  Ethical question: Do you
tell him the mushrooms in the pail are referred to as the Sudden Death
Morel and offer to dispose of them for him, or do you tell him they are
not only edible but delicious and never fatal, unless, of course,
consumed by a person who sometime in his life has eaten pasta, which,
as it happens, you haven't?

Situation: You are headed down to the store to buy a lottery ticket.

Your best friend, who is still recovering from the bear attack, gives
you a dollar and asks you to buy him a ticket, too.  You purchase the
tickets, stick them in your billfold, and then forget about them.  A
couple of weeks after the drawing, you remember the tickets and
discover that one of them is the winner of $15 million.  Ethical
question: Should you tell your friend about your sudden inheritance of
your uncle's fortune or should you share your winnings, possibly by
buying him a really nice rod-and-reelcombination?

Situation: Honest Abe Lincoln discovers that a shopkeeper has
mistakenly given him a dollar more in change than Abe was entitled
to.

Abe walks twenty miles to return the dollar and then walks twenty miles
home again.  Ethical question: How did a guy like this get to be
president, anyway?

Situation: You and your friend Burt are in a spike camp high up in the
mountains when you become snowbound because of a blizzard.  After two
weeks of being crowded together in the tiny tent, you are both cold and
starving and becoming desperate.  Ethical question: Is it permissible
to kill Burt to stop him from doing his John Wayne impressions?

Situation: You and your best friend are far out in the ocean In a small
boat.  There is only one life jacket in the boat.  The boat begins to
sink.

That is when you notice that your best friend is grinning and already
wearing the life jacket.  Ethical question: Will your best friend
forget that business with the bear and accept $15 million for the life
jacket?

That completes this lecture on situational ethics.  Now, to see if you
have been paying attention, there will be a pop quiz.  No cheating!

I'm sorry about that, but I still suffer from a bad case of
old-fashioned ethics.  It has been a real problem for me socially and
financially, but I expect that sometime soon scientists will come up
with a pill for it.  I just wish they'd hurry.

Bambo I Have long been fascinated by the idea of convergence.  You
yourself, for example, are a product of convergence, and it won't do
you any good to deny it.  Although you may be of the impression that
you have been around only since, let's say, July 10, 1946, the fact is
that you've been around ever since the world began and even before
that.  Back at the beginning of time, you were scattered in tiny bits
all over the place, and didn't seem to have a whole lot of career
prospects.  Sure, you say, you often feel that way nowadays, but back
then you were only these randomly isolated quark-size bits.

So millions and even billions and trillions of years ago, all these
bits began to converge on a pinprick dot in time, July 10, 1946.  And
suddenly, at that moment, all the little pieces came together as the
integrated you.  Isn't that marvelous?  Just think of all the thousands
of people your little bits and pieces traveled through to become you,
although I wouldn't dwell too hard on that aspect, no sirree, bub.

Unfortunately, you no sooner get it all together after all those
billions of years of converging through time and space then what
happens--you start falling apart.  Your bits start dispersing, often in
big chunks.  Hardly seems worth all the trouble, does it?

So what has convergence to do with hunting and fishing?  Absolutely
everything, that's what.  If you'll just shut up and Stop complaining,
I'll elucidate.

The whole object of hunting and fishing is to converge on the same
point in space andtime as your fish or game.  Through great effort--and
I hope you appreciate this--I have worked out a computer model of my
typical deer hunt.

Not only does this model show the sequence of my movements through the
hunt, it shows the simultaneous movements of My Deer, a creature my
computer refers to as Bambo.

Keep in mind that we are talking about convergence here, and the point
of this scientific treatise is to demonstrate how Bambo and I,
apparently through random act or chaos, converge on the same point in
space and time.  Here goes: I'm lying in bed peacefully asleep.  Bambo,
thirty miles away, happily grazes with a couple dozen of his associates
on a crop of alfalfa a rancher is depending on to keep him from joining
the ranks of the homeless.

By the way, at the risk of alarming the reader with the suspicion that
I am one of those geezers who start off with a brief and simple report
and then stretch it to infinity with endless digressions, I must make
this observation about the feeding habits of deer.  From time to time,
I read some nonsense about deer being browsers, not grazers.  The truth
is that deer enjoy browsing only on fruit trees you have nurtured
through a couple of years of heat and cold to the point where they are
about to bear fruit.  If you planted a fruit tree on top of your garage
roof, deer would find a ladder and climb up on the roof in order to
browse on your tree.  This is a well-documented fact.  Once they have
browsed your fruit trees down to nubbins, the deer will then go back to
their efforts to induct the rancher into the legions of the homeless.

Now, where was I?  Ah yes, I'm asleep in my bed, while Bambo munches
away on the rancher's alfalfa.

My alarm goes off.  I jerk awake and thrash about in the dark, trying
to punch off the alarm, which I am of the immediate impression is some
kind of vile practical joke.  At the very same moment, Bambo lifts his
head and glances around.  He senses something, even over a distance of
thirty miles.

Indeed, it is as if he too has heard my alarm.  "Rather early for Pat
to be getting up," he muses.  "That rascal must be going hunting.  This
could be good!"

Head still clogged with the residue of sleep, I start pulling on my
hunting clothes.  I ask my wife, Bun, "What's for breakfast?"  From the
lack of response and the fact that she has a pillow clamped over her
head, I deduce that it will be weak coffee and stale donuts from the
Quick Stop Gas & Grocery.  I grab my rifle and hunting gear and stumble
out through the dark to Retch Sweeney's pickup truck, where I find
Retch dozing with his head resting on the steering wheel.

Sensing that he is at extreme risk, Bambo turns and saunters toward his
resident mountain-top, taking great care to conceal the terror
quivering just beneath the surface of his hairy hide.  Crossing the
very road Retch and I will be traversing two hours later, he pauses a
moment to leave a rudimentary sign for Retch and me, possibly as a
crude commentary on our character.  He then slips gracefully into a
seemingly impenetrable thicket and strolls up a steep and meandering
game trail a mile or so to his favorite ridge on the mountain.  He beds
down under a picturesque old gnarled pine on the point of the ridge, a
position that gives him a clear view of any adversary approaching from
below.  A night of debauchery has left him a bit weary, so he decides
to take a snooze.

As Bambo drifts off to sleep, Retch and I pull out of Quick Stop Gas &
Grocery with our coffee and donuts.

"Hey boy, I feel lucky today!"  Retch tells me.  "I've got a game plan
all worked out.  Man, this plan is perfect.  To be a successful deer
hunter, you've got to think like a deer.  And I think like a deer!"

"Which may explain why you flunked algebra," I reply.

"Deer hunting has nothing to do with algebra.  It has to do with
geometry.  It is a matter of intersecting lines."  He steers with one
hand, while drawing out his plan on the dust of the dashboard.  "This
here is Misery Ridge.  My deer is here, a big old six-point buck.  I
move up the ridge like this.  He senses me and decides to escape to
Mount Horrible.  I drop over this saddle.  Our two lines of travel
intersect at this point.  And bang!  I've got my deer.  Simple as
that.

Plane geometry."

"You flunked geometry too, remember?"  I say.  "And it's easy to see
why.

Besides, deer hunting has nothing to do with geometry.  It is a matter
of convergence.  It's like an automobile accident.  You are driving
around town at the same time another person is driving around town.

Now even though you are both meandering randomly all over town, you are
still converging on the same point in space and time.  Crash!  You can
retrace the movements of any two drivers involved in an accident and
see that it was inevitable.  If either of them had made a wrong turn,
been delayed by a stoplight, or left home one minute earlier or later,
the accident wouldn't have happened.  It is the same with deer
hunting.

Any hunt appears to contain an infinite number of variables, but all of
these are controlled by the unifying principle of convergence.

Within the apparent randomness of chaos, there is a clearly defined
order, and-" "Stop!"  cries Retch.  "You're giving me a headache!"

"No doubt.  Here I try to hold an intelligent conversation with you and
... Hey, what happened to my other donut?"

"I randomly ate it.  The donut and I converged on each other at the
same point in space and time.  Ha!"

"Very funny."

Retch and I are rattling along a dirt road.  High on the mountain above
us, Bambo lifts his head and cocks his ears.  "Hey, stop and back up,"
I tell Retch.  "I think I saw some deer sign back there on the road.

Yes, there it is.  And look at the size of those tracks!  I have a
strong sense that if I follow those tracks up the mountain, the deer
and I will experience a moment of convergence."

"Yeah, right.  Well, I'm heading up to Misery Ridge to intersect my
deer on his line of retreat.  Simple geometry."

"Convergence!"

"Geometry!"

I get out of the truck, ease the door shut, slip across the road, up
the steep bank, and force my way into the thicket.  High up on the
mountain, Bambo listens intently.  He detects the sound of air forcibly
expelled from a set of lungs, a loud Oof!  The thicket has repelled me,
flinging me flat on my back on the road below.  I get up and dust
myself off.  "So, that's the way you want to play," I say to the
thicket, which smugly chooses not to respond.  I climb back up the bank
and slide gracefully into the deer trail.

Often, the only way to move through thick brush is to traverse the
three-foot-high tunnels deer have burrowed through it.  The procedure
consists of bending your knees into a half crouch and extending your
torso out from the hips so that it is parallel to and approximately
three feet from the ground.

Employing this posture, which approximates the shape of the letter Z,
you can move unrestricted through the densest of brush for several
hundred yards, pausing only occasionally to catch your breath and to
emit a hushed but quavering scream of anguish.  Catching your breath is
optional.  The scream, however, should be executed at regular
intervals, because if you let it build up into one big scream, it will
not be hushed and will frighten not only all game but some of the other
hunters off the mountain.

I emerge from the thicket.  Curious, Bambo stretches his neck to check
the terrain far below.  He has detected your hushed screams at regular
intervals.  "Aha," he thinks.  "Pat has survived the thicket.  Now, he
has to work his way around the sheer precipice.  That will take him at
least an hour.

Even he is not stupid enough to climb the precipice."

Halfway up the precipice, I pause on a quarter-inch ledge to plan my
next move.  Immediately above me is an overhang, requiring me to leap
out and up and grab it by its upper edge and raise myself to the lip of
rock, where I can get a new handhold by hanging momentarily by my
chin.

After that comes the tricky part of the climb.  By the time I reach the
top of the precipice, I am totally tuckered out.

Bambo peers down from his ridge.  He can see me now.  Instantly alert
to the impending peril, he yawns, whisks some flies off his back, and
rests his chin on a log the better to keep an eye on me.

I circle around Bambo's ridge and drop over the far side of the
mountain.

Shaken to the core by his narrow escape, Bambo goes back to sleep.

Six hours later, with darkness closing in, I arrived at the prearranged
rendezvous with Retch.  He is sitting on the hood of the truck while he
finishes off my lunch.

"I figured you was lost and that I'd better eat your lunch so I'd have
enough energy to rush off and organize a search team," he explains.

"Very considerate of you."

"I see you didn't converge with your deer."

I unload my rifle and put it in the cab of the truck.  "True.  But I
notice you didn't intersect with your deer."

"My deer is a little weak on his geometry."

"He's not the only one," I say.  "Well, I'm going to stick to my theory
about-" Bambo walks out of a thicket twenty yards away.  He stops in
the middle of the road and stares at me.  I stare back.  We exchange
rudimentary signs.

He then sidles off toward the rancher's alfalfa field.

"... convergence."

Retch, a dill pickle hanging from his mouth, watches Bambo recede into
the night.  "Big deal."

Get Ready I have never been a great devotee of preparation, choosing
instead to wing it.  Various enterprises of mine, sporting and
otherwise, no doubt would profit from a bit of preparation, but at the
loss of spontaneity, not to mention the exhilaration that comes from
being caught short in dire circumstances.  This is to say nothing of
the fine cardiovascular benefits to be gained.  For example, I once
discovered on a night trip through the mountains that the distance was
twenty miles longer than my gas supply.

Preparation for the trip would have required me to flip a switch to
check the fuel level in the truck's auxiliary fuel tank.  And flipping
switches can be so tedious.  Half one's life nowadays is spent flipping
switches.

So there I was, bumping along through the night in a wild and remote
region populated only by the occasional family of Sasquatches and a few
space aliens awaiting a lone traveler on whom to run weird and painful
experiments.

Throw in a homicidal maniac or two.  The demographics of the region
didn't occur to me, of course, until I exhausted the fuel of the first
tank and calmly switched over to the reserve tank, which was bone
dry!

Now is when the cardiovascular and overall health benefits kicked in.

As is my practice on such occasions, I stepped out of my vehicle and
began performing hop-aerobics while pounding on the hood of the truck
with both fists, thereby exercising both my upper and lower body, my
heart and lungs, and even my vocal cords.  Particularly my vocal
cords.

The following morning I emerged on foot from the mountains full of vim
and vigor and the mental alertness that comes from having hiked twenty
miles and also from having outrun a carnivorous Sasquatch who made the
mistake of clumsily stepping on a dry twig while trying to sneak up on
me.  My lack of preparation had provided me with yet another
inspirational and invigorating adventure that I might otherwise have
missed, had I subjected myself to the tedium of preparation.

I suspect it was my disregard for preparation that led to my
distinguished career in the Boy Scouts, whose motto is, as you know,
"Be Prepared."  If I'm not mistaken, I still hold the record for
longest period in the rank of Second-class Scout--five years!  I would
think the Boy Scouts of America at the very least would have awarded me
a plaque in recognition of this singular achievement, but they have
not.  Indeed, I suspect there has been an effort in the organization to
erase all evidence of my ever having been a scout.  All I have to say
to them in that regard is, "Just don't expect me to help any little old
ladies across the street!"

It was not unusual for me to arrive at camp cookouts with nothing to
cook out.  Had I prepared for the cookout by reading the little
mimeographed set of instructions for the outing, I would have learned
that we were supposed to bring our own food, which struck me as odd,
because on all previous outings we were supposed to bring our own
food.

This predicament forced me to live off the land, by which I mean
visiting the campsites of several Cub Scouts who happened to be
along.

"Hi, Melvin.  Hope you're enjoying your first cookout.  And what are
you burning on the end of your stick there?  Ah, a weinie.  Always a
good choice.

Oh, my gosh!  That stick you're using is a highly poisonous willow!

Good thing for you I happened to stop by.  What you were about to dine
on, Melvin, is known as the Two-step Death Wienie.  After your first
bite, you're dead before you can take more than two steps.  Didn't know
that, hunh?  Well, give me the wienie, and I'll take it off in the
woods and dispose of it properly.

Better hand me one of those buns to wrap it in, Melvin, because
touching it with my bare hands could be fatal.  Now, go wash your own
hands thoroughly and get another kind of stick.  And don't let this
happen again, Scout, because next time I may not be there to save
you."

My wife, Bun, is a preparation fanatic.  A week before any trip she has
all her bags packed and ready to go.  Then she unpacks and repacks them
two or three times, Just to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything.

"You'd better get packed," she tells me.

I chuckle.  "Are you kidding me or what?  It's three days before we
have to leave."

Two days later, she yells at me, "You better get packed!"

"Calm down.  We don't leave until tomorrow."

On the day we are to leave, she screams, "Get packed!"

"Don't rush me.  It's a good two hours before the plane leaves."

My packing for a trip consists of grabbing an armful of clothes out of
the closet and stuffing them in a suitcase.  It's fast and efficient
and requires absolutely no preparation.  Oh sure, maybe I do
occasionally show up at a black-tie dinner wearing a yellow tie and a
denim jacket.  The combination helps me avoid a lot of boring small
talk with the other guests.

Lately, though, I do make sure to bring my own underwear.  It's not
that Bun's pantyhose are particularly uncomfortable, slippery though
they may be, but there's always the worry I'll trip on some stairs and
be rushed off to an emergency room: "These panty hose aren't actually
mine, Nurse."

"Yeah, right."

My rich and sophisticated friend Parker Whitney is another preparation
fanatic.  His checklist for a weekend camping trip is the size of an
unabridged dictionary.  Parker prepares for every contingency known to
man or woman.  If he's traveling in the Arctic and a rattlesnake shows
up during a blizzard and bites someone, Parker will be prepared to whip
out his snake-bite kit and treat the victim on the spot.  If a log
rolls onto a person's legs during a backpacking excursion, Parker will
produce a two-ton hydraulic jack from his tidy pack.  "You never know,"
is his motto.  My lack of preparation, of course, used to drive Parker
crazy.

"What?"  he'd screech.  "No, I will not let you use my toothbrush just
because you forgot yours.  I do, however, have several emergency spare
toothbrushes, one of which I will sell you for twenty-five dollars
cash, the purpose of the exorbitant price being to teach you a
lesson."

"I've got you there, Parker.  I forgot to bring any money with me.

Ha!"

"In that case, you'll just have to do without brushing your teeth.  No
money, no toothbrush."

"You leave me with no choice but to breathe on you."

"Take the toothbrush."

That is what I mean by winging it.  Almost any problem caused by lack
of preparation can be solved with a little ingenuity.  Nowadays,
however, I am seldom forced to use drastic threats.  Over the years, my
camping companions, for example, have been conditioned to prepare for
my lack of preparation.

They now bring along an extra set of anything they think I might leave
at home, which is usually just about everything.

Thusly does lack of preparation save me enormous amounts of time and
energy that I can apply to more enjoyable endeavors.  Even Parker
Whitney, one of the last holdouts, has begun to show signs of
succumbing to my efforts to condition him.  Take a recent camping trip
for example.

"I've noticed that the only thing you've brought on our last couple of
camping trips was your hat," Parker said, as I climbed into his
well-stocked vehicle.

"I'm glad you noticed that, Parker," I replied.  "I trust you are now
adequately prepared with double sets of everything.  Also, as you no
doubt recall, last time you forgot my favorite brand of orange
marmalade, offering up the flimsy excuse that you cannot stand orange
marmalade yourself.  I really don't like to call attention to a fellow
camper's lack of preparation, but I find that sort of negligence
reprehensible."

"I'm sorry," Parker replied.  "Forgetting the orange marmalade was
inexcusable.  I don't know what I could have been thinking of.  This
time I brought half a case of the dreadful stuff."

"Good.  Now, there's just one other thing."

"I suppose you are referring to the fact that this time you have
forgotten even your hat.  In preparation for just such an event, I've
brought along a couple extra hats."

"Excellent, Parker!  But I hadn't realized until now that I had
forgotten my hat."

"So what's the problem?"

"Nothing serious I expect.  I doubt you're the sort of chap who would
go about in panty hose, are you old boy?"

Toe I was contemplating my toes this morning and--I know this will
interest you--the big toe on my right foot is almost back to normal. 
It has taken nearly a full year for the blackened toenail to grow out
and be replaced by a shiny pink new nail.  My big toe, aside from a
slightly flattened shape, looks every bit as good as its associates:
the piggy who stayed home, the piggy who had roast beef, the piggy who
had none, and the piggy who went "wee weee weeee" all the way home. 
Actually, that last little piggy didn't say anything.  It was I who
went "Wee weee weeeee!"  all the way home.

I flattened the toe during my Annual Major Nerve-Wracking Spring
Building Project.  My wife, Bun, likes to claim I start off pursuing my
Annual Nerve-Wracking Spring Building Project and end up with it
pursuing me.  Okay, sure, there was the project last year, the one
recorded in the blackened nail of my big toe, but that's certainly the
exception, if you don't count my pouring the concrete walk (May 1972),
putting a new porch on the cabin (May 1981), installing a deer fence
around the garden (May 1985), and building a cedar-strip canoe (May
1986-19?).  Even though those building projects may have pursued me in
the end, they never actually caught me.  If you can't escape from one
of your own building projects, don't call yourself a handyman.

"Time I got started building a new dock," I said to Bun over breakfast
one morning last June.  "Got to get it done before the river starts to
rise.

If I wait any longer, I'll have to wear scuba gear!  Ha ha!"

"I'd better order the scuba gear right away," Bun said.

"I was only kidding.  It'll be another three weeks before the river
starts coming up.  I'll have this dock done long before then."

"One air tank or two?"

I flew into action right after breakfast.  I called my friend Mike, a
logger, and asked him if he could get me twelve cedar poles to use for
pilings.  No problem, he said, and the very next morning he hauled in
the poles, each one twelve feet long and about eight inches in
diameter.  Mike casually tossed them off the back of his pickup truck
and into my driveway.  I was pleased to see they were so light, because
that would make them easy for me to carry down to the dock site.

I invited Mike in for a cup of coffee.  "Watch your step," I told him
as we headed for the house.

"You really should have a concrete walk put in," Mike said.

"This is a concrete walk," I said.  "Poured it myself back in seventy
-two."

"I see," he said.  "I didn't know that."

"Yes, I did the whole walk all by myself."

"It's very interesting."

"Thanks."

We got our coffee and some little round donut holes and brought them
out to the porch.  Mike dropped one of the donut holes and before he
could pick it up it rolled across the porch and off the edge.

"I built the porch to be self-cleaning," I said.  "That's why it slants
the way it does."

"Good idea," Mike said.  "By the way, I was wondering why you have that
deer penned up in your garden."

"He's not penned up, I said.  "He comes and goes through that fence as
he pleases.  That's why we call it a deer fence."

"Oh, I thought for a moment it was a cage of some sort, like that one
over there.  Pretty nice cage."

"Cedar-strip canoe."

"Of course.  I really have to get my eyes checked.  Can't see worth a
darn anymore.  So, who are you having build this dock for you?"

"Nobody.  Building it myself.  This may surprise you, Mike, but I'm
pretty handy with tools."

After Mike left, I went down to the riverbank and marked out a nice big
rectangle, and drove in a stake to mark the position of each of the
twelve pilings.  I hate a puny dock.  All my neighbors have little
insignificant docks.  This one would be big enough to hold square
dances on.

My first effort at digging a piling hole in loose rock didn't turn out
well.  The sides kept caving in, and by the time I had it deep enough,
the hole was the size of a bomb crater.  I then went up to haul the
first pole down from the driveway, and discovered that dew had soaked
into it and tripled its weight since Mike had tossed it off the
truck.

Still, I wrestled it up onto my right shoulder and by running sideways
at a precarious tilt, managed to get the pole down to the hole before I
toppled over.  After the piling was set and solidly tamped in, a
process that took scarcely more than six hours--do you realize how much
gravel needs to be shoveled to fill a bomb crater?--I came to a sudden
realization: my neighbors might be offended if I built a dock twice the
size of theirs.  They would think I was showing off, maybe even trying
to embarrass them.  It would be much more neighborly on my part if I
built a dock with only eight pilings.

After I had set three pilings, it became clear to me that the neighbors
would be even more appreciative if my dock were actually smaller than
theirs.

Six pilings would be plenty.  Four would serve.  It was as I prepared
to set the final piling that the incident of the big toe occurred.

Hugging the pole vertically to my chest, I staggered to the edge of the
excavation, at which moment the gravel under my feet caved in.  I shot
to the bottom of the hole, as did the piling, which might have split in
two from the impact, had it not been cushioned by my big toe.

Bun came running out of the house.  "I just saw a log fly by the
window!"  she yelled.  "What on earth is going on out here!"

"Nothing," I growled.

"Something is," she said.  "First the log flies by the window, and then
I hear something go 'wee weeee weeeee'!"

Much to everyone's surprise, I had the dock finished before the river
came up.  It is a modest dock, too small for square dances but plenty
big enough for tap dancing.

While I was contemplating my toes this morning, it occurred to me that
people in general seem to find mashing a toe amusing, so long as it
isn't their toe.  I don't recall receiving a bit of sympathy for
flattening my toe into approximately the size and shape of a Ping-Pong
paddle.  In fact, my so-called friends and associates burst into loud
guffaws upon hearing I had dropped a 300-pound log on it.

Disgusting!

But I, alas, am no better than they.

I had been installing a simple built-in cabinet in my upstairs
office.

One thing led to another, and pretty soon a wall had to be replaced,
along with a few odds and ends related to the structural supports.

Bun, fearing that the upstairs office might soon be in the downstairs
living room, insisted that I bring in a carpenter.  She then took to
bed with a sick headache.

(Women simply don't have the nerves for watching a home handyman ply
his craft.) So I let my bandaged fingers do some walking through the
Yellow Pages and found a carpenter by the name of Big Earl.  I called
him.

"Your office is on the second floor?"  he said.

"At the moment," I said.  "I would appreciate it if you could get out
here as soon as possible."

"That means I'll have to carry lumber upstairs.  The problem is,
mister, I mashed my big toe the other day and it's all swollen up
something awful and hurts like the very dickens."

I managed to ease the pain in Big Earl's toe with the offer to apply
large amounts of cash to the palm of his hand.  Scarcely had I hung up
the phone than Big Earl knocked at my door.  With one foot in a boot
and the other in a loose-fitting slipper, he hobbled into the kitchen,
wincing sufficiently at every step that I suspected an even greater
application of cash to palm might be needed to soothe his suffering.

Big Earl checked out the situation in the office and said the first
order of business would be to haul some lumber up the stairs.  I
explained that we would have to be quiet, because my wife was in bed
with a sick headache.  Big Earl said he would take eleven sick
headaches in exchange for a mashed toe.

As we were carrying a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood up the
stairs, each of us grasping an end, I heard a slight bump.  Not
realizing that Big Earl had thumped his sore toe on the top step, I
thought for a moment he had burst out in a crude attempt at yodeling.

I tried to shush him, fearing he would disturb Bun.  Distracted by what
up to that moment he considered to be a major pain in his toe, Big Earl
allowed the sheet of plywood to slip from his fingers.  It is common
knowledge among handymen that a sore toe acts as a magnet to any heavy
object dropped within twenty feet of it.  So even though Big Earl had
nine other perfectly good toes for the corner of the plywood to land
on, the heavy sheet zeroed in and landed with a spongy thud on the
previously injured toe.

Big Earl shot straight into the air.  By the time he came down, he had
flung off the slipper, grabbed up the foot containing the damaged
party, and clutched it to his midsection.

No sooner had he landed than he bounded off In a series of sprightly
one-legged hops, all the more remarkable for a man of his size and
age.

In mere seconds he explored all the rooms on the second floor and had
started retracing his route.  At one point he hopped in and out of the
bedroom where Bun was lying down with a cold cloth on her head.  A
moment later, she looked out into the hall, but by then Big Earl had
vanished into the office.

"I must be having a migraine," she mumbled and went back to bed.

Each time Big Earl hopped by me, I tried to engage him in casual
conversation, but he showed little interest.  Indeed, he hadn't uttered
a sound during the whole event, except for his aborted attempt at a
yodel.

Finally, he hopped down the stairs and out of the house.  I followed
along behind, carrying his slipper and trying to comfort him.

"Mashed toes do smart some, don't they, Big Earl?  I wouldn't worry
about it, though.  I doubt your toe is broken.  I mashed my big toe
with a three-hundred-pound piling last spring.  Boy, just be glad it
was only a sheet of plywood that hit your toe.  You take a
three-hundred-pound piling, now that hurts!"

Uncomforted, Big Earl hopped into his pickup and drove off without
saying a word.  He must have been nearly a half mile away when I heard
him make his first utterance: "WEEE WEEEE WEEEEE WEEEEEE!"  Now there
was something to which I could relate.

As I say, there is something about toes that is inherently amusing.  It
is not unusual for a normally sensitive and sympathetic person like
myself to burst out in maniacally wild laughter at the mere thought of
somebody else bashing a toe.  So I am happy to report that with
considerable difficulty I remained grimly solemn during and for days
after the event, an attitude I achieved by refusing to think about the
madly hopping Big Earl.  If someone so much as mentioned the word toe
or hop, my lips would quiver into a smile, but I would fight off the
smile and return to strained solemnity.  I think it totally
reprehensible to find amusement in the suffering of another human
being, even when it concerns only a big toe.  To do so clearly reveals
a major flaw in one's character, particularly when one feels an
uncontrollable urge to burst into crazed laughter every time he recalls
the incident.  The trick, of course, is simply not to recall the
incident.

Unfortunately, it was while I was seated in a crowded movie theater the
following week that the image of the hopping Big Earl suddenly and
without warning leaped vividly into my head.  I only wish it hadn't
occurred during the scene in which the poor little blind girl learns
that her faithful seeing-eye dog, Rex, has just been flattened by a
steamroller.

The Bandage I hurt my hand the other day and am happy to report that
the bandage is impressive.  There's not much use getting hurt if it
doesn't result in a significant bandage.  The minute I got the bandage
on, I rushed down to Kelly's Bar & Grill.  Fortunately, most of the
Kelly Irregulars were in attendance.

"There's ol' Pat.  Yo, Pat!  Haven't seen you in a while.  Been
fishin'?"

"Caught it in a piece of machinery," I said matter-of-factly.  I loved
saying that.  Made it sound as if I do real work.  Most of the guys at
Kelly's do real work, run machines of some sort--logging trucks,
skidders, Cats, backhoes, loaders, forklifts, chain saws.  They're
always getting hurt, guys like Lefty, Stumpy, Popeye, Toeless Joe, and
Mel.  Sometimes they aren't lucky enough to get a big bandage, so
nobody believes they've been hurt.  A tree bonked Mel on the head, and
he didn't get so much as a Band-Aid.

Nevertheless, the doctors in the emergency room got all excited when
they saw that Mel's head sat flat on his shoulders, like a pumpkin on a
fence.  They scheduled him for immediate surgery, apparently to extract
his neck, but then someone told them Mel's head has always sat flat on
his shoulders.  The doctors had just assumed that Mel was a cowboy, not
even guessing it was the bonk on the head that bowed his legs out and
popped his kneecaps.  That's what Mel said, anyway.  He was pretty darn
upset, too, that he didn't get a bandage.

"I caught a few up on the West Branch the other morning," Stumpy
responded.

"Yeah, I was running a sod-cutter at the time," I explained.

"Mostly rainbows," Stumpy said.  "A couple of cutthroat."

"Wicked machine, those sod-cutters," I said.  "Luckily, I have quick
reflexes.  Otherwise might have lost my arm."

"Mostly ten-inchers," Stumpy said.  "I did get one rainbow about
fourteen."

It finally became apparent that nothing would do but that I satisfy the
curiosity about my bandage by telling the whole story.

Yes, indeed, sod-cutters are wicked machines, at least the one I rented
from Stuff Rentals.  Jake Stuff, the owner, was out trying to hunt down
a backhoe that hadn't been returned, and had left his boy, Henry, to
run the shop alone.  Henry has his heart set on being a professional
tournament golfer, but since he's already about thirty-five, I don't
think he's going to make it.  In my opinion, though, he would certainly
make a much better golf pro than a tool-rental person.

Henry took me out to the storage shed and showed me the sod-cutter,
which looked something like a cultivators mean cultivator.  "There it
is," he said, nodding at it, his hands resting under the bib of his
overalls.

"How do you make it go?"  I asked.

"Beats me," Henry said.  "Ain't never run it."

"You got the manual?"

"Nope."

"I can probably figure it out when I get home," I said.  "I'm pretty
good with machines."

I got the sod-cutter home and unloaded it by rolling it down a couple
of narrow planks, reaching a top speed of about thirty-five miles per
hour between the pickup bed and the ground.  Unloading a heavy piece of
rental equipment single-handedly from a pickup would make a good
daredevil act for a circus: "And now, in the center ring, ladies and
gentlemen, Pat McManus will single-handedly, for the first time,
attempt to unload a 500-pound sod-cutter from the bed of his pickup by
running it down two narrow planks!"  Drum-roll.

Screams.  Applause.  Actually, the screams came from my wife, Bun, and
the applause from my irascible next-door neighbor, Al Finley, the
banker, who was peering over our adjoining fence.

"What now?"  Finley demanded irritably.  "It looks as if you're intent
on disturbing the peace and quiet of the whole neighborhood."

"You don't recognize a sod-cutter when you see one, Finley?  Well, this
here is a major industrial machine."

"What's it do, besides make a horrible racket?"

"It cuts sod, of course.  Bun wants me to dig up the sod along the
fence there so she can put in a flower garden.  This machine will do
the job in one-tenth the time it would take me to dig up all that sod
by hand."

"You don't know anything about running equipment like that," Finley
said.

"I'd better go call nine-one-one right now and have them start the
ambulance on its way.  Or the SWAT team!"

"Very funny," I said.  I squatted down and studied the warning printed
on the side of the sod-cutter, which stated that I was supposed to pull
levers A and B before starting the motor.  There were about twelve
levers in sight, so I assumed that the biggest and next biggest had to
be A and B. I pulled them.

At about that moment, across town, Jake Stuff arrived back at the
rental shop and asked where the sod-cutter was.  Henry said it was
out.

"You rented out the sod-cutter?  You idgit!  Don't you know there's no
way to shut that monster off, except by shorting out the electrical
system with a screwdriver!"

"Yup.  But the fella said he knew machines.  I 'spect he can figure
that out for himself.  Here's his name right here on the rental
contract."

"Him?  Good gosh a-mighty, he don't know nothin' about machines!"  Jake
jumped in his pickup and headed for my place.

Even as Jake was speaking ill of my knowledge of machines, I was
reaching for the pull-cord to start the engine.

"I'd prefer you didn't have that monster aimed right at my fence,"
Finley said.  "Turn it in another direction."

"Don't be silly, Finley.  It's too heavy to turn without the motor
going.

Besides, this sod-cutter won't budge an inch until I engage levers A
and B."

Just then my friend Retch Sweeney showed up.  "What's that
contraption?"

"A sod-cutter.  I have to cut some sod."

"I thought we were going fishing."

"We are.  That's why I have this machine.  It will zip out the sod in
no time, and then we can go fishing."

"The sod can wait.  It ain't going' nowhere, if I know sod.  We'll miss
the evening feed while you're foolin' around with sod."

"Be done in a couple of minutes," I said.  That's when I heard a horn
honking.  It was Jake Stuff speeding down the street toward us in his
pickup truck.  I waved a greeting at him and jerked the pull-cord.  The
engine thundered to life on the first stroke, an event never before
experienced by mankind in its long and frustrating relationship with
rental machines.

Afterwards, Retch drove me down to the emergency room to get my hand
checked out and bandaged.

"Looks to me like you bunged up your casting hand," he said.  "Maybe
you should have the doctor bandage a fly rod right to your hand.  No
tellin' how long it will take to heal up."

"Good idea," I said.  "I don't know exactly what happened.  My best
guess is that I got my hand wedged between the sod-cutter handle and
the fence--or maybe it was the side of Finley's house."

"Didn't cut much sod, as far as I could see," Retch said.  "Those two
big old steel teeth just kept chomping up the grass.  I expect it goes
a lot slower when it's actually cutting sod."

"I suppose," I said.  "I must have engaged the wrong levers."

"Didn't hurt the fence all that much.  Took out a couple boards is all,
right about where Finley was standing.  Old Finley's got some pretty
good moves, don't he?"

"I thought so.  Otherwise, the sod-cutter would have had him a couple
of times, once when we crossed his patio and the other time when he
climbed that tree in the McFarlands' yard.  Odd how that sod-cutter
stayed right on his heels, like it had a mind of its own."

"Yeah," Retch said.  "Finley probably thinks you were chasing him with
it.  I know that's what I thought."

"I'm sure he does.  Still, I considered it rather rude, the way he kept
shouting for someone to call the SWAT team."

While I was getting my hand bandaged in the emergency room, Finley was
wheeled past the door in a wheelchair.  I raised a hand to him in
greeting.

He gestured back.  The longer I know him, the more irritable Finley
becomes.

Probably just part of the aging process.  It turned out he was
suffering from nothing more than a little over-exertion and stress, and
they don't award bandages for over-exertion and stress.  Served Finley
right.

I must say the guys down at Kelly's were totally enthralled by my
report on how I had come to have a bandage on my hand.  Indeed,
scarcely had I ended my story than Mel turned to Stumpy and exclaimed,
"What did you catch 'em on, flies or worms?"

Thusly does a simple bandage on a person's hand hold endless
fascination for men who do real work.

As for the sod-cutter, no one seems to know the reason for its erratic
behavior.  From my own understanding of machines, however, I would have
to say that it was probably possessed by evil spirits.  But that's only
an educated guess.

The Big Woods Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I had hit a dead spot in an
otherwise interesting summer, mostly because Eddie's parents had
confined him to his own yard for two weeks.  This was shortly after
Eddie's father, Mr. Muldoon, had fallen into a pit we had dug for the
purpose of trapping wild animals, which we intended to tame and then
train to do tricks.

Eddie had even found an old chair and made a whip out of a stick and a
length of clothesline.  Those were the main things you needed to train
wild animals, a chair and a whip.  Eddie planned to charge people to
see the animals perform.  It was a good idea and probably would have
made Eddie and me some money, but then Eddie's father fell in the pit
and ruined everything.  Mr. Muldoon wasn't hurt one bit, and neither
was the skunk, the only wild animal in the trap at the time, not
counting Mr. Muldoon.  From all the fuss, a person would have thought
we had dug the trap just for Eddie's father.  It was the wild animal
trap that got Eddie confined to his yard.  After the first week, I was
allowed in to play with him, and it was a good thing, too.  Eddie was
about ready to go yard-crazy.

"How's it going?"  I asked.

"Terrible," he said.  "The guards are real mean to me, particularly the
one that smells like skunk."

"What do they feed you?"

"Just bread and water.  But I've set some snares around the yard to see
if I can catch something for supper.  Look, a wild pig!"  He pointed to
a Muldoon chicken approaching one of his snares.  The chicken stepped
into the snare and pecked at some crumbs Eddie had left on the ground,
then wandered off without tripping the snare.  Eddie was furious.  He
took great pride in his snares, even though he had never caught
anything with one of them.

"Stupid chicken!"  he yelled.

About then one of the guards appeared at the door and said lunch was
ready.  Eddie and I went in.  The guard had placed bowls of soup and a
platter of ham sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade on the table.

"Usually, it's just bread and water," Eddie explained as we washed our
hands.  "The guard didn't want the outside world to know how mean they
are to me."

"Go tell your father lunch is ready," the guard said to Eddie.

Eddie sniffed the air.  "He's coming now."

And at that moment Mr. Muldoon stepped on the porch and opened the
screen door.  He looked at me.  "Aha, the other wild-animal tamer," he
growled.

"Now, Herbert," Mrs.  Muldoon said.  "Don't get all fussed up again.

The boys just let their imaginations run away from them from time to
time."

"Only kidding," Mr. Muldoon said.  "But it wouldn't hurt if they
penned up their imaginations for the rest of the summer.  Eddie must
get his imagination from your side of the family.  I've never imagined
anything in my life.  Boys have got to learn to live in the real
world.

Take life like it is, and no complaints.  You ever hear me complain?

Never!"

"That's good, Herbert, because I have a little job for you.  I need
some dewberries for jam, and I want you to take the boys out in the
woods and pick me a couple of gallons."

Mr.  Muldoon started to complain.

"Hooray!"  Eddie and I shouted in unison.  "You mean the Big Woods,
Ma?"

Eddie cried.

Mr.  Muldoon went on complaining.

"Yes, dear, the Big Woods."

Mr. Muldoon complained even more fiercely.  It was hard to believe
this was his first time, he did it so well.

"Great!"  Eddie yelled.  "Maybe we'll even get lost out in the Big
Woods and have to build snares to survive.  Pat and I will go get the
berry buckets out of the garage."

As soon as Mr. Muldoon had finished his lunch, Eddie and I raced
across the highway toward the Big Woods, with Mr. Muldoon plodding
along behind.

Mrs. Muldoon stood in the doorway and watched our departure.  "You
keep a close eye on the boys, Herbert," she called after us.  "It would
be easy for them to wander off and get lost."  Mr. Muldoon chortled
evilly.

Eddie and I had named the Big Woods ourselves.  There were lots of
little woods around that we were allowed to play in, but the Big Woods
went on forever.  They spread out across the valley, over the
foothills, and then climbed the mountains.  I was a little concerned
about getting lost in the Big Woods, because I didn't have that much
faith in Eddie's snares as a means of providing sustenance.

Eddie and I raced along a trail overgrown with ferns taller than
ourselves.  "Hold up, you rascals!"  Mr. Muldoon shouted.  "I ain't
wearing tennis shoes, like you.  Even if a bear was chasin' me, all I
could do is walk a little faster."  Eddie's father actually grinned at
us.  He seemed to be enjoying the hike through the woods, even in his
big old clodhopper boots.

They probably weighed five pounds each.

Eddie and I enjoyed the hike, too.  The woods were cool and moist and
full of a thousand shades of green, with thick blankets of moss
covering long-dead fallen trees.  Shafts of sunlight slanted through
the towering firs and pines and cedars, making bright green blotches in
the shadowy woods.  Out there in the shadows, perhaps even watching us,
were deer and elk and cougars and bears and-!

"Bear!"  screamed Crazy Eddie.  He pointed into the woods.  And there
it was!  Eight feet tall, mean red eyes glaring from its black hairy
head, the fanged mouth twisted back in a horrible snarl!

For a brief moment, Mr.  Muldoon seemed almost as startled as I.

"That's only a black stump, Eddie," he explained crossly.  He picked
his hat up off the trail and put it back on his head.  "What did I tell
you about that imagination of yours!  Stop letting it run wild!"

I couldn't believe Eddie had actually mistaken the stump for a bear,
and told him so.  Anyone could see it was just a stupid old black
stump.

The woods became less enjoyable after our encounter with the stump.

"It could have been a bear," Eddie said.  Both he and I now looked for
other signs of bear in the shadows.  We dropped back and followed close
behind Mr. Muldoon, who from time to time turned his head casually to
peer off to the left and then to the right, probably to check for
landmarks.  The woods had grown darker and were full of rustling and
cracking and creaking sounds we hadn't noticed before.

"How come your mom just doesn't make raspberry jam?"  I said to
Eddie.

"Raspberry jam is good."

"I don't know," Eddie said nervously.  "I think raspberry jam would be
plenty good enough, don't you, Pa?"

"We come to pick dewberries and we are going to pick dewberries," Mr.
Muldoon grumbled.  "Bears or no bears."

A few minutes later, the woods thinned and faded away, tree by tree,
and all at once we were in a big bright clearing larger than the
Muldoons' cow pasture.  Dewberry vines were everywhere, climbing over
ancient brush piles and gray stumps, the vines heavy with black juicy
fruit.

"Wow!"  Crazy Eddie said.  "Look at all the dewberries!  Did you know
this clearing was here, Pa?"

"Of course I knew it was here," Mr. Muldoon said, smiling.  "Did you
think I was leading you on a wild-goose chase?"

We went to picking dewberries with a frenzy, stopping only occasionally
to gobble handfuls of the sweet, juicy fruit.  Eddie and I both
exchanged the opinion that dewberries were much better for jam than
raspberrie.  As we exhausted each mad trove of berries, we moved deeper
into the clearing, our buckets growing ever heavier.  Then Eddie and I
spotted a pile of stones black with berries.  We raced each other to
get to it first.  The pile of stones turned out to be the remains of a
fireplace.  Hidden beneath the grass was the stone foundation of a
cabin.

Some distance off were the remains of another fireplace.  And beyond
that another.  And still another.  Gray, weathered boards and cedar
shakes were scattered about on the ground.  Near one of the cabin sites
was a patch of wild roses and a gnarled fruit tree.

"Hey, Pa," Eddie called out.  "Somebody used to live here.  This was
once a little town."

Mr. Muldoon straightened up from a tangle of berry vines and rubbed
his back.  "Yeah," he said.  "A long time ago.  You guys got your
buckets full yet?"

"Just about," Eddie said.

The sun slid down behind the great dark mass of the Big Woods.  A cool
breeze stirred the tall dry grass of the clearing.  Mr. Muldoon walked
over to look at the fireplace.

"What do you suppose happened to the people who lived here?"  Eddie
asked him.

"Oh, they probably moved away," Mr.  Muldoon said.

"Why would they do that?"  Eddie said.

"How should I know?"  Mr.  Muldoon said.

A lone raven flew over, silent except for the rustle of its wings.

"Maybe they were all murdered," Eddie said.  "Some bandits came along
and murdered them."

"They weren't murdered," Mr.  Muldoon said.  "They moved away."

A board clattered to the ground on the far side of the clearing.  We
stared in the direction of the sound.  Nothing there.  The breeze
sighed through the tall grass, as though whispering to us of some
dreadful mystery of long ago.

"The murdered people are probably buried under those roses," Eddie
said.

I looked at the patch of wild roses.  It seemed likely.  Otherwise,
what would wild roses be doing out in the middle of a clearing?

"There are probably ghosts here, don't you think, Pa?"  Eddie said.

"The ghosts of the poor murdered people."

"Eddie," Mr. Muldoon said.  "There's no such thing as ghosts.  There
you go again, letting your imagination--what's that?"

"What's what, Pa?"

"Nothing.  just the wind I guess."

"Could have been a ghost," Eddie said.  "What did it sound like, Pa?"

Mr. Muldoon didn't reply.  He seemed absorbed in thought, possibly
reassessing his opinion about the existence of ghosts.

"Gosh," I said.  "Maybe I'd better be heading home."

"Me too," Eddie said.  "It's probably about the time the ghosts come
out.

I bet they wander around the clearing out here talking to each other
after dark, just like they did before they were murdered."

"Eddie," Mr. Muldoon said, stroking the hair on the back of his
neck.

A rock tumbled from the fireplace chimney.  All three of us jumped.

Mr. Muldoon picked his hat up off the ground an slapped it back on his
head.

"Yeah," I said.  "I'd better head on home."  I turned and sauntered
toward the entrance of the trail through the Big Woods.  I could hear
the grass whispering all around me.  I sauntered faster.  Eddie passed
me at a quick walk.  I started to trot to keep up.  Eddie broke into a
run.  I ran past him.  Eddie passed me.  I had the distinct feeling
something was after us.  Now Eddie and I were flying down the trail,
running harder and harder, cold sweat streaming out behind.  I could
hear things gaining on us, an eerie angry rumbling coming closer and
closer.  We sailed over logs across the trail without even touching
them, logs so big Mr. Muldoon had to boost us over them on the way
into the dreadful clearing.  Eddie slipped and fell, and I leaped over
him without even breaking stride and kept going.  It was each man for
himself now.  Eddie shot past me a second later.  And at last we burst
out of the woods and slid to a stop in the ditch by the highway.  The
drivers of the cars going by glanced out at us, little realizing they
were looking at two boys who had just made a desperate escape from an
unknown number of irate ghosts.  "I sure hope the ghosts didn't get
Pa," Eddie gasped.

"Me too," I said.

"Whewee!"  Mr.  Muldoon said.

Eddie and I whirled around.  We thought he'd still be back in the
clearing.  I couldn't help but stare down at his big old clodhopper
boots, to make sure he was still wearing them.  He was.  They seemed to
be giving off steam, but that may have just been my imagination.

Mr. Muldoon sucked in a draft of air, as he glanced back up the trail
behind us.  "Well, that was invigorating.  Gasp!  So, you boys thought
you could--gasp--race the old man home, did you?  Wheweee!  I guess I
showed you I could--choke--hold my own with a couple of kids, even
after a late start."

We crossed the highway into Eddie's yard, with Mr. Muldoon stopping to
rest every few feet.  He seemed a little shaky.  "Yep, that
was--gasp--quite a race," he said.  "I probably would have beaten the
two of you, if I hadn't been worried about spilling my bucket of
berries.  Look here--gasp--I didn't lose a single hen!"  And then Mr.
Muldoon slammed facedown on the ground, sending the berries spraying
from his bucket.

"Pa!"  Eddie cried out.  "Are you all right?  What's the matter, Pa?

Your heart?  Is it your heart?"

Eddie's father rolled over on his back and propped himself up on his
elbows.  All three of us looked down at his foot.  One of Eddie's
snares had finally caught something.

Elk Magic After many years of hard work, I have managed to create a
reputation for myself of not catching fish and not shooting game.  I
don't mean to brag , but I have been in situations where a
twelve-year-old boy with a slingshot could have limited out, and I have
still managed to come away empty-handed.  My psychologist friend Paul
Quinnett a few years ago wrote an article in which he testified as an
expert witness to my rare ability not only to catch no fish but to
prevent anyone within a radius of a hundred yards from catching fish.

Indeed, such is my reputation around town that people here won't even
think about going fishing or hunting on a day when they know I'm abroad
with rod or gun anywhere in the state.  It's a special talent.

Some of the best guides and outfitters in the country have bragged that
they were so good there was no way I could come back from an excursion
with them without bagging fish or game.  I have accepted numerous of
these challenges and have yet to be defeated.  Sadly, I heard later
that many of these guides and outfitters afterwards took to drink.

Others lost all faith in their skills and wound up among the homeless,
stumbling along the streets of large cities and mumbling absurdities
like, "I know the elk were there, but McManus, he did something,
radiated out some kind of magnetic field or ..."

One outfitter even sold his pack string, went to law school, and became
a successful attorney.  How would you like that on your conscience?

I must admit that I'd become pretty smug about never catching fish or
shooting game.  Sure, I was even a bit cocky, maybe even too cocky,
that day I was sitting in a hotel lounge in Denver when a shadow fell
across my table.  I looked up into the smiling face of Paul Howard, the
former offensive lineman for the Denver Broncos.  Paul now owned
Proline Excursions out of Denver.

We chatted for a while, and then Paul said, "I've got a proposition for
you, Pat.  You come hunt with me, and I'll guarantee you an elk."

I laughed and shook my head.  "No way, Paul.  You're too nice a guy.

I've ruined too many outfitters who thought they could go up against my
reputation, and I've beaten them all.  You hunt with me, you could end
up as a ... a ... an attorney."

Paul shuddered at the thought, and a tiny doubt flickered in his eyes
for a split second.  That is one of the things you watch for when an
outfitter tries to call you out.  It gives you an edge, and sometimes
that's all you need.

"I know your reputation," Paul said.  "And I know the risks.  But I've
got a place where even you cannot help but get an elk.  We had a
hundred percent success rate on our last hunt.  Most of these guys had
never even seen an elk before, let alone shot one."

I had heard it all before.  Hunters kept awake all night by elk bugling
around their camp.  Traffic on the roads held up for hours by streams
of elk passing through.  Hunters who wouldn't pull the trigger on bulls
with racks the size of forklifts, because they thought they were
dreaming.  And so on.

Paul's challenge was mighty tempting, though.  These days, I was about
as popular with outfitters as sushi at a cattlemen's barbecue.  It had
been years since I added another notch to my rifle stock, which was
already pretty well eaten away from notches recording the other
outfitters I had defeated.  From the way Paul described his ranch, I
knew this would be a major challenge, and a major notch.  I only hoped
there was enough wood left in the stock to take it.

"Okay, Paul," I said, "you're on.  I'll meet you at the crack of dawn
one year from today."

"Great!"

"One question."

"Sure."

"What time does dawn crack around here?"

Paul told me.

"In that case, we'll meet two hours after the crack of dawn."

As the year passed, I became increasingly uneasy about my hunt with
Paul Howard.  He was and still is a great athlete.  Maybe he would
expect me to keep up with him as he charged up and down the mountains
of Colorado, which start where other mountains end and go up from
there--way up.  In order to survive such a hunt, I would have to spend
the next six months running five miles a day, lifting weights,
dieting.

I called up Paul and told him a life-and-death situation had come up,
and I wouldn't be able to hunt with him after all.

"I can drive you right up to the hunting area," Paul said, "and you
just sit there until an elk you like comes by."

"Really?  Hold on a second, Paul, my secretary Just handed me a note.

Hey, this is wonderful!  The life-and-death situation has just been
canceled."

"What a coincidence!"

Little did Paul realize I hadn't been handed a note at all.  I don't
even have a secretary!  These outfitters are so easy to fool.

I should mention here that the stakes in these challenges are high for
me, too.  I make my living by writing about being unsuccessful in
outdoor sports.  If I go on an outing and have a good time, it's ruined
for me.  If everything goes wrong, I'm delighted.  Once, my friends
Gary Roedl and Keith Jackson and I were stranded by a stalled pickup
truck at the bottom of a remote canyon in Montana in the middle of a
blizzard.  The situation was desperate.  Roedl and Jackson looked
grim.

I burst out laughing.  "Bad enough we're all going to freeze to
death,"Jackson said, "but we have to put up with a crazy person while
we do it."

Unsuccess is my meat and potatoes.  If I were a successful and expert
hunter, I could be Jim Zumbo, and Jim Zumbo could be me.  As a matter
of fact, I have suggested several times that we exchange identities.

Zumbo always says, "Let me think about it.  Naw."

But now Paul Howard had presented me with a formidable challenge.  If
he managed to put an elk within the range of my marksmanship, which is
close, he would win, whether or not I shot the elk.  That's the way the
game is played.

I had plenty to lose.  A whole career of unsuccess could be wiped out
in a single moment by one stupid elk.

The day of the elk hunt finally arrived.  Kathy Howard, Paul's wife,
picked me up at the airport.  Kathy is a funny and very classy person,
but she didn't ease my concern about the hunt.  "I'm so sick of elk!"

she confessed.

"Elk elk elk elk!  That's all anyone talks about up at the ranch.  Who
got the biggest rack.  Who made the best shot.  Every hunter who shows
up thinks his elk is the greatest."

"Every hunter?"  I said.  "Every hunter has got an elk?"

"So far this year.  It's all just so boring!  Well, we have a new group
in now.  Maybe they'll be able to talk about something besides elk."

"I doubt it," I said.  I know elk hunters.

As we approached the ranch, Kathy suddenly braked.

"What is it?"  I asked.

"Elk," she said.

And it was true.  A herd of elk bounded down the bank just ahead of us
and streamed across the road.  I couldn't believe it, and I don't
expect anyone else to, but it happened.  I was immediately overcome
with a terrible sense of foreboding.

"Elk elk elk," Kathy said.  "I can't even drive to town without
practically getting run over by elk."

"It's terrible," I said.  I meant it, too.

We had a magnificent feed at the Winslett Ranch that night.  The
Howards, ranch-owners Allan and Jeanne Jones, and I thoroughly enjoyed
it.  But all the other newly arrived hunters were so joyous with
expectation they could barely eat.  They had come from all parts of the
United States, seeking that fabled "hunt of a lifetime."  A pleasant
chap by the name of Russ came all the way from Long Island.  This was
his first elk hunt.  He was so beside himself with excitement that I
didn't know which of him to talk to.

That night I bunked in a cozy and picturesque log cabin that had once
been the ranch's one-room schoolhouse.  I was thoroughly comfortable,
but I had trouble getting to sleep, what with all the elk bugling
outside.  The ranch definitely needed a curfew, with all the elk to be
shut off at 10 P.M. Forgetting what I had told him a year earlier, Paul
woke us up well before the crack of dawn, herded us into the ranch
house and stuffed us with a gargantuan breakfast.  Afterwards, he
loaded Russ and me into a 4x4 pickup truck, and we clawed our way
farther up into the mountains.  Some of the grades were mere precipices
but there were steep places, too.  On several occasions, both Russ and
I were beside ourselves with excitement, which made for a pretty
crowded pickup cab.

Finally reaching a plateau of sorts, Paul parked the truck and we got
out, softly closing the doors so as not to disturb the elk.  I was
jittery.

It looked as though in a few moments I would have to shoot an elk.

Paul placed Russ and me on stands.  Shortly thereafter a sliver of sun
appeared on the horizon.  It was the first time I had ever seen the sun
rise from below me.  Colorado mountains are high.

"Get ready," Paul whispered to me.  "Some elk should be coming by any
minute now.  And remember, don't take the first big bull you see.  Wait
for a nice one."

"Right," I said.  Sweat trickled down my back.  I stared at the freshly
churned-up ground where a herd of elk had recently passed not more than
twenty-five yards in front of me.

It would be an easy shot.  I hate easy shots.  They don't allow you any
excuse for missing.

The sun rose higher in the sky.  "They should be here by now, Paul
said.

He looked around, a puzzled expression on his face.  "They've been
moving through here every morning.  I scouted it out just for you."

My old confidence began to return.  I smiled.

"They're probably bedded in those aspens down there," Paul said
nervously.  "I'll make a sweep around the bottom of the ridge and drive
them up past you and Russ.  Remember, pick out a good one."

"Sure," I said.  Paul headed for the grove of aspens.  Off in the
distance I could see Russ on his stand, rifle at the ready, his posture
tense with expectation.  I removed my hunting jacket and sat down on
it.  Then I poured myself a cup of coffee.  I thought about taking a
nap.  I recognized the situation: The outfitter turning panicky.  The
outfitter rushing off to drive elk toward me.  I laughed, without fear
of being heard by elk.

An hour later, Paul came puffing up the steep slope.  "See anything?"

"Nothing."

"I don't know what's wrong," Paul said, wiping his face with a
kerchief.

This place is always crawling with elk.  Well, if they aren't here, I
know where they'll be."

We piled into the pickup and drove to another place.  The elk weren't
there either.  Paul was dumbfounded.  He had never before come up
against my kind of magic.

Driving out in the dark that night, we passed a deep, heavily forested
canyon.  We could hear the elk down there, bugling like mad.

"So that's where they went to," Paul said.  "That's really odd.  I've
never known elk to hole up in that particular canyon before.  Well, at
least we know where they are.  We'll get 'em tomorrow."

I stifled a laugh.  I knew what the elk were doing down in that
canyon.

They were making travel plans.  The leader of the herd was drawing maps
in the dirt with a hoof.  "Okay, gang," he was saying, "we had a close
call today, because we didn't know Pat was coming on the hunt.

Fortunately, we were able to hide out in this canyon we've never hidden
out in before.  Now's our chance to clear out.  Here we have Hawaii and
here we have the Northwest Territories.

Hawaii is a long swim, so we'd better head for the Northwest
Territories.  We owe it to Pat.  Mount up!  Yo!"

The next morning the elk were gone from the canyon.  That evening
reports began to come in from other hunters who hadn't seen an elk for
dozens of miles in any direction.  Paul's other hunters stared grimly
at him over supper that night.  Russ was so disappointed he could
hardly talk.  I liked Russ a lot, and Paul, too, and I knew what I had
to do.  I took Paul aside.

"I'm pulling out of here first thing in the morning," I told him.  "I
just can't do this to all these good folks.  Going soft I guess."

"Gee, I really appreciate that, Pat," Paul said.  "I thought I could
beat you, but I see now that's not possible.  You're the best I've ever
seen."

"Thanks," I said.  "I'll be out of the state by tomorrow night.  The
elk can't be more than a day's trek away.  They'll come flooding back
in as soon as I'm gone."

As it happened, the elk didn't even wait until I was out of the
state.

As Kathy was driving me off the ranch on my way back to Denver, she
slammed on the brakes.  A herd of elk streamed across the road ahead of
us.  "Elk elk elk!"  she yelled in exasperation.  I heard later that
Russ got a seven-point bull that very day.  I guess he must have taken
the first one that came along, but beginning elk hunters tend to do
that.  As Kathy and I sat in the car waiting for the elk to pass, I
unsheathed my rifle.  "What are you doing with your rifle?"  Kathy
asked.  "You can't shoot from the road."

"I'm just carving a notch in the stock," I said.  "A big notch."

"But you didn't get an elk!"

I guess Kathy hadn't heard about my reputation.

There She Blows I've never had any luck with collecting as a hobby. 
When I think of all the cheap and useless things I could have collected
over the years that are now worth a fortune, it makes me sick.  I read
a while back about an old duck decoy selling for thousands of dollars. 
It didn't look like much either.  I recently whittled a brand-new duck
decoy that looked twice as good as that old one, and it isn't worth
more than a piece of firewood.  That's because it isn't old, won't be
for at least another fifty years or so, and I lack the patience to wait
that long.

The older something is, the more it is valued, people being the only
exception.  The older people get the more they go down in value.  If
you don't believe me, just put a weathered old wooden duck decoy and a
weathered old man up for auction and see who gets the highest bid.  I
can tell you right now it will be the duck.  It's not because
collectors don't like old men, but because they know value when they
see it.  Fool that I am, I started out early in life collecting old
men, and I got a lot of use out of them, too, mostly in the form of
entertainment, but every last one of them depreciated down to
nothing.

I guess I just lacked good business sense.

My friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I got bitten by the collecting bug,
and by quite a few other bugs, too, when we were about ten years old.

We knew lots of kids who were already well started on collecting,
mostly dumb stuff like comic books and baseball cards that any fool
could see would never be worth more than the paper they were printed
on, but of course you can't expect kids to have any business sense.

Oliver Smith, a rich kid who lived in town, collected model steam
engines--working steam engines!  There was something worth
collecting.

Oliver knew what he was doing.  Every birthday he got a new toy steam
engine that actually got up a head of steam that sent its little
flywheel spinning.  Because of our religious upbringing, Eddie and I
certainly wouldn't have killed for one measly steam engine.  Serious
maiming, however, would not have been out of the question.  We were
returning from one of Oliver's birthday parties, stuffed with cake and
ice cream and envy, when Eddie came up with a fantastic idea.

"I think we should collect steam engines," he said.

"Me too," I said.  "Our folks will buy us steam engines as soon as
chickens learn to tap dance.  I can hardly wait."

"Of course they're not going to buy us steam engines," Eddie said.

"We'll have to build them."

"You know how to build steam engines?"

"Sure.  There's not much to them.  Come on over to the house tomorrow
and we'll build one."

Eddie's enthusiasm for his various inventions was highly contagious,
and I soon had a bad case of it myself, with good reason.  After all,
Eddie and I had built and tested a submarine, deep-sea diving gear, a
live trap for wild animals, and an airplane we piloted off a barn
roof.

In every instance we had survived.  Surely, we could build a simple
little steam engine with which to start our collection.

We set to work on the steam engine early the next morning, using the
Muldoon cellar as our workshop.  Eddie had gathered together a large
old tin fly sprayer, a metal wheel off a garden cultivator, a bunch of
candles, a wooden box, baling wire, a metal curtain rod, a pie pan,
nails, and various other materials.  I could see right away that his
plan emphasized function over design.  Somehow, I had imagined a little
gleaming brass engine, but that could come later.  First we needed to
build the prototype.

"Here's the idea," Eddie said.  "We build a frame to hold the fly
sprayer up above the box.  We attach the curtain rod to the handle of
the sprayer and run it to the cultivator wheel.  Then we fill the
reservoir of the sprayer with water.  Next we put the candles in the
pie pan under the reservoir and light them.  A head of steam will build
up in the reservoir and push the plunger on the handle back out, which
will turn the flywheel.  I have already drilled a hole in the tube
around the plunger.  When the plunger goes past that hole, the steam
will be released, the flywheel will turn and shove the plunger back,
and then the steam will shove it back again, and away it will go, chug
chug chug!"

"Sounds good to me," I said.

By the time Mrs. Muldoon called Eddie and me up for lunch, the steam
engine was built and ready for testing.  It was only with great effort
that we could contain our excitement as we sat down to soup and
sandwiches with Eddie's parents and Mr. and Mrs. Haverstead, who had
come to buy some hay and been invited to stay for lunch.

"What have you boys been up to?"  Mrs. Haverstead asked, perhaps not
entirely out of curiosity, for Eddie and I had acquired considerable
notoriety as a result of our inventions.

"We're working on an invention," Eddie said.

"How nice, dear," Mrs.  Haverstead said.

"Just so it's not another airplane on the barn roof," Mr. Muldoon
grumbled.  One whole side of his face twitched.  I had noticed that
every time Mr. Muldoon mentioned our airplane, which he did often, his
face twitched like that.  You would have thought he had been in the
airplane with Eddie and me when it soared off the barn roof.  Now there
was something to make a face twitch!

"Or a deep-sea diving helmet," Mrs. Muldoon said.  That caused Mr.
Muldoon's face to twitch again.

"Well, think of it this way, Herb," Mr. Haverstead said to Mr.
Muldoon.

"Maybe the boys will turn out to be great engineers when they grow
up--if they do!  Ha ha!"

"Ha ha," Mr.  Muldoon said.

As soon as lunch was over, Eddie and I rushed back down to the cellar
to test the steam engine, leaving Eddie's parents and the Haversteads
visiting over coffee.

"Let's hurry and get the steam engine running," Eddie said.  "I want
Mr. Haverstead to see it.  Did you hear him say how we might become
great engineers?"

"Yeah."

Eddie took out a kitchen match and lit the candles arranged under the
reservoir of the fly sprayer--I mean under the boiler of the steam
engine.

We stood back and watched the bottom of the boiler blacken with candle
smoke.  This being a very basic steam engine, it lacked any gauges to
indicate when sufficient pressure had built up in the boiler to push
the drive rod and send the flywheel spinning.  We watched the boiler
grow blacker and blacker.

We watched the drive rod begin to tremble.  We watched the whole steam
engine begin to shake.  But the stupid drive rod refused to move!  Not
a single chug emanated from the engine!  Eddie and I looked at each
other.  Eddie smiled, nervously wiping a bead of sweat off his upper
lip.  The cellar seemed to be heating up.  Then, popping tinnily, the
ends of the boiler bulged out!  The two engineers leaped back.  Instead
of chug chug, the engine was making an ominous ticking sound, perhaps
not unlike a time bomb.

"It's going to blow!"  Eddie yelped, a prediction I had arrived at on
my own but not soon enough to beat my colleague to the cellar stairs.

We burst into the kitchen, our hands clasped over our ears, always
mindful to protect our hearing from loud noises, and raced toward the
nearest exit.  The Muldoons and the Haversteads glanced at us with
considerable interest.  Mr. Haverstead was apparently in the middle of
a fishing story, because I caught the words "had just cast next to this
log when-" "It's going to blow!"  shouted Eddie.

This announcement not only had a most stimulating effect on the four
adults but seemed to seize them bodily and jerk them out of their
chairs, one of which flew across the kitchen and ricocheted off the
stove.  A mere second later, the six of us were standing in the yard,
staring back at the house, the ladies with their hands clasped over
their ears.

"What is it, a bomb?"  shouted Mr. Muldoon at Eddie.  "How big a bomb
is it?"

"-a monster bass hit," said Mr. Haverstead, who was still holding his
coffee cup.

It's a steam engine," Eddie said.  "It was just getting up a head of
steam and we ..."

Faintly, from inside the house, came a sound--phimpp!

"What was that?"  said Mr.  Muldoon.

"The boiler," Eddie said.  "The boiler just blew up.  I was expecting
something bigger."

One whole side of Mr.  Muldoon's face twitched.

After Mr. Muldoon got done ranting and raving and throwing in a mild
cussword here and there for punctuation, the little crowd of us trooped
down to the basement to survey the damage.  There wasn't much damage.

Through a rapidly dissipating cloud of steam, we could make out the
little engine that couldn't.  Water from the boiler had extinguished
the candles and puddled out onto the floor.  It was a pretty depressing
sight.

"My fly sprayer!"  croaked Mr.  Muldoon.

Now now, dear, you haven't used it in years," Mrs.  Muldoon said.

"Got to encourage the boys, Herb," Mr. Haverstead said.  "They may
grow up to be great engineers.  just because their steam engine didn't
work, doesn't mean they won't."

"Good gosh!"  Eddie suddenly exclaimed, bending over to look at the
remains of the engine.  "It worked!  It worked!"

And sure enough, it had.  The drive shaft had been pushed out and
turned the flywheel, half a turn anyway.  But Eddie and I hadn't been
there to see this miracle of technology, or to hear what surely must
have been a single mighty CHUG!

Still, I couldn't help but smile.  It wasn't often our inventions
worked so well.  The Haversteads and Mrs. Muldoon smiled, too.  After
a bit, even Mr. Muldoon smiled slightly, and if I hadn't been watching
his face so closely, I probably wouldn't even have noticed the tiny
twitch.

Brimstone "God created March in case eternity should prove too brief." 
I penned that line many years ago, back in the days when I still
harbored literary pretensions, and I am pleased to see that it has
stood the test of time.  In all modesty, I think it's rather
Shakespearian.  It also remains an accurate description of March, the
longest month by far, something more than a thousand days by my
reckoning.

March may be somewhat shorter in southern states, but here in the North
it stretches on forever, wet and cold and full of wind and slush.

Hunting is long past, fishing yet to come, and camping but a dream.  I
stand at the window and stare vacantly out into the blustery gloom, a
chinook devouring banks of gray, grubby snow, water streaming down the
road and pooling in the yard, wind lashing the dark, leafless trees,
the air filled with an incessant whine.

"Will you stop that incessant whining!"  my wife, Bun, yells at me.

"All you do day after day is stand at that window and stare vacantly
into space.

Why don't you get a hobby of some kind?"

"Staring vacantly into space is my hobby," I respond sharply.  "My
March hobby.  I loathe March."

"Poor baby."

One thing I hate even worse than March is mock sympathy from a
smart-alecky spouse.  Bun is a master of the form.

It being evident that I can expect no sympathy from my wife of many
Marches, I continue to stare vacantly out the window, trying to console
myself with the fact that this is by no means the longest March I have
ever experienced.  The longest March occurred back when I was about
fifteen, or at least somewhere around the middle of those horrible
teenage years when the world is your oyster, but you can't pry it
open.

March came early that year to our little town of Blight, Idaho, and
stayed late.  In other parts of the world, it was probably April or May
or even June, but in Blight it was still ugly old March, the season of
mud.  We woke up with mud, went to bed with mud, and dreamed fitfully
of mud.  The thaw had come.  We had spent the entire winter shoveling
snow, but it did no good to shovel mud.  Mud just goes down forever.

If your car got stuck in a mud hole, and you started shoveling it out,
pretty soon your car would be stuck in a well.  It was not unusual to
be driving in that distant and gentler time and actually stop when a
stranger on the road flagged you down.

"I got my car stuck in the mud," he'd say.  "Could you tow it out for
me?"

"Sure," you'd reply.  "Where's your car?"

"I'm standing on it."

Right then you would know that here was a man who had tried to shovel
his car out of the mud.

When your car got stuck in the mud, any car trying to tow you out,
would also probably get stuck in the mud.  So what you did was to go
find a man with a horse, a big strong horse, one that could tow your
car out of the mud.  It was that very chore, finding a tow horse, that
was thrust upon me so many miserable Marches ago.

All week I had been incarcerated in Delmore Blight High School, where,
among other unmentionable atrocities, I was daily exposed to the corpse
of Latin, a language that had been dead so long it was almost
unrecognizable.  If Latin hadn't already been dead, I personally would
have been only too happy to kill it.  Then the weekend arrived, but a
weekend filled with nothing but unforgiving March.  Mud.  Rain.

Sleet.

Wind.  The whole world seemingly had filled up with icy swirling
mud-brown water.  All Saturday morning I stood at the window staring
vacantly out.  March stared back, grinning fiendishly.

"Don't just stand there staring vacantly out into space," my mother
scolded.  "For heaven's sake, find yourself a hobby!"

"Staring vacantly into space is my hobby."  It's always good to get an
early start on your hobbies.

As I stood there staring vacantly into space, my eyes suddenly focused
on a sheriff's car plowing in through the mud of our farm road.

Hastily reviewing my activities of the previous week, I relaxed,
confident that the visit from the law had nothing to do with me.

"Hey, Ma," I yelled.  "Guess who's coming in?  Deputy Wiley Dipp."

"That miserable little twerp!  I wonder what he wants.  If you shot off
another sewer-pipe cannon down at the golf course, you're in for it."

"Look, Ma, eyebrows.  I'm done fooling with black powder.  I like
eyebrows.  I like skin."

"That's nice.  Now go answer the door."

I let Wiley stand outside in the rain a few moments, water streaming
off the brim of his cowboy hat as he glowered at me.  The deputy was
one of my least favorite people.  "Which of the womenfolk did you come
for, Wiley?"  I asked, opening the door.

"Don't smart-mouth me, kid.  Where's your mom?"

"Here she comes now.  What's up?"

"Rancid Crabtree is what's up.  I'm going to arrest him.

"Arrest Rancid?"  Mom and I gasped in unison.

Rancid Crabtree was a kindly old woodsman who lived in a little shack
back against the mountain, a gentle soul who never bothered anybody.

He was also my much-beloved mentor, teaching me all about woodsmanship
and lots of other stuff, some of which I was pretty sure my mother
didn't want me to know.

Rancid was a serious student of hygiene.  Long ago he figured out that
it was unwise ever to take baths, because they eat holes in your
protective crust and allow germs to get at you.  My mother didn't agree
with Rancid's theory, however, and I was forced to take at least one
bath a week and thus catch colds.  Mom's own theory about why Rancid
never caught colds was that the germs couldn't stomach the smell and
left him alone.

"Yep," Wiley said, "Crabtree deliberately broke a pool cue down at
Bart's Saloon Saturday night."

"That doesn't sound like a crime to me," Mom said.

"He broke it over Bart's head," Wiley said.

"That doesn't sound like a crime to me," Mom said.

"Then he threw Bart out the door of his own saloon."

"That doesn't sound like a crime to me," Mom said.

"The door was closed when Crabtree done it."

"Oh."

"Problem is," Wiley said, "I can't find Crabtree's shack so I can
arrest him.  I need the loan of the boy here to guide me out there."

I could barely restrain a laugh.  Dumb ol' Wiley actually thought I'd
show him how to find Rancid's shack, actually help him arrest my best
friend in the whole world.  Well, fat chance of that!

Sleet splattered so hard against the window of the deputy's car that we
could barely see to make the turn from the highway onto the mud road
that led back to Rancid's shack.

"Take another left up there," I told Wiley.

Odd that the deputy would still remember that unfortunate business with
the sewer-pipe cannon.  Apparently there was no statute of limitations
on the crime of firing a croquet ball from a sewer pipe down a
golf-course fair-way.

My friend Retch Sweeney and I had taken all the usual safety
precautions, too, and had even called out "Fore!"

Wiley turned left.  "You sure this is a road?"  he whined.  "It sure
don't look like one."

"It's a road, Wiley," I said, hunched sullenly down into my mackinaw.

"Pretty much of one anyway.  Why do you ask?"

'Cause we're drivin' right toward a gol-durn lake, that's why!"

I yawned.  "That's no lake."

"It ain't no lake?  Well then, it's the biggest puddle I ever seen.

But I guess we can plow through it."  Wiley tromped down on the gas
pedal.

I'd never been to the ocean.  So I had no idea how big waves got there,
but I suspected the wave created by the impact of Wiley's car would
have run a good second to the best the ocean had to offer.  Steam
billowed from under the hood, the lights went out, and the radio went
dead.

"Holy bleep!"  cried the deputy.  "You're in for it now, boy!  You told
me this wasn't a lake!"

"It isn't a lake.  It's a crick.  See, the ice has jammed up down below
and backed up the crick."

"Well, shoot, if it's a crick, there should be a bridge over it."

"There is a bridge over it.  The bridge is just under a foot or so of
water.  Even though you couldn't see it, you landed the car smack on
the bridge.  I gotta hand it to you, Wiley, you're a pretty darn good
driver."

Wiley ignored the compliment, and set about banging his forehead up and
down on the steering wheel, as though that would get us out of the
crick.  It did no good at all, of course, except to improve my mood
considerably.  After a bit, Wiley said, "We got to find somebody with a
horse to tow us out.  You know anybody around here with a horse?"

"Only one person," I said.

"Who's that?"

"Rancid Crabtree."

Wiley carried on like a madman for a few moments, and then finally
ordered me out of the car and into the crick, to go and fetch Rancid
and his horse.

Having slogged half a mile through mud up to my knees, I was tired and
miserable when I got to Rancid's shack.  He invited me in, blew the
dust out of his guest cup, and poured me a steaming jolt of black
coffee.  We chatted a while about the miseries of March, and how bored
we were with everything, and how we couldn't wait for trout season to
open and how we expected a better run than usual of cutthroat that
spring.

I finished my cup of coffee and Rancid poured me another.  He mentioned
that he must have sprained his back, because it had been giving him a
little trouble the past couple of days.  "Probably jist all the wet and
cold weather," he speculated.  "Or maybe Ah lifted something' heavy and
throwed it too hard.  Anyway, what brang you out on a day like this?"

"Oh, I almost forgot.  Wiley Dipp is coming to arrest you."

"He is?  Hot dang!  Thet's the best news Ah heard all March.  Let's
see, Ah'll take maw checkers and checkerboard, because Ah thank Murph
is still in jail.  Maw Tucker's still cookin' at the jail, ain't she?

If ol' Wiley'd jist git the lead out, Ah could be thar in time fer
supper.  By the way, what's Wiley arrestin' me for?"

"Throwing Bart through the door without opening it first."

"Ah didn't know thet was a crime!  If Ah'd know'd thet, Ah'd a done it
the Just of March, 'stead of waitin' until dang near the middle."

"Glad you're so happy about paying your debt to society," I said.  "But
the problem is, Wiley's car is stuck in the crick and we have to
harness old Brimstone to pull it out.  Otherwise, you'll never make it
to jail in time for supper."

"Wait jist a dang minute!  Ah might as soon not go to jail as have to
harness Brimstone!"

"Oh, let's give it a try."

We went out to the little corral behind Rancid's shack, and Rancid and
I and Brimstone went at it.  Brimstone knocked me down and tried to
stand on my head, but Rancid grabbed the horse around the neck and bit
down on its ear and got his fingers twisted around the horse's lip, and
then Brimstone tried to crush Rancid against a corral post.  The old
woodsman managed to escape, and Brimstone chased him around the corral
a couple of times and finally cornered him, and then Rancid doubled up
his fist and punched the horse squarely between the eyes, buckling its
knees and stunning it long enough for us to get the bridle and harness
in place.

"Shucks, thet was easier than Ah expected," Rancid said.  "Now let's go
pull the deputy's car out, so he kin arrest me and git me to jail in
time fer supper."

When Rancid, Brimstone, and I arrived back at the deputy's car, Wiley
was peering out through the rain-streaked windshield.

"C'mon out of thar and arrest me, Wiley," Rancid ordered.  "I got to
git to jail in time fer supper."

Wiley got out and waded through the swirling water.  "I'll arrest you
when I'm dang good and ready, Crabtree," he growled.  "First thing, you
got to tow my car back out of this lake."

"Fine with me," Rancid said.  He drove Brimstone around to the back of
the car.  The horse seemed to be returning to its own ornery self,
tentatively reaching around to take a bite out of Rancid's shoulder.

The old woodsman pointed a cautionary finger at the horse, who then
pretended merely to be admiring Rancid's mackinaw.

Wiley rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he searched for a way to hook the
tow chain to the vehicle.  "I guess the only thing to do is for you to
crawl under the car and hook the chain to the frame, Crabtree."

"Wahl, Ah don't thank thet's the only thang to do, Wiley.  T'other
thang to do is fer you to crawl under the car and hook the chain.  Ah
cain't hold maw breath thet long underwater.  'Sides thet, Ah strained
maw back a couple days ago, and cain't do no strenuous exercise."

Wiley looked at me.

"Don't look at me, Wiley."

"I'm certainly not submerging myself under a foot of water to hook that
chain," Wiley said.  He looked at Brimstone.  "I've got a better
idea.

I'll just commandeer your horse and ride back to a house that has a
telephone and get some real help."

"But then you'll arrest me, right, Wiley, so Ah kin git to jail in time
fer supper?"

"No, I ain't.  I've decided jail's too good for you, Crabtree.  You
enjoy it too much.  Go on back to your crummy shack."

"Gol-dang it, Wiley, here Ah come all the way out here in the rain and
mud and now you won't arrest me.  If thet don't rile me up something'
fierce.

And now yer stealin' maw horse.  Ah shore hope you know how to set a
horse, Wiley, cause if you don't, Old Joe here-" "Old Joe?"  I said.

"Yep, Old Joe," Rancid said.

Wiley laughed, tilting back his cowboy hat and dumping a quart of ice
water down the back of his neck.  "You call that nag a horse?  Now give
me a boost up."

Rancid and I plodded through the mud back to his cabin.  "Wahl, shoot,"
Rancid said.  "Ah had maw mouth all set fer some of Maw Tucker's
cookin' at the jail.  Durn thet Wiley!  But Ah'll tell you what.  You
stay fer supper and Ah'll fry us up some venison and gravy and
biscuits."

"Sounds good to me," I said.  "You think you'll ever get Brimstone
back, Rance?"

"Oh, shore.  Ah recollect the only time Ah tried to ride him.  About
five miles t'other side of the state line, he slowed down enough fer me
to jump off.  Thet offended Brimstone something' awful, and him and me
went four rounds right on the spot, and Ah never come out ahead in a
single one.  Took me two days to walk back home.  And thar was
Brimstone, chompin' down hay in the corral.  So don't you fret none
about ol' Brimstone."

Three months later, March came to an end.  And none too soon, either.

The Blue Dress Rancid had warned us to be at his place at four o'clock
sharp.  "Iffen you're a minute late," he warned, "Ah'll leave with out
yuhs!"

Retch and I, both about twelve at the time, had chuckled to ourselves,
because the rank old woodsman had about as much regard for time as he
had for baths.  So we came pumping our bikes up to his cabin a good
hour after the crack of dawn.  And Rancid's truck was gone.

"Can you beat that!"  Retch said.  "The ornery old codger left without
us!"

"You can't trust anybody to keep an appointment anymore," I said.

"Well, all we can do is ride our bikes up to the head of Sand Creek and
see if we can find him before he's caught all the fish."

After five miles of pumping up the dirt road, we finally found Rancid's
truck.  We still didn't know whether he had fished upstream or
downstream.  If we couldn't find him, he might return to the truck
while we were gone and take off, and we'd have to ride the bikes all
the way back home.

We decided to start downstream and see if we could overtake him in that
direction.  As it happened, the fishing turned out to be so good that
we soon forgot all about transportation one way or another, and didn't
think of it again until well into the afternoon, when the sweltering
heat began to drain our energy.  The mere thought of having to pedal
bikes all the way home suddenly became a matter of major concern.

"Geez, it's so hot, you know what I'd like to do?"  Retch said.  "I'd
like to take off all my clothes and dive into a deep cool pool of that
water."

"Me too," I said.  "But we'd better find Rancid first."  We climbed up
to the road and began trudging back toward Rancid's truck, our plodding
feet making little explosions in the deep hot dust.  By now we had
figured out that Rancid had fished upstream, because our fishing
wouldn't have been nearly so good if he had gone downstream.  In those
days Rancid usually considered a fishing limit to be all you could
catch plus one fish.  He would have left nothing for us.

Suddenly, we noticed a moving cloud of dust spewing into the air up
ahead and thought for a moment it might be Rancid's truck.  Then we saw
it was a rusty old sedan and instantly realized to our horror that
major trouble was headed our way--the infamous and evil Skragg boys!

The Skragg boys numbered approximately a dozen, ranging in age from
eight to thirty or so, their degrees of meanness increasing gradually
in magnitude from youngest to eldest, with the youngest possessing the
least pleasing attributes of a sack of rattlesnakes.

"Good gosh!"  cried Retch.  "It's the Skragg boys!  We're done for
now!"

At the very least, I knew they would stop and grab our strings of fish,
although my mind didn't dwell long on the very least.  One of my worst
fears had always been the possibility of being caught out on a lonely
road by the Skraggs in a playful mood.

But the Skraggs roared right on by us, screaming a few vile remarks and
laughing as they waved some rags out the window.  It is perhaps human
nature to regard persons such as the Skraggs as having displayed a deep
sense of charity and decency, if they leave you alive and in not more
than two pieces after an encounter with them.  As soon as we stopped
shaking, Retch and I felt those very sentiments.

"Gosh, maybe they're not such bad guys after all," I said.

"They didn't even take our fish," Retch added, his tone suggesting that
the Skraggs had bestowed upon us a token of their deepest affection.

We plodded on up the road, discussing the recently discovered virtues
of the Skraggs, until we arrived at Rancid's truck.  The old mountain
man was nowhere in sight.  We sat down in the shade of a nearby tree to
wait for him.

"Man, it's hot!"  Retch said.

"Yeah," I said.  "Except for missing Rancid, we could go for a dip in
the creek and cool off."

"Psssst!"

"What?"  I said.

"I didn't say anything," Retch said.

"Psssst!  Boys!  Over here, gol-dang it!"

We looked toward the sound of the voice.  There was Rancid, crouched
behind a bush.

"What are you doing there, Rance?  You can't scare us."

"Ah ain't tryin' to scare yuhs, you idgit!  Somebody stole all maw
clothes!  Ah got so dang hot Ah went crazy and took a swim in the
crick.  Felt so good, Ah couldn't believe it was water.  While Ah was
floatin' around down thar, some no-good yeller-bellied skonk stole maw
clothes.  Didn't mean nothin' to him, leavin' a feeble old man nekkid
in the woods!"

Retch and I looked at each other.  "It was the Skragg boys who done it,
Rancid.  The big ones.  We saw Luke wave a pair of pants out the window
when they drove by us on the road.  They must have been in a good mood,
because all they did was take your clothes.  Didn't beat you up or
anything."

"The Skragg boys?"  Rancid said.  "How many?"

"Five."

He shook his head sadly.  I couldn't help but feel sorry for him, a
pathetic old man who probably didn't even have another full set of
clothes at home anyway.

"Retch and I'll just close our eyes and you get in the truck and drive
home, I said.  "We'll ride in the back."

"Cain't!  The truck keys was in maw pants!  Now here's what Ah wants
you to do.  You go off up thet little side road yonder and you'll come
to Ike Munson's place.  Ike died a couple y'ars back, and you ask thet
pretty widder of his if Ah can borrow a set of Ike's clothes.  Now
git!

The skeeters is taken after me something' fierce.  Never should have
washed off maw protective crust!"

Half a mile up the side of the mountain, Retch and I found the Munson
place.  The widow Munson was out stacking firewood on the porch.  We
explained Rancid's predicament to her.  She straightened up and rubbed
the small of her back.  "Land sakes, if that Crabtree don't get himself
in more trouble," she said.  "I don't expect he'll ever tame down."

"It wasn't his fault," I said.  "Can you imagine someone stealin' a
feeble old man's clothes while he's in swimming?"

Mrs. Munson laughed a hard little laugh.  "Rancid's turned feeble and
old, has he?"

"Yes, ma'am.  He admits it himself."

The widow Munson laughed her hard little laugh again and blew a wisp of
yellow hair out of her eyes.  "Well, I'm sorry, boys.  I can't give
Rancid any of Ike's clothes because what I couldn't sell I gave away.

But I'll get something for him, even though he won't like it."

She went in the house and came out with a piece of clothing.

"I don't think he'll like it," I said.

"Beggars can't be choosers," she said.  "This old blue dress is the
only thing I can loan him.  It'll at least preserve his modesty till he
gets home."

We thanked her and rushed the dress back to Rancid.

"What in tarnation is thet!"

"It's a blue dress!"

"Gol-dang, Ah can see it's a blue dress!  Ah ain't blind!  Is thet all
she had?"

"Yup.  She said beggars can't be choosers."

"She did, did she?  Wahl, gimme it."

Presently, Rancid emerged from behind the bushes wearing the blue
dress.

It was a little tight in the arms and hit him a good six inches above
the knees.  I felt an urge to laugh, but Rancid shot me a look that
froze the urge right in my belly.

"This ain't the Just time Ah've worn a dress, ya know."

"It ain't?"  Retch said, unable to conceal his amazement.

"Nope, it ain't.  When Ah was a youngun going' off to school one y'ar,
the only decent outfit Ah had was a hand-me-down from the next oldest
in the family, maw sister Clementine.  A purty little dress it was,
too, green with white poky dots."

"But didn't the other kids laugh at you?"  I asked.

"Only once.  Ahim sorry to tell you this, Retch, but Ah got to borrow
your vehicle.  He then hopped on the bike and pedaled off, the blue
dress billowing out behind him.

I grabbed my bike, Retch straddled the rear-fender carrier, and we took
off after the old woodsman, who already was only a diminishing stream
of dust in the distance.  When we got to Fat Edna's Tavern a couple of
miles down the road, there was Retch's bike parked outside.

Fortunately, there was no sign of the Skraggs' big old sedan.

"I can't believe he'd walk into Fat Edna's wearing that blue dress
Retch said.  "Why, the loggers will laugh him to death!"

"It's got to be humiliating for him, but maybe he was just so thirsty
he couldn't pass up a cold beer no matter how much he got laughed
at."

Big Ed Finch was just walking into the bar, and we followed along
behind.

Mr. Finch hesitated for just a second when he saw Rancid sitting at
the bar sipping a glass of beer.

"Hello, Rance," he said.

"Howdy, Ed," Rancid replied, nodding.

Mr. Finch joined some men playing cards in the back of the room.  They
were all staring at their cards with great intensity.  They must have
been playing for awfully high stakes, because they didn't even seem to
notice that Rancid was wearing a blue dress.

Fat Edna came down the bar and refilled Rancid's glass and set me and
Retch up with a couple of orange pops.  could loan you a raincoat,
Rance honey," she said.

"Look like rain to you, Edna?"

"Nope."

"Than Ah guess Ah won't be needin' a raincoat.  Thanks fer the beer.

Ah got some bidness to attend to, so Ah better be off.  By the way,
anybody seen the Skragg boys around?"

"Yep," said Mr. Finch.  "Saw that old sedan of theirs parked outside
Bart's bar."

"Thank you kindly, Ed."

As Rancid walked out the door in his blue dress, I thought I detected a
kind of whoosh in the room, as though everyone there hadn't breathed in
a long time.  It couldn't have been because of Rancid, though.  He'd
just had a bath in the creek.

Retch and I pedaled along with Rancid as he headed toward town.

"You better go on home, Rance," I told him.  "I can rustle up some
clothes for you.  Besides, even if you find the Skragg boys and ask
them to give back your clothes, they're not going to do it.  Those
Skraggs can be real mean."

"Thet's what Ah hear.  But faint heart never won fair lady.  And it
don't hart none to ask, iffen you do it real polite."

When we reached Bart's Saloon at the edge of town, there was the big
sedan, still parked out front.  Rancid got off the bike, put down the
kickstand, and shook the dust out of his blue dress.

"Now, you boys stay here," he said.  "These folks might poke fun at me
for wearing this here dress, and it would make me feel real bad for you
to see such an awful thang.  So you watch over the bikes.  Ah won't be
long."  He walked into the bar, his long legs white and hairy beneath
the blue dress.

"This is terrible," Retch said.  "There's no telling what those Skraggs
might do to a defenseless old man."

"I know," I said.  "Maybe we should go get the police and-" Just then a
terrible crash came from inside the bar.  A second later, two of the
Skragg boys ran out the back door and around to the front.

Then three other Skraggs scrambled out the front.  They all piled into
the car and revved up the engine.

"Good gosh!"  I said.  "That's all five of the Skragg boys!"

"No it ain't," Retch said.  "That first guy out was Bart.  There's
still one Skragg left!"

At that moment we noticed someone trying to claw his way out through an
open window, but he was dragged back in, squawling, "We didn't know
they was your clothes, Crabtree!  How was we to knooooooow?"

After that there was a long deadly silence.  Retch and I waited, every
so often remembering to breathe.  Then the front door of the tavern
swung open again, and Luke Skragg walked out.  He was wearing the blue
dress.  Rancid came into view behind him, tucking the tail of a plaid
shirt into a pair of black pants.  On his feet were a shiny pair of
boots.

Luke hopped barefoot over the hot gravel and squeezed into the car with
his brothers and Bart.  Rancid siddled up to the window, which Bart was
frantically trying to roll up.

"Ah jist thought of something'," Rancid said, bending over to look in
the window.  "Better give me back thet dress, Luke.  It don't look thet
good on you anyways.  You jist don't have maw figure."

Luke wiggled out of the blue dress and handed it to Rancid.

"Thanks kindly, Luke."

The sedan roared off, spraying gravel against the wall of the bar.

Rancid watched the car until it was out of sight, his hands resting on
the hips of his new pants.

"Be all right, Retch, if Ah borrows your bike a while longer?"  he
asked after a bit.

"You bet.  Help yourself, Rance."

"You're probably all tuckered out," I said to the old woodsman.  "You
want us to follow you home?"

"What's thet?"  he said, as though momentarily distracted from a
pleasant thought.  "Oh, Ah guess not.  Thanks kindly, boys, but Ah
ain't going' home right now.  Got to return a blue dress.  Besides,
going' home would Jist be a shameful waste of a new suit of clothes,
not to mention a bath."

Many years later, after I had grown up, I realized that Rancid
possessed a quality that I couldn't put a name to when I was a boy, a
quality that explained the restrained and solemn attitude of the
patrons of Fat Edna's bar to the spectacle of a lanky old woodsman
wearing a blue dress.  That quality consists of a certain kind of
presence in social situations, possibly what the French refer to as
savoirfaire.

Warped Camshaft I have decided it's time for me to come out of the
garage and fess up: I don't understand motors.

"So what?"  you say.  Well, if you say "so what," that means you
probably live in a large city and eat quiche with Italian soda at
little fern cafes and have relationships and try to be a sensitive,
attentive, and warm human being.

Hey, that's fine with me.  But I happen to live in a small logging
community.

Around here, any twelve-year-old kid can diagnose a malfunctioning
engine during recess and do a major overhaul on it during lunch hour.

A male person who doesn't know his motors is likely to be regarded with
deep suspicion, or worse.  So up to now I've faked my knowledge of
motors, and with considerable success I might add.

As a youngster, I learned to get by with a few simple phrases I picked
up around the playground.  A kid would say, "I got to get home right
after school and help Pop work on the truck.  Wouldn't start this
morning."

"Better check the plugs," I'd say.  I didn't know a plug from a
porcupine, but this response was always in the ballpark of mechanical
mystery, even though it might imply that both the kid and his father
were idiots.

"We did check the plugs!  What do you think we are, idiots?"

Once a kid mentioned that his father had a warped camshaft.  I
laughed.

The kid frowned, shook his head, and pretty much avoided me after
that.

I thought it might be a good idea to add "warped Camshaft" to my phony
diagnosis of car problems.  If a car clattered past, I'd say, "Sounds
like a warped camshaft to me."

"The tailpipe's dragging on the pavement!"  one of the guys would point
out, none too gently.

"That too."

Somewhere in most vehicles there is something called a universal
joint.

The first time I heard the term I thought it was some kind of crummy
bar and grill found all over the world.  But it's something on a car.

Whatever it is, you can get a lot of mileage out of "universal
joint."

Let's say you're on a trip and pull into a greasy little roadside
service station to get the oil changed.  The owner instantly sizes you
up as an easy mark for a rip-off on unneeded repairs.  All you have to
do is say, "Hey, bud, while you have the car up on the rack, check the
universal joint for me."  Right away the guy will think you know a lot
about cars and will be less likely to sell you an unneeded radiator
flush, transmission overhaul, and a new rear axle.

Obviously, you should avoid being drawn into a long philosophical
discussion about universal joints.

My honest diagnosis of car problems consists of the simple statement,
"It won't go."  I walk into the house and tell my wife, Bun, "Call a
mechanic.

The car won't go."

"What's wrong with it?"

"I just told you.  It won't go."

"Oh."

Bun knows even less about cars than I do.  One of the secrets of a long
and successful marriage is shared ignorances.

To be fair to myself, I must report that when Bun and I were young and
oor, with four small children, I actually tried my hand at doing
mechanical repairs on our ancient sedan.  The Car, as we called it,
didn't seem to mind all that much and continued to go, despite my
efforts.  Starting and driving it, however, became increasingly
complex.  After one of my efforts at tinkering with its innards, The
Car required two people to get it started, one in the driver's seat and
the other holding down a doohickey under the hood.

The Car would roar to life with a fiery explosion, sending a great
cloud of smoke down the street and the neighbors into their yards to
see what had happened.  This was during the days when folks expected
the United States and Russia might be exchanging nuclear missiles at
any moment, and any loud noise came as a jolt to the nervous system.

As a result, The Car was thought to be the cause of several emotional
disorders in our neighborhood.  It started receiving hate mail.

Eventually, The Car required not only two people to start it, but two
people to drive it.  Bun was assigned to hold down the doohickey under
the hood, and as soon as the car exploded to life, she would slam the
hood, leap in the passenger side, and regulate the thingamajig while I
was engaged in dealing with the clutch, brake, and gas pedal, and
simultaneously adjusting the whatchamacallit.  (If you're unfamiliar
with thingamajigs and whatchamacallits, that's because cars nowadays
don't have them.  I'm not sure about doohickeys.) Then we would roar
off down the street, waving at the neighbors, who were either waving
back or waving the smoke away from their faces.  The ones with the
emotional disorders were easy to spot, because they would be jumping up
and down in the smoke and screaming weird threats at The Car.

Such is the confidence of youth that, despite the complexity and
precariousness of driving The Car, Bun and I would load it up with all
our camp gear and the four little kids, and head off for the mountains
nearly every summer weekend.  When we reached the narrow, steep,
winding road that led to our favorite camping spot, the kids would be
in the backseat singing "Go tell Aunt Rhodie the old gray goose is
dead" for the thousandth time, and Bun would occasionally join in, when
she wasn't needed to help with the controls.  My total mental and
physical capacity was maxed-out in making the car go and keeping it on
the road.

Then we would meet a logging truck and have to back up a quarter of a
mile to the last turnout.  I will not describe this exercise in detail,
because of the horrors it brings to mind, except to say that I twisted
around and concentrated on steering backwards down the rough and
winding road at ever increasing speed, while shouting out directions to
Bun.  She helped work the controls, the hand brake being her specialty:
"Brake, brake!  BRAKE!"  I'd yell.  "Thingamajig out half inch.  jiggle
whatchamacallit.  BRAKE!  BRAKE!"

In the backseat, the kids would be singing another chorus about the
death of the gray goose.  (I think The Car is why they all grew up with
a love of camping and nerves of steel.) It's a good bet that had any of
our emotionally unbalanced neighbors been in the car with us, they
would still be comatose.

Which reminds me of the stranded motorist we picked up on our way out
of the mountains one day.

Driving uphill one has the advantage that the grade itself serves as a
brake.  The opposite is true driving downhill, where the grade serves
as an accelerator.  As a safety precaution, we always went downhill in
what was referred to as "low gear."  This was exceedingly boring, and
the kids were always whining, "Can't we go any faster?"  The Car,
apparently sympathetic to this complaint, would wait until the next
steep grade and then jump out of low gear, much like a jack-in-the-box,
and with a similar effect on me.  The car would suddenly zoom down the
hill with me standing on the brake pedal and the kids yelling,
"Wheee!

This is more like it!"

One evening we were chugging downhill in low gear when we came upon a
vehicle parked in a turnout with a man and woman standing alongside of
it.

The man waved us down.  I stopped, not wishing to pass up an
opportunity to offer my services.  There is something about stopping to
help a stranded motorist that gives one a certain sense of
superiority.

The reasoning goes something like this: My car runs, his doesn't, so
obviously I am more intelligent than he is.

"I wonder if you can give me a lift to town so I can get a tow truck
for my car," the man said.

"Sure," I said.  "What's wrong with your car?"

"It won't go."

"I've had some experience with that particular problem," I said.

"Maybe I'd better have a look under the hood."  I loved saying that:
"Maybe I'd better have a look under the hood."

"Be my guest," the man said.

"Oh, please don't!"  Bun said.

I shot her a stern glance.  She was trying to ruin my first opportunity
to look under somebody else's hood.

I looked under the hood.  "Uh-oh," I said.  "Just as I suspected."

"What is it?"  the man said.

"Your doohickey."

"Oh no!"

"Yep," I said.  "You're going to need that tow truck after all."

The man slid into the front seat alongside of Bun, and we started off
down the road in low gear.  He introduced himself as Harold something
and explained that he and his wife had been out picking huckleberries,
had got lost, and when they finally made it back to their car, it
wouldn't go.  "My nerves are shot," he said.  "Would you mind if I
smoked a cigar?  It will calm me down."  Neither Bun nor I minded, so
he lit up and almost instantly seemed to relax as he puffed away.

After a bit, Harold said, "We're going a little slow, aren't we?"

"Yeah," I said.  "But we have that one long winding steep grade just
ahead.  We usually speed up when we hit that."

"Okay," Harold said.  He leaned back in the seat and shut his eyes.

Then we hit the steep grade.  The Car, seeing yet another opportunity
to kill us, instantly jumped out of gear.  I can't recall exactly what
happened after that because the three occupants of the front seat fused
into a single blur of activity.  I shouted out orders to Bun: "Pull
thingamajig!  Hand brake!  Brake!  BRAKE!  Now the whatchamacallit!"

Bun lunged about doing the copilot stuff, all pretty standard, but
Harold was screaming and swearing and seemed on the verge of hysteria,
possibly already over the brink.  He didn't seem to realize that Bun
and I were engaged in a merely routine activity, and there was no time
to explain it to him.

Then, at least as far as I could figure out, Bun somehow got her arm
through one of Harold's suspenders, and she and Harold got all tangled
up together, and the suspenders came loose and cinched up around
Harold's throat.  I can't say for sure exactly what happened, but
that's my best guess.  Anyway Harold stopped shouting and swearing and
started squawking something about choking.

So I yelled, "Forget the choke!  Brake!  BRAKE!"  Then we hit a big
bump, and Harold and Bun got wedged under the dash and appeared to be
punching each other.  By the time we got to the bottom of the hill,
Harold was clawing the suspenders loose from around his throat, the
kids were still singing "Aunt Rhodie," and Bun was smoking the cigar,
which seemed to have a calming effect on her, too.

"Everybody get ready," I said.  "We're coming to the bad part."

The Car performed one last service for us that year.  It caught fire
three weeks before Christmas, and we used the insurance money to buy
presents for the kids.  I haven't felt the urge to look under the hood
of a car since.

It's better not to know what goes on under there.

The 400-Pound Pumpkin My grandmother, a stout little old pioneer woman,
had come west by wagon and never tired of torturing me with tales of
her labors when she was my age.

During winter she had walked forty miles to school and home again
through snow eight feet deep and wasn't absent or even tardy a single
day.  During summer she single-handedly cooked for logging crews of 800
men, and then, after washing and drying all the dishes, she split up a
couple cords of firewood.

Now, in old age, her sole responsibility was looking after me, while my
mother was away at work.

"And land sakes, Pat," she confided in me one August afternoon,
"looking after you is the hardest chore the Good Lord ever thrust upon
me as retribution for my sins."

"What sins are those, Gram?  Anything I'd be interested in?"

"I should say not!  The whole passel of 'em wouldn't hold a candle to
the atrocities you come up with between breakfast and lunch on an
average day.

Now what instrument of the devil are you foolin' with?"

"Oh, this is Whomper, Gram, the world's most powerful slingshot.  I
made it myself."  I held up Whomper in all its mighty glory: a forked,
two-foot-section of trunk chopped from a thorn apple tree, woven bands
of rubber as thick as a logger's wrist, and a leather pouch fashioned
from the whole tongue of a boot, all the elements laced together with
baling wire.

Gram shook her head.  "If that ain't about the most useless thing I
ever seen, not counting yourself, of course."

"It's not useless.  I use Whomper for hunting elk."

"Pshaw!  There you go with your tall tales."

"I didn't say I ever got an elk with it."

"I should think not.  Why, there ain't a man in the world strong enough
to pull that slingshot."

"Oh yes there is.  Last year at the Loggers' Picnic, Rancid Crabtree
shot a stone as big as a peach clear out of sight with it.  He said the
strain laid him up in bed for three days afterwards, but he actually
shot Whomper."  I was a little hesitant to mention the old woodsman, my
friend and mentor, because Rancid and Gram were enemies of long
standing.

"You stop with your fibs, young man!  Still, it wouldn't surprise me
none if that lazy old fool Crabtree tried such a stunt, just to show
off.  Speaking of lazy, I've got a job for you.  Go get a hatchet and
help me cut my punkin loose from the vine.  I told Crabtree I'd pay him
a dollar to haul it to the fair for me.  He didn't want to, because it
too much resembled work, but his greed got the better of him."

Ever since I could remember, one of Gram's pumpkins had taken Grand
Prize at the fair.  That's because pumpkins were judged on size alone,
with no points deducted for ugly.  This year would be no different.

Gram's secret pumpkin fertilizer, its ingredients too disgusting even
to mention, and no doubt why I let them remain a secret, had this year
produced a gigantic orange monstrosity that was almost frightening to
behold.  It was the sort of pumpkin that could give a person
nightmares: Towns folk flee for their lives as the orange monster
rumbles down Main Street, crushing bicycles and overturning cars, the
police firing their guns into it--Thunk!  Thunk!  Thunk!--But the
pumpkin, unfazed and indestructible, rumbles relentlessly on toward the
grade school!  (Some nightmares are better than others.) Gram's
pumpkin, a great hideous blob of orange, must have weighed at least 400
pounds.  The two of us couldn't budge it so much as an inch.

With Gram shouting orders and threats, I chopped through the thick,
sinuous vine, half-afraid that I was turning the pumpkin loose on an
unsuspecting populace.

Gram smiled down at her pumpkin, then frowned at me.  "If you wasn't
such a slothful little critter, you could have grown something for the
fair yourself, or even made something for the children's crafts."

"Like what, one of those milk stools, where they take two pieces of
two-by-four and nail them into the shape of a T?  Hey, maybe I'll enter
Whomper.  I bet he'd win something."

"Good grief!"

Just then we heard the sound of a truck driving up and stopping on the
other side of the house.

"I'll bet that's Rancid now," I said.

Gram sniffed the air.  "Yep, that's him all right.  I reckon he forgot
his bath again last year.  That makes about five years runnin ."

Rancid came moseying out to the garden.  He bit off a chaw of tobacco
as he stared down at Gram's pumpkin.  "Wahl, iffen thet ain't the
gol-durn ugliest punkin you've come up with yet, old woman, Ah'll eat
maw hat and throw' in maw suspenders besides.  You must be breakin' a
law of some sort, growin' a thang like thet.  Ought to be ashamed of
yersef."

"Oh, what does an old reprobate like you know about punkins, or
anything else for that matter?"  Gram growled at him.  "You want that
dollar or not?"

"Spect Ah do.  Ah'll winch the monster up onto maw truck, but iffen it
tries to grab me, Ahim cutting' her loose, dollar or no dollar."

A couple of days later, Rancid and I went to the fair together and
wandered around looking at the canning exhibits, the wildlife exhibits,
and the various farm animals.  "Ah likes the pigs best," Rancid said,
reaching over a pen to scratch the back of a huge sow.  "Pigs has got
character.  Ah kinda feels a kinship with them."

"That's what Gram said about you and pigs."

"She did, did she?  Hmmm.  Ahim surprised she'd have a good word for
me.

You sure you're not makin' thet up?"

"Nope.  It's what she said all right."

"Wahl, Ah'd say sumpin' good about her, too, iffen Ah could thank of
sumpin'."

Just then a loudspeaker announced that the pumpkin judging was about to
begin.  Rancid blew thirty cents of his dollar to buy us each a hot
dog, and then we walked over to the open-sided shed where a couple
dozen pumpkins were lined up on a row of sturdy tables.  We strolled
along eating our hot dogs as we checked out the pumpkins, with Rancid
still complaining about his purchase.

"Dang highway robbers," he muttered.  "Thuty cents for two hot dogs.

Git 'em fer ten cents apiece anyplace but the fair.  They shouldn't
even call it fair, if they's gonna cheat folks."

"Wow, look at the size of these pumpkins," I said.  "There's some
mighty big ones here, but Gram's still looks a little bigger than all
the rest.  You want to know her secret fertilizer formula, Rance?"

"Not whiles Ahim eatin'.  Hey, wait a minute.  Thet biggest punkin
ain't your granny's!  Thet's old man Fleegle's.  Chet Fleegle's.  Ha!

The old woman's got hersef beat this y'ar!"

"Oh no!  You're right!"  I gasped.  "Mr. Fleegle's pumpkin does look
bigger than Gram's.  She's going to be so disappointed!  You can't
imagine how hard she worked growing that pumpkin."

We glanced at the crowd of spectators, always small for the pumpkin
Judging.  Mr. Fleegle was standing back, arms folded, a confident grin
on his face.  Gram looked sad and disappointed.  She didn't have to
wait for the pumpkins to be weighed to know that the Grand Prize had at
last eluded her.

She now would be left with the embarrassment of a miserable and
meaningless first.

"I can't stand to watch this," I said.

"Ahim kinda enjoyin' it mawsef," Rancid said.  "The excitement just
keeps buildin' up, don't it?  Hope maw heart can stand it."

"I'm leaving," I said.  "I think I'll go enter Whomper in the
children's crafts.  Maybe I'll win Grand Prize and save the family
honor."

"Ah wouldn't count on it."

We walked across a little open area to where the children's-crafts
judging was to be held.  I looked at the competition.  Nothing.  I
counted five two-by-four milk stools, along with a coffee table that
could have been used as a small teeter-totter, a board that Richie
McPherson claimed was a shelf, and several items I couldn't identify.

Whomper was a cinch to win Grand Prize.

Barney "Fig" Neuton, the mayor, was in charge.  A dozen spectators had
already gathered for the judging.

"Is it too late to enter something in the children's crafts, Mr.
Neuton?"

I asked.

"No, you're just in time.  Where's your entry?"

I pulled Whomper from the holster on the back of my belt.  "Right
here."

"Hey!  That is some slingshot, Pat!  Don't think I've ever seen a
slingshot that ... uh ... that husky before.  I'm sorry to tell you
this, son, but you can't enter your slingshot in children's crafts.

The rules say that any entry has to be useful.  And anybody can see
that slingshot is impossible to pull."

"Oh, come on, Fig," Rancid said.  "Let him enter his Whomper."

"Can't do it, Rancid.  Rules are rules.  There isn't a man in the world
could pull that slingshot, and you know it."

The old woodsman bent over and hissed in my ear.  "Hush!  I ain't a
gonna do it fer you agin.  One pull on thet durn slangshot lasts a man
a lifetime and then some."

"But, Rance," I whined.  "Our family honor is at stake!  You can't let
me down now!"

We both stared across at the Pumpkin-judging contest.  Four helpers
were heaving one of the smaller pumpkins up on the scale.  Mr.
Fleegle's would be next.  And then Gram's.

I pointed at Rancid.  "Oh, but-!"

Mr. Fleegle was beaming brighter than ever.  Gram was scuffing the
grass with her shoe.

Rancid shook his head.  "Wahl, since yer granny's punkin ain't going to
win this y'ar, Ah guess I got to help save yer family honor."  He
reached down on the ground and picked up a stone the size of an
apricot.  "Hand me thet Whomper, Fig.  Ah'll show you how a feeble old
man shoots a slangshot."

Mr. Neuton shrugged his shoulders.  "Oh, give it a try if you want,
Rancid, but there's no way.

Rancid hauled back on Whomper, grunting mightily.  Beads of sweat flew
off his forehead.  The spectators gasped, but some of them cried out,
"Come on, Crabtree, you can do it!"  And slowly, ever so slowly, the
bands began to stretch and stretch, humming with tension, and finally,
with one last mighty effort, Rancid pulled the slingshot to full
stretch.  A cheer went up.  But then he staggered about in a circle,
the slingshot at full pull, its bands singing, and spectators were
ducking and dodging and falling over one another to get out of the line
of fire.  And then, suddenly, Rancid pivoted, aimed, and sent that
stone sizzling across the little open area and straight into a
400-pound pumpkin!  That pumpkin exploded like an orange bomb.

When I opened my eyes, all I could see was orange--an orange judge, an
orange crew, orange spectators, an orange Mr. Fleegle, an orange Gram,
and even a little orange dog who just happened to be passing by.  Our
own group of spectators stood in stunned silence.  Then somebody began
to applaud, and one by one the others joined in.  Several men came over
and slapped Rancid on the back and said it was the best darn show they
had ever seen at the county fair.

Rancid handed Whomper back to the judge.  "The boy's enterin' Whomper,
Fig."

"Right you are, Rancid, right you are."

I tugged on Rancid's sleeve.  "That was great, Rance, great ... but
...

but ..."

"But what?"

"You shot the wrong pumpkin!"

"No, Ah didn't."

"Yes, you did!  You shot Gram's!"

"Of course!  It wouldn't hev been right to shoot poor old Fleegle's and
cheat him out of a prize he rightly desarved.  Don't you see?  If yer
granny don't have a punkin, they ain't no way Fleegle's punkin can beat
hers!"

"Oh.  I suppose that's true.  So what do you want to do now?"

"Wahl, Just of all, Ah'll spend the next three days in bed.  After
thet, Ah don't know.  And Ah thank Ah'll git going' right now, 'cause
here comes thet orange old woman, hoppin mad.  Probably want what's
left of her dollar back."

I never knew for certain exactly why Rancid shot Gram's 400-pound
pumpkin.  Maybe it was just to be mean, as Gram claimed, or maybe it
was an act of gratitude, for the nice thing she had said about him and
the pigs.

Whomper did win third place in the children's crafts, which was less
than great, I suppose.  But then again, our family didn't have all that
much honor to save in the first place.

Tenner-Shoe Blight I'm becoming increasingly concerned about my wife,
Bun.  She seems healthy enough, but I've begun to notice a pattern of
mental lapses.

For example, I was walking by the paper-recycling bin in the garage the
other day and happened to notice the most recent copy of The Old
Outfitter's Catalogue.

I snatched the catalogue from the bin and went back in the house.

"Do you realize what weird thing you've done?"  I asked Bun.

"Give me a clue," she said.

"Why, you tossed my new Old Outfitter's Catalogue in the recycling bin
before I'd even had a chance to see it, that's what!"

"Good grief," she said, blowing on her freshly polished nails.  "I
don't know what could have come over me."

"No harm done," I said.  "I managed to rescue it."

"I'm so glad.  It's entirely possible the new catalogue contains some
incredible outdoorsy thing you haven't yet purchased."

"You bet," I said.  "In fact, there's lots of stuff in here I haven't
yet purchased.  Every issue comes out with a whole bunch of neat new
stuff."

"Very thoughtful of the Old Outfitter."

"Yeah.  But what I need right now is something basic--a new pair of
boots."

"Ah, I see.  New boots.  I was under the impression you already had a
warehouse full of boots and shoes."

"Not at all.  You must be thinking of my bass-fishing warehouse.

Either that or my fly-fishing warehouse.  Nope, my meager supply of
sporting footwear is stashed on a shelf in the shop.  Come on, I'll
show you."

We went out to the shop and I pointed to the shelf.  "There, see for
yourself, I can barely keep myself properly shod.  Any other modern-day
sporting person would laugh himself sick at my meager collection."

"You're right, I suppose," Bun agreed.  "But only if the modern-day
sporting person were Imelda Marcos!"

"What are you saying!  All the footwear I have consists of my cowboy
boots, rock-climbing boots, insulated hunting boots, uninsulated
hunting boots, hip waders, chest waders, wading shoes, gum boots,
leather-topped rubber boots, leather-topped rubber shoes, rafting
shoes, boating shoes, jogging shoes, walking shoes, golf shoes, bowling
shoes, moccasins, downhill ski boots, cross-country ski boots,
snowmobiling boots, snowshoe pacs.  And that's about it!"

"Why, you're practically on the verge of going barefoot.  By all means,
get another pair of boots.  But first of all, throw away that ratty old
pair of shoes over there.  They're absolutely disgraceful."

"What!  My Tenners?  Are you kidding me?  I'm going to have those
bronzed."

The shoes Bun had indicated with such a tone of disgust, if the nasal
quality produced by holding one's nose can be considered a tone of
disgust, why, those shoes were the ultimate in footwear when I was
growing up.  In those days, all the sporting activities engaged in by
my associates and me were accomplished in Tenners.  We called them
Tenners after the man who had invented them, a genius by the name of
Mr. Tenner.  Once a rich kid from town tried to tell us that they were
actually Tennis shoes, but no one had even heard of a Mr. Tennis.  We
laughed ourselves sick over the sheer ignorance of that kid.

The wonderful thing about Tenners was that you could use them for
camping, mountain climbing, fishing, just about anything you had a mind
to do.

The Tenners were particularly good for fishing in icy water in the
early spring.  They were a little cool at first, it's true, but after
ten minutes or so, all feeling left your feet and much of your legs,
and you could wade a rocky stream on the sides of two broken ankles if
you had to, and not feel the slightest discomfort.  Mr. Tenner knew
what he was doing.

We never threw our Tenners away either, usually because over the months
of spring, summer, and early autumn they would gradually biodegrade,
until at some point there would be nothing left of them.  There was an
almost imperceptible point of final disintegration.  At one moment you
would be wearing your beloved Tenners and the next you would be
barefoot.  Some guys went barefoot for hours without realizing their
Tenners had disappeared.

In those wild and carefree days of constant hiking and camping and
fishing, we would sometimes wear our Tenners for days without once
taking them off.  Some of the guys even prided themselves on how long
they could go without removing their Tenners.  One time my cousin Buck,
who was about five years older than I, got into a contest with Ben
Clevis to see who could wear his Tenners the longest.  Buck won.

That was when we discovered the shoe's single flaw.  Buck's toes had
grown together, or so it seemed from the looks of them, which I won't
describe, except to say they were pretty interesting as far as toes
go.

My aunt Sophie, Buck's mother, was horrified by the sight of those
toes, and Buck wasn't too thrilled either.

"You get yourself over to old Doc Mange and have him do something about
those toes," Aunt Sophie told Buck.  Old Doc Mange had never been known
actually to cure anybody of anything, but he worked cheap, and
therefore was highly thought of as a physician n that particular time
and place.  I went along with Buck to give him moral support and
comfort.

"What do you suppose Doc Mange is going to do about your toes, Buck?

Maybe he will cut them off.  If he does cut them off, maybe he'll let
us keep them and we can put them in an empty coffee can and charge kids
a quarter to look at them."

"Shut up!  He ain't going to cut off my toes."

"Whatever he does, it's probably going to hurt a lot, Buck, to get
those toes separated.  Doc Mange took a big sliver out of my foot, and
that hurt like the dickens.  He didn't give me any ether or anything.

We were at the Loggers' Picnic, and Doc had two loggers hold me down,
while he cut that sliver out with a pocketknife he heated up to red-hot
with a match.  I almost yelled."

"Almost yelled, you little sissy!  If I know you, and I do, you woke
every dog in town and set them to howling their heads off.  Now me,
even if it does hurt, which it probably won't, I'll just laugh and joke
with Doc all the time he's fixin' up my toes."

"I bet not, Buck."

"Ha!"

I finally decided there was no use in me trying to comfort Buck,
because he was just too thick-headed to recognize when someone was
trying to do him a kindness.

Doc Mange's office was in the back of his house.  We arrived just as he
was finishing his lunch.  Doc wiped his mouth on his sleeve, plucked a
cigar stub out of an overflowing ashtray, lit it, and then peered at us
over his little wire-frame glasses.

"So, boys, what can I do for you?  Another sliver, Pat?"

"Nope, Doc, it's Buck this time.  His toes have grown together from
wearing his Tenners too long."

"Will you shut up!"  Buck snapped at me.  "It really ain't much, Doc.

Maybe you can give me a little ointment for my toes, something to free
'em up a bit."

"Take off your slippers, son, hop up on my table, and let me have a
look at them toes."

Buck did as he was told.  I could see he was none too happy to be
sitting on what both he and I assumed was the operating table.  Doc
bent over and looked at the offending toes.

"Whewee!"  he said.  "Good thing I finished my lunch before these toes
showed up.  Could ruin a man's appetite, that's for sure."

"You think you might have to cut them off, Doc?"  I asked.

Doc studied the toes, a serious expression on his face, although not as
serious as the one on Buck's.

"Nope, I don't reckon I'll have to do anything that extreme," he said,
straightening up and taking a puff on his cigar.

"There, ain't that exactly what I told you?"  Buck said, shooting me a
smug look.

"Lay back down on the table and relax, Buck," Doc told him.  "I'll get
you fixed up in a jiffy."  He pulled a big leather strap out from under
the table and fastened it snugly across Buck's legs just above the
ankles.  He then fastened another strap across Buck's chest.

"Afraid I might fall off the table, Doc?"  Buck joked.

"Hmmm?"  Doc said.  "Fall off the table?  Oh, right, ha ha!"

Buck winked at me.  I winked back.  This could be good.

"I suppose you use those straps when you don't have a couple of loggers
handy, huh, Doc?"  I said.

"What's that, Pat?  Loggers?  Oh yes, I remember now, loggers.  That's
a good one, son.  Nope, can't have loggers hangin' around to assist me
every time I have to operate.  Heh heh."

I winked at Buck.  He didn't wink back.  "Wait!"  he yelped.  "Hold up
a second there, Doc.  I think maybe if I give my toes a lot of fresh
air, they'll probably heal right up on their own.  They're startin' to
feel a lot better already, as a matter of fact."

"Not good enough, Buck.  Now, stop your frettin'.  This won't take but
a few minutes."

Before the operation got started, Buck and I watched Doc take some
little cotton balls out of a box.  "I hope you ain't thinkin' of
stuffing that cotton between my toes, Doc," Buck said nervously,
"because my toes are mighty tender."

Doc knocked the ash off his cigar.  "Don't worry, Buck, these ain't fer
you."  He then stuffed a ball of cotton in each of his ears.  Buck said
later that's when he got concerned.

I thought it a rather bad sign myself, and ever since have wished I had
asked Doc for some cotton to stuff in my own ears.  Otherwise, I might
not have suffered the hearing impairment that later kept me out of the
Air Force.

It's the sort of safety precaution you would expect a doctor to provide
a young and interested observer of a medical procedure, but I suppose
Doc's attention was focused mostly on his patient.

After these preparations were completed, Doc took a short length of
hemp rope and calmly sawed it up and down between Buck's toes, until
they were once again detached from their neighbors and cleaned up nice
and raw.  My hearing probably wouldn't have been irreversibly damaged
from this phase of the treatment, but then, after all the toes were on
their own again, Doc got a bottle of clear liquid off a shelf, and said
to Buck, "Just about got you fixed up, young fella.  My magic formula
here will heal them toes of yours right up."  He gave the freshly sawed
space between each of Buck's toes a good dose of the magic formula, and
I think that's when my hearing was permanently impaired.  When we left
Doc's house and headed home, all the dogs in town were still howling,
but I was so deaf by then I could hardly hear them.

As we walked along, I told Buck that I had been enormously impressed
with his performance.

"Shut up," Buck replied.

"Eh?"  I said, cupping a hand behind my ear.  "Anyway, I knew you were
strong, Buck, but I didn't know you were that strong.  You must have
stretched that big old leather chest strap a good six inches, while you
were trying to reach up and grab Doc by the throat."

"A couple inches more and I would have had him, too," Buck said.

"Speaking of grabbing throats, you better never mention my visit to Doc
Mange to anybody.  You get me?"

"Eh?"

By noon the next day, details of Buck's toe operation, with emphasis on
its operatic qualities, had spread to every corner of town.  The chief
suspect in the spreading of this vile slander was never apprehended,
although Buck did chase him over two backyard fences, down an alley,
and through a wrecking yard on the outskirts of town.

Doc charged Buck three dollars for the operation, which was a bargain,
because after the rest of the guys in town heard about the cure for
Tenner-shoe blight, they became foot-care fanatics and never again held
a contest to see who could wear Tenners the longest without taking them
off.

Doc Mange obviously was a forerunner in the field of preventive
medicine, but, like so many medical pioneers, he never got the
recognition he deserved.

Letter from a Kingfisher Much of the year I live on an island in a
river, a few hundred yards upstream from a large lake.  The island is
connected to the mainland by a log bridge.  The bridge gives the
impresSion it's about to collapse at any moment, which is no reason to
suspect that I built it.  Age, as with me, is the villain of its
deterioration.

A few years ago, a kingfisher took up residence on the bridge, or
whatever it is that kingfishers take up.  His primary interest in the
bridge, I believe, lay in the fact that it provided the perfect perch
for sighting in on the trout lurking in the deep and languid pool
directly below.  Every time I approached the bridge, the kingfisher
would fly off, his manner of flight somehow conveying to me his
annoyance at being disturbed.  There was no reason for rudeness on his
part, because he could have remained on his perch, and I would have
driven past him without so much as a greeting.  I had no intention of
entering into a relationship with him.  I merely wanted to get to town,
buy my morning paper, and return.  Passing the time of day with a bird
was the furthest thing from my mind.

This is not to say that I dislike birds in general.  For the most part,
I find them to be interesting and even entertaining.  From time to
time, my wife, Bun, and I have gone to great trouble and risk in order
to see and record the sighting of what to us at least was a rare and
unusual specimen.

Once, in Australia, we drove nearly a thousand miles to a lake for the
purpose of observin the avian life that abounded there, at least
according to our guidebook.  When we arrived at what we thought was the
place, only a sandy basin confronted us.  We stopped at a nearby
country store to ask proper directions to the lake.  The lady at the
store explained that we had indeed found the right place but the lake
was dry.

"You should have come after a wet," she said.  "All kinds of birds here
then."

"When was the last wet?"  Bun asked.

"Seven years ago."

So my bird-watching was just like my fishing.  I should have been there
seven years ago.  The birding was fantastic then.

I offer that anecdote as evidence that I am in fact fond of birds, and
will go to great trouble to seek them out.  They, for their part,
seldom cooperate.  That is all right with me.  I don't hold that
against them.  I have no wish to interfere with their lives, nor do I
wish them to interfere with mine.  The problem is that birds simply
will not leave me alone.

Opening my cabin one spring, I found a dead duck in my fireplace.  The
following spring, I found a live duck in my fireplace.  It remains a
mystery how the ducks got into my fireplace, or why they would want
to.

Personally, I suspect space aliens put them there, but I don't know for
sure.  Removing a long-dead duck from a fireplace is a disgusting task;
removing a live one is an adventure.

This summer a sapsucker took it upon himself to destroy Bun's fledgling
fruit trees, the ones overlooked by the deer.  Bun has a firm policy
against my shooting anything on the island, but one morning at
breakfast she looked out the window and saw the sapsucker at work on
one of her trees.

"There he is again!"  she cried.  "Get your gun and blast that
sucker!"

I explained that, provided my aim was better than usual, my
twelve-gauge shotgun would remove not only the sapsucker but also the
tree.  Furthermore, because I have a policy of not shooting anything I
won't eat, I did not relish dining on a bird whose main diet is tree
sap.

I also put up with a couple of yellow-shafted flickers whose sole
ambition in life seemed to be pecking my cabin out of existence.  Then
there was the deranged flicker who attempted to attract the attention
of available females by drumming on my tin roof at five in the
morning.

I'd step out on the porch, hoping to frighten him to death, but he
would only look down irritably at me from the roof and say, "What?"

Because no reasonably bright female flicker would even consider this
nut for a mate, he went on morning after morning rattling us awake at
the crack of dawn.

"I'm going to shoot him," I muttered to Bun one morning as I clamped a
pillow over my head.

"You better not.  I think flickers are protected."

"Not him personally."

Apparently, the bird finally found someone dumb enough to marry him,
because he stopped drumming on the roof.  If so, it does not bode well
for the flicker gene pool.

Last summer I had an adolescent heron daily prowling the river's edge
in front of my cabin, and when he tired of that, he would fly up and
stand on the canvas top of my boat.  (A heron is much worse than a gull
in that regard, much much worse.) Most un-heron-like, he seemed not at
all spooked by my presence.  So one day I was staring out the window,
preparing to eat a sardine-and-onion sandwich that I had just
painstakingly constructed, when the heron stabbed down with his beak,
speared some little furry creature, and devoured the poor struggling
entity right there in front of me.

"Hey, Bun," I said.  "How would you like a nice sardine-and-onion
sandwich?  No?"

But about the kingfisher.  For some reason, I became attracted to
him.

There was something about that oversized head and ridiculous beak that
I found appealing, possibly because he reminded me of a girl I dated in
high school.

He had such a serious demeanor, too, sitting there for hours on that
bridge railing, frowning, intense, as though about to discover the
secret of life.  I wondered what it would be like to see the world
through his eyes.  Perhaps all would be brilliantly sharp colors and
shapes, but meaningless, except for the flash and dart of fish down
below.  Fish would be his philosophy and science, his Aristotle, Kant,
and Spinoza, his Einstein and Hawkin, all rolled into one.

I felt compelled to do something with the kingfisher.  After all, he
made his living off my bridge.  I charged him no rent for office
space.

Surely he owed me something.  I decided that the price for his using my
bridge was an image of himself to hang on my wall, a photograph of him
in all his solemn glory.

The bridge is a quarter of a mile from my cabin.  Because he never
ventured near my cabin, I knew I would have to snap him at his perch on
the bridge railing, no major task.  I clamped a camera with a
telescopic lens onto the window of my car and drove down to the
bridge.

There he was, staring down into the water, the early-morning light
illuminating him perfectly.  Still well away from the bridge, I turned
the car so that the camera would be facing him, and stopped.  Seeing
that I in no way posed a threat to him at that distance, the kingfisher
instantly took off in annoyed and annoying flight.

The next morning I stopped the car twice the distance from the bridge
as I had the previous day, with a telescopic lens the size of a whole
salami clamped to the window.  Before I could focus, the kingfisher
flew off.  Now I was getting mad.

The following morning, dressed in full camo, my face blackened with
burnt cork, I snaked on my belly through the brush bordering the river,
through a ditch only half full of slimy water, through a patch of
thistles, and finally reached a tree from which I could snap a dozen
photos without the kingfisher's having the slightest awareness of my
presence.  Ever so slowly, I peeked with one eye from behind the tree
to locate the subject of this photo op.  The kingfisher took off in
annoying flight.

After a week or so of attempting to photograph this irritating bird, I
gave up and resumed my daily pattern of driving over the bridge and
watching him swoop off a moment before my tires hit the decking.

Winter came, and I returned to my home in the city, without an image of
the kingfisher to hang on my wall.  When I returned in the spring, I
noticed he wasn't on the bridge, but I really didn't care.  Here I had
tried to form a meaningful relationship with him, only to be
rebuffed.

So be it.  I opened up the cabin and then went outside to see what if
anything the deer and elk had left of the orchard--not much.  As I
tramped through the remnants of snow between the river and the cabin, I
noticed something dark on the ground.  I walked over and nudged the
feathered shape with my foot, suddenly revealing the oversized head and
the ridiculous beak.  The kingfisher.  I wondered what had finally
brought him all the way down from the bridge.  Never once over the
years had I ever seen him anywhere near my cabin.  And now, here he
was, much the worse for wear.  And then I realized he had used himself
as a letter to me: Dear Pat, This is to let you know that I am dead. 
We had some good times at the bridge, didn't we, with you trying to
sneak up on me with your camera and me always flying off at the last
moment before you could click the shutter.  It was fun.  I knew when
you noticed I wasn't at the bridge this spring you would wonder what
had become of me.  This is what did.

Sincerely yours, George George?

The Ultimate Bull Let me begin by saying that I don't hold with lying. 
It is a disgusting habit, with no other purpose than the deceit of
one's fellow man and woman.

After a lifetime spent in the company of elk hunters, I am pleased to
report that they as a group abhor lying as much as I do.  Oh sure, elk
hunters are only human, and occasionally an innocent little fib will
escape their lips while they're relaxing around the campfire of an
evening.

A hunter might, for example, describe his packing of an elk quarter up
a mildly steep hill in terms more appropriate to carrying a
refrigerator up the north face of the Matterhorn.  But that is an
exaggeration to be forgiven.

What cannot be forgiven is the outright lie, such as changing a
five-point rack into an eight-point rack.  That sort of unconscionable
falsehood offends the honor of all elk hunters, who know that it is
permissible to add only two points at most to a rack, and then only to
a hunter's first elk.  His future elk are not permitted to grow any
points at all after they have been shot, unless, of course, the hunter
has reached the age of sixty-five, and then anything goes.

I know an elk hunter who upon turning sixty-five gave up the sport.

Scarcely a month later, he had bagged at least a dozen more elk than I
had been aware of, which was three, and I was both pleased and
astonished to hear of his recent good fortune.

"Ed," I said to him, "I never realized you were such a successful elk
hunter."

"Yes, I am," he replied simply.

"Here all the years we've known each other, you have only mentioned
three elk.  Now, suddenly, there are eighteen."

"Twenty-three."

"Ah, twenty-three now.  I would have thought an even two dozen
perhaps."

"I prefer the odd number.  Besides, I'm too old to hunt down another
elk."

"Really?"  I said.  "Why, I would judge that the last twenty elk were
about the easiest ever taken in the entire history of hunting."

"Well, they were a heck of a lot easier than the first three, I can
tell you that."

By age seventy, Ed was kicking himself for not having at least ten of
his elk officially scored, because they would easily have made Boone &
Crockett, with several possible world records.

Ed was a man of restraint, however, and once his lifetime score reached
twenty-three elk, he held pat on that number and refused to exceed it,
even though that would have been easy enough for a hunter of all the
skills he'd acquired since giving up the hunt.  Ed did not believe in
excess.

One day as he was approaching ninety years, I asked him if he had
bagged any of those elk with a bow.

"Not at the present time," he said.

So right there you can see how modest he was.  He could just as easily
have shot half those elk with a bow, but he wouldn't do it.

As I say, all true and honorable elk hunters under age sixty-five, and
a few over, abhor the lie and will never use it to deceive their fellow
elk hunters.  What means are left, then, with which to deceive fellow
elk hunters?

Disinformation.  Yes, disinformation.  This is a wonderful rhetorical
device developed by the folks in Washington, D.C to avoid telling
either lies or the truth.  Here's an example of how disinformation can
be put to good use by elk hunters.

Let us say that you got your elk last year by grace of your cow
permit.

You are now playing cards with some other elk hunters, and one of the
guys asks you if you got your elk last year.  You feel no pressing need
to mention that your elk was a cow.

"Yup," you say.  "Whose deal is it?"

"Harry's.  Good rack?"

"Nothing I'd hang on the wall.  I thought Harry just dealt.  It must be
George's deal.  No?  Well, let's see, I dealt two hands ago and ...

whoops!

Sorry!  Didn't mean to spill my hot coffee in your lap, Charlie."

That is how disinformation allows one to keep from telling a lie
without telling the truth, augmented by a bit of diversion.

Now let's say that I am seated at a table at a Rocky Mountain Elk
Foundation banquet, and I in all my years of dedicated elk hunting have
never shot an elk.  Naturally, I want to appear as adept at hunting elk
as my banquet companions.  Otherwise, what am I doing here at an
elk-hunters' banquet?  I certainly don't want to be found out as an
imposter.  So what can I do?  When all of the successful elk hunters of
the previous year are asked to stand, I alone at our table remain
seated.  But I do not merely sit there.

I also smile bemusedly.  You can get a lot of mileage out of a bemused
smile.

"No luck last year, hunh?"  one of the successful hunters asks me.

"Oh, I looked over some pretty good racks," I reply, "but nothing I
wanted to pull the trigger on."

The reason I didn't want to pull the trigger on the racks is that they
were hanging on a friend's wall, and he would have been mad as the
dickens.

Thus no lie is involved in this response, as you can see.  My response
is merely a bit of disinformation.  Nevertheless, I have left the
impression that I have reached the discriminating stage of elk hunting
where only the ultimate bull will do.  Impressed by this response my
dinner companions lean forward attentively, hoping to pick up a few
tips from a master elk hunter.  I must then launch into something like
the following soliloquy in my best authoritative tones.

"The thing to remember about your really big bull is that he's almost
never going to be where you want him to be.  So you have to hunt him
where you don't want him to be.  And that's the steepest, nastiest hole
in the mountains that you can find.  You spend half a day climbing down
into that hole, and there's your elk.  Or maybe not.  If he's not
there--and you want to remember this--then he's someplace else.  Most
of the time, in fact, he's someplace else.  Or maybe he's where you
wanted him to be in the first place, but you are someplace else, namely
where you didn't want the elk to be, and he isn't.

That's pretty much the essence of elk hunting as I see it."

"Gosh, Sir, how many elk have you got in your lifetime?"  a young
fellow asks.

"Not really all that many, son.  Fewer than a dozen.  [Like a dozen
fewer.] But keep in mind, that I'm not going to take just any old bull
elk that comes my way."  [Like if a bull elk ever comes my way on
roller skates, I'm not going to shoot him.  Unless, of course, I think
he stole the skates, which he probably did, because how else would a
bull elk get roller skates?

So I'd have to shoot him anyway.] "What's the longest shot you've ever
made?"

"I'd guess about six hundred yards."  [Missed, of course.] "Wow!

What's your best rack, sir?"

"My best rack?  Hmmmm, let me think.  Yes, my best rack.  Whose deal is
it, anyway?"

"Deal?  We're not playing cards."

"Good heavens, so we're not.  I thought it was a terribly slow game.  I
must be at the wrong table.  If you gentlemen will excuse me."

Now, here's a tough one.  Suppose a friend asks you the location of
your secret elk-hunting place.  Your initial impulse is to lie: "What
secret elk-hunting place?  I don't have a secret elk-hunting place."

But that would violate the elk-hunter's code.  On the other hand, you
know if you tell him your friend will invite all his cronies along with
him, and they will chase all your elk into the next state.  You could
tell him to just buzz off and find his own secret elk-hunting place,
but that would break the bonds of friendship, which would be all right,
too, if the guy didn't hold the mortgage on your house on which you're
behind three payments.  So you must tell him.

"My secret elk-hunting place?"  you say.  "Henry, you are the only
person in the world I'd reveal this to, even if you didn't hold the
mortgage on my house, and you must promise never to tell another
soul.

Here's how you can get there.  You drive up to the end of Jefferson
Creek Road, and then climb to the top of Jefferson Peak.  There's no
trail, but just keep going up until you reach the peak.  You can't miss
it.  Now, pay attention to this, Henry.  Take a long rope.  You'll need
the rope to get down the sheer cliff on the other side of the peak.

The rope will also come in handy for hauling your elk back up the
cliff.  Once you're in the valley below, you'll see another mountain
off to your right.  Climb that one.  Take a left at the top."

"Good gosh," Henry says, interrupting.  "Isn't there a road anywhere
near this secret elk-hunting place of yours?"

"Whose deal is it?  I just dealt, didn't I?  So it must be yours,
Henry.

Oops, sorry!  Spilled my coffee right in your lap."

My Greatest Triumph Among the very best ways I've found to depress
myself is to add up and evaluate all my personal triumphs.  They turn
out to be few, small, and insignificant, and usually somewhat
questionable.  I'm left to wonder whether they were triumphs at all. 
Take my recent purchase of a new car.

I started with a salesman.  My sharp bargaining reduced him to whimpers
and what he claimed to be an offer on my part so outrageous as to
border on sheer fantasy.  He said he would have to go check the price
with his supervisor, who soon emerged from a cubicle smiling
confidently.  I reduced him to tears.  He went and got the sales
manager.  I reduced him to hysterics.

The manager finally told me that even though the price I demanded
scarcely paid for the cost of the raw steel in the car, he would give
in, if I would agree to a slight compromise.  I went along with the
compromise, but only so that a pittance of a commission could be paid
to the salesman, whose wife was in the hospital with an incurable
disease and whose seven children were going to bed hungry every night
of the week.

We shook hands on the deal.  I climbed into my new car, savoring yet
another personal triumph, and started to drive away.  That was when I
glanced through the showroom window and noticed that the entire sales
staff had their arms around one another and were singing and dancing,
and the sales manager was throwing handfuls of cash in the air.  It
makes you wonder.

I can perhaps be forgiven then, if I seem overly boastful in relating
my most recent triumph, which was not only monumental, but absolute.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that all triumphs past and future
might well be defined by this singular achievement.  It happened
thusly.

I had been paid a handsome fee to travel to a distant city and deliver
a luncheon speech to a group of businessmen.  Although I hadn't been
informed of the real reason for my speech, it soon became apparent to
me that the businessmen had to a man been suffering from insomnia, and
I had been brought in to cure them of the malady.  Halfway through my
speech, I noticed that the desired effect had been achieved, for such
had been the curative power of my words that all present were dozing
deeply and peacefully--this observation confirmed by a chorus of
snores.

My work obviously completed, I slipped quietly from the gathering, into
my rental car, and headed for the airport.  Checking the rearview
mirror to make sure I wasn't pursued, as sometimes happens after one of
my speeches--usually by the person who paid me the handsome fee--I
determined that I was in the clear, and slowed to the speed limit.  I
relaxed and began checking out the scenery, which, unfortunately,
turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of scenery.

Then, as I was passing a wooded area, I noticed a gathering of men and
a few women strolling about dressed in skins and fur and ancient
clothes.

Assuming this was a camp of investment bankers caught unawares by the
recession, I started to drive on, only suddenly to realize that the
gathering was in fact a rendezvous of modern-day mountain men.  I
instantly whipped into a parking area and joined the throngs of
sightseers roving from exhibit to exhibit.  I myself have always wanted
to be a mountain man and this undoubtedly would be as close to
fulfillment of that dream as I would ever get.

I checked out the blacksmith shop, the muzzle-loader range, the archery
range, several shops selling moccasins, tomahawks, and handmade knives
and the like, and soon had exhausted most of the exhibits as well as my
curiosity.  As I was about to leave, however, I came upon a
demonstration of ax-throwing, a common defensive ploy resorted to by
mountain men and a few of the current residents of New York City, one
of whom may have been the irritable, buckskin-clad person demonstrating
the proper technique for throwing an ax.

I immediately got into the line of touristy folk interested in trying
their hand at throwing an ax and sticking it in the butt end of a log
that had been set up as a target.  Pinned to the center of the log was
a playing card, the King of Hearts, which served as the bull's-eye.

The King of Hearts was in no danger, to judge from the way the hurtling
ax either failed to reach the target, overshot it, or bounced off the
log handle first.  The mountain man made no effort to conceal his
contempt for the marksmanship of the participants.  After each failed
throw by one of us modern folk, he would demonstrate his prowess by
sending the ax flying at the log.  Although the King of Hearts appeared
to be in no danger from this expert either, he did make the ax stick
with a satisfying thunk.

At last it was my turn.  The mountain man sneered at my suit and tie,
obviously pleased that through craft and intelligence he had managed to
escape such evils.

"Here's how you hold the ax," he growled at me.  "Get a good grip right
here and ..."

My stepfather, Hank, and I are going out to the woodshed to split some
wood.  I'm about twelve.  "Gol-durn!"  Hank says, picking up the ax.

"Another broken handle.  You must have done it.  That's the third one
in a couple of months."

"I know, Hank.  It's the kind of wood they're making ax handles out of
nowadays.  Hit a piece of wood a little wrong and they bust."

"... then you bring the ax back like this," the mountain man said.

I'm fourteen.  Hank and I are walking through our wood-lot in search of
a missing cow.  "Look at that stump there," Hank says.  "What do you
suppose chewed it up like that?  Couldn't be a buck scrape, not like
that.  If it was done by a bear, I sure wouldn't want to run into the
critter that can claw wood like that."

"Probably a bear, Hank."

"Could be.  I'd chop a section out of that stump to show to the folks
at the game department, if the ax handle wasn't broke."

"Now watch how I make my throw," the mountain man instructed me.  The
ax made a single loop and caught the edge of the log.  "That's how it's
done."

He grunted with satisfaction, walked up, and retrieved the ax.

"I think I've got the idea," I said.

"Yeah, right," said the mountain man.

I stepped up and threw the ax.

Vern Schulze, Kenny Thompson, Norm Alelson, and I are trapped by a
snowstorm high up in the mountains.  We've been holed up in an
abandoned trapper's cabin for three days.  We're all about
sixteen-years old.  During breaks in the storm, we go outside and try
to amuse ourselves with one of our favorite Pastimes.

The ax, flying toward the log target, made a graceful loop.  I couldn't
see the expression on the mountain man's face, because he had bent over
to cinch up a thong on one of his moccasins.

The storm has let up and may be over.  Kenny is pinning a wooden
kitchen match crosswise on the butt of a sawed log.  "What's the score
now?"

Norm checks a piece of paper in his hand.  "I've got six, Pat seven,
you've got eight, Kenny, and Vern's got nine.  If Vern cuts the match
in two with his next throw , he wins."

"This is getting too easy," Vern says.  "Maybe we should see who can
light the match with an ax."

The mountain man had just straightened up from tying his moccasin lace
when the ax completed its loop and thunked into the butt end of the
log.  A cheer went up from the spectators.  Applause broke out.

The King of Hearts had been neatly cloven in two.  The mountain man
scowled at me.  I smoothed my tie and buttoned my suit jacket.

"Beginner's luck," I said.  Then I couldn't help but
smile--triumphantly.

Another Boring Day It was one of those hot, dreary days of summer that
filled our neighbors on surrounding farms with dread.  Almost anything
could happen on such days.

Sudden storms could pulverize crops with hailstones the size of golf
balls, lightning could strike homes and barns and livestock, wildfire
could sweep across the countryside, wells could dry up from the
drought, Crazy Eddie Muldoon could become bored.

"I'm bored," Crazy Eddie sighed.

"Me too," I said.  "Can't you think of anything to do?"

"We could build another deep-sea diving helmet and you could test it
again in the crick," he said.

"Naw," I said.  "I nearly drowned last time."

"We could build another airplane and you could test-pilot it off the
barn roof."

"The last plane crash nearly killed both of us, remember?"

"Yeah.  Maybe we could dig another big hole in the ground and use it
for a wild animal trap," Eddie said.

"The only wild animals we caught in the last one was a skunk and your
father."

"Too bad we had to catch them both at the same time," Eddie said,
sighing.  "Otherwise, I don't think Pa would have been so peeved."

"He wasn't just peeved, Eddie.  He chased us for about three miles."

"Parents are so boring," Eddie said.  "I suppose we could go catch a
snake.  That might be fun."

"We each already have a pet snake.  What do we need another snake
for?"

"This would be a utility snake.  We'd use it just once and then discard
it."

"We could take it over to Olga's house and show it to her," I
suggested.

Olga Bonemarrow was one of our classmates in third grade.

"That's what I was thinking," Eddie said.  "Olga might like her own
snake.  Hee hee."

After a brief hunt, we caught a fairly decent snake and took it over to
Olga's house.  We thought surely she would find it of interest.  She
did.

"We got a little present for you, Bonemarrow," Eddie said.

"Oh yeah?"  Olga said.  She made a fist and stuck it under Eddie's
nose.

"You better not try any funny stuff or you know what will happen."

"We wouldn't think of it," Eddie said, smiling.  He pulled the utility
snake out of his pocket and thrust it at Olga.  "Snake!  Snake!"

"Oh, what a pretty little snake!"  Olga said.  "Can I really have
it?"

"Sure," Eddie said.  "We thought you might like it."

"Oh, I do," she said, taking the snake in hand and stroking it with a
finger.  "I guess this is a peace offering.  Well all right, if you
guys promise not to play mean tricks on me, I won't throw you down on
the ground and twist your arms up behind your backs until you scream.

Deal?"

"Deal," Eddie and I said in unison.

We walked back down the road toward Eddie's place.

"Rats!"  Eddie said.

"Double rats!"  I said.  "We wasted a perfectly good snake."

"Yeah.  I figured it for at least a couple laps around Bonemarrow's
house.  So, what do you want to do now?"

"Beats me," I said.  "I think this is just going to be one of those
boring days when nothing goes right."

We took the usual shortcut across the Millstead bull pasture.  The bull
pretended to be looking the other way until we were in the middle of
the pasture and then charged.  He had us in his sights but forgot to
lead us enough, and we beat him to the fence by a good ten yards.  No
contest.  The thing always to remember about bull running is that a tie
at the fence is as good as a loss.  We stood on the other side of the
fence and watched the bull bellow and slobber and paw the ground, the
usual bull stuff, which was mildly amusing, but we had seen the bull's
whole repertoire before.

It was nearly noon.  We went over to Eddie's house and had a boring
lunch.

"What are you boys up to today?"  Mrs.  Muldoon asked.

"Nothing," Eddie said.  "We're bored stiff."

"Good grief!"  his mother said.  Her hands shook as she poured us each
a glass of milk.  Mrs. Muldoon was a strange person, but not nearly so
strange as Mr. Muldoon, whose face started to twitch every time he saw
Eddie and me walk by with some of his tools.

After lunch we went out and sat on the Muldoon porch.  "Maybe we could
make a cigar by rolling up a piece of paper real tight, lighting one
end, and smoking it," Eddie said.

"Naw," I said.  "I already tried that.  Hot smoke and flames shoot down
your throat.  I think it might be bad for your health, too."

We sat in morose silence for several minutes.  Then Eddie said, "Well,
we could always go paddle the canoe on the crick."

"Too dangerous," I said.  "We could get hurt real bad."

"Maybe Buster isn't home," Eddie said.  Buster was the big kid who
owned the canoe.  He claimed to have built it himself.  The only hard
part, he said, was painting the name on the side.  Even I could have
come up with a better name for a canoe, but he had done a nice job of
lettering.

"Maybe Buster got sent back to reform school," Eddie said.

"No such luck," I said.  "I saw him down on the crick a couple days
ago, painting over the name on his canoe.  I hope he comes up with
something a little more catchy this time."

"Yeah, 'Property of Sunset Resort' was pretty dumb, even for Buster.

Well, it won't hurt to go look at the canoe, anyway."

"I suppose not," I said.

We found the canoe hidden upside-down in some brush with dried-up cedar
boughs piled on the top of it.  Buster was nowhere to be seen.  We
lifted the boughs off and turned the canoe over very carefully, just to
make sure Buster wasn't hiding under it.  He had renamed the canoe
"Busters," not a great improvement in my opinion, and the lettering was
much worse.  We found a note inside the canoe: "Deer pat an eddee keep
yor grubee paws off ths canoo or I twist off yor heds an brake yor arms
an legs sinseerly yor fiend Buster."

"Holy cow!"  I said.  "That's awful!"

"No kidding!"  Eddie said, picking up a canoe paddle and checking it
for balance.  "Even I can spell better than that, and I'm only in third
grade!"

"I meant the part about twisting off our heads."

"Don't worry," Eddie said.  "It's not like we're actually going to use
his canoe.  We're just looking at it.  Maybe we should slide it out
into the crick a little ways, to see how it floats.  A little water
can't hurt a canoe."

My eyes scoured the surrounding landscape.  Still no sign of Buster.

"Okay.  But just for a second."  We slid the canoe into the water.  It
floated beautifully.

"I guess maybe I'll sit on one of the seats," Eddie said.

"Okay," I said.  "But just for a second."

Eddie sat on one of the seats.  "Why don't you sit on the other
seat?"

"Okay, but just for a second."  I climbed into the canoe and sat
down.

The canoe began to drift downstream.  "Uhoh," Eddie said.  "I'd better
stick this paddle in the water."

Eddie and I never did understand how Buster got the impression we were
stealing his canoe.  We were merely sitting in it, drifting along,
putting the paddles in the water and pulling them gently back in long
easy strokes, but certainly nothing anyone but Buster would consider
paddling off in it.  The long easy strokes were abandoned when we saw
Buster running along the bank after us.  Then we resorted to actual
paddling, and did rather well at it, considering our lack of
experience.  In fact I had the distinct sensation that the canoe itself
floated several inches above the water, possibly the result of a
powerful magnetic field created by our churning paddles.

We soon approached a shallow spot in the creek, where it was apparent
Buster could wade out and grab us.  By now we were wondering exactly
what techniques were normally employed in twisting off heads.  Did
Buster stand on your body to keep it from turning while he twisted on
your head, or what?  Not wishing to participate in such a
demonstration, no matter how interesting, Eddie and I decided to make
our escape across land on the opposite side of the creek from Buster,
who was now charging full speed toward the shallow crossing.

Traversing the Millstead's potato patch, we decided the canoe had
become more hindrance than help, so we abandoned it and took off on
foot.

For all Buster's rage about our touching his canoe, one would have
thought he'd be happy to have it back.  But no, his interest in the
canoe had dissipated to the point that he leaped right over it without
even breaking stride.  Eddie and I were now the main attraction.  By
the time we reached the fence at the top of the hill, Buster was
closing on us fast.  We threw ourselves under the fence mere seconds
ahead of Buster.  Our lungs bursting, our legs turning to jelly, Eddie
and I ran on in our hopeless quest for survival.

"I gotcha now, you canoe-stealers!"  Buster shouted at US.  "You guys
are done for."

Reaching the fence on the far side of the pasture, Eddie and I sagged
to the ground, turned, and watched the unrelenting Buster trot toward
us.  Even though he was still in the middle of the pasture, we could
see sweat streaming off his face and his mouth gasping for air.  But
still he came.

To judge from the bull's expression, he could scarcely believe his good
fortune.  Here was a slow-moving, exhausted target right out in the
middle of his own pasture.  And the target hadn't even noticed him
yet.

The bull adjusted his cross-hairs, pawed a cloud of dirt into the air
with each front hoof, and pulled the trigger.

Buster, seeing that we had stopped, slowed to a walk as he came toward
us, grinning, and making menacing twisting gestures with his hands.

Not wishing to see even Buster transformed into Hamburger Surprise
before our eyes--neither Eddie nor I had a particularly strong
stomach--we pointed toward the bull, a four-legged Guernsey locomotive
roaring down on the unsuspecting victim.  Buster glanced casually in
the direction of our pointing, as though expecting a trick.  His
eyeballs shot out a good six inches and snapped back, somewhat on the
order of the paddleball an aunt had given me for Christmas.

The big slobbering beast circled the pasture twice, with the bull about
three feet behind him, and then vaulted the fence at the far end of the
pasture.  The bull, in fact, had proved to be a marvelous stimulant to
the exhausted Buster.

It was the sort of thing you would like to turn into pills and sell as
a cure for lethargy.  You could make a fortune on it.  "I got to take
one of my Crazed Bull Pills now," an old person would say, and then he
would leap out of his rocker and sprint ten times around the old folks
home.  I know that would be the case, because one glance at the bull
erased every bit of Buster's weariness.  Why, you would think he had
just stepped out of a cold shower after a good night's sleep, he was
suddenly so filled with vim and vigor.

Even the bull seemed impressed.

Eddie and I wandered off in the general direction of my house.  We came
across a good snake, but it recognized us and slithered under a stump
pile before we could grab it.  I had a sister who wasn't of much use,
but she could provide a bit of entertainment, mostly fancy dancing and
loud noise, if you showed up with a snake.  She was no Olga
Bonemarrow.

I used my pet snake, Herbie, on her from time to time, but I felt too
much excitement wasn't good for a young snake and had to ration him and
use him only on special occasions.

Herbie always seemed limp and worn-out after a performance, but elated,
too, over a job well done.

"I wish we had poisonous snakes around here," Eddie said.

"Yeah, me too," I said.  "Rattlesnakes would be good.  Or cobras."

"Pythons would be better."

"Yeah, I've always liked pythons.  You could have a lot of fun with a
python."

Mom was sitting on the back porch shelling peas when we arrived.

"What have you boys been up to?"  she asked.

"Nothing," Eddie said.

"Just another boring day," I said.

"No kidding!"  Eddie said.  "I don't think I've ever been this bored in
my whole life."

"Good grief!"  my mother said, shelling some peas onto the ground.  She
was a little strange herself.

The Complete Curmudgeon Tramping about my woods the other day, I came
upon a murder of crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), an unkindness of ravens
(Corvus corax) and even a convocation of bald eagles (Hatiaeetus
leucocephalus), if I may be forgiven for using the proper group and
Latin names for these species, ahem.  Now that I regard myself as a
serious birder, I no longer use the more common term for such
groups--"a bunch of birds"--as was my practice before becoming a
serious birder.  As it happened, all of the aforementioned groups
caused me no little irritation, because I was engaged at the time in
not mere avian observation but in a pursuit of a more practical nature,
namely looking for a ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) for my supper. 
And all I found were bunches of other birds, inedible at that, most of
which seemed to take keen delight in my disappointment, or so I judged
from their raucous screeching and squawking.

When I at last tromped grouseless into my house, I discovered a gossip
of women (Chatter s adinfinitus) at my dining-room table, said gossip
consisting of my daughters and their mother.

"It's only the curmudgeon," I heard one of them say.  "No cause for
alarm."

The curmudgeon!  Why any of them would suppose that my neighbor Al
Finley would come barging into the house without so much as knocking
was beyond me, although I thought the possibility might bear some
further reflection.

"It is only I," I snapped.

"Yes," my wife, Bun, replied, "the curmudgeon--Grouchus crankeeyus."

This pitiful attempt at wit gave rise to such an outburst of mirth from
the women that I could only surmise that their previous discussion, if
such chatter can be dignified by the term, had consisted of comic
accounts of my efforts to become a serious birder, no doubt zeroing in
on my practice of casually dropping a scientific bird term into a
conversation: "I glance up at this flock of pigeons flying over," my
friend Retch Sweeney tells me, "and, smack, right in the eye!"

"Columbafasciata," I say.

"No kidding, man!  That pigeon must have weighed five pounds!"

The term I wish to consider here, however, has nothing to do with
birding, except perhaps tangentially.  It is curmudgeon, as applied to
me by my spouse, Bun, albeit in a strained reach for humorous effect.

To escape the prattle of my spouse and offspring, I stomped mutteringly
off to my study, formerly known as the "hole under the stairs," packed
myself a pipe, ignited it, and, grinding the stem between my teeth,
pulled a dictionary off the shelf and looked up curmudgeon.  The
dictionary defined the word as "an irascible, churlish person," which
struck me as somewhat negative.

Well sure, I may on occasion be a mite irascible and a tad churlish,
but who isn't?  I'll certainly admit to irritability from time to time,
too.  If the rough edges of life have honed my temper, they have also
worn me down and exposed a few nerve ends.

I once overheard a woman simper to a professor friend of mine, "Why,
Mary Ann, you used to be such a bubbly person and you aren't
anymore."

To which Mary Ann growled in reply, blowing a wisp of hair from her
weary eyes, "I got too old to bubble."  The same thing happened to me,
I guess.  I got too old to bubble.  But I do enjoy a nice grumble.

One of the things I grumble a good deal about is the current practice
of explaining to youngsters.  "Oh dear, Ronnie, I see you have broken
the tip off of my three-hundred-dollar Number Five Loomis fly rod that
I have protected with my life on numerous occasions.  Sit down
alongside me, son, and as soon as I sop up my tears with my hanky, I
will explain how you were using my fly rod in an unacceptable manner,
namely as a whip with which to flail the neighbor's cat.  Do you
understand what I am explaining, Ronnie?"

Back when I was a kid, parents never cluttered up a youngster's mind
with explanations.  We nevertheless came to understand with crystal
clarity the parent's disapproval of our actions.  "All I was doing was
trying to poke my kite out of a tree with the old man's split-bamboo
fly rod.  Whewee!  I won't do that again!"  Although the kid seldom
went into detail about his motivation for never again using his old
man's split-bamboo fly rod in such a fashion, it was clear that his
parent had made quite an impression on him, possibly several.  After a
while, a kid just understood how he was supposed to act, what the rules
were, with no explanation at all.

An explanation from a parent would have terrified us.  "Holy cow, we'd
have thought.  "The old man's explaining something to me!  We're all
doomed!"

Even as an adult I hate explainers.

Plumber: "The reason your faucet squirts water all over the ceiling is
you put it in upside down."

I'm paying this guy fifty bucks an hour to critique my do-it-myself
plumbing?  No, I am not.  I am paying him to make the faucet squirt
into the sink.

All people who actually know how to fix things are chronic
explainers.

Doctor: "You're twenty pounds overweight.  Your problem is eating too
much and not getting enough exercise."

And here I'd thought it was because the hole in the ozone layer was
letting in too much gravity.

Sadly, explanations aren't limited only to people who actually know how
to fix things.

Guy I've never seen before in my life but who sits beside me on a bus:
"You know why the national debt keeps growing?  I'll tell you why!  The
government spends more than it takes in, that's why!"

Me: "Let me off at the next corner, Driver."

Another thing that makes me irascible and churlish is positive
thinking.

It's so depressing.

Positive thinker: "The mechanic is smiling.  That must mean there's
nothing wrong with my car.  I knew all along we'd be able to use our
life savings to send Leonard to college."

Another positive thinker: "Just think, Martha, in three or four years
we'll be harvesting apples off that little sapling we just planted."

What this positive thinker refuses to accept is that his little tree
will have to survive insects, disease, drought, heat, and cold before
it produces a single apple, and besides that, the night after the
planting a deer will show up and eat his tree.

The problem with positive thinkers is ... oh, sorry about that.  I
almost committed an explanation.

Something else that piques my irascibility is clothing manufacturers.

I have stashed in the back of my closet what I refer to as Mafia
shirts.  By this I don't mean shirts that look as if they might be worn
by the Mafia, black shirts to go with their white ties, but shirts made
by companies owned by the Mafia.  As you open the clear plastic
package, you notice that exposure to air causes the collar to fray.

According to the neck size imprinted on the inside of a collar that
actually reaches around your neck, you should be playing offensive
tackle in the NFL.  But you still have the same ridiculously skinny
neck you've always had.  Shirttails have been bobbed so short they can
scarcely be tucked beneath your belt, and men now have to wear
suspenders to keep their pants hitched up to just beneath their armpits
in order to keep their shirttails tucked in.  It's true.  Buttonholes
are made one size smaller than the buttons, so that once you finally
get the buttons fastened, you can't get them unfastened.  You have to
get the shirt dry cleaned while you're still wearing it.  ("Easy with
the steam press, Fu.  Yowwwwwww!  Thanks, buddy, what's the charge?") I
don't want even to think about Mafia pants.

Boy, here's something that really burns me--those little clickers in
cars that are supposed to remind you your turn signal is still on but
the clicker is just loud enough that your wife, the passenger, can hear
it but you can't, even though you're sitting closer to the clicker than
she is.  "Your turn signal is still on, dear," she says, her tone
suggesting that this is because of a major congenital defect in you
requiring either a frontal lobotomy or a hearing aid the size of a boom
box.  The turn-signal clickers in all the cars I've ever owned were
obviously made by the Mafia in one of their shirt factories, where they
were developing the seat-belt retractors that don't retract seat belts,
so the belts get repeatedly stuck in the door and eventually start
looking as if they had been chewed by a large dog whose intent is to
kill you by remote head-on collision--the perfect murder.  It is my
opinion that the Mafia was also responsible for changing the headlight
dimmer switch from a convenient button on the floor to a little shift
stick on the steering column that has twenty-seven other functions, so
that when you try to dim your lights you turn on the windshield washer,
signal for a left turn into oncoming traffic, and set the cruise
control for sixty-five miles an hour while closing on a tanker truck on
a steep grade, and the approaching cars blind you by flashing their
headlights because you still haven't dimmed yours, and then you almost
collide with the tanker but manage to swerve out around it even as your
frayed seat belt snaps in two, and then your passenger spouse says,
"Your turn signal is still on, dear."

As I puffed my pipe reflectively in my den, it occurred to me that just
about everything irritates me these days--the economy, politicians,
positive thinkers, clothes, dams, clear-cuts, spotted owls, young
people, old people, fruit trees, deer, mechanics, plumbers, several
major continents, and the expanding universe.  I suddenly realized
that, indeed, I had become a curmudgeon!  The strange thing is, I
rather enjoy it, I really do.

The Liars Club Every morning before classes began, some friends and I
would meet in the high school gym to exchange reports about our latest
amorous adventures.

Because neither I nor my friends ever had anything even remotely
resembling an amorous adventure--we were mostly nerds--we started
telling lies.  This innocent pastime eventually developed into the
Liars Club.  Any member who lured the other members into believing a
lie got to be president.  The lie had to be told and believed while the
club was in session which was each weekday morning.

The presidency of the Liars Club remained vacant for months, because
any comment whatsoever made by a member during the meeting was
instantly met with rude expressions of disbelief.  A member could show
up in a full-body cast and claim he had been injured.  The other
members would laugh in derision.  "Ha, you expect us to believe that?

No way!"  Becoming president of the Liars Club appeared all but
impossible.

I should mention that my years in high school were served without
distinction of any sort.  Girls regarded me mostly as an obstacle to be
darted around on their way to class.  Coaches noticed me in the locker
room only when they attempted to drape their sweat clothes over my head
and shoulders to dry.

The teachers were generally nice, jokingly referring to me as John or
Richard or sometimes Melvin.  As with so many students who pass through
high school unnoticed and all but invisible, I craved recognition, or
at least some small affirmation of my existence.  For that purpose, I
set out to craft and execute the perfect lie, the success of which
would win me the presidency of the Liars Club and all the acclaim and
glory that went with it: "That's Pat McManus, president of the Liars
Club," a beautiful girl would say.  "Gee, I wish he wasn't dating all
the cheerleaders simultaneously, because I'd love to go out with
him."

"That's Pat McManus, president of the Liars Club," the coach would
say.

"I think I'll make him first-string quarterback."

"That's eitherjohn or Melvin, the president of the Liars Club," a
teacher would say.

Okay, so nothing's perfect.  Still, I had a lot riding on the lie.

I thought of various scenarios.  I could pay Hulk Simmons a dollar to
spread the rumor that I had challenged him to a fight.  Once the rumor
had spread, the guys in the club would be sure to ask me if I was
fighting Hulk.

"Yeah," I'd say.  "He bumped me in the locker room the other day, and I
called him out.  Shook him up pretty bad, too."

"Wow, when's the fight?"

"Today after school, behind the Donut Dive."

"Ain't you scared?"

"Me?  Naw.  It's time somebody taught Hulk a good lesson."

I was about to set this plan in motion when I suddenly imagined Hulk
walking up to me after school and handing me back my dollar.  More
likely, Hulk would walk up to me and not hand me back my dollar.

"Me and you is fightin' behind the Donut Dive in half an hour," he'd
growl at me.

"You gotta be out of your mind, Hulk," I'd say.  "You'd kill me in a
fight!"

"I know.  But it can't be helped.  If I don't fight you, everybody will
think I'm chicken."

"But if we actually fight, my lie won't be a lie, and I won't get to be
president of the Liars Club."

"Tough.  After we fight, you won't even get to be you."

It was a close call.  I could see I had to come up with a plan that
didn't involve Hulk Simmons and my getting killed behind a stupid donut
shop.

And I did.

One morning I arrived at the gym looking terribly sad.  The club
members were grouped together on the bleachers.  "Watch it," somebody
said.  "McManus is up to something.  Don't fall for that sad look.

It's a trick."  Everyone was on guard, the common expression of
disbelief already forming on sneering lips.

"Anybody heard how Bob's mom is doing?"  I asked, staring sadly down at
my shoes.  The members knew Bob was a good friend of mine and a rather
studious fellow, whose hobby, incidentally, happened to be tinkering
with explosives.

He had even set up his own highly sophisticated chemistry lab.  Nobody
messed with Bob.  Give him a playful punch and both you and he might go
up.  That at least was the myth Bob had carefully nurtured.

The members' faces began to harden with suspicion.  Finally, someone
asked, "What about Bob's mom?"

"Is she going to make it?"  I responded, as though what I was talking
about must be common knowledge.  Beginning liars should take note that
the opening I was using, now referred to among competition liars as the
"McManus Opening," consisted entirely of questions, the implication
being that my adversaries knew something I didn't.  A question can't be
a lie, but can serve much the same purpose.  "Is she going to make
it?"

I asked again.

"Make what?"

"Live, of course."

Some of the faces looked puzzled.  "Why shouldn't she live?"

"You mean you don't know about the explosion?"  I said angrily.  "You
can't barely survive an explosion like that and be up baking cookies
the next day, can you?"

Some of the faces turned solemn.  A couple registered shock.

"He's setting us up," said one of the more accomplished liars, but
there was a touch of doubt in his tone.  He couldn't quite bring
himself to believe somebody would lie about something this horrible and
tragic.  Ha!

I could feel the lie drawing them in.  It was a big lie, a magnum lie,
a powerful lie.  I had known instinctively that a small lie wouldn't be
up to the job.

"Didn't you notice Bob's house when your bus came by it this morning,
Larry?"  I asked.  "Isn't it still smoldering?"

The membership turned as one to look at Larry, the bus rider, from whom
I had requested confirmation.  What I counted on here was the fact that
Larry had absolutely no reason to notice Bob's house any morning, let
alone this one.

"Gee, I dunno," Larry said, obviously embarrassed for not being more
observant.  "I never even looked at his house."

Voices in the background: "I know McManus is lying He asked Larry,
though I don't believe ... Why would he ask Larry if ...?"

"Do you mean to tell me, Larry, you didn't even notice that Bob's house
is gone?"  I demanded.

"I'm sorry!  I'm sorry!  I wasn't paying attention!  Was Bob ...?"

Dramatic pause.  "Yes."

I took out my handkerchief and wiped my eyes, the tears a product of my
pent-up mirth, which also had strangled my voice into a pained croak.

The effect on the Liars Club was marvelous.

"So far," I croaked, "I guess they've found only a few small pieces.  A
finger here, a toe there.  Choke!  Apparently, he was holding the
explosive when ..."  I was almost too overcome by emotion to
continue.

"His ... mom ...

the ... only ... survivor," I croaked.  "Even ... his ... dog ...

Spike."

"Oh no, not Spike, too!"

"Poor old Spike.  Bob loved that dog."

"Spike" was a masterful touch, a stroke of pure genius.  Bob didn't
even have a dog, let alone one named Spike!  And the membership knew
Bob didn't have a dog!  The lie had not only taken them in but reshaped
their entire perception of reality.

"I still think he's lying," Harold said, but with no great
conviction.

"Look, there's Norm.  We can ask him.  Hey, Norm, come over here?"

Norm was another good friend of Bob's.

Norm plodded across the gym floor.

"Is it true about Bob?"  half a dozen voices asked.

"Geez," Norm said, his voice quivering.  "It seems so unreal.  I was
just talking to Bob a few hours before the explosion."

Norm is one of the finest method actors I've ever known.  That was why
I used him for the clincher, the coup de grace.  He had probably been
up all night rehearsing his part and acquiring the dark puffy circles
around his eyes.

The tragedy now confirmed, a tidal wave of grief swept over the Liars
Club.  Eyes welled with tears.  Lips trembled.

"Gee, I thought it was just another lie," Harold said.  "But it's
true.

Poor Bob."

"Just a few fingers and toes, hunh," Larry said.  "Gosh, it was only
yesterday I saw all of Bob walking through the gym on his way to-" At
that moment, the victim of the explosion sauntered through the gym on
his way to class.

Bob seemed slightly puzzled and even somewhat concerned by the
intensity of the stares directed at him, partly because I hadn't
informed him he was to play the lead in the Big Lie.  Then a great roar
of outrage exploded from the Liars Club.  Thinking he was about to be
set upon by a mob of angry and maniacal liars, Bob fled the gym,
leaving pages of homework fluttering in the air behind him.

I must say the other liars in the club did not respond graciously to my
sudden ascent to the presidency.  They were so enraged, in fact, that
they disbanded the club on the spot.  After all my effort, I got to be
president of the Liars Club for only a couple of minutes.  It was
enough though.

A Couple Pickles Shy of a Full Barrel I made two basic mistakes that
day.  The first was going fishing with Al Finley and Retch Sweeney at
the same time.  They can't stand each other, but I thought maybe a day
of fishing together in a small boat would create one of those
male-bonding things between them.  My other mistake was renting a boat
from Fizzy, owner, manager, maintenance man, and sole employee of
Fizzy's Fishing Resort, which consists of a rotting dock and a
half-dozen dilapidated shacks that Fizzy has the gall to rent as
"cabins."

"You fellas renting a cabin for the night?"  Fizzy asked as we unloaded
our gear from the rear of Al's station wagon.  "Only twenty-eight
bucks.  I throw in breakfast."  He wiped a dribble of tobacco juice off
his stubbly chin with a greasy sleeve.

"How much if you don't throw in breakfast?"  Retch asked.

"Same rate either way."

"Well what kind of a deal is that?"  Retch said.  "I think we should
get a substantial discount if we eat the breakfast."

"No cabin, Fizzy," I said.  "We're just out for the day.  All we need
is a boat.  You got one that's lakeworthy?"

"All my boats is lakeworthy," Fizzy snapped.  "The only problem I ever
have with these boats is from fellas who don't know nothin' about
boats.  Had two nincompoopers in here just last week, rented a boat and
then abandoned it at the far end of the lake.  Must have scaled that
cliff, hiked all the way back through the woods and swamp, then sneaked
their car out of the parking lot without me catchin' them.  Durn
fools!"

"Parking lot?"  Retch said.  "I didn't know you had a parking lot,
Fizzy.

How come we always have to leave our car on this pile of rocks?"

"This pile of rocks is the parking lot!  Now you want a boat or you
just gonna jaw at me all day?  I got a bidness to run."

"Really?"  Retch said.  "What is it?"

I could see that Retch was feeling more ornery than usual, and that did
not bode well for my being trapped all day in a leaky old boat with him
and Finley.  Al Finley, a banker, happens to be a fanatic about such
things as proper etiquette, tidiness, order and reason, archaic
concepts that, as Retch points out, don't even help you shoot a decent
game of pool.

"Let's take a look at the boats," Al said, walking out on the dock.

"I'm already putting my life at risk merely by going fishing with you
two bozos.  I would at least like to increase the minimal probability
of my survival by finding a boat with only a modest similarity to a
sieve."

We examined several of Fizzy's boats, rejecting one right off, for the
reason that the only evidence of its existence was a bowline tautly
disappearing into the water at the edge of the dock.  We did, however,
spend a few moments contemplating the straining bowline.

"Don't pay no attention to that boat," Fizzy said.  "I'm just soaking
it a bit to tighten up some seams.  Now right here is a good sound
boat."

"This boat?"  Retch said.  "You're callin' this boat sound, Fizzy?  Why
it's so old George Washington probably used it to cross the Delaware.

But what the heck, if it was good enough for George Washington, it's
good enough for us.  We'll take it."

"You must be mad!"  shouted Al.  "Can't you see it's leaking?  There's
no way I'm going out in that monstrosity!"

Two hours later, Retch and I had each boated a couple of nice bass.

"Can you believe that Finley?"  Retch said.  "Worried about a little
water in the bottom of the boat."

"Yeah," I said.  "I've been out here in worse boats.  Hand me the
bailing can.  The trick is not to let the leakage get ahead of you.  If
Finley had known that, he wouldn't have been so nervous."

"Would you two bozos stop talking about me as if I weren't here?"  Al
said.  "By the way, I think it's Retch's turn to row for a while."

The outboard motor had actually run for a good twenty minutes or so,
just long enough to get us up to the far end of the lake.  Then it had
died, probably of a natural cause, old age being the best bet.

"Row us a little closer to shore, Finley," Retch said.  "That looks
like some good bass water over there."

"Oh, for Pete's sake, here we are adrift in a leaky boat and you can't
think about anything other than catching fish."

"Got nothin' else to do," Retch said.  "Boy, wait until I get ahold of
that Fizzy!"

Without realizing it, I at that very moment started the horrible
contest.

"Oh, you won't do anything to Fizzy.  You know he's not quite all
there."

"Oh, I know that," Retch said.  "He's been about half a bubble off
plumb for years."

Then Al contributed: "It was quite obvious to me that his elevator
doesn't go all the way to the top floor."

He rowed us along in silence, save for the splashing of the oars.

After a bit, Retch said, "Yeah, Fizzy's got only one oar in the
water."

More thoughtful silence.  "He's not playing with a full deck."

"Enough!"  I shouted.  "Let's all simply agree that Fizzy is a little
bit off his rocker."

Retch and Al glared at each other in a manner reminiscent of old war
movies about men adrift in a lifeboat, slowly but surely going mad.

The sun beat down upon us, the oarlocks squeeked hideously, and our
voices turned hoarse from thirst, there being nothing to drink but a
lake full of water.

"Oh, all right, he's a little bit off his rocker," Retch croaked.  "But
I'd have to say Fizzy's got at least one wheel in the sand."

Al: "He's one brick short of a load!"

Retch: "He's got a bat in his belfry!"

Al laughed maniacally.  "Fizzy isn't wrapped too tight either."

Retch sat for a long while, his brow furled in thought.  "Okay, the
problem with Fizzy is that his bulb isn't screwed all the way in."

"I've never heard that one before," Al said.

"That's because I just made it up."

"Foul!  You can't just make up these insanity expressions!"

"Why not?  Somebody makes 'em up."

"Oh, so you want to play hardball, huh, Sweeney?  Okay then.  Let me
see.

Hmmmm.  I got one.  His dipstick shows a quart low."

"His dipstick?  You're the dipstick, Finley.  That doesn't make any
sense."

"What does sense have to do with this?  Your turn."

"Stop!"  I cried.  "I can't take any more of this!"

"We're not stopping on my turn," Retch growled.  "Let's see.  Hmmmm."

I lay back with my head on the bowline and tried to block out the
insane insanity contest.  Then I must have dozed off, for how long I'm
not sure.

Suddenly, I once again became aware of the angry, rasping voices of Al
and Retch.

Al: "His glue never quite set up."

Retch: "He's one bean short of a full can."

Al: "His anchor doesn't go all the way to the bottom."

Retch: "He needs an adjustment on his vertical hold."

Al: "His spin dry is one sock out of balance."

Retch: "The tail's too short for his kite."

Al: "His boat's leaking faster than we can bail."

Retch: "His fuse don't go all the way to the powder."

Al: "I said, THIS BOAT'S LEAKING FASTER THAN WE CAN BAIL, YOU FOOL!

WERE GOING TO SINK!"

Nothing so stimulates alertness in a boater as the cry, "We're going to
sink!"  I responded in the traditional manner, which could easily be
mistaken by an uninformed observer as a frenzy of bailing.  It was
several seconds before I realized I wasn't holding the bailing can,
which had been snatched from me by Retch.  Al was on his knees bailing
with cupped hands, and I joined in with my own cupped hands.  Pausing a
moment to make a calm and logical assessment of our situation,
including the standard comparison of one's endurance as a swimmer with
the distance to the nearest shore, I noticed that the water in the boat
showed distinct signs of current.  I suspected that something basic had
given way somewhere in the aft region of the rickety craft, a suspicion
confirmed by the fact that but a few moments later the three of us were
sitting in a boat submerged up to its gunnels.  There was nothing to do
but go over the side and, grasping the gunnels, kick-stroke our way to
shore.  As we paused to take a breather, Finley propped both of his
elbows up on the gunnels and gasped, "Well, this fishing trip with you
two bozos is turning out better than I expected.  At least I'm still
alive."

"Don't blame us," Retch said.  "It's Fizzy's fault.  I always knew he
was about half a twist off tight."

"That insight hardly qualifies you as perspicacious," Al responded.

"Any fool could see he was one egg short of an omelet."

"Oh yeah?  Well, I would have to say that Fizzy is-!"

I judged the swimming distance to the nearest shore now to be about
half a mile or twice my best swimming distance in recent years.  Only a
desperate person would even consider taking such a risk.  I started off
with a backstroke.

After I had scaled the cliff and was slogging my way through the swamp
back to Fizzy's, it suddenly struck me: Al and Retch were both a couple
pickles shy of a full barrel.

Excuse Me, While I Get Out of the Way My cousin Buck was a natural-born
leader, and it was from him I first learned about the essential
character of leaders, no matter how they are born.

High-powered executives like to roar: "Either lead, follow, or get out
of the way."  I have Buck to thank for my becoming one of the people
who get out of the way.

Buck early on displayed two of the most common qualifications for
leadership, those being that he was tall and had nice hair.

Furthermore, he was burdened with only minimal intelligence, which left
him free to act without the usual restraints provoked by thought.  And,
finally, he possessed charisma, that peculiar trait of personality so
magnetic it draws a leader's followers happily after him into the most
desperate and stupid of predicaments, for which favor he earns their
undying gratitude and devotion.

Indeed, many a leader has won glory for heroic acts in situations that,
except for his unrelenting arrogance and stupidity, would never have
occurred in the first place.  I will name no names, except that of
Buck, who was just such a fine and heroic leader.

Although Buck's exploits as a leader still abound in my memory, I will
select only one for the purpose of illustration, namely the expedition
into Big Fish Lake, a tiny oval of blue we discovered on a map.  We
naturally supposed that the name meant there were big fish in the
lake.

"No doubt about it, that lake has got some huge fish in it," Buck said
as he and I perused a map.  "Otherwise, the guys who made this map
would never have named it Big Fish Lake."

"You must be right, Buck," I said.  "By the way, did you notice that
right over here on the other side of Lookout Peak is a smaller lake
called Little Fish Lake?"

"Well, we sure as heck don't want to hike into that one."

The expeditionary force consisted of five of us: Billy, Lester, Jake,
and me, all in our early teens, and, of course, Buck, in his later
teens.  During our planning session, Buck explained that we needed to
pack only modest provisions.  "There'll be plenty of big fish for us to
eat, men, plenty of big fish."

Because the lake was far back in mountains previously untrekked by us,
I surreptitiously slipped the map and a compass into my pack, hoping
not to be found out by Buck, who was of the opinion that such
navigational aids were only for sissies.  He liked to say the only map
and compass he needed were in his head, and I supposed they were.  They
would not have been crowded in there, either, but could have stretched
out and made themselves comfortable.

Still, Buck's map may have been better than the one I packed, which was
so deceptive in its untopographical simplicity it could show two points
on a trail an inch apart and hide the Matterhorn in between them.  As
for providing useful information about terrain to be crossed, that map
was about as closed-mouthed as any I've ever seen.  It slyly failed to
mention swamps and mountains and cliffs and canyons and raging streams
and numerous other unpleasant surprises.  The map exhibited such
homicidal tendencies that I was almost afraid to turn my back on it.

But at least it was a map.

As was the common practice on our expeditions, Buck immediately assumed
the position of leader, without the distraction of a vote by the
membership.

None of the rest of us qualified as a leader anyway, and for obvious
reasons.

Billy was too short, Lester didn't have good hair, Jake had excessive
intelligence, and I wore glasses.  The wearing of glasses in and of
itself deprived a person of even the hope of becoming a leader.

The expedition set out early one morning along a well-maintained Forest
Service trail that paralleled a sparkling stream flowing out of a
narrow valley that extended back into the mountains.  After an hour or
so of easy hiking, Buck stopped and put his hands on his hips, always a
bad sign, because it indicated he was attempting thought.

"This trail is getting us nowhere," he said, addressing us troops.  "I
don't know what the Forest Service could have been thinking when they
built this trail.  It obviously takes the long way around.  We can save
a half-day of hiking by cutting off through the woods here and climbing
up that ridge to the mountaintop."

I stared into the thick tangle of brush and trees between us and the
ridge.  "But, Buck, maybe there's a swamp or something out there.  That
could be why the Forest Service didn't build the trail off that way."

"If there's a swamp out there, I'll eat my hat," Buck said.  "Swamps
just don't happen at this elevation."

"I didn't know that," I said.

"Of course you didn't," Buck said.  "Anybody who wears glasses
wouldn't.

Now shut up and follow me."

We followed Buck off the trail and into the woods.  It was tough going,
and we soon got separated.  Clouds of deerflies swarmed about us, but
were soon driven off by mosquitoes.  My feet started getting wet.  Then
slimy mud began lapping my boot tops.

"We're in a swamp, Buck!"  I yelled.

A dark, swirling column of mosquitoes just ahead of me yelled back,
"This ain't no swamp!"

"I thought it was."

"No, it ain't."

Murky green water rose to my waist.  Tattered curtains of moss billowed
out from the limbs of silvery dead trees.

"It sure looks and feels and smells like a swamp, Buck."

"Well, it ain't.  This ain't nothin' like a swamp.  Now, everybody come
over here.  I just found an island."

Billy, Jake, and I struggled over to the island and climbed up beside
Buck.  While we ate sandwiches and sipped from our canteens, Buck took
the opportunity to identify various birdcalls for us.  The calls were
from birds none of us had ever heard of before, so the lesson was very
educational.  One call sounded kind of sad and eerie, a strange,
haunting cry that seemed to hang in the air.

"That's your little Brown-headed Pine Bird," Buck said.  "You can tell
by the way it sort of trills off at the end.  You can't mistake it."

"I don't think so," I said.

"You don't?  Well, just what kind of bird do you think it is then,
smarty?"

"I think it's Lester," I said.  "He always trills off at the end like
that."

And sure enough it was Lester.  He emerged from a cloud of mosquitoes
long enough to see us and then came bounding through the water toward
our little island.

"Oh, am I ever glad to find you guys!"  he gasped, "I thought I would
be lost in this swamp forever!"

"This ain't no swamp!"  Buck snapped.  "Boy, are you guys ever lucky to
have me here to lead you.  Otherwise, you'd have no idea where you
are."

"So where are we, Buck?"  Jake asked.

"Where are we?  Ha!  That's just the sort of dumb question I'd expect
from you, Jake.  I'll tell you where we are.  We're here on this little
island!  Any fool could see that."

"But where is 'here'?"  Billy said, looking around the watery area that
appeared very much like a swamp but wasn't.

"I could show you where here is if we had a map, but we don't," Buck
snapped.  "The only map we have is the one in my head."

"I have a map," I said.

"You sissy!"  Buck said.  "Well, since you have a map, hand it over,
and I'll show you all where we are."

I handed Buck the map, and he spread it out on the ground.  He studied
it a while, his brow puckered from concentration.  "All right, Jake,
here's a little test for you.  I bet you can't pick out the spot on
this map where we are."

Jake looked over Buck's shoulder.  "We have to be right here," Jake
said, placing his finger on the map.

"I'll be clanged!"  Buck said.  "You guessed the very spot.  Yep,
that's exactly where we are.  As you can see, we are only about six
inches east of Lookout Peak.  We should be able to cover a measly six
inches before nightfall."

"But we're west of Lookout Peak," Jake said.

"East, west, whatever," Buck said.  "Don't try to confuse me with
meaningless details.  Follow me, men!"

"Yea, Buck!"  we cheered.

We reached high ground an hour later and started the climb up the
ridge.

But the ridge didn't go up in a gradual incline toward the peak, as one
would expect of any decent ridge.  It moseyed upwards for a ways,
raising false hopes in us, and then dropped off into a deep ravine,
which we had to climb down into and then back out of--a half hour of
treacherous climbing, and we hadn't gained a foot of altitude.  The
ridge found this little trick so amusing, it repeated it a dozen times
before we reached the peak.

During one of our rest stops, Buck guzzled deeply from his canteen.

"Might as well drink up, men.  There's gotta be an icy spring up near
the top of the mountain where the guy that mans the fire lookout tower
gets his water.

They always put lookout towers on the only peak around that's near
water."  So we all guzzled deeply from our canteens, and then, laughing
heartily, we dumped the remainder of our water over our sweating
heads.

"Yea, Buck!"

When we reached the peak, I couldn't see the lookout tower anywhere.

"Where's the lookout tower, Buck?"

"How should I know?  It's got to be here someplace.  Why would they
hide a lookout tower?"

"I see a lookout on that peak way over there," Billy said.  "Strange
that they would put two lookout towers so close together.  Why would
they do that, Buck?  Buck?"

Instantly, our lips dried and cracked, and our tongues swelled up.

Jake and Lester fell on the ground, clutching their parched throats.

Even though I had drunk practically a quart of water a mere hour
before, I instantly became so crazed from thirst I tried to hit Buck
alongside the head with a big rock.

Fortunately, we had plenty of food with us, all of it dehydrated.  For
supper that night, we each ate a package of dry chicken noodle soup.

It didn't taste too bad.  As Buck said at the time, picking his teeth
with a noodle, "Gloff mugghh gluddh minph!"

Early the next morning, we sprinted three thousand feet back down the
mountain, tumbling over the occasional cliff in the dark, until at last
Buck found a trickle of water dribbling from a crack in the rocks and
forming a little puddle.  In later life, I would pay as much as eight
dollars for a drink in a tall frosty glass with a little umbrella and a
garnish of orange slice and cherries.  But never have I had a drink at
any price that half measured up to the mossy, muddy water I slurped
from that puddle.  If I could find the puddle again, I'd bottle the
water--nay, that elixir--and make my fortune.

Buck's finding the water aroused in us such gratitude and adulation
that we'd have built a monument to him on the spot, except we were too
bruised and battered from our wild scramble down the mountain.  "We
will never forget this, Buck," we croaked.  "You've saved us once
again.  Yea, Buck!"

I will mention only a few further horrors encountered on our trek to
Big Fish Lake, because I do not wish to be reminded of them more than
necessary.

Fortunately, a short time after Billy went temporarily mad, we
intersected the very same trail we had started out on.  We knew it was
the same trail, because of the little signs the Forest Service
thoughtfully had put up at intervals along its broad expanse to guide
adventurers like ourselves.

"Just as I figured," Buck croaked.  "I knew if we headed due north,
we'd have to cut the old trail."

"Due west,"Jake choked out.

"Whatever."

"Yea, Buck," we gasped.

"Now," Buck said, "let me check that map of yours again, four-eyes.

Ah, yes, just as I suspected.  There's only an inch or two between us
and Big Fish Lake, provided we leave the trail and take a shortcut due
east.  What do you think of that?"

"Yea, Buck."

The Matterhorn, it turned out, was every bit as high and treacherous as
it appeared in the movies.  It did slow us down considerably, mostly
because we had to substitute fingernails for ice axes and pitons.

Halfway up the north face, Jake fell.  Perhaps distracted by the raging
storm, he hadn't driven his fingernails far enough into the granite.

Even to this day I can still hear his long, shrill, warbling scream as
it diminished into the dark silences of cold and empty space.

"I wish you wouldn't scream like that," I told him.  "It gets on my
nerves, particularly with all this cold and empty space down below."

Obviously embarrassed, Jake became defensive.  "So how was I to know it
was only a two-foot drop?"

At long last we found ourselves camped on Big Fish Lake, but too tired
to try a single cast.  The only thing I remember about that night is
that just before I drifted off, I noticed that Lester's hair had turned
white.  Maybe it was from the strain of our journey, or perhaps even
the deep shame he felt for suggesting earlier that day that if we
didn't find Big Fish Lake soon we might have to eat Billy.

The next morning we discovered that any fly whatsoever flicked out on
the lake would instantly be gobbled up by a fish.  It was some of the
fastest fishing I've ever experienced.  We also discovered that the
lake had been misnamed.  The fish certainly weren't what anyone would
call huge or big, or even average--or even small, for that matter.  I
personally ate twenty-seven of them for breakfast that morning and
scarcely took the edge off my appetite.

When the time came for us to head off down the trail toward home, Buck
shouted, "Follow me, men!  I'm going to lead you down a new shortcut
I've figured out!  Hup two three four, hup two."

He glanced in my direction.  "And what do you think you're doing,
four-eyes?"

"Don't mind me, Buck," I said.  "I'm just getting out of the way."

The Two Masked Raiders One Halloween a few years ago I was watching the
TV news in a hotel room in a large American city.  The newscaster
reported that all the restaurants on the top floors of skyscrapers in
the city had been sold out, because the diners enjoyed watching the
flames spouting up from buildings that had been set afire by Halloween
pranksters.  I suppose it was something like watching a Fourth of July
fireworks display, with the diners clapping their hands and exclaiming,
"Oooooh!  Look at that one!  I liked that one best!"  There were
several shots of buildings that had just been ignited, and I studied
them with considerable interest, hoping not to recognize my own hotel. 
Later I learned that the immolated buildings were empty, at least as
far as anyone knew, but one can't be too careful in large cities
nowadays.

Wanton destruction as a form of entertainment seemed to me a bit
excessive, and I was about to indulge myself in a fit of righteous
indignation, when suddenly I recalled the Two Masked Raiders, who
terrified our little farming community every Halloween during several
years of my early youth.

The identity of the two Masked Raiders has remained secret all this
time, but, under the assumption that the statute of limitations has run
out on those Halloween pranks, I now for the first time reveal the
raiders' true identities: a smart, bossy kid named Vern and his
sidekick, a handsome lad who bore a striking resemblance to myself.

Although the Two Masked Raiders operated over a period of only a few
Halloweens, they left an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of
their neighbors.  Even now, when I visit the place of my youth,
old-timers will mention the Two Masked Raiders to me.  "You probably
don't recall, Pat, but every Halloween for years and years the Two
Musked Raiders would hit our homes.  It was horrible."

"Masked Raiders," I corrected.

"Their calling card said 'Musked."" "I suspect their penmanship wasn't
all that good."

"If you say so.  And nobody ever found out their true identities."

"Nope.  Never did," I said.  "They must have been terribly clever,
those Two Masked Raiders."

"If you say so, Pat."

Riding home on the school bus several days before Halloween, or "Hell
Night," as our neighbors referred to it, Vern and I selected our
targets.

"Look over there," Vern whispered.  "We can hit the Millfords' house by
going over their back fence, crawling across their garden, and making a
dash across that open area to the chicken house.  Then we can strike
from behind their woodpile and be gone before they know what's
happened."

"Or we could walk up their driveway," I said.

"No, no, you idiot, we can't just walk up their driveway!  You don't
launch an attack like that.  It isn't right.  You have to sneak."

"Okay."

A full week before Halloween, fear began to tighten its grip on the
neighbors.  We could sense it.  We knew that every farmer along the
highway was asking himself the question: c'Will I once again fall
victim to an attack by the Two Masked Raiders?"  The answer was: Yes!

The Two Masked Raiders spared not the old, the poor or even the infirm,
although quite often they spared the really fast and mean.

By the time Halloween finally arrived, the neighbors were wild with
terror, but there was nothing they could do but wait helplessly for the
onslaught that would come quickly and silently out of the dark of
night.

Still, they tried not to show the fear that gnawed at their very
innards.

They went about their routine chores of milking the cows and slopping
the hogs, just as if they expected life after Halloween.  But this
outward show of serenity did not fool the Two Masked Raiders one bit.

We could hardly contain our glee over the wave of terror we had sent
rolling over the land.

Occasionally, we would meet a neighbor in a store shortly before
Halloween, and the subject of the Masked Raiders would come up.

"Hello, boys.  I see it's about time for Halloween.  I suppose the Two
Masked Raiders will strike again.  You boys got any idea who they might
be?"

"No, ma'am.  Nobody knows their true identities.  Could be about
anybody, but we figure they're a couple of the big kids."

"You're probably right.  Well, my mister would sure like to get his
hands on 'em, what they did to our place last year."

"Yeah, that was pretty awful.  I mean, whatever the Two Masked Raiders
did, it must have been pretty awful."

"Oh, it was!  If you boys find out who the Two Masked Raiders are, you
tell my mister.  He'll take care of them, you bet your boots."

"Yes, ma'am."

You probably can't even imagine how thrilling it was to hear someone
talk to us about the Two Masked Raiders, with that person having not so
much as a clue that the ten-year-old boys being addressed were none
other than the Two Masked Raiders themselves.

It is time at last to reveal exactly why the Two Masked Raiders were
considered such a menace.  They would streak silently out of the dark
and--I realize this is shocking but it must be told for its historical
significance--put little squiggles of dreaded soap on a window,
sometimes even two!  Then they would vanish into the night, cackling
fiendishly over the havoc left behind.

Our first year out, we settled for a few meaningless squiggles.  The
next year, when we became the Two Masked Raiders, Vern boosted me up to
a high window of the Hoffsteaders' house, a window someone wasn't
likely to be peering out of, and hissed at me, "Don't do just a
squiggle.  Write our signature!"

"You think that's such a good idea?"  I whispered back.

"Yes!"

I scribbled on the window as quickly as I could and dropped to the
ground.  We stepped back to study the signature.

Vern sighed in exasperation.  "Not 'Pat and Vern,' you idiot!  You were
supposed to write 'The Two Masked Raiders!'" This time I boosted Vern
up, and he scribbled over our names and wrote in the signature.  We
stepped back to admire it.

"You wrote 'The Two Musked Raiders,'" I pointed out.

"Yeah, my penmanship ain't that good."

One Halloween was especially eventful.  We had heard that there was a
long and honorable tradition of tipping over outhouses as a Halloween
prank, but indoor plumbing had made a serious encroachment in our part
of the county, until only one outhouse remained, the Crankshafts'.

Vern and I decided we had better take advantage of this opportunity
while it still existed.  Mr. Crankshaft was a huge logger, and we knew
that he would have no trouble righting his privy all by himself.  We
crept up to the outhouse and gave it a big shove.  It scarcely moved.

We put our shoulders against the weathered boards and managed to rock
the shack back and forth a little, but not enough to topple it.  The
privy was a lot heavier than it looked.

"I know what," Vern said.  "What we need is a pry pole and a block of
wood.  We can slip the pry pole under the floor and pry it over.  Do
you see a pole anywhere?"

"There's one over by the barn," the privy said, in a deep gruff voice
not unlike that of Mr. Crankshaft.  "If you're the Two Masked Raiders,
give me a minute, and I'll help you find the pole.  just stop rocking
the dang privy."

The Two Masked Raiders vanished into the night.

A short while later, they were crawling on their bellies through a
clover field, approaching the Rambo house.  The clover wasn't tall
enough to give them much cover, maybe an inch or two higher than their
shoulder blades.  Just as they got within striking distance, Nick Rambo
burst out onto the front porch carrying a shotgun and a huge
flashlight.  His wife was peering out around him.

"Stand back, Judy," Mr. Rambo said.  "I think the Two Masked Raiders
are out there someplace."

"Are you going to shoot them, Nick?"

"Only if I see them."

The beam of the flashlight swept across the raiders, whose hair now
stood several inches above the clover.  Traitorous hair!  Back and
forth went the beam.  The raiders heard the ugly sound of a shell being
jacked into the chamber of the shotgun.

"What makes you think the Two Masked Raiders are out there, Nick?"

Mrs.  Rambo asked in a shrill, nervous voice.

"I can smell them," he said.

That was a distinct possibility and one I won't elaborate on, except to
say that Nick Rambo was famous for his keen sense of smell.  After
shining the beam back and forth over our treacherous hair a few dozen
times, Mr.  Rambo and his wife went back in the house.

"I'm getting too old for these raids," Vern muttered, as we shuffled
off toward home.

"Me too," I said.  Nick Rambo had just aged me ten years.  Even worse,
though: We suspected folks of actually growing fond of the Two Masked
Raiders!

Made us pretty darn mad, too.

Mosquito Bay My four daughters stopped by the other day, trailed by a
riotous band of my grandchildren.  I make a practice to count the kids
when they arrive for a visit and again when they leave, just to make
sure none has been left behind.

It's a simple precaution one learns after a few years of
grandparenthood.

When one starts to settle down in the evening with one's newspaper, one
likes to avoid the shock of finding a stray grandkid hiding under it.

"Hi, Grampa!"  the kids chorused, coming in and throwing their coats on
the floor.

"Hi, guys," I said, doing my impression of a jolly old elf.  "Ho ho
ho!

I was hoping you would come over, because we can play a game."

"Oh, wow!  What is it?"

"It's called 'Don't Touch Any of Grampa's Stuff."  Doesn't that sound
like fun?  Here's how it's played.  The first guy I catch touching
Grampa's stuff is Out.  Now, what does 'Out' mean?  Your cousin Bernard
could explain that better than I, although-" "But, Grampa, we don't
have a cousin Bernard!"

"Not anymore.  You see, I walked into my den, and there was Bernard
swatting flies with my split-bamboo fly rod, and-" "How come you didn't
want him swatting flies?"

"A very good question, Daniel.  You see, it wasn't the flies I was
concerned about, which is one of the reasons for my inventing the game
'Don't Touch Any of Grampa's Stuff."  So what happened, Bernard tried
to-" "Enough about Bernard!"  shouted my wife, Bun.  "There was never a
Bernard, kids.  No Bernard."

"I thought there was," I said.

"Nope, no Bernard.  Now, kids, you mustn't believe everything your
grampa tells you.  He has a tendency to rearrange reality."

After Bun left the room, I asked the kids if they understood what
Grandma meant by the phrase "rearrange reality."

"No," they said.

"Good," I said.  "So Bernard told me he didn't know he wasn't supposed
to play with my three-piece fly rod, and I told him that no he wasn't,
because it was supposed to be only a two-piece fly rod.  Then Bernard
opened my big tackle box, and something came out and ate him.  Does
everyone understand what is meant by the phrase 'ate him'?  It means
Bernard was Out."

During dinner my daughters got to reminiscing and laughing about some
of the wonderful times we had when they were young girls.

"Do you remember the camping trip at Mosquito Bay?"  Bun asked them.

"Do we remember Mosquito Bay!"  the girls shouted.  "Do we ever!"

I wasn't at all surprised that they remembered that particular camping
trip, because it was one of our more exciting adventures together,
quite wonderful really, what you might call the perfect camping trip.

Mosquito Bay is now an asphalted, fireplaced, restroomed, and
garbage-Dumpstered campground, but back then it consisted only of a
silver of sandy beach embraced by dense forest.  It could be reached
only by boat or through the mountains by what the Forest Service maps
depicted as a dotted line.

Actually, the dotted line wasn't all that bad, and I managed to pilot
our big old station wagon over it without any major difficulty, largely
because I had grown up driving on dotted lines and had managed to
develop the necessary skills.

"Oh, that road into Mosquito Bay!"  exclaimed my daughter Kelly.  "I
wouldn't have been so scared if Dad hadn't been so frenzied.  When he
ripped off the muffler on those rocks, that was the first time I ever
knew there were so many bad words."

Clearly, Kelly was remembering some other road on some other camping
trip with someone else's father.  Muffler indeed!  Anyway, we unloaded
the station wagon, and I quickly and efficiently erected our
interior-frame umbrella tent, one of those with the weird contraption
known as the "spider," and rightly so.

As soon as the tent was ...

"Yeah," said Peggy.  "That's the time Dad got tangled up inside the
tent and screamed out, 'Help!  The spider's got me by the throat!"  And
we all thought he meant a real spider and took off running for our
lives!"

The girls all found this recollection highly amusing, I less so.  As I
say, I quickly erected the tent, but when I emerged, everyone had
vanished, except for Bun, who was standing behind a tree with a club in
hand.  Once we had collected the girls from the surrounding forests, I
built a fire and cooked a hearty supper, after which ...

"Oh, I remember the fire Dad built that night," Peggy said.  "We could
have cooked supper just over the matches he used up trying to get it
started.

Then he poured his 'secret fire starter' on it.  Whew!  What a fire!"

"I remember that!"  cried Shannon.  "Wasn't he smoking at the time?"

"Yeah, he was," said Peggy.  "We thought for a moment he was going to
burst into flames, but he just smoked."

I myself vaguely recall that it was a rather large fire, a bit
inconvenient for cooking, but nevertheless adequate for me to prepare a
five-course meal.

"I was pretty little at the time," Erin said.  "But I can still see him
trying to cook eight wieners on the end of a long branch.  It looked
like he was using a spear to fight a fire-breathing dragon."

"We did have a four-course meal that night anyway," Shannon
contributed.

"Charred wieners, greasy buns, cold pork 'n' beans, and ash of
marshmallow."

Five-course meal.  I count pork 'n' beans as two courses, as does any
serious camp chef.  After this sumptuous feast, we turned in, and just
in time too, because soon we began to hear the patter of rain on the
tent roof.  There are few sounds I enjoy more than the patter of rain
on taut canvas.  Now that I think of it, I really should write a book
on the rearing of children in the Great Outdoors.  Early on in
parenthood, I noticed that my children had a tendency to pay entirely
too much attention to any minor detail that caused them the slightest
discomfort and as a result they missed out on the enjoyment of the
situation as a whole.  At the Mosquito Bay camp, for instance, they
began to complain about a trifle bit of dampness in the tent, and I
explained to them that they should learn to ignore such details.  After
which, I told them a pleasant little bedtime story until they drifted
off to sleep.

"Was it the first night the bear came and scared the bejeebers out of
Dad?"

No, that was the next night.  The first night an awful storm came up
and blew down the tent, because Dad didn't have the tent poles
connected to the spider the right way.  The water was running through
the collapsed tent like a river, and we were floating about on our air
mattresses.  What was it that Dad said?"

"Oh, it was his favorite saying in those days, whenever we complained
about some awful catastrophe: 'Details!  Details!  Now shut up and go
to sleep!'" I believe it was on the second night of the camping trip
that I detected the distinct sounds of a bear rummaging about outside
the tent.  I immediately got up and went outside to shoo the bear away,
only to discover that the bear was approximately the size of a Buick.

It was, in fact, the largest bear I had ever seen.  I stood there for a
minute or so, calmly studying the magnificent creature.  Then, speaking
firmly, to show I meant business, but not so loud as to startle him, I
ordered the bear out of camp.

"It was Mom who first heard the bear," Kelly recalled.  "I heard her
tell Dad it was a bear."

"That's right," Shannon said.  "And Dad said, 'It's just a chipmunk.

Go back to sleep."  Then Mom said, 'That chipmunk just ripped the lid
if the camp cooler."  And Dad said, 'Okay, okay, I'll go outside and
run him off."

So he lifts the door flap and looks out and jumps about three feet in
the air.

'Quick.!"  he yells.  'Everybody into the station wagon!'" "I thought I
ordered the bear out of camp," I said.

"No," Bun said.  "You ordered us into the station wagon."

"Maybe then I ordered the bear out of camp, after everybody was
safe."

"No, then you got into the station wagon, too."

"Who ordered the bear out of camp?"

"Nobody.  I think he spent the night in our tent, eating potato chips
and reading comic books."

"Well, there you go," I said.  "It is not a good idea to share a tent
with a bear that is eating potato chips and reading comic books."

From the psychological standpoint, I find it interesting how the
imaginations of young children, and even of a wife who at the time was
scarcely out of her twenties, could distort the simple events of a
camping trip so as to be beyond recognition.  Even more striking, they
retain these distortions into adulthood, or, in Bun's case, into
grandmotherhood, and seem to regard them as factual.  The horrors they
reported were so far from the truth that I had no choice but to put
them to the test.  Surely, the girls would not wish to encounter such
terrors and hardships ever again, if they had experienced them in the
first place.

"For the sake of the children," I said, "whose big ears have been
absorbing your fanciful tale, I offer this test.  I am planning a
camping trip into the headwaters of Blizzard Creek, which can be
reached only by driving thirty miles on a dotted line.  Who would like
to go with me?"

Instantly, four daughters raised their hands.

"Very good," I said.  "Now whose version of the Mosquito Bay camping
trip is true?"

"Yours?"  they said in unison.

"Right."

After the daughters and grandchildren had piled into their cars and
headed down the driveway, I couldn't help but chuckle.  I may be
getting old, but my memory is still pretty darn accurate, and it would
be just as accurate after the trip into the headwaters of Blizzard
Creek.  Opening a closet, I started rummaging around for a map and
...

"Hi, Grampa."

Okay, so I don't count as well as I used to.

My Hike with, ahem, the President When Retch Sweeney and I came in from
perch fishing one day a couple of years ago, we noticed my wife, Bun,
hopping up and down on the porch.  "Guess what!"  she shouted.  "You've
been invited on a hike with President Bush!"

"You want these perch?"  I asked Retch.

"No way, man," he said.  "You keep 'em."

"You've been invited on a hike with President Bush!"  Bun screamed.

We tied up the boat and started walking up to the house.  "You lazy
bum," I said to Retch.  "You just don't want to spend the night
fileting a mess of perch.  No doubt you'll show up for breakfast
tomorrow to help eat them, though."

"You guessed it," he said.

"Don't you understand what I'm telling you?"  Bun screeched.  "You've
been invited on a hike with the president!"

"See you at breakfast," Retch said, glancing at the hopping Bun.

"Might be a good idea to lock up all the sharp objects in the house
tonight."  He got in his car and drove off.

Bun grabbed me by my shirtfront and shook me.  "Will you listen to what
I'm saying!  You've been invited-" "I heard, I heard," I said.  "So
what's the joke?"

"No joke!  You've been invited on a hike with the president.  It says
so right here in this letter from the White House."

I reacted to this bit of news with my usual calm demeanor, despite the
distraction of Bun's repeatedly knocking me over with a feather.

"When's the hike?"  I asked.

"You have to leave tomorrow morning for Bakersfield."

"I'm hiking with the president through Bakersfield?"

"No, dummy, you're hiking through Sequoia National Forest, but you
first have to get to Bakersfield, where you'll be driven up to
rendezvous with the president."

"But why me?"  I asked.

"Who knows.  It's probably a mistake of some kind, but you had better
take advantage of it.  Not everybody gets invited on a hike with the
president."

Mistake my eye.  Slowly, I began to perceive the logic of it all.

George Bush is an outdoorsman.  I'm an outdoorsman.  It made sense.

On my way to the airport the next morning, I stopped by Bob's Chevron
station, the major social center in our little town.

"Been doing any fishing?"  Bob asked me.

"I'm going on a hike with, the president of the United States," I
said.

"Oh, I've been out a few times," Bob said.  "Caught some dandies off
Indian Point."

"I'll be hiking with George Bush," I said.

Russell came in from the garage wiping the grease off his hands with a
rag.  "Hey, that's interesting!"  he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Yeah," Russell said.  "I was fishing off Indian Point last night and
didn't get so much as a bite.  What were you using, Bob?"

I tried to tell Ernie Beckman about my hike with the president, but he
sped off on his motorcycle before I could get to him.

On my flight to Bakersfield, I casually mentioned to the flight
attendant that I was on my way to hike with the president of the United
States.  "That's nice," she said.  "Would you care for the Knot of
Chicken or the Minuscule of Beef?"

It began to dawn on me that I didn't project the image of someone who
would be hiking with the president of the United States of America.  I
panicked.  Maybe it was all a mistake.  Or worse yet, maybe it wasn't a
mistake!  Maybe I was expected to guide the president through Sequoia
National Forest!  It was entirely possible that the Secret Service's
background check on me had overlooked the fact that I have no sense of
direction and can't step ten feet into the woods without getting
lost.

Sure, it's a special talent, but perhaps not one the president would
fully appreciate.  I imagined a scene that chilled my Bonemarrow: The
president and I are walking down a trail.

"Look, Mr.  President, huckleberries!"  I point out.

"I love huckleberries," the president says.  "Gosh, it's been years
since I've picked huckleberries.  Let's get some."

The Secret Service agents grunt sounds of alarm.

"Oh, for heaven sakes," the president tells them.  "Pat can guide me
over to the huckleberries.  They're only ten feet off the trail."

As midnight approaches, President Bush, two Secret Service agents, and
I are probing our way through the darkened forest.  An owl hoots above
us.  A large animal crashes off through the brush.  "So, maybe moss
doesn't always grow on the north side of trees," I say.  "Anybody got
another suggestion?"

Much to my disappointment, I discovered at the hotel that I wasn't to
have President Bush all to myself.  Four other writers had been invited
along on the special hike, but they were all real Journalists.  Among
them was my friend Michael Hodgson.  Michael is even more adept at
getting lost in the woods than I. It occurred to me that maybe
presidential candidate Bill Clinton had something to do with putting
the little group together.  Between Michael and me, we might get the
president so lost he would never be found.  Talk about dirty
politics!

Early the next morning we were driven to Sequoia National Forest and
directed down a trail on which had been set up a magnetometer, one of
those devices to detect metal you have to walk through at airports.

just as at airports, there was a table alongside the magnetometer,
where Secret Service agents examined any bags or parcels.  Bun had
bought me a little belt pack for carrying my camera and film.  The
pack, unfortunately, had three zippers, one concealed.  The agent could
feel the film inside the pack but couldn't figure out how to get to
it.

He became increasingly exasperated with it and me.

"And you're protecting the president?"  I laughed, only to discover
that Secret Service agents have absolutely no sense of humor.

(Actually, it wasn't until I got home that I said that, because I'd
already discovered Secret Service agents have no sense of humor.) The
delay at the magnetometer was sufficient for me to get lost.  A herd of
the White House Press Corps had just thundered down the trail into the
woods, and I followed aimlessly along behind, not wishing to get too
close, for fear that I might get trampled or gored.  Pretty soon I was
lost.  I hadn't realized that my little group had been led off on a
different trail to meet the president for the special hike.

As I was performing the Modified Stationary Panic--my standard practice
in such situations--an aide to the president found me, and we raced up
and down several hills until I was once again united with my group.  I
explained that by deliberately getting lost I was merely trying to lend
a bit of authenticity to the outing, which otherwise seemed to have
acquired an aura of artificiality, as hikes go, possibly because there
was a Secret Service agent behind every tree.  Some of the trees were
Secret Service agents.

At last the president arrived.  I was a bit surprised to see that he
looked exactly as he does on TV, only a good deal more relaxed and
happier.

We five writers had our pictures taken with him, which was why most of
us were there in the first place, if the truth be known.  Obviously,
the president of the United States was not about to reveal any major
new policies to a little bunch of environmental writers and me out in
the middle of the woods, no matter how impressive the woods.

It soon became apparent that the president hadn't invited me along as a
guide, which was something of a relief.  He struck off on his own at a
brisk pace, seemingly unaware of steep grades, on which I thought it
best to pause from time to time to check on the Secret Service agents
and make sure they were all attentive.  Satisfied that they were doing
their work properly, I moseyed on up the hill, checking for any
wildlife that might pose a threat.

Speaking of wildlife, I was beginning to think that all of it,
including insects, had been removed from the park in preparation for
the presidential hike.  I never saw so much as an ant or a mosquito all
morning.  At one point, however, I was pleased to see a pair of ruffled
grouse roar off from directly behind the president.  He didn't seem to
notice but the Secret Service agents all reached under their jackets,
even as they jumped about a foot in the air.

I almost burst out laughing, but restrained myself.  As I say, the
Secret Service agents have no sense of humor.

Eventually, the president slowed up and sat down on a log.  We writers
gathered around and had a nice chat with him for about thirty
minutes.

Several of the real journalists asked serious environmental questions,
which the president casually swatted down as if they were annoying
flies.  I myself feel strongly that the environment is definitely
worthwhile, but endless harping about it does get tedious.  So I
decided to ask the president a dumb question about his hunting and
fishing.  George Bush the outdoorsman suddenly surfaced, and he started
talking enthusiastically about a fishing trip the day before: "As a
matter of fact--I know this will interest you--I caught a keeper of a
striped bass out in the ocean.  Guys who have fished there all their
lives, two of them, told me they never heard of that before, right
where we go anyway.  Thirty-seven inches long!  I let her go, because
we're trying to build that fishery back."

I've listened to thousands of such fish stories.  "What!"  I
exclaimed.

"Thirty-seven inches long!  No way!  You trying to kid me, George?"  (I
didn't really say that.  I just put it in to see if my editor is paying
attention.) George Bush would make one heck of a fishing partner, I can
tell you that, probably as good or better than my buddy Retch Sweeney. 
George would stay and help you filet the perch, too, he's that kind of
guy.  I was hoping we might spend a little more time together, and he
would get to know me and like me, and we'd start fishing for stripers
together, and then he'd offer me a small ambassadorship.  Just a
passing thought.

But it was not to be.  A pack of aides and Secret Service agents
suddenly whisked him away without so much as a good-bye wave or an
invitation to visit him in the White House.  I was left only with some
brief memories of our hike through the woods, and, of course, some
photos of my old hiking pal, the president, and me to show the boys
back at Bob's Chevron.

As soon as I got home, I asked Bun if Bill Clinton had called to invite
me on a hike with him.

"Not yet," she said.

"That's odd," I said.  "Well, we'd better stay off the phone, just in
case."

Ed in Camp We were driving up into the mountains.  It was to be my last
fishing trip with the Old Man, He was ninety, perhaps more.  Probably
more.  It was hard to tell, because the Old Man lied about his age.  He
lied about almost everything.  Following his conversation was like
tracking a ferret through dry leaves.  His name was Ed.

"I'm glad you invited me along on this fishing trip," he said.  "You're
a good boy."

"I didn't invite you," I said.  "You invited me.  This fishing trip was
your idea."

"It was?"  he said.  "I didn't know."

"Yes, Ed, it was your idea," I said.  "You said that you were going to
drive up into the mountains and fish Caribou Creek one last time.  As
you'll recall, I told you that you couldn't drive, because you don't
have a driver's license anymore.  You don't have a driver's license,
because you can't see more than twenty feet ahead of you.  Besides,
your car won't run."

"How come my car won't run?"

"Because I fixed it so it wouldn't.  You may recall that you nearly ran
over Mike Murphy's dog on your last outing."

"Murphy's dog should have gotten out of my way.  If a dog's too stupid
to get out of the way, he should be run over."

"He was tied up to Murphy's front porch, Ed.  He couldn't get out of
the way."

"So that's what all the fuss was about."

"Yeah.  There was also some problem with a rosebush and a pink plastic
flamingo."

"I hate those plastic flamingos.  I must have meant to run over it."

"Anyway, I told you that if you insisted on going up to Caribou Creek
one more time, I'd take you."

"So, you did invite me.  You always try to put the blame on me for your
own foolishness.  I'd think you'd have better sense than to drag an old
man like me out on a long trip like this.  I'm already tired.  A trip
like this could kill me.  I'll tell you one thing, though.  One time
Pinto Jack and me ..."

I waited.  "What, Ed?  What about you and Pinto Jack?"

No reply.  Ed had gone to sleep, head back against the seat, mouth open
and emitting frail little snores.  Everything about Ed was frail, even
his snores.

I began to wonder if this fishing trip wasn't a bad mistake.  I had
known from the beginning it was a mistake, but not that it was a bad
mistake.  Ed had already caught thousands of fish in his lifetime, many
of them legal.

What purpose was served by his catching a few more?  It wasn't as
though he had been deprived of his share of fun.  He had devoted his
entire life to having a good time.  I doubt that a single day had ever
slipped by without Ed grabbing it in a bear hug and squeezing out a
maximum measure of enjoyment.

Almost all his life, he'd been happy.  I guess that's why I hung out
with him as much as I did.  Maybe I wanted to find out Ed's secret.

"Ain't you even interested?"  Ed said suddenly.

"In what?"

"Well gol-dang it, ain't you heard a word I said?  I was tellin' you
about what me and Pinto Jack did one time, but I can see you ain't
interested, so I guess I won't."

"Fine."

"So Pinto and me we fixed up this old school bus as kind of a camper.

Had one of them emergency doors in the back that the kids can escape
out of if they's smart enough and want to skip school.  We built a
couple bunks in the bus, and even had a trapper stove in there, with he
chimney elbowed out one of the windows.  It was a real nice outfit.

One week we was camped up in McCormack Meadows, that high country up in
the headwaters of McCormack Crick, you know.  About noon one day, I
fixed myself a nice baloney-and-onion sandwich and left it on the table
while I went down to the crick to get some water and ..."

"And what, Ed?"  I glanced over.  He was sound asleep again.  That was
all right with me.  The road was getting steep and treacherous now.

The more treacherous the road, the better the fishing, that's my
theory.  I punched the truck into four-wheel drive and we started to
climb.  Before long, we came to the bad spot, a big steep slab of rock
that slants out over the canyon.  Even four-by-fours have a tendency to
slide ever so slightly toward the brink, just enough to give you that
feeling in your stomach that tells you the fishing up ahead is going to
be darn good.  The tricky part is that the front of the vehicle rears
way up at the high edge of the rock, and you kind of teeter over the
top lip of the slab and the hood is in your way and you can't see if
you're going to land on the road or not, and this is very spooky
because, if you don't land on the road, you're not going to land on
anything for about a half mile, and all you can do then is watch the
scenery flash vertically passed the windows.  I've had grown men scream
going over the top of the slab, and sometimes I've Joined in myself,
just to keep them company, and when we hit the road on the other side
we'd just turn the screams into a song: 'eeeeeaaaaaaooooooooo, the Old
Gray Mare, she ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be
..."  and like that.  You don't want any distractions as you totter
over the top edge of that slab.

"And so I start foolin' around down there by the crick, catchin' some
hellgrammites for bait and ... Dang it, stop singing about the Old Gray
Mare when I'm tryin' to tell you a story.  Oh, we must of just topped
the slab.  I didn't catch the scream part.  Did we miss the road or has
it just got real smooth?"

"No, we hit the road.  I stopped the car to let my heart start up
again.

Go on with your story."

"Where was I?  Hard to tell a story with you interrupting every few
minutes.  Oh, yeah, so I get back to the bus and my sandwich is gone.

I figure Pinto snuck in and et it.  When Pinto shows up, he claims he
don't know nothing about any sandwich.  We get to lookin' around and
finally we see the damp print of a bear's paw on the linoleum.  Did I
tell you about the linoleum?  Me and Pinto got it for practically
nothin' down at the furniture store and ..."

"Forget the linoleum.  Tell me about the bear."

"What bear?  Oh, yeah, the bear.  We figure the bear will come back to
the bus the next day to see if we've fixed him another sandwich for his
lunch.

So we tie a long rope to the emergency door and hide in the brush.

Sure enough, along about noon here comes the little bear, a yearling,
and he hops right up into the bus.  Pinto and I jerk the rope and slam
the door shut."  At this point, Ed burst into a long wheezing cackle.

"So we got ourselves a bear trapped right there in our bus."  Ed smiled
radiantly at the distant memory of the bear trapped in the bus, a smile
directed inward rather than outward.

"I've got a question for you, Ed," I said.  "Just why did you trap that
bear in the bus?"

"Why?  Because it was fun, that's why.  And because I reckon nobody
else in the entire history of the world ever trapped a bear in a bus.

What do you think of that?"

"I think you're probably right.  What did you do with the bear now that
you had him trapped in your bus?"

"Well, we was young bucks, so we didn't waste our time thinkin'
ahead.

If an idea come to us to do something', we did it, and left the
thinkin' for after.  The problem was, when we opened the door, the bear
wouldn't leave.  He just sat in there eatin' up our grub, like he was
at his own birthday party.

I guess he figured it was his bus now, and he didn't seem to mind us
standin' on the outside lookin' in.  He seemed to think that was the
way it should be.

I says to Pinto, 'Pinto, we better get him out of there before he
figures out how to drive the dang bus, and we'll be left stranded up
here in the mountains with nothin' to eat."  Pinto says he's getting'
madder and madder just watchin' that bear eat up all our grub, and what
was the bear doin' in our bus anyway, and he says he's going' in the
bus and throwin' the hairy bugger out.  And he done just that.  You
remember, don't you, how Pinto was never quite all there?

Well, by the time he got that bear out of the bus, there was a whole
lot less of him there.  But he done it, and that's what counts.  We had
a lot of good laughs over that bear, Pinto and me.  Which reminds me of
the time ..."

I was staring out the windshield thinking of Pinto and the bear, and
wondering whether there had been a bear, or even a bus, when I heard
the Old Man's wheezing snore.  Easing up on the brake, I let the truck
crawl ahead until the road widened out enough for a snake to pass us on
the outside edge, if he took it easy and kept himself pretty
straight.

Ed didn't wake up again until after we had pulled into the campsite at
Caribou Creek.

I tossed the tent bundle out on the ground and started to unwrap it.

Ed opened the door of the truck and looked out.  "Here, stop that!  You
don't know nothin' about how to pitch a tent proper.  Let me give you a
hand with it, so it gets done right."

I spread out the ground cloth, rolled the tent out on it, and staked
down the corners.  "I'm almost out of the truck," Ed said.  "You're
stakin' them corners down too loose.  Wait till I get over there and
show you how."

I fitted the frame together, snapped the tent to it, and tied off the
roof flaps.  Then I got the two cots out of the truck and set them up
in the tent, along with the camp table and chairs.  I was sitting at
the table pouring a cup of coffee when Ed arrived.  "You should have
waited for me to help," he snapped.  "As usual, you done it all
wrong."

He sagged into a chair.  "Now, I'm all pooped out from rushing over
here so fast.  And I left my cigars in the truck!  I better go get
them."

"Try to be back before dark," I said.  "I don't want to have to come
looking for you."

"On second thought, you go get my cigars."

"I'll get your cigars after I finish my coffee," I said.  "You know
they're bad for your health, don't you?"

"What health?  I haven't had any health in years.  Now go get them
cigars, and I'll finish that cup of coffee for you.  it's the least I
can do."

That night I built a big campfire and the Old Man and I sat in our
chairs poking at the fire with sticks, drank a little whiskey, smoked
his cigars, and told stories.  Ed's stories were better than mine, but
only because he is such a good liar.  He's also had a lot more fun.  It
made me a little sad, listening to all his great adventures and
thinking about all the time I'd frittered away on work.

Ed leaned back in his chair and squinted up at the sky.  "My," he said,
"look at them stars.  You can't see stars in the city.  You have to be
up in the mountains to really see stars.  You know, there are trillions
and trillions of stars.  Every person on earth could have a billion
stars of his own and there would still be plenty left over."

"I expect that's right," I said.  "I've never thought of it that
way."

"They're really beautiful tonight aren't they, the stars?"  he said,
gazing up into the darkness.

"They truly are," I said.  "I don't think I've ever seen the stars more
beautiful."  Actually, I couldn't see any stars at all, because the sky
was clouded over.  It felt good to lie to the Old Man.  I was glad to
see I wasn't out of practice.

After a bit, Ed said, "You know, out here in the mountains like this,
sitting around a campfire next to a fine trout stream, under a sky full
of stars, why this would be a perfect time and place for me to die."

"I don't think so," I said.  "It's an inconvenient time and place."

"How come?  You could bury me right over there under those birches and
no one would know."

"Bury you?  I wouldn't bury you.  Too much work.  I came here to fish,
not bury some ornery old cuss.  You die, your remains stay right where
they drop.  The only trouble I'd go to is lifting that gold pocketwatch
of yours."

"Robbing the dead, that's Just what I'd expect of you," the Old Man
growled.  "You're not a safe person to die around."

I didn't much care for the morbid thought Ed was turning over in his
mind.  And I particularly didn't like his little musing smile.  A
shiver ran through me, even though the night was warm.  But what does a
man in his nineties have to look forward to?  Right.

We sat there in silence for a long while poking at the fire.  After a
while, I said, "Oprah has a good show coming on next week."

"Oprah does?  What?"

"Uh, pretty women who, uh, let's see what was that now?  Oh yeah,
pretty women who have been captured by UFOs and, uh, marry creatures
from outer space and later divorce, but then have a hard time
collecting alimony."

"Sounds interesting," Ed said, perking up.  "I like that Oprah.  She's
a pretty woman.  I do love them pretty women.  When's Oprah have that
show on?"

"Toward the end of the week.  We'll be back in plenty of time."

"Good.  I wouldn't want to miss it."

"I wouldn't want you to," I said.

How I Got This Way, Part II Nobody ever sets out to be a writer of
short humor pieces.  No little kid in the history of the world has ever
said he wanted to be a writer of short humor pieces when he grew up.  I
was no different as a child.  What I wanted to be was an artist.  I
drew and painted thousands of pictures from the time I was six years
old until I went off to college.  "Look what I just drew," I'd say to
my mother.

"Very nice," she would say.  "That's one of the nicest pelicans I've
ever seen."  Mom encouraged me to be an artist, because she thought I
was probably too dumb to do anything else.  Artists don't have to be
smart.  All they have to be able to do is draw.

"But it's an airplane," I'd explain.  "A Messerschmitt!"

"Oh, of course.  I should have looked closer.  I did wonder why you
would draw a swastika on the side of a pelican.  just keep practicing
your drawing."

Because I was planning on becoming an artist, I never paid any
attention to grammar and spelling all the way from first grade through
high school.

Artists don't need to know grammar and spelling.

The Korean War started while I was in high school, and enlistments and
the draft quickly opened up many jobs in construction.  The summer I
was seventeen, I lied about my age and quickly landed a job building a
hydroelectric dam on a river near my home, although not all by
myself.

I became a highscaler, a person who hangs from a rope and pries loose
rock off sheer cliffs.  It was a lot of fun and I made a great deal of
money.  Then one day a fellow highscaler had most of the mountain fall
on him.  "I lied about my age," I told the foreman.  "I'm only
seventeen."  He found me a safer job, but it involved actual work and
wasn't any fun at all.

After three summers of working construction, I had more than enough
money to start college.  Even though I was an Idaho resident, I
enrolled at Washington State College, because I'd heard it had an
outstanding art department.  I wasn't at all worried about doing well
in art, because I'd already spent a dozen years drawing and painting
thousands of pictures.  What worried me was Freshman English
Composition.

During our orientation, the college president gave a stern speech to
all of us freshmen.  "Look at the person on your right," he ordered.  I
looked at the guy to my right, but he was looking the other way.  "Now,
look at the person on your left."  I looked at the person on my left,
but he, too, was looking the other way.  "Keep this in mind," said the
president.  "At graduation time, neither of those people you just
looked at will be there to receive a diploma."

Of course I felt sorry for those two guys and was happy that neither
one of them had been looking at me.  I still had a major worry: how to
get through English Comp.  If you didn't pass English Comp with at
least a D, you got booted out of college.  The professors back then
didn't want to turn loose on the world a Bachelor of Arts who didn't
know how to write a grammatical and properly spelled sentence.  They
were worse than priests when it came to being spoilsports.

Right away, I got into trouble with the art department faculty.  One
day a professor asked us to name our favorite modern artist.  I said
mine was Norman Rockwell.  I had studied his Saturday Evening Post
covers for years.

Obviously, he was on the cutting edge of modern art.  The professor
went into a severe fit of retching.  I supposed it was because of
something he'd eaten for lunch.  It wasn't.  He simply couldn't stomach
Norman Rockwell.  The whole art department faculty despised Norman
Rockwell.  Word quickly spread among them that Rockwell was my favorite
artist, and my reputation as a serious student of art went down the
drain.  Also, I was having some problems in drawing class.  "Why did
you put a swastika on the side of that pelican?"  my drawing instructor
demanded.

I was faring even worse in English Comp.  Every week we had to write
and turn in an essay.  I went through agony writing my first essay and
thought that it turned out pretty well, even though I realized it
probably wouldn't receive much more than a B. It was, after all, my
first effort at serious writing.  The essay came back with a large red
F blazing on the top of it.  I was shocked.  And shaken.  The sheer
force of my anxiety impelled me to spend twice as much time on my
second essay, nearly a half hour, and much to my dismay, it too came
back with an F. It was also scribbled all over with tiny red
handwriting from the professor.  Three more essays, three more F's.  I
didn't know what to do.  As a last resort, I started reading the tiny
red handwriting on my returned essays.  It gave me some clues as to
where I was going wrong, which seemed to be just about everywhere.

Frantically, I started studying grammar and spelling and sentence
structure.  Soon I was working on English Comp essays eight hours a
day, seven days a week.  A major breakthrough: one of my papers came
back with a D-.  Thusly encouraged, I multiplied my efforts.  I gave up
dating, I gave up sleeping, and finally I even gave up Ping-Pong, of
which I was dorm champion.  My essay grades continued to improve.  I
got a C at last, then a C+, a B- a B, an A-, and finally, on my very
last essay, an A+!  Ironically, that last essay was a critique and
appreciation of the cover art of Norman Rockwell.  "That was a great
essay," my professor told me.  "I was delighted to see that you decided
to write about something other than chickens."

That comment surprised me.  After all, I had been writing about what I
knew, the advice given to all beginning writers.  My professor
apparently harbored some prejudice against chickens, about which he had
failed to inform me.  What came as an even greater surprise than the
A+, the professor recommended me for Honors English the next
semester.

Not bad, F to Honors in one semester.  Mom said she had never expected
any less.

By now I had invested so much time in writing essays that I decided I
might as well keep on going and become a writer.  The way I figured it,
I could sit in a little cabin in the mountains of Idaho, write books
and stories, mail them off to publishers, and they would mail me back
big checks, and soon I'd become rich and famous.  I didn't know why
more people hadn't hit upon this very same idea.  Writing books and
stories was a perfect way to earn a living.

Then I took my first creative writing class.  Most of the other
students, I soon noticed, seemed to be getting A's for their stories,
while I never seemed able to get higher than a B. It was
discouraging.

After all, if you can't be the best writer in a crummy college creative
writing class, how could you ever expect to become the best writer in
the world?

Perhaps one problem was that I was trying to write stories that would
sell to pulp Westerns, while the other students were writing about
Death, Despair, and Delusion--the Three D's of serious creative
writing.  Before we had completed the first month of the class, at
least a hundred fictional human beings had been wiped out by poverty,
the crushing weight of society, or hideous disease.  Suicide was a big
favorite, too.

Most of my characters, on the other hand, got killed in gunfights, and,
by golly, they all had it coming to them.  Oddly enough, the professor
teaching the class--an internationally acclaimed scholar--had worked
his way through college writing for pulps.  I thought he should be more
appreciative of my work, but he wasn't.  He seemed to begrudge me even
B's.

I decided there was nothing to do but start writing about Death, and I
started pounding out a story about a woman who knocked off her husband
in a rather intriguing way.  A peculiar thing happened in the
process.

The story wouldn't go where I wanted it to go.  It wanted to write
itself, and at last I gave up and let it do so.

Alas, it turned out not to be a serious story.  I dreaded having to
read it in class and, as was a requirement, explain the creative
process I'd gone through in bringing this piece of, uh, literature into
being.  It was also the practice in that class for one's fellow writers
to rip to shreds on principle anything written by anyone else, and they
were seldom satisfied until the writer had been reduced to a quivering
column of jelly.  I began to read.

From the back of the room came a snort of derision.  A girl giggled.

Someone tried to choke back an actual laugh.  Suddenly, the whole class
burst into howling mirth!  It was exhilarating.  I glanced up at the
professor.  He was bent over the lecturn, wheezing with laughter!  He
removed his spectacles to wipe away the tears.  I knew now that I could
not help but extract an A from my creative writing professor.  The
story came back from him adorned with yet another B.

Furious, I stalked into his office.  "How could you even think of
giving this story a B?"  I demanded.  "I had the whole class
practically rolling on the floor.  You yourself laughed so hard you had
tears streaming down your face."

"Yes, McManus, that was quite a funny story.  But this is a class in
the writing of serious literature.  And even you will have to admit
that your story is not serious literature."

So what could I say?  Nothing!  I had nevertheless learned an important
lesson: The writing of humorous short stories and essays would never be
regarded as pursuit of serious literature.  I vowed never again to
write another piece of humor.  There was no future in it.  Depressed as
I was about that little story, I nevertheless submitted it to the
campus literary magazine, and in due time it came out in the magazine,
my first published work of fiction.

Writing began to dominate my life, much to the detriment of my other
classes, particularly those in math and the sciences.  One day I
received a note from the dean of the college.  He wanted me to stop by
his office.  I knew what it was about.  Some of my grades were
dismal.

The dean, in contrast to myself, was a Rhodes scholar.  He was not the
kind of person to tolerate bad grades for long, and I knew he was about
to issue an ultimatum to me.

When I stopped by his office to hear the grim news, he looked up and
actually smiled at me.  "Ah, McManus," he said cheerfully.  "Come in
and have a seat.  Coffee?  Coke?  No?  Well, I just wanted to tell you
personally how much I enjoyed your story in the campus magazine.  I
nearly laughed my head off.  You, my boy, have a wonderful talent for
humor.  Much less so for math and science, I might add, but you are a
very funny writer.  Keep up the good work!"

I was of course relieved and flattered, but I wasn't fooled.  The
writing of humor would bring only humiliation, closely followed by
poverty.

During my sophomore year, shortly after I had learned to spell
sophomore, I got a job "stringing" for a newspaper, the editor of which
always seemed to have time to sit down over coffee with me and critique
my stories.  He taught me just how difficult Journalism is, and how
extraordinarily hard it is to nail down a simple fact.  Much of
journalism nowadays consists of quoting "sources," which is much easier
than getting down to the bedrock of fact.  You can spill coffee on a
newspaper today without much danger of wetting a fact, although you
will drown a lot of quotes.  journalism is still a great and glorious
profession, and I would not have minded at all pursuing it for a
lifetime, but it is impossible to be a reporter and still live in a
little cabin in the mountains.

After college I worked for a newspaper, a university, a television news
department, and finally became a teacher at a university.  Each job
took me farther away from that cabin in the mountains.  So for the
first ten years after college, I worked furiously at freelance
writing.

I wrote articles on cancer research, arson investigation techniques,
archaeology, bacteriology (one of my D's in college), forestry
research, wildlife research, geology (another D in college), art and
artists, psychology, philosophy, and, oh, I nearly forgot, chickens.

But never once did I think about writing humor.

My writing schedule consisted of writing every evening from seven until
nine, seven days a week, every week, every month, and I sent to market
everything I wrote, no matter how bad I thought something was.

(Reviewer: "I suspected as much!") One day in the first hour of my
writing time, I completed an article on the uses of telemetry in the
study of wildlife, that is, the hooking-up of wild creatures with radio
transmitters so that they can be spied upon electronically.  I still
had another hour of my writing time left.

Well, I said to myself, I will just write nonsense for the next hour,
and I did.  I wrote nonsense about hooking-up wildlife with radio
transmitters--all wildlife.  The point was that this would do away with
a lot of the problems connected with hunting.  The hunter would merely
have to stop by the control center and ask if a deer was in the area.

The controller would say, "Yes, I see 5789-A headed for the
Haverstead's meadow.  At his present rate of travel, he should reach
there at exactly five-fourteen."  So the hunter would saunter over to
the Haverstead's meadow and wait for Old 5789-A to show up.

As with most nonsense, the story didn't seem to amount to much, but
because I had written it, I felt compelled to mail it to market.  I
did, and it was rejected, no great surprise.  I sent it out again, and
it was rejected, still no great surprise.  I sent it out again, this
time to Field & Stream magazine.  Back came a check for $300!

The most I had ever been paid for an article up to that time was $750,
but that particular article had taken me more than a month to research
and write.  I made a quick calculation.  I had just earned $300 in an
hour.  I wrote two hours a night.  Therefore, I could write two pieces
of nonsense a night.  That was $600 dollars a night, $4,200 a week,
$218,400 a year.  Why, that was more money than I could make at the
university--in a lifetime!

Suddenly, I became a writer of short humorous essays.  A dozen or so
rejections later, I sold another humor piece and then another and
another.

That summer I got bumped from my summer teaching job by a professor
with more seniority.  For the first time in my life, and that of my
family, I would have to support all of us for three months solely on my
writing.  The family greeted this news with wide-eyed stares and
trembling lips.  All that lay between them and starvation was Dad's
typewriter.

The day after I learned I wouldn't be teaching summer school, I went
out to my sister-in-law's lake home, sat down on her dock, and pounded
out two humor pieces on my Smith Corona portable.  I folded up both
stories, stuck them in the same envelope, and mailed them off to Field
& Stream.  Back came a check for $750, more than I would have made
teaching summer school.  I stood there by the mailbox, the check
clutched in my hand, and stared off into space.  Yes, I could almost
see it out there in the distant mists, a little cabin tucked away in
the mountains of Idaho.

One of the stories I wrote on the dock that day was about my miserable
old dog Strange.  Finally, a quarter of a century after his death,
Strange, for the very first time ever, came when I called him.

And that is pretty much how I got this way.

NEVER SNIFF A GIFT FISH By Patrick F. McManus An Owl Book HenrY Holt
and Company New York Copyright (C) 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by
Patrick F. McManus All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 521 Fifth Avenue New York,
New York 10175

Published simultaneously in Canada.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McManus, Patrick F.
Never sniff a gift fish 1. Hunting--Addresses, essays, lectures.

2. Fishing--Addresses, essays, lectures.

ISBN 0-03-063863-1

ISBN 0-8050-0031-3 (An Owl book) (pbk.) First published in hardcover by
Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1983.

First owl Book Edition-1984

Designer: Kate Nichols Printed in the United States of America All
stories in this book originally appeared as follows: in Field & Stream:
"Blowing Smoke," "The Man Who Notices Things," "The Short Happy Life of
Francis cucumber," "Well, Excuuuuse Me!," "Edgy Rider," "The Mountain
Car," "Never Sniff a Gift Fish," "The Fibricators," "The Family
Camper's Dictionary," "The Big Match," and "The Elk Trappers"; in
Outdoor Life: "Poof--No Eyebrows!," "I Fish; Therefore, I Am," "Running
on Empty," "The Cat and the Cat Burglar," "The Christmas Hatchet," "The
Kindest Cut of All," "Share and Share Alike," "Backseats I Have Known,"
"The Hunters' Workout Guide," "Temporary Measures," and "The Bush
pilots,"; in Audubon: "Salami on Rye and Hold the Wild Gobo," and
"Two-Man-Tent Fever"; (and Readers Digest); in Daiwa Fishing Annual:
"'Fish Poles, and Other Useful Terminology"; in Scokh Game Call Annual:
"The Arkansas Prank Hound"; in Spokane magazine: "The Night Grandma
Shot Shorty"; and in johnson outboards Boating 1980: "Strange Scenes
and Eerie Events" ISBN 0-03-063863-1 HARDBOUND ISBN 0-8050-0031-3
PAPERBACK ALSO BY PATRICK F. MCMANUS Kid Camping From Aaaaiii!  to Zip
A Fine and Pleasant Misery They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

Dedication To Patricia Contents Blowing
Smoke................................................................1


Poof--No
Eyebrows!..........................................................10

I Fish; Therefore, I
Am.....................................................20

Running on
Empty............................................................26

The Cat and the Cat
Burglar.................................................33

Salami on Rye and Hold the Wild
Gobo........................................41

Two-Man-Tent
Fever..........................................................49

Fish Poles, and Other Useful
Terminology....................................56

The Man Who Notices
Things..................................................64

The Elk
Trappers............................................................73


The Short Happy Life of Francis
Cucumber....................................83

The Arkansas Prank
Hound....................................................91

Well, Excuuuuse
Me!.........................................................98

The Mountain
Car...........................................................103

The Christmas
Hatchet......................................................"4

The Night Grandma Shot
Shorty..............................................121

The Kindest Cut of
All.....................................................126

The Bush
Pilots............................................................135

Share and Share
Alike......................................................144

Never Sniff a Gift
Fish....................................................151

Backseats I Have
Known.....................................................159

Edgy
Rider.................................................................1


6

Strange Scenes and Eerie
Events............................................178

The Hunters' Workout
Guide.................................................184

Temporary
Measures.........................................................191

The
Fibricators............................................................


96

The Family Camper's
Dictionary.............................................203

The Big
Match..............................................................210


Blowing Smoke Many people think that my reputation as a great
outdoorsman is a product of inherent athletic ability.  Nothing could
be further from the truth, which is that I have been cursed since birth
with an extraordinary lack of coordination.

For years my fly-casting technique was compared, rather banally I might
add, to an old lady fighting off a bee with a broom handle.  My canoe
paddling raised shouts of alarm among onlookers, who assumed I was
trying to repel an assault by a North American cousin of the Loch Ness
monster.  My attempts to pitch the family tent terrorized entire
campgrounds.  As for marksmanship, any game I happened to bring into
camp was routinely examined by my disbelieving companions for powder
burns.  ("The man has stealth," they would say.  "Who else could place
the muzzle of a rifle to the head of a sleeping mule-deer buck?  Who
else could still miss?") For years I suffered the ridicule of my fellow
sportsmen over what they perceived to be my ineptitude.  Then one day I
happened to recall a lovable old college administrator I had once
served time under, Dr. Milburn Snodgrass.

That casual recollection was to advance outdoor sports by a hundred
years.

Doc Snodgrass had taken up pipe smoking as a young man and turned it
into a highly successful career, eventually rising to the position of
dean.

Obviously, his success was not due merely to pipe smoking.  No, he was
also the master of two facial expressions: thoughtful and bemused.

Those were the total ingredients of his success.  The man was dumb.  It
is my considered opinion that if intelligence were crankcase oil, his
would not have wet the tip of the dipstick let alone reached the
add-one-quart mark.  But he was an excellent dean.

No matter what problem was brought before Doc Snodgrass, his response
was to sit back and puff on his pipe, alternating between thoughtful
and bemused expressions.  The effect suggested that Doc was bemused by
a problem so ridiculously simple and was giving thought to firing the
nincompoop who dared bother him with it.  The problem-bearer would
laugh feebly, to indicate it was all a little joke, and then rush off
to find the solution himself.  People thought Snodgrass was a genius
and often wondered what great ideas he was mulling over as he puffed
his pipe and looked thoughtful and bemused.

Eventually, I would learn the truth: Doc Snodgrass was not smart enough
to mull.

One example will serve to illustrate the effectiveness of the dean's
approach to human relations.

During a campus uprising, the students demanded that the college
administration do away with Poverty, War, and Mashed Turnips in the
Commissary, although not necessarily in that order.  Doc Snodgrass
appeared suddenly on the steps of the administration building,
seemingly to confront the chanting mob but more likely because he had
mistaken the exit for the door to the restroom.  (His thoughtful
expression was probably due at first to his wondering why so many
students of both sexes were in the men's room.) As he fumbled about in
his pockets looking for his tobacco pouch--the search for the source of
the Nile took scarcely longer--the students fell silent, no doubt
saving their breath for the purpose of shouting down the words of
wisdom they expected to be forthcoming from the dean.  (youths are not
called callow for nothing.) The pouch at last found, the dean began to
fill his pipe, tamping and filling, tampping and filling, and all the
while looking extremely thoughtful.  Then he began probing his pockets
for a match.  Finally, an exasperated student in guerrilla attire
lunged forward and thrust upon him a disposable lighter, little
realizing that the dean was confounded by all such modern technology.

His efforts to ignite the lighter by scratching it against a brick wall
produced a good laugh from the students and a consensus among them that
anyone with a sense of humor like that couldn't be such a bad guy after
all.  The mood of the crowd lightened.  A game of Frisbee broke out.

Someone threw a football.  A coed burned her bra.

Having solved the riddle of the lighter, and tortured the tobacco into
a state of combustion, Snodgrass began sucking away on his pipe as he
looked increasingly thoughtful.  He was, as I say, a master of the
thoughtful expression.  Even the hardliners among the students seemed
unable to resist the impression that the dean was contemplating the
eradication of Poverty, War, and Mashed Turnips.  The crowd began to
disperse, its members exchanging among themselves the opinion that the
dean had not only a great sense of humor but a mind "like a steel
trap."  The truth was, he had a mind like flypaper, and not very good
flypaper at that.  His total intellectual arsenal consisted of his pipe
and those two facial expressions.

The import of the dean's pipe did not strike me immediately, but when
it did, I rushed out and bought myself a pipe and tobacco and began
practicing my expressions.  As a direct consequence of these efforts, I
began rising through the professorial ranks as if by levitation.  The
ugly rumor that I had flunked three successive IQ tests (there were a
lot of trick questions) was silenced once and for all.  Faculty and
students alike began referring to me as one who had a mind like a steel
trap.  And I continued to puff my pipe and look alternately bemused and
thoughtful as promotion after promotion was thrust upon me.  Still, not
all was well.  There was the problem of my ineptitude at outdoor
sports.

Then one day I was struck by a marvelous idea.  If my pipe and
expressions had worked so well in advancing my career, why wouldn't
they be equally effective in something worthwhile, such as hunting and
fishing?

The very next weekend, on a fishing trip with Retch Sweeney and Fenton
Quagmire, I took along my pipe and tobacco and, of course, my ability
to become bemused or thoughtful at the drop of a hat.

The fishing started out routinely, with Sweeney and Quagmire making
snide remarks about my casting technique.  For the most part, however,
they confined their merriment to a few chortles, saving the belly
laughs for the embarrassing predicament that my lack of coordination
invariably lands me in.

Presently, I spotted a promising patch of water, but it was made almost
inaccessible because of thick brush and high banks on one side and a
monstrous logjam on the other.  For that very reason I guessed that the
deep hole beneath the logjam probably hadn't been prospected recently
by other anglers.

As I studied the situation, I noticed a slender log jutting out through
the brush on the bank, and I quickly calculated that by sitting on the
end of this log I could cast over the hole and still remain concealed
from the fish.  Five minutes later I was perched somewhat precariously
on the end of the log and, in fact, had already extracted a couple of
plump trout from beneath the logjam.  Sweeney and Quagmire, both as yet
without a single strike, glared enviously at me and cursed my
ingenuity.  Now it was my turn to chortle.  But right in the middle of
my chortle, a huge rainbow zoomed out of the depths like a Polaris
missile and detonated on my Black Gnat.  This was exactly what I had
been anticipating, and with lightning reflexes, I fell off the log and
dropped fifteen feet into a bed of assorted boulders, none smaller than
a breadbox.  Even though my impact on the rocks caused me to wonder
momentarily whether pelvic transplants had yet been perfected, I
immediately arose without so much as a whimper, whipped out my pipe,
and began stuffing it with tobacco.

Already I detected the sounds of Sweeney and Quagmire crashing through
the brush, possibly to determine if I had suffered any serious injury
but more likely racing each other for the fishing spot I had so
recently abandoned.  In any case, I knew that great booming laughs were
already gestating in their bellies.

But I was ready.  When their heads popped from the brush, I was calmly
puffing on my pipe and looking thoughtfully up at the log.

"You hurt?"  Sweeney asked, traces of a smile already playing in the
corners of his mouth.

To such a question I normally would have snappishly replied, "No, you
idiot, I've always been shaped like a potato chip!"  Then would have
come the wild howls of mirth, the ecstatic knee-slapping, and the
attempts by Sweeney and Quagmire to re-create through mimicry some of
my more extravagant moves during the course of the fall.  But not this
time.

Calmly, I blew a puff of smoke toward them and displayed my bemused
look.

I then returned my thought ful gaze to the log.

I will not exaggerate the quality of my companions' mental processes by
suggesting that they had flashes of insight.  Nevertheless, I sensed
some faint cognitive flickerings.  "Whatcha do that for?"  asked
Quagmire, referring to my fall.

"Yeah, you could've hurt yourself," Sweeney added, puzzled.

Without replying, I continued to study the log thoughtfully,
occasionally tossing a bemused look in the direction of my audience of
two.

Thoroughly befuddled, Quagmire and Sweeney at last wandered off to
resume their fishing.  They clearly were of the impression that I had
deliberately planned and executed the fall from the log, possibly as a
scientific experiment for a secret government agency.  Before shouting
"Eureka!"  however, I salved my injuries with emergency first aid,
which consisted largely of defoliating all the flora within a five-foot
radius by hissing a stream of colorful expressions, and hopping about
like a rain dancer trying to terminate a five-year drought.

I could scarcely wait to test the pipe-and-twoexpression ploy on wits
quicker than those of Sweeney and Quagmire.  The next weekend I was
fishing alone on one of my favorite rivers and happened to run into a
chap whose name turned out to be Shep.  He obviously was an expert fly
caster.  His wrist would twitch and eighty feet of line would shoot
toward the far bank, the tiny fly settling on the surface of the water
as softly as a falling flake of dandruff.  Even as I watched, he netted
one of the finest trout I've ever seen taken from the river.

"I think I'll keep this one " he said to me.  "Now the big ones, I
always release them."

"Big ones?"  I said, ogling his hefty catch.  "Why, yes, I never take
any of the big ones home myself.  In fact, I often don't take home any
small ones or middlesized ones either."

"Now, that's what I call true sportsmanship!"  Shep said, casually
dropping a fly three inches from the far bank.  "Say, there's plenty of
room here.  Why don't you try a few casts yourselp."

I had already dug out my pipe and lighted up.  "Well, maybe, but first
let me see you do that again, that, uh, cast of yours."

He obliged me with a repeat performance, this time placing the fly a
mere inch from the bank.  I puffed my pipe and gave him my bemused
look.

"Something wrong?"  he asked, a note of unease in his voice.  He was
showing definite signs of discomfort.  "It's my elbow, isn't it?"  he
said.

"I've never held my elbow the way you're supposed to.  Maybe you can
give me a couple of lessons."

I knocked the ashes out of MY pipe, changed to the thoughtful
expression, and unleashed a powerful twenty foot cast, the splash from
which lifted a flock of crows cawing into the air from a nearby
cornfield.

Shep leaped back.  "Are you okay?  That was a nasty spasm you had just
then."

I silenced him with my bemused look.  Then I stoked up my pipe again,
alternating between thoughtful and bemused expressions.  That destroyed
the last of Shep's confidence.  Ten minutes later I had him totally
under my power and was even giving him a few casting tips: "There you
go again," I scolded him, "casting over twenty-five feet.  You have to
learn control, man, learn control!"

"I know," Shep said, whimpering, "but I just can't seem to get the
knack of it."

"Well, then, try this approach," I advised.  "Just pretend you're a
little old lady fighting off a bee with a broom handle."

Naturally, I was delighted to discover that this bit of business with
the pipe and two expressions not only transcended my lack of
coordination but conveyed the impression that I was actually an expert
angler.  Within six months, I had applied the technique to all the
other outdoor sports and found that it worked equally well.  Now when I
missed an easy shot at a pheasant, say, I would no longer hang my head
and look embarrassed.  Instead, I'd stick the pipe in my mouth and look
bemused.  "You sure scared the heck out of that ol' ringneck," my
companion would say.  "You've got to be darn good to miss a shot like
that!"

To date, my greatest achievement with the pipe and two expressions
occurred on a backpacking trip into a wilderness area of the Rocky
Mountains.

Sweeney, Quagmire, and I were hiking along a trail when we came across
a bear track of approximately the dimensions of a doormat.

"BleeP!"  hissed Sweeney.  "Look at the size of that track!"

"It's fr-fresh, too," whispered Quagmire, swiveling his head about.

"L-looks like grizzly.  Can't be far away, either."

As I now do under all such circumstances, I dug out the pipe, calmly
filled, tamped, and lighted it.  just then a grouse exploded from the
brush at the edge of the trail and gave all three of us quite a
start.

Nevertheless, I puffed away on my pipe and looked bemused.  Both
Quagmire and Sweeney said later they were extremely impressed by my
reaction.  After all, it's no simple thing to puff a pipe and look
bemused when you're running that fast.

Poof--No Eyebrows!

Just as I was assembling the ingredients for a small snack in the
kitchen, the doorbell rang.  My wife, Bun, went to answer it, and I
heard her invite in Milt Slapshot, a neighbor who often seeks out my
advice on matters pertaining to the sporting life.  "Is Pat home?"  I
heard Milt ask.  "A fella told me he knows something about
muzzleloading."

Realizing Bun could never resist a straight line like that, I jumped up
and headed for the living room in the hope of stifling her.

"Does he ever!"  she said, chortling.  "Why, this very minute he's out
n the kitchen loading his muzzle!"

A wife who chortles is an irritation, but one who also regards herself
as a wit is a social nuisance.  I grabbed Milt by the arm and guided
him toward the den before Bun could embarrass the poor fellow further
with another attempt at emulating Erma Bombeck.  "Stop the cackling,
Milt," I told him.

"It only encourages her."

Once his tasteless display of mirth had subsided, Milt explained that
he was building a muzzleloader and needed some technical advice from
me.  A mutual acquaintance, one Retch Sweeney, had told him that I had
once conducted extensive scientific research on primitive firearms.

That was true.  In fact, it would be difficult to find firearms more
primitive than those utilized in my research.

"You've come to the right man," I said.  "Yes, indeed.  Now the first
thing I need to know is, are you building it from a kit or from
scratch?"

"A kit," Milt said.

"Good," I said.  "Building muzzleloaders from scratch is a risky
business, particularly when you work your way up to sewer pipe too
soon.  Now the first thing ..."

"Sewer pipe?"  Milt asked.  "What do you mean, sewer pipe?  Are you
sure you know something about black powder?"

"Ha!"  I replied.  "Do you see my eyebrows?"

"No.

"Well, that should answer your question.  All us experts on black
powder have bald eyes."

Actually, I do have eyebrows, but they are pale, sickly fellows, never
having recovered from the shock of instant immolation thirty years
ago.

Having my eyebrows catch fire ranks as one of the more interesting
experiences of my life, although I must say I didn't enjoy it much at
the time.

Indeed, my somewhat faulty eyesight may be a direct result of having my
eyebrows go up in smoke.  Either it was that or the splash of Orange
Crush soda pop with which my sidekick Retch Sweeney, ever quick to
compound a catastrophe doused the flames.

Milt, who had settled into a chair in the den was attempting, with some
success, to conceal his fascination.  As I explained to him, most of my
early research into the mysteries of black powder took place during the
year I was fourteen.  Some of those experiments produced spectacular
results, particularly the last one, which enabled Retch and me to
attend the annual Halloween party as twin cinders.

The first experiment, in which my eyebrows were sacrificed to the cause
of science, consisted of placing a small pile of black powder on a
bicycle seat and touching a lighted match to it.  I can no longer
recall why a bicycle seat was employed as part of the apparatus, but I
am sure my co-researcher and I had sound reasons for it at the time.

In any case, we proved conclusively that a match flame serves as an
excellent catalyst on gunpowder.  I later concluded that the experiment
might have been improved upon in only two ways: to have placed the
powder on Retch's bicycle seat and to have let him hold the match.

Instead, he chose to stand in awe of the experiment and about ten feet
away, sucking absently on a bottle of Orange Crush.  On the other hand,
my sacrifice was not without its reward, since bald eyes and a hole
burnt in my bicycle seat made great conversation openers with girls at
school.

The success of the experiment had to be withheld from the rest of the
scientific community for fear our parents would find out about it.

Unfortunately, My mother inadvertently discovered the secret.

"is anything the matter?"  Mom asked during supper the evening after
the bicycle-seat experiment.

"No," I replied casually.  "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing in particular," she said.  "It just seems a little odd,
your wearing sunglasses and a cap at the dinner table."

She then expressed her desire that I remove both glasses and cap
instantly, sooner if possible.  After some debate over the finer points
of dinner-table propriety, I complied.

As expected, Mom responded with the classic question favored by the
parents of young black powder experimenters everywhere: "WHAT HAPPENED
TO YOUR EYEBROWS?"

Looking surprised and fingering the scorched area above my eyes, I
tried to convey the impression that it was news to me that my eyebrows
were missing, as if they might have dropped off unnoticed or been
mislaid at school.

The truth was soon extracted from me with an efficiency that would have
been the envy of medieval counterintelligence agents.  This was
followed by a bit of parental advice.  But scarcely had this parental
advice ceased reverberating among the rafters than I was already
plotting my next experiments for unlocking the mysteries of black
powder.

The discovery by Retch and me that we could purchase black powder in
bulk from a local dealer was to have great impact on our lives, not to
mention various parts of our anatomies.  The dealer in question was the
proprietor of Grogan's War Surplus, Hardware & Gun Emporium, none other
than that old reprobate, Henry P. Grogan himself.  We weren't at all
sure Grogan would sell a couple of scruffy, goof-off kids something as
potentially dangerous as black powder.  Our first attempt at making a
purchase was, therefore, cloaked in subtlety and subterfuge.

"Howdy, Mr. Grogan," we opened with, both of us so casual we were fit
to burst.

"Howdy, boys.  What can I do for you--assuming, of course, you got cash
in your pockets and ain't just here to finger the merchandise?"

"Oh, we got cash," I said.  "Uh, Retch, why don't you read Mr. Grogan
our list?"  ttuh, okay, heh, heh--Yeah, well, here goes--one GI mess
kit, one helmet liner, a parachute harness, a pound of black powder,
and lets see, now, do you have any of those neat camouflage jackets
left?"

To our chagrin, a look of concern came into Grogan's eyes.  "Gosh!

boys, I don't know if I should ... It just don't seem right to sell you
two young fellows ... Oh, what the heck!  Elmer Peabody wanted me to
save those last two camouflage jackets for him, but I'll let you have
'em.  Now, how much gunpowder was that you wanted--a pound?"

In all fairness to Grogan, I must admit that he did warn us that severe
bodily harm could result from improper use of the black powder.  His
exact words, if I remember correctly, were, "You boys set off any of
that stuff near my store and I'll peel your hides!"

The black powder we bought from Grogan had been compressed by the
manufacturer into shiny black pellets, a form intended, I believe, to
make it less volatile.  Even before mashing them into powder, we found
it was possible to touch off the pellets if they were first piled on a
bicycle seat and a match held to them.  The pellets did not ignite
immediately even then, apparently for the purpose of tricking the
person holding the match into taking a closer look at what was
occurring on the bicycle seat.

Then--poof!--no eyebrows.

Our first muzzleloaders were small and crude, but as our technological
skill and knowledge increased, they gradually became large and crude.

We never did develop a satisfactory triggering mechanism.  On the
average shot, you could eat a sandwich between the time the trigger was
pulled and the gun discharged.  A typical muzzleloader test would go
something like this: RETCH: Okay, I'm going to squeeze the trigger now.
 There!

MUZZLELOADER: Snick Pop.  Ssssss ...

ME: Good.  It looks like it's working.  Better start aiming at the tin
can.

MUZZLELOADER: Ssss ... Fizt ... SSSS ...

RETCH: Say, give me a bit of that sandwich, will you?

ME: Sure.

MUZZLELOADER: ... Sss ... Split ... Ss ... Putt ...

RETCH: What time is it?

ME: About time for me to ...

MUZZLELOADER: ... Ssst--POOT!

RETCH (enveloped in cloud of smoke): How was my aim?

ME: I think it was pretty good, but the muzzle velocity leaves
something to be desired.  As soon as the smoke clears, reach over and
pick up the ball and we'll load her up again.

Even as we increased the range of our muzzleloaders, the delay in the
firing mechanism discouraged us from usin them on game.  If we had used
one of them for rabbit hunting, say, we would have had to squeeze the
trigger and then hope a rabbit would happen to be running by when the
gun discharged.

Squeezing the trigger before your game appears over the far horizon is
the ultimate in leading a moving target.

Since we had up to three minutes of lead time on stationary targets,
hunting with our muzzleloaders seemed somewhat impractical.  There was
also the probable embarrassment of having our shots bounce off the
game.  It didn't seem worth the risk.  A hunter can stand only so much
humiliation.

Our first muzzleloader was a small-caliber derringer, the ammunition
for which consisted mostly of dried peas.  This prompted Retch to
remark derisively to a tincan target, "All right, Ringo, drop your iron
or I'll fill you full of dried peas."

"Okay, okay," I said, "I get your drift.  We'll move up to the hard
stuff--marbles, ball bearings, golf balls."  it was a mistake, though,
and I knew it.  Once you start escalating, there's no stopping until
you achieve the ultimate weapon.  Within a couple of months, we were
turning out muzzleloaders in the .80-caliber range.  Then we got into
the large-caliber stuff.  Finally, we decided the time had come to stop
monkeying around with black powder pistols and rifles.  We had some
close calls.  We had reached the point where there was some doubt in
our minds whether we might be firing a muzzleloader or touching off a
bomb.  Thus it was with considerable relief that we abandoned our
clandestine manufacture and testing of pistols and rifles.  After all,
a cannon would be much safer; you didn't have to hold it.

The cannon was constructed of sewer pipe, two-byfours, baby-carriage
wheels, rubber inner-tube bands, a clothespin, baling wire, and various
other odds and ends, all of which, blending into a single, symmetrical
unity, neared perfection on the scale of beauty.  A croquet ball was
commandeered from the Sweeney backyard for use as shot.  In our
enthusiasm of the moment, it was thought the croquet ball could be
returned to the set after it was recovered from the firing range.

Alas, it was not to be so.  Attired in our muskrat-skin hats, which we
had sewn up ourselves, we mounted our bicycles and, with cannon in tow,
set off for the local golf course, where a fairway would serve as a
firing range, a putting green as a target.

As we had hoped, the golf course turned out to be deserted.  We quickly
wheeled the cannon into firing position and began the loading
procedure.

"Think that's enough powder?"  Retch asked.

"Better dump in some more," I advised.  "That croquet ball is pretty
heavy."

"And there's some for good measure," Retch said.

The croquet ball fit a little too tightly, but we managed to ram it
down the barrel.  Then we both took up positions alongside the cannon
to witness the rare and wonderful spectacle of a sewer pipe firing a
croquet ball down a golf-course fairway.

"Ready, aim, fire!"  I commanded.

Retch tripped the firing mechanism.

Eventually, the thunder was replaced by clanging bells inside our
heads, the shattered pieces of earth and sky fell back into place, and
the wobbly world righted itself.  Retch and I limped over to the side
of a utility shed and sat down to relax a bit and collect our senses.

Presently, a deputy sheriff drove up.  He stood for a moment gazing at
the haze of smoke wafting gently over the golf course, the patch of
smoldering turf ringed by fragments of sewer pipe, baby carage wheels,
and pieces of two-by-four.  Then, hoisting up his gun belt, he
sauntered over to us.  "You boys know anything about an explosion out
this way?"  he asked.

"What kind of explosion?"  Retch asked.

"A big explosion."

I was still so stunned I couldn't think up a good lie.  Anyway, I knew
the deputy had us cold.

"Now, what I want to know," the deputy went on, "is why are you two
boys sitting out here behind this shed smoking?"

"Shucks," I said, "if you'd been a little earlier, you'd have seen us
while we were still on fire!"

I thought for sure he was going to haul us off to jail, but instead he
just smiled, took one last look at the smoldering debris, and started
to saunter back to his car.  "Well, if you fellas turn up any
information about the explosion," he said over his shoulder, "I'd
appreciate it if you'd let me know.  I don't reckon there'll be another
one, do you?"

"Nope," Retch and I said in unison.

Then the deputy stoPPed and kicked gingerly at something on the ground
in front of him.  it was Retch's mmuskrat hat!  The deputy turned and
gave us a sympathetic look.  "Too bad about your dog," he said.

The cannon pretty well quelled our enthusiasm for building our own
muzzleloaders from scratch.  Not only had it made a big impression on
us; it had made numerous small impressions.  Years later, while I was
undergoing a physical examination, the doctor commented on some bumps
under my skin.

"Pay them no mind, doc," I told him.  "They're just pieces of sewer
pipe."

At this juncture of my recitation, Milt Slapshot jumped up and headed
for the door.

"Thanks," he said.  "You've answered my question."

"Gee, I said.  "I've even forgotten what the question was.  But if you
need any help putting your muzzleloader kit together, Milt, just give
me a call."

He hasn't called yet.  I suppose he's been tied up at the office a lot
lately.

I Fish; Therefore, I Am Scholars have long known that fishing
eventually turns men into philosophers.  Unfortunately, it's almost
impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary.  I have
always thought it would be better if fishing turned men into Wall
Street bankers, but that is not the case.  It's philosophers or
nothing.

I became a philosopher at age twelve, after a scant six years of
fishing.

One evening at supper I looked up from my plate and announced, "I fish;
therefore, I am."

Perhaps awed by this evidence of precocity in a young boy, my
stepfather turned to my mother and asked, "Is there any more gravy?"

Thus encouraged, I forgot about philosophy until I went off to
college.

The intellectual experience of life in a college dorm proved to be
enormously stimulating, and soon I was engaged in a variety of
scientific experiments.  My research paper, "Levitation: A Roommate's
Response to A Garter Snake in His Bed," caught the fancy of a
psychology professor who invited me tojoin him in research on abnormal
behavior in lesser primates.

Three months later, I made a remarkable discovery.  If I pressed either
the red or green buttons, nothing happened, but if I pressed the
yellow, a bunch of bananas would drop out of a hole in the ceiling.

Not caring much for bananas, I resigned my position and went in search
of more serious, if not more fruitful, studies.

While trying to decide on a major in college, I picked up a minor in
philosophy, one Maylene Whipple by name, who could have passed for
twenty-five any day of the week.  It came as a shock to me to learn
that the precocious Maylene was only seventeen, particularly since we
had already engaged in discourse on the Hegelian dialectic, which is a
felony in most states even if committed by consenting adults.  Maylene
was amazed at my grasp of all the world's great philosophies, but less
so at my grasp of her left knee, to which she responded with a karate
chop that left my wrist bones in shambles.

"Where did you learn so much about philosophy?"  Maylene asked, as I
smiled suavely, clutching my throbbing wrist in an armpit.

"From fishing," I said.  "I started fishing at age six, and by the time
I was twelve, I was a full-fledged philosopher."

"Pooh!"  she said.  "Fishing can't turn you into a philosopher!"

"Oh yeah!"  I said.  "How about Francis Bacon?  How about him?"

"What about Francis Bacon?"

"Why, Bacon was nothing but a humble tailor until he took up fishing.

Five years later, he invented the scientific method and changed the
course of history, despite never having landed a brown trout over
fourteen inches."

"That's incredible!"  Maylene gasped.

"Yes," I replied, "particularly when you consider there were plenty of
really big brown trout around back then.  The rule is, however, The
worse the fisherman, the better the philosopher."

I went on to explain to Maylene that Aristotle was known among his
associates merely as "one weird dude" until he met up with Plato.

"Teach me to be a philosopher," Aristotle pleaded.

Plato was immediately intrigued by the young man.  "All right," he
said.

"Let us begin with the basics: Truth, justice, and How to Bait a Hook
Properly."

Plato himself was so miserably inept at fishing that he eventually
wrote The Republic, which is just about as bad as you can get when it
comes to catching fish.  Much to Plato's disappointment, The Republic
was rejected by all the leading outdoor publications of the day.

"That sounds pretty fishy to me," Malene said.

"Yes," I replied.  "That is what I am trying to teach you.  All
philosophy is pretty fishy underneath."

"Underneath what?"  Maylene asked.

"I don't know that yet," I said.  "I'm only a sopho more."

And I was to remain a sophomore for several years, largely as a result
of my study of philosophy at every lake and stream within a hundred
miles of the university.

The one great universal question I sought to answer was why the angler
always should have been here last week.

After graduation, I studied with the great French existential
philosopher Albert Camus, who told me that men must learn to live
without hope.

"Why is that?"  I asked, disentangling a backlash.

Taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by my backlash, Camus cast
into the hole in which I had just had a nice strike.  "Because that
way, even if you don't catch any fish, you're never disappointed.  You
can always say you just enjoyed being Out communing with nature on a
nice day.  Catching fish is not a matter of ultimate concern, unless,
of course, we are talking about something over five pounds."

The other great French existential philosopher, jeanPaul Sartre, once
gave me an analogy to explain his concepts of Being and Nothingness.

"This," he said, holding up a stick with one paltry eight-inch trout on
it, "is Being.

That," he said, pointing to my empty creel, "is Nothingness."

I have studied the philosophy of Karl Marx at considerable length, and
although I understand it has gained a number of followers in certain
parts of the world, I personally have never found it appealing, perhaps
because I disagree with one of its basic tenets.  Marx believed that
anglers should put all their bait in the same can, from which each
would take according to his need.  I, on the other hand, believe that
each fisherman should dig and fish his own worms, although I am not
averse to going sharesies on the fly book of a really good tyer.

William James's philosophy of pragmatism was more to my liking.

Pragmatism is the philosophy of doing that which works, no matter what
your mother might have told you.  James, who had pretensions of being a
dry-fly purist, developed pragmatism from a simple experiment he
performed one fishless day on a trout stream.  He discovered that by
making a slight modification in a No.  18 Caddis, he was suddenly
catching monstrous brook trout.  The James Ploy, as the experiment came
to be called, is still popular with some fishermen, eventhough the
technical difficulty of attaching a night crawler to a No.  18 Caddis
has never been solved.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once explained logical positivism to me in a way
that made it seem the answer to all the great philosophical questions,
except what to do about spilled tackle boxes.  Morris Lippenstein, a
friend of mine in college, developed the philosophy of transactional
redundance.  It was a lousy philosophy, but Morris, on the other hand,
was a terrific fisherman.

Even now his former professors still refer to him as "Morris the
Sophomore."

The best philosopher I've ever known was a man by the name of Rancid
Crabtree.  Rancid lived in a little cabin in the woods behind our place
when I was a boy.  Since he was free of all forms of gainful
employment, he was able to devote himself to philosophy for up to
twelve hours a day, not including cleaning and eating the catch.  As a
student of philosophy, I often sat at the feet of this great teacher,
although I preferred a chair situated some distance upwind.

Rancid was at his philosophical best while on a trout stream.  "The
water's a little murky for fishing," I observed once.

Rancid took a chaw of tobacco and studied the water.

"Ain't nothin' never just right to do what you wants to do when you
wants to do it," he philosophized.  "So you bestjust go ahead and do it
anyways."

"Spinoza?"  I asked.

"Naw, just a little tobaccy juice dribbling down my chin."

Although Rancid's philosophy seemed to be centered on fishing, it
shaped much of my attitude toward life.  Here is a sampling of his
philosophy: "The two best times to fish is when it's rainin' and when
it ain't."

"Smoked carp tastes just as good as smoked salmon when you ain't got no
smoked salmon."

"There ain't no private property you cain't fish if you knows how to
hunker a spell with the man what owns it."

"You cain't make fish bite just by wantin' 'em to."

"Any time a man ain't fishin' he's fritterin' away his life."

As I say, Rancid Crabtree's philosophy had an enormous influence on
me.

If it hadn't been for that, I might now be living a life adorned with
the tawdry baubles of wealth, a life made sleazy and decadent by
conspicuous consumption.  I might even have turned out to be one of the
jaded beautiful people of the jet set.  Other than those drawbacks,
Rancid's philosophy has served me pretty well.

Running on Empty Some of the boys and I were sitting around Kelly's Bar
& Grill the other evening, stretching and varnishing a few truths about
our adventures in the Great Outdoors, when Kelly himself hauled a new
round of iced schooners over to our table and sat down.  He listened to
the conversation for a few moments, shaking his head in a pretty good
impression of annoyance and then muttered, "Fish, hunt, fish, hunt do
you guys ever talk about anything else?"

"You don't care much for outdoor sports, do you, Kelly?"  Retch Sweeney
asked.

"Oh, you guys are all right," Kelly said.  "It's just that I can't
understand what you see in hunting and fishing.  Man, that stuff is
boring."

"maybe to you it's boring," Al Finley put in, "but to us it's
exciting."

"Ha!"  Kelly said.  "Exciting!  Listen, I know, I fished once.  its
boring!

"Is not!"  Al said.

"Is!"  said Kelly.  "Okay, wise guys, tell me, what's the most exciting
thing about hunting and fishing?"

I thought for a moment.  "Running out of gas."  The other guys all
nodded in agreement.

"Running out of gas?"  asked Kelly, astonished.  "I would've thought
something like being chased by a big bear."

"That's a good one, too," I said.  "But for absolute, undiluted,
marrow-chilling excitement, it's running out of gas."

"I can't believe I'm sitting here listening to this nonsense," Kelly
snarled.  With that, he got up and stomped back to the bar to
spit-polish some glasses.

Like Kelly, most people unfamiliar with outdoor sports find it hard to
believe that running out of gas is the most exciting part of hunting
and fishing.  That's because they know only about the typical, mundane
experience of running out of gas on a well-traveled highway, such as
happened to me just the other day.

On my way home from a business trip, I thought I could make it across a
desert without stopping for a tankful at one of those seedy "last
chance for gas" places that loiter on the edge of deserts.  A mere
fifteen miles from the next gas station, my car choked, coughed a few
times, and then chugged to a stop.  Heat waves rippled up from the
empty horizon and gusts of searing wind sandblasted my car.  It was all
I could do to keep from laughing.  "You call this running out of
gas?"

I said to the fates that govern such things.  "This is child's play!"

I then nonchalantly flagged down the eighty-seventh car to pass, a
vehicle driven, as Ijudged, by a recent escapee from an institution for
the criminally insane.

The man's conversation was diverting, based as it was on a considerable
expertise in the use of poisons, stilettos, hatchets, and pipe bombs.

Some twenty months later, we arrived at the gas station, where he
dropped me off.

When I thanked him for the ride and for sparing my life, he snapped his
fingers as though reminded of some forgotten business, then drove off
in a huff, apparently much disgusted with himself.

The gas station attendant, on the other hand, proved difficult.  He
said his station had a policy against providing any aid whatsoever to
travelers in perilous distress, including the loaning out Of tOOls, the
restroom key, or containers in which to carry gas back to stranded
vehicles.  Without much coaxing however, he agreed to sell me a rusty
little gas can, a family heirloom, as he said, which his
great-grandfather had had handcrafted of rare metals by a team of
silversmiths imported from Switzerland.  Snatching up my heirloom of
gas, I hoofed it back to my car in a trice or, to be more specific,
four hours and ten minutes.  Although the trek was long and hot, the
buzzards circling overhead afforded some shade, and I could not help
but think how accustomed we are to zipping mindlessly along in our
shiny tin capsules, totally oblivious to the ever-changing face of
nature: and what a good thing it is, toO.  For an outdoorsman, though,
that sort of running out of gas doesn't even rank as a nuisance, let
alone excitement.  it requires no skill, no finesse.  it requires no
skill, no finesse.  it is an accident.  An outdoorsman cannot leave
such an important part of his avocation to mere chance.  He must plan
and practice his routine until he gets it perfect.

Then, finally, when he has mastered the arts he can drive his vehicle
to the far end of a wilderness canyon and, some fifty miles or so
beyond the boundaries of the known world, with night closing in and
storm clouds rising, turn to his companions and, with just the right
degree of flair, announce, "G-great jumping gosh almighty, I think
we're out of g-gas!"

Nothing so stirs the emotions and invigorates the vitals of an
outdoorsman as that announcement, particularly when it is enhanced by a
sappy, bug-eyed expression on the face of the announcer.  Once the
announcement has been made, the tradition is that the other persons in
the car are supposed to respond in unison, "Ooooh bleep!"  Sometimes,
though, they merely sit there slack-jawed, staring at the gas gauge in
disbelief.  Also, on occasion, they will choose to unwind with a bit of
horseplay, such as taking turns chasing the vehicle's driver and trying
to hit him with a stick.

There are numerous ways of running out of gas in the wilderness.  One
of the best is to run over large, sharp rocks that puncture your gas
tank.  This method usually affords a much greater degree of surprise,
since all the gas dribbles quietly out onto the ground while you are
away from the car getting cold, hungry, and exhausted in the pursuit of
fish or game.  It is considered poor form, however, to clap your hands
and emit happy yelps of surprise over the discovery that you ruptured
the gas tank on some sharp rocks.  The time is better employed getting
a head start down the road while your companions are still selecting
their sticks and testing them for tensile strength.

The problem with the punctured-gas-tank method is that you can't always
depend on finding large, sharp rocks in the right places.  Thus,
running out of gas a sufficient distance out in the boonies to qualify
you as a master of the art becomes largely a matter of chance.  The
punctured tank is fine, if the opportunity offers itself, but should
not be counted upon.

The so-called short cut, on the other hand, is practically foolproof,
and I highly recommend it.  The "short cut" is usually recalled by one
of the members of the party as a road he was told about in a bar by a
fellow who discovered it while huckleberrying with his family at age
six.  The "short cut" sounds like a reasonable option to the driver,
particularly if he hasn't filled his quota for running out of gas that
year.  "It will cut our driving time in half," he explains, and of
course, it does.  The rest of the time is spent walking, usually up an
incline that appears to be leading to the Continental Divide.

Another good method involves the use of an auxiliary gas tank.  When
the vehicle stalls, the driver says to his nervous company, "Oh-oh,
Fred, looks like we're out of gas."  Allowing himself the enjoyment of
seeing perspiration bead up nicely on the passenger's forehead, the
driver then chuckles and says: "Only joshing, Fred.  Now, I'll just
switch over to the auxiliary tank."  The trick here, of course, is to
have neglected to check the auxiliary tank after your kid borrowed your
vehicle to go out for a pizza and failed to mention that the pizza was
on the other side of the state.  Because your partner may not see the
humor in the situation, you should be prepared to entertain him with
some of your impersonations of famous personalities.

The next best thing to running out of gas is almost running out of
gas.

Fraught with suspense, these trips are often referred to as
white-knucklers.

The term is derived from the driver's tendency to increase the
tightness of his grip on the steering wheel in direct ratio to the rate
the gas is diminishing.  One theory holds that as much as fifteen
additional miles can be squeezed out of the steering wheel itself.

Further mileage is gained by all the passengers rocking forward in
unison and chanting "C'mon, baby, c'mon!"

Chanting by itself is not good for more than two additional miles.

Because it may be difficult for the non-outdoorsman to understand the
exhilaration we hunters and anglers get from running out of gas, I will
give an example from my own personal experience.  Al Finley, Retch
Sweeney, and I had just returned to my car from a fishing trip into the
Hoodoo Mountains and were heading back to the main highway when I
noticed the needle on the gas gauge was hovering half an inch below the
empty mark.  Immediately, I took the recommended emergency measure,
which consists of beating on the gas gauge with your fist in an effort
to get the needle to rise up to the point where you have enough gas to
get home.  I then fell back on squeezing the steering wheel, while
Retch and Al rocked and chanted.  But it was all to no avail.

The engine inhaled the last vapors from the carburetor and died.

We sat there for a few moments, coining some colorful phrases, and then
Al asked the usual question: "Well, what are we going to do now?"

"Beats me," I said.

"I got an idea," Retch said.  "How far back was that big old house we
passed?"

"About five miles, I'd guess," said Al.

"You mean that big spooky old house with the porch caving in and the
shingles falling ofF?"  I asked, hoping to diffuse the hostility in the
car with some casual conversatiOn.  "Boy, I wonder what kind of person
lives in a place like that-- Pretty darn weird, I'll bet.  And those
big wolfy dogs!  Did you see those two dogs, standing under that sign
that said 'Trespassers will be shot!"  wonder what they were gnawing
on.  Looked like it was wearing a hat!

Hoo-boy, I would no more go into that place than--what?  What do you
mean, my fault?  No.  They probably wouldn't have any gas anyway and
..."

A few hours later, I was back at the car with a can of gas.  One of my
pants legs was missing and the back had been ripped out of my shirt.

Fortunately, I had finally been able to lose the dogs by circling
through a swamp and wading up a creek before scaling the cliff.  The
sense of exhilaration was marvelous.  For the first time since running
out of gas on Bald Mountain, I felt fully and truly alive, except for
the lower half of my body, which seemed pretty well shot.

"Any trouble?"  Al asked.

"None to speak of," I said.  "Just the usual."

"Fella lives in that house", said Retch, "pretty weird, was he?"

"Just the usual.  He wouldn't take any pay for the gas, though."

"No kidding!"

"Yeah, but be careful of that gas can.  It's a family heirloom."

The Cat and the Cat Burglar The sound of a vase crashin to the floor in
the living room snapped my wife and me bolt upright in bed.

"It's the cat" Bun Hissed.  "You forgot to put the cat out again!"

"Oh, go back to sleep," I said.  "It's probably only another
burglar."

"You're trying to make excuses.  I know it's the cat.  You forgot to
put it out!"

"Well, I'll prove it's a burglar," I growled, crawling out of bed and
switching on the hall light.  As I expected, a dark figure was
wandering about the living room.  "Hey you!  " The burglar pointed a
questioning finger at his chest.

"Yes, you," I snapped.  "You see anybody else in the living room?  Now
c'mere.  I want to prove to my wife you're only a burglar and not the
dang cat.  Besides, there's no point in eyeing the TV--it blew a tube
on California during the Miss America Pageant, which made two of us,
heh, heh."

The burglar shuffled down the hall, a can of Blackjack Mugger's Spray
trained on me.  "Don't try no funny stuff."

"It was only a little joke."

"I know, but it was pretty bad, and I'm not up to it.  I've had a hard
night.  How come your house is so empty?"

"We've had a lot of other burglaries," I explained.  "For a while they
were so frequent we thought about asking the burglars to each take a
number so there wouldn't be so many here at one time."

What did I say about da funny stuff?"

Sorry.  Say, I'd appreciate it if you would poke your head in the
bedroom there so my wife will know you're only a burglar and not the
cat."

The burglar peered cautiously around the door and looked at my wife.

"Oh, thank goodness you really are only a burglar," Bun said.  "That
cat makes such a terrible mess when it gets left in.  My nice rug in
the living room."

"Can it, lady" the burglar ordered.  "I ain't got time to hear about no
cat messes."

"Have it your way," Bun said.  "But I really should tell you about
Felix.

He sometimes."

"I said, can it!"

"Well, if you're going to be rude, I'll just go back to sleep.  The
last few burglars we had were at least civil."

"Sheesh, do I ever pick 'em," the burglar moaned.

Then he turned to me.  "Say, you're da outdoor writer, ain't ya?"

"Well, sort of," I replied.

"Yeah, dat's what I was told.  All you outdoor writers got big gun
collections.  Let's have a look at yours."

My gun collection!  For years I had worried that some burglar would
discover my secret gun room and clean it out.  Now, under the threat of
bodily harm, I was being forced to reveal my hoard of priceless
firearms.

"oh, all right, follow me," I told the burglar.

I led the way to the den, pressed a hidden button, and a wall panel
slid silently back, revealing the secret gun room.  The burglar
whistled his approval at this bit of architectural ingenuity.

"And there's my fabulous collection," I said, pointing to the gun
cabinet.

"Dat's it?"  the burglar gasped, awestruck.

"Yes," I said, "that's it.  A fence will pay you handsomely for these
fine guns.  Your fortune is made, I'm afraid."

Unlocking the doors to the gun cabinet, I decided to take one last
desperate chance to save my collection.  "Why don't you sit down and
make yourself comfortable," I said to the burglar, "and I'll tell you
about these guns.  Should you decide to keep them for your own
enjoyment, knowing their histories will increase the pleasure of owning
them."

Apparently approving of this suggestion, the burglar flopped into an
armchair, while I removed one of my favorite rifles from the gun
cabinet.

"If you were a connoisseur of fine guns," I began, "I would first tie a
bib around your neck so you wouldn't drool all over your clothes when I
showed you this little .30/30.  Notice, if you will, the grip of the
stock."

"Yeah, what caused dat, termites?  Or did your dog chew it?"

"To the contrary," I replied, "this is custom checking on the grip,
which in all modesty I must admit I accomplished myself with a
ball-peen hammer and a five-penny nail.  True, the exquisiteness of the
pattern is detracted from somewhat by the wrappings of baling wire and
electrician's tape on the stock.

You may also have noticed that the barrel is slightly bent to the left
and downward, but I can assure you it's not more than an inch out of
alignment.  I won't go into how the stock got splintered and the barrel
bent except to say that it saved me from a nasty fall.  The gun is
still remarkably accurate, however, provided you make the necessary
adjustments in your aim.  I assume you have studied calculus?  No?

Well, perhaps one of those pocket calculators would work just as well,
although a bit bothersome on a running shot."

Feigning disgust, the burglar motioned for me to return the .30/30 to
the rack.  He pointed to another rifle.  "What's dat, a .30/06?"

"Close," I said.  "Actually, it's a .30/02, one of the predecessors of
the .30/06.  There was a little problem with the locking mechanism on
the bolt, and the model was discontinued when it was discovered that
the breech velocity sometimes exceeded the muzzle velocity.  Otherwise,
it's perfectly safe, as long as you don't forget to jerk your head away
the instant you squeeze the trigger.  My grandfather once killed a
trophy elk with the bolt when the animal tried to slip past him forty
yards to the rear.  But that kind of shooting takes considerable
practice and I don't recommend it for beginners."

A hint of gloom had settled upon the burglar's features as he gestured
irritably for me to return the .30/02 to the cabinet.

I next took down a wonderful old side-by-side 12-gauge shotgun I also
had inherited from my grandfather--"Old One-Ear" they called him--on my
fourteenth birthday.  As I told the burglar, the shotgun had one
interesting little eccentricity, which was that on about every third
shot both barrels discharged simultaneously regardless of which trigger
was squeezed.  Since I weighed only 125 pounds at the time, most
student Pilots log less flight time than I did on an average hunt, and
their landings are a good deal softer.

As for the effects of these double-barreled kicks on my anatomy, the
high school football coach once observed me coming out of the showers
and leaped to the conclusion that I had contracted a progressive
disease in which one shoulder takes on the general shape and color of a
Hubbard squash.  There was also the problem that my nose from week to
week seemed to drift about my face, sometimes anchoring under my left
eye and at other times setting a course for the center of my
forehead.

This feature was nicely complemented by my right ear, which appeared to
have been run through a pastashaping machine.

"I used this fine old gun for nearly twenty years," I told the
burglar.

"But people were always asking me about the'accident,'and I got tired
of telling them I had saved my commanding officer in Korea by throwing
myself on a hand grenade."

The burglar stifled a yawn with his fist.  "C'mon guy, I ain't got all
night, ya know.  Let's speed it up on dese histories, huh?"

"Right," I said.  "I think you'll like this next one."

I unracked the single-shot .22 rifle that had been given to me by my
parents when I was eleven years old.  Ah, never was a gun given more
tender care than that one.  I cleaned and oiled it three times a day
whether it had been fired or not, and never allowed a speck of dust to
settle on it for more than a minute.

"So how come it's all rusted and pitted?"  the burglar asked, his voice
fairly reeking with exasperation, perhaps because I was delaying my
account of the .22 in an unsuccessful attempt to wrench the bolt
back.

As I told the burglar, a couple of months after the .22 had come into
my possession, I was out in the back pasture target-practicing on a tin
can when who should show up but a neighbor by the name of Olga
Bonemarrow.  I didn't much care for girls at the time, and considered
Olga in particular a great nuisance.  Ignoring her, I continued to
plink away at the can while she directed a torrent of prattle at the
back of my head.  Suddenly a single question leaped from the torrent
like a sparkling cutthroat from the spring runoff.

"Do you want to come over to my house and play doctor?"  Olga had
asked.

By sheer coincidence, Olga had hit upon one of my great enthusiasms of
the moment, namely the field of medicine.  Such was my passion for the
art and science of curing the sick that target practice and even my
beloved .22 were immediately blotted from my consciousness.  Attempting
to comport myself in a dignified manner appropriate to a serious
student of medicine, I raced panting after Olga to her house, where we
slipped upstairs to her bedroom without detection by Mr. and Mrs.
Bonemarrow.

While I grabbed a window curtain and dried my palms, which were
sweating profusely from the previous exertion, Olga rummaged around
under her bed, finally extracting a large flat box.  The box for a
moment consumed one hundred percent of my attention, for on its lid was
printed the word "Doctor."

Olga took off the lid, removed a board zigzagged with lines of squares,
placed two tiny white wooden figures on the square bearing the title
"Med School," and then began to shuffle little stacks of cards.  Even
as I sized up the situation, my interest in the field of medicine began
to fall off sharply.

"I just remembered a previous engagement."  I told Olga and headed for
the door.

"Hold it, buster," Olga snapped, adding with ominous vagueness, "or
I'll tell Pa!"

Pa, I should point out, was built like a nail keg and had a temper
shorter than a gnat's hiccup.  No matter what Olga might tell him, I
deduced it wouldn't be good, and it was easy to imagine a hairy nail
keg drop-kicking me through a second-story window.  Still, I was not
the sort of person to be intimidated by childish threats, as I
immediately demonstrated to an astonished Olga.  In fact, in only my
first three throws of the dice, I got out of med school, interned at a
major hospital, and was making big bucks performing cardiovascular
surgery.

Not only was the game boring, but it lasted slightly longer than the
last ice age.  By the time it ended, my mental faculties felt as if
they had been stir-fried in molasses.  I staggered off home and dropped
immediately into bed.

The next morning I awoke with a jolt, realizing that somewhere in the
fiasco with Olga I had mislaid my rifle.  I left the house so fast the
screen door twanged for a week.  But the .22 was not to be found.  It
was as if it had slipped from my sweating palms the day before and
disappeared down a gopher hole.  My grief was monumental and has
lingered even into the present day, causing me still to hold the entire
medical profession in general distrust and responsible for the loss of
my .22.

The following spring I found the rifle on a stack of fence posts, where
it had wintered over.  As a boy, I often read many articles that warned
of the ills of failing to clean and oil a gun after each use, but never
did I read an article warning against leaving a gun on a stack of fence
posts all winter.

You would think some shooting editor might have mentioned that at least
once.

"So that's how my .22 got rusted and pitted," I told the burglar, who
seemed on the verge of suffering an infarction of some sort.  "Now,
moving right along, this rather peculiar-looking rifle here is actually
a .270.  I restocked it myself with the arm from an old rocking chair
and ..."

The burglar held up a hand for me to cease.  "Listen, pal," he said,
"maybe I'll just take da TV after all.  You can keep da guns."

Clearly, the man had been touched by my show of affection for the guns,
which was what I had hoped for.  Out of appreciation for his change of
heart, I led him back to the living room, loaded him up with the TV,
and even tried to warn him when he started out the wrong door.  When
the ruckus in the yard finally died down, I went back to bed.

"Is the burglar finished?"  my wife asked sleepily.

"I'm afraid so," I said.  "If the poor devil had had enough sense to
drop the TV, he probably could have made it over the back fence before
Felix got him.  You know, having an attack cat isn't such a bad idea;
but if these burglaries ever let up, we're going to have to start
buying cat food for him."

Salami on Rye and Hold the Wild Gobo "Did you know that cattails are
good to eat?"  my wife asked me one evening, looking up from the book
she was reading.

"Who says?"

"Euell Gibbons."

"Well, Gibbons may know something about the Roman Empire, but he
doesn't know a damn thing about cattails," I responded
authoritatively.

"They are not good to eat!"

"That was Gibbon who knew about the Roman Empire.  Gibbons is an expert
on wild foods."

Well, it just so happens, as I pointed out to Bun, that I too am an
expert on wild foods.  I was taught about them as a boy by my
grandmother.

Few things were more dreaded in our house during my youth than Gram's
announcement, "I think I'll go out to the woods and pick us a mess of
wild greens for supper.  Don't that sound good?"

"Mmmmmmm," Dad would say, because he hated to hurt Gram's feelings.

"Aagghhh!"  my sister and I would say, because we detested Gram's wild
greens.  Then Dad would get us off in a corner and make some threats.

He always referred to these threats as "a piece of advice."

"Let me give you two a piece of advice," he would say.  "You eat your
grandmother's greens without a word, and if she asks you how you like
them, you smile and go 'mmmmmmm."  Or else!"

We would try to get him to be more specific about the "or else" so we
could weigh the punishment against eating the greens, but he would
stand pat on the vague and ominous threat.

The truth was Dad hated the greens as much as we did.  He told my
mother once that he would rather see the wolf crouched at the door than
Gram coming through it with a mess of her wild greens.  But he would
never for the world let Gram think that they weren't practically his
favorite food.

At supper he would be solemnly munching his way through the generous
portion of wild greens to which he had masochistically helped himself,
when Gram would ask, "How do you like the greens, Frank?"

Dad would look up and smile and go "mmmmmmm," but his eyes would be all
wild and terrible.  Then he would shoot my sister and me his "or else"
look, and we would attack our own portions, which would be about the
size of postage stamps but more than ample.

"And how do you children like the greens?"  Gram would ask.  We would
first check out our glowering father, then smile weakly and go
"mmm-gag-mmmmm."

I vividly recall the time Dad drew among his portion of the greens a
particularly noxious sprout, its presence in the mess no doubt due to
Gram's failing eyesight.  (It was generally suspected that if a thing
was vaguely green and appeared not to be moving under its own power,
Gram picked it.) Dad bit into the renegade sproutjust after he had
smiled and gone "mmmmmmm" in response to one of Gram's inquiries about
the greens.

(When he was eating her wild greens she could have asked him if he'd
had a hard day, and he would have smiled and gone "mmmmmmm.") Suddenly,
he stiffened in his chair and his fork clattered to the floor.

"What is it?"  Mom asked, thinking he was having an attack of some
kind, and I guess he was.

He stomped his foot several times, shook his head, swallowed mightily,
and then drained his water glass in a single gulp.

Wiping his nose and eyes discreetly on his sleeve, he glanced over at
Gram and offered the opinion, "Some of these greens have a powerful
flavor."

Gram, oblivious of the preceding activity, peered at him over her
spectacles.  "Don't they, though!  Try'em with a little cinnamon.  They
taste even better that way."

I don't know about the cinnamon, but I could have tried them with Dutch
Cleanser and they wouldn't have tasted any worse.

Gram was also a great believer in natural remedies for illness.  Once
when my sister was sick, or claiming to be, possibly because we were
scheduled to have a mess of wild greens for supper, Gram concocted one
of her folk medicines.  The only ingredient that I can recall with any
certainty was sap from a balsam tree in our yard.  There was some
yellow stuff, too, either sulfur or mustard powder, and I believe some
water and molasses.  She boiled the mixture down to concentrated and
then took a tablespoonful in to my sister, the very picture of
infirmity as she lay in bed.

"Here, dear, take this," Gram said, pinching Trudy's cheeks to open her
mouth, and pouring in the yellowish-brown substance.  "It will have you
up and around in no time."

Well, Gram was right about that.  Ol'Trudy was up and around in one
second, gasping, gagging, choking, knocking over furniture, and kicking
walls.

It was a miraculously quick cure and worthy of being written up in
medical journals.  And not only did the remedy cure childhood illnesses
instantly, but it had wonderful preventive powers.  In fact, neither
Trudy nor I was ever sick again in all the rest of the time Gram stayed
with us.

When I grew up and married, I thought wild greens were behind me once
and for all.  Then Bun read Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell
Gibbons.  Soon she was insisting that we stalk not only the wild
asparagus, but the wild cattail, the wild milkweed, the wild burdock,
the wild pokeweed, and a dozen other wild foods.  "You never know when
a knowledge of wild foods might come in handy," she would say
ominously.

It wouldn't have been so bad if we could have done our stalking in the
woods and swamps, but we lived in a city.  One day as we walked along
the sidewalk past a weedy vacant lot strewn with the rusting carcasses
of dead cars, Bun suddenly gasped, "Wild gobo!"

Well, I scarcely jumped more than a foot in the air, which says
something for my self-control, for I fully expected some hulking menace
to be charging in our direction.  "Where?  Where?"

"There," Bun said, pointing to some weeds.  "Wild gobo, also known as
great burdock, Arctium lappa."

"Arctium lappa my clavicle," I snarled.

I hated stalking wild foods with Bun almost as much as I did eating
them.

(Bun, with tears welling: "You don't like my pokeweed ragout!"  Me,
smiling weakly: "Mmmmmmm!") The problem with stalking wild foods in the
city was that they always grew on somebody else's property.  There were
two modes of operation open to us.  We could sneak onto the lot, dig up
or hack down some of the weeds, and then flee to the car for a fast
getaway.  Or we could ask permission of the property owner: "Sir, I
wonder if you'd mind if I hacked off a bit of your wild gobo."  It
always seemed easier to me just to sneak onto the property without
permission.

Through all of this I tried to explain to Bun how to interpret the
terminology used in wild food books.  For example, edible does not mean
"good to eat."  Edible means only that you won't flop over with your
face in your plate when you take a bite of the stuff.  Choice does not
mean choice.  It means only that if you feed the food to an
unsuspecting dinner guest he won't chase you out of the house trying to
plunge a table fork into your back.

"I don't believe it," Bun would say.

"It's true," I'd reply.  "Listen, if the cattail was actually good to
eat, they'd sell it in supermarkets for three dollars a pound.  I rest
my case."

I must admit that my experience with wild foods has not been all bad.

Wild mushrooms are a case in point.  I am a fungiphile of long
standing, and devote countless hours searching for succulent morsels of
the half-dozen varieties I know how to identify.  Indeed, I owe it to
the humble shaggymanes for once improving the general quality of my
life, if not actually preserving my sanity.

Many years ago I had a friend named Stretch who worked nights at a
warehouse.  Apparently the job wasn't too difficult, because every
night he found time to write half a dozen poems.  After he got off
work, in the morning, he would rush over to my house to read me his
latest creations.

While I ate breakfast, he would sit down at the table with me, refusing
all offers of food and drink.  Then he would say, "Oh, maybe I will
have a cup of coffee, if it isn't too much bother."  After a while he
would add, "Say, that toast looks awfully good.  Do you mind?

Thanks.

Please pass the jam."  And a bit later: "Were you planning on eating
both those strips of bacon?"  And so on.  Soon I would be at the stove
frying him overeasy eggs and "a few hash browns, if you have some
handy, and maybe three or four more strips of that bacon."

Now, Stretch was a fine fellow and good company, and I did not mind at
all feeding him breakfast every morning.  The problem was his poetry,
which was of the Naturalistic school and leaned heavily on an S
alliteration: "Sad, sorrow-sunk survivors of a sadistic society,
saturated with strong, stiff stench of stifling strife ..."

In short, it was not poetry to eat breakfast by.  Every morning I would
go off to work in a somber, Naturalistic mood and throughout the day
would find myself saying such things to my fellow workers as, "Sara,
send Sally for six or so sheets of seven-cent stamps."

One day walking home from work I spotted a nice patch of shaggymane
mushrooms growing on a lawn and, with the stealth known only to
foragers of wild food in an urban setting, quickly filled my hat with
them.

The next morning I cooked up the mess of mushrooms and was just sitting
down to enjoy them when Stretch bounded through the door, the night's
output of poems clutched in his hand.

"Breakfast, Stretch?"  I asked as he sat down at the table and began
arranging his works for the reading.

"No, nothing for me, thanks.  This first poem I titled 'Slime."  I
think you will like it.  Oh, maybe I will have a cup of coffee, if it's
not too much bother."

Then Stretch saw the dish of shaggymanes.  "What's that?"

"Mushrooms."

"Mind if I try them?"

"Be my guest," I said, sliding the dish over and handing him a fork.

"Hey, these are delicious!"  Stretch exclaimed and continued to fork in
my shaggymanes between stanzas of "Slime."  Upon completion of the
reading, he asked, "How did you like it?"

"Great," I said.  "How did you like the mushrooms?"

Stretch ran his finger around the dish and licked the juice off of it
appreciatively.  "Just the best thing I ever ate, that's all," he
said.

"What kind were they?"

"Beats me," I said.

"You don't know?"  he said, staring at his licked finger as if it were
a coral snake.

"I found them growing in the yard and thought they looked good enough
to eat," I said.

Stretch looked around wildly.  "But you're not supposed to do that!"

"Why not?"  I said.  "It's my yard, I can pick mushrooms in it if I
want."

"No, that's not ... I mean ... look, I got to go!"

Since my eyes were in the middle of a blink at the time, I didn't see
Stretch leave, but I noted that the swiftness of his departure had sent
the poems floating about the kitchen like autumn leaves in a brisk
wind.  While conjecturing to myself about Stretch's intended
destination, I gathered up the poems and placed them neatly on the
shelf to return to him the next time he stopped by to give me readings
at breakfast.  The poems gathered dust there for many months, and now
I'm not sure what happened to them.  I suppose they weren't such bad
poems either, particularly if you're unusually fond of the S sound.

Two-Man-Tent Fever Fenton Quagmire was telling me recently about the
weekend he had just suffered through at his lakeside retreat.

"Rained the whole time, and I didn't get outside once," he said.  "By
Sunday I had a case of the cabin fever like you wouldn't believe!"

Wouldn't believe?  Why, I could barely keep from doubling over in a
paroxysm of mirth!

I happen to know that Quagmire's "cabin" is a threebedroom,
shag-carpeted, TVed, and hot-tubbed villa overlooking a stretch of
sandy beach that sells per linear foot at the same rate as strung
pearls.  Obviously, what Quagmire had experienced was nothing more than
villa fever, which compares to cabin fever as the sniffles to double
pneumonia.

True cabin fever requires a true cabin--four buckling walls, a leaky
roof, a warped floor, a door, and a few windows.  Furnishings consist
of something less than the bare necessities.  Wall decorations, while
permitted, should not be such as to arouse any visual interest
whatsoever.  (The old Great Northern Railroad calendar with the
mountain goat on it is about right.) A wood stove, preferably one made
from a steel barrel, provides the heat, and also the only excitement,
when its rusty tin pipe sets fire to the roof.

That's your basic true cabin.

When I was six, we lived for a year in just such a cabin.  My father
speculated that it had been built by a man who didn't know his adz from
his elbow, or words to that effect.  The shake roof looked as if it had
been dealt out by an inebriated poker player during a sneezing fit.

Proper alignment of one log over another was so rare as to suggest
coincidence, if not divine intervention.  The man who rented the cabin
to us, apparently a buff of local history, boasted that it had been
built toward the end of the last century.

"Which end?"  Dad asked him.

Within a short while after we moved in, Dad had the cabin whipped into
shape, a shape that might now be regarded as unfit for human habitation
but which in those days would generally have been thought of as unfit
for human habitation.  After hammering in the last nail, Dad unscrewed
the cap from a quart of his home brew, took a deep swig, and told my
mother, "This is as good as it gets!"  I have, of course, re-created
the quote, but it captures the proper note of pessimism.

One might suppose that a family of four would be miserable living in a
tiny, sagging log cabin in the middle of an Idaho wilderness, and one
would be right.  My mother and sister accepted our situation
philosophically and cried only on alternate days.  Dad arose early each
morning and went off in search of "suitable work," by which he meant
work that paid anything at all.  I spent my time morosely digging away
at the chinking between the logs, not realizing that the resulting
cracks would let all the cold out.

One day in the middle of January, Mom looked up from her bowl of gruel
at breakfast, as we jokingly referred to it, and announced, "Well,
we've finally hit rock bottom.  Things just can't get any worse."  We
soon discovered that Mom lacked the gift of prophecy.

Within hours, the mercury was rattling about like a dried pea in the
bulb of the thermometer, and the wind came blasting out of the north.

Strangely, Dad seemed delighted by the onset of a blizzard.  Even now,
four decades later, I can still see him bending over, rubbing a hole in
the window frost with his fist and peering out at the billowing snow.

"Let her blow!"  he shouted.  "We've got plenty of firewood and enough
grub to last until spring if we have to!  By gosh, we'll just make some
fudge, pop corn, and play Monopoly until she blows herself out!  It'll
be like a little adventure, like we're shipwrecked!"

The rest of the family was instantly perked up by his enthusiasm and
defiance of the blizzard.  Mom started making fudge and popping corn,
while my sister and I rushed to set up the Monopoly game.

The blizzard lasted nearly two weeks, give or take a century.  By the
third day my sister and I were forbidden even to mention Monopoly,
fudge, or popcorn.  And Dad no longer regarded the blizzard as a little
adventure.

"Why are you making that noise with your nose ?"  he would snarl at
me.

"I'm just breathing."

"Well, stop it!"

"Whose idea was that calendar?"  he'd snap at my mother.

"What's wrong with it, dear?"

"That stupid mountain goat watches every move I make, that's what!

Look how its eyes follow me!"

A day or two later, as Dad himself admitted at the time, he became
irritable.

Shortly after that, he came down with cabin fever.

Spending several days trapped in close quarters with a person who had
cabin fever toughened me up a lot psychologically.  A couple of years
later, when I saw the movie Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, I thought
it was a comedy.  At the peak of his cabin fever, Dad could have played
both leads in the film simultaneously and sent audiences screaming into
the streets.

The only good thing about cabin fever is that it vanishes the instant
the victim is released from enforced confinement.  When the county
snowplow finally opened the road and came rumbling into our yard, Dad
strolled out to greet and thank the driver.

"Snowed in fer a spell, weren't ya?"  the driver said.  "Bet you got
yerself a good case of the cabin fever."

"Naw," Dad said.  "It wasn't bad.  We just made fudge and popped corn
and played a few games of Monop ... Monop ... played a few games."

"Well, you certainly seem normal enough," the driver said.  Then he
pointed to Mom, Sis, and me.  "That your family?"

It seemed like an odd question, but I suppose the driver wondered why a
normal man like my father would have a family consisting of three
white-haired gnomes.

There are numerous kinds of fever brought on by the boredom of enforced
confinement over long periods.  I myself have contracted some of the
lesser strains--cold water-flat fever, mobile-home fever, and
split-level fever, to name but a few.  I have never been able to afford
the more exotic and expensive fevers, like those of my wealthy friend
Quagmire.  In addition to his villa fever, he will occasionally run a
continent fever, one of the symptoms of which is the sensation that the
Atlantic and Pacific coastlines are closing in on him.  The treatment,
as I understand it, is to take two aspirin and a Caribbean cruise.

Of all such fevers, by far the most deadly is two-man-tent fever,
which, in its severity, surpasses even the cabin variety.

I had the opportunity of studying two-man-tent fever close-up a few
years ago, when Parker Whitney and I spent nearly twenty hours in his
tiny tent waiting for a storm to blow over.  Parker is a calm, quiet
chap normally, and it was terrible to see him go to pieces the way he
did, after the fever overtook him.

For a while, during the first few hours of the storm, we were
entertained by the prospect that we might momentarily be using the tent
as a hang glider.

After the wind died down to a modest gale, we were able to devote our
whole attention to the rippling of the orange ripstop nylon that
enveloped us.

Fascinating as this was, its power to distract was limited to a few
hours.  By then, I was formulating a geological theory that a major
earth fault lay directly beneath, and crossed at right angles to, my
half-inch Ensolite pad.

While several of my more adventuresome vertebrae were testing this
theory, I gradually became aware that Parker was beginning to exhibit
certain signs of neurotic behavior.

"I hate to ask this, old chap," I said, kindly enough, "but would you
mind not chewing that gum quite so loud?"

Parker replied with uncharacteristic snappishness.  "For the fourteenth
time, I'm not chewing gum!"

Mild hallucination is one of the early symptoms of two-man-tent
fever.

Not only did Parker fail to realize that he was chomping and popping
his gum in a hideous manner, but he clearly was of the impression that
I had mentioned the matter to him numerous times previously.  Since
hallucinations do not yield readily to logical argument, I thought that
confronting him with the empirical evidence might work.  Unfortunately,
Parker was now in the grip of paranoia and responded to my effort by
shouting out that I had "gone mad."  I suppose he was referring to the
manner in which I had grabbed him by the nose and chin and forced his
mouth open, a maneuver that proved ineffective, since he had somehow
managed to hide the gum from my vision and probing thumb, possibly by
lodging it behind his tonsils.  Such deception, I might add, is not at
all unusual among victims of two-man-tent fever.

Parker remained quiet for some time, although I could tell from the
look in his eyes that the paranoia was tightening its hold on him, and
I began to wonder if my life might not be in danger.  I warned him not
to try anything.

"Why don't you get some sleep?"  Parker replied.  "Just try to get some
sleep!"

"Ha!"  I said, not without a trace of sarcasm.  "Do you really think
I'm going to fall for that old one?"

I twisted around in my bag and propped up on an elbow so I could watch
Parker more closely.  It was easy to see that the two-man-tent fever
was taking its toll on him.  He was pale and trembling, and stared back
at me with wide, unblinking eyes.  He looked pitiful, even though
posing no less a threat to my life.

Then, as if our situation were not perilous enough already, I noticed
that Parker had dandruff.  Under normal circumstances, I can take
dandruff or leave it alone, but not in a two-man tent.  It wasn't the
unsightly appearance of the dandruff that bothered me, but the little
pup pup pup sounds it made falling on his sleeping bag.  I soon deduced
that Parker had contrived this irritation for the sole purpose of
annoying me, a sort of Chinese dandruff torture, although I hadn't
realized until then that Parker was Chinese.

Informing him that I was on to his little game, I told Parker to get
his dandruff under control or suffer the consequences.  Not
surprisingly, he denied any knowledge of his dandruff or its
activities.  I therefore retaliated by doing my impression of Richard
Widmark's maniacal laugh every time I heard a pup.  Parker countered by
doing his impression of a man paralyzed by fear.  It wasn't that good,
as impressions go, but I withheld criticism of the poor devil's
performance, since it seemed to take his mind off the fever.

At the first break in the storm, Parker shot out of the tent, stuffed
his gear into his pack, and took off down the trail, leaving me with
the chore of folding up the tent and policing camp.  Before I was
finished, a ranger came riding up the trail on a horse.  We exchanged
pleasantries, and I asked him if he had happened to pass my partner on
the trail.

I don't know," he said.  "Is he a white-haired gnome?"

Fish Poles, and Other Useful Terminology I have long held the opinion
that a person should know the jargon of any activity in which he
professes some expertise.  A writer, for example, should not refer to
quotation marks as "those itty-bitty ears."  It is unsettling to hear
the carpenter you have just hired refer to his hammer as "a pounder." 
A mechanic tinkering in the innards of your car arouses anxiety by
speaking of a pair of pliers as his "squeezer."  Similarly, it would be
disconcerting to have a doctor tell you he had detected an irregularity
in your "thingamajig."

(If you're like me, you're composed almost entirely of thingamajigs,
some of which you value a good deal more than others.) Ignorance of
proper terminology often leads to confusion, alarm, and panic,
especially when one talks about the sport of fishing.

I recently met a man and his son out bass fishing.  The father was
making superb casts with what was obviously a new rod.

"Is that a boron you've got there?"  I asked.

The man turned and looked at his son.  "Well, he ain't too bright,
that's for sure," he said.

Here was a case where a man had mastered the art of fishing, but had
failed to keep up on recent nomenclature.  I could hardly blame him.  I
now spend so much time learning all the new fishing terms that I
scarcely have time to fish.

Non-anglers think fishing is easy.  Well,just let them spend a day
poring over one of the new fishing catalogs and memorizing the terms.

One 1982 catalog, for example, contains such terms and phrases as
"fiberglass integrated with unidirectional graphite," "silicone carbide
guides with diamond polished silicone carbide guide rings," "Uni bent
butt," that sort of thing.  I'm just lucky I didn't ask the man fishing
with his son if he had a Uni bent butt.  I might have come home with a
Uni bent head.

Consider just a few of the terms you now must learn in order to go out
and catch a few bass: structure, isolated structure, sanctuary,
stragglers, breakline, suspended fish, pattern, holding area, riprap,
point, scatter point, contact point, cheater hook, buzz bait, Texas
rig, crank bait, tringgeing, flippin', PH, spinnerbate, fly'n'rind.

The aerospace industry requires less technical jargon than the average
bass fisherman.

When I was a youngster, my friends and I could get by on fewer than a
dozen fishing terms.  No doubt we could have expanded our angling
vocabulary by going to the county library and checking out a book on
fishing techniques.

The problem was that if one of the gang showed up at the library to
check out a book, Miss Phelps, the librarian, might have suffered a
heart attack on the spot.  Enlarging our fishing vocabularies didn't
seem worth the risk of taking a life.  We chose to get by on the few
fishing terms we knew.

Although our fishing terminology was limited, it was not without its
own peculiar complexity.  Take the word keeper for example.  The first
fish you caught was always a "keeper."  This was not the result of
outrageous coincidence, but of definition.  The first fish was
interpreted as a "keeper" merely by having a mouth big enough to
stretch over the barb of a hook.

There were several advantages to this definition of keeper applying to
the first fish.  Suppose the first fish you caught during the day was
also the only fish, and you had released it.  That would mean you would
have to go home skunked, an angling term every bit as significant then
as it is today.

Calling the first fish a "keeper" often prevented the emotional damage
which resulted from going home "skunked."

Furthermore, if someone later asked you if you had caught any fish, you
could reply, in reference to a fish no longer than a pocketknife, "Just
one keeper.  The phrase just one keeper implied, of course, that you
had caught and released numerous small fish, thereby contributing to
one's reputation as a "sportsman."  if the first fish was particularly
small, it did not always remain a "keeper."  A larger fish, when
caught, became a "keeper" and the small first fish became a badly
hooked one.  You always explained, with a note of regret in your voice,
that you had kept the "badly hooked" fish because it would have "died
anyway."  Proper fishing terminology even in the time of my youth was
extremely important, both socially and psychologically.

Although some of our terms might seem simple by today's standards, they
were not without their subtle shades of meaning.  Take the word mess
for instance, which was the word used to denote your catch while
telling someone about your day of fishing.  Mess used without modifiers
usually meant two fish--a "keeper" and a "badly hooked."  A small mess
referred to a single "keeper."  A nice mess meant three fish, excluding
any "badly hooked."  Any number of fish over three was, naturally, a
big mess.  To ask for specific numbers was considered rude when someone
told you he had caught a "big mess" of fish.

Today, the phrase a mess of fish is seldom heard, probably because
anyone uttering it would instantly be identifying himself as a fish
glutton.

Quantity of the catch is now always referred to by specific numbers,
although a certain element of deception is still retained.  An angler
who has spent twelve hours flailing a trout stream, and managed to land
a total of three fish, responds to a question about the number of fish
caught by saying "I only kept three."  If asked exactly how many he
caught and released, he will be overcome by a coughing fit and have to
rush from the room.  Now, as always, it is considered poor form to lie
about the number of fish caught, unless, of course, the angler has not
mastered the technique of the coughing fit.

It took me fifteen minutes the other day to memorize the name of my new
casting rod, and I've already forgotten it.  When I was younger, we
didn't have to memorize the names of our rods because we didn't have
any.  We had what were called "fish poles."  Even now, after nearly
forty years, I will still occasionally refer to a three-hundred-dollar
custom-built fly rod as a "fish pole."

"That's a nice fish pole you've got there," I'll say to the owner of
the rod.

He will go white in the face, shudder, twitch, gurgle, clench his
hands, and lurch toward me.  "Wha-what d-did you s-say?  F-fish pole?

FISH POLE!

Y-you called my three-hundred-dollar rod a FISH POLE?"

I will back away, hands raised to fend him off, and explain that I have
never shaken a bad habit picked up in my childhood.

Fish pole, in the old days, was a generic term for any elongated
instrument intended for the purpose of propelling hook, line, sinker,
and worm in the general direction of fish-holding water, and then
wrenching an unlucky fish to the bank with as little fuss as
possible.

Some fish poles were made from cedar trees that had been rejected as
too short or too slender for use as telephone poles.  A few fortunate
kids owned metal telescoping fish poles.  My first fish pole was a
single-piece, stiff metal tube about six feet long.

There was a wire that could be pulled out of the tip if you wanted
"action."

I never pulled the wire out.  Action, in my fishing circles, was not
considered a desirable characteristic in a fish pole.  It merely
complicated the process of wrenching the fish from the water, or
landing it.

Landing, by the way, consisted of whipping the fish in a long, high arc
over your head and into the branches of a tree, which you usually had
to climb in order to disengage both line and fish.  Sometimes the fish
would come off the line right at the peak of the arc and whiz away
toward the state line like a stone loosed from a sling.  These fish
were later referred to as "badly hooked."

Forked stick is a term seldom heard among anglers nowadays, which is
too bad, because the forked stick once served to enrich both fishing
and conversations about fishing.

"I prefer the forked stick to a creel for carrying fish," a kid would
say.  "The creel is too bulky and keeps catching on brush.  It gets in
your way when you're casting, too.  Most creels are too small for a
really big fish anyway.  Give me a forked stick to a creel any time."

This statement actually meant "Give me a forked stick any time until
someone gives me a creel.  Then I'll prefer a creel."

There was much discussion about the kind of tree or bush that produced
the best forked sticks for carrying fish.  In theory, the way you
selected a forked stick was to seek out a good specimen from the
preferred species of bush or tree, cut it off with your pocketknife,
and neatly trim it to appropriate and aesthetically pleasing
dimensions.  Ideally, there would be a fork at both ends, one to keep
the fish from sliding off and the other to be hooked under your belt,
thus freeing both hands for the business of catching fish.

The theory of the forked stick didn't work out in practice, because the
kid never even thought about cutting a forked stick until he had caught
his first fish.  To cut a forked stick prior to catching a fish would
have been presumptuous and probably bad luck to boot.  (Also, few
things look more ridiculous than an angler walking around with an empty
forked stick.) Once a fish had been caught, the youngster, in his
excitement, would instantly forget the aesthetically pleasing
proportions prescribed for the forked stick.  He would twist off the
nearest branch with a fork on it, gnaw away any obstructing foliage
with his teeth, thread the fish onto it, and get back to his fishing.

When you were catching fish, you didn't have time to mess with
aesthetics.

The forked stick contributed much excitement to our fishing.  Since a
double-forked branch or willow was almost never available when needed,
the forked stick could not be hooked under your belt but had to be laid
down somewhere while you fished.  Once or twice every hour, a panicky
search would begin for a string of fish left on a log or rock "Just
around that last bend."

Approximately thirty percent of your fishing time was spent trying to
catch fish and seventy percent looking for fish you had already
caught.

Thus, the term forked stick denoted not merely a device for carrying
your catch, but a whole mode of fishing that the boy who grows up
owning a creel can never come to know or appreciate.  He should
consider himself damn lucky for it, too.

There were a few other terms that filled out our fishing vocabulary.

Game warden is one that comes to mind.  I don't know if any state still
has game wardens.  Most have Wildlife Conservation Officers or persons
of similar sterile title to enforce fishing regulations.  Somehow it
doesn't seem to me that "Wildlife Conservation Officer" has the same
power to jolt a boy's nervous system as does "game warden."  How well I
remember a fishing pal once exclaiming, "Geez, here comes the game
warden!"  We jerked our lines from the creek, sprinted up the side of a
steep, brush-covered hill, threw our fish poles and forked sticks under
a log, and tore off across the countryside.  And we hadn't even been
violating any of the fishing regulations.  The term game warden just
had that sort of effect on you.

There is at least one indication that many terms and phrases closely
associated with fishing may soon be made obsolete.  A new reel on the
market is reputed to virtually eliminate backlash, that wonderfully
intricate snarl of line that has served to enrich the vocabularies of
anglers ever since reels were invented.  It seems likely the
eradication of backlash could mean the end of such colorful expressions
as bleeping bleep of a bleep bleep.  Truly, the language of fishing
will be the less for the absence of backlash.

And it's about time, if you ask me.

The Man Who Notices Things Fenton Quagmire has this irritating
habit--he notices things.  Even when we were kids, Fenton noticed
things.

Our fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Terwilliger, was keen on noticing
things herself.  "All right, class," she'd say, "who noticed anything
different about our room today?  Pat?"

"There's a picture of George Washington on the wall?"  I'd try
hopefully.

"That picture has been there ever since they built the school!  Now,
Eugene, do you notice anything different about the room?"

"Nope."

"Lester?"

"Unh-unh."

One by one, Mrs. Terwilliger would call out the names of the boys in
the class and ask if they noticed anything different about the room.

They would reply with negative grunts, wild guesses, and looks of total
befuddlement.

(She never called on any of the girls, of course, since it is well
known that girls notice things.) Finally, the teacher would get to
Quagmire, who would have been waving his hand in the air and snapping
his fingers for attention.

"All right now, Fenton, I want you to tell these dunces what's
different about the room today."

Quagmire would then point out some piddling detail, such as that the
wall to the cloakroom had been removed, or all the seats were facing in
a different direction, or Mrs. Terwilliger was dressed up like Woody
Woodpecker.  We dunces would emerge from our lethargy long enough to
express our amazement that we had failed to notice the thing, whatever
it was, and would whisper vows among ourselves to make life miserable
for Quagmire at the next recess.

The casual observer might suppose that the rest of us boys enjoyed
tormenting Quagmire, and we were frequently hauled into the principal's
office to face such charges.  The truth was, it was Quagmire who
tormented the rest of us.  I remember, for example, a championship
softball game in which we were ahead by one run in the ninth running,
and the opposing team, with two outs, had the bases loaded.  An easy
fly ball was batted out to Quagmire in center field.  The ball bounced
alongside him and disappeared into a weed patch.  He was on his hands
and knees staring at the ground.  Cries of rage and anguish went up
from the rest of our team.

"Hey, guys," Quagmire shouted.  "Guess what I just noticed out here--a
four-leaf clover!"  In his peculiar innocence, he assumed that the
reason his teammates were converging on him so rapidly was to satisfy a
lifelong curiosity about four-leaf clovers.

I saw that it was up to me to save him.  In the musical chairs of
childhood relationships, Quagmire was from time to time my best friend,
and this was one of those times.  The code back then required that you
do whatever you could to save your best friend, so I immediately took
defensive action on his behalf.  "Run, Quagmire, run!"  I shouted.

"But first, grab that four-leaf clover, because you're gonna need all
the luck you can get!"

Sometimes I wasn't able to save Quagmire from the violence he called
down upon himself.  Once, he and I went fishing together on the opening
day of trout season.  I was still in the grip of
first-cast-of-the-season jitters as we waded through some tall grass on
the way to our favorite fishing hole.

Suddenly, Quagmire pointed at my feet and shouted, "Look out!"

In response, I raised both knees up alongside my ears, then did some
aerial gymnastics that would have shamed a Nadia Comaneci.

"What?"  I yelled, still treading air.  "What is it?"

"Why, didn't you notice these little globs of foam on the grass?"  said
Quagmire.  "You nearly stepped on them.  See, they look like spit, and
there's a little bug inside each glob.  I'll bet these little bugs make
spit houses for themselves.  If you'll notice, right here is a glug arf
ugh lo mawffroat!"

Bug-spit houses!  It was just lucky for Quagmire that my hands were too
weak at age ten to effectively strangle a person.  Nevertheless, it was
some years before he again noticed anything in close proximity to my
feet.

My friend and mentor, the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree, could not abide
Quagmire.  Once when Fenton and I were in high school, I suggested to
Rancid that we take him hunting with us.

"No!  No!  No!"  yelled Rancid.  "He ain't going'hunting' with us, an'
thet's final!  Ah cain't stand the way thet boy is all the time
noticin' stuff what ain't even worth bein' noticed!"

"Oh, c'mon, Rancid," I urged.  "Fenton doesn't have anybody else to
hunt with."

"Waall, shoot!"  Rancid said.  "Mebby this one time.  But you tell him
we're going' hunting' and not just out noticin' thangs.  You got it?"

"Right."

I had a little talk with Quagmire, and he promised he would try not to
notice anything on our hunting trip.  He did try, too, I'm sure of
that.

Driving up into the mountains on our hunt, Quagmire could scarcely
contain himself.  He would glance out the window and then swivel his
head around.  "Say, did you ..."  he'd start to say.  I'd elbow him in
the ribs and he'd shut up.

"What's thet?"  Rancid would say, glaring.  Quagmire's eyes would be
wild with excitement over what he had just noticed.

"Nothing," he'd say.

Then Quagmire started studying the dashboard on Rancid's old truck as
we bounced along.  "Pardon me for mentioning this, Mr. Crabtree, but I
noti ..."

I jammed my elbow into his ribs.  "B-but ..."  he sputtered.  I shook
my head at him.  From then on, the drive was peaceful, and if Quagmire
noticed anything else, he had the good sense not to mention it.

A couple of hours later we were trying to catch up with a herd of mule
deer we hadjumped earlier.  Quagmire was making a sweep around the
mountain above us, while Rancid and I, having about given up hope of
ever catching sight of the mule deer again, rested at the foot of a
high cliff.  Rancid was stoking his lip with tobacco, when Quagmire
appeared at the top of the cliff, frantically signaling to us.

"Gol-dang!"  whispered Rancid.  "The boy's seen the herd!  Ah always
said he warn't a bad feller!  Ah guess the only thang we can do is
climb the cliff."

"Gee," I whispered back.  "It's awfully steep.  I don't think we can
climb clear to the top."

"Shore we can!"  Rancid hissed.

Halfway up the cliff, Rancid spat his tobacco out into space.  "Ah got
some bad news fer ya," he said to me.

"What's that?"  I asked.

"Ah don't thank we can make it all the way to the top," he grunted, his
clawed fingers digging into a vertical slab of granite.  "But thet
ain't the bad news."

"Well," I gasped, "what's the bad news?"

"Ah don't thank we can climb back down nuther!"

I considered Rancid's assessment of our predicament much too
optimistic.

Fortunately, at that moment I discovered an inch-wide ledge that angled
right up under the overhang that was covered with wet moss.  "This way,
Rancid," I said.  "I see a way out."  And sure enough, scraped,
battered, and bruised, the two of us soon scrambled over the lip of the
cliff.

"Dang," Rancid said, rubbing his knee as we looked around for
Quagmire.

"Ah shore wouldn't hev wore maw good pants iffen Ah'd know'd we was
gonna climb thet cliff today."

"Tear'em, did you?"

"No.  Now, whar in tarnation is thet Quagmire?"

Presently, we saw him crouched behind some brush, signaling to us.

Unslinging our rifles, we hustled over in a walking crouch, being
careful not to make any sound that would spook the deer.

"Whar is they, Fenton?"  Rancid whispered, peering around over the top
of the brush.

"This is fantastic!"  Quagmire said.  "Look at these rocks here.  I was
just walking along when I noticed them.  See how round they are?  Why,
they're river rocks!  What are river rocks doing this far up on the
side of a mountain?  Do you know what this means?"

"Yup," growled Rancid.  "It means, Quagmire, thet whan you pick up one
of them rocks thar better be a herd of deer under it!"

The river rocks weren't even the worst part of our day.  When we got
back to Rancid's truck, it wouldn't start.  "That's what I tried to
tell you, Mr. Crabtree," Quagmire said.  "I noticed on the way up here
that your gas gauge was on empty."

Rancid leaned his head on the steering wheel.  I didn't know whether he
was crying or just counting to ten.

Middle age hasn't diminished Quagmire's obsession with noticing
things.

His hair is gray now, his face eroded by time and weather, but still
the bright little eyes relentlessly ferret out things to notice.  I
dread having Quagmire come in the house when he picks me up to go
fishing.

"I notice you got a new hairdo," he says to my wife.  "Looks nice."

"Why, thank you," Bun says, adding, "I'm glad somebody noticed."

"My gosh, you did get a new hairdo," I exclaim.  "When did you change
from the bouffant?"

"Nineteen sixty-five."

"Oh."

Meanwhile, Quagmire has found something else to notice.

"What happened to your other goldfish?"  he asks.

"It died last summer," Bun says.

"When did we get goldfish?"  I inquire.

"I see you painted your living room blue," says Quagmire.

"You did?"  I say to Bun.  "Heck, I liked the brown."

"The brown was four colors ago," snarls Bun.

And so it goes.  Needless to say, Quagmire is very popular with women,
who seem to have a certain irrational regard for men who have a
compulsion to notice trifling details.  "Why can't you be more like
Fenton?"  Bun wails at me.  "You never notice anything!"

Well, that's certainly not true, as I informed Bun in no uncertain
terms.

It's that I'm selective about what I notice.  I don'tjust go around
noticing indiscriminately, for pete's sake!

I recently spent three days hiking alone through the Cabinet Range of
the Rocky Mountains, and Bun would have been amazed at all the things I
noticed.

I noticed that the trails were a good deal steeper this year than
last.

This was no doubt the result of some foolishness on the part of the
U.S. Forest Service.  When I got back home, I fired off a letter to the
USFS and told them to leave the trails alone--they're steep enough!

I noticed the nights are darker when you're alone in the mountains than
when you have company.  Scientists should investigate this phenomenon;
it might be something the CIA could make use of.

I noticed, after a couple of hours of staring out into the abnormal
darkness, that there was a hard, knobby object under my Ensolite pad,
no doubt a seed dropped by a careless ant.

I noticed a mosquito, and marveled that a creature so small could be so
enormously complex, and still could find nothing better to do with
himself than walking around in my ear singing light opera.

I noticed an ant crawling up my leg, probably the same careless chap
who had dropped the walnut that was under my Ensolite pad.

I noticed far off down in the valley the sound of a large, clawed foot
pressing into moss.

I noticed that I didn't have a gun with me, and wondered if there was a
tool on my Swiss Army knife with which to fend off a grizzly.  Maybe
the corkscrew.  I imagined the headline in the newspaper: "Grizzly
Corkscrewed by Lone Hiker."

I noticed that the ant had been joined by some friends and relatives.

They were probably helping him look for his baseball.

I noticed the distant whistle of a train, and wished I was in the
lounge car exchanging dry jokes and drier martinis with traveling
salesmen.

I noticed that it was only a cold, slimy sleeping bag drawstring
slithering across my neck, but not until I had killed it with a blow
from my hiking boot.  Should have waited until it was off my neck,
though.

I noticed that the sound of the large, clawed foot was right next to
me, and the beast was making an assault on my jerky bag.  One usually
doesn't find chipmunks with such large, clawed feet.  He was a cheeky
fellow, too.  The sight of a man feinting wildly at him with a Swiss
Army knife corkscrew scarcely fazed him.

I did enough noticing on that outing to give me my fill of it, and I
haven't noticed anything since.  A dog could ride past me on a unicycle
smoking a cigar and doing an impression of Groucho Marx, and I wouldn't
notice.

The first person I ran into on my return from the mountains was
Quagmire.

"That must have been quite a trip," he said.  "I notice that you've
lost fifteen pounds."

Ha!  Quagmire isn't as perceptive as he likes to think.  I hadn't lost
an ounce over ten pounds!

The Elk Trappers My wife and I were but a few years out of college and
already surrounded by babies of our own making--a simple, inexpensive
hobby that had somehow gotten out of hand.  At the time, I was writing
for all the big-name, high-paying national magazines.  Unfortunately,
they never bought anything I wrote.  I did sell an occasional article
to newspapers and regional magazines, but payment from these
publications was small and slow in coming, often requiring that I go
into the office to bend the editor's ear and sometimes his Adam's
apple.

During my best year as a free-lance writer, our standard of living
hovered constantly near the poverty level but was never quite high
enough for us to qualify as poor.  Bun's hopes and dreams had
diminished in both number and magnitude since our marriage, and she now
spoke wistfully of the day when we might move into a quaint little
hovel of our very own.  She was a marvelously inventive cook, however,
and no matter how little food we might have, she was always able to
come up with a delicious dish of some sort.  One of my favorites was
her Boston Baked Bean, which she served on holidays.  I am probably the
only person in the world who knows how to carve a bean properly.

We used to tell the children it was a small turkey.  "Who wants white
meat?"  I would ask.

After a while, our situation became so bad that even the surly henchmen
from the collection agency stopped coming around, possibly because I
kept bumming small loans off of them.  Finally, I decided to commit the
writer's ultimate act of despair, even though my own personal religion
forbade such a drastic measure.  Still, it seemed like the only way out
of my predicament: I'd have to take a regularjob.

In a disgustingly short time, I landed a position with a local
television station as a reporter/photographer in the news department.

It was dreadful.

As I signed the W2 form, my whole life flashed before my eyes.  Bun,
however, was elated when I told her.

"Wonderful!"  she cried.  "We should celebrate!  I'll POP us a corn!

What do you want to drink?"

"A schooner of tap," I said.  "I've cultivated a taste for chlorine."

Right from the start, I did not get along with the news director at the
station.  He was a tough, burly individual, with a face like a fist and
a temper shorter than a snake's inseam.  His name was Pat Hooper.  It
was a simple enough name but for some reason I constantly messed up its
pronunciation, particularly when we were doing a "live" show and I was
supposed to say, "Now, back to Pat Hooper!"

"You idiot!"  he would scream at me after the show.  "You did it
again!"

"Calm down, calm down," I'd say.  "Now, just tell me nicely and quietly
what it was I did wrong.  After all, I'm still learning the business,
Hat."

There were other problems.  One time, rushing off to do an interview, I
set one of the station's portable sound cameras on top of the news car
while I loaded some other equipment.  The next place I saw the camera
was in my rearview mirror, bounding along behind my speeding car like a
dog chasing after the family sedan.

Then there was the foggy night I called into the station from a pay
phone on the outskirts of town.  Hat himself answered.

"Boy, I never thought I'd be happy to hear your voice," he shouted over
the phone.  "The two-way radio in your news car must have conked out,
huh?

We've been trying to reach you for an hour.  Anyway, we heard from the
cops that some fool just drove his car into Mamford Lake!  Drove right
down the boat-launch ramp!  And get this--liar, liar!--he told the cops
he thought the lake was just a big puddle!  Oh, harharharheeeee!  Let
me catch my breath!

Okay, now here's what I want you to do.  Get out to Mamford Lake as
quick as you can and shoot some film and try to get an interview with
the guy.  It'll make a heck of a hilarious story for the late news!"

I waited until the news director's giggles had died down.  "Listen,
Hat, I'm already out at Mamford Lake, and I can tell you right now
you're not going to find the story all that hilarious."

Probably the thing I hated most about being a television reporter was
having to listen to a grown man sob so often.

Hat and I had got off to a bad start and our relationship had steadily
deteriorated.  After about a year, there was even some evidence that
the news director had taken a personal dislike to me.  Oh, there was
nothing major, just little things I noticed, like the way he would slap
at me if I passed too near his desk.  I decided to confront him face to
face and get the matter out in the open where we could deal with it
like two mature adults.

During a quiet moment in the news room, I said, "Hat, there's something
bothering you.  I get the distinct impression that you are harboring
some ill feelings toward me.  Let's talk about it, what say, fella?"

"Get this maniac away from me!"  Hat screamed to nobody in
particular.

"Now right there is a good example of what I mean," I said.  "Look, if
I upset you so much, why don't youjust go ahead and terminate me?"

"I might just do that," Hat replied.  "Let's see, with time off for
good behavior I'd be back on the streets in five years."

Then he sank back in his swivel chair and started doing his impression
of a dog chewing hot pitch.  Once he started acting silly like that,
trying to converse with him in an intelligent manner was hopeless.

I was oddly upset over this little exchange with Hat.  Indeed, it
seemed likely that he was thinking of firing me.  Never before had I
worked at a job where I had even the slightest fear of being fired.

(Usually, the news came as a total surprise.) What I needed, I knew,
was a big story, something that would change Hat's opinion of me as a
television reporter.  I needed something with human interest, something
with animals in it, big animals, wild animals, something with danger
and courage and conflict, something with brave, dedicated men risking
all to extend the horizons of human knowledge!  And I knew of just such
a story--The Elk Trappers!

A game biologist had recently told me about an elkmigration study being
conducted in a wilderness area of a nearby state.  Two men had been
hired to trap--that's right, trap--elk.  Once the elk were trapped,
they were adorned with various paraphernalia for future tracking and
identification on their travels about the mountains.

I could hardly wait to tell Hat about my story idea.

"What?"  he said.  "Elk trapping?  Nonsense!  What kind of stuff are
you trying to pull on me now?"

"I'm not kidding, Hat," I said.  "It'll make great film.  Of course,
I'll have to be away from the station for a whole week but ..."

"A whole week?  You've got to stop reading my mind.  I was just sitting
here wondering when a good story on elk trapping might turn up!"

A few days later I was flailing my old sedan over a route that the U.S.
Forest Service cartographer had designated with two parallel dotted
ines.

Only too late did I discover that the dots represented mountain goat
tracks, the cartographer apparently having turned up some evidence that
a mountain goat had managed to explore the region in rather aimless
fashion sometime in the previous century.  I could not help but agree
that the goat's achievement had been heroic, but why the cartographer
should choose to commemorate it with dots was beyond comprehension.  A
simple skull-and-crossbones with horns would have sufficed.

At long last I spotted the elk trappers'camp nestled in a grove of
cedars near the foot of a precipice, the upper rim of which my vehicle
was momentarily teetering upon.  Having come this far, I was not about
to turn back simply because of a near-perpendicular descent of a few
hundred feet.

Shifting my weight, I tilted the car forward.  judges of free-fall
events probably would have disqualified me on the technicality that my
car's tires occasionally brushed protruding rocks on the drop.  The
wall of the precipice swooped outward in a curve similar to that of a
playground slide, and I was able to regain control of the vehicle in
sufficient time to bring it to a screeching stop a good six inches from
the tent of the elk trappers.  In fact for several moments after the
stop, I continued to screech, as did the elk trappers, who had shot
from the tent with a suddenness that caused me to wonder if the two of
them might not have been sittin in some kind of spring-loaded catapult,
awaiting my arrival.

Mort and Wally, as I'll call the trappers, turned out to be great guys,
although not exactly the heroic types I had in mind for my television
feature.

Neither of them had had any previous experience at trapping elk, but,
as the official who had hired them probably asked himself, who has?

They were both college students, majoring in zoology, and had taken the
elk-trapping job for the summer as a means of acquiring some experience
in the field.  Mostly what they had acquired was a deep and intense
hatred for elk.

"We've seen all the elk we ever want to see," Mort told me.

"We've seen a whole lot more elk than that," Wally put in.

"I stand corrected," Mort said.

As we sat around the campfire that evening, Mort explained the trapping
procedure to me.  Basically, it consisted of luring an elk into a big
corral with a salt bait rigged up in such a way that it dropped the
corral gate behind the animal.  The trappers would drive the elk into a
confining chute, where a tag was attached to its ear and a bright
orange collar fastened around its neck.  Then it was released.

"I hate to say this, fellas," I said, "but it all sounds rather
boring."

"Boring isn't the word for it," Wally said.  "I've had more excitement
planting potatoes!"

Egads, I thought.  Here I had risked my life and practically destroyed
my car in the hope of shooting some exciting footage of men and elk in
hoof-to-hand combat, and now it turned out to be nothing more than a
tedious routine!  Even though I had been in the television business but
a short while, I knew that, above all else, there were high standards
of accuracy and truth and credibility to be maintained.  One simply did
not attempt to distort reality.  So what that I had risked my life!  So
what that I had ruined my car!  So what that I was about to lose my
job!  So what that we would have to fake it!

"How good are you fellows at feigning excitement?"  I asked.  "Let me
see you do your bug-eyed-with-terror look."

I must say that I was rather surprised the next morning when, at the
crack of dawn, Mort leaped from his sleeping bag and strode briskly out
of the tent in the manner of a man eager to be about his business.

Perhaps, I thought, these two elk trappers take their job more
seriously than they let on.  After all, their nearest boss was a good
day of hard travel away.  There was nothing to prevent them from
sleeping in until ten or eleven if they wished.

Then Mort returned and climbed back into his sleeping bag.

"Get the fire going already?"  I asked.

"What for?"  Mort said.  "We don't usually get up until ten or
eleven.

After all, our nearest boss is.  .

"I know," I said.

Mort had exaggerated slightly.  By ten, we were hoofing our way up a
mountain so steep the trail was only eighteen inches away from my
nose.

At each gasp I stripped small pine trees bare of needles.  I had
charley horses that could have run in the Preakness.  My tongue felt
like a strip of smoked jerky.  And most tiresome of all was that Mort
and Wally strolled along, whistling and singing, and tossing a Frisbee
back and forth.

We eventually arrived at the elk trap, which looked more like one of
those stockades pioneers used for defense against the Indians.  And it
contained an elk!  A huge cow was rushing back and forth, the whites of
her eyes flashing with fear and rage.

"We caught one!"  I shouted.  "We caught an elk!"

Mort and Wally stared disgustedly, first at me and then at the elk.

"Listen, I don't want to disappoint you or anything," Wally said, "but
this is going to be real boring.  I wouldn't even bother setting up
your camera if I were you.

He had disappointed me.  "Well, since I've come this far I might as
well shoot whatever I can."

While Mort and Wally ran around the trap, shouting and throwing small
stones at the elk, trying to drive it into the confining chute at one
end, I shot some rather dull film of the activity, then set my camera
up next to the chute so I could get some good close-ups of the elk.

Eventually, the cow, apparently thinking she saw an escape route,
charged into the chute.  Wally rammed a pole through the chute behind
her to keep her from backing out and Mort slid another pole across the
chute above her to keep her from jumping while the various
paraphernalia were attached.

"Are you sure she can't get out of there?"  I yelled at Mort, who was
about to attach a bright orange collar to the elk.

"No way," Mort shouted back.  "These poles are six inches thick.  Take
an elephant to break one of them.  I told you this was going to be
boring."

KerrAACK!

The elk had just snapped the pole that crossed the chute above her.

Then, like a four-legged mountain climber, she went up the
ten-foot-high wall of the chute, where she bashed another pole in two
with her head, making an opening about the size of a basketball.

"She's getting out!"  I yelled.

"No way," Mort said, calmly.  "That hole is too small for her to get
..."

Before he had finished the sentence, the elk had wriggled through the
hole and was plummeting toward us!  Even as the shadow of the
descending elk expanded around us, I switched the camera to ON.  This
was my chance!

For ten seconds, chaos reigned.  First, the elk was on Mort and
Wally.

Then Mort and Wally were on the elk and the elk was on me.  Wally went
by with the elk after him and Mort after the elk.  I was going up a
tree and the elk was coming down.  There were shouts and bellows and
grunts and groans; there were curses that must have stunted the growth
of trees.  Then the cow got her bearings and set a straight course for
the Continental Divide, leaving me on my back in the dust, Wally
perched on top of the elk trap, and Mort wearing the orange collar.

And I had it all on film!

"Geez!"  Hat said as we previewed my film back at the station.  "What
was that bit there?"

"That round thing that shot past?  I think it was a close-up of a
dust-coated eyeball.  Now this blur here is where I jumped a log.  That
odd shape that flashed by was Mort with the elk on his shoulders!  This
is a great shot of some dust and blue sky.  And here ..."

I glanced at Hat, who was studying me thoughtfully, probably wondering
how he could ever have so misjudged my talent as a television
reporter.

"You know something?"  he said.

"What's that?"  I said.

"Five years isn't all that long.  And besides, I could use the rest."

The Short Happy Life of Francis Cucumber Almost every day the boy, Ace,
would come over to the jiffy Trading Post, and he and I would sit on
the steps and talk.  I remember one October morning in particular.

"What is it like to be a hunting guide?"  Ace asked.

"It's very good to be a hunting guide," I said, "but the hard thing is
to guide well and true and honorably."

"I wish you would stop talking like a Hemingway character," he said.

"Nobody talks that way anymore."

"In the old days, everyone talked like a Hemingway character," I
said.

"They don't anymore," Ace said.  "Yes," I said, "I know.  It's sad."

"You're the only person left who still talks like a Hemingway
character," he said.  "You still talk that way.  It makes me sick."

"I don't give a - - - - I said.  "I'll talk how I please."

"You don't have to use the dashes with me," he said.  "I know that
word."

"Do you know all the words?"  I asked him.

"Yes," Ace said.  "I know - - - - and - - - and - - - - and - - - and "
"That's very good," I said.  :How about - - - - - - - - - - - ?  Do you
know that one?"

"I do now," he said.  "That's a real dandy."

"Remember, you only use that word when you are being charged by a rhino
and have missed with the second barrel of your.455 Rigby.  It is a
large-caliber word."

"I'll remember," Ace said.  "Now, tell me again how it is to be a
hunting guide."

I told him again how it was to be a hunting guide.  Ace never tired of
hearing about what it was like to be a hunting guide, possibly because
he always fell asleep after the first five minutes.

In the old days, as I told Ace, the hunting-guide business was much
more fun.  When you met another hunting guide out in the bush and he
wanted to know how you were getting along with your client, he would
ask, "Are you still drinking his whiskey?"  Now the question is, "Are
you still drinking his mineral water?"  Mineral water has taken a lot
of the fun out of the huntingguide business.

"How long has it been since you've had a client?"  Ace asked.

"Eighty-two days," I said.

"That's a long time to go without a client," he said.

"Yes," I said.  "My luck has been very bad.  At least a dozen times now
I have taken parties of five into the bush and come back with parties
of only two or three, It may be an omen."

"It may be that you are a bad guide," Ace said.

I laughed and playfully snatched his motorcycle helmet and held it high
overhead.  He made some sounds of annoyance but finally managed to get
the chin strap loose and dropped to the ground.  He rubbed his neck.

"Why you old-!"  he said.  "Why did you do that?"

"I did it because you are a wise-elbow," I said.  "You have always been
a wise-elbow, ever since I have known you.  That is why you are
twenty-two years old and still in the fifth grade."

Ace pointed up the street.  "Hey, would you look at that!"  he said.

I turned cautiously, keeping one eye on him, because he likes to play
tricks, sometimes hitting me on the ear with a big board when my back
is turned.  He was not tricking me this time.

A chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce was coming down the street.  It pulled
up next to the Trading Post, and a middle-aged man and a much younger
woman got out.  I had great difficulty not staring at the see-through
blouse; the skin-tight, shimmering, gold pants; the diamond necklace
and earrings.  The woman wore a simple print dress and nojewelry.  She
was blond and tan and slender with large blue eyes and a fine nose.

She was very beautiful.

I can always tell Southern Californians when I see them.  There is
something different about them.  I nudged Ace and whispered, "Check the
license plate."

"Oklahoma," he said.

"Just as I figured," I said.  "There is something different about
Oklahomans."

There is something different about Texans too.  I remember the Texan I
guided up into the Hoodoo Mountains.  He had money written all over
him.

After that I could never stand to look at another tattoo.  I sometimes
wonder whether he ever found his way out of the mountains.

The man and woman started walking toward me and Ace.  I pushed my hat
back with my thumb, leaned against the porch post, stuck a wooden match
in my mouth and chewed on it.  Fortunately, I still have lightning
reflexes and was able to smother the flames in my mustache before they
took my eyebrows.

Apparently, the man and woman had not seen lightning reflexes before.

"Are you all right?"  the woman asked.

I squinted through the smoke of my smoldering lip stubble and grinned
at her.  "Mumpht him scows an maw mouph cot fahr, liar, liar," I said
casually.

The man and woman glanced uneasily at each other.  "What can I do for
you folks?"

"We're looking for Wilson, the hunting guide," the man said.

"At your service," I said.

"Oh?"  the man said.

"Oh dear!"  the woman said.

The man said his name was Francis Cucumber and the woman was his wife,
Dill.  He was after a trophy mountain goat.  Friends had told him that
Wilson was the best hunting guide in these parts.  With all due
modesty, I confirmed the truth of what his friends had told him.

"My services don't come cheap, though," I told Cucumber.  "I get
fifteen dollars a day plus expenses.  Colorful expressions and ironic
remarks are extra."

"We'll take the package."  Cucumber said.

We made arrangements to pick up the Cucumbers at their hotel the
following morning.  I knew Ace would want to go along to help with the
camp chores but was too proud to ask.  Finally, when he couldn't stand
it anymore, he blurted out, "C'mon, let me go!"

I chuckled good-naturedly and released him from the half nelson.  "You
remember to mind your manners around the clients," I told him.  Since
he had only two manners, I figured minding them was not too much to
ask.

"One thing puzzles me," Ace said.

"What?"  I said.

"How come you told them your name was Wilson?"

"Because Wilson already has more clients than he can handle."

That night I prepared for the safari into the mountains by rereading
Hemingway's African short stories.  If you are to guide well and true
and honorably, it is very important to read Hem's African stories.

Sometimes, if you have not read Hemingway in a long while, you cannot
think of anything ironic to say to your clients.  Clients become very
upset with a guide who does not speak with irony, even when he doesn't
get them lost in the mountains.  Once, some clients and I were lost for
three weeks and I ran out of ironic remarks and had to fall back on my
knock-knockjokes.  It is very dangerous to tell lost hunters
knock-knock jokes, because sometimes they will charge you without
warning and attempt to stuff used socks in your mouth.

That is why you never go into the mountains without a good supply of
ironic remarks.

The next morning we rode up into the Hoodoo Mountains and in the
beginning everything went well and I thought we were going to have a
fine hunt.  Then Cucumber began to complain about his feet dragging on
the ground.

"That is because your legs are long and the burro's are short," I
explained.

"I know what the reason is," Cucumber snapped.  "What I want to know
is, why don't you let me ride the horse and you ride the burro?"

Clearly, the man was not without a sense of humor and I complimented
him on his clever jest.

"It is a very good sign that you can make jokes even after the toes of
your boots have worn off," I said.  "You joke well."

" - - - - - - - - - - - - !"  Cucumber shouted.

I glanced swiftly around to see if we were being charged by a rhino,
which is rare in Idaho.  There was no sign of one.  Already Cucumber
was beginning to hallucinate.  I had often observed this tendency in
clients before, but never so early in the hunt.

That night we camped by a small mountain lake.  While Ace and I
prepared supper, Cucumber and Dill got into a furious argument.  At one
point I heard her scream, "How could you be such a fool as to get us
into this mess!

Anybody can see that that idiot doesn't know anything about guiding!"

That raised my dander.  For one thing, this was only the fifth time I
had brought Ace along on an expedition.  You couldn't expect him to
know anything about guiding with so little experience, even if he
weren't an idiot.  Ace didn't seem to mind what had been said about
him, or so I judged from the fact that he burst into loud guffaws.

I fixed my famous Whatchamacallit stew for supper and Cucumber and Dill
even complained about that.  Both of them said it upset their
stomachs.

If they had just tasted it, though, I'm sure they'd have found it not
only hearty but delicious.

After supper we sat around the fire and talked and drank mineral
water.

"Tomorrow we will be in goat country," I said.  "The goats are very
fine and white and beautiful this time of year and they are like
patches of snow against the gray rock of the cliffs, and sometimes they
are actually patches of snow, and then you know you are not yet in goat
country at all, which is very discouraging after you have spent the day
climbing a rock cliff."

"Huh?"  Cucumber said.

"Egads!"  Dill said.

"I have known hunters to shoot the patches of snow after they have
climbed the cliffs," I said.  "They do not laugh when they shoot the
patches of snow either but are very serious about it and sometimes they
even cry, which is bad for the morale of the other hunters."

"I'll bet," Dill said.

"The way you tell the goats from the patches of snow is that the
patches of snow don't move or go 'baaa,'" I said.

"Go 'baaa'?"  Cucumber said.  "How far is it back to the road?"

"You don't understand," I said.  "There are no goats between here and
the road.  Now, we'd better turn in.  Tomorrow we must climb the cliffs
and find the goats and we must hunt well and true and honorably."

"Your manner of speech reminds me of someone I've read somewhere," Dill
said.

"I think it's ... it's ..."

"Yes?"  I said.

"... Abigail Finley Dunlop!"  she said.

"Well, enough of this silly prattle," I said sternly.  "Let's hit the
sack.  We've got a gut-buster of a day ahead of us tomorrow."

"Ain'tcha gonna talk like a Hemingway character no more?"  Ace asked.

"I was startin' to like it."

"Shut up and douse the fire," I said ironically.

Shortly after sun-up the next morning, Ace and I discovered that the
Cucumbers had stolen my horse and vanished without a trace.  Naturally,
I was furious.  What really made me mad, though, was not my clients'
act of ingratitude and treachery and deceit but that my horse was the
only one who knew the way home.  Even worse, I couldn't get Ace to shut
up: "It is not enough to guide well and true and honorably," he said.

"You must also know which direction is the north and which direction is
the south, and it is good, too, if you can tell east from west.  Never
ask for whom the bell tolls."

The Arkansas Prank Hound My cousin Buck was three years older than I.
When we were growing up he was the smartest person I knew or ever
expected to know.  Buck was a walking university.  There wasn't
anything he didn't know or couldn't figure out.  He was amazing.  Of
course, that was back before his mind started to go bad.  His mind
started to go bad about the time I entered high school and began to
detect certain flaws in the information he dispensed to me.  When I
pointed these flaws out to him, he said even he had noticed some
deterioration of his intellect.

As the years went by, Buck's IQ continued to plummet, eventually
leveling out at what he termed average but what I would judge to be a
whole lot closer to the intelligence of asparagus than of genius.  But
no matter.  The portion of Buck's intellectual history that we are
concerned with here is the early period, when he still knew
everything.

In those early days I followed Buck around constantly, listening to him
discourse on such matters as sex, life, death, hunting, fishing, sex,
outer space, cars, sex, motion pictures, horses, dogs, motorcycles, and
sex.  Even though Buck knew everything about everything, he did seem to
favor certain subjects.  Wildlife, for example, was a specialty of
his.

One time we saw a funnylooking little mouse hopping along through the
grass.

"What kind of mouse is that?"  I asked Buck.  "See the way it hops!"

"That's called a hop mouse," Buck said without even a moment's pause.

The speed with which Buck could identify even the rarest and most
obscure of species was something to marvel at, but no more than his
knowledge of wildlife physiology.

"How come that mouse hops instead of runs like a normal mouse?"  I
would ask.

Without a second's hesitation, Buck would explain, "'Cause it's got a
different kind of hinges on its hind legs."

"Hinges?"

"Yeah, hinges.  If you ain't about the most ignorant kid I ever
knowed!

Hinges is what lets legs bend."  Buck knew all about feeding habits,
too.

"What do hop mice eat, Buck?"  I asked.

"Just your regular mouse food--grass, roots, bread, cheese."

Buck's real area of expertise was dogs, hunting dogs in particular.

What Buck didn't know about hunting dogs you could fit in the eye of a
needle and still poke a camel through.  His own hunting dog was a rare
and expensive breed, the Arkansas Prank Hound.  Buck always had to
laugh about the way he fooled the man who sold him the dog.  The man
was sitting in an old pickup truck when Buck happened by and stopped to
admire the pup.

"I bet you never seen a pup like this un," the man said.

"No, sir, I ain't," Buck admitted.  "What kind is it?"

The man cast an appreciative eye down at the pup and after a thoughtful
pause said, "Why, this is what you calls your Arkansas Prank Hound.

Bet you ain't never even heard of the breed before."

"Course I have," Buck said, because he knew all the dog breeds there
are.

"Pretty good dogs, are they?"

The man's eyebrows shot up.  "Good?  Why, they is the best!"

"I mean are they good hunters?"  Buck said.

"YOU wouldn't believe how good they are," the man said.  "My goodness,
the Arkansas Pran Hound does everything for the hunter but load his
shotgun, and he'd do that too if you showed him how.  But the main
thing about the Prank Hound is it knows how to talk.  You take most
bird dogs, about all they can do is point the bird, right?  But the
Prank Hound, he'll come right out and tell you, 'There's two ringnecks
and a hen hidin' in that tall grass over there."  Their one fault is
sometimes they'll argue with you about who's gonna retrieve the bird,
you or them.  They ain't above makin' a nasty remark either when you
miss an easy shot."

"You don't mean they talk real human talk, do you?"  Buck said.

"Well, no, it's not exactly human talk.  It's dog talk.  The thing is,
it don't take you no time at all to learn it."

"I don't suppose you'd consider selling the pup?"

"I surely do hate to," the man said.  "But I've fallen on hard times
lately.  My house burned down and I lost myjob and my heart has been
actin'up on me.  I suppose if somebody came along and offered me five
hundred dollars for the pup I'd have to sell him."

"Gee," Buck said, "all I got is three dollars."

"That's close enough," the man said, thrusting the pup into Buck's
hands.

"Of course, I'd have to hold out for the five hundred if his papers
hadn't burnt up in the fire."

Buck had to laugh as he told me later.  Here he had foxed the man out
of a five-hundred-dollar dog for three dollars, and all the time he had
another two dollars in his pocket.  Besides knowing everything back in
those days, Buck was shrewd!

Buck named the pup Gooch.  We could scarcely wait for the dog to grow
up and start talking.  Every other day or so, I'd go over to Buck's
house and ask him, "Has Gooch said anything yet?"

Buck would look down at his dog.  "Nothin' worth mentioning."

Now there are a great many cynics in the world who might assume that
Gooch's previous owner had lied to Buck about the dog's ability to
talk.

After about a year in which Gooch had not uttered even the most casual
of remarks, I was starting to become one of those cynics.  One day I
said to Buck, "I don't think Gooch is ever gonna talk!  I think that
man lied to you!

He pulled a fast one on you, that's what he did."

Buck, of course, was unaccustomed to having me speak to him in that
way.

Being three years older than I, he had no trouble pointing out the
flaws in my reasoning.

"This here is an Arkansas Prank Hound, ain't it?"

"Yes," I had to admit.

"And all Arkansas Prank Hounds know how to talk don't they?"

"Yes," I had to admit.

"So it stands to reason that Gooch is gonna start one of these days,
don't it?"

"Yes," I had to admit.  Only one question remained in my mind.  Would I
have had to admit all those things if Buck hadn't been twisting my
arm?

Shortly after that incident, how ever it turned out that Buck had been
right all along about Gooch.  The dog did know how to talk!  It was
about the most remarkable thing I ever witnessed.

I had stopped by Buck's house in my usual fashion to ask him if Gooch
had said anything yet.

"Why, yes, he did," Buck replied.  "It wasn't nothin' important.  just
your usual dog talk."

"He talked?"  I shouted.

"Sure," Buck said.  "Actually, he's been talking for several months
now.

It was just that I didn't understand Arkansas Prank Hound.  I was
expectin'him to say something' in American, until it suddenly occurred
to me that he don't speak American.  Then I got busy and started
studying the sounds he was makin' and right away I figured out a few
words.  Now I can understand just about anything he says."

I looked at Gooch in amazement.  "What does he talk about?"

"Oh,just the neighborhood dog gossip," Buck said.  "It was kind of
boring, to tell you the truth, particularly if you don't care any more
than I do about what nasty things the Whites' dog wrote on their
gatepost."

"Well," I said, "pheasant season's open.  Let's take him out hunting
and then he'll have something interesting to talk about."

Buck said that sounded like a pretty good idea.  He went in the house
and got his single-shot 16-gauge and we headed for the stubble fields
south of town.  Gooch walked along behind us, not saying anything.  As
we passed an alley, the dog spotted a cat and took off after it barking
for all he was worth, a sum I still believed to be at least five
hundred dollars.

"What's he saying?"  I asked Buck, who was yelling at the dog to come
back.

"Huh?"  Buck said.  "Oh, you're too young to hear language like that.

I don't know where Gooch picked up some of them words.  I just hope
there ain't any ladies in this neighborhood who understand Prank
Hound."

When Gooch finally caught up with us, we were already out to the
stubble fields.  He rushed up to Buck whining and yapping.

"I don't care what that cat called you," Buck told him.  "I want you to
tend to business.  And furthermore, cut out using them swear words!

Now get out there and do some hunting."

Gooch made a woofing sound.

"Oh, all right, please then!"  Buck said.

It wasn't long before Gooch flushed a pheasant.  I might have been
mistaken but I thought the dog had stepped on the bird with his hind
foot.  In any case, Gooch jumped around yelping in fright and snapping
his jaws in the empty air.  He flushed another three pheasants in
approximately this same manner, never once first saying a word to
either Buck or me about a bird being anywhere in the area.  As we were
trudging back home without Buck having had a chance to fire a single
shot, Gooch trotted happily along ahead of us, possibly singing a Prank
Hound folk tune.  If so, I couldn't make out either the tune or the
words.

"I'd sure hate to sell ol' Gooch," Buck said, "but I could probably let
you have him for five hundred dollars.  Ain't every kid owns a talking
dog."

"All I've got is a quarter," I said.

"That's close enough," Buck said.

"It's my lucky quarter and I can't give it up," I told him.

Actually, it wasn't my lucky quarter at all.  I just couldn't take
advantage of one of my very own relatives, particularly one whose mind
was starting to go bad.

Well, Excuuuuse Me!

It has come to my attention that some of you anglers are forgetting
your manners.  You offenders know who you are, so I won't mention any
names, but I want this crude behavior to stop immediately!  Perhaps it
is time to review the basics of fishing etiquette, for the benefit of
those of you who have forgotten them and for the youngsters just
getting started in the sport.

Let us begin with a typical situation.  Your fishing partner has laid
claim to the only hole on the stream that seems to be producing any
fish.  He has pulled three nice rainbows from the hole and is walking
around on his knees, either because he doesn't want to spook the
remaining fish with the sight of his profile or because he is praying
the fish will keep biting.

You haven't had so much as a strike all day, and you know your partner
will be giving you nonstop lectures for the next month on how to
improve your fishing technique.  What to do?  Climbing up the cliff
behind your partner and throwing a large rock in the hole is considered
a breach of fishing etiquette.

Furthermore, it will be difficult to convince the offended party that
you threw the rock in the hole accidentally.  The main reason it will
be difficult is that a person can't think clearly while fleeing for his
life.

According to proper fishing etiquette, you must accept your partner's
good luck gracefully.  Call out to him and offer encouragement and
compliment him on his technique.  "WONDERFUL CAST THERE, BOB!"  you
might yell.  "I'LL BET YOU'RE GOING TO CATCH A REAL MONSTER OUT OF THAT
HOLE!"

Since he may not be up on his fishing etiquette, Bob's response might
be to grimace, shake his head furiously, and put his finger to his lips
in the universal gesture of asking for silence.  Or he may use some
other universal gesture, depending upon his knowledge of fishing
etiquette.  In any case, don't fall into a sulk, because that is the
worst of bad sportsmanship.

Merely start crashing through the brush toward him, yelling, "WHAT,
BOB?  WHAT DID YOU SAY?  GO AHEAD AND MAKE ANOTHER OF THOSE WONDERFUL
CASTS OF YOURS!

I'LL BET THERE'S A FIVE-POUNDER RIGHT OUT THERE WHERE THE TOP OF My
SHADOW IS FALLING ON THE WATER!"  You may be surprised to learn that
such gentlemanly and polite conduct can be even more effective than the
loutish behavior of throwing a big rock in the water.

Anglers Often carry secrecy so far that it falls into the realm of
unsportsmanlike conduct.  Some fishermen I know laugh fiendishly and
refuse to divulge the kind of fly they have hit upon that happens to be
producing fish at the moment.  Such behavior is disgraceful.  There is
absolutely no reason to laugh fiendishly when a simple, inscrutable
smile will do.  In the rare instances when I'm the one with the right
fly, I like to explain to the other anglers, as I land another trout,
that much of the pleasure of fishing is to solve for one's self the
mystery of what the fish are taking.  It would subtract from their
pleasure if I solved the mystery for them, I say, smiling
inscrutably.

Of course, this patient explanation doesn't work on all anglers.  Take
Retch Sweeney, for example.  His approach to solving the mystery is to
say, "Yeah, right, sure," as he wrestles me to the ground, hauls in my
line, and takes a look at the fly.  Retch cares nothing for mystery and
even less for fishing etiquette.

When asked what fly you are using, the polite thing to do is to open
your fly book and hand a fly to the person making the request.  He will
be so pleased by your openness and generosity that he will respond in
kind when the time comes for you to ask him what kind of fly he is
using.  As he hands you the fly, don't stare at it in astonishment and
exclaim, "A turkey feather lashed to a Number two hook?"  Otherwise, he
will respond by saying, "Yes, it worksjust as well as the horsefeather
fly you gave me.  Maybe even better."

Here is another situation that often comes up.  You have forgotten your
lunch and are starving when you get back to the car first after a long
day of fishing.  Your partner's lunch is sitting there in plain sight
on the front seat as a deliberate temptation to you.  He could have
followed his usual practice of hiding it under the spare tire of his
car or in the engine compartment, where you always found it anyway.

But leaving it on the front seat is practically an invitation.

You open the lunch sack tentatively and peer in.  There are two
sandwiches, a piece of cake, and an orange.  The question is, should
you eat one of the sandwiches?  The piece of cake goes without saying,
and the orange you will leave for him, but should you eat one of the
sandwiches?  The answer is to eat one.  If you eat both sandwiches, you
have violated fishing etiquette, and even worse, you may have to walk
home.

Should you help ladies in and out of boats?  The new social standards
permit women to open their own doors, and it follows that they should
be allowed to get out of boats unassisted.  I, however, tend to be
chivalrous by nature and always reach out a hand to steady the woman I
fish with as she climbs from boat to dock.  It makes her feel more
secure and less likely to drop the rods and tackle boxes.

Suppose you do inadvertently commit a fishing faux pas.  Many anglers
are totally at a loss in such a situation and blunder about saying,
"Gee, I'm sorry!  How clumsy of me!"  Such abject apologies only cause
embarrassment in most fishing circles.  It is far better to treat the
mishap in a jovial manner.  Here are a few apt responses for a variety
of circumstances.

"Great leap, George!  If I hadn't bumped you off the rock, I'd have
never known what a fine athlete you are.  Need a little more practice
on the landings, though.  Heh heh."

"Three-hundred-dollar rod, huh?  Didn't feel like much more than a
dollar ninety-eight when I stepped on the tip.  Ho ho.  Seriously,
though, I've heard it improves the action of expensive rods if you
break about three inches off the tip like I did there.  Now, you just
dry your eyes and see if that ol' rod doesn't actually cast better."

"Oh, I don't know, I think you look rather rakish with a bass plug in
your ear."

"George, you won't believe what I did!  Prepare yourself for a laugh.

I forgot I had your square-stern canoe on top of the car, and I started
to back into the garage.  What?  Yeah, I know it wasn't square-stern,
but it is now!

Get it, George?"

In all of these instances, you will note that the mishap is dealt with
in a bluff and hearty manner, which your fishing companions will
appreciate much more than they would humble apologies.  If they don't
happen to be familiar with fishing etiquette, however, no harm is done,
at least none that a good chiropractor won't be able to work out for
you in half a dozen visits.

The Mountain Car Budge Honeylip, proprietor of Honeylip'S Auto Salvage
and junk Co sold us the mountain car himself.  As we said afterward,
Budge was a man you could trust.

Retch Sweeney and I had bicycled out to Honeylip's prepared to deal
with his head salesman and tow-truck driver, Slick Beasly.

"Sure as shooting, ol' Slick will try to pass off one of those junkers
Honeylip intends to sell for scrap iron," I told Retch.

"Yeah," he said.  "You got to watch a man like Slick Beasly."

"Here's what we'll do," I said.  "As soon as Slick starts giving us the
hard sell on some wreck, we'll just laugh cynically and start to walk
away.

Let me hear you laugh cynically, Retch.  Okay, that's not bad."

Retch and I had worked in the hayfields for nearly the whole month of
june in order to earn enough money to buy ourselves a mountain car.

Our transportation situation had become critical when both our
respective sets of parents had simultaneously refused to allow us to
drive the family autos anywhere except on paved roads.  They had ranted
some nonsense about mud and rocks and tree branches and fenders and oil
pans as their excuse.  The problem was that our county didn't have all
that many paved roads, and what there were didn't go anyplace
interesting, such as to decent hunting and fishing areas.

The crisis forced us to indenture ourselves to a series of farmers,
every one of whom was possessed of a maniacal obsession for extracting
from his hired hands their last ounce of energy.  If we so much as
stopped for a drink of water and a bit of conversation, the farmers
would yell at us to stop goofing off because they didn't want their hay
to get snowed on before Retch and I got it in, which was ridiculous,
since it was still only June.

Our suffering and exhaustion were almost too much to bear.  Retch and I
each contracted a blister, in fact.  When we showed our injuries to the
farmer of the day, all he did was to laugh cruelly and say that it was
so rare and strange for blisters to rise up for no known reason he had
a mind to send it in to Ripley's Believe It or Not.  Farmers were an
insensitive bunch.

Having come by our money through such hard labor, Retch and I were not
about to be snookered out of it by some high-pressure salesman like
Slick Beasly.  By the time we had bicycled out Cemetery Hill Road to
Honeylip's Auto Salvage and junk Co we had our plans laid.  The main
idea was to slip into the salvage yard and check out the cars before
Slick even knew we were in the vicinity.  That way we would be able to
arrive at our independent judgments, without being confused by a
barrage of sales talk.

Everything went well until we started examining the first car, opening
and closing its doors, looking under the hood, kicking the tires,
gazing in wonder at the miraculously low mileage recorded on the
speedometer.

"Afternoon, gentlemen," a voice behind us said.  "Anything I can help
you with?"  It was Slick, calmly leaning against a rusty Packard,
pretending to clean his fingernails with a penknife.

"Oh, we're just looking," I said shrewdly.

"Too bad," said Slick.  "I happen to have a nifty little number here
that runs like a dream."

He slid into the car, started it, and gunned the engine into a banging
roar.  It sounded good.

Slick shook his head as he turned the key off.  "A rich banker in town
is supposed to stop out any time now and buy this vehicle for his
spoilt brat of a kid.  Oh, how I do hate to see them rich kids get
everything!  Shucks, I'd sell this car right now for half price just to
prevent that from happening."

"How much?"  I asked.

"Hunnert," Slick said.

Retch and I laughed cynically and started to walk away.

Then Budge Honeylip popped out of his office in the company's quonset
hut.  "Dang it all to heck, Slick," he yelled.  "I got a good mind to
give you the boot, trying to foist a car like that off on these boys
for a hunnert dollars."

"But, boss ... I" blurted Slick.

"Don't but me," yelled Budge.  "You git on over to the shop and change
the oil in the tow truck.  Won't be nobody around there you can cheat
out of their hard earned money!"

Slick hung his head and slunk off toward the quonset hut.  I felt sorry
for him, but he had it coming.  Budge put his arms around Retch and
me.

"Now you boys just tell ol' Budge the kind of vehicle you're looking
for."

"A mountain car."

"You mean like for hunting and fishing?"

"Yeah, you know, the kinda car that will go just about anywhere."

"Oh, you don't want something fancy then, something with fenders and
all what might get caught in the brush."

"Naw," Retch said.  "It don't need fenders."

Budge said in that case he had just the car for us.  A lot of his
customers were picky, he said, and wanted fenders and all the trimmings
on their cars, but he could see we were practical, down-to-earth,
no-frills men.

In addition to all his other qualities, Budge could judge character
pretty well.

The car he showed us had a bit fewer frills than we had expected.  No
seats, for example.  A missing door.  A glassless rear window.  A
lidless trunk.  And, of course, no front fenders.  There were, we would
discover, other missing frills, but their absence was not immediately
observable.

Budge set an apple box inside the car for a seat, climbed in, and
started the motor for us.  It sounded like a washing machine tumbling
down a flight of stairs.  Smoke billowed out from every crack and
seam.

Budge stuck his head out of the cloud of smoke.  "Course it needs a
tune-up--cough, cough--but you two look like you might be pretty handy
with tools.  Seeing as how that ornery Slick tried to--cough,
cough--pull a fast one on you, I could probably let you have this prime
mountain car for, oh ...

forty dollars."

We stared at him in disbelief.  Forty dollars!  For this car?  He had
to be out of his mind!

Budge apparently was reading our thoughts because he started to say,
"On the other hand, now that I think about it, maybe I could ..."

"We'll take it!"  Retch blurted out.

"Yeah," I added quickly.  "You said forty dollars.  You can't change
your mind now."

We could tell from the look of astonishment on Budge's face that he
hadn't run into a couple of sharpies like us in a long while.

Obviously, when he realized what a mistake he'd made, he had thought
about raising the price maybe doubling it.  He even as much as admitted
his blunder after we had completed the transaction: "I'll tell you
something, boys.  It ain't every day I sell a car like this one for
forty dollars."

Scarcely believing our good fortune, Retch and I loaded the bikes into
the back of the car and were driving off, when we saw Slick standing in
the door of the quonset hut.  His mouth gaped as he stared first at us,
then back at Budge, then at us again.

we decided to give our mountain car a quick road test on Cemetery
Hill.

The hill was by no means as rugged as the terrain our mountain car was
intended for, but it was sufficiently steep and winding, as may be
judged from the fact that the hill did not have a cemetery on it.  The
name had been invented by loggers who had to drive trucks down the
steep, twisting grade.

Our mountain car growled up the hill without difficulty, delighting us
with its performance.  At the top, Retch, who was driving, plowed the
front of the car up a steep bank in order to get it turned around.

"Wow!  Look at that!  This thing is just like a tank!"  he exclaimed
happily.  "Now let's see how it does going downhill."

One of the frills missing from the car turned out to be the brakes.

Immediately, I saw why there was no door on the passenger's side.  Some
passenger had undoubtedly kicked it off in his haste to abandon the car
on a downgrade.  Only two factors prevented me from leaping out: (1) a
fierce determination not to abandon my friend, and (2) total
paralysis.

Sitting on the seatless floor of the car, I could look down through
gaping holes and see the earth rushing past a few inches away.  Even
worse, on one turn, I could see sky rushing past.  Somehow Retch
managed to get down the hill without flipping us over.  After we had
coasted to a stop, we sat silent for a long while, savoring the
sensation of breathing.  Presently, a farmer drove up in a truck.  He
squealed to a stop and rushed over.

"You boys all right?"

"Yup," Retch said.

"You're lucky to be alive from the looks of it," the farmer said.

"Your car's totally demolished!"

Retch and I smiled feebly but appreciatively.  It isn't everyone who
can joke like that and still keep a straight face.

Retch and I drove the rest of the way to his place in low gear.  The
trip was without further incident, except that while we were waiting
for a train to go by on a crossing, Sheriff McGrady's head poked
through the smoke on my side.  "I should've known," he said,
recognizing me and Retch.  "What in tarnation have you two gone and
done now?"

"Just driving our mountain car home," I said.

"Car?"  the sheriff said.  "There's a car here?  Why, for goodness
sakes, so there is.  What kind of fuel does it burn, wet leaves?  Now,
I don't wish to seem unkind, lads, but if I catch you driving this
vehicle on the public roads again, I'll skin the both of ya!"

Sheriff McGrady had no great appreciation of mountain cars.

Retch's father was sitting on the front porch in his undershirt
drinking a can of beer when we pulled into the Sweeney driveway.

"Well, what d'ya think of our new mountain car, Popper?"  Retch
shouted.

"We practically stole it from ol' Budge Honeylip for a lousy forty
dollars!"

Mr.  Sweeney stared impassively.

"Pat and me, we're gonna get out your tools and tear it all down and
put it back together, Popper.  Course we'll need the garage, but I
figure you can park your car out in the alley for a couple of days."

Mr.  Sweeney continued to stare impassively.

I began to suspect that he had suffered a stroke.  Then, slowly, his
lips began to move.  "Someday somebody will invent a pill," he said.

Weird!  Retch and I attributed this muttered nonsense to a slight
stroke or maybe temporary senility.

We worked on the mountain car for a week, dismantling it piece by piece
and arranging the parts in neat order on the floor of the garage, and
down the driveway, and around the lawn.  Mr. Sweeney would come home
in the evenings, park his car in the alley, stare balefully at us and
dispersed parts of the mountain car, then go into the house muttering
to himself about the invention of pills.  The man was not well.

My fellow mechanic and I were not feeling all that great either.  Bit
by bit our confidence in being able to reassemble the mountain car
eroded.  Panic started to set in.  We began to quarrel.

"The long gizmo with the holes in it bolts onto that big thing over
there," Retch would say.

"You're crazy!"  I'd yell.  "The flat thingamajig with the do-hickies
on it goes there."

Nevertheless, the car was reassembled in a single weekend.  All the
gizmos and thingamajigs and do-hickies were bolted into their proper
places with swift efficiency, if not actual frenzy.  The work, however,
was accompanied by a steady stream of creative cursing that turned the
air of the neighborhood blue for weeks afterward.

Occasionally, Retch's mother would come out to the garage and complain
about the vile invectives rolling up from the bowels of the mountain
car.

"Hush!"  she'd cry.

"The neighbors will hear!"  'I don't give a bleep if they do hear," Mr.
Sween ey would reply.  "Now hand me that box wrench, Retch, and be
quick about it!"

"Sure thing, Popper.  But are you certain that whatchamacallit goes
there?"

"Shut up!"

Mr. Sweeney did a wonderful job of putting the mountain car back
together, and it was almost as good as before.  He even repaired the
brakes.

To show our gratitude, we offered to take Mr. Sweeney along on our
first fishing trip in the mountain car.  His only response to the
invitation was a long, quavering laugh that reinforced our doubts about
his emotional stability.

The mountain car provided us with enormous pleasure, hauling us to the
very ends of wilderness roads and, often as not, back again.  We even
gave the car a name, Mrs. Peabody, in honor of our favorite high
school English teacher.  Apparently, this caused no end of rumors about
the teacher.  For example, one day Retch and I were tossing back a
couple of malts in Toby's Soda Fountain and discussing our favorite
topic, the mountain car.

"I think Mrs. Peabody's rear end is about to go out," I said.  Toby
froze in mid-wipe on a glass he was drying.

"What makes you think so?"  Retch asked.  Toby cocked his head in our
direction.

"Well, she was making these strange rumbling sounds when I had her out
in the mountains the other day."

"You had Mrs. Peabody out in the mountains?"  Toby asked.  "What
for?"

"The usual thing," I said.  "Retch and me take her out two or three
times a week.  Sometimes we stay out for days."

"For days?"  Toby said.  "You and Retch with Mrs.  Peabody?"

"Sure," I said.  "It's more fun that way.  Gosh, Toby, maybe you'd like
to come along sometime, too.  You'd be more than welcome."

"I don't think my wife would like me going out with Mrs.  Peabody."

"Oh," Retch said, obviously miffed.  "You think you're too good for
Mrs. Peabody.  just because she's old and shabby and got a few too
many miles on her, you don't want to be seen out with us."

"Goodness no," cried Toby nervously.  "And she's certainly not all that
old.  Thirty-five, I'd guess."

"Thirty-two," Retch said, his temper cooling.  "Sure, I'll admit Mrs.
Peabody needs some work done on her.  In fact, my pop says he's going
to grind her valves first chance he gets."

Toby's glass shattered on the floor.  "Your father is going to grind
her valves?  I thought he was a bricklayer."

"Yeah, he's a bricklayer, all right, but he's gotten so he enjoys
tinkering with Mrs. Peabody out in our garage.  It's sort of a hobby
with him."

Mumbling incoherently, Toby walked off to find a broom.  It was obvious
he didn't know much about mountain cars, so we never mentioned Mrs.
Peabody to him again.

Our adventures with Mrs. Peabody in the two years we owned her are too
numerous to mention here, so I will recount only the last.

Retch and I were grouse hunting with Mrs. Peabody up on Big Sandy
Mountain.  As we were driving along, a big blue grouse appeared at the
edge of the road up ahead.  Retch eased Mrs. Peabody to a stop on a
turnout, and we grabbed our .22s and slipped out of the car.  The
grouse, in the meantime, had flown up into a spruce tree.  Stealthily,
we walked up the road, trying to pick out the dark shape of the grouse
among the boughs.  I inched around the far side of the tree, my rifle
at the ready, but I still couldn't see the grouse.  Retch was still
standing on the road, impatient as always.

"Fire," he said.

"I can't even see it," I whispered.  "Why should I fire?"

"FIRE!"  Retch shouted.

"Fire yourself, you idiot, if you can see the grouse," I shouted back
at him.

"Forget the dang grouse," he yelled, taking off down the road.  "Mrs.
Peabody is on fire!"

Indeed she was.  Although Mrs. Peabody had always smoked, now there
were tongues of flame licking the hood.  We were too late to save
her.

The loss saddened us, of course, but there were others who looked upon
it as a blessing.  Among these was the Forest Service whose lookout
towers half a dozen times a summer would report Mrs. Peabody as a fire
out of control.  My mother, who referred to the mountain car as "a
death trap," was much relieved to hear of its end.  Retch's father
could scarcely contain his joy.  Budge Honeylip saw it as an
opportunity to sell us another fine car.  But perhaps the most relieved
and delighted person of all was our high school English teacher.

The Christmas Hatchet The best evidence I've been able to come up with
that the human race is increasing in intelligence is that parents no
longer give their kids hatch ets for Christmas.

When I was a boy the hatchet was a Christmas gift commonly bestowed
upon male children.  In an attempt to cover up their lapse of sanity,
parents would tell their offspring, "Now don't chop anything."

By the time this warning was out of the parents' mouths, the kid would
have already whacked two branches off the Christmas tree and be adding
a second set of notches to one of his new Lincoln logs.

It was not that the kid harbored a gene compelling him to be
destructive.

The problem was with the hatchet, which had a will of its own.  As soon
as the kid activated it by grasping the handle, the hatchet took charge
of his mental processes and pretty much ran the whole show from then
on.

Shortly after Christmas the kid would be making frequent trips to the
woodshed with his father, and not to chop wood either.

"The hatchet did it!"  the kid would yell as he was being dragged
toward the woodshed by his shirt collar.  "I was just walking through
the gate and my hatchet leaped out and chopped the post!"

Some kids were gullible enough to try the old George Washington cherry
tree ploy.  "I did it with my own little hatchet," they would
confess.

"I know," their father would say.  "Now haul your rear end out to the
woodshed!"

The moral most of my friends and I drew from the cherry tree story
wasn't that George Washington was so honest but that his father was a
bit slow.  This showed that even a kid with a dumb father could grow up
to be President.

The average length of time a kid was allowed to remain in possession of
his hatchet was forty-eight hours.  By then the hatchet would have
produced approximately sixty bushels of wood chips, eight hundred hack
marks, and a bad case of hysteria for the kid's mother.  The youngster
would be unceremoniously stripped of his hatchet, even as its blade
fell hungrily on a clothesline post or utility pole, and be told that
he could have e it back when he was "older," by which was meant age
twenty-seven.

Kids now probably wouldn't understand the appeal hatchets held for
youngsters of my generation.  If a kid today received a hatchet for
Christmas, he would ask, "Where do you put the batteries?"  He would
have no inkling of the romance of the hatchet and what it symbolized to
boys of an earlier time, presumably all the way back to George
Washington.

In the time and place of my childhood, woodcraft still loomed large in
the scheme of a man's life.  A man sawed and split firewood for the
home, of course, but more important, he could take care of himself in
the woods.  He could build log cabins and lean-tos and footbridges,
chop up a log to feed a campfire, fell poles to pitch a tent on or to
hoist up a deer or to make a stretcher to haul out of the woods the
person who wasn't that good with his ax.

One of the best things you could say about a man back then was that he
was a good woodsman.  Being a good woodsman seemed to erase a lot of
other character flaws.

"Shorty may have some faults," one man might say, "but I'll tell you
this--he's a good woodsman!"

"Yep," someone else would observe.  "Shorty is a fine woodsman, all
right.  If he made it to the mountains, I reckon it'll take the posse a
month to root him out."

The ax was the primary tool of the woodsman.  If he wished, a woodsman
could go off into the woods with an ax and provide heat and shelter for
himself and live a life of freedom and independence and dignity and not
be at anyone's beck and call or have to comb his hair or take baths.

Not that I recall anyone ever fleeing to the woods, not even Shorty,
who was nabbed sitting on a barstool at Beaky's Tavern, still a long
way from the mountains.

But it was the idea!  If you were good with an ax and a gun, of course,
and a knife, you could always fall back to the mountains.  What it was
all about, underneath, was the potential for freedom, not the jived up
freedom of patriotic speeches but real freedom, one-to-one-ratio
freedom, where man plucks his living directly from Nature.  Of course,
sometimes Nature plucksback, but that's not part of this dream, this
vision, as symbolized by the Christmas hatchet.

I first realized I needed a hatchet when I was five years old and my
mother read me stories about the pioneers chopping out little clearings
in the great forests of the land.  Ah, I thought, how satisfying it
would be to chop out a clearing, to chop anything, for that matter.  My
campaign for a hatchet began immediately and achieved fruition on my
eighth Christmas.

Although I wasn't allowed to touch any of the presents before Christmas
Eve, I had spotted one package that bore the general shape of a
hatchet.

Still, I couldn't be sure, because my mother was a clever and deceptive
woman, once wrapping a new pair of longjohns to look like an electric
train.  Was she pulling a fast one on me this time or had she realy
lost her senses and bought me a hatchet?

It turned out to be a hatchet, a little red job with a hefty handle and
a cutting edge dull as a licorice stick.  Even as I unwrapped it, I
could feel all the thousands of little chops throbbing about inside,
pleading to be turned loose on the world.  "Now don't chop anything,"
my mother said.

Within minutes, I had honed a razor edge onto the hatchet and was
overcome with a terrible compulsion to chop.  Forty-eight hours later,
the hatchet was wrenched from my grasp and hidden away, presumably to
be returned to me sometime after I had children of my own.

A few days after Christmas I learned that my friend Crazy Eddie
Muldoon, who lived on the farm next to ours, had also received a
Christmas hatchet.

"Where is it?"  I asked.  "Let's go chop something."

"Uh, I got it put away," Crazy Eddie said.  "Let's use yours."

"Uh, I loaned mine to my cousin for a while," I replied.  "He said,
'You don't have a hatchet I can borrow, do you?"  and I said, 'Sure.""
"Sure," said Crazy Eddie, who was only crazy part of the time.

As good luck would have it, an epidemic of permissiveness swept the
county the following summer and both Eddie and I regained possession of
our respective hatchets.  There were still plenty of chops left in the
hatchets and the two of us wandered off down to our woodlot in search
of a suitable recipient.

A large tamarack soared up uselessly on the edge of the woodlot, and
Crazy Eddie said maybe it would be a good idea if we built an empty
space in the sky where it was standing.  As it happened, I had long
nourished a desire to yell "Timberrrrrr!"  at the very moment I sent a
mammoth of the forest crashing to the ground.

"Your folks can use it for firewood," Crazy Eddie said, in an attempt
to explain his motive for felling the tamarack.  But I knew he too
yearned to hear the thunder of a great tree dashed to earth; he, as
much as I, was into chopping for the pure aesthetics of the thing.

We spent all day chopping away at the tamarack, with Eddie on one side,
me on the other, our hatchets sounding like slow but determined
woodpeckers.

At noon I went home for lunch.

"What are you boys up to?"  my mother asked, with no great show of
interest.

"Chopping down a big tree."

"That's nice," Mom said.  "Don't fight."

After lunch, Crazy Eddie and I were back at the tree again, chipping
out a huge U-shaped gouge all the way around its circumference.  We
were both exhausted, sweating, standing in chips up to our knees, but
we could see now it was possible to accomplish the task we had set for
ourselves.  The tree began to moan and creak ominously as the hatchets
bit into its heartwood.  By late afternoon the huge tamarack stood
precariously balanced on a gnawed core of wood slightly thicker than a
hatchet handle.

Neither Crazy Eddie nor I had the slightest clue as to the direction in
which the tree might fall, which heightened our anticipation with the
added element of suspense.  We took turns charging up to the tree,
whacking out a quick chip, and then dashing back to relative safety.

Suddenly we heard it: the faint, soft sigh that signaled the tree's
unconditional surrender to our Christmas hatchets.  A silence fell upon
the land.  High above us the boughs of the tamarack rustled.  Crazy
Eddie and I shivered happily.  We had accomplished something
momentous!

Crrrrrraaa ... went the tree, beginning a slow tilt.  We were now able
to determine the direction of its fall, which wasn't particularly
good.

Eddie's father, a short while before, had built a fence between our
woodlot and theirs and now, even though I had not yet studied plane
geometry, I was able to calculate with considerable accuracy that the
tree would neatly intersect the fence at right angles.

"You better yell 'timber,'" Crazy Eddie said, his voice trembling.

"Timmmm ..."  I started to cry.  Then we heard another cry.  It was
that of Eddie's father, who had come down to the woodlot to call him to
supper.

"Eddieeeee!"  his father called.  "Crazy Eddieee!  It's time for
supperrrrr!"

Cr-r-r-r-a-a-a-a-A-A-A-A-ACK!  went the tree.

"Eddieee!"  went Eddie's father.  "EddieeEEEEEE!"

The monstrous tamarack smote the earth with a thunderous roar, rising
above which was the twanging hum of barbwire.  Fence posts shot into
the air fifty yards away.  Eddie's father shot into the air fifty feet
away.

"Bleeping bleep of a bleep!"  screamed Eddie's father, introducing me
to that quaint expression for the first time.

There is an old saying that cutting firewood warms you twice: once when
you chop it and once when you burn it.  Well, chopping down that
tamarack warmed Eddie and me three times, and one of those warmings was
a good deal hotter than when the wood burned.

I learned a good many things from felling that tamarack with my
Christmas hatchet, perhaps the most interesting of which is that a
barbwire fence is regarded by its builder as merely a barbwire fence
until a tree falls on it.

Afterward it is looked back upon as a priceless work of art, surpassed
in beauty and grandeur only by the Taj Mahal.

My Christmas hatchet disappeared immediately after the great
tree-felling but surfaced again a few years later when I was old enough
to conduct my own camping trips.  Much to my surprise, I discovered the
hatchet was almost useless for cutting wood.  it was as if Excalibur
had been reduced to a putty knife.  The very next Christmas, I gave my
little cousin Delbert the hatchet as a present.

"wow!"  he said.  "A real hatchet of my own!  Thanks a lot!"

"You're welcome!"  I shouted after him as he raced away, homing in on a
stand of shrubs in his backyard.  "But don't chop anything!"

The Night Grandma Shot Shorty When I was a boy, we kept a loaded pistol
in the house with which to dispatch criminals who might come prowling
around late at night.  We never killed any criminals with the pistol,
but there was one near-fatality.

Unfortunately, the victim was not a criminal, at least so far as we
knew.

The caliber of the pistol was very large, at least .45--maybe .50--and
magnum to boot.  The pistol could put a hole in you the size of a
grapefruit, if you were a criminal trying to force your way into our
house late at night.

At least that's what I told the guys at school.  What I didn't tell
them was that the gun was a figment of my mother's imagination.

My father had died when I was six, leaving me the lone male in a family
of women--my mother and grandmother and a sister, who was six years
older than I. If I have never become too excited over women's
liberation, it is because I grew up surrounded by liberated females,
all tough, hard, and fearless.  Any one of them could have taught a
graduate course in assertiveness training.  My sister held a black belt
in aggravation.

Our farm was situated about a mile from a railroad, and it was not
unusual for tramps to stop by and ask if they could chop some wood in
exchange for a meal.  My mother, bless her heart, never once turned
away a tramp unfed, but boy did those suckers chop wood!  There were no
free handouts at the McManus farm.

Even with all the tramps drifting into our place (staggering away three
hours later with a baloney sandwich clutched limply in hand), Mom never
saw any need for a gun as a means of self-protection.  After all, she
viewed the tramps as harmless, easy-going fellows, who, if spoken to
with a proper measure of firmness, were capable of chopping a good deal
of wood.

Then one day Mom went into town and hired three local criminals to
build an extension onto the chicken house.  When they were about half
done with the project, she saw they had no skill as carpenters, paid
them off, and sent them packing.

"We'll get you for this!"  one of the criminals, a mean little man
called Shorty, yelled back over his shoulder.

"Ha!"  Mom responded.

The threat, however, caused some concern among the rest of the
family.

What would we do if Shorty came sneaking back in the middle of the
night, intent on murdering us all?

"Oh, all right!"  Mom said.  "Here's what we'll do."  She explained
that if we heard any strange noises outside at night or someone banged
on the door, my sister would sing out loud and clear, "Do you want the
gun, Ma?  Do you want the gun?"  To which my mother would loudly reply,
"Oh, you'd better give it to me!  But be careful it's loaded!"

This system worked rather well.  Not only did the imaginary pistol
frighten off any criminals making strange noises outside our house, but
it gave several innocent late-night visitors a bad case of the
shakes.

In fact, the imaginary pistol turned out to be more deadly than any of
us expected.  One night my mother was sitting up alone playing a game
of solitaire, when suddenly there was a banging on the door.  Mom, who
never thought the imaginary pistol was necessary in the first place,
got up and answered the door without bothering to wait for my sister to
sound the alarm.

The visitor turned out to be a diminutive young fellow by the name of
Little Ernie and he had a terrible tale of woe to tell.  He had joined
the Civilian Conservation Corps that summer and had been working with a
CCC crew back in the mountains eradicating blister rust.  Somehow,
Little Ernie had managed to antagonize the rest of the crew, and they
had taken him down and shaved off all his curly blond hair.  He had
left the camp in a huff, his cowboy hat wobbling loosely atop his
ears.

As he recited the story to Mom, his voice rose and fell, quavering with
rage.  He also refused to remove his hat to allow Mom to survey the
damage.

In that time and place, it was considered the ultimate rudeness for a
man to wear his hat in the house.  This was to be a contributing factor
in the misunderstanding shortly to follow.

After one last outburst of rage, Little Ernie pounded the table with
his fist.  Mom was getting tired of hearing about the atrocity and she
told Ernie he could spend the night in a spare upstairs bedroom.  She
then went off to bed herself, neglecting in all the excitement to
mention to Ernie that another upstairs bedroom was occupied by my Aunt
Gladys, who was visiting, and Gram.

When the banging on the front door had first sounded, Aunt Gladys and
Gram had sat "bolt-upright" in bed.  Soon they heard a loud male voice
full of rage and incoherence.

"It's Shorty!"  Gram hissed to Aunt Gladys, who had been told about the
threat.  Aunt Gladys went pale and her hair tightened in its curlers.

"We'd better go help Mabel," she whispered.

They listened a bit longer to the mad ravings rising from the living
room.  Then they heard the dull sounds of blows being delivered.

"My God, he's killed her!"  Gram gasped.

After a period of silence broken only by the tinny rattle of hair
curlers, they heard booted feet begin to ascend the stairs.

"Oh!"  Aunt Gladys whispered.  "Now he's coming for us!"

Through the open door of their bedroom, Gram and Aunt Gladys had an
unobstructed view of the stairwell.  Thump ... thump ... thump ... came
the booted steps.  Given their emotional state, it was perhaps
understandable that Gram and Aunt Gladys would mistake the slow
plodding on the steps to be a result of stealth rather than weariness
and nervous exhaustion.

Slowly, the crown of a cowboy hat rose above the edge of the stairwell,
a sure sign the intruder was a killer.  No one else would wear a hat in
the house.  Then the head and shoulders came into view.  There was only
one thing to do.

Gram drew the imaginary pistol.  EMploying the tone Of voice she
reserved for breaking up dog fights and ordering the family hog out of
her flower gardens, she let Little Ernie have it.

"Hold it right there, Shorty," she snarled, "or I'li blow your head
off!"

Three days later, Little Ernie had recovered enough to be ready and
willing to go back to the CCC camp.  By then, if he held a cup in both
hands, he could get it to his lips without sloshing coffee all over
himself.  Much of his color had returned too.  Since the stubble of his
hair had leaped up half an inch when he heard Gram's command, he now
looked as if he had a crew cut, although it was somewhat lighter in
shade than his original blond curls.  We never saw Little Ernie again,
so I don't know if he ever fully recovered.

Perhaps he was still peeved at Gram, thinking that by calling him
"Shorty" she had been referring to his modest stature.

Mom got rid of the pistol soon afterward.  She said it was too
dangerous to have lying around the house, where a young boy or an old
lady might get hold of it and accidentally kill somebody.

The Kindest Cut of All Hal Figby, a newcomer to our little gatherings
down at Kelly's Bar & Grill, doesn't care much for hunting or fishing. 
We don't hold that against him, of course, and even go out of our way
to treat him just as if he were normal.  He is soft-spoken, polite,
does everything in moderation, and in general seems to be a perfect
gentleman.  Otherwise, he is a pretty decent sort of guy.  He's even
good for a laugh occasionally, such as the time we invited him down to
Kelly's to watch the Saturday night fights.  He said later he had
thought we meant the fights would be on television!  Broke us up.

That's just the sort of person Figby is.  Still, we couldn't have been
more surprised when he committed the breach of etiquette.

Half a dozen of us had stopped by Kelly's after a hard day of fishing
and were getting tuned up to spend the rest of the evening testing out
some new lies on each other and maybe stretching a truth or two.  Then
Figby showed up.

Scarcely had he sat down than he began staring across the table at
Retch Sweeney.

"Something wrong, Figby?"  Retch asked, in a tone that killed
somebody's promising lie in mid-sentence.

"Uh," Figby said, "it's just that nasty scar on your face.  I was
wondering how you got it."

We were dumfounded.  Of all the stupid things we might have expected
Figby to say, this was absolutely the worst.  Here we had just got a
nice start on a pleasantly sociable evening, and Figby had to blurt out
something like that.  Even Figby should have known you never ask a man
how he got a scar on his face.  A couple of the guys got up in disgust
and walked out right then.  I later regretted I hadn't gone with them,
because I didn't have much stomach for what happened next.  And I must
say, Retch was unmerciful.  He talked steadily about that scar for
upwards of two hours.  It was dreadful.

There is nothing a man, particularly an outdoorsman, enjoys talking
about more than his scars.  Every scar has a story behind it.  I have
heard some scar stories approximately the length of Churchill's A
History of the English-Speaking Peoples, but such brevity is rare.

Once a question has been put to an outdoorsman about one of his scars,
the man will go on a hinge of scar stories.  He cannot tell about one
scar and let it go at that.  As soon as he has exhausted all the scars
on his face, he will move on to the scars on his hands and arms, and
once he has recited the history of each of them, he descends to his
lower extremities, finally rolling up his pant legs to search for old
scars he might have forgotten about.

It is for that reason that no outdoorsman will ever ask another about a
scar.

There are certain constants in the telling of any scar story.  One is
that the recipient of the near-mortal wound from which the scar was
derived never uttered a sound during the ordeal: "So, there I was, my
arm laid open elbow to wrist, and me not making a sound.  Several of
the younger fellows fainted dead away at the sight of it, and I
couldn't help but smile.  Then ol' Pap Wiggens got out a
saddle-stitching awl and sewed up my arm with a length of catgut
leader.  and I didn't so much as say 'ouch."" It may be nothing more
than a coincidence, but I have yet to hear a scar story in which the
injured party admitted to bellowing like a bull moose with bursitis.

Another characteristic of the scar story is that the scar always is
much smaller than the original wound.  In fact, each time the story is
told, the difference between the size of the scar and the size of the
wound becomes increasingly greater, until you begin to worry that if
the story is told one more time the original injury might prove
fatal.

I've seen outdoorsmen express real astonishment that they somehow
managed to survive a wound that left a quarter-inch scar on an index
finger.  Once during a physical examination, I asked the doctor the
cause of this phenomenon, and he spent the rest of the afternoon
telling me about a tiny scar on his elbow left over from the time he
nearly severed his arm.  I hadn't realized until then that he was an
outdoorsman.  Afterward he gave me a prescription for some drops to
clear up my glazed eyes.

Another feature of the scar story is that the teller always remembers
to make a dry, humorous comment to his companions as they gape in
horror at his damaged hide.  "It's just a scratch" seems to be the
standard dry, humorous comment.  Obviously, you can't expect great
creativity from an injured person.

One interesting and amusing characteristic of the scar story is how
easily an outdoorsman can be reminded of one.

"Have you seen John's boat?"  someone might ask.

"No," replies the outdoorsman, "but that reminds me.  I don't believe
I've ever told you how I got this scar on my cheek."

Persons unknowledgeable about outdoorsmen might assume that a boat
played at least some slight part in the acquisition of the scar.  When
the story is at last over, they will ask, "But what about the boat?"

"What boat?"  replies the outdoorsman.  "Say, that reminds me of the
scar on my ankle."

Speaking of boats, there's quite a story behind this scar on my
thumb.

The scar is merely a small, whitish crescent just behind the knuckle.

I must explain, however, that the scar remained the same size but my
thumb grew.

When it received the original wound, my thumb was only seven years
old.

To fully appreciate the gash On my thumb, you must visualize the scar
superimposed on a little seven-year-old thumb.  Then you realize how
truly ghastly the injury was.

The scar happened like this.  Crazy Eddie and I were planning our first
camping trip.  We had both been sentenced to second grade and were due
to start serving our time the following week.  When you're seven years
old, second grade lasts for life and a day.  (When I was eight, second
grade lasted only twenty years, which was a great improvement.) We
wanted to have one last fling before the doors shut behind us, and a
camping trip seemed like a good idea.

Finding enough grub for the camping trip was the big problem.  We dug a
few potatoes out of the garden, and Crazy Eddie sneaked half a loaf of
bread from his house.  But we needed some meat.  Fortunately, Eddie's
father had hauled a dead horse into their barnyard a few weeks
before.

He had cut up most of the carcass to feed to the foxes he raised for
furs, but there were still some good parts left.  Eddie borrowed his
father's hunting knife while his parents were away, and we went out to
the barnyard to cut off a few steaks to roast on willows over the fire
we hoped to build by rubbing two sticks together because we weren't
allowed to play with matches.  Eddie sliced off a nice round steak for
himself without incident or accident.  Probably one reason he didn't
cut himself was that he used one hand to cut with and the other to hold
his nose.  The hand that holds the knife doesn't usually get cut, so
the trick is to keep the other hand out of the way and occupied with
some useful task like holding your nose.  Foolishly, I tried to brush
the flies off the steak I was cutting.  The knife slipped and laid open
my thumb to the bone.

I didn't cry.  That was the first time I had been hurt that badly and
didn't cry.  I remember thinking, "Odd, I just cut my finger to the
bone and I'm not crying.

Eddie wasn't very supportive in that regard.  "Geez , he said, "all
your blood is leaking out!"

That made me want to cry, but I didn't.  Maybe I somehow knew that
years later I would have this wonderful scar and I wouldn't want to
remember that I cried when I got it.

"Don't it hurt?"  Crazy Eddie asked, apparently because he couldn't
deal with the fact that I wasn't crying.

I decided to compound his amazement by making a dry, humorous comment
about the cut, but I couldn't think of any.  "Naw," I said finally,
"it's just a scra ... a scra ... I got to go home."  And I went.

Two weeks later I finally thought of a dry, humorous comment, but by
then we were in second grade and Crazy Eddie was too miserable to
appreciate it.

During the years of my childhood, I picked up dozens of tiny scars, but
none worth showing to anybody.  All my friends were constantly getting
neat scars.  One time Crazy Eddie and I were floating a log raft down
the creek.

Suddenly, up ahead, we saw a strand of barbwire stretched across the
creek about six inches above the water.  Crazy Eddie, who was on the
front of the raft, lay down and pressed himself against the logs so
that he would pass under the wire.  He didn't press hard enough.  The
barbs raked him fore and aft, particularly his aft.  (He wasn't known
as "Crazy Eddie" for nothing.) When I came to the wire, I calmly
stepped over it, averting my gaze from the bits of Eddie left on the
barbs.  Eddie picked up an interesting set of scars from the
experience, and he liked to claim later that he never uttered a sound
during the ordeal.  Maybe so, but the workers at a nearby sawmill went
home early that day because they thought they heard the shriek of the
quitting whistle.

Crazy Eddie continued to add to his collection of scars with knives,
hatchets, saws, arrows, fishhooks, tree branches, sharp rocks, just
about anything that had any potential at all for lacerating his skin.

By the time we were in sixth grade, Eddie looked like a walking display
of hieroglyphics.

He was the envy of every boy in school.

I, on the other hand, had only one good scar, the one on my thumb.  The
problem with a scar on a thumb is that it is not easily called
attention to.

Once I was lucky enough to fall facedown in a pile of rocks and get a
deep gash on my chin.  I had high hopes for that wound, but bit by bit
the scar faded and within six months had vanished.

"Thank heavens," my mother said.  "I thought you might be disfigured
for life."  Mothers just don't understand about scars.

I have an excellent scar on one of my feet, a gift from a double-bitted
ax.  But a foot is one of the worst places to have a scar.  How do you
explain taking off your shoe and sock and placing a smelly foot up on a
table so the scar can be noticed?  I have often been asked for such an
explanation and, failing to come up with one, have on several occasions
been forcibly ejected from Kelly's Bar & Grill.  A scar on your foot is
more of a nuisance than anything.  It is, as Shakespeare put it, the
unkindest cut of all.

One of life's worst misfortunes is to get a truly fabulous scar in a
place where no one except maybe your spouse can notice it, and spouses,
like mothers, are generally unappreciative of scars.  A classic
instance of such a scar occurred when my friends Retch and Birdy and I
were about seventeen.  We had been fishing in a place that required
that we drive through a series of hayfields, opening and shutting half
a dozen gates along the way.  Retch was driving his old 1933 sedan,
and, because he was furnishing the transportation, he insisted that
Birdy and I open and shut the gates.  Birdy complained that this was an
unfair labor practice and violated constitutional rights as they apply
to hayfield gates.  A heated argument ensued, and certain vile names
were exchanged.  When we arrived at one of the gates, Birdy got out,
swearing that this was absolutely the last gate he was going to open
and close.

"Ha!"  Retch said.  "We'll see about that.  Lock all the doors so he
can't get back in.  We'll make him walk all the way to the next gate
and we won't let him back in the car until he opens and closes it.  Heh
heh!"

With that, he started driving slowly across the hayfield toward the
next gate.  What happened next came as quite a surprise to Retch and
me, since neither of us had ever guessed that Birdy might possess
ambitions to become a stuntman.

Once he perceived what we were up to, Birdy raced after the bouncing
sedan, making no attempt to conceal his fury.  He climbed on the back
bumper, worked his way up over the trunk, across the roof of the car,
and down onto the hood.  Once he was on the hood, he sprawled across
the windshield to block Retch's vision.

His plot foiled and his vision blocked, Retch became furious.  "Well,
I'll fix him!"  he snarled, pressing down on the gas pedal until we
were bouncing along at nearly twenty miles an hour.  Birdy reacted by
turning his back to us and, now astraddle the hood, grabbed hold of the
rain gutters on each side of the windshield to steady himself.  Retch
hit the brakes.

Birdy shot off the front of the hood as if from a catapult.  He made a
nice eight-point landing, counting two points for each bounce.  Retch
and I expected that he would rest there on the ground for a spell and
contemplate the error of his ways.  instead, he instantly leaped up and
launched into a wild and wonderful dance to the accompaniment of his
own whoops and hollers.

That was when we remembered the hood ornament, one of those little jobs
with the wings raised in simulation of flight.

The little wings gave Birdy a spectacular matched set of scars.

Unfortunately, they were in a place where they were not likely to be
noticed in the typical social situation.  In the thirty years since,
Birdy has not once had occasion to tell the story behind those scars.

It seems like such a waste.

Scars are often interpreted as evidence that a man has lived
dangerously.

I totally dismiss my wife's assertion that they are more likely proof
that he has lived dumbly.  She knows nothing about the masculine mys
tique.

My hope is that the cosmetic industry will soon come up with false
scars for men, much as it did with false beauty marks for women.  It
would be only fair, not to mention a lot less painful.  But it probably
wouldn't work.

After all, who would want to tell about getting a scar from the Avon
lady?

The Bush Pilots Mostly what I wanted to be when I grew up was a
mountain man, but there was one brief period, during the summer of my
eighth year, when I gave serious consideration to becoming a bush
pilot.

It was Crazy Eddie who got me to thinking about the bush-pilot
business.

He came up with the idea immediately after our ill-fated venture into
deep-sea diving, which, among other consequences, produced a rare form
of hysteria in the Fergusons' herd of milk cows: not only couldn't they
be made to drink; they refused even to be driven to water.  A
veterinarian was brought in to offer an opinion, but, because he had no
experience with the effects of deep-sea diving on cows, he failed to
come up with a diagnosis.  Had the vet thought to ask Crazy Eddie and
me, as people usually did when inexplicable phenomena occurred within
the range of our travels, we could have told him what was wrong with
the Ferguson cows.  They had the bends.

Since the reader may have some difficulty grasping the deeper
psychological implications of my bush-pilot phase, an examination of
the deep-sea-diving venture may provide some insights, particularly in
light of the fact that both experiences involved traumatized cows.

In my own defense, I must report that the entire deep-sea-diving
experiment was Eddie's idea.  I was recruited at the last minute, to
help with the testing, after Eddie had designed and assembled the
diving outfit himself.

Although the technology of the outfit would be too difficult for the
lay person to understand, I will mention that its component parts
consisted of an old milk pail, a tire pump, a length of garden hose,
and two bags of rocks.

Eddie said he needed me to work the tire pump while he descended into
the depths of Sand Creek, the test site being a deep hole in the creek
behind the Ferguson place.  The hole was next to the bank on one side
of the creek.  The creek bottom tapered up from there onto a gravel bar
on the opposite side, where the Ferguson cows came to drink.  Through
oversight, Crazy Eddie hadn't factored the cows into the experiment.

As Eddie and I stood on the bank staring down into the swirling dark
waters of the hole, my friend could scarcely contain his enthusiasm.

"Boy," he said, "I can't wait to get down there and start exploring.

This hole is a perfect place for pirates to hide a chest of treasure.

Probably some pearls down there too, and gold and ..."

"C'mon, Eddie, let me go first!"  I blurted.

"Okay."

While he was helping me on with the milk-pail helmet, Eddie said he was
letting me go first only because I was his best friend and that he
wouldn't even consider doing such a favor for anyone else.  I said I
appreciated it and, sliding down over the bank, asked Eddie if he was
sure the diving outfit would work.

"Yeah," Eddie yelled, starting to work the pump furiously.  "But if it
doesn't, can I have your bike?"

Still contemplating Eddie's little joke, I plunged into the hole.  I
sank swiftly into the cool, swirling darkness, the bags of rocks tied
to my belt working wonderfully well.  There were, however, some bugs in
the rest of the outfit.  The helmet offered limited visibility, since
the only way to see out of it was straight down.  Mostly what I could
see was the level of water rising in the inverted milk pail, despite
the hiss hiss of the air hose.  Of even more interest to me at the
moment was the distinct tactile impression of long, slimy tentacles of
octopus slithering around my body.  Thus distracted, and with the water
in the helmet now lapping about my eyes, I scarcely touched bottom
before setting a course toward the incline of the gravel bank on the
far side of the creek.  Even though I maintained the calm demeanor I
thought appropriate to a deep-sea diver, the vigor of my movements
caused silt and gravel to boil up in such a fashion as to effect major
changes in the creek channel, or so Eddie later remarked.

It so happened that at that very moment, the herd of Ferguson cows was
moseying down to the creek for a drink, apparently mildly interested in
the frantic activities of the boy on the far bank but with no
expectation of a streaming, slime-covered creature with an inverted
milk pail on its head to be emerging from their watering place.  As
Crazy Eddie later related the spectacle to me, for I was too
preoccupied with gasping to notice such things, the entire herd rose
straight up eight feet in the air, reversed direction, and to the
accompaniment of a cowbell rendition of "The William Tell Overture,"
disappeared over a distant hill.  Oddly, the route of the cows'
departure was marked in later years by an unusually lush growth of
grass.  The wondrous vitality of the swath of grass became something of
a local mystery as did the refusal of the cows to go anywhere near the
creek for two weeks afterward, despite the maniacal exhortations on the
part of Mr. Ferguson to get them to do so and save him the chore of
carrying water to them.

Naturally, Crazy Eddie was disappointed in the performance of his
diving outfit.

"Maybe it was my fault," I said, untying the bags of rocks from my
belt.

"I probably did it wrong.  Why don't you give it a try and let me stand
on the bank and pump air?"

Eddie thought for a moment.  "Gee, I would," he said, "but it's, ah,
getting on toward suppertime.  Besides, I've been thinking that maybe
I'd rather be a bush pilot than a deep-sea diver."

As we walked home, dragging the deep-sea-diving outfit behind us, Crazy
Eddie suggested that maybe I would want to go into the bush-pilot
business with him.  He explained how it would work.  "We'll have this
plane, see, and we'll fly hunters and fishermen back into the
wilderness.  We'll land on gravel bars in rivers and in little
clearings in the forest, and the hunters and fishermen will be scared
to death, but afterward they'll say, 'Boy, you sure know how to handle
this plane!'and we'll just laugh like it was nothing.

But we won't work all the time.  Whenever we want, we'll go fishing and
hunting ourselves.  It'll be great!"

Already I could feel myself getting caught up in Eddie's dream.  "But
where will we get the plane?"  I asked.  "We don't have any money."

"We'll have to build it.  Of course, we'll start off with just a little
plane, one we can use to practice our flying with and landing on gravel
bars and small clearings in the forest.  That can be tricky.  Come on
over to my place tomorrow and we'll start building the plane."

"Sounds good to me," I said, tilting my head to one side and batting
some creek water out of my ear.

I did have some doubt that Crazy Eddie and I could actually build an
airplane.  As it turned out, though, Eddie was an aeronautical
genius.

When I showed up the next morning, he had already drawn up the plans on
a sheet of Big Ben tablet paper.  He said he had based the design on a
plane in a comic book story about a bush pilot.  It looked swell.

"Where will we get the motor?"  I asked.

"My dad's got an old washing-machine motor out in his shop," he
replied.

"We can use that, and whittle a propeller out of a board."

That sounded reasonable enough.  I felt guilty about having doubted
Eddie's engineering skills.

"We'll start off with a glider, though," Eddie continued.  "After we've
practiced landing the glider a few times, we can hook up the
washing-machine motor to it, and work on our takeoffs."

"But we'll need some high place to launch the glider from," I said.

"What can we use?"

"No problem," said Eddie.  He pointed to the roof of the towering
Muldoon barn.  Why hadn't I thought of that?  I supposed it was because
I wasn't an aeronautical genius.

The finished plane bore only a slight resemblance to Eddie's design,
possibly because our escalating anticipation of the forthcoming flight
caused us to rush construction.  Then again, it may have been the
limited supply of materials available to us: two apple crates for the
cockpits, an empty dynamite box for the motor housing, two long pieces
of shiplap siding for the wings, a short board on a rusty hinge for the
tail, and the rear wheels and axle from Eddie's wagon for the landing
gear.  All things considered, the bush plane looked exceptionally
airworthy.

It had soon become obvious to us that the completed plane would be too
heavy for the two of us to carry up to the ridge of the barn roof, so
we assembled the parts up there.  The roof had two angles to it, one
about 30 degrees, and the other, the lower one, a steep 45 degrees or
so.  A shed roof was attached to the bottom edge of the barn roof.

Near the eave of the shed roof, Eddie and I built a ramp that, once our
plane had picked up sufficient speed in its descent, would loft us up
into the clouds, where we would spend the rest of the day riding the
wind.  Toward evening we would find a gravel bar or a small clearing in
the woods on which to practice our bush-pilot landing.

With the aid of a ladder, we managed to get all the parts of the plane
up to the ridge of the barn roof and assembled.  The bush plane,
pointed nose-down, was held in place by means of a rope attached to a
weather vane, the knot in the rope being tied in such a manner that the
pilot needed only tojerk an end of the rope to release the craft for
its descent.

The activities on the roof of the barn provoked much interest among the
resident population of sparrow s, who kept darting about and offering
advice and encouragement, but because the construction had taken place
on the side of the barn away from Crazy Eddie's house, his parents,
both of whom seemed to suffer from severe nervous disorders, knew
nothing of our activities.

Late in the afternoon, the plane, straining at its tether, was
finished.

Crazy Eddie, crouched beside me on the slope of the barn roof, could
scarcely contain his excitement over the first flight.

"Boy, it'll be great," he said.  'Just think about it.  Soaring around
up there in the clouds, looking down at the patchwork of fields, all
the cars and animals and stuff real tiny like, and ..."

"Yeah," I said.  "You'll have to tell me all about it after you
land."

Crazy Eddie looked at me.  "The wind blowing in your hair, the plane
sailing along like a hawk."

"Hmmm," I said.  "Maybe we both should go.  The plane's got two
cockpits, after all."

"Well, okay," Crazy Eddie said, with what I took to be a slight ebbing
of enthusiasm.

"Say, maybe your folks would like to see us test the plane," I
suggested.

"Why don't you go invite them to watch the takeoff."

"Good idea!"  Eddie scrambled down the barn roof and raced to the
house, where he asked his mother and father if they would like to see
us test a plane we had built out behind the barn.  They said sure,
they'd be right out.  No doubt they were relieved to learn that Eddie
was doing something sensible for a change, instead of getting involved
in one of the crazy, dangerous schemes he was always coming up with.

when Eddie returned, I was already seated in the rear cockpit.  "I
thought you would like to be pilot on the first flight," I told him.  I
doubt that I had ever heard that the rear of an airplane is safer in
the event of a crash, but my years of associating with Eddie had given
me certain useful intuitions.

About then his parents, strolling arm-in-arm, appeared far down below
in the barnyard.  They stopped and looked around for the plane their
son had built.

"Mom!  Dad!"  yelled Crazy Eddie.  "Up here!"

Mr.  and Mrs.  Muldoon looked up.  Both seemed momentarily paralyzed.

Mr. Muldoon's jaw worked up and down, but no words seemed to come
out.

Mrs. Muldoon sagged against her husband.  It was apparent that both of
them were overcome with awe by the aeronautical feat accomplished by
their only child and his friend.

"Contact!"  I yelled.

"Roger!"  Crazy Eddie yelled back, giving his parents a jaunty
salute.

Mr. Muldoon yelled something, too, but we couldn't make it out,
because Eddie had already jerked loose the knot and the wind was
rushing in our ears.

Our flight plan worked outjust as we had intended.  Oh, at first there
was some shrill screeching from down below and I had the vague
impression of cows leaping fences and trying to climb trees and
terrified chickens and geese raising a terrible ruckus, but then the
bush plane hit the ramp on the shed roof and we were lofted high into
the air.  The wind caught us and carried us even higher, and it was
wonderful.  Far down below we could see tiny houses and horses and cows
in the patchwork fields and miniature farmers waving to us from
miniature tractors, and there was Sand Creek, like an embroidered line
of green and blue meandering through the countryside, and then we
soared higher still and were in the clouds, white puffs of vapor
floating up like cotton candy, and it was all very lovely and exciting,
except I had this pain in my body, and my head ached.

When I opened my eyes, Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon were bent over me, both
of them strangely white of face.  They were blurred, too, but because
their surroundings were in sharp focus, I determined it was because of
their shaking.

"Are you all right?"  Mrs. Muldoon asked, wringing a stream of
perspiration from her hands.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, propping myself up on an elbow.  There was
a manure pile nearby and on top of it a pile of kindling and two wagon
wheels.

Mr.  Muldoon said the manure pile had probably saved our lives.

Not too bad, I thought.  Any old bush pilot could land on a gravel bar
or a little clearing in the forest, but I'd like to see one of them
land on a manure pile and live to tell about it.

Both Crazy Eddie and I recovered quickly.  In fact, the only lasting
ill effect of the bush-plane flight was that the Muldoon cows walked
around for weeks afterward with their heads turned to the sky, as if
expecting some assault from outer space.  Crazy Eddie and I used to
chuckle at them while we were building the submarine.

Share and Share Alike The sharing of a single big-game animal between
two hunters is at once the most delicate and the most complex problem
encountered in hunting, with the possible exception of deciding whose
vehicle to drive on the hunt.  It may be useful to examine the problem
in some detail.

Let us begin with a hypothetical situation.  As is well known, an elk
that is shot dead within fifteen feet of your hunting vehicle will
still pull himself together enough to gallop to the very bottom of the
steepest canyon within five miles.  This is known as the elk's
revenge.

Assume you have just shot such an elk.  You and your hunting partner,
whom we'll call Bob, have tracked the elk to the bottom of the
canyon.

As you stand over the massive form of the felled but still magnificent
animal, you become contemplative.

One of the things you contemplate is how much bigger an elk is at the
bottom of a canyon than it is fifteen feet from your vehicle.

(Scientists have calculated that a wounded elk will add fifty pounds to
its weight for every hundred yards it gallops down into a canyon.) You
now ask yourself two questions: (1) How are you going to lug the elk
back up to your vehicle?  and (2) Why didn't you go golfing today
instead of hunting?

With three round trips each, you and Bob manage to pack out the elk
section by section.  Neither of you experiences any extraordinary ill
effects from the exertion, other than the seizing up of major portions
of your cardiovascular systems.  Bob lies wheezing by the side of the
road, a haunch of elk still strapped to his back.  You are walking
around on your knees and mumbling about "getting in shape" and not
caring if you never see another bleeping elk."  At this point you are
willing to give the entire elk to Bob, provided that he lives.  Your
intimate association with elk meat over the preceding hours has
diminished your appetite for the stuff and has resulted in a
psychological malfunction known as excessive generosity.  Wisely, You
put off the decision of what share of the elk should go to Bob until
you are rested and your mind has cleared.

The culinary aspects of elk meat improve in direct proportion to
distance in time from the packing-out process.  A week after the hunt,
during which time the elk has been aging nicely in a cooler, the
thought of all those steaks and roasts stashed away for the winter is
intensely satisfying.  There is still the problem of what portion of
the elk should be Bob's share.  You are now in the proper frame of mind
to make this decision.

Your reasoning goes something like this: For openers, you consider
giving Bob half the elk.  Once you have enjoyed a few moments of mirth
over this ridiculous notion, you get down to serious figuring.  Using
half an elk as base, you deduct from it five pounds for each day
remaining in the elk season, days in which Bob might very well shoot
his own elk.  You make further deductions for the amount of whining Bob
did while packing out your elk.  Then there is the matter of that
unseemly phrase Bob blurted out when he learned the elk you had shot
was at the bottom of a three-thousand-foot canyon--more deductions, all
of them choice cuts.  You don't forget Bob's tripping over a log and
cartwheeling down the slope with a hindquarter strapped to his
packboard.  That bruised a lot of meat, some of which was elk.  Further
deductions.  When you finally total the figures, you discover that Bob
now owes you approximately one quarter of an elk.  The charlatan hasn't
even had the courtesy to mention the matter of this debt to you.  And
to think you trusted him enough to let him help pack your elk out of a
three-thousand-foot canyon!  Some gratitude!

In the end, your calculations are for naught.  Your spouse demands that
you give Bob a generous share of the elk.  You acquiesce reluctantly
but eventually conclude she was right--although this conclusion does
not arrive until the middle of April, when even the thought of one more
elk roast blights your day.

"What's for supper?"  you ask your wife.

"Elk," she replies.

"Aaaack!"  you say.  "How about TV dinners?  I'm sick of elk!"

"You shot it, you eat it!"

"I know, I'll call Bob.  He would probably like some more elk."

"Are you kidding?"  Bob responds.  "I'm fed up to my follicles with
elk!

I couldn't choke down another bite of elk if I lived to be five
hundred!"

"Oh yes you can and you are!  You didn't take your full share of the
elk!

You packed it out and you're going to eat it!"

In this way, the problem of sharing a single big-game animal between
hunters usually resolves itself.

My first encounter with the problem of sharing a big-game animal
occurred when I was sixteen.  I was hunting with my cousin, Buck, who
was several years older than I. At that time, Buck was at the height of
his intellectual powers and knew all there was to know about hunting
and most of everything else.

Some people are stingy with their knowledge and try to hoard it, but
not Buck.

He handed his out freely and voluminously and endlessly, at all hours
of the day or night, whether one was in the market for knowledge or
not.  Naturally, because of his towering intellect and absolute
knowledge of all matters pertaining to hunting, Buck got to devise our
field tactics.

Shortly after dawn, as Buck was bathing my semiconsciousness with a
steady stream of his hunting knowledge, I glanced up the side of the
mountain to clear the glaze from my eyes and spotted five specks.  The
specks were moving.

"Buck, there's a herd of mule deer up there!"  I shouted.

Since part of Buck's knowledge consisted of the natural law that he was
the only one who could spot deer first, he dismissed my report with a
chuckle and the comment that the specks I saw were probably on my
glasses.

Then he stopped the car and got out, casually, as if to stretch and
satisfy a need for a breath of fresh air.  He got back in the car,
shook a cigarette from a pack, lit it, blew out the match.  "There's a
herd of mule deer about halfway up the mountain," he said.  "When
you're driving out to hunt mule deer, it's a good idea to stop every
once in a while and check the slopes.  Now you take these deer here, we
might have missed them if I hadn't stopped for a look around."

"Good, Buck, good.  I'll try to remember that."

Buck then laid out the tactics.  "Now here's what we're going to do.

You work your way up the mountain toward the deer.  I'll drive around
to the top of the mountain and wait on the road just in case they try
to cut back over the ridge."

"Why don't you climb the mountain and I drive around on the road?"

"Because it wouldn't work, that's why.  Besides, if the deer cut back
over the ridge, we want to have the best shot to be waiting there."

I got out to start working my way up the mountain, and Buck drove off,
leisurely smoking his cigarette and fiddling with the radio dials.

There was about a foot of new snow on the mountain, and the climb was
cold, slippery, and exhausting.  Occasionally a fir tree would unload a
bough of snow down the back of my neck, and that didn't improve my
mood, either.  Nor did the thought of Buck sitting in the warm car at
the top of the mountain, drinking hot coffee from the thermos and
smoking and listening to the radio, while he gave the deer time to
detect my presence and then retreat practically into his lap.

But it didn't work out that way.  All at once I found myself right in
the middle of the herd of mule deer.  A nice little buck stepped from
behind a tree and stared at me, as if astonished to find a human being
stupid enough to be climbing a snow-covered mountain that early in the
morning.  I downed him with a single shot.  The rest of the herd raced
off in all directions, except toward Buck.  An hour later I was back
down on the road with my deer.  Buck, who had witnessed the "whole
fiasco," as he called it, was waiting for me.  He was hot, too.

"Boy, that was dumb!"  he snarled.  "Shooting that itty-bitty buck when
there was one three times as big in the herd.  I knew I shouldn't give
you the best chance, but since you're just a kid and all, I thought I'd
do you the favor.  Boy, did you blow it!"

We rode in silence all the way home, Buck occupied with what I could
easily guess were dire thoughts, and I, with gloating.  When you're
sixteen and wear glasses and aren't that good at sports and spend a
good deal of time in the company of an intellectual giant, you don't
get much opportunity for gloating.  When you do, you savor it.

"You just remember," Buck said, after dropping me and my deer off home,
"part of that deer is mine."

When I got around to cutting up the deer, I at first considered giving
Buck a full half of it.  On the other hand, I had my mother,
grandmother, and sister to provide wild game for, and Buck lived by
himself in an apartment.

If he tried to eat half a deer all by himself, he would soon become
sick of venison and wouldn't want to go deer hunting ever again.  No, I
told myself, it would be better if I gave him only a hindquarter.  That
would be about right for one person.  On the other hand, steaks cut
from the hindquarter of a deer are awfully good eating.  Buck might use
a venison-steak dinner as bait to lure one of his girl friends into his
apartment.  That in all probability could lead to Buck and the girl
committing a serious sin.  Since my religion forbade even contributing
to serious sin, I was not about to risk going to hell over a
hindquarter of venison.  No sir, Buck would have to make do with a
front quarter.

But which front quarter?  That presented no real difficulty.  Because
of Buck's interest in science, he would be intrigued by studying the
effect of a .30/30 slug on the shoulder of a deer.  There was still a
lot of good meat on the shoulder, too.

Upon further consideration, I decided that Buck might prefer to forgo
his scientific studies and have the shoulder ground up into venison
burger.  So I ground up the venison for him.

Well, that turned out to be an awful lot of venison burger for one
person.  I started dividing it up into neat little piles, until I found
the exact amount that I thought would be suitable for Buck.  I then
left his share on the table while I went to deposit the rest of the
venison in the cold storage locker.

A few days later I ran into Buck.  "Hey, you little rat," he greeted
me, "where's my share of our deer?"

I shook my head sadly.  "You may have some trouble believing this,
Buck, but while I was taking my share down to the locker, the cat got
in the house and ate your share."

Buck did not take the news well.

Never Sniff a Gift Fish There is one thing about my neighbor Al Finley
that irritates me.

Well, actually, there are many things about Finley that irritate me,
but one stands out from the others.  It is his constant seeking after
immortality.

I don't mean to say that Finley wants to live forever, although he
probably has that in mind, too.  And if the population of the world
should one day increase to the point where people are standing on each
other's shoulders, you can bet Finley won't be one of the guys on the
bottom.  No, he will be up on top, shouting orders to the fellow down
below to step along faster and watch out for the bumps.  That's the
sort of person Finley is.

On the off chance he doesn't achieve immortality for his person, Finley
at least wants it for his name.  He is driven by this ambition.

For a while, he thought he might achieve lasting fame by writing
poetry.

When his masterwork, "Ode to a Liver Spot," brought him bad reviews and
several threats against his life, he decided he might stand a better
chance of achieving immortality in the sciences.  His
anti-gravitational device worked but once--when his wife stepped on it
while cleaning the basement--and it worked then only because she
thought it was something that had crawled out from behind the
furnace.

After reading a book on Disraeli, Finley decided he was destined to
become a great statesman.  He won a seat on the city council and
quickly became a master of political acrobatics.  He now straddles
fences, juggles books, and can change horses in midstream without
rocking the boat.

Nevertheless, it appears that he will not rise above the level of city
councilman, which is a good sign that the system works.

Despite Finley's pitiful failures at achieving immortality, he
continues to pursue his quarry, like an untrained pup let loose in the
fields, to whom every grasshopper is a rabbit in disguise.  His most
recent quest for lasting fame took shape on a fishing trip with Retch
Sweeney and me.

Retch and I honked Finley out of bed at four-thirty in the morning.  He
staggered out to the car, his gear in his arms, and muttered, "This is
an ungodly hour to wake a man!"

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,"
I replied.

"The early bird gets the worm," said Retch, chortling.

Finley's face brightened.  "Who said that?"

"We did," said Retch.  "You see anybody else in the car?"

"He means who said it first," I explained to Retch.  "Those famous
quotations are probably both from Ben Franklin.  Old Ben thought up
about ninety-eight percent of all the famous quotations."

"I thought he invented kites," Retch said.

I could only shake my head in disgust.  For a man with sixteen years of
education, Retch was surprisingly ignorant.  True, all sixteen years
were spent in grade school, but he should have learned something.

Finley had turned thoughtful, as he does whenever he is contemplating
his own immortality.  "You know," he said, "Ben Franklin is probably
remembered as much for his sayings as he is for his inventions.  But
have you ever noticed how few famous sayings have been derived from the
outdoor sports?"

"Now that you mention it, I can only think of a couple," I replied.

"There are the ones about a bird in hand being worth two in the bush
and a miss being as good as a mile.  That's all I can think of.

Anyway, probably the reason there are so few famous quotations derived
from the outdoor sports is that old Ben was primarily an indoor
sport."

"You know," Finley mused aloud, "I bet that a person who thought up a
lot of quotations related to the outdoor sports could practically
achieve, uh, immortality."

I was instantly sorry the subject had ever come up and tried to change
it by asking Retch if he had found another dry fly like the one he'd
had such great luck with the previous weekend.  He said he hadn't and
was darn sorry to have lost the fly before having a chance to tie up
some duplicates.

Finley, who had continued musing in the back seat, injected himself
into the conversation.  "For want of a flY, the fish is lost," he
said.

Putting our lives at risk, for I was driving, I twisted around in the
seat to turn the full force of my glare on Finley.  "That's horrible,"
I cried.  "That is truly disgusting!"

"Curve!  Curve!"  Retch shouted.

"You stay out of this," I snapped.  "This is between Finley and me."

"I thought it was pretty good," Finley said.  "People probably didn't
care much for Ben Franklin's 'early to rise' quote when they first
heard it either."

"Truck!  Truck!"  cried Retch, obviously trying to distract me from
giving Finley the tongue-lashing he deserved.

"You can't just think up famous sayings," I told Finley.  "It doesn't
work that way.  Anybody knows that."

"Why not?"  said Finley.  "Somebody has to think them up."

"Train!  Train!"  yelled Retch.

I could tell I wasn't going to win any argument with Finley,
particularly with Retch clowning around, so I calmed my nerves by
concentrating totally on driving.  I had seen men before who didn't
know how to control their nerves.

Retch Sweeney was one of them.  Even while driving out for a little
fishing and relaxation, he was all pale and twitchy and had even
twisted his cap up into a knot.  I think he drinks too much coffee.

"Never sniff a gift fish," said Finley.

I could see then that the situation was hopeless.  We would just have
to let Finley's malady run its course.

"Get it?"  Finley continued.  "That means you shouldn't be too critical
of something that's given to you.

I told him I thought that bit of wisdom had been covered by gift
horses.

"But how many gift horses have you received lately?"  Finley asked,
smirking.  "That's right, none.  Now, a gift fish, that's a lot more
common and people would identify with it."

"Well, I'd certainly sniff any fish you gave me, that's for sure," I
told him.

Finley was quiet all the rest of the way to the river.  I thought maybe
I had hurt his feelings and discouraged him from thinking up more
famous quotations.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  The case was
that thinking up famous quotations is more difficult than one might
expect.

We set up camp and spent the rest of the day fishing, or, more
accurately, practicing our fly casting.  Toward evening we picked up a
couple of smallish rainbows, which would have been enough for supper
with a couple of gift fish thrown in.  We drew straws for the trout,
and Finley and I had to settle for a supper of canned hash.  We set two
plates of hash out on a log, ostensibly to cool but actually to let the
darkness build up a bit.  I knew a man once who tried to eat some
canned hash in broad daylight, but his jaw froze up on him and had to
be pried open with a spoon.  Ever since then I have waited until dark
to eat my hash.  When the night was ripe enough, I dug in, giving a
little shout before each bite to give any insect life a chance to
escape.  I explained to Finley that this was one of the lesser-known
bits of woodlore I had picked up over the years.

"Yes," he said, "two bugs in the hash are worth one in the mouth."

"There's some truth to that one," I said, "but it's not particularly
memorable."

"How about this one?"  Retch put in.  "When all the straws are the same
length, the man that holds 'em gets to eat the fish!  Har!"

Finley and I stared at him.  "Now I've got one," I said.  "The man who
cheats his fishing partners had better learn to sleep lightly!"

"Listen, you guys, I was only kidding," Retch said, nervously.  "I got
the short straw!  It wasn't real short, but it was short."

"The man who lies to his fishing partners may wake up with hash in his
boots," said Finley.

"I like that one," I said.  "It's the sort of famous quotation I can
remember."

It was a mistake to offer Finley encouragement.  As we lay in our
sleeping bags, Retch and I trying to get to sleep, Finley ran off one
freshly minted famous outdoor quotation after another: "The pessimist
complains that he just lost a lunker and the optimist brags he just had
a great strike.

"What the tourist terms a plague of insects, the fisherman calls a fine
hatch.

"No fisherman ever bragged that the huge fish he hooked turned out to
be a log.

"What do you think of those?"  he asked.

"Shut up and go to sleep is what I think of them," I growled.  "Or to
put it another way, how would you like a sock in the mouth?"

"All that's gruff isn't tough.  Say, that's a pretty good umph aggh
muff ..."

It wasn't one of my clean socks, either.

The next day there was no holding Finley back.  From way off down the
stream, he shouted at Retch and me, "I got one!  I got one!"

Naturally, Retch and I rushed off toward him.

When we arrived, too late it appeared, Finley was standing there
sorting through his fly box.

"Did you--puff puff--lose it?"  I asked.

He looked up and smiled.  "A man who fishes in sneakers never gets in
over the top of his waders."

"Wha ...?"

"You've got to admit that's a pretty good one," he said.

"So, where's the fish?"  Retch gasped, his mental agility having peaked
at age six.

"There is no fish," I explained, plucking a section of devil's club
from my armpit.  "There is only another famous outdoor quotation."

Retch removed a small pine cone from his ear.  "Listen, we could say he
wandered off into the woods and disappeared.  Nobody would know, nobody
would care!"

Finley calmly tied on a fly and made a dismal cast that fell a good ten
feet short of the pool he was aiming for.  Inexplicably, a nice rainbow
glommed the fly.

"A cast that reaches a fish is never too short," he said smugly.  "I'd
better write that one down."

Retch and I knew we were beaten and wandered off downstream.  "Geez,"
Retch muttered.  "If famous quotations were fish, he'd be over his
limit by now."

"Don't you start!"  I said.

"What?"

"Nothing."

On the drive back home, Finley was fairly spewing with famous outdoor
quotations: "The angler who doesn't look before he leaps will have his
next cast made of plaster."

"There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm.

"I have never met a fish I didn't like.

"Who was that fish I seen you with the other night?  That was no fish,
that was my muddler."

"Even a fish stick once knew the glories of the deep."

And on and on.

Finally I screamed, "Enough, Finley, enough!  You've invented enough
famous outdoor quotations to compile your own Bartlett's.  Henceforth,
no angler will give an after-dinner speech without first perusing his
Finley's.

Now stop, before you flood the market."

"But so far I've only covered fishing," he replied.  "There's still
camping and hiking and boating and, of course, hunting."

"Please, Lord, deliver us!"  cried out Retch, who had never before
shown much inclination toward religion.

Finley cleared his throat: "A goose may honk but will not wave."

"It is a foolish hunter who ..."

Backseats I Have Known The backseat of my new compact sedan is so small
and cramped we have to grease the children to get them in and out of
it.  That's what started me thinking recently about the decline of the
backseat in American life, about all the wonderful adventures I've had
in backseats, about all the backseats I've known and loved.

Among the older readers there are probably those who hold nostalgic
recollections of the backseat mainly as the trysting place of young
love.

Indeed, I remember one such incident in my own steamy, R-rated
adolescence.

At age sixteen I had already acquired a reputation as a suave and
debonair ladies' man.  My first real date, with the scintillating and
sizzlingly beautiful Olga Bonemarrow, pretty much established my style
as a worldly, dashing young-man-about-town, a person born to the fast
lane of life.

The only thing that crimped my style was parental reluctance to allow
me to get my hands on our new car, a prospect Mom and Hank, my
stepfather, equated with an imminent arrival of the apocalypse.

Finally, I gave them an ultimatum.

Hank pondered the ultimatum a spell and then said to my mother, "As I
understand it, either we let him have the car for a date with Olga
Bonemarrow or he runs off and joins the French Foreign Legion and we
never see him again.

What's it going to be?"

"Don't rush me," Mom said.  "I'm still weighing the options."

Eventually, they gave in and let me have the car.  I cruised over to
Olga's house and picked her up.  "Neato!"  she said.  "What a neat
car!"

To get Olga into the proper mood, I took her to a movie, a Randolph
Scott western, and afterward blew nearly a whole buck on a double order
of hamburgers, malts, and French fries.  Then I drove her out to the
gravel pit and parked.  No dummy, Olga sensed right away that I was up
to something.

"Whatcha stop here for?"  she asked, giggling coyly.

"I dunno," I said, always quick with a quip.  "Say, would you look at
that pile of gravel!"

"Neato," Olga said.

We sat there without talking for a while, listening to the radio and
staring out at the pile of gravel.  Then, very cool and casual, I made
a suggestion.

"Say, Olga," I said, "how'd you like to get into the backseat?  It's
real nice back there."

Olga giggled.  "Neato," she said, her voice going low and husky, her
lovely, thick eyelashes fluttering like a duet of moths.  Nevertheless,
there was something about her response that made me uneasy.  Perhaps it
was the way she took out her wad of bubble gum and stuck it on the
gearshift knob before vaulting into the backseat.

So there we were, with Gene Autry crooning softly on the airwaves and
the light of a full moon illuminating the sensuous curves of the
highway department's gravel pile.  I let the mood build, then asked
suavely, "How do you like it back there?  Lots of leg room, ain't
there?"

"Yeah, neato," she said, icing up the windows.  "Guess what, I just
remembered, my folks were expecting me home a half hour ago."

Perhaps I was too wild and impetuous for Olga, or so I gathered from
the fact that it was nearly six months before she again acknowledged my
existence.

In any case, I had learned a good lesson, namely that there are some
women who just don't like to live life in the fast lane.

The Olga episode aside, my love affair with the backseat has nothing to
do with romance or other such nonsense but with the great outdoors.

Nowadays, when almost every outdoorsman owns a van, a camper, a
trailer, or a motor home, only we old-timers recall that the
predecessor of these conveyances was the backseat.  The backseat of his
car could provide an outdoorsman with emergency shelter, a bed for the
night if need be; it was his gun and rod rack, his larder, tool chest,
survival kit, closet; his sanctuary from mosquitoes, gnats, and strange
sounds in the night; his garbage dump, woodshed, storage room, tackle
box, and more.  The test of an outdoorsman in the old days was his
ability to find in his backseat whatever he needed to survive in the
back-road wilds of America.

"We're done for now," his partner might say.  "There's a big tree
across the road."

The outdoorsman would shrug and reply: "Not for long.  I got a chain
saw, a peavey, two splitting wedges, a maul, and a double-bitted ax in
the backseat."

In those days, a man needed only three things to survive for months in
the outdoors: a gun, a good knife, and a properly outfitted backseat.

The backseat was not without its dangers.  Retch Sweeney and I once ate
for two days on a bag of jerky he found in a corner of his backseat.

It wasn't greatjerky or even good but still moderately edible, at least
until Retch recalled that he had never put any jerky in his backseat.

"Well, if it isn't jerky, what is it?"  I asked.

"I don't want to talk about it," Retch said greenly.

Another time, as Retch and I were rounding a curve on a steep mountain
road, an avalanche swept down from out of my backseat and engulfed
us.

Somehow, I managed to bring the car to a stop and dig myself out.  Then
I went around to the other side of the car and probed the jumbled mass
of camp gear with a stick until I found Retch, and just in the nick of
time, too.

Fortunately, his face was in a small pocket of air between a boot and a
coffee pot, and he had been able to breathe.  The air probably would
have given out, though, if I had had to bring in specially trained
search-and-rescue dogs to find him.

Another danger of backseats was that methane gas sometimes arose from
decay in the bottom layers.  For that reason, most experienced
outdoorsmen never allowed an open flame inside the car, particularly
after an outing lasting more than three days.

Retch's wife once accidentally opened a rear door of his camping car
and later was found crouched in a corner of the garage, whimpering and
sucking her thumb.  The doctor sent her to bed under heavy sedation.

He said he thought she was suffering from a psychosis of some kind.  I
think it was probably from a string of crappies mislaid in the backseat
on a fishing trip the previous July.

I have long thought that a good horror movie could be made about the
backseat of a hunter's car.  These two hunters are driving along way
back in the mountains on a dark and stormy night, see, and suddenly the
backseat begins to pulsate.  Slowly it begins to ooze forward, toward
the necks of the unsuspecting hunters.  At the end of the film a posse
with a pack of dogs pursues the backseat into a swamp where it slips
beneath the greenish ooze, burbling evilly.  Retch scoffed at my
idea.

I was miffed.  "Listen," I told him, "I know for a fact a strange life
form can originate in a backseat."

"Let's not get personal," he snapped.

There is a science to packing a backseat prior to a camping trip.

Unfortunately, no one has ever discovered a suitable method for
repacking it for the return trip.  This is because camp gear during the
course of the trip expands to half again its original volume and
overflows into the front seat.

On the way home from one camping trip, I was stopped by a traffic cop
who claimed he thought the car was being driven by a water jug and a
halfinflated air mattress.

Another reason that repacking the backseat poses problems is that the
process always takes place during a thunderous rainstorm.  The
prescribed method of packing a backseat under that circumstance is to
hurl the entire camp blindly and savagely through a rear door of the
car.  One time we came home from a Forest Service campground with a
pine branch, several large rocks, a rest room sign, and a ranger who
had stopped by to collect the fee.

One of the most efficient repackings of a backseat I've ever seen was
accomplished by Retch's father when we were boys.  Mr. Sweeney hated
the outdoors and everything in it, but once, during a mellowness
brought on by a quart of home brew, he promised to drive little Retch
and me out for an overnighter.  His wife held him to the promise.

Grousing and grumbling, he drove Retch and me out to the first wide
spot in the road, which happened to be a logging camp garbage dump.

Retch and I set up the tent and stowed the gear in it while Mr. Sweeney
sat in the car, frowning at his newspaper.  Along about sundown, as
Retch and I were frying supper, we looked up to see bears of all sizes,
shapes, and colors streaming toward our camp.  It was a startling
sight, to which Mr. Sweeney responded with the quaint expression,
"What the bleep!"  He screamed at us to get in the car.

Then he wrapped his arms around the umbrella tent, ripped it from its
moorings, dragged it complete with contents to the car, and rammed,
crammed, and stomped it into the backseat, all the while helping Retch
and me expand our vocabularies.  I was too shaken up to time him, but I
doubt that more than eight seconds elapsed between our spotting the
bears and our careening out of the dump at 60 m.p.h. It was a
remarkable performance.

Sleeping in a backseat can be something of an art.  As much gear as
possible is moved to the front seat and the rest is thrown out on the
ground to be repacked during a thunderous rainstorm the next day.  Then
you roll out your sleeping bag and climb into it.  Because this step
takes half the night, it should be begun early.  Next, you tangle your
hair, if any, in the door handle; this will prevent you from rolling
onto the floor, which can be disastrous, particularly to the other
parties who may be sleeping in the backseat with you.  (Yes, it is
entirely possible for more than one outdoorsman at a time to sleep in a
backseat; however, check with your doctor, your minister, and the local
health department before attempting to do so.) I once spent a night
sleeping in a backseat with two other guys, but never again.  The next
morning we got up, built a fire, cooked and ate breakfast, and hunted
for two hours before we got completely untangled.

The backseat was, I suppose, as much a state of mind as anything.  It
was a symbol of freedom and adventure.  It was the pioneer's Conestoga
wagon shrunk down and upholstered; it was the prospector's burro with
ashtrays and armrests.  Then one day, I judge about the late fifties,
some guy, a genius, probably an outdoorsman who had just spent the
night sleeping in a backseat, came up with a fantastic idea: Suppose a
vehicle could be built that was nothing more than a huge backseat
equipped with engine and wheels!  The motor home was born.

Edgy Rider As a child I constantly begged my father to buy me a pony. 
One day I extracted from him the promise that if he saw an inexpensive
steed at the auction he would buy it for me.  He came home with a
pig.

"Where's my pony?"  I demanded.

He pointed to the pig.  "You're lookin' at it."

I named the pig Trigger.

Naturally, I was enraged.  Other farm kids had their own ponies to
gallop about on while I had to ride a stupid pig!  On the pig's behalf,
I'll say that he cared as much for being ridden as I did for riding
him.  "Whoa, Trigger!"

I'd scream at the pig.

"Oink oink squeeeeeeeeee!"  he'd reply, and race along a barbwire fence
in an attempt to saw me into four equal sections.

The great humiliation, though, was when my ponyowning friends would
come over to play cowboys.  The only one who sat short in the saddle, I
always had to be the villain.  "Hey, Podner," one of the guys would say
to his sidekick, "I think ol' Black Bart is trying to sneak up on us--I
just heard his horse oink!"  Then they'd laugh.

That fall I had little trouble containing my grief when Trigger was
transformed into hams and salt pork.  Seldom does one have the
opportunity of eating an adversary without being subjected to
criticism.  Nevertheless, I was still without a suitable steed.

Crazy Eddie Muldoon, who lived on a nearby farm and was also horseless,
came up with the theory that cows might be employed as satisfactory
mounts.

The theory seemed reasonable enough to me, as any wild scheme did in
those days, and I agreed to help him test it.

"Since it's my idea, I'll do the hard part," explained Crazy Eddie.

"That means you get to ride the cow first and have all the fun."

This seemed uncharacteristically generous of him, and I inquired as to
the exact nature of the "hard part."  He said it consisted of studying
the results of the experiment and thinking up ways by which the ride
might be improved upon.  "And I have to keep a watch out for Pa, too,"
he concluded.

"He's down working in the bottom pasture right now.  But we don't want
him showing up while you're riding the cow.  Understand?"

I understood.  Mr. Muldoon was a burly Irishman with a volcanic
temper, and he strongly objected to scientific experiments being
conducted on his livestock.

Getting on board a cow turned out to be more difficult than either of
us had supposed.  Crazy Eddie would try to boost me up, but the cow
would give us an indignant look and walk away, with me clawing at her
hide and Eddie running along grunting and gasping and trying to shove
me topside.  Finally, he said he had another idea, which was that I
would climb up on a shed roof overhanging the barnyard and, when he
drove a cow past, I would drop down on her back.

"And presto!"  he exclaimed obscurely.

As soon as I was perched on the edge of the roof, Crazy Eddie cut out
from the herd a huge Holstein, one approximately the size of a Sherman
tank, and drove her unsuspectingly beneath my perch.  According to
plan, I dropped down on the cow's broad back, grabbing her bell collar
as I landed.  And presto!  The Holstein emitted a terrified bellow,
leaped straight up in the air, and executed a rolling figure eight with
full twist.  That was for openers, a little warmup exercise to get out
the kinks and limber up her muscles.  Then she stretched out like a
greyhound after a mechanical rabbit and did four three-second laps
around the barnyard, a maneuver apparently intended to build momentum
for a straight shot down the narrow lane behind the barn.

With hands locked like sweating visegrips around the bell collar, and
every toe gripping cowhide, I stuck to the back of the Holstein like a
hungry, sixty-five-pound bobcat, which nay have been exactly what the
cow thought I was.  During the first moments of my ride, I wondered
vaguely if Mr. Muldoon's cows were equipped with burglar alarms, for
there was a terrible din in my ears; only later did I attribute this
fierce clanging to the cowbell.

About midway down the lane, I managed to unlatch my eyelids--a mistake,
as I instantly realized, for the first thing I saw was a compounding of
my troubles.  There, plodding up the lane toward us, possibly with
nothing more on his mind than the question of what his wife had fixed
for lunch, was Mr. Muldoon.  Now, unknown to me, the barnyard antics
of the Holstein had terrorized the rest of the herd, which was
stampeding along immediately behind us.  It was this wild and violent
spectacle that greeted Mr. Muldoon as he glanced up from his
preoccupation with picking his way through patches of cow spoor laid
down with the singular indiscrimination for which cows are noted.

In retrospect, this preoccupation bore a certain similarity to concern
about a few drops of rain just before one falls in a lake.

Overcoming the momentary paralysis that accompanied his first sight of
us, Mr. Muldoon exploded into furious activity, which consisted
largely of jumping up and down and waving his arms.  The clanging of
the burglar-alarm cowbell prevented me from hearing what he was
shouting, which was probably just as well.  Perceiving that his efforts
to flag down the herd were not only ineffective but, if anything, were
increasing the cows' RPMS, Mr. Muldoon turned and began to sprint
ahead of us at a rate that under normal circumstances I'm sure I would
have marveled at.  As it was, we passed over him as if he were a tansy
weed rooted in the ground.

My dismount from the Holstein was facilitated by a low-hanging limb on
a tree at the end of the lane.  I bounced several times, finally coming
to rest in a posture similar to that associated with a lump of mush.

Fortunately, I had landed beyond the exit of the lane, and the herd of
cows that thundered close behind showed the good sportsmanship of
fanning out on both sides of me.

Mr. Muldoon had not been so lucky.  When he came hobbling up to see if
I was still alive, I noted that he appeared to have been pressed in a
giant waffle iron, and one none too clean at that.  I choked out the
story of the experiment to him, and he showed considerable interest in
it, mentioning in passing that he could scarcely wait to debrief Eddie
in the woodshed.  Crazy Eddie, I might add, was at that very moment in
the house busting open his piggy bank to see if he had enough money for
a bus ticket to another state.  I was happy to learn that he came up
short by several dollars.

My craving for a suitable mount, by which I mean one that did not go
oink or moo, was never to be satisfied.

Years later, my own children began begging me for a horse.  At the
time, we lived in one of the humbler sections of suburbia, an area
which, through some oversight of the planning commission, remained
zoned for agriculture.

This meant that it was legally possible for us to keep a horse on our
two acres.  I decided to broach the subject to my wife.

"I've been thinking," I broached, "every kid should have a horse.

Caring for a horse gives a kid a sense of responsibility."

What do you need a horse for?"  Bun replied.  "You already have a
four-wheel-drive pickup with racing stripes and a chrome rollbar."

That woman can be incredibly dense at times.  "Not for me!  Ha!  I can
just see myself, dressed up like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter,
galloping off into the sunset!"  Actually, I didn't look bad that way,
not bad at all, but I wasn't about to give Bun the satisfaction of
thinking she'd had one of her suspicions confirmed.  "Yes, by gosh, I
think we should buy the kids a horse."

But we don't even have a barn!"  Bun wailed.

"We can turn the garage into a barn," I explained, "Listen, all we need
is a little imagination."

"All you need is a good psychiatrist," she muttered.

Later, when I was copping a plea of temporary insanity, I would remind
her of that mutter.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is remarkably easy to buy a horse, but
only if you know absolutely nothing about horses.  I found an ad in the
classified section of the newspaper that stated: "Good kids' horse,
$150."  It seemed like a steal.  Surely, I thought, at this very moment
hordes of eager horsb buyers are converging upon the foolish soul who
is offering such a fantastic bargain.  I dialed the number, and the man
who answered--he spoke in the soft, country drawl I had
expected--confirmed that indeed he was all but overrun with potential
buyers.

"I don't want to sell Pokey tojust anyone, though," he told me.  "Since
you sound like a man who knows horses, I'd be happy to bring him by
your place so you can take a look at him."

I said I'd be delighted if he would do that and gave him the address of
my spread.  Scarcely had I hung up the phone than an old pickup truck
with a horse in the back came rattlin down my driveway.  A lanky cowboy
emerged from the cab of the pickup.  Extending a hard-callused hand, he
said, "Name's Bill, You the man what's lookin' for a good kids'
horse?"

I replied that I was indeed that person.  By this time, my brood of
moppets were bouncing up and down around me, clapping their little
hands together, and screaming, "Buy him!  Buy him!"

"Hush," I scolded them.  "I'm going to have to have a closer look at
him first."

"Sure thing," Bill said.  He dropped the tailgate of the pickup and
ordered the horse, "Step out of there, Pokey."  Amazingly, the horse
backed up and stepped down out of the pickup.  Then the cowboy scooped
up our little three-year-old and set her on Pokey's back.  I'll swear
that horse turned and smiled affectionately at Erin.  He walked ever so
carefully around the yard, stopping every time she teetered one way or
the other until the little girl recovered her balance, and then he'd
plod on.

My wife, who was witnessing the performance, also seemed impressed with
the horse's gentleness, or so I judged from the fact that she had
ceased pounding her chest in an apparent effort to get her heart
started again.

"What'd I tell you," Bill said.  "Pokey's a great kids' horse."

There was no doubt about it.  While Bill was lifting Erin back down, I
was writing out the check.  Perhaps I wouldn't have been so hasty if
I'd had the good sense to study the horse's face more carefully.  When
I finally did so, I had the distinct impression that it bore a
combination of features that reminded me of W. C. Fields and, in a
different mood, of Richard Widmark in one of his roles as a homicidal
maniac.  Probably just my imagination, though, I said to myself.

One little incident before Bill departed also caused me some wonder
about my purchase.  As Bill was wringing my hand as though I had just
saved his life, Pokey plodded softly up behind him.  I assumed the
horse was going to give his former master an affectionate goodbye
nudge.  Instead, he clamped half a dozen yellow teeth onto the cowboy's
shoulder.  I recall the smirking look in the horse's eyes as Bill
danced about, silently mouthing curses as he reached back and twisted
one of Pokey's ears until the animal unlocked itsjaws.  Bill grinned
sheepishly, if you can imagine the grin of a sheep that has just been
gnawed on by a coyote.  "A little game Pokey and I play," he said.

"Really?"  I said.  "I would have guessed that hurt like heck."

Bill casually flicked a tear off his cheek.  "Naw!  Heck no.  Well, be
seein'you."

Contrary to his last remark, I never saw Bill again.  But I can say in
all honesty, I really would have liked to, and preferably in some
remote area where his shouts for help would have been to no avail.

Within a month, I could not look at Pokey without seeing "glue factory"
written all over him.  The only thing that saved him from taking up
residence on the back side of postage stamps was that the children
loved him.  And, as far as I could determine, he loved the children.

He lived with us for ten years, providing the children with almost as
much pleasure as he did the tack-shop owner, the feedstore proprietor,
the farrier, and the veterinarian.

I viewed him largely as a malevolent machine for transforming
five-dollar bills into fertilizer for my garden.

I must admit that I had some ulterior motives in acquiring a horse.  My
wife's charges that I intended to satisfy the cowboy fantasies of my
childhood were, of course, too ridiculous to dignify even with
denial.

I did think, however, that the horse might come in handy for elk
hunting, so I went out and purchased some of the essential gear for
that purpose.

Bun knows nothing about elk hunting, but even so I thought her response
to my acquisitions was uncouth, to say the least.  Personally, I find
it unladylike for a woman to stagger about holding her sides while
squealing hysterically.

"Laugh all you want," I told her, "but if you weren't so ignorant of
the subject you'd know that nine out of ten elk hunters wear cowboy
hats.  Cowboy boots are the only safe footwear for stirrups--anybody
knows that.  And the brush on the sides of trails will tear your legs
to pieces if you don't have a good pair of chaps.  The leather
vest--well, you'd just be surprised at how handy a leather vest is when
you're hunting elk!"

"B-but the spurs!"  she gasped.  "The sp-spurs!"

I didn't even try to explain the spurs.  I mean, if a woman is so
ignorant of elk hunting that she doesn't know about spurs, there's no
point in trying to educate her.

It had been twenty years and more since I had ridden a horse, or a pig
or cow for that matter, so before embarking on Pokey myself I
considered it only prudent to study the horse's style while the
children rode him about the two acres I now referred to in taverns as
the "back forty."  With the older children, he would gallop at a
moderate gait around the fenced pasture, slowing for the corners and in
general taking every precaution not to unseat the young riders.

Several knowledgeable horsepersons who observed him thus in action told
me I couldn't have found a better kids' horse.  I would nod knowingly,
chewing on a grass straw as I pushed my cowboy hat back with my
thumb.

One day when the kids were off at school, I told Bun, "I think I'll
take a little ride on Pokey,just to shape him up for elk season."

I was wondering why you had your chaps on."  she said.  "Where are
your--hee!  hee!--spurs?"

"The spurs are for later," I said, ignoring her mirthful outburst.

"Now, come on out to the back forty with me.  I may need some
assistance."

"Okay," she agreed, "but if you think I'm going elk hunting with you to
help you get on and off your horse, you're crazy."

Perhaps it was fate that dictated I would have to suffer insults in my
pursuit of horsemanship.  The problem was, I had not yet been willing
to mortgage the house in order to swing financing for a saddle.  Since
the children mounted the horse by using the board fence as a ladder, I
figured I could do the same.  This procedure, however, was made easier
if someone held the horse's bridle while the mounting was taking
place.

Maybe my imagination was acting up, but the expression on Pokey's face
that day seemed more Richard Widmark than W. C. Fields.  Nevertheless,
I climbed the fence and, while Bun maneuvered the horse up close, I
threw a leg over him.  So far, so good.  I took up the reins and told
Bun to step back.

"Giddap," I said.

Nothing.

"Giddap!"  I said, louder.

Still no response whatsoever.  I looked at Bun.  She shrugged her
shoulders.

"GIDDAP, you miserable bleep-of-a-bleep!"

The bleep-of-a-bleep lowered his head, against which he had now
flattened his ears, but refused to budge.

Once more I shouted "Giddap," but this time I dug my heels into his
flanks.  Before my hat hit the ground at the starting point, we were at
the far end of the back forty.  But it was not so simple as that.

The smooth, rhythmic lope with which Pokey carried the children about
the pasture had been replaced by a gait closely simulating the motion
of a jackhammer--a thousand-pound jackhammer.  My eyeglasses flew off,
the fillings in my teeth popped loose, my vertebrae rattled like
castanets.  With the instincts of a natural horseman, I hauled back on
the reins.  Unfortunately, the motion of the horse had bounced me so
far forward, I had to stretch the reins far back behind me, and even
then couldn't get the slack out of them.

But this problem had ceased to concern me, since I now had another
distraction.

For those unfamiliar with a horse's anatomy, there is a large bone at
the point where the neck hooks on to the rest of him, technically
speaking.  I now found myself astraddle this bone, pounding against it
at a rate of five times per second.  On the scale of discomfort, this
sensation rated somewhere between unbearable and unbelievable, thus
motivating me to take defensive action.  I flopped forward and wrapped
both arms around the beast's neck, a move which had the purpose not
only of enabling me to hold on but possibly to strangle the horse into
submission.  Alas, at that moment, Pokey cut sharply around a corner,
so that I was swung beneath his neck.  We arrived back at the starting
point with me suspended from the horse's neck in the manner of a
two-toed sloth from a limb.  Pokey came to a reluctant halt, and I
dropped to the ground.  Calmly, I picked up my hat, beat the dust out
of it on my chaps, and strolled over to Bun, who was sagged against the
fence doing her impression of a limp noodle.

"Want to see any more trick riding?"  I asked.

Despite my air of nonchalance, the ride had taken its toll on me.

Suddenly, in fact, I detected what I thought was the symptom of a heart
attack--an excruciating pain in my shoulder.  Then, collecting my wits,
I reached back, got hold of an ear, and twisted it until Pokey
unclamped his jaws.

Pokey was truly a great kids' horse.  But he hated adults.

Our next yard sale included a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, chaps, and a
leather vest.

"Don't you want to sell the spurs?"  Bun asked.

"No, I'm keeping them," I said.  "Just in case I ever run into Bill
again!"

Strange Scenes and Eerie Events Every day weird things happen for which
there are no rational explanations.  Take, for example, the case of
Retch Sweeney's watch.

Retch and I were trolling on a lake in Canada several years ago and, as
he leaned over the side of the boat to net a nice rainbow trout I was
bringing in, Retch's watch came loose from his wrist and fell into the
lake.  Not only was the watch expensive, but it held great sentimental
value: Retch's wife had given it to him on their twentieth
anniversary.

It bore the inscription, "To Charley Bombi, for 40 years dedicated
service to Acme Sand & Gravel Co."

Retch's wife is a great one for sentiment.

Five years after Retch lost his watch in the Canadian lake, he and I
went on a boat-camping trip on a lake in Montana.  It is important to
note that there is no waterway connecting the two lakes.  After making
camp, Retch and I went out to see if we couldn't hook into one of the
monster rainbows reported in the vicinity.  Sure enough, as we trolled
past the mouth of a stream, Retch's rod whipped double and a few
seconds later a beautiful rainbow was doing aerial gymnastics.  We went
back to camp and while I started preparing supper, Retch dressed out
his fish.  Suddenly he let out a great yell.  I rushed over to see what
had happened.

"Look what I found in this rainbow," he shouted, holding up a shiny
object.

"I can scarcely believe my eyes," I said.  "How could such a thing
happen?"

"Beats me," Retch said.  "I've never even heard of anybody finding a
bottle cap in the stomach of a fish before."

Me either," I said.  "Now if it had been the watch you lost in the lake
up in Canada, I could understand that.  You read in the newspapers all
the time about that sort of thing happening."

Some persons seem to possess almost supernatural powers.  One of the
ways Retch and I pass the time when the fishing slows down on a lake is
to toss a floating ring well out from the boat and then hold casting
contests to see who can hit the ring most often.  Fred Dokes happened
to be along with us one time and he couldn't miss the ring.  Retch and
I were impressed.

"All right, now I'll really show you something," Fred said.  "Something
that will amaze you."  He took from his pocket a wad of stuff that
looked like cookie dough and placed a plug of it over each eye.  Next
he tied a large bandana over the top of the dough.  Finally, he took
off his jacket and tied that around his head in such a way that it was
absolutely impossible for him to see out, even if he hadn't had the
dough over each eye.

"Hand me my rod," he said, standing up in the boat.  "Now what I want
you to do is to spin me around five times.  You don't need to worry
about pointing me in the direction of the floating ring."

I spun him around five times.  Naturally, the only thing I expected
would happen was that Fred would stagger backwards and fall into the
lake.

"Okay, just watch this," he said.  Fred then took two steps backwards
and fell into the lake.

Of all the people who seem to have supernatural powers, Fred proved
that he wasn't one of them.  When he offered to show us how he could
shoot skeet blindfolded, we declined on the grounds that watching too
many demonstrations of extrasensory perception can bring on a nervous
condition.

Even weirder was what happened to Retch and me up in the Hoodoo
Valley.

We had spent the day fishing on a remote lake and had so much fun that
it was practically dark before we knew it.  Then the wind came up and
big black clouds came rolling over the mountains, and the sky was
cobwebbed with lightning.  We got the boat loaded and headed off down
the winding, two-lane highway.  Even in the daylight, this highway is
spooky but on a dark and stormy night it can really give you the
creeps.  Mist hangs in tattered shrouds over the swampy land; ancient,
moss-draped trees line the road, their branches moaning in the wind,
and from time to time dark, shaggy shapes scurry through the beams of
the headlights.

Rain began to splatter the windshield before we had driven a mile.

Then we saw him.  Standing alongside the road up ahead was a slender,
pale youth with long, streaming hair, his thumb beckoning us to stop.

"I've heard this one before," Retch said.  "Don't stop for him!"

"We can't just let the poor devil stand out there in the rain.  He'll
drown," I said.

"The way the story goes," Retch said, "is that he has already ..."

But before he could finish, I'd brought the car to a stop and the youth
was crawling into the backseat.  He appeared to be about eighteen, with
pale eyes, pale lips, and pale hair.

We drove along in silence for some time, Retch tensely popping his
knuckles and occasionally reaching back to pat down the hairs that
persisted in rising on the back of his neck.  Finally, I tried to
strike up a bit of conversation with the lad.

"You from these parts?"  I asked.

The boy said nothing.

"What were you doing out in a storm like this?"

My question was answered only by an eerie silence.

"Oh, my gosh!"  Retch muttered under his breath.  "I knew it.  Next
he's going to tell us that the bridge up ahead is washed out."

"Don't be silly," I whispered.

"The bridge up ahead is washed out," the boy said.  "You'd better take
the River Road to town."

I patted down a few unruly hairs on the back of my neck.  "Right."

When we reached the intersection of the River Road, I stopped the car
and climbed out to take a close look and make sure the road was
passable.  Retch scrambled out of the car with me.

"You were crazy to pick that kid up," he hissed at me.  "I know he's
the same one I heard about somewhere.  I'm walking the rest of the way
to town."  just then a high wavering cry drifted out of the darkness up
ahead.

"One thing's for sure," Retch said.  "I'm not walking to town."

When we got back to the car, the pale youth was gone.  We two pale,
middle-aged men scrambled into the car, which spewed out twin rooster
tails of mud over the boat and trailer as we shot off down the River
Road.

We slid to a stop in front of the only bar in the town and bounded
inside, both of us having the distinct impression that we were being
trailed, possibly by a large bat.  The harmaid and a scattering of
patrons gave us curious stares.

"You look like you seen a ghost," the harmaid said.

"T-two double sh-shots of the st-strongest stuff you got," Retch
ordered.

"I don't know what he's having."

"The s-same," I said.

We then related our story to the folks in the bar.  They listened with
attentive solemnness, occasionally nodding as if to say, yes, yes, they
knew what had happened.  When we had finished, an old white-bearded
fellow took off his rimless spectacles and wiped them.  "I reckon you
fellows have just become acquainted with the jakes boy.  He drove his
car into the river a couple of years back."

"D-drove his car into the river?"  Retch said.

"D-drowned?"  I said.

"Drowned!"  the old man said.  "Heck no, he didn't drown!  But driving
his car into the river is apparently what give him the idea of thumbing
rides on dark and stormy nights and scaring the bejeebers out of
fishermen like you fellers!"

At that the regulars at the bar burst into hysterical laughter and
slapped their knees black and blue and rolled around on the floor and
generally gave the impression of being highly amused.

As Retch and I slunk for the door, the old man spoke again and the
mirthful occupants of the room instantly suspended their hilarity.

"There is one thing, though, that's a little strange about your
experience.  I'm kind of surprised you didn't notice it."

"What's that?"  I said.

"There ain't no bridge on the highway up to the lake!"

Retch and I stomped out of the bar.  If there's one thing I hate, it's
a bunch of drunken yokels making a spectacle of themselves.

When we got to the car, I stared into the backseat where the jakes boy
had been sitting.  "Wait a second," I said.  "If that wasn't a ghost,
why isn't the seat wet where he was sitting?"

Retch looked into the backseat.  "You've got a point there," he said.

"On the other hand, why would a ghost steal both our tackle boxes?"

The mystery was never solved, even though Retch and I spent a couple of
dark and stormy nights driving up and down the highway hoping to give a
lift to a lad with pale eyes, pale lips, pale hair, and two dark green
tackle boxes that didn't belong to him.

The Hunters' Workout Guide Since prehistoric times and even earlier,
hunters have engaged in strenuous physical exercises to prepare
themselves for the rigors of hunting.

Strangely, most hunters are still out of shape by opening day of
hunting season.  Why?  If one discounts the tendency of hunters to
start their exercise program fifteen minutes before the season opens,
then it must be concluded that standard exercises are ineffective in
conditioning the human body for the postures, movements, and exertions
peculiar to hunting.  I have, therefore, devised an exercise program
especially for the hunter.

The exercises are designed to be performed in the typical business
office during interruptions in the work routine, such as coffee breaks
or the boss being called out of the building.  This is because, as my
research shows, the average hunter doesn't have time to work out at a
gym.  Instead, he must slave away at two or three jobs in order to pay
for all the expensive paraphernalia that makes serious hunting
possible--jewelry, furs, fancy dresses, and the like.  Otherwise,
there's no way his spouse is going to let him spend all his spare time
out hunting.

Some of the exercises are intended to condition the hunter
psychologically for the ordeals often encountered in the field.  It is
a well-known fact that a hunter's mind usually surrenders to hardship
before his body, which doesn't help the mind all that much since it
can't go home alone and sit by the fire with a hot toddy until the body
comes stumbling in.  I, on the other hand, have had occasions when the
body conked out first.  That's a bad one, too.  My mind would say,
"C'mon, there's a deer right over this next rise!"  But my body would
reply, "Well, go get it then, but I'm sittin' right here on this log
until you get back."  The trick is to have the body and mind collapse
simultaneously, which is the purpose of these exercises.

Be sure to get a checkup from your doctor before undertaking the
exercise program.  If the doctor bursts out laughing during the exam,
don't believe him when he tells you he thought of a funnyjoke.  just
forget about getting in shape for hunting this year and take up golf
instead.

Here is a test you can perform in your own home to determine your level
of physical fitness.  Strip off all your clothes and lie down flat on
the floor.  Next, push yourself up into a headstand.  If you have
trouble maintaining your balance, you may wish to have someone hold
your feet to steady you.  My research shows, by the way, that only one
person in ten thousand can keep a straight face while holding the feet
f a naked man who is standing on his head.  Simply ignore any unseemly
displays of mirth by your helper.  Also, a sharp word or two spoken
with authority often serves to repress the natural human urge in this
situation to tickle behind the knees.

It is best if you learn to stand on your head unassisted.

Now note your physical responses.  If the blood pounds in your ears and
behind your eyeballs and you are overcome by nausea, there is nothing
to worry about.  These are merely symptoms of a minor malady common in
persons of middle age, which is middle age.  (If you are not yet
middle-aged, of course, you should start worrying.) On the other hand,
if everything suddenly goes dark and you have trouble breathing, you
have a serious problem--your fat has slipped down and covered your
head.  Persons experiencing this condition should begin the exercise
program immediately.

The field situations described below are for the purpose of comparison
only.  You may experience greater or lesser misery depending on how and
where you hunt.  Here, then, are the exercises.

The Ice-Breaker--For this exercise, you will need a pan of water and a
large quantity of ice.  Put the ice in the pan and let chill for an
hour.

Stick your hands in the ice water until they become totally numb.  Now,
jerk them out of the ice water and try to take your ballpoint pen apart
and reassemble it in three seconds.  This will give you the dexterity
you need to reload for a quick shot during a freezing rain.  Or it may
give you frostbite, which is all right, too, since every hunter should
be able to shoot with frostbite.

Spend your coffee breaks standing in the pan of ice water.  Although
your office-mates may at first think you a bit eccentric, they will
soon avoid you during coffee breaks and at all other times if
possible.

Your concentration will thus be unbroken by idle chitchat.  And it
takes quite a bit of concentration to stand in a pan of ice water for
fifteen minutes.

Every other day you should sit in the ice water instead of standing in
it.  If your supervisor asks you why you are sitting in a pan of ice
water, tell him it keeps you mentally alert for the afternoon's work.

Who knows, perhaps the whole office staff will be required to sit in
pans of ice water during the coffee break.

To more accurately simulate the conditions of the hunt, arrange for one
of your fellow workers to sneak up behind you from time to time and
dump the pan of ice water down the back of your neck.  The maximum
conditioning will occur if, at the time, you are tired and miserable
and feeling as if you can't survive for another minute.

Consistent practice of the various forms of the Ice-Breaker will
prepare you for certain climatic conditions encountered on the hunt.

Of course, there will be days when the weather turns bad, and nothing
can prepare you for that.

The Candle--Hunters must learn to ignore pain if they are to fully
enjoy their sport.  A good way to condition yourself to pain is by
holding your hand palmdown over a candle.  Howling and dancing about
during this procedure tends to detract from the desired effect of the
exercise and should be avoided.

Within a few weeks you should be able to hold your hand over the candle
for up to five minutes without flinching.  Some of your friends in the
office may accuse you of showing off or making a display of raw
machismo.  Others may openly ridicule you.  Some sadist may even
suggest that you use a lighted candle.

The Hindquarter Hustle--This exercise is intended to improve your upper
body strength and your agility.  From among your fellow workers, select
one who weighs approximately one hundred pounds--about the weight of a
hindquarter of an elk.  Because of the size requirement, your subject
will probably be a woman.  Ask her if she will assist you in an
exercise.  Do not, I repeat, do not indicate that you have chosen her
because she bears any resemblance whatsoever to the hindquarter of an
elk.  Then have her ride you piggyback while you step from floor to
desk top, leap to a chair, step over the back of the chair and onto the
floor, jump to the top of the table, down again, and finally climb up
twenty-seven flights of stairs.  Repeat.  While this is going on, the
woman should flop about and in every other way possible attempt to make
you lose your balance.  A word of warning: Since your employer may not
be an elk hunter himself, and therefore may be incapable of
comprehending the purpose of this exercise, you should perform it only
when he is in a board meeting or similarly occupied.

The exercise, obviously, is intended to prepare you for the task of
packing out a hindquarter of an elk you were stupid enough to shoot
five miles from your vehicle in rough, steep terrain that didn't seem
all that bad when you weren't packing out the hindquarter of an elk.

The Squat Walk--This exercise is sometimes referred to as the Moving
Hunker.  Lower yourself into the standard hunker position, with
posterior no more than three or four inches above the floor.  Now
walk.

That's all there is to it.  You should try to work up to half a mile a
day of the Squat Walk.

Half a mile may seem rather far, but if you Squat Walk out to the water
cooler or down the hall to deliver a report or out to lunch, you'll be
surprised at how quickly you can do half a mile.  Your fellow workers
and passersby may give you odd looks and make snide remarks, but so
what!  Remember to keep moving, however.  A stationary Squat Walk
arouses suspicion, and may result in someone's calling the security
people.  It is very difficult to explain a stationary Squat Walk to
security people.

The Squat Walk prepares you for hunting in open country where the only
concealment from game is low brush.  It is not unusual for hunters in
this situation to Squat Walk four or five miles in a single day.

Frequently, coyote hunters will Squat Run, a particularly difficult
maneuver, in the direction of quavering howls wafting over the desert,
only to discover the howls are coming from a Squat-Walking hunter
trying to straighten up.

Practicing the Squat Walk around the office will help you avoid such
embarrassment.

The Five-Toe Grab--This exercise gives you the powerful toes so
important to hunting.  The basic technique consists of striding briskly
across a room and suddenly freezing in midstride with the extended leg
well forward and the foot approximately two inches above the floor.

This is accomplished by gripping the floor with the toes of your other,
or planted, foot.  Sure it's difficult, particularly while wearing
shoes, but far from impossible.  Try to maintain a relaxed expression
while performing this exercise, since uncontrolled grimaces have been
known to rupture faces.  At first, you may notice strange crackling
sounds, but this is nothing more than fissures developing in your toe
bones and should be ignored.  After six weeks of practicing this
exercise daily, you will be able to crack walnuts with your toes,
though why you should want to is beyond me.

As most experienced hunters are aware, the situation for which the
Five-Toe Grab prepares them is this: You are striding briskly back to
your car after a day of deer hunting.  The freshest tracks you have
come across appear to have been made early in the last century.  Deer
are the furthest thing from your mind.  Suddenly, as your fore boot
descends toward a pile of dry twigs, you notice a nice buck standing on
a knoll a mere thirty yards .distant.  The slightest sound will send
him out of sight.  You apply the Five-Toe Grab, halting the descent of
your foot an inch from the twigs.  While maintaining that posture, you
put the crosshairs on the deer and get off your shot.  This technique
can be highly effective, but only on deer that are not startled by
grunts that carry up to a mile on a still day.

The Desk Lift--With this exercise, you stand straddle-legged on the
backs of two chairs, then bend over and pick up your office desk, after
which you ...

But that's enough for today.  I don't want you to overdo it before we
get to the difficult exercises.

Temporary Measures About seventy-five percent of the sporting life
consists of temporary measures--give or take sixty percent.  Extreme
cases on either end of the scale have been eliminated from the study. 
There was one angler, for example, who believed that if you can't do a
thing right you shouldn't do it at all.  A strict adherent to this
philosophy, he hadn't been fishing once in the past thirty-seven years.
 I chastised the man for holding such a stupid belief--that there is a
right way to fish--and told him I had a good mind to divest him of his
title of angler.  He told me he had a good mind to punch me in the
nose.  I replied that I'd like to see him try, but since I was three
blocks away by then, he didn't hear me, and it's a darn good thing for
him that he didn't.

Another extreme case, on the opposite end of the scale from the
sorehead mentioned above, is myself.  Approximately ninety-eight
percent of my sporting life consists of temporary measures.  A line
guide on one of my favorite fly rods is tied in place with little black
mounds of sewing thread daubed with model airplane glue.  As I tell
anyone who notices, the mounds of thread are only a temporary
measure.

I intend to rewrap the rod properly as soon as I don't have something
better to do.  It is surprising, though, how many better things there
are to do than rewrapping a rod properly.  Even more surprising is that
sewing thread and model airplane glue will hold a guide in place for
upwards of ten years.

Someday I intend to build a decent duck blind.  It will be supported by
stout posts, chemically treated against rot.  There will be a built-in
bench inside with a drawer underneath to hold boxes of shotgun
shells.

A small table will fold out from the side for lunch.  I've even thought
of attaching a camouflaged canvas roof that slips back automatically
when I stand to shoot.

For a temporary measure, though, I'll continue to stand hip-deep out in
the marsh with a bunch of cattails tied around me.

As soon as I don't have something better to do, I'm going to patch that
leak in the tent.  Of course, rewrapping a line guide on my fly rod
would be something better to do than patching a leak in a tent, so it
may take a while.

For a temporary measure, I sleep on the side of the tent that doesn't
leak.

If I have a companion along, I simply say, "Why don't you sleep on that
side of the tent?  It has a nice view of the stars."  It also has
running water, but I let him discover that for himself.

I really do want to organize my tackle box.  Several years ago, I
fished with a man who actually had his tackle box organized.  He
expressed some disapproval of my technique of hauling out a cluster of
lures and spinning it around until I found the spoon that I wanted.

Naturally, I was embarrassed and realized I had to do something to
correct the situation.  For a temporary measure, I didn't go fishing
with the man anymore.

Pretty soon, when all the kids are through college, I'm going to buy
myself a decent four-wheel-drive hunting rig.  It will be so high off
the ground I'll need a ladder to climb into it.  That hunting rig will
go anywhere.  And there will be a nice little camper on the back, with
a propane heater, comfortable beds, a refrigerator and cookstove, and a
table on which my buddies and I can play cards after a hard day of
fishing or hunting.  Best of all, there will be a special rack up on
top for hauling back the deer and elk and moose that I bag.  But until
I can afford the new rig, I can certainly make do with the family
sedan, that's for sure.  What do I care if some of the wealthier
hunters get a chuckle out of my hunting rig?  You'd think they had
never seen a man driving home with his deer seat-belted beside him on
the passenger seat.

As soon as the mortgage is paid off, I think I'll get me one of those
new compound bows, the ones with all the little pulleys that enable you
to hold at full stretch without trembling or without your eyeballs
getting tangled in the cord.  For right now, I'll have to settle for my
old recurve, with its pull ranging from fifty-five to three hundred
pounds, depending on how late in the day it is.  As I tell my
bowhunting companions, the recurve is just a temporary measure, until I
get my new compound.  Besides, my eyeballs need the exercise.

One of the things that has always bothered me about three-week fishing
expeditions for record-busting black marlin in the South Pacific is the
design of the fighting chair.  After thirty minutes of fighting even a
mediumsized black marlin, you can get a terrible pain in your lower
back if the chair isn't just right.  I want to get a custom-made
fighting chair for my deep-water cruiser.  For now, though, I'll get by
with a boat cushion.  A custom-made fighting chair would look out of
place in a twelve-foot aluminum cartopper.  Besides, I don't get much
pain in my lower back from fighting even the big two-pound rainbows up
at Trout Lake.  But Trout Lake, too, is only a temporary measure, until
I get enough money together for the deep-water cruiser and the
threeweek expeditions after black marlin in the South Pacific.

Someday I want to be able to tie size-22 flies perfectly, but until
then I will have to put up with some defects.  The biggest defect is
that Clipper John's Fly Shop clips me $1.50 each for them.  Of course,
if my recurve bow continues to exercise my eyeballs, I may soon be able
to see well enough to tie my own size 22s.

I've always wanted to have a good fishing companion, a man of learning
and culture and good taste, a man who appreciates classical music and
literature, good Scotch and fine foods, a man who knows the Latin names
of flora and fauna, a man who enjoys the opportunity to commune with
nature whether or not any fish are caught.  Instead, my fishing
companion is Retch Sweeney, who says things like, "Not one lousy
fish!

Don't that beat all!  I wish those bleeping birds would shut upthey're
getting on my nerves!  This cheap beer ain't too bad, but it has an
awful aftertaste when you belch it."

Strange as it may seem, even after forty years of fishing with him, I
still like to think of Retch as a temporary measure.

A friend of mine recently got himself an insulated survival suit that
keeps him cozy-warm when we're out icefishing.  "You ought to get one
of these," he says, as the north wind comes strafing across the ice.

"They keep you cozy-warm."

"Yeah, I know, that's what you keep saying," I reply.  "Actually, the
cold makes me feel alive.  Say, would you mind checking my pulse to see
if I still am?"

Freezing out on the ice is only a temporary measure.  I fully intend to
get one of those insulated suits, but I wouldn't want to give up
icefishing until I do.

My sleeping bag is one of those September models.  You know the
kind--too hot for summer and too cold for winter, but just right for
September.  In fact, it's just right only for the second week of
September.  Unfortunately, I always have to work that week, and have
never yet had the opportunity to experience the bag when it is just
right.  Pretty soon I'm going to buy a bag for summer and another one
for winter.  It seems like the only sensible thing to do.  But for now,
the September bag is all right, even though it's nearly July and I have
to sleep with it unzipped.  After all, somebody has to take care of
feeding the carnivorous insects.

My wife points out that if I didn't spend so much time out hunting and
fishing and "cavorting about in the wilds," I would have time to earn
more money and then I could buy all the stuff I need to do things
properly, and I wouldn't have to put up with so many temporary
measures.  But I have an even better solution.  If you just leave
temporary measures alone long enough, they eventually become permanent
measures.  Then you don't have to take any time away from your hunting
and fishing and cavorting about in the wilds to earn a bunch of
money.

I've been aging some of my temporary measures for over thirty years now
and, if my guess is right, several of them are just about ready to turn
permanent.

The Fibricators Young Elwood Fitch stopped by the house the other day
to tell me he had caught a five-pound cutthroat under the bridge on
Sand Creek.  He said he had taken the fish on a No.  16 Black Gnat he
had tied himself.

Elwood is only twelve, but even so I couldn't help but be disappointed
in him.

"Elwood," I said, "you don't expect me to believe a fish story like
that, do you?"

Embarrassed, the lad hung his head and scuffed some shag off my carpet
with the toe of his boot.  "I sorta hoped you would."

"Not a chance," I said.  "Now, tell me the truth."

Elwood confessed that actually the fish was a perch that weighed
considerably less than half a pound and he had caught it in Bott's Lake
on a night crawler his little brother had sold to him for a nickel.

I shook my head.  "Elwood, don't You know that when you tell fishing
lies the way youjust did you tarnish the credibility of all the rest of
us anglers?"

"I'm sorry," he said.

"All right, everybody makes mistakes," I said.  "But I want you to
promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"That you'll learn how to tell fishing lies properly.  No
self-respecting angler would believe a fish story the way you told that
one.  Pull up a chair and I'll give you a few pointers."

As I told Elwood, I have been a student of fibrication most of my
life.

In fact, I remember the very first story I ever fibricated.

I was about six years old and had stopped by the cabin of an old couple
who lived back in the woods near our farm.  Homer and Emma seemed
delighted by my visit and invited me in for a glass of lemonade.  After
we were seated comfortably around their table, the old man leaned over
and asked me, "Well, young man, what's the news?"

News?  There was no news that I was aware of, but my hosts were looking
at me with expressions of such eager anticipation that I didn't feel I
should disappoint them.

"Just the bus wreck," I said.

The two old people snapped upright.  "What'd he say, Emma?"  the old
man shouted.

"He said there was a bus wreck!"  Emma shouted back.

I hadn't expected my small contribution to the conversation to arouse
such excitement, but was pleased to have interrupted the day's tedium
for the old folks with a bit of "news."  I thought they would be
satisfied with just the headline, but they weren't.  They pressed me
for details.

"When did it happen?"  Emma asked me.  "We haven't heard anything about
a bus wreck."

"About a half hour ago," I said, for no particular reason other than a
vague notion that news should be as fresh as possible.

"Good lord!"  cried Homer.  "Where?"

"Why, down at the big bend in the highway near our place."

Never before had my efforts at small talk aroused such interest and
enthusiasm in adults.  Homer and Emma bounded to their feet, danced
around the table, knocked over chairs, stepped on assorted dogs and
cats, and shouted questions at me so fast my head began to heat up from
the strain of concocting new and frightful details.

"Anybody killed?"  cried Homer.

I took a long drag on the lemonade and wiped my mouth on my sleeve.

"Fifteen people," I said.

Not having any great experience with numbers, I had selected fifteen
more or less at random.  From the way Homer's and Emma's jaws sagged, I
knew I had picked a good number, one the old couple held in high
esteem.

"Most of them women and children," I added, shaking my head for
dramatic effect and to give emphasis to the sheer awfulness of the
disaster.

While I was pondering the possibility of having an airplane crash into
the bus, the old couple scooped up towels, sheets, and blankets, and
before I knew what was happening, they had loped off in the direction
of the accident, apparently with the idea of offering aid and comfort
to the survivors, if any.

Amid an uproar of dogs and cats, I sat alone at the table, nervously
sipping my lemonade, happy to have brought a note of excitement into
the lives of Homer and Emma, but fighting off the ominous feeling that
I was not yet finished with The Great Bus Wreck, as it was to be
henceforth known.  After hiding out in the woods for most of the day, I
was finally driven home by threat of darkness.  My sister, The Troll,
was waiting for me on the back porch.  She turned and called out
happily to my mother, "Hey, Ma, Walter Winchell finally got home!  Do
you want me to bring the stick?"  Even in those days the news business
was filled with stress.

Technically, The Great Bus Wreck fib doesn't qualify as a fish story,
because a fish wasn't included among the ingredients.  It does,
however, contain the essentials of proper form: an attitude of casual
disinterest on the part of the fibricator, a gradual compounding of the
magnitude of the event being fibricated, and the insertion of a variety
of specific details.  I was a natural fibricator.  Still, at the age of
six, I lacked the necessary craft and polish to "take in" experienced
anglers with one of my fish stories.

A few years later, much to my good fortune, I became acquainted with
Rancid Crabtree, who had devoted his whole life to mastery of the art
of fibrication.  Rancid was the Picasso of the fib.  He could do little
white fibs, big blue fibs, realistic fibs, impressionistic fibs,
expressionistic fibs, abstract fibs, surrealistic fibs, nonobjective
fibs, and even pop fibs.

As with any genius, Rancid extended the limits of the art far beyond
anything that had been known before.  Fibrication was an all-consuming
activity to him.

In the years I knew him, I don't think I caught him in more than half a
dozen truths, and each of those so minuscule as to be unnoteworthy
except for its rarity, like, say, a one-legged woodpecker.

Rancid tended to be a purist, and most of his fibs were created
primarily as fibs for fibs'sake.  On the other hand, he never hesitated
to manufacture a functional fib whenever an occasion arose.

One time Rancid and I were just returning to the road from one of our
secret fishing spots when we ran into three characters whom Rancid
regarded as unsavory, which is to say that they were known to engage in
activities the old woodsman despised--regular jobs.  The trio consisted
of the town barber, dentist, and undertaker, and two guys who worked at
the sawmill.  They gawked at our string of plump trout and then took
some sightings along the corridor we had just carved through the thick
brush that concealed a lovely set of beaver dams a quarter mile
distant.  Scarcely taking time to grunt greetings at us, the men
extracted their fly rods from an automobile and began to assemble
them.

"What'd you take them fish on?"  one of the men asked.

"Got any pickled sow's yars with ya?"  Rancid asked.  "Thet's the only
thang these fish'Il bite on."

"Yars?"  the man said.

"Pickled sow's ears," I translated.

"No, we ain't got any of them," one of the other fellows put in, "but
we got some mighty fine flies."

"Wall, good luck to ya," Rancid said, starting to walk away.  Then he
stopped and turned and said, "Say, iffin you fellers see maw big black
dog, Wuff, would you mind haulin' him back to town?  He can find his
way home from thar."

"Oh, I reckon," a man said without any great show of enthusiasm.

"I'd be beholdin' to ya," Rancid said.  "Course, if Wuff be all tore up
when ya find him, jist put him out of his misery."

"Tore up?"  another man said.

"Yep.  I'spect thet big cat might of kilt him outright, but mebby
not."

"Big cat?"

"Jist an ol' mountin' lion.  But don't worry non, cause they almost
never attacks a hoomin bean lessen they's hurt an' starvin'."

The three men faltered in the assembly of their rods.

"Come to thank of it," Rancid continued in a musing manner, "thet ol'
cat did seem a bit on the thin side, didn't you thank so, boy?"

"YOU could count his ribs," I said.

Rancid raised an eyebrow at me in an expression that said, "That ain't
bad."  By now the men were taking down their rods, so Rancid and I
ambled off up the road.

"Hope you find your dog," one of the men called after us, apparently
thankful we had saved him from being torn to bits.

"Oh yeah, me too," Rancid said.  "Ol' Rex, he was a purty good ol'
dog."

"Wuff," I corrected, but the three men were too distracted to pay
attention to minor discrepancies.

"Shucks," Rancid said later.  "Ah didn't even git to use the part about
the Quicksand."

"Or the poisonous ticks," I said.

"Yeah," Rancid said.  "The pisonous ticks.  Ain't nobody yet gone up
agin the pisonous ticks!"

That's your basic functional fib.  But Rancid used the functional fib
only in emergencies.  His preference, as I said, was for the pure fib,
the fib for fib's sake.  I think the motive behind Rancid's fibrication
was his belief that ordinary life was insufficient and required
enhancement.  I'd spend a wet, cold, dull day out in the woods with
Rancid and my general impression of the experience was that it had been
wet and cold and dull.  But later, upon hearing Rancid tell someone
about the day, I would discover that it had been full of wild
adventures and startling occurrences and rare spectacles.

Afterward, I always remembered Rancid's version of the day rather than
my own impression of it, because Rancid's was so much more interesting
and entertaining and even magical.  Reality always played second fiddle
to Rancid's imagination.

At the close of my lecture, I could see that young Elwood was fairly
bursting with a question.  It is a wonderful thing to see intellectual
curiosity suddenly take flower in youth.

"Yes, Elwood, what is it?"

"You got any good junk food in the house?"

"No, you little toad, I don't believe in junk food!  You can have some
celery or carrot sticks if you like."

"Naw.  Well, I'd better be going.  See ya."

After he left, I worried about how Elwood would survive modern life
with no more understanding of fibrication than he has.  Indeed, such
was my anxiety over poor Elwood that I wandered out to the kitchen and
absentmindedly consumed a whole package of Yummy Yum -Yums, half a
leftover pizza, and two cans of cream soda.

The Family Camper's Dictionary Every year thousands of Americans are
introduced to the sport of camping.

(Many of them are wives and mothers who don't want the meeting to occur
in the first place, but no matter.) To ease their transition from the
comforts of home to life in the wilds, I have compiled the following
dictionary of terms, phrases, yelps, howls, and miscellaneous weird
sounds.

Camping itself is a rather vague term.  For example, the infliction of
the average family camping trip on prisoners of war would be considered
a violation of the Geneva Convention.  On the other hand, it is
considered perfectly all right, and evenfun, for a father and mother
and their young children to subject themselves to the same
experience.

When it comes to camping, cruel and unusual punishment is in the eye of
the beholder, along with smoke from the campfire.

This is not to say that family camping trips are free of protest.

Generally, the protest occurs in the middle of a stormy night while the
family bobs about on air mattresses in the flooded tent.  One of the
common forms of protest is: "You just try to pull something like this
again, George, and I'm consulting a divorce lawyer!"

There are many kinds of camping.  Car camping, for example, is where
the camp is within twenty feet of the car, and a portion of each night
is actually spent in the car, either because the tent collapsed or
somebody thought he "heard a bear."

Backpacking is where the camp is located more than twenty feet from the
car, and no portion of the night is spent actually in the car, except
in the case of dire emergencies, such as when somebody thinks he "saw a
bear."

Solitary camping is where a lone camper lies awake all night wondering
how he could have been so stupid as not to have brought somebody along
to camp with him.  You know you are involved in solitary camping when
you ask "Did you hear that funny sound just then?"  and nobody
answers.

Of course it may be that the reason you are suddenly involved in
solitary camping is that the person you were with heard that funny
sound just then and is now engaged in car camping.

Group camping may consist of as many as forty individuals, none of whom
thought to bring a can opener.  A Cub Scout outing is typical of group
camping, and it often ends with the adult leader spending the night
pressed inside a pup tent with fourteen Cub Scouts because somebody had
the bright idea of telling scary stories around the campfire.

Roughing-it camping is where the camp is so basic as to be devoid of
even hot showers.

There are many other forms of camping, but they are mostly combinations
or variations of the above or with no relation to them at all.  Let us,
therefore, proceed to the Family Camper's Dictionary: Corn flakes--A
common camp food.  Often eaten dry with salt and pepper since no one
thought to bring milk.

Hominy--Whenever there is a camping disaster, the only food saved.

"Looks like we may be stranded here for a week," a camper says.  "Did
we save any of the food?"

"Just the fifteen cans of hominy," he is told, which scarcely seems
worth the trouble of surviving.

Oddly enough, the only food saved is never the canned beef stew.  Cans
of beets, parsnips, or squash may turn up as substitutes for the
hominy.  The mysterious thing is that nobody can ever remember seeing
any of these foods in the grub box prior to the disaster.

The aroma of frying bacon--What campers love to wake up to.

As my wife and I climbed into our sleeping bags one evening a while
back, I told her, "You know what I love to wake up to on camping trips,
Bun?  The aroma of frying bacon."

"Oh, yeah?"  she said.  "Well, I'll have to see if I can find it in a
spray can next time I'm in the store."

If you're unlucky enough to have an insensitive and stubborn spouse,
you may go through many years of camping without waking up to the aroma
of frying bacon.

"Something hairy just ran across my neck!"--An announcement made by a
young child immediately after the lantern has been shut off in the
tent.  Once the screaming from the other children has died down, the
parents explain to the kid that it was just his imagination.  Then for
the rest of the night the parents experience the sensation of hairy
things running across their necks.

Cloudburst--A natural phenomenon that, when it occurs in the middle of
the night, reminds a young child that he forgot to go to the bathroom
before turning in after being told to do so nine times.

A big black stump--What the young child thinks is a bear while he is
going to the bathroom in the middle of the night during a cloudburst,
and which his father, peering through the rain and urging the child to
act with expediency, also thinks is a bear.

A bean-What is thought to produce any night sound within a mile radius
of the campsite.  Also, what is standing on your picnic table munching
your camp cooler when you stroll out of the tent, saying to the
children, "See, Daddy isn't afraid.  He knows it is just a little chip
...!"

Yip-yip-yip-Owoooooo!--The haunting, melodi( call of coyotes singing to
each other in the hills.  Also, the spine-tingling cry of a camper
trying to pound in a tent peg with a rock.

Camping manuals--Books filled with ingenious camping tips which are
forgotten the instant the camper sets foot in the field.  "I read about
a way to cook a chicken with a camera lens and a wire clothes hanger,
but I can't remember how," he says.  "Better just fry it."

Wire clothes hangers--The most useful camping tools ever invented.  May
be used for roasting meat over a fire, holding cooking pots, lashing
tent poles together, and many other services.  Once, I even saw a
camper hang his clothes on one.

S'Mores--Child's standard camping dessert, consisting of chocolate bars
and toasted marshmallows sandwiched between graham crackers.  Have been
known to cause child to become semipermanently attached to his clothes,
sleeping bag, pine needles, and anything else he comes in contact
with.

Although a child may consume half a dozen S-Mores, two are considered a
lethal dose for adults.

Unimproved Forest Service Campground--A designation on Forest Service
maps to indicate a small swamp used for experimental breeding of killer
mosquitoes.

New binoculars--What one of yourchildren vaguely remembers having last
seen when he set them on a log during a rest stop earlier in the day.

New camera may be substituted for new binoculars.

"What do you mean, get up?  It's still dark out!"--What your youngest
child says upon awakening upside down in his sleeping bag.

Pants pockets--Containers to which young campers eventually transfer
the entire contents of their packs.

Suspenders--What the young camper needs to hold up his pants pockets.

Not unusual for a kid's suspenders to shoot him out of camp when he
dumps his pockets.

"When hell freezes over"--An expression used by wives and mothers to
indicate the next time you'll get them to go on another camping trip.

"A nice hot bath"--An odd phrase that wives and mothers insert into
every other sentence after the second day of a camping trip.

A toasted marshmallow--What a kid calls the flaming projectile he lobs
at your lap from the end of a sharpened willow.

Call of the wild--Sound made by parents as they search the woods for a
kid who is asleep in the back of the station wagon.

Downwind--Whichever side of the campfire you happen to be on.

Bicycle campers--Hearty individuals who walk about camp with a pained
expression on their bodies.

Cowboy coffee--A beverage made by throwing a handful of coffee in
boiling water, and which causes your legs to bow when you take a sip of
it.

"Come and get it!"--Plea telephoned to tow truck company by camper who
was dumb enough to back his car into an Unimproved Forest Service
Campground.

A roasted wiener--What your wife says you look like after you have
spent a July day hiking shirtless in shorts.

Squirrel--Guy in neighboring campsite who plays transistor radio at
full volume most of the night.

Gorp--A mix of fruits and nuts.  Also, a derogatory term applied to the
rowdy group in the next campsite.

Eye-opener--Early-morning shot of cowboy coffee.  Also, loud snuffling
sound just outside the tent.

Woodcraft--Sneaky tactic used to fool your spouse into getting up and
building the morning fire.

Last been-The one you forgot you drank before you took the kids on a
hike to the top of the mountain.

National Park Campground--What all the campers came here to get away
from.

Bug bite--What the camper tries to avoid taking while he is eating
outside in an Unimproved Forest Service Campground.

Grill--The questioning of a child who vaguely remembers having set your
new binoculars on a log a few rest stops back.

Granny knot--What you feel like after spending a night sleeping with
your spouse and three children in a pup tent.

"I'll hold my breath"--Childish threat made to keep from eating the
special stew you've prepared for supper.  Tell her if she doesn't eat
it she'll be setting a bad example for the children.

Camp dump--The back seat of your car on the way home.

"Don't tell me it's over already"--Sarcasm used by wives and mothers at
the termination of camping trips.

"Who's going to help me wash all this stuff and put it away?"--An
indication that it's not over already.

The Big Match The long-distance phone call from my nephew and fishing
manager, Dr. Mike Gass, was typical of him--warm, witty, and with the
charges reversed.

"Hey, Unc, I got a great match arranged for you," Mike shouted over the
phone.  "This guy is a top contender."

"Sounds good," I said.  "Who is it?"

"Tuck Harry."

"Not the Tuck Harry," I gasped.  "Listen, Mike, maybe you'd better call
the match off.  I've been slowing down a lot lately, and my reflexes
aren't what they used to be.  Tuck Harry mayjust be too good for me."

"Come on, Unc, don't try to kid me," Mike said jovially.  "You haven't
been beaten yet, have you?"

That was true.  I had defended my title dozens of times against some of
the top contenders in the sport and always emerged victorious.  You
see, I am the World Champion of not-catching fish and not-shooting
game.  Oh, for recreation and relaxation, I will occasionally catch a
fish or shoot a grouse or pheasant.  Indeed, as a youngster I was never
without a fishing rod or shotgun in hand, which was awkward at church
and while taking baths, but otherwise a great way of life.  My skill at
hunting and fishing was surpassed only by an abundance of luck, and I
had no trouble keeping the family table well supplied with fish and
game.

Alas, tragedy brought to an abrupt end my carefree and happy life.  At
the tender age of twenty-five, I was struck down by the necessity of
having to take a regular job.  As a result of this catastrophe, my
hunting and fishing were limited to weekends and sick leave, the latter
so frequent that my boss would have fired me if he hadn't thought I was
terminally ill and would be leaving soon anyway.

As the amount of time I could spend in the outdoors diminished, so did
my skills and luck.  My hunting and fishing friends began to feel sorry
for me and took to arranging special little outings to their secret
places.

"Listen," one of them would say, "I guarantee you will catch fish where
I'm taking you."  We'd go there and I wouldn't catch any fish.  "All
right," the fellow would say.  "Now I mean business.  I'm taking you to
a spot I've never even told anybody else about.  You must swear never
to tell where you caught the fish."  We'd go there and I wouldn't get a
strike.

Hunting was no different.  A pitying friend would tell me, "This time
you're going to get your deer for certain.  I've got this secret place
staked out, with a deer practically tied to a tree for you.  You won't
be able to miss."  And I wouldn't miss.  I wouldn't even get to
shoot.

At best, we'd find some stale tracks in the secret place, indicating
that a deer had passed earlier in the century.

I concealed my disappointment over these failures by the ruse of
gnashing my teeth and kicking trees.  Reflecting upon the phenomenon,
however, it occurred to me that not only didn't I catch fish or shoot
game on the outings, neither did anyone in my party.  I began to think
that perhaps I had some peculiar psychic power that nullified the
rhythms of the natural world.  It was as though a magnetic field
radiated out from me and affected even my companions.  Unfortunately,
my companions came to a similar conclusion.  Soon I couldn't suggest a
hunting or fishing trip to them without it conflicting with one of
their "previous engagements" on that date, which was odd, since most of
these guys usually didn't even know the months of the year.  All they
knew were the seasons--trout season, grouse season, deer season, etc.
It is the nature of the true sportsman, however, to seek out a
challenge.

If the taking of fish or game becomes too easy, he soon tires of it,
and begins looking for ways to make the sport more difficult for
himself and to improve the odds for the quarry.  The angler, for
example, will go from hooks baited with worms to wet flies to dry flies
so tiny that they look as if they've been tied under an electronic
microscope.  His fly rods will become increasingly lighter until they
are all but invisible.  I've seen fly fishers using rods so light I
didn't know if they were casting or trying to catch gnats in the air
with their bare hands.  My friend Orvis Fenwick once made half a dozen
casts before he realized he hadn't picked up his rod.

Thus it was that the master hunters and anglers in our area began to
look upon me as the ultimate challenge.  "Catching any fish lately?"

one of these master sportsmen would be asked "No, I haven't had a
strike all summer," would come the answer.  "But I fish exclusively
with McManus, you know."  An expression of awe would come over the
questioner's face.  "Gee," he would say admiringly.  "I would like to
work up to that some day."

Eventually, word spread about my prowess at notcatching fish and
not-shooting game, and fishing and hunting guides from around the
country began sending me invitations to go a few rounds with them.

They knew that if they could induce me to catch fish or shoot game,
their reputations would be made.  I skunked them all.  Some of them
even gave up halfway through the bout, complaining of stomach cramps.

So many invitations were arriving, I finally asked my nephew Mike to
become my manager, and to take over the business of arranging
matches.

"I've got a great idea," he told me.  "How about this?  You start out
by catching a few fish, see, and then we make a bet with the guide that
you won't catch any more fish.  We'll clean up!"

"Sounds good to me," I said.  "But how do I catch the first few
fish?"

"Yeah, I suppose that might be a problem, given your past record."

We decided to scrap the idea of my becoming a not-catching-fish hustler
Even so, I have been banned from several states.  When I went hunting
in Montana a few years ago, no one in the state got so much as a shot
the days I was there.  It was an outstanding display of power on my
part, but now the only way I can get into Montana during the hunting
season is by wearing my Truman Capote disguise.  This explains why
several Montanans have reported seeing Capote gnash his teeth and kick
trees because he missed an elk--missed it by at least three weeks, if
the condition of the tracks was any sort of indication.

Members of outdoor clubs in Idaho take turns patrolling the borders in
an effort to keep me out of the state, but I can usually manage to
elude them.

To punish them, I frequently extend my stay in the state well after
I've become bored with not-catching fish and not-shooting game.

Steelheaders in Oregon, I understand, have put a bounty on me, and will
pay it to anyone who brings in my license and steelhead card.  This
seems a bit extreme, since I shut off the fishing in Oregon only a
dozen or so times a year.  Furthermore, I have it on reliable testimony
that the instant I leave the state, the steelheading becomes fantastic
and remains so for some weeks afterward.

But now I was worried about the match that Mike had arranged for me
with Tuck Harry.  Tuck is a young fishing guide who works the rivers of
western Washington state.  He has built up a formidable reputation for
helping his clients connect with steelhead.  He would be tough to
beat.

Still, I had left some of the best and toughest fishing guides in the
country sobbing into their bait buckets.

The reason I was worried is that, fishing alone the previous week, I
had caught three nice trout.  Naturally, I hadn't told anyone about the
catch, except my wife, whom I revived by rubbing an ice cube on her
forehead.  Then there was the close call last summer when I was stream
fishing.  A monstrous trout had made a pass at my Renegade, and I saved
the day only by snapping the fly away from itsjaws and integrating
thirty feet of line with a thorn apple immediately to my rear.  It had
been close.  I was haunted by the thought that maybe my luck was about
to go good.

In the grim light of a cold and foggy dawn, Mike and I met Tuck Harry
on the bank of a river, the name and location of which I was sworn not
to divulge.  The local steelheaders are more secretive than the
Mafia.

It is rumored that if one of the members reveals the fantastic fishing
in the river to an outsider, one of the other steelheaders will grab
him and kiss him on both cheeks.  Strangely, this does not often prove
fatal, although the victim will have recurring fits of nausea for the
next five years.

I quickly sized up Tuck, as Mike and I watched him wrestle the drift
boat from the trailer and, grunting and gasping, drag it to the
river.

We would have helped him, but long experience has taught me that this
kind of exertion takes a lot out of a guide, particularly with Mike and
me in the boat.

Nevertheless, the young man retained an air of confidence and seemed in
complete control of the situation.  I found this disconcerting and
began to wonder if I was not in over my head.  As it turned out, I was
in only up to my armpits, having inadvertently stepped backward out of
the boat.

"Thatta way to go," Mike wispered to me as I changed into dry
clothes.

"That staggered Tuck, and it's only the first round!"

Tuck recovered quickly, however, and no sooner had we shoved off than
he retaliated by drifting the boat through a wild stretch of
whitewater.

Cleverly, Mike and I concealed our anxiety from the guide by reciting
the Twenty-third Psalm in unison.

Tuck pulled up across from one of his secret holes and rigged me an
outfit.  "Keep your thumb lightly on the spool of the reel when you
cast," he explained, since I had told him most of my experience in
recent years had been with spinning rather than with bait-casting
reels.

"That's it, you've nearly got it," Tuck said encouragingly, after my
first attempted cast.  "Now, let me get my knife and I'll have your
thumb freed from that backlash in no time."

"Actually," I replied casually, "I'd just as soon you freed my elbow
and left foot first, if you don't mind."

I soon mastered the bait-casting reel with a few practice casts.  Then
Tuck instructed me to cast up to the head of the hole, take up the
slack quickly, and allow the sinker to bounce along the bottom of the
river.

"They're in there," he said of the steelhead.  "You should get a
strike."

His confidence in my hooking a steelhead was unnerving.  I countered
immediately by fastening hook, line, and sinker irretrievably to some
rocks on the riverbed, a technique that proved so effective I repeated
it a dozen times during the next hour.  Then I switched to snagging
limbs, logs, and curious livestock that watched us drift by.  By noon,
Tuck was on the ropes.

The fear that my luck might be turning good proved unfounded.  In two
days of drifting down the river from dawn to dark, I got not a single
strike.

Furthermore, neither did Mike nor Tuck.  Nor did the hundred or so
other steelheaders on the river.  Some of the latter, recognizing me
and knowin of my reputation, shook their fists and yelled at Tuck, "Get
him out of here!"

It was, if I do say so myself, one of my most inspired performances.

felt sorry for Tuck, of course, since he had put up a fine scrap and
shown good sportsmanship and didn't gnash his teeth and kick trees, as
do some guides.  That's why I was so happy to hear that, the day after
I left, everyone in Tuck's boat took limits of steelhead, and the other
steelheaders reported that it was the best day of fishing they had ever
seen on the river.

It's hard for me to control my elation over news like that.

THE NIGHT THE BEAR ATE GOOMBAW By Patrick F. McManus Henry Holt and
Company, Inc.  New York Copyright (C) 1989 by Patrick F.

McManus All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form.

Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 115 West 18th Street New
York, New York 10011

Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited 195 Allstate
Parkway Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8.

library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McManus, Patrick
F.

The Night the bear ate Goombaw 1. Outdoor recreation-United
States-Humor.

ISBN 0-8050-1033-5

Henry Holt books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases
for sales promotions, premiums, fund raising, or educational use.

Special editions or book excerpts can also be created to
specification.

For details contact: special Sales Director, Henry Holt and Company,
Inc 115 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011.

FIRST EDITION Designed by Claire M. Naylon Printed in the United States
of America All stories in this book appeared previously as follows: In
Field & Stream: "Scritch's Creek" (originally titled "Scritch's
Crick").  In Outboard Boating: "Gunkholing" (originally titled "I'd
Rather Be ...

Gunkholing").  In Outdoor Life, "The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw";
"Water Spirits" (originally titled "Spirits"); "Letter to the Boss"
(originally titled "Letter to My Boss"); "A Road Less Traveled By";
"The Fried Flies, Please, and Easy on the Garlic" (originally titled
"Lord of the Flies"); "How to Get Started in Bass Fishing" (originally
titled Beginner's Guide to Bass Fishing"); "At Loose Ends" (originally
titled "Tying One On"); "Sequences"; "Kid Brothers and Their Practical
Application"; "Garage-Sale Hipe" (originally titled "Garage-Sale
Frinzy"); "Out of Sync"; "Cupidity, Draw Thy Bow" (originally titled
"Love Me, Love My Bass"); "The Tin Horn"; "The Dumbest Antelope";
"Visions of Fish and Game"; "Whitewater Fever"; "Never Cry 'Arp!'";
"Getting It in the Ear"; "As the Worm Squirms"; "Try Not to Annoy Me";
"A Brief History of Boats and Marriage"; "Boating Disorders."

Also by Patrick F. McManus Kid Camping From Aaaaiii!  to Zip A Fine and
Pleasant Misery They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

Never Sniff a Gift Fish The Grasshopper Trap Rubber Legs and White
Tail-Hairs Dedication To Vern Schulze, without whom many of these
stories would never have happened Contents
Sequences..............................................................


.....1

The Dumbest
Antelope.........................................................7

Out of
Sync.................................................................16


Kid Brothers and Their Practical
Application................................23

The Fried Flies, Please, and Easy on the
Garlic.............................31

At Loose
Ends...............................................................36

Getting It in the
Ear.......................................................43

Garage-Sale
Hype............................................................49

How to Get Started in Bass
Fishing..........................................56

As the Worm
Squirms.........................................................62

Scoring................................................................


....69

A Road Less Traveled
By.....................................................74

Gunkholing.............................................................


....79

Blips..................................................................


....87

The Night the Bear Ate
Goombaw..............................................93

Water
Spirits..............................................................10


Letter to the
Boss........................................................."1

Scritch's
Creek............................................................"6

The Tin
Horn...............................................................131


Cupidity, Draw Thy
Bow.....................................................138

Whitewater
Fever...........................................................145

Never Cry
"Arp!"...........................................................153

Visions of Fish and
Game...................................................159

A Brief History of Boats and
Marriage......................................165

Boating
Disorders..........................................................171


Try Not to Annoy
Me........................................................180

Sequences I have long been a student of sequences, probably because of
my upbringing on a farm and, perhaps the larger influence, my
association with my stepfather, Hank.  My mother remarried several
years after my father died, and Hank came to live with us on our Idaho
farm.  He was a city person, at one time the manager of a minor-league
baseball team who had spent most of his working life in the grocery
business.  You would expect that someone in the grocery business would
know about farming and sequences, but both forever remained a mystery
to Hank.

What Hank seemed never able to grasp was that on a farm you simply
don't go out and do a piece of work.  No, the first thing you do is
determine the lengthy sequence of activities necessary even to begin
the job.  Then you realize that the sequence of preparatory activities
is so long you will never get to the intended task.  So you go fishing
instead.  This had been my family's approach to farming for
generations, and it worked fine, but Hank could just never get the hang
of it.

One day Hank said to me, "Pat, let's take off the day and go fishing up
Ruby Crick."

"Sounds good to me," I said.  "Let's go."

"Okay.  But first we have to fix that hole in the pasture fence.  Won't
take but twenty minutes."

My shoulders sagged.  "Hank," I said.  "Either we go fishing or we fix
the fence.  Which is it?"

"Both," he said.  "First we fix the fence, then we go fishing.  Now go
get the wire stretcher and we'll get started."

I saw that it was hopeless.  No matter how often I had tried to explain
sequences to Hank, he could never grasp their significance.  "The wire
stretcher's broken," I said.

"Oh, that's right.  Well, we'll just run over to the Haversteads and
borrow theirs."

"Yeah, but the Malloys borrowed our post-hole digger."

"We can swing by the Malloys and pick up our post-hole digger on the
way back from borrowing the Haversteads' wire stretcher.  Then we fix
the fence and go fishing.  Easy as pie."

"We're out of fence staples, too."

"Is that right?  I guess after we borrow the Haversteads' wire
stretcher and pick up our post-hole digger from the Malloys, we can zip
into town and buy some staples at Jergans Hardware, come back, fix the
fence, and go fishing."

"But Hank, you promised Sam Jergans you would haul him in a load of hay
bales from the Nelsons' the next time you came to town."

"Danged if that ain't what I promised!  I got to take Sam the hay when
we go for the staples.  Otherwise he'll be mad as hops.  We'll have to
take the truck, but first we better pick up the spare tire that's over
at LaRoy's Shop getting fixed.  So here's what we'll do.  We'll borrow
the post-hole digger from the Haversteads, pick up our wire stretcher
from the Malloys, stop by LaRoy's Shop and get the spare, go over to
Nelson's and load the hay, haul the hay in to Jergans, buy the staples,
come home, fix the fence, and go fishing.

How does that sound?"

"You're getting mixed up, Hank.  We borrow the wire stretcher from the
Haversteads and pick up our posthole digger from the Malloys."

"Good leapin' gosh a'mighty, this is getting' complicated.  Now where
did we start?  I better write it down in the proper ..."

"Sequence," I said.  "We started out to go fishing, but first you
wanted to fix that stupid hole in the fence."

It was this early training in sequences that made almost any endeavor
in life seem impossible to me.  That is why I have just gone fishing
instead.  I have always enjoyed reading about the great successes so
many men and women achieve, and once I even thought I would read a book
about how to become a success myself.  "I'm going down to the library
to check out a book that tells me how I can become a success," I told
my wife, Bun.

"That's a good idea," she said.  "I only wish you had read it thirty
years ago.  Since you're going downtown to the library, will you drop
off some clothes at the dry cleaners?"

"Sure."

"I have a coupon for twenty-five percent discount on cleaning.  Oh,
darn!

I threw the newspaper out.  Will you run over to the Smiths and see if
they still have theirs?  And I told Bev Smith she could have that old
trunk in the attic and you can take it over to her when you go, but
you'll have to repair the hinge on the attic door first, because
otherwise the door will fall off, so when you're down in the basement
getting your tool box, I'd like you to ..."

"Forget it," I said.  "I'm going fishing."

I never did get to read the book on how to become a success.  I doubt
if I missed much.  Once I did go to a seminar on becoming a success,
and the speaker said the most important thing was for one to set goals
for oneself.

That was when I walked out.  Any fool can set goals.  I've set more
goals than a trapper sets traps.  I could set half a dozen goals for
myself this very minute, without exerting more than a couple of brain
cells in the process.

The problem is getting to the goals.  Every goal has a sequence
swirling beneath it like the vortex of a whirlpool.  Take your first
step toward that goal and you're instantly sucked into the vortex,
swirled downward endlessly farther and farther away from your goal,
until you've completely forgotten what the goal was, and your only
concern is how to get out of the vortex.

It's kind of scary, if you think about it.

I've seen decent, normal persons suddenly come down with ambition and
set themselves a goal or two.  Then they set off for their goals and
you hear a diminishing wail as they're sucked down into the vortex of
sequence, and they're never seen again, although sometimes you'll get a
postcard from Acapulco.  It's much better just to go fishing and forget
about success.

You'll be happier, take my word for it.

Even fishing can be fraught with sequence, however, and you must be
constantly on guard against it.  Suppose, for example, Retch Sweeney
shows up and asks me to go fishing with him.  I say, "Okay," grab rod,
reel, and tackle box, and start out the door.

"What test line you got on that reel?"  Retch asks.

"Four-pound."

"Not strong enough for bass.  Go put eight-pound on.  Ten would be
better."

"Do you want to fish or get sucked into a sequential vortex?"  I snap,
continuing on out the door.

"What?  You got trouble with your drains again?  Yeah, let's get outta
here before Bun catches us.  Four-pound's good enough."

I have never attempted to explain sequences to Retch, but he has an
instinct for avoiding them.  Somewhere in the spacious recesses of his
mind he senses that if I wait to put on eight-pound line before I go
fishing, I will never get to the fishing.  Maybe there won't be quite
enough line to fill the spool.  Then I will have to wind the line off
the reel spool and back onto the stock spool.  Next I will have to find
some line to back up the eight-pound line.  After that I will have to
go to Gary Soucie's Hook, Line & Sinker to study the knot for tying two
lines together.  But then I'll remember I loaned the book to my
next-door neighbor, Al Finley, but if I go ask Finley for it, he will
want his lawn mower back before Bun has a chance to mow the lawn with
it.  Thus I will be forced to mow the lawn myself, then return the lawn
mower to Finley, get my book back, study the knot, tie the two lines
together, and wind them on the spool.  By then it will be too late to
go fishing.  It's better to take my chances with four-pound-test.

If you are to achieve any happiness in this world or know a moment's
peace, you must learn to view any undertaking not as an isolated event
in itself but as a starting point from which you work backwards through
endless sequences.  The happiest man I ever knew was my old mentor in
woodscraft, Rancid Crabtree.  Rancid understood the necessity of
avoiding sequences.  "You can't go chasin' life all over tarnation," he
was fond of saying.  "You got to set back and let it come to you.  Stay
in one place long enough and most everthang'll come by at least
once."

it didn't make any sense to me either.  But the point is, Rancid was
the happiest man I've ever known.  Faced with some monumental task or
dismal but necessary chore, he didn't sit around whining or cursing his
luck.  He just squared his shoulders, set his jaw, and said, "This dang
nuisance can take care of itself.  Let's go fishin'!"

The man knew sequences.

The Dumbest Antelope Mr. Clare Conley Editor-in-Chief Outdoor Life New
York, N.Y.

Dear Clare: At this very minute, Outdoor Life's executive editor, the
wily Vin Sparano, is racing hellbent for vinyl back to New York to give
you his version of the antelope hunt in Wyoming.  Don't believe a word
he says.

His account of the trip will be nothing but lies, designed to put all
the blame on me.  I am rushing this letter off to you by express mail,
so that you will have in hand the true facts of the matter before Vin
arrives.  But first, here is a list of my expenses for the trip:
Airfare................................................................


380.00

Meals..................................................................


$46.15

Rental of four-wheel-drive
vehicle.....................................$405.26

Fuel...................................................................


212.35

Tips...................................................................


$00.75

Miscellaneous.......................................................$24


478.54

Please note my frugality, tipping serving as an excellent example of my
effort to hold costs to a minimum.  Any questions?

Oh, perhaps I should explain something about Miscellaneous.  As you
probably know, there is a Wyoming law that all males over age five must
wear cowboy hats.  My hat cost $150.  Since wearing a cowboy hat
without cowboy boots looks ridiculous, I picked up a pair of them
too--$200.  I thought the spurs ($65) would add a nice touch.  The
leather vest, plaid shirt, and kerchief came to roughly $180--it's a
very nice vest.  Now for my great bargain, a really nifty pair of chaps
for--would you believe?--$140.  Normally you can't buy a pair of woolly
chaps for anywhere near that price.

That's about it for Miscellaneous, except for a few other odds and ends
that slip my mind at the moment.  Now let me give you the true facts
about the antelope hunt.

To begin with, I flew into Rock Springs, Wyoming, rented a
four-wheel-drive vehicle, and drove eight hundred miles to Rawlins.

True, the normal driving distance between Rock Springs and Rawlins is
less than one hundred miles, but only if you make a right turn instead
of a left turn leaving Rock Springs.  The left turn takes you to
Rawlins by way of Montana, a very scenic route, believe me, and one
that definitely should be put on the map.

An elderly rancher, who claimed mine was the first "strange face" he
had seen in that part of Wyoming in the last four years, finally got me
pointed in the general direction of Rawlins.  He said just follow the
signs.  All the signs, however, had been made by deer and antelope, few
of which had been heading for Rawlins.  The rancher, by the way,
complimented me on my woolly chaps, after he got over his first
impression that I was trying to steal two of his sheep, or so he
claimed.  We both thought that very amusing, he somewhat more than I.

He warned me not to wear them into any of the tougher Wyoming saloons,
no doubt fearful that one of the cowboys there might try to make off
with them for his own use, such is the rarity of woolly chaps nowadays
in Wyoming.

I eventually found Rawlins and made my way to the hunting camp some
miles north of the town.  Right away I saw I was about to fall in with
bad company--Vin Sparano, editor and writer; Jim Zumbo, editor and
writer; Bill Rooney, editor and writer; Hal Nesbitt, editor and writer;
Kathy Etling, writer; and Bob Etling, a normal person.  A rougher bunch
probably hadn't been assembled in Wyoming since the Hole-in-the-Wall
gang broke up.  There were characters here who could quick-draw a
library card and check out three books faster than the eye could
follow.  Others could split an infinitive with a single blow and not
think twice about it.  Sparano was said to smile while firing off
rejection slips with both hands.

I got Zumbo aside.  "This looks more like a literary convention than a
hunting trip," I told him.  "I don't want to show these people up, or
you either.  Sure, I don't mind giving everybody a few hunting tips,
but it's embarrassing for them when I fill my tag right away and
they're bumbling around day after day, hoping against hope that they
might luck out and get a close, standing shot."

"You don't have to worry," Zumbo said.  "They'll do fine.  Besides, Hal
and I have already gotten our antelopes."

"You have?  Hal too?"

Harold "Hal" Nesbitt happens to be the administrative director of the
Boone & Crockett Club.  I was happy to hear he had already got his
antelope because that would leave him free to score my antelope before
any shrinkage occurred.  Typically, my big game trophies shrink as much
as 50 percent before they can be measured, thus denying me admission to
the Boone & Crockett record book.  With Hal right there, this problem
was as good as solved.

As you might expect, Zumbo had selected the worst possible camping site
in all of Wyoming, a knob of ground surrounded on all sides by
wide-open spaces as far as the eye could see.  Since the camp had no
restroom facilities and the tallest bush was less than a foot high, any
calls of nature could be answered only by hiking out toward the horizon
until one was concealed by the curvature of the earth.  Just going to
the bathroom took up half the day.

Shelter consisted of a small camping trailer and a motor home.  Sparano
and Rooney slept on the bed in the camper and Nesbitt and I slept on
the table.  I slept with all my clothes on, not only because I didn't
know Hal that well but because my sleeping bag is rated at only ten
degrees below zero.

The first night I scarcely got a wink of sleep.  Hal tossed and turned
all night, complaining about stabbing pains in his legs.  I would have
got up and slept on the floor, except I thought the jangling of my
spurs might wake the others.

The next day's hunting proved thoroughly disappointing.  Everyone but
me got an antelope.  Vin made a lucky long shot.  I say lucky because
the antelope in question was so far away as not to be visible to the
naked eye.

Vin explained--and explained and explained--how he had held 503 feet
above the animal and led it by a quarter of a mile, working into his
calculations the factors of wind, temperature, humidity, and level of
suspended particles in the air.  My theory is that Vin fired a shot to
test his rifle and an antelope came by several minutes later and
accidentally got into the line of fire.

Nothing can be proved, however, so Vin sticks like epoxy to his
story.

Then what does Bill Rooney do?  From a mile away, he sneaks up on a big
buck right in the middle of a herd without one of the antelope spotting
him.

Up until then I liked Rooney a lot, but I simply cannot tolerate a
showoff.

To make matters worse, a Wyoming game warden who checked us said it was
the best antelope he had seen taken that year!

I thought the worst had to be over, but when we got back to camp, I
discovered that Kathy and Bob Etling had each got an antelope.  Never
have I been on a hunt in which so many things went wrong.

I had been told that antelope are easy to hunt, but I dare say that is
not the case.  They are cunning beasts.  Off in the far distance,
streams of them flow hither and yon, waves of them wash across the
prairie, and fringes of them decorate almost every ridgeline.

Occasionally they will streak, zip, or flash past within rifle range.

Not once, however, did I see any antelope play, as is reputed in the
song.  Show me an antelope playing and I'll show you some antelope
chops.  Personally, I doubt the songwriter ever even saw an antelope,
let alone one that played.

That night as I slouched in a corner of the camper, with the din of
Vin's endless account of his long shot assaulting my eardrums, Kathy
Etling slipped over beside me.

"Pat," she whispered, "I saw some dumb antelope today.  I know where
you can probably get one of them."

Kathy is a very nice person, and I didn't want to let on that there was
simply no way I, a sportsman, would take advantage of some poor
creature lacking in normal intelligence.

"How dumb, Kathy?"

"Really dumb."

"Well, thanks anyway, but I'm really not interested," I said, patting
her on the shoulder.  "Just for the heck of it, though, could you draw
me a map?"

She drew the map on the back of an envelope, sketching in various
landmarks.  "How's that?"

"Fine.  But I don't see any antelope."

She put an X on the map.  "There's one."

You may think I'm exaggerating, Clare, but I'm not.  Kathy actually
drew the map just as I've described it, right down to the X. Naturally,
this is just between you and me, and Kathy, of course.  I wouldn't want
Sparano or Zumbo to find out about the map, because I would never hear
the end of it.

The next day Zumbo, Sparano, and Rooney went out with me on my hunt,
each of them offering suggestions as to where I might find antelope.  I
refused to listen.

"Turn here, by the green post," I told Zumbo.  "Turn right after we
cross that big culvert.  Then drive straight ahead three-quarters of a
mile until we come to a large open area with a low ridge off to the
south of it."

"You been up here before?"  Jim said.

"Nope," I said.  "Why do you ask?"

"No reason."

"This is crazy!"  Sparano said.  "There aren't any antelope around
here.

An antelope would have to be stupid to be in a place like this."

"Stop here!"

"Here?"  Rooney said.  "We're right out in the open.  Even if there
were any antelope here they could see us from a mile away in any
direction.  But there aren't any antelope here."

I got out, loaded my rifle, and walked a couple hundred feet away from
the rig.  The little group of observers sprawled out on the ground,
sighing, groaning, and occasionally snickering.

After waiting twenty minutes for the arrival of an antelope, I began to
wonder if maybe the boys had put Kathy up to drawing the map.  It would
have been about like them.  Still, Kathy didn't seem the type to help
perpetrate a low-down, dirty, rotten practical joke, even though it
struck me as a pretty good one and probably worth a try on Zumbo
sometime.

Suddenly, a dot appeared at the top of the ridge.  I put my rifle scope
on the dot.  The dot was staring back at me.  It was an antelope, with
horns.

It sees me, I thought.  There's no way it's going to come within
range.

As if reading my mind, the antelope galloped down off the
ridge--straight toward me!

Incredible!  Here, truly, was a dumb antelope!  It stopped three
hundred yards away, offering an easy target.  I fired, kicking up a
spout of dust a couple of feet to its right.  This, I should mention,
is a good way to test an animal's reflexes, but should not be attempted
by beginners.

The antelope, displaying excellent reflexes, if a total lack of good
judgment, bounded up in the air and took off, turning into one of the
brown-and-white streaks for which the species is noted.  But it was
still streaking right at me!  Cool as ice, I stopped its charge with a
perfect offhand shot at fifty yards.  Indeed, if I had flinched even
slightly, I might have hit the befuddled creature, but such was not my
intent.  I had, of course, perceived that the antelope was not only
extraordinarily dumb but also malicious, and dead set on attacking
us.

For that reason, I had fired a warning shot across its bow and thereby
dissuaded it from carrying out its dastardly assault.  The antelope,
obviously shocked by this impressive display of marksmanship, streaked
to safety.

"Wow!"  said Zumbo.

"Amazing!"  cried Rooney.

"I never saw anything like it!"  exclaimed Sparano.

"It was nothing," I responded modestly.

"It was less than nothing!"  shouted Zumbo.  "An easy shot like that,
and you missed?  I can't believe it!"

I tried to explain that I had accomplished my intended purpose, but
unfortunately my associates chose to cling to their own interpretation
of the event.  Naturally, I was more than a little annoyed.  Here I had
just stopped an antelope in mid-charge and saved myself and probably
them from a bad goring--a pronghorn gore is one of the worst kinds,
too.  But what thanks did I get?  Nothing but ridicule.

"I will admit," Rooney finally admitted, "that it would have been
unsportsmanlike to shoot that antelope.  It was just too dumb."

"Yeah," agreed Sparano.  "The world's dumbest antelope!  " "What a
day!"  exclaimed Zumbo.  "The world's worst shot meets the world's
dumbest antelope!"

I hope you won't mind, Clare, but I forged your name to a letter
sending Zumbo on assignment to Borneo, where he will be reimbursed for
expenses by a fat bald man wearing a white suit with a red carnation in
the lapel.

Before I forget, I would like to mention the cowardly behavior of Vin
Sparano.  Every time I drove our rental rig up to some rugged terrain,
a deep gully, a bad stream crossing, or a rickety bridge, Vin would
yell, "Wait!

Wait!  I'd better get out and take a look at this!"  Then he would walk
across the questionable area and, once he was safely on the other side,
signal for me to drive over.  I couldn't help but be amused by his use
of the old "checking it out" ploy.

You would have expired of mirth, Clare, if you could have seen Vin
yelling and hollering and practically hurling himself out the door when
we came to one particularly nasty area.  The road slanted off at a
forty-five-degree angle to the edge of a cliff, which dropped down into
a river.  Vin was out there hopping up and down, yelling, "Go back, you
fool, go back!  You can't make it!  You'll slide into the river!"

You should have seen Vin's face when I threw that rental rig into
four-wheel-drive and plowed on ahead.  Funneeeey!

Oh, I just remembered another item under Miscellaneous on my list of
expenses.  But more about that later.

Cordially, Pat Out of Sync Over the years I have observed a recurrent
failure in the Homo sapiens species to get itself in sync.  For
example, two nations will decide to have a war, and each will send a
great army to the wrong place at the wrong time, and they won't be able
to find each other.  This is enormously embarrassing to the generals,
although the troops don't mind, often saying to each other, "Whew-eeee!
 That was a close one!"

My dictionary defines "sync" as "an act or instance of
synchronizing."

It defines "synchronizing" as "1.  to occur or exist at the same
time.

2. to operate at the same rate or simultaneously."

Sync is what I am out of.  Always have been, always will be.  My
fishing and the fish biting, for example, almost never occur or exist
at the same time.  You would think that during all the years I've spent
hunting, I and a trophy elk would show up at the same place at the same
time.  But that has never happened.  As far as I can tell, elk are even
more out of sync than I am.

Wonderful sales on outdoor gear occur or exist at the very times a
surplus in my bank account does not occur or exist.

In shooting, I have discovered that my shot and the game do not arrive
at a given spot at the same time.  "I'm just out of sync," I tell my
friends.

"You're just a bad shot," they reply.  My friends know next to nothing
about sync.

My fishing buddy Keith Jackson is seriously out of sync, too.  For many
years, we didn't realize that we were both out of sync, and a good deal
of confusion resulted.  The most extreme case of this confusion
occurred on a fishing trip to the Olympic Peninsula.  The first bit of
out-of-syncness resulted in our not being able to leave at the same
time on the four-hundred-mile drive to the fishing place.  I had to
leave a day later.

Jackson said that was all right.  He would haul the boat and have the
fish all scouted out by the time I arrived.

He then gave me a complicated set of directions as to the time and
place of the rendezvous.  "I'll meet you by the brown farmhouse two
miles past the dairy at five-thirty in the morning," he said.

"Right," I said.

I drove all night and arrived in the general area of the rendezvous at
four in the morning, only to discover that the entire region was
saturated with dairies.  Furthermore, residual darkness prevented me
from determining the color of the houses.  I thought about getting out
of the car, tiptoeing over to a likely-looking house, and holding a
lighted match up next to the siding to determine its color.  (Crazy
thoughts like that often pop into a fisherman's mind while at peak
anxiety over missing a fishing trip.) What gave me pause, however, was
the mental image of a farmer coming out of his house, groggy with sleep
and irritated at having to milk a bunch of dumb cows who are eating him
into bankruptcy, only to find a stranger holding a lighted match to his
siding.

"Just checking the color of your house paint," I'd explain.

"Yup," the farmer would say, turning to his great Dane.  "Git him,
boy."

By five-thirty I was parked in front of a likely looking brown house,
one of approximately fifteen brown houses in the area.  "Maybe this
isn't the right brown house," I said to myself "Probably it's that
brown house I passed two miles back."  I then raced off to that brown
house.  Then I thought of another brown house that had to be the one.

And so on.  For the next three hours, I drove frantically from one
brown house to another.  No Jackson.

Meanwhile, Jackson is parked in front of a brown house, frantically
watching the minutes of his fishing time tick away.  "I'll just bet
that stupid McManus is parked in front of the brown house by the old
Smith dairy.

I'd better go check."  He roars off.  Five minutes later I arrive at
the brown house he just left.  Jackson sees that I'm not at the old
Smith dairy brown house and roars back to his original brown house,
which I have just left to check the brown house at the old Smith
dairy.

(All this we calmly figured out later, after trying to beat each other
with tire irons.) By eight o'clock Jackson had sunken into a state of
blathering nsanity, in which condition he was suddenly possessed by the
irresistible urge to go fishing without me.  Half an hour later, he was
trolling alone for salmon in Puget Sound, such was the depth of his
madness.

At ten o'clock I gave up on brown houses and drove down to the nearest
boat launch.  There was Jackson's pickup and his empty boat trailer.

"Why," I said to myself, "that rascal has gone fishing without me."

(I'm not sure "rascal" is the exact word I used, but it will do for
here.) Naturally, I assumed that Jackson never had any intention of
meeting me at a brown house but instead had just gone fishing.  Being a
reflective person, I hunkered in the sand and reflected about what to
do next.  Letting the air out of all of Jackson's tires seemed to
dominate my reflections, but I decided to give him one more chance.

Since by now I was starving, I wrote a note saying: "I have gone to the
Singing Salmon Cafe to eat breakfast."  I put this note on Jackson's
windshield.  After breakfast, I drove back to the launch.  I parked my
car next to his rig, got out, turned over the note on his windshield,
and wrote, "I am asleep in my car next to your rig."

So Jackson returns from his morning of fishing and gets in his
pickup.

He reads the note through his windshield.  The note says, "I have gone
to the Singing Salmon Caf to eat breakfast."  He grabs the note off the
windshield, wads it up, and heads for the Singing Salmon Cafe, no doubt
intending to give me the thrashing he thinks I so richly deserve for
making him miss three hours of the best fishing time.

I wake up a short while later.  Jackson's truck and trailer are gone!

He has deliberately ignored my note!  I now realize that Jackson not
only has sent me on a wild goose chase for a mythical brown house and
has gone fishing without me, he is going to great lengths to avoid
me.

I know that he is involved in something he doesn't want me to know
about.  He's afraid I'll tattle to his wife.  Ha!  What kind of person
does he think I am?  I leap in my car and begin the return of the
eight-hundred-mile round-trip, never once having set eye on Jackson or
put lure to water.  "Just wait, Jackson," I growl to myself.  "Just
wait until your wife hears what sort of high jinks you've been up
to!"

After that misadventure, Jackson and I realized that we were both
hopelessly out of sync with each other.  So we worked out a plan.  No
matter where we intend to meet for a fishing trip, Jackson says, "I'll
meet you by the brown farmhouse."

"Right," I say.  We now know that it doesn't make any difference what
brown farmhouse or where the brown farmhouse is, because we would never
arrive at the same time and place anyway.  We just go off on our own
individual fishing trips.  There's about as much chance we'll meet up
that way as if we had synchronized for a rendezvous.  In fact, probably
a better chance.

My whole family has never been in sync about anything but particularly
in regard to fishing.  I recall the time my stepfather, Hank, and my
mother had a little spat.  Hank was steaming mad, and he told Mom,
"Dang it, woman, I'm going down and fish the crick and get myself some
peace and quiet!"

"Good!"  Mom shouted.  "Maybe that will cool you off!"

Hank stormed out of the house, banging the screen door as loudly as he
could.  Mom sat around seething and speaking ill of Hank.  "That old
fool!  I don't know what I ever saw in him.  He's so stubborn and
opinionated and I don't know what all."

After a bit, however, her rage subsided and she began to think more
kindly of Hank.  "He's a hard worker, though.  I'll say that for him,"
she said.  "I guess he's not so bad."

I thought I'd put in a good word for Hank, to speed reconciliation
along.

"Yeah, and he's not all that stubborn and opinionated, if you ask
me."

"Nobody asked you.  If stubborn was hay and opinions were cows, we'd
have the biggest farm in the county.  What I ever saw in that man, I'll
never know!"

"Forget I mentioned it."

By late afternoon, Hank still hadn't returned from fishing.  He was
getting along in years, and I could tell Mom was sorry about their
argument and was beginning to worry about Hank.  Then a thunderstorm
blew in and rain began to pound down in torrents.

"Oh, good heavens," Mom cried, "poor Hank will get soaking wet.  Where
could he be?  I think I'll drive up to the bridge.  If he's there, I
can give him a ride home."  She rushed out of the house and drove
off.

Hank meanwhile was dry and comfortable, sitting under the thick foliage
of a huge cedar tree, puffing contentedly away on his pipe and waiting
for the storm to pass.  The bridge was about two hundred yards away.

As he stared vacantly in that direction, he saw Mom drive up in our
car, which she turned around and parked on the bridge.

"Aha," he thought.  "She has driven out here to pick me up and make
amends.  She is not such a bad woman after all, even if she is
excessively stubborn and opinionated."

Hank then rushed out into the storm, the icy rain plastering his
clothes to his body as he galloped along.  His lucky fishing hat blew
off into the creek.  As he grabbed for it, he tripped over a log and
fell flat on his face in a mud puddle.  Putting off howling with pain
and nursing his injured leg until later, he leaped up and fought his
way through a thorn thicket, emerging from which he dropped into a
drainage ditch, the greenish ooze reaching almost to his armpits.

Hauling himself out on a rusty strand of barbwire fence, he punctured
random parts of his anatomy on the barbs, but nothing could detain him
in his rush toward the car and amends with Mom.  Finally, he hurled his
torn, bleeding, gasping, freezing body onto the road and limped
hurriedly to within three feet of the car's rear bumper, a pained smile
of gratitude for Mom's thoughtfulness quivering on his blue lips.

At that moment my mother, seeing no sign of Hank either up or down the
creek, calmly drove off.  Had she but looked in her rear-view mirror,
she would have seen a rain-blurred, frenzied figure limping wildly down
the road, but Mom didn't believe in rear-view mirrors.  "There's no
point in looking back," she liked to say.  "You might see something
gaining on you."  In this case, the something would have been Hank.

Even with a bad leg, the man could move fast, if he was mad enough.

Once Keith Jackson asked me how I had ever got so out of sync.  "I
inherited the tendency," I said.  "Got it from my mother.  How about
you?"

"Caught it from one of my fishing partners.  Anyway, let's go fishing
tomorrow.  Meet you at the brown house."

"Right," I said.  "The brown house."

Kid Brothers and Their Practical Application I always thought it would
be nice to have a kid brother.  All I ever had was an older sister, who
at best wasn't much fun and at worst was dreadful.

It is a terrible thing to have a sister who is bigger and stronger than
you are.  Say you're hanging out in the yard with some of the guys,
explaining to them exactly what you'll do to the school bully if he
"pulls any of that stuff" with you, and suddenly your older sister
comes out on the porch and bellows at you to get in the house and help
with the dishes.  You respond with a cutting remark that gets a chuckle
out of the guys.  Your sister then bounds off the porch, throws three
of the guys to the ground, grabs you, twists your arm up between your
shoulder blades, and marches you into the house on your tiptoes.  That
sort of thing can ruin a guy's image.  Older sisters can be bad.

But suppose you had a kid brother, say about three years younger than
yourself.  Think of the fun you could have with him.  You could lock
him in the basement, say, and turn off all the lights, and he's down
there screaming and yelling and crying, claiming that he just felt an
icy hand on his neck.

See, he doesn't know it's your icy hand, because you sneaked back into
the basement and grabbed him by the neck.  And sometimes, when there
wasn't anything else to do, you could practice your tying-up techniques
on him.

(Kids realize early on that when they get to be adults they'll have to
spend a lot of time tying people up, so it's important they get
practice.  A kid brother would be perfect for this.) One of the best
things of all you could do with a kid brother would be to say, "Beat
it, kid," whenever he tried to hang out with you and the guys, and he
would have to beat it, because if he doesn't he knows you'll lock him
in the basement again.

You could teach your kid brother all kinds of stuff, too, just to help
him out.  You could teach him how to build a campfire and pitch a tent
and bait a hook and make a slingshot or a bow-and-arrow.  Maybe he
wouldn't want to learn any of this stuff, but that wouldn't make any
difference, because he would be smaller than you, and you could teach
him anyway.  What's the use of knowing something if you don't have
anybody around to teach it to?

Whenever you weren't tying him up or locking him in the basement or
teaching him things or telling him to beat it, you could find lots of
other uses for a kid brother.  You could send him on errands, real or
imaginary, play the old snipe-trapping trick on him, use him as a test
pilot on rafts and go-carts to see if they were safe, any number of
things.  I really missed having a kid brother.

Several of my friends had kid brothers, and more or less took them for
granted.  I envied them but never let on.  The accepted attitude toward
kid brothers was to regard them as a nuisance.  I personally felt that
my associates never exploited their kid brothers to the full potential,
but I didn't feel it would be appropriate for me to offer advice.  That
would be like a man who had never owned a dog lecturing his friends on
how to train their dogs.  (Actually, this is a favorite pastime of
persons who have never owned a dog, but why put myself in a bad mood by
dwelling on it?) Many was the time when one of my friends complained
there was nothing to do that I wanted to suggest we tie up his kid
brother in the basement and turn off the lights and listen to him
yell.

But I never did.  It would have been different if I'd had one of my
own, so we could have taken turns using each other's kid brother for a
project.  You take advantage of a person if you can't return the favor
in kind, and that's not right.

My friend Retch Sweeney had two kid brothers, Erful and Verman.  Erful
was about the right age for a kid brother, three years younger than
ourselves, and we got quite a bit of use out of him.  Verman was too
young and small to be of much value.  Besides, he had a runny nose all
the time, and it made you sick to look at him, let alone to actually
touch him.  A runny nose is a great defense mechanism if you're a kid
brother.  Even now it turns my stomach, just remembering little
Verman.

I thought of him as the Nose.

Erful Sweeney was a chunky toe-head, meaning that he had a head that
looked like a toe.  I don't know if he was born that way or whether
Retch had done the shaping on the kid's head after he was older.  To
call Erful homely was to flatter him extravagantly.

As a kid brother, Erful seemed just about perfect to me, but Retch
regarded him as a large fat tick embedded in his life.  Throughout my
youthful association with Retch, Erful stands out in my memory as a
constant, lurking presence.  In the early years at least, he had a low
whining threshold, which could get on a person's nerves.  Retch and I
would be out in the barn shooting baskets in the haymow, and there
would be this background sound of Erful whining, "C'mon, you guys, let
me play.  If you don't, I'm gonna tell!"  This was Erful's power
whine--"I'm gonna tell!"  Sometimes it would make me laugh right out
loud, it was so ludicrous.  Retch was usually in such big-time trouble
with his folks that Erful's telling on him for not letting him play was
like giving a parking ticket to John Dillinger.  "Beat it, kid," Retch
would say, "before I tie you up in the basement and turn off all the
lights."

"Hey, good idea," I'd say.

"I'll tell!"  Erful would whine.

Erful had a face that only a mother could love, and I don't think his
mother cared all that much for it.  She seemed always trying to get his
face out of the house.

"Where you boys going now?"  she demanded of us one day.

"Down to the river fishin'," Retch said.  "And I ain't takin' Erful."

"You most certainly are taking Erful!  You just wait until he finishes
his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Erful, hurry up and eat so you
can go fishing with Pat and Retch.  Wash your toe-uh-your face
first."

"C'mon, Ma, don't be mean," Retch said.  "Why do I have to take Erful
everywhere?"

"Because he's your brother, that's why.  Besides, this will give Erful
a chance to use the new fish pole he got for his birthday."

"Yeah!"  Erful said.  "And my new reel!  Wow!  Wait up, guys, till I go
get my new fish pole and reel."

Then Verman piped up, wiping his sleeve across his nose, "Can I go
fishin' with Pat and Retch, too, Ma?"

Mrs. Sweeney looked at her youngest son, the Nose.  "No,
you're-gag-too little to go down to the-gag-river.  Then
again-gag-maybe not."

We went out and got on our bikes.  The standard procedure for the older
guys was to ride off as fast as possible and leave the kid brother far
behind, whining loudly, "Wait up!  You're going too fast!"  We always
got a chuckle out of this particular whine, since the kid brother
obviously thought we were unaware we were going too fast for him.  Once
out of sight of our pursuer, we would hide and let him race on by,
still howling, "Wait up, guys!  You're going too fast!"  even though we
were no longer even in sight.  Kid brothers were dumb.

On this particular day, Retch tried to vary the routine a little.

Before we rode off from his house, he said to Erful, "Hey, Erful, let's
run down to the basement a second.  I got some candy hidden away down
there.  Don't that sound good?"

"Naw," Erful said.  "You're not getting me down in the basement!  Whine
whine."

Usually, Erful wasn't that suspicious.  As I told Retch later, the
trick might have worked if he hadn't been holding the length of
clothesline rope right out where Erful could see it.

All we could do was ride away from Erful, hide until he went whining
by, and then go off fishing at some remote place along the river where
he wasn't likely to find us, in other words the standard procedure,
which was all right but not nearly so efficient as leaving him tied up
in the basement.

After we had ditched Erful, Retch and I rode up to China Bend, which
was good fishing but a little dangerous, the sort of place where you
wouldn't want to fall off the bank or jump in and try to net a fish
that was too big just to jerk up onto the bank.  Oh, if it was a really
big fish, of course you would go in, but it was the sort of risk you
wouldn't take for anything under sixteen inches, particularly with the
current as cold and churning as it was now.

After a couple of hours, Retch and I had caught half a dozen smallish
trout, nothing to get excited about, and were just enjoying the peace
and quiet of the river, when all at once Erful came panting up on his
bicycle.

"Gee, guys, you lost me," he said.  "I guess you wondered what happened
to me, but I've been looking all over for you.  Bet you thought I went
back home."

"Yeah, sort of," Retch said.  "When we couldn't find you, we just came
up here and started fishin'.  I said to ol' Pat here, 'I wonder what
became of Erful,' and Pat said, 'Oh, he probably went home."" "Nope.  I
just hunted till I found you.  Now I want to try out my new fish
pole."

"Yeah, well, this isn't a good place to do it," Retch said.  "The ank's
startin' to cave away and you might fall in."

"Oh sure, tell me about it!"  Erful whined.  "You're just tryin' to get
rid of me!  I'm gonna tell, too!"  With that, he stepped over to the
edge of the bank, which instantly caved in with him.  Shrieking, he
clawed at the loosening sod around him, his feet already being swept
downstream by the greedy current.  Ignoring the impulse to laugh at
this comical spectacle, I lunged heroically toward the bank, grabbed
Erful by his toe-head, and hauled him to safety.  (Later I thought how
lucky that it had been Erful the bank had caved in with and not Verman,
because the Nose probably would have had to go into the river.) In all
the excitement, it took us several seconds to realize that Erful's new
fish pole had plopped right into the deepest hole at China Bend.

"Well, that was one fish pole that didn't last long," Retch said.

"Goodbye, birthday fish pole.  Maybe next birthday you'll get another
one, Erful.  That's only a year away.  Twelve long months that you'll
have to use your old fish pole.  I guess you'll pay attention to what I
tell you from now on."

Erful emitted a howl of gloom and despair so pitiful that Retch and I
had to laugh.  He then got on his bike and pedaled off toward home,
sounding like a broken fire siren.

"Stupid kid," Retch said, untying the laces on his shoes.  "Serves him
right, losing his new fish pole."  He pulled his sweatshirt off over
his head.

"I don't know why my folks bother to keep him around."  He undid his
belt and stepped out of his pants.  "He's just a nuisance."  Retch then
dived into the cold, swirling waters of China Bend.

On his fourth dive, Retch finally found the fish pole and swam
downstream to a place where he could claw his way up the bank.  He was
blue and shivering.  He tossed the fish pole on the ground and started
putting his pants back on.  He didn't say anything for a while, because
he was so embarrassed, and also because his teeth were chattering so
hard I wouldn't have been able to understand him anyway.

After a bit he said sheepishly, "I hope you won't tell the guys about
this.  You know, about me going in the river after Erful's fish pole.

It was all he got for his birthday, and.  . ."

"Not me," I said.  "I'm not going to tell anybody about it."

And I didn't.  When you see a character flaw of that magnitude suddenly
revealed in your best friend, you're certainly not about to spread it
around.

The Fried Flies, Please, and Easy on the Garlic For some reason I've
never been able to comprehend, I sometimes find myself at dinner
parties.  Startled, I look around and discover that I am seated at a
large table with eleven people I've never seen before in my life.

This reminds me that I really should pay more attention to where I am
going and what I am doing.  My goodness, what would I do if I suddenly
awoke and found myself in bed with a perfect stranger?  With my luck,
it would probably be an imperfect stranger, some grizzled, wild-eyed
old coot demanding that I check the jug to see if there's another shot
of wine left in it.  Still, that would be better than finding myself at
dinner parties.

Sooner or later, usually sooner, at these dinner parties, the host or
hostess will announce, "Mr. McManus hunts, you know."  A frigid
silence falls over the table like a frozen mute butler, only breaking
less china.  Soup spoons hang suspended over the vichyssoise.

"Indeeeed!"  exclaims a stout matron, sighting down her nose at me.

"Don't start, Martha," mutters a little bald man seated across from
her.

Martha starts.  "I do hope you won't take offense, Mr. McGinnis, but I
view hunters as the lowest form of life, not excluding bacteria and
algae."

"No offense taken," I reply, glad for an excuse to ignore my
vichyssoise, which I view as the lowest form of food, not excluding
lichens and boiled beets.

"I would venture a guess," rumbles a rotund chap dabbing the corners of
his prissy lips with a napkin, "that over a lifetime a hunter such as
yourself probably has killed dozens of defenseless deer and elk."

"Thank you," I say, politely dabbing vichyssoise off my tongue with my
napkin.  His estimate is a bit large, but since my hunting companions
aren't around to burst into raucous laughter, I let it ride.

Martha now leans forward, her eyes hard and gleaming with anticipation
of closing in for the, uh, kill.  "So, tell me, Mr. McGillis, and I'm
sure all those present will be as interested as I in your response,
what is it about killing poor wild creatures that gives you so much
sadistic pleasure and satisfaction?"

"Gee, I don't know," I say.  "I've always enjoyed killing things.  I
haven't thought much about it.  All I know is, something sets me off
and I suddenly have to start killing.  One of the things that sets me
off is vichyssoise, so I'm sure you'll pardon me if I don't eat any
more of it, delicious as it is."  I feint playfully at Martha with my
butter knife.

"Well," she huffs, "I would certainly never have anything to do with
killing."

The main course arrives.

"Oh," cries Martha.  "Rack of lamb!  One of my favorites!  " "I'm
afraid I'll have to pass," I say.  "I try to avoid eating anything that
died of natural causes.  Smells good, though.  Is there any chance this
lamb could have died in an accident?"

In truth, I've never cared much for killing.  There are exceptions.  I
enjoy killing a big fat housefly that keeps buzzing around my head at
night when I'm in bed trying to sleep or read.  I leap out of bed, roll
up a magazine, and take off after him, trying for wing shots, knocking
over lamps and chairs, smashing plaster off the walls, lunging,
leaping, diving, trying to get in a mortal wound on my adversary, by
which I mean turning him into an amorphous blotch.  My wife says she
really hates the maniacal laugh that bursts from my drooling and
panting lips when I have at last dispatched the cursed fly.  She
doesn't much like hearing the details of my fly-hunting technique
either, such as how you have to lead behind a resting fly to get him.

On the other hand, I don't enjoy killing flies that aren't bothering
me, flies that are going about their own business, which seems to
consist largely of walking up and down windows: "I had a hard day at
the office, Maggot.  I must have walked up and down that window eighty
times and I'm still not done."

Most people, including antihunters, think nothing of killing flies.  I
think about it.  Sometimes my wife says to me, "What are you thinking
about?"

I tell her, "Killing flies."  She usually doesn't ask me what I'm
thinking about for several months afterwards, which is good, because
usually I'm not thinking about anything.  It's embarrassing to be
caught thinking about nothing.

I wonder why people should be so unconcerned about killing a fly and go
berserk over the thought of killing a deer.

Is it because flies are more numerous than deer that it's okay to kill
them?  Of course, people, too, are more numerous than deer, so we'd
best avoid that line of reasoning.

Is it because flies aren't as pretty as deer?  Most people aren't as
pretty as deer, either.  If we killed things just because they are
ugly, my friend Retch Sweeney would be in big trouble.  He wouldn't
show his face on the street, I can tell you that.

Maybe some people can't stand the thought of killing deer because deer
babies are so cute.  Fly babies are about as uncute as it is possible
to get.

Personally, though, I don't think degree of cuteness should be the
deciding factor in whether something is okay to kill.  Maybe even fly
parents think their babies are cute.  Then again, probably not.

Maybe it's okay to kill flies because they are so small.  If a thing is
small enough, most people aren't bothered much by killing it, which is
why ants, aphids, spiders, and all forms of bacteria get so paranoid:
"Harry, I tell you I smell Listerine!  The fool is going to kill us
with Listerine, just because we give him bad breath!  I know it, Harry,
I tell you I know it!"

Maybe intelligence is the determining factor.  I knew a professor once
who avoided oysters because, he said, he wouldn't eat anything with
that low of an IQ.  Flies are pretty smart, though, in my judgment much
smarter than oysters and even deer.  I don't mean to imply that they
would score well on an SAT test.  They can't even divide fractions, a
characteristic they share with most college graduates.  No, I don't
think we should say it's all right to kill something merely because of
low intelligence.  If the ugliness faction didn't get Retch Sweeney,
the intelligence faction would.  Ole Retch wouldn't be able to step out
of his house long enough to snatch the Sunday paper off his porch.

Don't get me wrong.  I have no desire to be known as the friend of
flies.

I'm not going to sponsor a program whereby sportsmen's groups go around
putting out rotten garbage for flies during hard winters.  I certainly
prefer deer over flies, and by a substantial margin, if for no other
reason than that deer don't play kickball on a manure pile and then
walk around on my potato salad before showering.  On the other hand,
flies don't eat my fruit trees down to the size of fiddlehead ferns.

I really don't like killing anything, except fat flies maliciously
buzzing my head while I'm trying to sleep.  But killing is the natural
culmination of the pains and pleasures of the hunt, at least if you're
a better shot than I am.

Generally speaking, I don't kill anything I don't eat.  I draw the line
on flies, though.  The drumsticks are too small.

At Loose Ends Give a man enough rope and it will still come out six
inches too short.

That is the nature of rope, if not the nature of man.  In fact, the
phrase "enough rope" is deceptive, because there is no such thing as
enough rope.

Ask anyone who has tried to tie a canoe securely to the top of his
car.

No driver is more nervous than the one with a canoe tied to the top of
his vehicle.  Never mind that he has bought out the entire rope supply
of a hardware store and his canoe now looks as if it had a gill net
draped over it.

Every time he brakes at an intersection, he expects his canoe to run a
red light.  This is because the rope turned out to be six inches too
short.

The standard and ideal image of a rope is of a tightly woven strand of
fibers of equal diameter its full length.  Anyone who associates
regularly with rope knows that is not the case.  A real rope looks like
this: The first two feet consist of an unraveled portion of hemp
leading up to a big knot whose purpose is to stop the unraveling.  The
hemp section, approximately one inch in diameter, contains three other
permanent knots of unknown or forgotten function and a permanent loop
about the size of a dinner plate.  Tied onto the hemp section is a
length of semi-rotten clothesline.  This in turn joins a stiff blue
nylon water-skiing rope, with the handgrip still attached.  The
water-skiing section is tied to a length of twine, which serves as the
terminal or tie-down end.  This is the rope you use to tie a
twelve-hundred-dollar canoe to the top of your car.  It is six inches
too short.

A thorough knowledge of knots is essential to anyone associating with
rope on a regular basis.  I learned most of my knot-tying during a
stint I served as a Cub Scout.  Mostly what we did at the Cub Scout
meetings was learn to tie knots.  True, we were mildly interested in
knots, but what we really wanted to learn was how to build fires.

"No, no, boys," the den mother would say nervously.  "Tie your knots
and then we'll have cocoa and cookies."  Mrs. Slocum herself did not
know how to tie knots.  If she needed a knot tied, she hired someone to
do it.  Our only source of knot-tying instruction, therefore, was the
Boy Scout Handbook.  The way you tied a bowline, for example, was to
follow this sequence: "The rabbit comes out of its hole, goes around
the tree, and back into its hole."  Then you would pull both ends of
the rope tight and the bowline would disappear.

Anytime you wanted a knot that disappeared when tightened, you tied a
bowline.

It's one of the best knots to know.

Our favorite knot was the hangman's.  This was one of the few useful
knots omitted from the Boy Scout Handbook, which is surprising, since
the handbook at that time was intended to train youngsters to become
adept outdoorsmen.  Although the handbook failed to mention it, few
things are more annoying to an outdoorsman than when, wet, tired, and
hungry, he has to figure out how to tie a hangman's noose after the
camp cook has served only boiled beets for dinner.  We Cubs fashioned
several respectable-looking hangman's knots, much to the dismay of Mrs.
Slocum, who always rushed in with cocoa and cookies before we could run
any field tests.  The woman was all frayed nerves.

The most useful knot was the plain old granny, which has a reputation
for slipping.  The slipping problem can be solved merely by piling one
granny on top of another (not unlike a football scrimmage at an old
folks' home) until the sheer weight of the knot holds it in place.  I
personally still favor the granny over all other knots, although, for
safety's sake, I never tie one that weighs less than half a pound or
about the size of your average grapefruit.

But my knots stay tied.  My old friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon will sign an
affidavit to the truth of this statement.

When we were about ten years old, Eddie, who lived on the farm next to
ours, came over to play one day.  He said he had strict orders from his
mom to be home in an hour.  Otherwise he would be in big trouble.

"Ah, you can stay longer," I said.

"Nope, I can't," Crazy Eddie said.  "Ma cut a switch about six feet
long and said she'd wear it down to the size of a toothpick on me if I
wasn't home by four sharp."

"In that case," I said, "let's play tying up."  Tying up was one of our
favorite games.  It consisted of one person tying the other one up and
seeing how long it took him to get loose.

"Okay, I'll go first," Crazy Eddie said.  "I been thinking of a new way
to tie you up.  Ain't no way you're gonna get loose, unless you beg me
to untie you."

Eddie used about forty feet of clothesline rope to tie me up but came
out six inches too short.  That was why it took me only half an hour to
wiggle free.  "Now it's my turn," I said.  "Step over here, Eddie."  I
pointed to a cast-iron frame that had formerly served as the base for a
wood-burning heater but had obviously been intended for tying someone
up to.  I had Eddie lie down in the middle of the frame and tied each
of his hands and legs to one of the four corners with my compound
granny knots.

Eddie grunted and struggled but couldn't get loose.  Minutes passed.

Eddie got angrier and angrier.  "This is unfair!"  he yelled.

"No, sir," I said.  "There's nothing in the rules that says you can't
use a cast-iron frame to tie up with."  Actually, the only thing in the
rules was that you couldn't tickle a guy or otherwise torment him while
he was tied up.

Because of that limitation, I became bored watching Eddie trying to get
loose.

I went in the house and made myself a sandwich.  By the time I got
back, Eddie was seething with rage.

"When I get loose, I'm going to break all your arms and legs three or
four times apiece!"  he yelled.  Up to that point, I had been thinking
about untying him.  Now I saw that would be unwise and a definite
threat to my health.  Four o'clock came and went.  I began to wish
Eddie would get loose on his own, while I stood off at a safe distance,
because there was no way for me to untie him without considerable risk
to my arms and legs.  Time marched on.

I got out my jackknife and started whittling sticks to calm my
nerves.

"Okay, okay, I give up," Eddie finally said.  "Untie me."

"Promise not to break my arms and legs?"

"Yeah."

"Uncross your fingers," I said, because that canceled out any
promise.

"Okay."

I rushed over and tried to untie the granny knots.  They wouldn't come
undone.  The only thing to do was to cut the rope, which I did.  Eddie
rubbed the circulation back into his wrists and ankles.  Then he leaped
up and threw a half nelson around my neck.

"You promised," I croaked.

"I had my toes crossed."

At that moment, Eddie's mom came around the corner of the house.  She
was carrying the six-foot-long willow switch.  "You're two hours late,
young man!"  she snarled.  "Now march for home!"

"But Ma ...!"  yelled Eddie.

"No buts!  March!"

"See ya, Eddie," I said.

I watched Eddie and his mom cross the field to their house.  Every four
or five steps, I would see Eddie bound into the air.  A half second or
so later, I would hear the sizzle of the switch and Eddie go "YIPE!"

How interesting, I thought.  Why shouldn't the sizzle of the switch and
the "Yipe!"  occur at the same time Eddie bounded into the air?  While
I was contemplating this curiosity with typical scientific detachment,
however, my own mother discovered her clothesline had been cut into a
dozen pieces.  She began casting about for a suitable switch.  This in
turn reminded me of my plan to join up with the French Foreign Legion,
and I immediately set off in search of a recruiting office.  The
Foreign Legion always had need of recruits who were good at tying UP.

Tying things now seems to be an activity of the distant past.  I
remember when store clerks routinely wrapped purchases in paper, zapped
some string around them from a big spool, and broke off the end with a
flick of the wrist and a crisp, satisfying pop that signaled the
completion of the transaction.

Package tying was a craft by which the professional clerk could be
recognized.

When you got home, all your purchases were neatly wrapped and tied, and
you had added to your supply of string for tying up other things around
the house.

But no more.  Now when you get home from shopping all you have is a
plastic bag with your purchases lumped in the bottom of it.  No
string.

If you want string, you have to go out and buy it.  It's sad.  When I
was a boy, entire lives were held together with free string.  Now
everyone seems to be at loose ends!

Perhaps there is no better indication of the demise of tying than the
modern pickup truck.  Have you recently--by recently, I mean the last
thirty years--tried to tie anything down in the bed of a pickup?  It's
impossible.

There is nothing to tie to.

One of the reasons there is nothing to tie to is that pickup designers
have discovered that most people no longer actually carry things in
their pickups, because the paint might get scratched.  I am not of the
paintscratch-fretting school.  I still carry things in the bed of my
pickup.

The other day I went out to a junkyard and bought an old refrigerator
that I plan to turn into an old refrigerator.  I had taken along some
rope to tie the refrigerator down in the pickup bed.  (This is a
precaution I take ever since I had a washer/dryer combo topple out of
the truck on a steep hill and almost rinse and spin-dry a jogger.) The
only way I could tie the old refrigerator down was to wrap the rope all
the way around under the body of the pickup and up the other side,
where it turned out to be six inches too short.

"You don't have enough rope," the junk man said.

"What's new?"  I said.  "There's no such thing as enough rope."

"True," he said, for he was a man who knew rope.  "I guess I'll have to
sell you some baling wire to finish the job."

"Baling wire!"  I exclaimed.  "That's wonderful!  I haven't come across
any baling wire in years."

"Know why?"

"It's an antique now?  A collector's item?"

"You got it, pal.  But I can let you have a couple of pieces for, oh,
say, five dollars."

"Try saying fifty cents."

"Fif ... fif ... fif.  Guess I can't say it.  I can say 'two dollars,'
though."

"Sold."

Naturally, I couldn't use a valuable antique to tie down an old
refrigerator.  So I made do with what was handy.  You don't really need
to wear a belt and shoestrings while you're driving.  On the other
hand, I now wish I had just cinched up the buckle and not added a
granny knot.  It looks odd with a three-piece suit.

Getting It in The Ear One of the more interesting things that can
happen to an angler is to get a barbed hook sunk into his hide.  Such
is the horror and fascination of the experience that many an angler has
contemplated giving up his regular work and hitting the lecture circuit
to entertain audiences around the nation with a dramatic rendering of
his ordeal.

Listening to someone tell of being hooked can be a trying experience.

Often have I observed a group of my friends listening to a fellow
angler relate the grisly details of the extraction of a barbed hook
from some valued and sensitive part of his anatomy.  I can testify to
the looks of disbelief, horror, and revulsion, the gasps and groans.

The listeners, on the other hand, are usually bored stiff.

Sport fishing has now been in vogue for several hundred years, during
which time the removal of barbed fishhooks from the hides of humans has
acquired its own history.  During the early days, when the lord of the
manor hooked himself, he would select one of his serfs to remove the
hook.

Generally speaking, serfs did not look upon this as a plum
assignment.

The serf would grasp the shank of the hook, brace both his feet on the
lord, and pull for all he was worth.  The method was simple and direct
but raised the mortality rate of serfs significantly.  Sometimes two or
three serfs would be expended in the removal of a single hook.

The twentieth century finally arrived with its advances in medicine and
technology, and just in time, too, because the supply of serfs had been
pretty well exhausted.  Fishing partners could now remove hooks from
each other right on the lake or stream, thanks to a new invention:
rusty pliers.  The technique consisted of grasping the shank of the
hook with the pliers, bracing both feet on the hookee, and pulling.

The pliers did away with much of the discomfort the extractor of the
hook formerly suffered from finger cramps.  The invention of ear plugs
also reduced the threat of hearing loss that formerly accompanied the
hook-removal process.

Then a man known only as Earl devised a procedure for removing hooks
that appeared promising.  Earl advised twisting the hook in such a
manner that the point and the barb were forced up through the skin of
the angler.  The barb could then be clipped off and the rest of the
hook easily removed.  He demonstrated this technique on a burly young
man by the name of Bubba, and narrowly escaped with his life.  Earl now
lives in a different town under an assumed identity.  His technique,
however, became widely accepted among anglers.  It can be safely
applied with nothing more than a pair of rusty pliers, a stout chair,
and, depending on the size of the hooked angler, ten to fifteen feet of
good rope.

Getting hooked invariably leads to an instant social occasion.  The
reason for this is that one's fishing partners feel that an audience
for the hook removal will inhibit the hookee from extreme emotional
outbursts.  Even as great chunks of his flesh are gouged out of
him--"great chunks" meaning any the size of a pinhead or larger--the
angler will stoically sit there telling jokes: "Then there was the one
about the chicken and the turtle-o!-and so anyway the rabbit
is-OWWW!-well, the farmer comes home right then and-OW-WW!"

That is why as soon as someone is hooked, one of his companions must
leap to his feet and announce to all the fishermen within a quarter
mile, "Hey, we got a man hooked here!"

It so happens that every fisherman ever born has developed his own
theory for hook removal.  Here, now, is his chance to test the theory
on someone besides himself.  Upon the announcement that a man has been
hooked, all boats on a lake will immediately converge on the scene of
the disaster.  If the hooking occurs on a stream, men, women, and
children will come running from all directions, some charging right
through boiling rapids in their effort to arrive in time and foist off
their theory on the attending "surgeon," usually a man known only as
Earl.

There is a good deal of pushing and shoving as the assembled anglers
struggle with each other to get their hands on the offending hook and
test their particular theory.  Everyone is shouting opinions and
recommending techniques: "Best way to do that ... Twist and pull real
hard ... Take a sharp knife and ... Tie a string between the hook and
the anchor and ..."

After a while the anglers begin swapping tales about the times they got
hooked and how much worse hookings they were than the one here being
witnessed.  Beverages and sandwiches are broken out, and a full-scale
party is soon under way.  Hookings are to fishermen what barn-raisings
were to the pioneers, an opportunity for socializing in an otherwise
solitary enterprise.

I myself have been hooked only twice in my life.  On the first
occasion, Retch Sweeney and I were fishing from a bass boat.  Our motor
had conked out, and we were faced with the prospect of having to paddle
the boat all the way across the lake to the launch area.  The wind had
come up, and as I was making my final cast, a gust whipped my line
around me and I buried the hook in the flab of my left side.  Retch
took charge delighted to have this opportunity to test one of his many
theories for hook removal.

As soon as he had shouted out the requisite, "Hey, we have a man hooked
here!"  (even though we were the only ones on the lake), he cut away my
shirt, pleased with the chance to use his new knife, grabbed a pair of
rusty pliers, and began worrying the hook, although a good deal less
than me.  Frustrated in his effort, he fell back on the traditional
tactic of bracing both feet on the hookee and pulling, thereby
stretching my flab out in the vague shape of a sail.  The wind caught
my flab like a jib and began moving us in the general direction of the
launch ramp.  Retch was all for maintaining this arrangement, because
if the wind held and he could tack to the starboard, it would save us a
good deal of paddling.  I argued against it.  The maneuver, however,
had loosened the hook, and it dropped out of its own accord.

Nevertheless, I do not favor this method and cannot in good faith
recommend it.  On the plus side, the mishap improved my casting
fourfold, and fifteen years passed before I hooked myself again.

The second and most recent hooking occurred while I was fishing with my
irascible neighbor, Alphonse P. Finley.  Finley was winding up for a
cast when I suddenly had the sensation that one of my ears had been
turned into live bait.  Apparently unaware that he had hooked me,
Finley attempted to cast my ear into a patch of lily pads and might
well have succeeded if the ear had been less firmly attached to my
head.  I immediately called Finley's attention to the problem.

Startled, he looked around.  "Cripes!"  he said.  "I thought jaws III
had taken a bite out of you!  And all it is, you've got a set of treble
hooks dangling from your ear.  Where's my rusty pliers?  I've got a
surefire technique for removing hooks from ears.  But first, let me say
this."

"What?"

"Hey, we've got a man hooked over here!"  he shouted.

Once again I was saved the ordeal of an audience, Finley and I being
the only anglers on the lake.

"Forget your technique," I said.  "I'm having a doctor remove this
hook!

Now just get your clippers and snip the line from the hook."

Always one for taking a bad situation and making it worse, Finley
looked around for his clippers, backed up, and bumped against my
head--sinking one of the treble hooks all the way through his
sweatshirt!  My ear was now firmly attached to Finley's back just above
his beltline.

"You'll have to take your sweatshirt off," I said.

"I can't," Finley said.  "The hook went through my long underwear
too."

"Well, if you can't pull the sweatshirt over your head, see if you
can't wiggle out through the neck."

"Finley wiggled and squirmed, grunted and groaned.  No, I can't make
it," he said in a strangled voice.  "Now I've got my arm stuck straight
up through the neck of the sweatshirt and can't get it back in!"

"This is the worst predicament I've ever been in," I said.  "Somehow
we've got to get this boat back to shore, get into your car, drive to
that gas station down the road, and have the attendant cut us loose."

"I have some more bad news for you," Finley said.

"What?"

"I've got to go to the bathroom."

An hour later, we pulled into the gas station.  Carefully, we eased out
of the car, with me cheek to cheek with Finley's backside, and Finley
with his arm sticking straight up out of the neck of his sweatshirt.

Three old codgers, tilted back in their chairs against the station,
watched us curiously, apparently unaccustomed to seeing strangers in
those parts.

Finley, no doubt directing a strained smile at them, croaked, "Would
one of you gentlemen be kind enough to direct me to the men's restroom,
or the ladies', for that matter, whichever is unoccupied at the
moment?"

"Wait!  Stop!"  I shouted.  "Someone cut us loose first!"

The codgers came over for a closer look.  "Dad gum, I see the problem,"
one of them said.  "They's hooked together with fishhooks.  At first I
thought you fellers was just from New York City.  Hey, Ben, bring me
them wire snippers."

In a few seconds, we were snipped apart, and none too soon, for Finley
homed in on the men's room like a heat-seeking missile.  While I stared
after Al, contemplating the peril I'd narrowly escaped, the old codger
who had snipped us apart tugged at the lure dangling from my ear.

"Let me have a go at the hook in your ear," he said.  "I got a special
technique for getting' hooks out of ears."

"Why not?"  I said.  "Okay, have at it, Mr.  ... Mr.  ..."

The old gent smiled and pulled a rusty pair of pliers from his hip
pocket.  "Just call me Earl," he said.

Garage-Sale Hype Ninety-eight percent of all hunting and fishing time
is spent getting ready to go hunting and fishing.  Getting ready
consists primarily of buying stuff.  The easiest place to buy the stuff
is at a sporting goods store, which has the disadvantage of fixed
prices.  Often, however, you can find just what you're looking for at a
garage sale, where, if you don't mind haggling a bit, you can get a
used item for scarcely more than you would pay for a new one.

Furthermore, fish and game laws in all fifty states permit you to refer
to any sporting gear bought at a garage sale as "a terrific bargain."

If the item proves to be defective, you can always return it to the
operator of the garage sale, and he will happily return your money, but
only if you can provide identification proving you are a recent escapee
from a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane.

I myself am a skilled garage-sale shopper.  Whenever I'm looking for a
real bargain on some outdoor gear, I buy the first edition of the
Sunday newspaper Saturday evening.  That gives me an edge on the other
bargain hunters who might scan the classified ads in the later editions
for the same neat stuff I'm after.

Last Saturday evening I was sitting in my study (also known as the
laundry room) perusing the classified section of the Sunday paper when
my irritable neighbor, Al Finley, burst in on me.

"Darn it, Finley!"  I said.  "Knock before you come charging into
somebody's house.  You startled me."

"Good!"  Finley snapped.  "Besides, I did knock."

"You did?  I guess I didn't hear you because the washing machine was
running.  Anyway, when I didn't answer your knock you should have
realized I wasn't home and gone away."

I knew, of course, that Finley had come over to borrow back some of his
tools.  I really wouldn't mind loaning him his tools so much if he
would just take better care of them and return them promptly.

"I need my electric drill back.  Let's go get it!  Right now!"  he
pleaded, tugging playfully on my ear.

"Okay, okay," I said.  "Just wait until I finish checking the ads for
garage sales.  Whoa!  What's this?  Retch Sweeney is holding a garage
sale tomorrow.  Mostly outdoor gear.  Rods, reels, assorted fishing
tackle, his old pump shotgun with the bent barrel, a bunch of other
stuff.  What say we beat it over to his house, or rather his garage,
and jump on some bargains before the other bargain hunters show up
tomorrow?"

"That elbow!"  (Finley has the habit of applying crude anatomical names
to people he doesn't like.) "What would I want with any of his junk?"

"Well, you did lose that spinning reel over the side of the boat last
week.  Maybe you can pick up another one at a bargain price at Retch's
garage sale."

"Oh yeah?  You're the one who'd better pick up another reel for me,
preferably at a new price.  It was you who dropped it over the side of
the boat.  I wasn't even fishing with you!"

"Let's not quibble over meaningless details," I said, grabbing my
jacket off the clothes hamper.  "We'd best get over to Retch's garage
just in case some premature shoppers scarf up all the good stuff."

"Much as I hate to admit it, that might not be a bad idea," Finley
said.

"Darn right," I said.  "We'll take your car.  It'll be better that
way."

"Why is it better that we always take my car?"

"It's just better, that's why.  Do I constantly have to explain
everything to you, Finley?"

"Ye gads!"

The light was still on in Retch's garage, and there was no sign of
other bargain hunters lurking about.  Retch was arranging some of his
sale items on top of his Ping-Pong table and another table he had made
out of a sheet of plywood and a couple of sawhorses.  Boxes of
tattered, torn, worn, rusty, bent, battered, and broken items of
outdoor gear were lined up along the walls.  There were snowshoes,
empty shell casings, rods, reels, assorted fishing lures, a couple of
landing nets, a canoe paddle, a rubber raft, three outboard motors, and
a few hundred other items heaped in random piles about the garage.

"Wow!"  I said.  "This is quite a sale."

"Yeah," Retch said, stepping back to examine the arrangement he had
been working on.  "I figure I'll sell enough to buy that bass boat I've
been looking at."

Finley snorted.  "You silly elbow, you think somebody is actually going
to pay money for this conglomeration of dismal junk?  You've got to be
kidding!"  He poked gingerly at a rusty old tackle box.

"Careful with the merchandise, Finley," Retch said.  "You break it,
you've bought it."

"Aha, I see you've already picked up the lingo of marketing.  But it's
going to take a lot more than lingo to sell this detritus."

"Detritus?  That's a tackle box--an antique tackle box!  Cripes, don't
you even know an antique tackle box when you see one?  Anyhow, it might
just interest you to know, Finley, that I am a master of sales
psychology.  A lot of guys that show up at a garage sale, all they plan
on doing is looking.  Oh, sure, if you got a dirt-cheap price on
something they want, maybe then they'll buy it.  But then I lay the old
psychology on them, and before they know it they're walking out of here
with an armload of merchandise."

Finley chuckled.  "Psychology!  I suspect you know about as much
psychology as a mollusk."

"Well, maybe I do and maybe I don't.  it just depends."

"Depends on what?"

"On what a mollusk is.  Okay, Finley, you think you're so smart, I'll
just give you an example of how to send a bargain hunter into a buying
frenzy.

Now the first thing you do is price everything up real high.  Say about
triple what you figure something is worth.  That gives you a margin for
haggling, should it come to that.  Of course, you don't mark the prices
on anything--you keep them in your head.  So in comes a guy and he's
kinda sniffing over your stuff, thinking you're gonna ask an arm and a
leg for everything.  So he picks up a nice little reel, for instance,
and he figures if he haggles real hard he can get it for maybe ten
bucks.  He says, 'How much you asking' for this battered-up old
reel?"

I says, real dumb like, 'Gosh, I don't know.  How does two dollars
sound?"  Well, his ol' eyeballs light up and start dancing around over
the rest of my merchandise like he's finally struck the mother lode of
garage sales.  'How much you want for them snowshoes?"  he yells.  I
says, 'Oh, gosh, I guess fifty bucks would ... And he yells, 'I'll take
'em!  How much you want for ...?"  Before you know it, he's got a bunch
of my jun-uh, merchandise, and I got all his money.  See, I've suckered
the poor bugger right into a buying frenzy without him even knowing
it.

But here's the tricky part.  Every time he asks me a price, I yawn,
just like I'm so bored with the deal I can hardly stay awake.  Works
like a charm!"

Finley looked at me.  "Can you believe this nonsense?  Buying frenzy!

Garage-sale hype!  Now I've heard it all!"

"You ain't heard it all, Finley," Retch said.  "There's a whole lot
more, but this ain't no seminar for your personal education in how to
operate a garage sale.  Besides, I got work to do.  Come back tomorrow
and I'll give you a demonstration of buying frenzy."

"I may just do that," Finley said.  "Garage-sale psychology!  Ha!"

"Yeah, me too," I said.  "I may come to observe your technique.  I've
got a bunch of jun-uh, used items that I wouldn't mind unload-uh,
selling.  I find it kind of hard to believe, though, that someone would
actually fall for this malarkey."

"He's out of his mind," Finley said, flipping shut the lid of the
tackle box and blowing the rust off his fingers.  "There's no way
anyone old enough to be out alone without his mother would fall for any
of this elbow's psychology.  I would ..."  Finley suddenly nudged me in
the ribs.  "Look over there on the Ping-Pong table," he whispered.

"That reel!  It's just like the one of mine you dropped out of the
boat, you kneecap.  That was a forty-dollar reel.  Now's your chance to
replace it.  The elbow probably wants eighty for it."

"Yeah, you're probably right," I said.  I walked over and picked up the
reel.  "How much you asking for this old beat-up spinning reel,
Retch?"

"That old thing?"  he said, scratching his head and yawning.  "Oh, I
don't know.  How does two dollars sound?"

Finley chuckled all the way home.  He even let me drive his car, so he
could concentrate on his chuckling.  "I can't get over the elbow and
his 'sales psychology."  Sometime I'd like to put on a disguise and
sneak into one of his garage sales and let him try to pull that stuff
on me.  I could hardly contain myself when he yawned after you asked
the price of the reel.  Two bucks!  Now, that is, if I do say so
myself, a bargain--a reel bargain!  Get it?  Look.  It's just exactly
like my reel.  I had my initials scratched on it right here, where it
has the initials A.F which happen to be my initials too, and this is my
reel!"

"Yeah, Finley," I said, "I meant to mention that.  You see, after I
dropped your reel over the side of the boat, Retch stripped off all his
clothes and dove down and retrieved it off the bottom.  But when I
asked for it back, he claimed salvage rights.  That's probably why he
let us have it for two bucks.  just to be nice.  Thanks, by the way,
for loaning me the two bucks.  Don't let me forget to pay you back."

We both had a good laugh over that zinger.

"I'm just happy to get the reel back," Finley said.  "Say, the
snowshoes are poking me in the back of the head.  Couldn't we put them
in the trunk?"

"Nope, trunk's full.  Last thing I could squeeze in was the antique
tackle box."

"How about on top of the car?  We could tie them to the Ping-Pong
table."

"Naw, we got too much stuff up there already."

Finley started chuckling again.  "I can't get over the elbow and his
garage-sale psychology!  I'll tell you one good thing about his
operation, though."

"What's that?"

"He takes credit cards."

How to Get Started in Bass Fishing Many people think they can start
fishing for bass just anytime they please and pick up the techniques as
they go along.  They are right, of course, but in the process they will
miss many of the important nuances so important to the sport.  Also,
they will learn many bad habits and get themselves in embarrassing
situations, most of which can be avoided by following the advice set
forth below.

You should first buy (note: "buy" is an important and frequently
repeated term in the bass angler's technical vocabulary, so learn to
pronounce it properly) several essential tools and materials.  These
are, in order of importance, a hammer, saw, nails, paint, shingles, and
a bunch of boards.

Once you have everything assembled, begin building an addition onto
your house.  You will need this addition to store all your bass tackle
in.  Do not make the mistake of thinking you can simply keep your
tackle in an extra bedroom or scattered about the living room, unless
you are a bachelor or wish soon to become one.  Build the addition.

Now that your addition is built, it is time to go tackle shopping.  Go
down to your local tackle shop and buy everything in sight.  You will
eventually end up with all of it anyway, so you might as well get it
over with.  Put the tackle in your new addition.  If there is any left
over, store it in an extra bedroom or scatter it about the living
room.

Among the stuff you will have bought are things called tackle boxes,
which are nothing more than boxes in which you keep tackle.  Do not
confuse tackle boxes with tackle boxing, which is a form of combat used
to decide who gets to use the last lure that is the only thing catching
fish.  Also, tackle boxes should not be confused with fishing tackle,
an extreme maneuver used to prevent a companion from getting to the
next fishing hole before you do.

You will notice right away that the tackle boxes are divided up into
little sections, which allow you to keep your tackle organized
according to kind, size, color, etc. Pay no attention to the little
sections.  Just grab handfuls of tackle and stuff the boxes full.

Since the contents of your tackle boxes will be in a big mess after
your first fishing trip anyway, this shortcut will save you a great
deal of time.  (Millions of hours of fishing time are wasted each year
by anglers needlessly organizing their tackle boxes before each trip.

Don't fall into this trap.) Now, once the tackle is stuffed into the
boxes, you may find ends of plastic worms and line sticking out.  Clip
these off.  Bass fishermen should be neat.

Next, you must begin learning the names of all the stuff you bought.

Say that you happen to be the only person to catch a fish in three
hours or so.

Other bass anglers will pull up next to your boat and say, "What did
you catch it on?"  If you don't know the name of your lure, all you can
say is something like "A little green wiggly thing."  The other
fishermen will laugh and poke fun at you, while frantically sorting
through their tackle boxes for little green wiggly things.  It can be
embarrassing.  Think how much better it will be if you can reply to
your inquisitors, "I caught it on a Mister Twister Chartreuse Flake
Double Tail."  Yes, I know it's difficult to say.  That's why you must
begin practicing right now.

In learning the names of your tackle, you probably should start with
plastic worms.  Your basic worms have simple enough names: Black,
Purple, Blue, Red, etc. Eventually, though, you will want to move up
to your power worms: Smoke, Motor Oil, Black Grape, and Amber Flake.

You may think those names are more appropriate to members of a street
gang than to plastic worms.

The names were in fact borrowed from members of a street gang, who took
up bass fishing and went straight.  These plastic worms are terrific
fish-getters.  A bass will start to nibble on Motor Oil and Amber Flake
will sneak up behind and mug him.  It's a good idea, however, not to be
caught alone in the dark with more than six of these power worms.  You
never know.

They may claim you looked like a bass.

Once you have learned all the names of all your fishing tackle, which
shouldn't take longer than two years, you are ready to go out on the
water and start looking for bass.  The first thing you will discover is
that bass are very hard to see, because they are covered up with
water.

This may strike you as taking unfair advantage, as it does me, but that
is the way the contest is played.  To the inexperienced eye, all water
looks pretty much the same.

Consequently, you will spend a great deal of time casting your lures
into water in which your average bass wouldn't be caught dead.  So what
do you do?

I recommend that you find an experienced bass fisherman to take you out
and instruct you on the fine points of catching bass.  My first bass
mentor was a chap by the name of Retch Sweeney.  On the first day of
instruction, he took me to a spot where I would never have guessed a
bass might be hanging out.  "I bet you would never guess a bass would
be hanging out here," he said.

"Well, just you cast your Yellow Skirt, Yellow Twister Tail into that
brush by the shore and I'll show you something."  I made ten or fifteen
casts with the spinner bait.  "See?"  Retch said.  "A bass would never
hang out here.  Let this be a lesson to you."

In this way, I quickly learned all the places in our area where not to
fish for bass, and also that I had better find another bass-fishing
instructor.

My next instructor was a man by the name of Smokey Joe.  Smokey taught
me a great deal about terminology, particularly what words to use when
you jerk your lure off of what you think is the grasp of a submerged
log but turns out to be the grasp of a submerged bass the size of a
log.  Some anglers will respond to this situation by shaking their
heads and calmly commenting, "Gosh, a funny thing just happened.  I
jerked my line because I thought I was hooked up on a log and it was
the biggest bass I ever saw in my life.  Well, that's the way it
goes."

Never again go fishing with a bass angler who responds in this way.

He is not cut out for the sport and will be a bad influence on you.

Smokey Joe showed me how to respond properly to the log/bass
situation.

As he snapped the lure free and the monstrous bass thrashed briefly
through Smokey's field of vision, he dropped his rod and reel into the
boat.  Then he leaned forward, grasping the gunnels with both hands,
his eyeballs protruding only slightly in the direction of the empty
water through which the bass had churned a moment before, as if the
sheer intensity of his stare might bring the bass back.  All this
while, Smokey was noisily sucking air, expanding his lungs until his
shirttails were drawn right out of his grimy jeans.  I then saw the
reason for his gripping the gunnels, because he began to jump up and
down with both feet, and his grasp on the gunnels prevented him from
flying out of the boat.  (I recognized this as an important tip, and
made a mental note to remember just how it was done.) He then used the
air in his lungs to power a long, quavering scream of anguish that
echoed up and down the lake, and for miles away fishermen said to each
other, "Smokey Joe must have lost a trophy bass he thought was a
log."

At last the scream dribbled out into ominous silence, and I wondered
what Smokey would do next.  I hoped it didn't involve me.  I was
relieved to see him sucking air once more, and I wondered if it was for
another scream, even though I thought he had exhausted all
possibilities for a scream in his first effort.  But he didn't scream
again.

Instead, he moved into the terminology stage, employing exotic words I
had never heard before, occasionally and deftly working in the terms
"bass" and "log," but they were so burdened down with adjectives it was
difficult to notice them.  When he reached full pitch, I figured we
could have turned off the electric motor and powered the boat at
trolling speed with nothing more than Smokey's torrent of
terminology.

At peak volume, it probably achieved thirty-five pounds of thrust,
perhaps more.  I realized then that I would need several more years of
bass fishing to achieve anything comparable.

When we finished fishing for the day, we pulled in to the dock.  Some
other anglers were just going out.  "Any luck?"  one of them asked.

"Caught a few," Smokey said.  "And I lost the biggest bass I ever saw
in my life."

"Gee, that's too bad," the man said.

Smokey shrugged and smiled.  "That's the way it goes."  I knew then
that there were nuances to bass fishing that I had never even
suspected.

As the Worm Squirms I was up at my cabin the other day, when young
Lonnie Bird stopped by to show me a seven-pound bass he had just caught
in the river.  A s-e-v-e-n-p-o-u-n-d bass!  Never had I seen such a
bass taken out of the river, the very same river that for twenty years
I had beaten to a froth from mouth to source with every lure known to
man and never landed a bass over two pounds.  My head reeled at the
sight of the thing.  From my river!  A SEVEN-POUND BASS!  I had to
force myself to breathe.  My whole life as an angler flashed before my
eyes, and I thought I must surely be dying from the mere sight of this
finny miracle.

"Not a bad fish, Lonnie," I said.  "Where'd you catch him?"

"Up in Crawford Slough.  You know where those submerged stumps are at
the head of the slough?"

Crawford Slough!  Cripes!  The submerged stumps!  Oh, the pain!  I
can't stand the pain of it!

"Uh-hunh.  Crawford Slough.  Well, you got yourself a pretty nice fish
there, Lonnie.  Probably caught it on a crank bait, right?"

"Nope, a worm."

A worm!  Of course!  Why didn't I think of that?  Aaaaiiii!

"Yes, I've found that some of the larger bass will go for a worm this
time of year.  I bet it was a purple silverflaked worm with a gray
tail.

Right?"

"Nope.  A real worm."

"What do you mean, a real worm?"

"I mean a real worm, one that ain't plastic."

"Aha!  The kind of worm that you dig ..."

"Yeah, the kind that you buy in the little round paper cartons out of
the dairy food section at the Super Mart."

"Oh, that kind of real worm.  Well, to tell you the truth, Lonnie, I
feel it's much more sporting to use artificial worms.  I would have to
be pretty hard up for bass before I would resort to fishing with live
worms I bought out of the dairy section at the Super Mart."

"Won't do you no good to rush in there after a carton of them, because
I bought the last of the Super Mart's worms this morning.  The early
bird gets the worms!  Ha!  Get it?"

"Yeah, I get it, you glutton, you hoarder of worms!  Listen, I'll give
you a buck for a dozen worms right now, no questions asked."

"Nope.  By the time the worm man comes around to the Super Mart again,
I'll have caught all the seven-pound bass out of Crawford Slough!"

"Okay, Lonnie, I'll show you.  I'll just go dig my own worms.

"Dig your own?  What do you mean, dig your own?  You think worms just
grow in the ground?  Worms come in round paper cartons from big worm
ranches.

Everybody knows that.  Shoot, if you could just dig 'em out of the
ground, the worm man would go bust."

As soon as Lonnie had departed with his monstrous bass, I grabbed a
shovel and spaded up an acre of ground.  Not a single worm put in an
appearance.

The following week I was waiting at the Super Mart for the worm man to
bring in a fresh shipment.  A late-model pickup truck drove up and a
tall, lanky gentleman got out.  He was wearing cowboy boots, a
ten-gallon hat, and a nice leather vest.  He lifted a crate of little
round paper cartons from the back of the pickup.

"You must be the worm man," I said.

"Actually, I prefer to be known as a worm rancher," he said frostily.

"I'm sorry," I said.  "I should have known--the boots, the hat.  How
big's your ranch?"

"Almost half an acre."

"Half an acre," I said.  "Well, I suppose you can raise quite a few
worms on half an acre."

"Yep.  Right now I'm runnin' three hundred thousand head on the north
pasture alone."

"Wow!  How big's the north pasture?"

"About this big, give or take a couple of inches.  Most of the stock's
out on the open range, though.  You might like to come out and watch
the roundup."

"A roundup!  How many hands does it take for a roundup?"

"Six usually.  Mine, my wife's, and my son Grover's."

"Sounds exciting," I said.  "It would be worth the trip just to see the
itty-bitty branding iron.  For right now, though, I'd just like to buy
some worms off you."

"Shore thing, podner.  How many you want?"

"Oh, about fifty head."

While the worm rancher was counting out my purchase, I started
wondering whatever happened to regular old worms, the kind you dig out
of the ground rather than out of the dairy case at a grocery
store--ranch-raised worms.

I'll admit that I'm glad to see the resurgence of worms, whatever their
source.  For a while, I thought they might have disappeared forever.  I
remember going through the miniature-marshmallow phase of fish bait.

It was disgusting.  Pastel marshmallows!  Remember?  Arguments would
break out over what was the best marshmallow bait, the pinks or the
greenies.  True anglers were ashamed to walk into a store and buy a
package of pastel miniature marshmallows.  "My little boy likes to eat
them," you'd say to the clerk.

"Yeah, sure," she'd say.  "And my dog, Rex, plays the violin."  Or
maybe some other anglers would ask you what you caught your fish on,
and you'd say a No.

16 Royal Coachman on a one-ounce tippet, and about then a miniature
pink marshmallow would fall out of your fishing vest and bounce up and
down on the dock like a Super Ball.  And you would squish it with your
foot, but it would be too late.  What I hated most about bait
marshmallows was that they wouldn't sink when they came off the hook.

Soon there would be these rainbow waves of miniature marshmallow
slopping around the lake.  They were pretty, yes, but they lacked that
gritty, smelly, slimy essence that true fishermen love about real fish
bait.

Next came the canned-corn phase.  Not just any canned corn would do
either.  It had to be white niblet corn.  On opening day of fishing
season, five thousand fishermen would descend on a little lake near my
home, and every one of them would have his little can of white niblet
corn.  Some of the anglers would actually open the cans of corn at home
on electric can openers!

They were despised by the corn purists, who insisted on hacking open
the can with a dull jackknife.  Unlike marshmallows, the niblets of
corn sank when they came off the hook.  After the first couple weeks of
fishing season, the bottom of the lake would be covered with fermenting
corn.  Toward the end of summer, the lake approached 85 proof.  The
perch were already pickled when you caught them.  They would lie on
their backs in the live well, hiccuping.

White niblet corn and miniature pastel marshmallows were enough to give
an old-time wormer like myself the galloping shudders.  Kids would go
into a store and buy marshmallows and corn and think that was all there
ever was to getting bait.  When I was a boy, catching worms was more of
a challenge than catching fish.  Some of our worms were bigger than
most of our fish.  We bragged about big worms we had dug.  We lied
about bigger worms we hadn't dug.

We were worm snobs.  Artificial flies were for sissies.  We'd ridicule
a kid right off the creek for fishing a dry fly.  "Whatsa matter," we'd
say, scared of worms?"

I was a good wormer, but not a great one.  Dum-dum Harris was a great
wormer--the best!  If there had been an Olympic event for worming,
Dum-dum would have taken the gold.  He wasn't all that bright about
most things.  He'd been in fourth grade longer than most of us had been
in school.  The teacher thought of him almost as part of the
woodwork.

Once she tried to screw a pencil sharpener onto his chest.  Dum-dum
helped her!  But he was a genius when it came to finding worms.

Toward the end of July, the clay soil in our part of the country would
bake into one great ceramic tile.  Once you had chipped through the
tile, you would start shoveling your way toward China.  It took you so
long to dig down to moist earth, where a worm might possibly be, that
by the time you discovered you'd dug a dry hole, it was too late to dig
another.  If you managed to find one worm, you could go fishing for a
couple of hours, pinching little sections off him to rebait the hook.

Finally, you would be down to one little half-inch section of worm, and
you and your buddy would be fighting to see who got it.  Then Dum-dum
would show up.  He would actually fish whole worms.  If a worm got even
a little soggy, he would toss it into the creek and bait up another
one.  Dum-dum was the first person I ever saw practice conspicuous
consumption.

Finally, by August, the rest of the boys would be down to fishing with
manure-pile worms, tiny, pale, squiggly things.  Dum-dum would come
along with a can overflowing with big fat night crawlers.

"Mighty sick-looking worms you got there," he'd say, flipping out a
half-pound night crawler.

"Yeah," one of us would reply.  "Well, you'd be sick-looking too, if
you were raised in a manure pile."

Sometimes Dum-dum would take mercy on us.  "C'mon, Dum-dum, give us
some worms," we'd beg.  "We dug up half the county and didn't find a
single worm."

"Got just enough for myself," he'd say.  "But I'll help you find
some."

Then he'd turn around and look this way and that, studying various
clods of dirt.  After a bit, he would walk over to a clod and pull it
up, revealing a whole convention of worms.  Dum-dum, however, didn't
perform this service free of charge.  Usually it would cost us our
school hot-lunch desserts until about next Easter.  We could scarcely
believe we had frittered away the easy worms of May and June and were
now forced to pay loan-shark prices to Dum-dum.

One of the advantages of worming, we discovered early on, was that it
discouraged little girls from wanting to go fishing with us.  When we
got to be sixteen, however, we learned that it also discouraged big
girls from wanting to go fishing with us.  Most of us switched to flies
then, claiming that worms really weren't a sporting bait.  After thirty
years and more of fishing with flies and other artificial lures, few
things would make me return to worms.  One of them is a seven-pound
bass that may have escaped Lonnie Bird up at Crawford Slough.

After the worm rancher had stacked up my little round paper cartons of
fifty worms, I pulled out a couple dollar bills and asked him how much
I owed him.

"Let's see," he said, scratching his head.  "This is always the hard
part.  What's fifty cents times fifty?  Shoot, I'll go get my
calculator."

"Hey, don't bother," I said.  "That works out to twenty-five
dollars."

"it does?  Okay, I'll take your word for it.  That'll be twenty-five
dollars."

"Twenty-five dollars!"  I screamed.  "That's fifty cents a worm!"

"Yep," he said, grinning.  "Or you could pay me all your hot-lunch
desserts up until next Easter."

"What?"  I said.  "Dum-dum?  My gosh, it is you--Dum-dum Harris!"

I don't know why I hadn't recognized him right off.  Not that many
people go around with a pencil sharpener screwed to their chest.

Scoring A couple of years ago, I was on an antelope hunt in Wyoming
with William Harold (Hal) Nesbitt, the executive director of the Boone
& Crockett Club.  I tried to explain to Hal why some of my big game
animals should have been listed in the Boone & Crockett record book,
but he wouldn't listen.  My one complaint about Boone & Crockett is
that it's just too fussy about scoring.

The McManus System of Big Game Trophy Scoring would simplify the whole
business, and, of course, get me into the record book where I belong.

I told Hal about a great shot I had made on a huge elk in Montana a few
years back.  Even with the Boone & Crockett system, that elk would have
scored 380 points.

"Well," Hal said, "you should have taken it to an official Boone &
Crockett scorer."

"How could I do that?"  I said.  "I missed the elk.  But only by an
inch.

So now you tell me I can't be in the Boone & Crockett because of one
lousy inch!  That's what I mean, Hal--you B&C guys are just too
fussy."

If the people who run Boone & Crockett had any sensitivity at all to a
hunter's feelings, they would include a category called "Near Misses on
Big Game Trophies."

Another thing I told Hal was that Boone & Crockett should let the
hunter score his own game and report it himself.  Would I lie about the
score?  Of course not.  It really irritates me that Boone & Crockett
might assume I would be dishonest about such a serious matter.

Hal pointed out that in his excitement over his trophy the hunter might
not follow the prescribed procedures for scoring and thereby arrive at
a score not in agreement with the trophy's actual dimensions.

"Well, of course not," I said.  "My scoring always exceeds the trophy's
actual dimensions at the time of its demise.  What we're talking about
here is merely the process by which a game animal whose natural life
span has been terminated at middle age or younger is allowed to reach
full maturity in the hunter's mind, through a series of complicated
calculations.  Usually--nay, always--this maturing process results in
massive racks of near-perfect symmetry.  These become part of the
hunter's permanent mental record of the animal.  It's simply a matter
of taking care to shoot an animal that possesses the right set of
genes.  If you wanted proof, we could send you a few chromosomes and
you could study the antler genes in them and find that the genes
coincide with our judgment of the trophy's dimensions at full
maturity.

Hey, how about that, Hal?  Good idea?"

That's a problem with the executive director of the Boone & Crockett
Club.  He doesn't know a really good idea when he hears one.  Still, I
thought when he returned to his office in Washington, D.C Nesbitt would
at least ponder my suggestions and eventually come to realize the good
sense they make.

But no.  I have just received a book titled Measuring and Scoring North
American Big Game Trophies by none other than William H. Nesbitt and a
coauthor, Dr. Philip L. Wright.  Not once is the McManus Trophy
Scoring System mentioned, and I had to read the whole darn book to find
that out.

Until I manage to bring out The Complete McManus Book of Scoring Big
Game Trophies (three pages, with large illustrations), hunters who want
to see how their big game ranks according to Boone & Crockett standards
may want to get a copy of the Nesbitt-Wright book.

he book includes all score charts and procedures and "covers all
thirty-four categories of native big game."  I must admit I was
surprised by the thirty-four categories of big game.  I thought there
were only bear, deer, elk, goat, antelope, sheep, moose, and turkey.

Strangely, Nesbitt and Wright overlooked turkey, but include walrus and
muskox!  I suppose walrus and muskox are all right, but I think the
authors made a monumental error in omitting turkey.  They are no doubt
prejudiced by the fact that the turkey has only two legs, unless you
count the turkey my wife bought for last Thanksgiving, which had
three.

Well, I told her I wasn't going to eat any deformed, mutated turkey no
matter how much she threatened me, but it tasted all right.  Now where
was I?  Oh, yes, the walrus doesn't have any legs at all to speak of,
and Nesbitt and Wright included it.  So why not put in the turkey?

Just ask yourself, which would your spouse let you display in the
living room, a mount of a walrus or a turkey?  Right, neither one, but
just for the sake of argument, ask yourself that.

Even though Measuring and Scoring North American Big Game Trophies
fails to include the McManus System or turkey, I found myself studying
and memorizing pertinent information in some of the chapters and
charts.  I figured that the next time I went to a big game show, I
could use it.  I'd walk up to a guy standing smugly next to his
monstrous elk rack and say, "Note the point developed from the side of
the main beam adjacent to the normal point, G-4.  Do you understand
what I mean by G-4?  Why, it's this point right here.  On a Roosevelt's
elk, this point would be considered normal and designated as G-5.  On
an American elk, as you have here, it is considered abnormal.  Too bad,
pal.  You must take your horns and leave immediately."

One of the best sections in the book is instructions on how to
calculate the score of your own trophy, using common tools found around
the house: calipers, carpenter square, alligator clips, tape measure,
and so on.  I've already had occasion to use my information.  At
Kelly's Bar and Grill the other night, I happened to hear a couple of
young bachelor friends of mine, Phil and Ernie, mention the word
"scoring."  From the intensity of their discussion, I judged they were
very serious about the subject, and Phil indicated it was a matter of
prime importance for him to score that very evening.  Why he would put
off scoring a trophy until after dark I didn't know, but Phil, as you
will see, is a bit odd anyway.

"Hey, scoring," I said, "I'm something of an expert on that."

They both laughed.  "C'mon, man, quit putting us on," Phil said
presently.  "A pudgy old guy like you?  Ha!"

"Oh yeah?"  I said.  "I'll have you know I just finished reading a book
about it.  I bet you guys don't even know the basic equipment for
scoring."

I could tell I had them there, because they both looked embarrassed.

"'Ha!"  yourself," I said.  "I thought so.  Sure, you probably figure
all you need is a carpenter's square and a measuring tape.  But I'll
bet you've never even considered using a caliper."

"Get away, man!"  Phil said.  "I don't want to hear it!"

"I thought not," I said.  "And how about alligator clips?  You've never
even considered them, have you?"

"Hey, c'mon!"  Phil said, grimacing.  "You're getting too weird even
for ole Ernie here."

"You guys just don't want to learn how to do a thing right," I said.

"You probably won't even bother to read my book, The McManus System of
Scoring, when it comes out."

"Probably not," Ernie said.

"In any case, you should learn proper scoring technique," I said.  "For
example, Ernie, that moose I saw you with last fall could have made
Boone & Crockett."

Well, I don't know what set Ernie off, but he went bonkers.  I suppose
he'd been drinking too much coffee or not getting enough sleep.

Anyway, while Phil wrestled him to the floor, I made a quick exit,
recalling belatedly that some people just can't take a compliment, and
Ernie is one of them.

Later, I learned that there might have been some confusion in the use
of the word "scoring" between the boys and me.  Apparently, in some
quarters "scoring" means successfully making the acquaintance of a
person of the opposite sex and questionable character.  I was a little
embarrassed by the misunderstanding, I'll admit, but nevertheless I had
managed to save both Phil and Ernie from achieving their unsavory
purpose: Kelly's bartender chucked the two of them into the street
because of the ruckus.  They'll thank me someday, too, although from
what I hear from mutual friends, it won't be anytime in the near
future.

A Road Less Traveled By In his poem "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost
wrote of two roads diverging in a wood, and he took "the one less
traveled by."  It's a wonder he didn't see me somewhere along the way. 
I was wearing my cowboy hat, a red-and-black plaid shirt, and a worried
look.  People who take roads less traveled by often wear worried
looks.

I love driving roads less traveled by, the lesser the better.  My wife,
Bun, and I were huckleberrying in the mountains the other day, and I
pointed to a road less traveled by that diverged off the main Forest
Service arterial.

"Let's go up that road," I said.  "Probably find some good picking."

"What road?"  she said.  "I don't see any road."

"Right there," I said.  "On the other side of the ditch.  The tracks
are grown over a bit with brush, but you can see where the road starts
to wind up the mountain.  Brush in the track is a good sign, because
that indicates no one has gone up the road in a while.  Therefore, we
can conclude that no one has picked the berries on top of the
mountain."

"Brush?  Trees are growing in that track!"

"Well, yes, but they are small trees.  That's even better, because it
tells us that no one has gone up the road in a couple of years."

"Or possibly this century!"  Bun cried.  "We're not going up that
'road,' as you so imaginatively describe it.  That's nothing but a
crack in the woods!"

"And you claim to be a devotee of Robert Frost," I said.  "What would
old Bob think of you now?"

"Frost?  What's he got to do with this insanity?"

"Never mind.  Anyway, what we'll do is just drive up the road a little
ways, and if it looks too rough, we'll turn around and come back."

Reluctantly, Bun accepted this suggestion, which is an old but good
ruse, and wives usually fall for it.

I put the spurs to Hoss, my old four-wheel-drive, and we went bucking
and snorting through the ditch and up the bank to the road less
traveled by, scarcely bouncing enough to flatten the crown of my cowboy
hat against the roof of the cab.  Bun slid her glasses back up her nose
and checked the buckle on her seat belt.  "I really hate this," she
joked.  I laughed appreciatively at her spunky wit.

Hoss plowed through the ten-foot-high brush, plodded on through a small
rocky stream, and almost pooped out in a swampy area on the far side.

Then he charged up to high ground, where the road, or possibly an old
avalanche, was strewn with boulders the size of basketballs.  We
maneuvered around some of the basketballs, climbed over the rest, and
sent a few of them dribbling down the grade behind us.  A pile of shale
had slid off the mountain onto the road ahead of us.  One side of Hoss
was wedged up against a rock wall; the other side extended out over a
precipice by half the width of a tire.

"Stop!"  Bun demanded shrilly.  "Turn around and go back this
instant!"

Calmly discharging cold sweat, I ignored her absurd demand.  To
distract her from the illusion that we were in an impossible
predicament, I exclaimed cheerily, "Look, Bun, a bald eagle!  Don't you
love to watch eagles soar?"

"Not when I'm looking straight down at them," she said.

"Yes," I said, "this perspective does take something away from their
majesty.  Well, I'm sure the road will improve soon."

I was lying, of course.  Roads less traveled by never get better, only
worse.  Still, a modest white lie does little harm and some good.  It
can calm a nervous spouse and distract her from clawing up the
upholstery.

"Now," I said, "when we go over that shale pile ahead, we will tilt
rather sharply toward the brink of the cliff and may even slide
sideways a few inches, but that is only normal in situations such as
this."

I could see that these words had the desired calming effect on Bun,
because she dabbed the perspiration from her forehead with a swatch of
upholstery and even gave me a tiny, if grim, smile.  Smiling with
clenched teeth produces a rather grotesque effect, however, and I made
a mental note to call this to her attention at a later time, provided
there was a later time.

We crossed the shale pile without harm, except for possible hearing
loss as the result of loud shrieking in a closed cab.  As I told Bun,
loud shrieking is wonderful for relieving tension and she should have
joined in.  I get really annoyed at people who bottle up their
tension.

As I expected, the road deteriorated quickly beyond the shale pile, and
old Hoss began to whinny and slip and stumble.  "Well," I said, "time
to drop into four-wheel drive.  I know some outdoorsmen who are so
stupid they drive into a remote place in four-wheel drive until they
get stuck.  Then they're up the creek.  The thing to do is go in
two-wheel until you get stuck and then you have four-wheel to get you
out."

"Guess what," Bun said.  "You put it in four-wheel crossing the swamp
and never took it out."

"Quite correct," I said.  "I was just checking to see if you
remembered.

You see, I had an ace up my sleeve all along.  The power winch!  Now,
if you would be so kind as to pull out the winch cable and attach it to
the trunk of one of those trees protruding from the avalanche, we will
be on our way again.

I would do it myself but I don't want to take the time to pry my
fingers off the steering wheel."

Winching the last few hundred yards to the top of the mountain was slow
and tedious, with Bun slogging ahead to hook the cable.  I thought I
should probably install a faster winch--or a faster wench!  Ha!  Wisdom
being the better part of valor, I kept that little joke to myself, Bun
seeming oddly out of sorts at the time.

Suddenly, I noticed Bun wildly waving her arms and shouting at me.

Thinking this might be a warning the cable was about to snap and send
me and Hoss hurtling off the mountain, I sprang sprightly from the cab
and drained off the spurt of excessive adrenaline by hopping smartly in
place.  "What?"  I shouted.  "What is it?"

"Huckleberries!"  Bun shouted.  "Tons of them!  And they're as big as
cherries!  Bring the buckets!"

"Huckleberries?"  I said.  "What do you want with huckleberries?"

I hate picking huckleberries.  I don't care if they're as big as
grapefruit.  What did Bun think, that I'd come all this way on a
less-traveled road to pick huckleberries?

"I said," Bun shouted sternly, "bring the buckets!  And you know what's
even better?  There are huckleberry pickers!"

"There can't be huckleberry pickers," I said.  "Not on a road less
traveled by."

"Yeah, there are," Bun said.  "I-90 cuts across the mountain here.

Isn't that great?  We don't have to go back down that awful road."

I don't know where Robert Frost ended up on his road less traveled by,
but I doubt it was a four-lane interstate.  I've been depressed ever
since.

Gunkholing One of the problems with gunkholing is that many boaters
don't know what it is.  I have just taken a scientific survey of four
boaters, and none of them knew the meaning of the word gunkholing. 
(They did make several guesses, all of which were wrong and pretty
weird to boot.

It's a good thing for them that I'm not a Freudian psychologist or they
would be in a lot of trouble right now.) Even my unabridged Random
House Dictionary of the English Language contains gunk hole, which it
defines as "a quiet anchorage, as in a cove."  It defines gunkholing as
"to sail casually along a coast, anchoring from time to time in quiet
coves and inlets."  If a simple lexicographer knows the meaning of
gunkholing, you would certainly expect boaters to, since they're the
ones who do it.

All right, I'll confess.  I was past puberty before I knew a gunk hole
from a gopher hole.  About twenty years past puberty, but so what?  I
didn't bring the subject up.  An editor did.  He wrote me a letter
requesting that I write an article on gunkholing.

"I'm sure you know what it means," he wrote evasively, "but don't
bother looking in your Webster's dictionary because it isn't in
there."

Well, of course, it wouldn't be in that dictionary.  Webster wasn't the
sort of man who would know about gunkholing and wouldn't admit it if he
did.

Now that I've taken care of the definition of gunkholing, I had better
tell you how it's done properly.  There's a lot of slipshod gunkholing
going on among boaters nowadays, which is probably another one of those
signs of the times we're always hearing about.  People just don't want
to take the time to learn how to do a thing properly, the way God
intended.  Do I think God approves of gunkholing?  Why, of course I
do.

He approves of all the good things, and gunkholing is one of the good
things.  When you stop and think about it, the Garden of Eden was sort
of one great big gunk hole, with Adam and Eve laid back, taking it
easy, and not a worry in the garden.  Then Eve got hungry.  What ruins
a lot of fine gunkholing is somebody's getting hungry.

That's when all the trouble usually starts.  Let me give you one
example.

My friend Retch Sweeney and I were fishing up on Lake Roosevelt one day
a couple of summers ago, and all the fish had fallen into a comatose
state and sunk to the bottom as they like to do when I'm in the
vicinity.  Then a rare and startling thing happened.  Retch got an
idea.

"Hey, I got an idea!"  he said, appearing no less amazed than myself.

"Let's find us a nice gunk hole and tie up to a tree for the rest of
the afternoon.  We can lay back and take it easy until the evening
feed."

I knew we weren't properly prepared for serious gunkholing, but since
this was Retch's first idea in several months it seemed a shame to
waste it.

"That's a good idea," I said.  "Let's do it."

It took us nearly an hour to find a halfway decent gunk hole, one with
some shade on the water and an aesthetically pleasing backdrop of trees
and moss-covered rocks, and a tiny stream tumbling melodiously down a
picturesque precipice.  There was one drawback.  A hundred yards above
us, a highway wound around the mountain, and the roar of traffic
drifted down to our otherwise peaceful gunk hole.  Worse yet, there was
a roadhouse up there, and we could hear the banging of the screen door,
the raucous voices of the clientele coming and going, and occasionally
even the sound of glasses and plates knocking together.

"Kind of noisy for proper gunkholing," I said.

"Yeah," Retch said.  "Just have to ignore it, I guess."

We spread out the boat cushions and lay down on them.  The boat rocked
gently in the waves, a bird twittered, the water made appropriate water
sounds against the shore.  Presently, Retch said, "This is nice, ain't
it?"

"Yes," I said.  "A man needs gunkholing from time to time, you know
what I mean?"

"Yeah."

Then Retch said from beneath the hat over his face, "They're cooking
hamburgers up in that roadhouse.  I can smell 'em."

"You're probably just smelling that hat."

"No, it's hamburgers.  Big, fat, juicy hamburgers."

A period of silence.

"We got anything left to eat in the lunchbox?"  Retch asked.

"Just half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

"Ugh.

A period of silence.

Retch suddenly sat up.  "They got thick slabs of sweet onion on those
big fat juicy hamburgers.  Now, don't tell me you can't smell that
onion."

"No, I don't.  That roadhouse is a hundred yards away, up on top of
that cliff.  You're just imagining you're smelling big fat juicy
hamburgers with thick slabs of sweet onion on them.  Now are we going
to gunkhole or not?"

Retch lurched to his feet and stared at the cliff.  "Probably wouldn't
take more than ten minutes to climb up to that roadhouse."

"Are you crazy, man?"  I said.  "A person could kill himself trying to
climb that cliff!"

Retch's nose twitched, as if savoring the aroma of a big fat juicy
hamburger with a thick slab of sweet onion on it.  "I got to try!"  he
croaked, stepping out of the boat and heading for the roadhouse.

Unfortunately, the boat was in fifteen feet of water.  He shot out of
sight in a giant splash, only to emerge a minute later scrambling over
the moss-covered rocks like a frightened crab.  He slipped on the wet
moss and fell into the melodious stream, cursing both roundly.

Scarcely had I recovered from a fit of mirth over this spectacle when I
saw his hulking figure clawing its way up the side of the cliff.  Retch
hung by one hand from a tiny bump in the cliff while his legs churned
against the rock in search of a foothold.  A short while later he
seemed to be clamped to the granite wall with nothing but his
fingernails.

What worried me was that he hadn't got to the bad part of the cliff
yet.

Eventually, he threw a leg up over the lip of the cliff and vanished.

I heaved a sigh of disgust and flopped back down on boat cushions,
trying to recapture some of the passive enjoyment of gunkholing.

Scarcely had I closed my eyes, however, when I heard a little shower of
rocks rattling down the cliff.  I glanced up, and there was Retch
again, clawing his way back down.

Twenty minutes later he was back at the boat.

"You ... pant ... ought to see those ... gasp ... hamburgers!  They are
... choke ... magnificent!"

"So why aren't you up there eating one of them?"  I asked.

"I ... gasp ... forgot my billfold.  It's ... pant ... in my tackle
box.

Get it for me ... choke ... will you?"

I tossed him his billfold, and he staggered off again in the direction
of the cliff.  His ascent this time was so horrifying and verbally
obscene that I will not describe it, in case this is being read by
children.

Two hours later, while I was napping peacefully in the boat, I was
suddenly attacked by a tattered, wild-eyed creature that came lurching
out of the brush on shore.  Snatching up an oar, I attempted to repel
the beast, only to discover at the last moment that it was Retch
Sweeney himself, or at least what was left of him.  I hauled him into
the boat.

"I've had enough gunkholing," I told him.  "The fish have regained
consciousness and are starting to feed.  Now that we've had a good
rest, we should be able to get in a couple of hours of hard fishing
before dark."

" Mmmffff," Retch replied, in a tone that suggested a definite lack of
enthusiasm.

I tried to cheer him up.  "Nothing like a little restful gunkholing to
get the old juices flowing!"

"Phimmph," he said, rather crossly.

"Well," I went on cheerily, "how was the big fat juicy hamburger?  Can
you honestly say that it was worth all the risk and effort and
trouble?"

"Yeah, it was."

"Really ?"

"Best burger I ever ate.  It was charbroiled, but juicy pink on the
inside.  The buns were homemade and toasted on the grill.  Then they
were slathered with this special sauce.  Next, thick slices of tomato
and cheese were loaded on."

"Tomato, too?"

"Yeah.  And nice fresh crisp lettuce.  Next came this big slab of Walla
Walla sweet onion.  Oh, it was enough to drive a hungry gunkholer out
of his mind."

"Good onion, hunh?"

"Delicious!  Scrumptious!  Then they heaped on the side this huge pile
of steaming hot, thick, crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside
french fries.

Oh, man, let me tell you, was that ever a good burger!"

"Well, Retch," I said, shaking my head, "after you risked life and limb
climbing that cliff for a hamburger, let me ask you this."

"What?"

"When you reach that overhang at the top of the cliff, do you think
it's easier to throw your right leg over it first or your left?"

That is a classic example of improper gunkholing.  Here, now, are the
rules for proper gunkholing.

1. Take plenty of food and beverage, since gunkholing stimulates a
ravenous appetite.  A good supply of edibles will usually discourage
members of the party from going ashore to forage at roadhouses,
farmhouses, and campground garbage cans.

2. If your spouse is along, do not allow her to persuade you to
disembark for the purpose of picking up a nice piece of driftwood,
collecting a strange weed, or obtaining an unusual rock for the rock
garden at home.  My wife once talked me into going out into a
waterfront cow pasture to commit theft on a rock shaped vaguely like a
washbasin.  Although it was shaped like a washbasin, it weighed
approximately the same as a bathtub, filled, and with a fat lady in
it.

No sooner had I wrenched the rock loose from the earth in which it had
been embedded by the last glacier to pass through than the herd of cows
resident in the pasture raised a cry of alarm and took off after me in
a frenzy to thwart the burglary.  I sprinted for the safety of the
boat, all the while mindful of how ridiculous it appears for a man to
sprint with his legs bowed out in the configuration of a barrel hoop
and his arms stretched practically to the ground from the weight of a
monstrous boulder.  Naturally, my wife started screaming.  "Don't drop
the rock!"  she screamed.  "Don't drop the rock!"  Never be persuaded
to go ashore while gunkholing.

3. Gunkhole only with persons who don't tell jokes.  Nothing ruins
gunkholing faster than a compulsive joke-teller.  You will be pulling
into a peaceful cove where the foliage of the shoreline is mirrored in
the water, the stillness of the place is broken only by the distant
call of a loon, a doe and her fawn are slipping out of the shadows for
a drink, the hillside above is golden in the sunlight and sprinkled
with wildflowers.  Then your companion will blurt out, "Say, did I ever
tell you the one about the farmer's daughter and the Russian
cosmonaut?

Well, it seems ..."  There is one sure cure for the compulsive
joke-teller while gunkholing, but I can tell you only that it involves
an anchor and a length of rope.

4. Don't gunkhole at night with an attractive person of the opposite
sex, particularly when golden moonbeams dance on undulating waves, a
gentle breeze whispers sweet nothings to the stars, and mingled
fragrances of pine and cedar caress each breath of air, unless of
course you have a serious relationship with the person, and then it's
okay.

There are many other rules to proper gunkholing, but I don't have time
to go into them now.  Even as I write this I am bobbing about in one of
the finest gunk holes I have ever discovered.  Its only fault is a
rather noisy drive-in restaurant on the highway up above.  If I have
not mistaken the aroma, the specialty of the house is char-grilled hot
dogs smothered in relish and heaped with chopped onions.  Many persons
might think the terrain between me and the drive-in totally
untraversable, but what do they know about gunkholing?

Blips I seem to spend a good part of my life pushing buttons.  If I
want to cook a pizza, I stick it in a microwave oven, push a few
buttons, and presto, I have melted cheese all over the oven.  I push
buttons to set the temperature of the house and car, to turn on radios,
TVs, and VCRS, to type, to set my watch and clocks and the speed of my
car, and even to get cash out of my bank, in the rare instance when
there is cash there to get.

Buttons, as anglers well know, now play a big role in fishing,
particularly as they apply to fish-finders.  Much fishing nowadays
consists of pushing buttons while staring at blips on a screen.

"Wow, look at that one!"  the modern angler exclaims, staring at a
blip.

"It's dang near an inch long.  I bet that blip would go five pounds!"

Many anglers now consider a day's fishing successful if they've seen a
few large blips.  Soon, anglers will start mounting their biggest blips
and hanging them on den walls.  "I tied into that blip up on Lake
Weegee," the angler will brag.  "Biggest blip ever recorded at
Weegee."

I've already noticed a tendency among my friends to exaggerate the size
of their blips.  I suspect a good deal of lying goes on about monstrous
blips that got away.

As my friend Keith Jackson likes to say, though, you can't eat blips.

(It's not that good of a saying, but it's the best Jackson has come up
with, so he says it over and over.) He means that sooner or later you
have to bait a hook and dangle it down in front of whatever is causing
the blip.  Blip purists, of course, consider actual fishing to be bad
form, crude and distasteful.

Jackson always has the latest in electronic fish-finders, because he
does a lot of writing about high-tech fishing.  After many years of
scientific experimentation, he has worked out a simple and efficient
method for dealing with faulty technology in fishing gear.  He sells it
to me.

As we were visiting in his fishing-tackle warehouse--formerly his
garage--he said to me recently, "Hey, I got a new fish-finder for
you."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing.  It's the most advanced fish-finder I've ever come across."

"I'll bet!  How much you want for it?"

"Well, you being a good buddy and all, I'm going to let you have it for
noth ... noth ... for twenty-five dollars."

"Twenty-five dollars!  Let me see this worthless piece of junk."

Jackson pointed to a nice wooden box, the lid of which had been nailed
shut, with most of the nails bent over and surrounded by the
indentations of a wildly flailed hammer.

"So, let me have a look at the thing," I said.

"I'd prefer you take it home and look at it there."  He seemed
nervous.

"No doubt," I said.

Reluctantly, Jackson pried up the lid on the box.  I looked in.  The
little high-tech face of the fish-finder stared back at me.

"Looks like new," I said.

"It is new," Jackson said.  "I only used it once."

"Conked out on you, hunh?"

"Nope, worked fine."

"Well, the price is right," I said.

"Yep," Jackson said.  "Heh heh heh."

A few days later, I hooked up the fish-finder to my boat and went out
on the lake to see if I could turn up a few blips for supper.  After
pushing a few buttons on the control panel of the finder without
results, I resorted to an old trick I learned years ago: reading the
operation manual.

The manual informed me that my finder had been given its own individual
name--Melvin.  It said that not only did Melvin accurately report water
depth, temperature, and pH and location, size, and species of fish, it
also offered advice on the kind of lure to use and how to fish it.

"Your Melvin 500X contains a small but powerful computer into which has
been fed all the fishing knowledge, lore, expertise, and wisdom of an
actual eighty-year-old angler.

The Melvin 500X also captures much of the crusty old angler's
personality, which we at FISHTECH are sure you will find amusing and
entertaining.  You and Melvin enjoy your fishin' now, hear?"

"Holy cow!"  I said to myself.  "I can't believe Jackson sold me this
fantastic piece of technology for only twenty-five dollars.  He must
have been out of his mind."

As instructed by the manual, I punched in the secret code to activate
the fish-finder.  Beep beep beep went the little black box, followed
by: "Howdy, bub.  Name's Melvin.  How you today?  Well, we can't catch
no fish sittin' here chewin' the fat.  Crank up the motor and take us
out to a depth of twenty feet.  Don't just sit there with you thumb in
you mouth.  Git crackin'!"

Hey, this is terrific, I thought.  It's almost like having the old
angler right here in the boat with me.  I watched the depth scale on
the finder screen blink toward twenty feet.

"Why so quiet, bub?"  the finder asked.  "Cat got your tongue?"

"What?"  I said, startled.  "You mean you can hear me?"

"Sure I can hear you.  Just because I'm an ugly little black box don't
mean I'm deaf.  Jeer cripes, look out for that log!  You got to pay
attention, bub.  I hope you fish better than you drive a boat."

"Sorry, uh, Melvin," I said.  "I was a little distracted there for a
moment."  I felt a little silly, apologizing to an ugly little black
box.

The depth scale read twenty feet, but there were no blips on the
screen.

Because I was after largemouth bass blips, I decided to run on up to
another spot I knew.

"What you think you doin'?"  Melvin said.  "We're gonna fish here."

"But there aren't any fish here," I said.  "There's not a single blip
on the screen."

"Don't pay no attention to that stupid screen, bub.  It don't know
nothin'.  If I say there's bass here, there's bass here.  I can feel it
in my bones ... well, in my transistors, anyway.  There's bass down
there all right, huggin' the bottom.  Go about five pounds.  Tie on a
whitehead jig baited with a purple worm.  Bounce it along the
bottom."

"I think a chartreuse worm would work better," I said.

"You sassin' me, boy?  I say purple worm, I mean purple worm!"

I tied on a purple worm and began bouncing it along the bottom.

Nothing.

Melvin was beginning to get on my nerves.  For one thing, he kept
humming tunelessly.  Presently, he said, "Knock knock."

"What?"  I said.

"Not 'what,' dummy," Melvin snapped.  "You supposed to say 'Who's
there?"" "Stop!"  I shouted.  "I hate knock-knock jokes."

"Tough," Melvin said.  "I'm supposed to entertain you, and this is the
entertainment.  Now I ain't gonna tell you again.  Knock knock."

Just then I hooked into something and started to reel in.

"Five-pound largemouth," Melvin said.

"I don't think so," I said.

"If I say it's a five-pound largemouth, it's a five-pound
largemouth."

I hauled a waterlogged branch into the boat.  "Ha!"  I said, holding up
the branch.  "What do you say this is, Melvin?"

"I say it's a five-pound largemouth," Melvin said.

"I've had about enough out of you, Melvin," I snarled.

"You sass me again, boy, I gonna whomp your head!"

"Okay, that's it.  I'm going to jerk your power cord," a threat I
instantly carried out.  The screen went dark.  I was left with peace
and quiet, a huge expanse of sparkling water, and only my own wild
guesses to tell me where the fish might be.

"Knock knock," the black box said.

"Melvin?"  I said.  "But I pulled your plug."

"Ever hear of batteries, bub?  I come with a backup power supply.  Now,
one more time--knock knock."

I snatched up the black box.  "That was your last knock knock.  I'm
going to deep-six you!"

"Help!  Help!"  the black box squawked.  "Murder!  Help!"

Melvin landed with a splash and sank.  Then he bobbed back to the
surface.  The FISHTECH engineers had had the malicious foresight to
equip the black box with flotation.  Little paddles popped out of
Melvin's sides and he started to churn his way back to the boat,
cursing a blue streak all the while.  I pushed him off with an oar,
started the motor, and headed for home, glancing back from time to time
to see if I was being followed.  Sure enough ...

Suddenly, I awoke in a cold sweat.  It was the middle of the night.  I
was safe in my own bed.

"For heaven's sake, what is it?"  my wife, Bun, asked.

"Nothing," I said.  "I just thought I heard something go 'knock
knock."" "You did," Bun said.  "It's at the front door.  Who could it
be at this hour?"

"I think I know," I said.  "Don't answer it."

The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw There was so much confusion over the
incident anyway that I don't want to add to it by getting the sequences
mixed up.  First of all--and I remember this clearly--it was the summer
after Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I had been sprung from third grade at
Delmore Blight Grade School.  The Muldoons' only good milk cow died
that summer, shortly after the weasel of in their chicken house and
killed most of the laying hens.  This was just before the fertilizer
company Mr. Muldoon worked for went bankrupt, and he lost his job. 
The engine on his tractor blew up a week later, so he couldn't harvest
his crops, which were pretty much dried up from the drought anyway.

Then Mr. Muldoon fell in the pit trap that Crazy Eddie and I had dug
to capture wild animals.  Our plan was to train the wild animals and
then put on shows to earn a little extra money for the family.  But Mr.
Muldoon fell in the trap, and afterwards made us shovel all the dirt
back into it.  The only wild animal we had trapped was a skunk, and
when Mr. Muldoon fell in on top of it, he terrified the poor creature
practically to death.  Neither Mr. Muldoon nor the skunk was hurt
much, but the skunk managed to escape during all the excitement.  So
there went our wild-animal show.  This occurred about midsummer, as I
recall, about the time Mr. Muldoon's nerves got so bad that old Doc
Hix told him to stop drinking coffee, which apparently was what had
brought on his nervous condition.

For the rest of the summer, Mr. Muldoon gave off a faint, gradually
fading odor of skunk.  Unless he got wet.  Then the odor reconstituted
itself to approximately its original power, which placed a major
restraint on the Muldoons' social life, meager as that was.

Fortunately, Mr. Muldoon didn't get wet that often, mainly because of
the drought that had killed off his crops.  As Mrs. Muldoon was fond
of saying, every cloud has a silver lining.

So far it had been a fairly typical summer for Mr. Muldoon, but he
claimed to be worried about a premonition that his luck was about to
turn bad.

Then Eddie's grandmother, Mrs. Muldoon's mother, showed up for a
visit.

"I knew it!"  Mr. Muldoon told a neighbor.  "I knew something like
this was about to happen!  I must be physic."

After I got to know Eddie's grandmother a little better, I could see
why Mr. Muldoon regarded her visit as a stroke of bad luck.  She
immediately assumed command of the family and began to boss everyone
around, including me.

Nevertheless, I doubted that Mr. Muldoon was actually physic, because
otherwise he would never have come up with the idea of the camping
trip.

"I'm worried about Pa," Eddie said one morning as we sat on his back
porch.  "He's not been hisself lately."

"Who's he been?"  I asked, somewhat startled, although I regarded Mr.
Muldoon as one of the oddest persons I knew.

"Pa's just started acting weird, that's all.  You know what crazy idea
he came up with this morning?  He says we all gotta go on a camping
trip up in the mountains and pick huckleberries.  He says we can sell
any extra huckleberries we get for cash.  But Pa don't know anything
about camping.  We don't even have any camping stuff.  Ain't that
strange?"

"Yeah," I said.  "Say, Eddie, you don't suppose your pa ... uh ... your
pa ..."  I tried to think of a delicate way to phrase it.

"What?"  Eddie said.

"Uh, you don't suppose your pa, uh, would let me go on the camping trip
too, do you?"

When Eddie put the question to his father, Mr. Muldoon tried to
conceal his affection for me beneath a malevolent frown.  "Oh, all
right," he growled at me.  "But no mischief!  That means no knives, no
hatchets, no matches, no slingshots, and no shovels!  Understood?"

Eddie and I laughed.  It was good to see his father in a humorous mood
once again.

I rushed home and asked my mother if I could go camping with the
Muldoons.  "You'd be away from home a whole week?"  she said.  "I'll
have to think about that.  Okay, you can go."

I quickly packed my hatchet, knife, and slingshot, along with edibles
Mom gave me to contribute to the Muldoon grub box.  The one major item
I lacked was a sleeping bag.  "I'll just make a bedroll out of some
blankets off my bed," I informed my mother.

"You most certainly won't," she informed me.  "You'll use the coat."

"Ah, gee, Ma, the coat's so stupid.  Mr. Muldoon will tease me all
during the trip if I have to use that stupid coat for a sleeping
bag."

The coat in question was a tattered, dog-chewed old fur of
indeterminate species that my grandmother had acquired during a brief
period of family wealth in the previous century.  It had been given to
me as a "sleeping bag" for my frequent but always aborted attempts at
sleeping out alone in the yard.

For all its hideous appearance, it was warm and cozy, and covered my
nine-year-old body nicely from end to end.  Still, I knew the Muldoons
would laugh themselves silly when they saw me bed down in a woman's fur
coat.  My only hope of retaining a shred of dignity, not to mention my
carefully nursed macho image, was to slip into it after they had all
gone to sleep.  I stuffed the coat into a gunnysack, concealing it
under the one threadbare blanket my mother reluctantly issued me.

The day of the big camping trip dawned bright and clear, a common ruse
of Mother Nature to lure unsuspecting souls out into the wilds.  The
five of us piled into the ancient Muldoon sedan and set off for the
mountains.  Most of our camping gear, such as it was, balanced
precariously atop the car.  It was wrapped in a huge hay tarp, which
was to serve as our tent.  "Ain't had a drop of rain in three months,"
Mr. Muldoon had said.  "Probably won't need the tarp."  This statement
would later be recalled and admitted as evidence in the case against
Mr.  Muldoon's being physic.

"How you doin'back there, Goombaw?"  Mr. Muldoon said to Eddie's
grandmother.  For some reason, everyone called her Goombaw.

"How you think I'm doin'?"  Goombaw snapped back.  "Wedged in between
these two sweaty younguns!  I'm boilin' in my own juice!  This camping
trip is the stupidest dang fool idear you ever come up with, Herbert!

We'll probably all get et by bears.  Tell me, what about bears,
Herbert?"

Yeah, I thought.  What about bears?

"Ha ha ha ha," Mr. Muldoon laughed.  "You don't have to worry about
bears.  They're more afraid of humans than we are of them."

Well, I thought, that's certainly not true of all humans, particularly
one that I know personally.  It's probably not true of all bears
either.  But I kept these thoughts to myself, since Goombaw was doing a
thorough job of grilling Mr. Muldoon on the subject.  I could tell
that the talk of bears was making Mrs. Muldoon nervous, not that she
was the only one.

"Let's change the subject, Goombaw," she said.

"Oh, all right.  How about mountain lions, Herbert?"

For the rest of the long, hot, dusty ride up to the huckleberry
patches, Goombaw harangued Mr. Muldoon about every possible threat to
our well-being, from bears to crazed woodcutters.  By the time we
reached our campsite, she had everyone in such a nervous state that we
were almost afraid to get out of the car.  Mr. Muldoon stepped out,
swiveled his head about as though expecting an attack from any quarter,
and then ordered us to help set up camp.

No level area for our tent was immediately apparent, but Crazy Eddie
and I finally located one.  It was down a steep bank and on the far
side of a little creek.  Mr. Muldoon, Eddie, and I dragged the bundle
of camp gear down the bank and across a log to the little clearing in
the brush and trees.  In no time at all Mr. Muldoon had constructed a
fine shelter out of the tarp.

Eddie and I built a fire ring of rocks, and Mrs. Muldoon and Goombaw
got a fire going and put coffee on to boil, apparently forgetting that
the doctor had told Mr. Muldoon to cut down on his coffee drinking
because of his nerves.

Eddie and I sampled the fishing in the creek.  All in all, the camping
trip showed signs of becoming a pleasant experience.  Then it got
dark.

"I say keep a fire going' all night," Goombaw advised.  "It might help
keep the bears off of us."

"There ain't no bears," Mr. Muldoon said.  "Now stop worrying about
bears.  Ha!  Bears are more afraid of us than we are of them.  Now,
everybody get a good night's sleep.  We got a lot of huckleberries to
pick tomorrow."

He stripped down to his long underwear and burrowed into the pile of
quilts and blankets Mrs.  Muldoon had arranged on the ground.

I pulled my threadbare blanket out of the gunnysack and spread it out
in the dirt next to Goombaw.

"Good heavens, Patrick!"  Mrs. Muldoon said.  "Is that all you have to
sleep in, that one little blanket?  The nights can get pretty chilly up
here in the mountains."

"Oh, I've got more blankets in my sack," I lied.  "If it turns cold,
I'll just put some more on.  But I sleep warm."

As the night dragged on into its full depth, I lay there shivering in
my blanket, studying with considerable interest the looming dark shapes
the full moon revealed around our camp.  Finally, Goombaw and the
Muldoons ceased their thrashing about on the hard ground and began to
emit the sounds of sleep.  I jerked the fur coat out of the gunnysack
and buttoned myself into its comforting warmth.  I set a mental alarm
to awaken me before the Muldoons, so I could conceal the coat before
they caught sight of the hideous thing.  Then I drifted off into fitful
sleep.

"Wazzat?"  Goombaw shouted in my ear.

Later, she claimed only to be having a nightmare, but, fortunately for
us, she sounded the alarm just in time.  In the silence that followed
Goombaw's shout, you could almost hear four pairs of eyelids popping
open in the dark.

"A bear!"  Goombaw shouted.  "A bear's got me!"

Since I was lying right next to Goombaw, this announcement aroused my
curiosity no end.  I tried to leap to my feet but, wrapped in the fur
coat, could only manage to make it to all fours.

"Bear!"  screamed Crazy Eddie.  "Bear's got Gooooo!"

"Bear!"  shrieked Mrs.  Muldoon.  "There it is!"

Goombaw made a horrible sound.  I could make out the big round whites
of her eyes fixed on me in the darkness, no doubt pleading wordlessly
with me for help, but what could a small boy do against a bear?

"Holy bleep!"  roared Mr. Muldoon.  He lunged to his feet, knocking
over the ridgepole and dropping the tarp on us and the bear.  Figuring
Goombaw already for a goner and myself next on the bear's menu, I tore
out from under the tarp just in time to see Mr. Muldoon trying to
unstick an ax from the stump in which he had embedded it the night
before.  Even in the shadowy dimness of moonlight, I could see the look
of surprise and horror wash over Mr. Muldoon's face as I rushed toward
him for protection.  He emitted a strangled cry and rushed off through
the woods on legs so wobbly it looked as if his knees had come
unhinged.  Under the circumstances, I could only surmise that the bear
was close on my heels, and I raced off after Mr. Muldoon, unable to
think of anything better to do.  With his abrupt departure, Mr. Muldoon
had clearly let it be known that now it was every man for himself.

Bounding over a log with the effortless ease that accompanies total
panic, I came upon Mr. Muldoon peeling bark and limbs off a small
tree.  Since he was only four feet up the tree, I debated briefly
whether to wait for him to gain altitude or to find my own tree.  Then
Mr. Muldoon caught sight of the bear closing fast on us.  He sprang
out of the tree and took off again, with me so close behind that I
could have reached out and grabbed the snapping flap of his long
underwear.  The thought did occur to me to do so, because I was nearing
exhaustion, and Mr. Muldoon could have towed me along with his
underwear flap.  Upon later reflection, however, I think it is well
that I didn't grab the flap, for it probably would have been a source
of considerable embarrassment to both of us.

When I could run no more, I dropped to the ground, deciding I might as
well let the bear eat me as run me to death.  But the bear was gone.

Perhaps he had taken a shortcut through the woods, hoping to cut me and
Mr. Muldoon off at a pass.  In any case, I never did get to see the
bear, narrow as my escape had been.  Sweltering in the fur coat, I took
the thing off and stuffed it down a hollow stump, glad to be rid of the
thing.

When I got back to camp, everyone was gone.  I climbed up to the car,
inside of which I found Eddie, his mother, and Goombaw, each more or
less in one piece.

"Thank heavens," cried Mrs. Muldoon.  "We thought the bear had got
you!

Have you seen Mr.  Muldoon?"

I said yes I had, not mentioning that I had seen even more of him than
I cared to.  Half an hour later, Mr. Muldoon scrambled up the bank to
the car.

Upon learning that everyone was intact, he explained how he had led the
bear away from camp, at considerable risk to himself.  I was surprised
that he neglected to mention my role in leading the bear off, but
didn't think it my place to mention it.

"You got to keep a cool head during a bear attack," Mr. Muldoon
explained.  "Panic and you're done for."  "Wheweee!"  Goombaw said.  "I
smell skunk!  Somebody step on a skunk in the dark?"

Then it started to rain.  Hard.

Water Spirits My first encounter with water spirits occurred at a high
mountain lake in northern Idaho.  Dr. Mike Gass and I had grunted and
gasped our way up the steep, rocky trail to the remote lake on the
basis of rumors that large, savage cutthroat trout abounded there.

As soon as we arrived, Mike set up operations on a snow slide at one
end of the lake, the only good casting area.  I wandered around the
lake trying to find a place I could cast from, but the shore was
wrapped with a thick fir collar right up to the water's edge.  Finally
I came upon a slender log extending thirty feet or so into the
shallows.  I did a balancing act out to the end of it and frantically
began tying on a fly.

Mike yelled gleefully about a big strike he had just had.  Glancing up
to see if any fish were rising around me, I noticed a V form near the
middle of the lake, a V such as a shark fin makes cutting the water,
only tiny.  The V swept in a wide half circle and--much to my
astonishment--came right up to my feet!  I stared down into the V to
see what was making it, expecting a fish or maybe a large water bug of
some sort.  But there was nothing there!  Nothing visible was making
the V!

"Jeepers criminy," I said to myself.  "There's nothing there."

While contemplating this curiosity, I glanced again out into the
lake.

Another V had formed.  This one, too, swept in a wide half circle, only
in the opposite direction.  And it, too, came right up to my feet!  I
stared down into the V with considerable intensity, protruding my
eyeballs for a better look.  There was nothing in this V, either.

Being of a scientific bent, I carefully analyzed the situation, taking
into account all possibilities for what might have caused the Vs and
what could account for each of them to zoom right up to my feet.  This
process took no more than three seconds and led me to the only logical
conclusion.

"Water spirits!  Water spirits!"  I yelled, rushing past Mike on my way
to the trail.

Mike is a calm, practical, no-nonsense man, not easily budged in the
direction of panic.  Thus it came as no little surprise when he
thundered past me on the trail, his fly line snapping like a whip in
the wind.  He claimed later that he didn't for one moment believe there
were actually water spirits present, "because any person with an iota
of intellect knows they don't exist."  His haste, he explained, was due
merely to the fact that he didn't want to be caught after dark in the
mountains with a crazy person.  It was clear to me that the lake
contained water spirits, but I had no idea there was also a crazy
person in the vicinity.  Neither of us has returned to the lake
since.

Several years passed without my having further confrontations with
water spirits.  I now shared a suite of offices with my friend Dick
Hoover, a former television newscaster and a university professor.

Hoov, as I call him, was now in the business of making films.  I was
writing magazine articles, spending hours every day hunched over a
typewriter.  One fine spring day, Hoov was bustling about in the outer
office preparing to take a canoe trip down a nearby river to shoot some
film of the flora and fauna.  Thumping away on the typewriter, I
thought, Why didn't I have the good sense to go into the filmmaking
business so I, too, could be out canoeing on a beautiful day like this
rather than being chained to a stupid typewriter?

Hoov left, and I continued to type away, pausing every few minutes to
stoke my envy.  A couple hours later, the door to the outer office
slammed.  I listened intently, wondering what irate being had just
stormed in, and whether it might be after me.  Then I heard footsteps:
squish, squish, squish, squish.

I got up and looked out.  There was Hoov, streaming with water and
spewing forth the rather mild, silent profanity he uses in extreme
situations.

The canoe had tipped over and dumped him and all his camera gear into
the river.  An enormous wave of sympathy welled up in me, which I tried
to conceal behind the facade of hearty laughter.  Often this approach
has the therapeutic value of showing the victim of such a mishap the
lighter side of the misfortune, and the two of you end up having a
jolly good time joshing each other.  Occasionally, of course, it leads
to one of those uncomfortable social situations in which the victim of
the mishap fails to respond appropriately to humor and chooses instead
to crush your windpipe.

Alas, the therapy failed to take hold on Hoov, who could think only of
his filming gear resting on the bottom of the river, and whether
throttling a laughing person might constitute a felony.  Wiping away
the feigned tears of mirth, I said, "By golly, Hoov, maybe all isn't
lost.  Maybe we can salvage some of your gear from the bottom of the
river.  I'll go get my canoe and make a grappling hook of some sort and
we can drag the river.  There's every chance that water and sand and
gravel won't seriously harm expensive and delicate photographic
equipment."

"I've paddled my last canoe," Hoov growled.  "No, what we'll do is,
I'll borrow a rowboat from my neighbor."

"Ha!"  I said.  "There's no way I'm going to go down that river in a
rowboat.  A person would have to be out of his mind to take a rowboat
down that river!"

Hours later, Hoov was still in a wretched mood.  "Row to the right," he
commanded.  "I think that's the spot I tipped over in."

"The sun's going down," I said.  "And this is the forty-ninth spot you
think you tipped over in.  We'd better get out of here before it gets
dark.

It's a good three miles downriver to the take-out spot."

"Oh, let's try one more place," Hoov said.

"Listen," I said, "I didn't want to mention this before, but you know
the reason you tipped over in the canoe?"

"Spare me," Hoov said.

"Water spirits," I said.  "It was probably water spirits."

Hoov stared at me, the homemade grappling hook dangling ominously from
his hand.  Although I doubted he would grapple me, his stare made me a
little nervous.

"You're crazy, McManus," Hoov said.  "Water spirits!"  For the first
time that day, he laughed.

"I'm not kidding."

"I know you're not.  That's why I say you're crazy."

"Oh yeah?"  I said.  "Well, Mr. Smarty, I did some research about the
river, and back in the old days the Indians wouldn't go near this
stretch because they believed it was inhabited by evil water
spirits."

It was true.  I had actually read that, even though I didn't need
research to support my conviction as to the presence of water
spirits.

Any fool could see that this creepy section of the river provided them
with perfect habitat.

"Evil water spirits, indeed!"  Hoov said, chuckling.  "How do you come
up with this kind of whimsical non sense?"

"Think what you will," I said, "but let's get out of here just the
same."

Hoov finally acquiesced to my demands and we drifted off downriver
toward our car.  The river was high with the spring runoff but
generally placid, and I found it remarkably easy to steer the rowboat
even going with the current.

We zipped comfortably through several small rapids.  Then we came to a
stretch where huge trees reared up on both sides of the river, with an
eerie evening light playing upon the water and patches of mist drifting
about like stray ghosts out on a lark.

"I don't like the looks of this," I said.

"What?"  Hoov said, seeing nothing but smooth water ahead of us.

"This place," I said.  "It's quiet.  Too quiet.  Don't you realize this
is a perfect place for evil water spirits to hang out?"

"Har liar liar liar," Hoov laughed.

We drifted into a wide bend in the river.  On the inside of the bend, a
large thorn apple tree hung out over the water, raking the current with
its branches.  There was plenty of room to maneuver around it, so I
didn't pay it much attention, preferring to sift the shadows of the
woods around us for signs of hostile haunts.

"Har liar liar," Hoov laughed.  "Har ...!  Watch where you're rowing,
McManus!  We're headed for that thorn apple tree!"

There was still enough room to maneuver.  I smiled at Hoov and dug the
oars into the water.  The boat failed to respond.  I dug the oars in
again.

And again.  Still no response.  The oars were now whipping around like
twin paddle wheels under full steam, but some Stephen Kingish force was
drawing us irresistibly into the thorn apple tree, which--and I didn't
imagine this, either--reached out for us with its gnarled, spiked limbs
and drew us into its deadly embrace, hissing and grinning malevolently
as it did so.

"McManus, you did this deliberately and ... ARRRHHHHHH!"  Hoov leaped
to his feet to fight off the thorn tree, which raked him fore and aft
with its vicious claws.

Fortunately, we were both wearing life jackets.  I dropped the oars and
started to jump up to help Hoov fight the tree mano a mano.  But
something grabbed me from behind, and with enormous power, jerked me
half out of the boat and slammed me flat on my back against the surface
of the water.

"They've got me!"  I yelled.

"Murphhh gragg zork!"  Hoov cried.  "Ow!  Ow!"

I figured the water spirits had him, too.

All at once, we burst free of the thorn apple and floated gently off
downstream.  But the evil water spirits still held me flat against the
surface of the water, still doing their best to pull me under.

"they won't let me go!"  I yelled at the shredded Hoov, who seemed to
be deliberately ignoring my predicament.  "The water spirits are trying
to drown me!"

"Oh, for gosh sakes," Hoov said.  "It's only the handle of the oar.

When you dropped it, the oar went under the boat and the handle caught
under your life jacket."

"I know that," I said, slipping my life jacket off the oar handle.

"But don't try to tell me the evil water spirits had nothing to do with
it."

Hoov glanced nervously over his shoulder.  I could tell he was making
an effort not to believe in water spirits.  But they weren't done with
us yet.

When we got to where we had parked the old station wagon Hoov used for
his filming jaunts, we grabbed the boat, one of the few ever made of
cast iron, dragged it up the bank, and shoved it into the rear of the
wagon.  With a last nervous glance at the river, we roared back toward
town.  I didn't want to raise the topic of water spirits with Hoov, but
I had the eerie feeling a few of the more persistent haunts were
clinging to the station wagon.

Presently, we heard a serious grinding noise in the back of the car.  I
looked at Hoov.  I could tell he had leaped to the same conclusion I
had.

"You want to stop and check out that noise?"  I asked, hoping that Hoov
would have enough sense not even to consider such a thing, particularly
on a dark and lonely road.

"Better not," he said.  "Maybe when we get back to town."

"Right," I said.

Upon arriving back in the city, we soon found ourselves trapped in six
lanes of jammed-up traffic.  We were on a well-lighted street, and this
seemed like a good place and time to see what the water spirits had
been up to with their grinding noise.  Hoov opened his door and looked
back.  The left rear tire was on fire.

The left rear tire was not far from the gas tank.

The water spirits, having failed to drown us, were now trying to blow
us up!  I cursed the little buggers roundly, if briefly.

Hoov bounded out of the car yelling, "Fire!  Fire!  The gas tank is
going to blow!"

The occupants of the cars wedged in tightly around us responded to this
announcement with a good deal of interest.  Previously, they had been
slumped in their car seats staring morosely out the windshield at the
impacted traffic, perhaps with no other thoughts on their minds than
what a hard day they had had at the office.  But now, with news of a
gas tank about to explode mere feet away, they became suddenly animated
and showed not the slightest sign of lethargy or fatigue.  I myself had
just accompanied three businessmen and two nuns in synchronized hurdles
over several compact cars when I heard Hoov shout.

"McManus, stop!  We've got to save the boat!  It's not mine!"

Personally, I thought that was reason enough for not saving it, but
Hoov insisted.  We rushed back, grabbed the cast-iron boat, and,
holding it over our heads to clear the tops of the cars, ran down the
street with it, looking for a passage through the traffic jam.  I have
often wondered what the occupants of the cars two blocks away thought
when they saw two panting middle-aged men running down the street at
night carrying a cast-iron rowboat over their heads, particularly when
one of them looked as if he had recently been fed through a
pasta-making machine.  With police and fire sirens converging from all
sides, they probably thought we had stolen the boat, then forgotten
where we had parked our car, and were making our getaway on foot.

By the time we got back to Hoov's station wagon, the fire department
had arrived and extinguished the flaming tire.  One of the firemen
walked over to Hoov and asked him what had started the fire.

Hoov stood there quivering with exhaustion, his face and arms scratched
by thorns and blackened by smoke, his shredded clothes still damp from
the morning dunking in the river which had devoured all his filming
gear, and he muttered, "A wheel bearing broke and overheated."

I'm not sure why he lied.  Both of us knew what it really was that
tried to get us, first with water, then with fire.  On the other hand,
maybe Hoov said the right thing.  You never know how firemen might feel
about water spirits.

Letter to the Boss Mr. Clare Conley Editor-in-Chief Outdoor Life New
York, N.Y.

Dear Clare: Good news!  You know that expensive new camera you thought
you had lost on the Montana fishing trip with me and Jim Zumbo?  Well,
it turned up.

It was still in the drift boat, wedged up under the bow cover!  Can you
believe it?

I thoroughly enjoyed our little outing together.  It was a fairly
typical fishing trip for me.  Thank goodness!  You can imagine how
nervous a fellow gets the first time he takes his boss on an outing, no
matter how commonplace or trivial it might be.  You just never know
when something might go wrong.  I have to chuckle every time I recall
your wondering aloud at the party in Kalispell the night before whether
it would be safe to go fishing with me.

Remember?  You said, "All the crazy adventures McManus writes about,
you sometimes wonder if some of them might actually be true.  Wouldn't
it be funny if he turned out to be as crazy as he writes!"

Boy, that line got a great laugh from everybody at the party.  I'm sure
all those present would have thought it just as funny if they hadn't
been your employees.  I for one thought it was a real thigh-bruiser.

Anyway, I guess you know now that I am a fairly normal guy, even though
my imagination does carry me away at times.

Oh, about the camera.  As soon as it dries out, I'll rinse it good with
gasoline to get rid of all the sand and rust.  Then I'll send it off to
you posthaste, because I'm sure you're anxious to see what kind of
pictures it takes.  I don't know much about photography but I suspect
some of the pictures may have been damaged, because the film was sort
of all lumped together and I probably scratched it quite a bit when I
dug it out of the camera with a stick.  I wasn't sure but I thought
gasoline might affect the film adversely.

Let me know if any of the pictures turn out, particularly the one of
Zumbo's big fish.

I thanked Alan Christianson of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and
David Moles for loaning us the drift boat.  Alan joked that he was just
glad to get it back in one piece!  Ha ha!  You did hear that we found
the boat, didn't you?  It was hung up under a log a couple of miles
downstream from the rapids.  David knows how to build a sturdy drift
boat.  Aside from a few scratches, it was in great shape, even after
being winched up the wall of the canyon.

The only other borrowed equipment we lost was one oar.  You, of course,
saved one of the oars by clinging to it even through the worst of the
rapids.

A less considerate and responsible person would simply have let the oar
shift for itself, and would have struck out for the shore, although the
canyon walls are so steep there you probably couldn't have got out
anyway.  Did you know that?  You did the wise thing, which is to float
a couple thousand yards down through the canyon, even if you had to
spend half the time underwater.  Better safe than sorry I always say.

You remember the life jacket you and I had that friendly little
tug-of-war over just prior to capsizing?  Well, even that turned up, on
a gravel bar downstream from Banners Ferry, Idaho.  It still had the
imprints of your fingers on it!  Only kidding!  Ha ha!

Even though you probably are aware of this, I should explain that I
wasn't trying to wrest the life preserver from you, and I'm sorry if I
gave you that impression.  I was merely attempting to assist you in
putting it on.

I tried to tell you this at the time, but the roar of the rapids and
Zumbo's screaming, "We're all gonna die!  We're all gonna die!"

probably drowned--unfortunate word that--out my voice, or maybe even
caused you to think I had actually shouted something like "Give me
that, you ...!"

Think about it.  Would an employee shout something like that at his
boss, particularly after he had just been promised a large raise?

Sure, the raise involved the life preserver, although that certainly
had nothing to do with my assisting you in putting the preserver on.

(By the way, the raise hasn't shown up on my paycheck yet.  In fact,
the paycheck hasn't shown up yet.  Would you mention this to the
comptroller?) Don't be too hard on Zumbo.  I realize that the little
mishap was totally his fault, but keep in mind that he has written a
lot of great stories for the magazine over the years.  Still, after all
the time he and I have kicked around together, he should have realized
I don't know a thing about rowing a drift boat.  Jim was certainly
remiss in not arguing more forcefully that I not be allowed to row,
because he more than anyone should have realized that my claim to
having vast experience in handling drift boats in rapids was merely an
attempt to introduce a little comic relief into the situation.

Also, I thought it might take your mind off the treble-hook spinner
dangling from your ear.  And I guess it did that all right!  Ha ha!

Seriously, though, I think it would have been wise for you to let me
remove the hook with my pocket knife, because, unlike drift-boat
rowing, I do have vast experience removing hooks from ears and even
more private parts of the anatomy.

Did I mention that Zumbo bumped my arm just as I was getting ready to
make that cast?  I don't think it was deliberate, but who can tell
about Zumbo?

Please keep in mind that the whole idea for us to do a fishing trip
together was Zumbo's.  But, as I say, don't be too hard on him.  He
apparently didn't detect the jesting tone in your shouted threats when
you chased him out of the canyon with the oar, which is probably why he
lit out for the mountains immediately after the trip and hasn't been
seen since.  If by any chance you were serious about those threats, I
will try to discover his whereabouts for you.  What are friends for, I
always say.

Any chance you can make it out West for a hunting trip with me this
fall?

My friend Retch Sweeney has offered to guide, if you could see your way
clear to send five hundred dollars in advance so he can make bail.

Don't expect any great amount of excitement.  It would just be a
typical McManus hunting trip.

We'd love to have you along.  Think about it.

And please, do stop by the comptroller's office and ask about my
check.

Best regards, Pat Scritch's Creek The first time I saw Ketchum Scritch
I was about twelve and spending the day with the old woodsman Rancid
Crabtree.  Ketchum came driving up in an ancient, rickety truck that
seemed to be puffing smoke from every orifice and portal.  He was about
as tall a human being as I had ever seen, hard and sinewy, with a
week's growth of gray beard and coal-black eyes glinting out of
cavernous sockets.  And there was a meanness to him, not the happy
meanness of some people I knew, but a serious, no-nonsense meanness.

In the truck with him was a little girl with wild tawny hair and great
wide blue eyes.  She held a dog by the collar.  The dog curled a lip at
me and growled.  Ketchum Scritch told the dog to shut up, and the dog
did.  I thought probably Scritch could tell just about anything to shut
up and it would.  He got out of the truck and walked toward us carrying
a gallon jug.  "Scritch," Rancid said.  "Crabtree," Scritch said.

Those were about the only two words exchanged between them.  Rancid
gave Scritch a wad of crumpled-up dollar bills and took the jug.

Scritch got back in the truck and drove off in a cloud of smoke.  I
could see the little girl looking back out of the rear window of the
truck.

After they had gone, I said to Rancid, "How come they call him
Ketchum?"

"Wahl, it might be on account he come from Ketchum, Idaho.  But Ah
reckon it's 'cause if anybody does him a mean turn and tries to get
away, he'll catch 'em.  Ah recollect y'ars ago thar was a fella by the
name of Ringo Dance who beat Scritch out of some money.  The way Ah
heard the story, Scritch caught up with him in a saloon in a little
town up north.  Ringo was standin' at the bar with some other men when
Scritch stepped through the door and called out his name, mean and
hard-like--'Dance!"  Ringo jumped right out through a winder, and the
other fellas, they took one look at Scritch and broke into a
fox-trot.

Ha!  Ah guess they didn't know Ringo's last name was Dance."

I for one certainly did not want to be caught by Ketchum Scritch,
whether or not I had done him a bad turn.  Little did I know then what
lay in store for me a few years hence.

"What's in the jug?"  I asked Rancid.

"Some medicine ol' Scritch whups up fer me from time to time."

"Medicine?  Why, you're never sick, Rancid."

"Thet jist goes to show what fine medicine it is," Rancid said, and he
pulled the cork and took a dose of it.  Then he gasped and wheezed and
pounded himself on the chest.  "Not only thet, it's good fer tannin'
hides and curin' fence posts."

The next time I saw Ketchum Scritch was a couple of years later.  My
friend Retch and I had hitchhiked back into the mountains with a couple
of loggers to do some fishing.  As we rounded a curve, the mountains
opened up into a pretty little valley with a stream flowing through
it.

"Hey, this looks like a good place," Retch told the loggers.  "Just
drop us off here and we'll spend the day fishin' that stream."

"You sure you want to fish there?"  the driver said.

"Why not?"  I asked.  "You think it's fished out?"

"Naw," the other logger said.  "I can almost guarantee you it ain't
been fished a-tall."  I caught him sneaking a wink at the driver.

"Then this is the place for us," Retch said.  "We'd appreciate it if
you'd pick us up on your way back tonight."

"Sure thing," the man who had winked said.  "Leastwise we'll pick up as
much as we can."  Then the two loggers laughed for all they were
worth.

Looking back, I now realize that they were two of the happy mean type
of people.

The fishing in that little stream was as fine as any I'd ever had.

After we saw that we wouldn't have any trouble catching our limits, we
dumped out our worm cans and started practicing our fly-fishing.  It
was beautiful the way those fat little cutthroat would tear into our
Black Gnats, and every once in a while we would nail a twelve- or
fourteen-incher, and once this huge redbelly flashed out from under a
log and snapped my leader as if it were a cobweb.  I told myself I'd
have to come back and try for that fish again.  It was one of those
fish that swim forever in the dark currents of your mind, until you
catch them.  Then you eat them and forget them.

After Retch and I each had a good string of fish, we stashed them and
our fishing rods and went exploring.  We walked down the middle of the
creek singing and whistling and philosophizing, enjoying the cool,
clinging wetness on our legs, the hot sun toasting our backs, and the
creek itself, dappled with golden light beneath a veil of alder
leaves.

It was wonderful.  Then I happened to notice a shed off to one side,
almost concealed by honeysuckle.

"Why, look there," I said to Retch.  "Somebody has built himself a
little cabin."

"I'll be danged," Retch said.  "Maybe it was built by an old prospector
and he got froze to death or something' and left some gold nuggets
layin' around.  Let's go take a look."

As we scrambled out of the creek and started up the bank to the shed, a
voice boomed, "Whoa there!"

We both whoaed.  It was the sort of voice that if it had said
"Dance!"

you instantly would have broken into a fox-trot.

I looked around and there stood Ketchum Scritch.

"What in tarnation you think you doin'?"

While I was still sorting through my hoard of lies for a good one,
Retch stammered out, "W-why, we're uh lost.  Yes, sir, we're lost!"

"Y-yeah," I said, picking up the cue.  But before I could embroider the
lie with some colorful and authentic details, Ketchum snatched Retch up
by the shirt and held him straight out at arm's length.  Retch's feet
ran furiously in empty space.

"I don't know whether to skin you now or wait until the next time I
catch you snoopin'around my property," Scritch said, looking as if he
favored now.

"N-next time would suit me better," Retch whined, cause there ain't
gonna be no next time."

Then Scritch dropped him.

Retch's feet being already revved up, he spun a couple of shallow
furrows in the sod and then shot off through the brush, across the
creek, and up the side of a mountain before I had even jammed myself
into first gear.

Scritch looked down at me.  "I seen your skinny carcass somewheres
before," he said.  "When I caught those poor fellas in here last year,
you ain't by any chance the lucky one what got away, are ya?"

"N-no, sir," I said.  "This is my first time, and I was just passing
through, trying to find my way home."

"Well then, I want you to do just two things.  The first is to pick up
them fish you stashed up the crick."

"Y-yes, sir.  And what's the other?"

"T'other is, git!"

After picking up the strings of fish, I set what might well have been
the world's record for gitting.  Retch and I were so scared that it was
at least a week before we even thought about going back to fish
Scritch's creek.  It seemed such a shame, all those fine fat cutthroat
going to waste.  We began to speculate that maybe old Scritch was more
bark than bite and decided to ask Rancid Crabtree his opinion.

"What age you be now?"  Rancid asked.

"Fourteen."

"Wahl, then Ah wouldn't try fishin' thet crick ag'in, cause Scritch
considers anybody over twelve a keeper."

"What's he use that old shed for, anyway?"

"Ah 'spect thet's whar he keeps the ones he don't throw back.  You boys
best steer clear of Scritch."

We didn't talk about fishing Scritch's creek anymore, but I couldn't
get the thought of that huge, magical cutthroat out of my mind, the one
that had snapped my leader.  Several times in moments of fish madness I
nearly sneaked back there, but the image of Ketchum holding Retch in
the air at arm's length would shock me back to sanity.  I was left with
only my memory of that fine morning on Scritch's crick and a gnawing in
my belly to fish it again.

A couple years passed, and I became almost as interested in girls as I
was in fish.  One Saturday Retch somehow managed to borrow his father's
car, and he, Birdy Thompson, and I drove out to a little country school
to a dance.

Usually we went just to watch the Saturday Night Fight, in which a
couple of the seedier characters at the dance would shuffle around each
other in the parking lot, saying things like "So you think you can take
me, hunh?"

"I don't think, I know ..."

" You and who else?"

"I can take you with one hand tied behind me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

And so on.  They would shuffle around each other repeating these
phrases for half an hour or so, hoping someone would jump in and say,
"Okay, break it up, you guys."  If no one said, "Okay, break it up,
guys," then sooner or later they would have to roll around in the
gravel of the parking lot for a while to satisfy the spectators who had
stood around listening to all the boring chitchat.

But this Saturday night our plan was different.  The idea, as I
understood it, was to meet some girls and see if they wouldn't let us
"take them home."  I was a little nervous about the venture, because I
didn't know that much about girls, and the very thought of actually
"taking home" filled me with a secret dread.  The dread was secret,
because I had somehow managed to give the impression to the other
guys--I don't know how--that I was an experienced ladies' man.

"Hoo boy!"  Birdy said when we drove up to the school.  "I got a
feeling we're going to get lucky tonight!"

"Hoo boy," I said, wiping my palms on my good pants.

It turned out to be a pretty nice dance.  Rancid Crabtree was there,
whooping it up with his girlfriend, Ginger Ann.  I danced a couple of
dances with Ginger Ann, just to get loosened up a bit.  She was soft
and warm to the touch, and smelled nice, too, and pretty soon I was
wondering if Rancid would mind if I took Ginger Ann home, just for
practice.

"You got a ride home tonight, Ginger Ann?"  I ventured.

"You bet I have, sweetie," she said.  "Now why don't you go dance with
that pretty little girl over there.  Maybe she don't have a ride
home."

Why, my eyeballs almost suffered cardiac arrest.  Standing against the
wall was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen, her tawny hair framing
her big blue eyes, perky nose, and sullen mouth.  I sauntered over to
her.  "Hi.  My name is Patrick."

"So?"

"Uh, so, uh, I was wondering if you had, uh, a name."

"Sure I have a name!  Pearly."

"Oh.  Well, Pearly, would you go home with me?  No!  I mean, would you
like to dance?"

Pearly practically leaped at the invitation.  "Oh, I guess so," she
said.

My suavity had paid off.

I danced the next two dances with her, being very cool and
sophisticated so she would know I was a man of the world.  Every time I
tried to ask her if she had a ride home, though, the words didn't come
out right.

"Uh," I said to her suavely, "you must be getting very warm from all
this dancing.  You're sweating like a pig, ya know.  Uh, do you have,
uh, would you like, uh ... some of that nice cool lemonade over
there?"

"I sure would," she said.  "I'd like to soak my sore feet in it."

Pearly may have been cute, but she had a bit of a mean streak, too.

As I was handing her a glass of lemonade is when the terrible
misunderstanding occurred.  Someone bumped me hard from behind, and I
dumped the lemonade right down the front of Pearly's dress.  Well, I
was embarrassed and angry, and assumed the bump had been deliberate, a
little practical joke perpetrated by either Retch or Birdy.

"Watch it, you moron!"  I snapped.  "Or I'll ..."

"You and who else?"

Recognizing fighting words when I heard them, I slowly turned around.

There stood a menacing mountain of bone and muscle that appeared to be,
if not the missing link in the chain of human evolution, at least a
misplaced one.

He was a head taller than I and had real biceps, which looked like
turtles doing pushups in his shirt sleeves.

"I want to go home," Pearly said, speaking my exact thought.

"Don'tcha wanta stay for the fight?"  the link said to her.

"What fight?"  I asked.

"The one between me 'n' you," the link said, thumping my chest with a
finger the size of a cucumber.  "Now let's go out to the parking
lot."

Of all the possible destinations under my feverish consideration, the
parking lot held such a low priority it didn't even register on the
scale.

But by now some interested spectators had gathered around us and were
offering words of encouragement to both sides.  With an audience
looking on, I didn't feel I could resort to defensive groveling without
at least going through the traditional fight ritual: "So, you think you
can take me, hunh."

This utterance so delighted and surprised my adversary that he burst
out in a harsh laugh.  "Yeah, I do."

"You and who else?"

Then I heard Birdy's voice whispering urgently in my ear.  I hoped he
had some plan for escape.  "You know your new fly rod?  I was wondering
if, after the fight, I could ..."

Suddenly, Rancid Crabtree was standing between Missing Link and me,
shoving us apart.  Wow, I thought, that was close.  Now Rancid will
say, "All right, you guys, break it up."

"All right, folks, Ahim here to tell you this ain't gonna be no bloody
spectacle put on for your amusement.  You all jist go on about yer
dancin' and let these fellas go out to the parking lot and settle their
differences man-to-man in private.  Ah'll go along jist to make shore
it's a fa'r fight."

What?  Is he stark-raving mad?  This guy is going to kill me!

Rancid's little speech resulted in a good deal of disappointment, most
of it apparently mine.  Everyone else seemed to prefer dancing a polka
to watching a poking.  The last thing I wanted was a fight, fair or
unfair making so little difference as to be inconsequential, because in
either case I was going to get murdered.

The three of us walked out to the parking lot, the link rolling up his
sleeves over his bulging biceps.  I rolled up my shirt sleeves over
where my biceps were supposed to be but hadn't yet put in an
appearance.  If they were ever going to show up, now was a good time.

"Fust thang," Rancid said, "Ah don't wanta see no eye gougin' or ear
bitin' or puttin' the boots to a fella while he's down.  Of course,
it's okay while he's still standin' up."  The link sneered, an
expression I took as a clear indication he did not hold such sissy
rules in high regard.  "Now, Ahim going' to give each of you fellas a
little tip about fightin'," Rancid went on, "since Ah've had
considerable experience with it in maw day.  But Ah better whisper it
in yer ears so t'other fella can't hear it.  You Just," he said to the
link.

"I don't need no tip about fightin'," the link said.  I believed him.

"You git it anyway," Rancid said, "because otherwise you might just end
up beaten into a little pulpy mess that would make people sick to their
stomachs just to look at you, and somehow folks might think Ah was to
blame.

Now, you don't want thet, do you, Harry?"

Harry?  I thought.  Rancid must know the link.

Rancid put his arm around where Harry's neck would have been if he'd
had one, and started whispering.  I could tell it must be very valuable
information, because of the startled look on the link's face.  All the
time he was whispering, Rancid kept smiling and hugging Harry's head,
which caused Harry to wince, and every once in a while they would look
over at me, and the link would kind of shake his head in a little
jerking motion.  I was beginning to wonder if Rancid was giving my
opponent a tip or a five-minute lecture in mayhem.  Then a strange
thing happened.  Harry tore his head loose from Rancid's hug, scurried
across the parking lot, leaped in his car, or somebody's car, and
roared off down the road, spraying gravel over half the school
playground.

Rancid stood there in the parking lot, hands on his hips, rocking back
and forth on the balls of his feet, smiling his big snaggle-toothed
smile, and staring after the rapidly diminishing taillights.

"Shoot," he said.  "Ah guess thet fella just remembered some bidness he
had back in town.  Thar won't be no fight after all."

I let out the breath I had caught when the link had first thumped my
puny chest.

"What about my tip?"  I said.

Rancid looked puzzled for an instant.  "Oh, thet," he said.  "Ah don't
reckon you'll be needin' yer tip."

When Rancid and I walked back into the dance, a murmur of amazement
drifted around the room.  Rancid patted me on the back and turned to a
group of men standing by the door.  "Ah never seen nothin' like it," he
told them.

"Boy hits like a goldang pile driver!  You'd never guess it, lookin' at
them puny arms of his, would ya?  Ah bet ole Harry don't stop runnin'
till sunup tomorrow."  The men all grinned, looking at my puny arms.

Retch and Birdy came over to congratulate me and said they knew I could
hold my own with the link.  "Yeah, and I was just foolin' when I asked
about your fly rod," Birdy said.  "I figured all along you could lick
him.  How come, do you suppose, Rancid wouldn't let anybody watch?"

"I don't know," I said.  "It was pretty violent.  I hope I didn't get
blood splattered all over my good pants."

Suddenly, Pearly was standing in front of me.  "You know what you went
and done?"  she said, her blue eyes flashing.  "First you dumped
lemonade all over my dress and now you beat up my ride home!"

"The link was your ride home?"

"He's my cousin is all--Harry Pitts!"

"Sorry," I said.  "I didn't know."

"Well, now you're just gonna hafta take me home yourself."

"Hoo boy!"  Birdy said, poking me in the ribs.

"Hoo boy is right," Retch said, slapping me on the back.  "I'll even
loan you my old man's car.  Don't mess it all up either.  Ha!"

"Hoo boy," I said, my voice hardly cracking at all.  This was not my
night.

To tell the truth, "taking home" wasn't what it had been cracked up to
be.  Pearly sat hunched against the door on her side of the seat and
devoted most of her attention to chewing a hangnail--the world's
largest hangnail.

Occasionally she would snap directions at me, but that was about all
the conversation I could get out of her: "Turn there ... Take a left at
the crossroads ... Go through that gate ..."

After half an hour, it occurred to me that we were getting pretty far
into the mountains, and I was beginning to wonder if I could find my
way back again.  The road deteriorated into an overgrown pack trail,
and I was tearing up brush and small trees with the bumper of Retch's
old man's car.

"Holy cow!"  I said finally.  "How much farther is it, anyway?"

"Drive through that crick, smarty," Pearly snapped, and we'll be nearly
there."  I imagined the look on Retch's old man's face if he could see
me driving his car through a creek.  It was pretty terrible.

A frightening thought suddenly hit me.  Suppose Harry Pitts was at
Pearly's house!  Either I spoke the thought aloud or Pearly read my
mind.

"Naw, Harry won't be there," she said.  "It's my grampa's place.  I'm
stayin'with him for the summer."

We drove into a clearing at the far edge of which was a huge old log
house.  There was something about the place that caused the hair on the
back of my neck to lift.  "Uh, this your Grandpa Pitts's place?"  I
asked.

"Naw," she said.  "This here belongs to Grampa Scritch."

"Grandpa Scritch?  Scritch?  SCRITCH!"

As I simultaneously gunned the engine and attempted to push Pearly out
the door, a great mean voice roared out, "Whoa there!"  I had no
trouble recognizing the voice.  I stalled the engine just as Scritch
himself stepped into the headlight beams.

"Now you gonna get it, I bet," Pearly said in her mean, squeaky little
voice.

"Step out of that car, boy!"  Scritch ordered.  "What you doin' with
Pearly?  Get on up the house there, so's I can git a better look at
you."

It soon became apparent that Harry had sneaked Pearly off to the dance
without telling Grampa Scritch.  By the time we got to the house, she
was crying and saying that everything that had happened was my fault.

I did not anticipate that the next few moments would be among my
happier ones.  I did not even anticipate there would be many next few
moments.  If Scritch had threatened to skin me over a few fish, what
would he do to me for kidnapping his granddaughter?  Worse yet, for
taking her home?

Scritch turned up the lantern on the table and glared at me.  "Now
what's this all about?"  he said.

"We-we-we-we," I explained.

"He whopped Harry!"  Pearly blurted out.  "And afterwards Harry run off
and left me at the dance!"

"Whopped Harry?"  Scritch boomed.  "No!"

"Yeesssss!"  whimpered Pearly.

"Good gosh almighty!"  Scritch bellowed and brought his fist down so
hard on the table the lantern flew up in the air almost as high as I
did.

"S-sir," I said, "there may be some misunderstanding about that."

But it was too late.  Scritch stepped around the table and came for
me.

I backed against a stove and shut my eyes.  And then Scritch had me by
the hand, crunching all my finger and knuckle bones into little
splinters, and I supposed that he would then move on and do the same to
the other parts of my body, one piece at a time.  But then I realized
he was pumping the remains of my hand up and down.  He was shaking my
hand!  And laughing!  I had never in my life heard even a rumor of
someone's having seen Scritch laugh.  Pearly seemed amazed, too.  And,
if I wasn't mistaken, disappointed.

"Laddy," he said after a bit, still squeezing the remains of my hand,
"anybody who whups that no-good Harry Pitts is a friend of mine.  If
you can see your way clear, I'd like for you to whup his daddy, too."

Then he laughed again.  "Yup, from now on, laddy, you count yourself my
friend.  And old Scritch don't have many friends."

"That's h-hard to believe, sir," I said.

"It's true.  And that's the way I like it!"

I thought it might not be too easy, being Ketchum Scritch's friend, but
it was a darned sight more pleasant than being his enemy.  After he had
finished squeezing my hand, he poured Pearly and me each a glass of
buttermilk and set out a plate of dry biscuits.  I formerly had loathed
buttermilk, but now found it to be far and away my favorite beverage.

The dry biscuits tasted more delicious than the finest chocolate cake
I'd ever eaten.  Thus does a near brush with death heighten one's
appreciation of the humbler things of life.

Scritch sat across the table from me, staring at my puny arms.  "So you
whopped Harry," he said.  "Well, I be danged."

"I guess I better be going," I said.  "There are a couple other fellows
at the dance who might be needing the car."

"I like you," Scritch said.  "I don't know why, but I do.  If you want
to take Pearly out again sometime, it's all right with me."

I looked at Pearly.  She stuck out her tongue.

"Thanks anyway," I said, "but I'm more used to older ladies."

"I can understand that," Scritch said.  "Anyway, if there's ever
anything I can do for you ..."

I stopped.  My trembling, mangled hand rested on the doorknob.  "There
might be something," I said.

For many years afterwards, up until the time old Ketchum Scritch died,
whenever I felt the urge to catch a mess of cutthroat trout, I had my
own secret place, a mountain stream where golden light dappled the
water beneath a fluttering veil of alder leaves.

I never saw either Pearly or Harry Pitts again, and as far as I was
concerned, that was much too soon.

The Tin Horn I have always made a point of avoiding violence,
particularly if there's some chance I might become a participant in it.
 My father, on the other hand, was a professional fighter of sorts.  He
was paid money to box in Saturday matches promoted by hustlers in
little Idaho logging towns, and he always won, even in the sissy fights
where they used boxing gloves.  My father loved boxing.

Dad tried to interest me in boxing from my earliest years, teaching me
to jab with my left and hook with my right and step in for an
uppercut.

I enjoyed it.  Then I found out the other guy got to hit back, and all
the fun went out of boxing for me.  Dad tried to conceal his
disappointment, but I could sense a certain lack of enthusiasm when I
would ask him to play paper dolls.  He died when I was six.  I've been
sorry ever since that I hadn't faked as much interest in boxing as he
did in paper dolls.

Life goes on.  For my seventh birthday, one of my rich aunts gave me a
tin horn.  "Lord," my mother muttered, as if we didn't have trouble
enough."

She frequently made such irrational statements during those troubled
days, and I thought the sooner I learned to play the tin horn the
sooner I could cheer her up with a few little tunes.  The horn had come
with a book of sheet music.

The composer of the music had chosen to use diagrams and numbers in
place of notes, which was thoughtful of him, since I didn't know how to
read music.

I loved that little tin horn and practiced on it day and night.  The
titles of the songs caught the mood of the music beautifully.  For
example, "Happy Little Blue Bird" went something like this: tali tali
tali tali tali tali tali tali taaaaah.  "Sad Little Rain Drop," by
contrast, went: tali tali tali tali tali tali tali tali.  Precociously,
I mastered the entire book of songs in less than a week, although Mom
said she thought surely it had been at least a year.

"Nope," I replied, "Just a week.  And I've got them all memorized.

Here, I'll play you 'Happy Little Blue Bird."" Tali tali tali tali tali
tali ...

During the second or third week, one of the valves on the horn
developed a squeak.  Thus, "Sad Little Rain Drop" sounded like this:
tali tali tali-squee tali tali-squee tali-squee tali ... I asked Mom if
she thought the squeak detracted too much from the music.  She said
no.

The squeaky valve, however, was soon to play a major part in my young
life and result in that rite of manhood so cherished in memory: one's
first honest-to-goodness, no-holds-barred, knock-down, drag-out
fight.

My worst enemy at the time, not counting my sister, the Troll, was a
girl who lived on a nearby farm.  Her name was Valvoleen Grooper.  She
was a year older than I, and a head taller.  I sometimes played with
Valvoleen's younger brother, Dicky, but because of his ever-lurking
evil sister, I usually avoided him.  One of Valvoleen's favorite sports
was to snatch one of my playthings away from me and run and hide it.

If I couldn't find it, too bad.  I was losing some of my interest in
paper dolls by then, so the loss didn't bother me much.  It was the
dishonor, the humiliation.

"You better give that back to me or I'll tell!"  I'd scream at her.

"Tough tiddlywinks," Valvoleen would reply, and, with a haughty toss of
her head, swagger off to her house.

As paper dolls began to lose their grip on me, they were replaced by
fishing.  Fortunately, a fine little trout stream ran through the back
of our farm, and I had merely to dig a few worms, grab my fishing pole,
and wander down to the creek anytime I felt like it, which was usually
once or twice a day during the summer.  With the arrival of the tin
horn, however, and the discovery of my talent for music, fishing was
momentarily forgotten.  Then one day the horn turned up missing.  I
hunted high and low, far and wide for it, but the horn was not to be
found.

"You seen my horn?"  I asked Mom, who was relaxing at the kitchen table
with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.

"Nnnph," she replied, with a casualness that showed little
understanding of the significance of the loss.  My whole musical career
was at stake, and did she care?

"Maybe somebody stole it," the Troll said.  "Good riddance, too!

"Stole it?"  I said.

"Yeah," the Troll said.  "Somebody with a tin ear took your tin horn.

Ha!"

"Would you two shut up," Mom said.  "I'm trying to read the paper."

"Anybody been over here?"  I said.

"Wha?"  Mom said.  "Oh, Dicky and Valvoleen stopped by while you were
gone."

"Oh.  But no hoboes or anybody who might steal a horn?"

"NO."

I spent another day searching for the horn, trying to think of
someplace outside I might have set it down, but to no avail.  Finally,
I gave up, dug some worms, and went down to the creek to fish.  I
caught a couple of six-inchers and some little ones.  Even after the
action slowed and finally stopped, I still sat there dangling the line
in the water, thinking about my horn.  I thought I could almost hear
its melodious tali tali tali tali.  Suddenly it occurred to me that I
didn't just think I could hear the tin horn, I actually could hear
it!

Very faintly from somewhere upstream came the unmistakable notes of
"Happy Little Blue Bird."

I tossed my fish pole up on the bank and ran upstream.  As the music
grew louder, I went into a crouch, sneaking silently along through the
brush to the top of a bank where I could peer down unseen by the horn
player.  I had not formulated any plan yet for retrieving the horn,
mainly because I expected to see a large, dirty hobo playing it.

Crawling on my belly, I parted the grass at the top of the rise.

There, down below me, sitting on a grassy spot by the crick, was
Valvoleen.  She was now playing "Sad Little Rain Drop" but without the
subtle melancholy I could evoke from the song.  Tali tali tali-squee
tali tali-squee tali-squee tali ... The squeak!  Now there was no doubt
that the horn was mine.  Valvoleen had stolen it.  I was consumed with
rage.

But restraint was called for.  I needed a strategy.  I knew from
experience that Valvoleen could outrun me.  I would have to get close,
then snatch the horn from her before she knew what was happening.

I stood up, brushed off the front of my shirt and jeans, and sauntered
down the slope to the creek, whistling as I went.  Valvoleen saw me,
her eyes narrowing to slits, but she continued to play, if somewhat
raggedly, on the horn.

"Oh, Valvoleen," I said, moving closer.  "Fancy seeing you here."

Valvoleen took the horn from her lips.  "Beat it, Dumbo.  Don't you see
I'm trying to practice my music?"

"Oh, yeah, I see that."  I moved closer.  "Very pretty."  A few more
feet.  She was standing up, suspicion tightening the skin around her
mouth and eyes.  "I was just up the crick fishing when I heard this
pretty music and wondered who ..."

I lunged for the tin horn, got one hand on it.

"You stupid little wart!"  screamed Valvoleen.  "What are you doing?"

I jerked at the horn.  "It's mine!  You stole it from me!"

"Did not!  It's mine!"

Her left jab caught me square on the nose.  I staggered back, trying to
think of a suitably sardonic comment, but all I could come up with was
the traditional and mundane "Owwwwww!"  Valvoleen had broken my grip,
not to mention probably my nose.  She darted for the path up the bank,
but I cut her off.  She backed away, keeping her lethal left fist
cocked high.  I moved in.

She backed away.  Both of us were breathing hard.  A large gray cedar
log slanted out across the creek behind her.  Valvoleen jumped to the
log.  A tactical error.  Now I had her.

I jumped to the log.  She backed up to where the log slanted down into
the water.  There was no place for her to go now.  She would have to
stand and fight.  She stuck the horn down through the belt in her jeans
and came at me, fists high, feinting with the left.  I went in under
the right hook I knew was coming and tried for an uppercut.  I missed
her chin but grazed an ear, almost dislodging her glasses.  Bad
timing.

If I'd knocked off her glasses I would have had her.  Valvoleen
responded with a kidney punch, or at least a punch on some kind of
organ that hurt like mad.  Then she kneed me solidly but to no
effect.

I slipped and went down, getting in a lucky kneecap punch, right on the
crazy bone.  She howled satisfyingly.  I whipped an ankle hold on
her.

She responded with the old but effective hair-pull, permanently
inverting several hundred of my follicles.  I could hardly breathe.

Then I realized it was because my face was being pressed down into the
log.  Valvoleen had released her hair-hold and was kneeling on my head
while giving me body shots to the ribs.  I was beginning to lose
interest in music.  Finally, with every last ounce of my seven-year-old
strength, I drew my left leg up under me and with a powerful thrust
toppled us both into the water.

Valvoleen came up wide-eyed and choking.  "Save me!"  she cried,
thrashing about.  "I can't swim!"

I stood up.  The water was only up to my hips.  I grabbed her by the
back of the collar and dragged her to shore in the manner made
fashionable by John Wayne.  I reached down and took my tin horn from
her belt.

"Let that be a lesson to you," I said, and walked off up the hill.  I
shook the water out of the tin horn and began to play "Happy Little
Blue Bird": tali-squee tali-squee tali-squee ... When I got to the top
of the hill, I turned and looked back.  Valvoleen was still sitting in
the water at the edge of the crick.  Her chin was on her chest.  I
thought she might even be crying.

I smiled.  Dad would have been proud of me.  Tali-squee tali-squee
tali-squee tali-squee ...

When I got home, the Troll met me at the door.  "Guess what?  I found
your horn.  It was rolled up in a newspaper in the back of Mom's
closet.  How much will you give me to get it back?  How come you're all
wet?  Yuck!  You've had a nosebleed!  You look like you've been in a
fight.  And where did you get that other horn?"

"Valvoleen," I said.  "It's Valvoleen's.  I'm just borrowing it."

I felt a little bad about accusing Valvoleen of stealing, then beating
her up and taking her horn.  So the next day I gave the horn back to
her.

Well, I didn't exactly give it back.  I hid it and let her look for
it.

Cupidity, Draw Thy Bow My first real, honest-to-goodness date ever was
with Melba Peachbottom, far and away the loveliest girl in seventh
grade at Delmore Blight junior High.  I personally thought the date a
great success, but Melba, for some obscure reason, found it less than
satisfactory, or so I assume from the fact that she has not spoken a
word to me in the forty years since.

I realize now that part of my fascination with Melba consisted in her
newness.  The girls I had gone to school with through grade school were
all attractive in their own way, but they lacked the mystery of the
unknown.

There was my good friend Olga Bonemarrow, for example, but after six
years of suffering through the same sights, sounds, and smells,
particularly the smells, of grade school, what was there to talk
about?

The time we nearly froze to death because all the classroom windows
were kept wide open after Stink Miller trapped his first skunk?  Or,
more intimately, the time I hit Olga in the ear with a spitball
intended for Retch Sweeney, and it stuck right there in her ear until
she dug it out with a pencil?  I don't know why, but there was just
something about hitting a girl in the ear with a spitball that
tarnished her for me, at least as a candidate for first date.

Melba, on the other hand, was shiny new, with unmercifully blue eyes
and tawny hair and an actual figure.  I knew that female figures were
highly prized by older men, and even though I was primarily interested
in pretty faces, I thought Melba's having a figure probably counted as
a plus.

Even on the first day of school I noticed she was attracted to me.

Once I even caught her looking in my direction, daintily covering a
yawn with her cute little hand.  Our relationship developed rapidly
over the next couple of weeks.  Then it turned serious and soon after
that got totally out of hand.

At the rate this wild, impetuous affair was rushing tumultuously along,
I knew the moment was fast approaching when I would actually have
to--oh, sublime agony!--speak to her.

Cripes!  Sure, I was as suave and sophisticated as the next
twelve-year-old at Delmore Blight, and undoubtedly I had the finest
pompadour in the entire school.  Each morning I would coat my hair with
this hair-dressing goop I had got from my beautician cousin, Elmira.

Then with great delicacy and attention to detail I would mold my hair
into loops and waves and rolls until the pompadour covered the whole
top of my head and violated considerable airspace on both sides and
above.  My ears looked like two helpless little pink things caught in a
raging brown surf.

With possibly the world's greatest pompadour going for me, I didn't see
how I could miss with Melba.  Still, there was that formidable
obstacle--speaking to her for the first time.  Cripes!  What kind of
opening could I use?  I couldn't very well just walk up to her and say,
"Hi, Melba," because I sat scarcely three feet away from her every day
of the week.  She was always sitting right there--radiantly
there--practically at arm's length.

How could I suddenly, for no reason, blurt out, "Hi, Melba," as though
I had just happened to run into her at a swank cocktail party or
something?

My one hope was that during lunch recess she would almost get run over
by a logging truck, and I could shout, "Watch out, Melba!"  That would
break the ice.  Unfortunately, a truck never came within a hundred
yards of her.  If one even came as close to her as fifty yards, I was
ready to shout my warning, but none ever did.  Even to get a shot at
Melba, a truck would have had to drive halfway up the fire escape,
because every lunch hour she sat up there with her girlfriends,
whispering and giggling.  Melba was driving me crazy, and I began to
think she avoided trucks just to spite me.

As my mentor, the old woodsman and man of the world Rancid Crabtree,
was fond of saying, faint heart never won fair maiden.  I decided to
take the bull by the horns.  As might be expected, I got gored.

Despite my suave, sophisticated manner, I suffered from a slight speech
impediment whenever I got nervous.  I stuttered.  Since I seldom got
nervous, few of my schoolmates realized I was thusly afflicted.  I had
decided to go with the basic "Hi, Melba," even though I knew it sounded
stupid.  But if I could just initiate the conversation, she would
probably reply, "Hi, Patrick, how are you today?"  and I would say,
"I'm just fine, Melba.  And you?"  and she would say, "I'm fine, too,"
and I would say, "How about a date next Saturday?"

Cripes!  I could feel sweat streaming down my back as I sauntered up
the fire escape toward Melba and her friends.  Fire escapes aren't that
easy to saunter up, either.

Suddenly, there I was, hovering over Melba and her friends, all of whom
stared at me in wondering and electric silence.  I was committed now.

I couldn't very well say, "Excuse me.  I'm just passing through on my
way to the top of the fire escape."  There was nothing to do but blurt
out "Hi, Melba," and that is what I attempted.  But all that came out
was, "Hu-hu-hu-hu-hu-hu ..."  Cripes!

Janie McAllister, one of the friends, immediately took matters into her
own hands and extricated me from the predicament.  She leaned over the
edge of the fire escape and yelled at the school-ground supervisor:
"Mrs.  Grendel!

Patrick's panting on us!"

"Patrick!"  screamed Mrs. Grendel.  "Get down off that fire escape and
stop tormenting those girls!"

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I laughed evilly and
fled.

Whether it was my suave, sophisticated manner or the pompadour that
impressed Melba, I'll never know, but the very next day she actually
spoke to me.  I was standing casually--I always stood casually in those
days--next to the water fountain when Melba walked right up to me and
said, "Excuse me.  I'd like a drink."  I stepped aside with a flourish,
grasped the faucet knob, and suave as Cary Grant cracked, "It's on me,
Melba."  In a spasm of nerves, I then turned the knob too hard and
squirted approximately a quart of water up Melba's nose.  If ever a
romance was ill-fated, this was it!  Cripes!  I laughed evilly and
fled.

I naturally concluded that the water-faucet debacle had permanently
fractured our relationship, but that afternoon, as I casually wallowed
in the black pit of despair, Melba suddenly, miraculously penetrated
the gloom and asked if she could borrow a sheet of tablet paper.  From
my ceaseless surveillance of every detail of her classroom existence, I
knew that Melba had practically a whole tablet tucked away neatly in
her desk.

"Uh, sure," I quipped.  At that moment I knew with certainty that I
would never solve the intricate and lovely jigsaw puzzle that was
Woman.  Too many missing pieces.  But what the heck.

Immediately after school, I asked Melba if she would go on a date with
me the following Saturday.  She hesitated, possibly pondering whether I
was about to laugh evilly and flee.  But then her pent-up emotion for
me burst its restraints and gushed forth.  "Okay," she said.

A first date for a twelve-year-old boy is knotty with problems, not the
least of which is how to transport the girl to the place where the date
is to occur.  As expected, my parents showed great reluctance to loan
me the family sedan, and I was not about to risk the humiliation of
having one of them drive us to and from the date.  (Both my parents
were a terrible embarrassment to me at the time, although they improved
enormously with age.) My only other option was to carry her on my
bike.

If Melba thought that too awkward, she could perhaps walk alongside the
bike, while I pedaled slowly.  I guessed that she would prefer to ride,
and in preparation for that likelihood I attached one of my mother's
decorative pillows to the rear-fender carrier.  Melba, sensitive soul
that she was, would probably appreciate this thoughtful touch.

Saturday, I knocked nervously on Melba's door and was invited in by Mr.
Peachbottom.  He seemed pleasant enough.  "Hello, son," he said.

"Here, let me take your hat."

"I'm not wearing a hat, sir," I replied.

"You're not?"  he said, taking a pair of spectacles from his shirt
pocket and putting them on.  "Oh.  Sorry.  Very nice pompadour you have
there."

"Thanks."

At that moment, Melba floated radiantly into the room wearing a nifty
pink dress.

"You look nice," I said.

"Gee, thanks," she said, blushing.

"Well, well, well," said Mr. Peachbottom, beaming.  "Where are you two
kids off to?  Harold's Ice Cream Emporium, I suspect."

Melba gave me one of her dazzling smiles as she awaited my response.

"Oh no, sir," I said.  "Something much more exciting than that."

"Indeed," said Mr. Peachbottom.  Melba's smile increased by about
fifty watts.

"Yeah," I said.  "Hogg Slough!  Bass fishing!  I caught a beaut out
there last week.  Almost three pounds.  But I'm pretty sure there's
some five-pounders in there, too.  I brought an extra pole for you,
Melba, and a whole big glob of nice fat lively night crawlers.  Ever
catch a bass before?"

Melba shook her head.

"No?  Well, this will be a real treat for you then."

I guess I was pretty well off the mark with that prediction, about bass
fishing being a treat for Melba.  After the date, she never spoke to me
again, nor much during it.  Thus do romances bloom and flourish and as
quickly wither away.

The next weekend, Olga Bonemarrow and I took my bike and went out
fishing at Hogg Slough.  Olga wasn't as pretty and mysterious as Melba
Peachbottom, but she was a whole lot better bass fisherman.  I felt
comfortable with Olga, too, and didn't have to put on airs.  Even so I
did regret removing the pillow from the rear-fender carrier, which I
knew could get hard and uncomfortable on a long ride.

"Pedal a little faster, Bonemarrow," I told Olga.  "My rear end is
getting sore."

Whitewater Fever I was tunneling through my garage the other day when
my irascible neighbor, one Alphonse P. Finley, popped in, demanding to
know the whereabouts of his lawn mower.

"Ye gods," he exclaimed in mock alarm.  "What a mess!  Aren't you
afraid of getting buried in an avalanche in here?"  Finley is a
tidiness-excessive personality.

"Don't raise your voice so loud," I said.  "Sound vibrations can
sometimes trigger a slide up by the rafters.  Also, I'd prefer it if
you didn't bother me now.  I'm looking for a saw."

"You'll never find it in here."

"It's a table saw," I said, probing gently into a pile with a wading
staff.  "Maybe it's under those canoes.  Give me a hand and we'll move
the canoes outside."

"I didn't come here to help you eviscerate your garage.  I just want my
lawn mower."

"Maybe it's under the canoes, too," I said shrewdly.

As Finley and I were lifting the top canoe, he clumsily bumped a
paddle, which nudged some tent poles, which in turn dislodged an
amorphous yellow blob from the top of my fishing-rod cabinet.  The blob
plummeted down, enveloping Finley.

"Aulp!  Aulp!"  he yelled, muffling his panicky cries with the
rubberized fabric.

"No need for concern," I said.  "These old World War Two surplus life
rafts are pretty tough.  I doubt you could hurt one with your head."

Finley dumped the raft off him, wiping dust and cobwebs from his wispy
pate.  "Yeech!  Nasty!  A raft, you say.  Don't tell me you actually
trusted your life to this thing on water."

"Oh yes indeed," I said.  "Retch Sweeney and I were among the pioneer
river rafters of the Pacific Northwest.  Haven't used it in a while,
though."

Twenty-five years, in fact.  The last time I'd used the raft was when
Retch Sweeney, his dog, Smarts, and I shot the Chick-n-out Narrows in
the middle of the night.

We had not intended to shoot the Narrows in the middle of the night, or
any other time for that matter.  We were unfamiliar with the river, but
people who knew it had told us, "Watch out for the N-N-Narrows!  Watch
out for the N-N-Narrows!"  Then an old rancher who ran cattle up along
the river informed us that the Narrows were greatly overrated and told
us where they were located.  As we discovered later, either the old
rancher didn't know which narrows we were interested in or he was a
homicidal maniac.  I still favor the latter.

Assuming we had already passed through the danger spot, a timid chute
of water, Retch and I decided to float out of the canyon one evening,
expecting nothing more then a serene, moonlit float down to our
take-out spot.  The dog, Smarts, stupidly went along with the plan.

As we bobbed sleepily along through the night, we were suddenly
startled into full alertness by a yelp of alarm from Smarts.  The dog's
tail, ears, and hair stood straight out from his body, as though some
malicious practical joker had just plugged his tail into a light
socket.  We instantly ascertained his cause for alarm, which served to
dampen our mirth over the dog's comic electrification: the river had
turned up on its side and was squeezing itself through an
ever-narrowing corridor of rock walls!  Even worse, at the end of the
corridor, the river appeared to flow directly into a tunnel it had
gouged into the mountain.

Dispensing with any discussion of the possible geological causes of
this phenomenon, we took to our paddles and expended considerable
energy in trying to paddle the raft upstream.  But to no avail.  As we
were swept toward the entrance to the tunnel, the hideous roaring
intensified until it became almost deafening.  Typical of such
predicaments, however, our roaring did no good at all and only
contributed to our sense of unease, which was reaching levels never
before detected in human beings.

Years later I returned to the Narrows to observe it in daylight, and
discovered that it was not a tunnel at all but a channel cut in a
twisting, dropping course down through solid rock and so narrow that a
rafter going through it could reach out and touch both sides
simultaneously.  There was nothing left to indicate the magnitude of
our terror as we were sucked through the Narrows in the dark of that
dreadful night, except the marks where four sets of human fingernails
and a pair of dog claws had scratched along the granite walls.  I was
surprised to see that the scratch marks had already eroded away until
they were now scarcely an eighth of an inch deep.  Thus does nature
erase the puny works of man and dog.

The experience took a lot out of Smarts.  Afterwards he went about with
an empty look and a wild, haunted stare, all the more poignant for his
having had most of the hair worn off him in the Narrows.  A few weeks
later, however, he returned to his same old self, which was no great
improvement.  The only residual effects Retch and I suffered were that
we stuttered over the word "Narrows" and went about for some time
afterwards with an expression of absolute horror frozen on our faces.

This was particularly embarrassing in restaurants and at dinner
parties.  "Oh my, what is it?"  a hostess would ask me.  "The asparagus
soup?"

"No, ma'am," I'd explain.  "Just the N-N-Narrows."

For twenty-five years I had blocked the Narrows, and the raft, out of
my consciousness.  And now it had flopped down on Finley, as if once
again vying for my attention.

"You know what?"  I said to Finley.  "You and Retch Sweeney and I
should haul this raft up the St. Joe and have ourselves a little float
trip.  Nothing risky or anything--just a pleasant little one-day float
down a gentle river."

"Ha!"  Finley snapped.  "You must be mad!  To think that I for even one
moment would consider floating down a river with that stupid, ugly
thing!"

"Well sure, it's a little ugly right now, but once it's inflated it
looks pretty good."

"I was referring to Sweeney.  But ditto your raft."

Driving up the St. Joe with the bundled raft lashed to the top of the
car, Retch and I couldn't help but chuckle at how Al Finley had
ridiculed our little adventure.  Retch mimicked Finley's shrill voice:
"A watery grave, that's what I would expect of your little float
trip!"

"Funny," I said between appreciative chortles.  "And what was it he
said about nincompoops?"

"I said," Finley's shrill voice replied from the backseat, "that I
would have to be totally out of my mind to float a river with you two
nincompoops.

What possessed me to come along I'll never know."

"It was your spirit of adventure," I said.  "Also, you wanted to hear
all the bad things we would say about you."

"Yes, well, I would think you would at least speak decently of a person
suffering from temporary insanity."

"Listen, Finley," Retch said, "this is nothing more than a simple
little float, not much more exciting than playing with your rubber duck
in the tub.

You want excitement, you should have floated with us in the old days.

That was excitement!"

"And terror," I said.

"Yeah, and terror."

River rafting, of course, has improved considerably since those days.

I told Retch and Finley about a recent float trip I'd taken down the
Moyie River with my friend Peter Grubb, whose River Odysseys West in
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of all places, runs float trips all over the
world.  Peter's lecture on safety lasts almost as long as the trip.  I
was particularly attentive to Peter's instructions on what to do when
tossed out of the raft: lie on your back with your legs pointed
downstream so you can see where you're going, while backstroking with
your arms to steer toward the nearest landing spot on shore.

This varied somewhat from my own method, which consisted of running as
fast as I could over the surface of the water.

"Tell me that again," Finley said.  "Grubb's version."  I did.  "Also,
Peter introduced me to some great new rafting equipment, like these
little electric pumps that run off a car battery and can inflate a raft
in about three minutes.  It used to take Retch and me hours to pump up
a raft with a tire pump.  Boy, modern technology sure can take the work
out of rafting.

Mostly, though, Peter is a safety fanatic.  He says he never runs a
river without scouting it first.  That's what we're doing now, Finley,
scouting the river from the road."

"Indeed?  Well, how about where the river curves away from the road
here and goes through that canyon?  Shouldn't we stop and scout
that?"

"Don't be a sissy, Finley," Retch said.  "What would the river be doing
in that canyon that it isn't doing here?  Har liar!"

"Right," I said.  "Har liar!"

An hour later we were floating down the river.  I took up the captain's
position in the bow, while Retch paddled from the stern.  Finley
sprawled in the middle of the raft, doing his impression of a limp
washrag.

"I thought you said you had one of those new electric raft inflators,"
he gasped.

"Nope.  Still just a tire pump.  But you'll get the hang of it after
you pump up the raft a few more times.  I thought you were starting to
catch your rhythm there towards the end."

The float was about what we expected: the gentle bobbing motion of the
raft, birds twittering along the banks, trout darting away from the
raft, deer staring in awe at the strange yellow creature drifting by.

I popped the tab on a can of diet root beer as we drifted pleasantly
away from the road and into the canyon.

"What's that noise?"  I said.  "Sounds like a train.  Surely the train
doesn't run through this canyon."

"Gee.  It sounds like the train is wrecking," Retch said.  "Almost
reminds me of the N-N-N-N!"

We swept around the next bend, the river picking up momentum.  Then we
saw why.  It was getting a run at a series of high hurdles and a high
jump, followed by a pole vault.  When we plummeted down from the crest
of the pole vault, I glanced back to see if Retch and Finley were still
aboard.  Both of them had their mouths stretched wide open.  I think
they may have been screaming, but the thunderous roar of the water
drowned them out.  I turned to see what they might be screaming about
and discovered that the river had bunched up in a big, boiling knot and
then thrust itself straight up into a towering wall of water curling
back at the top.  We swooped up under the curl and hung there, slipping
up and down and back up the steep green slope of the wave.  At that
moment, I noticed that the wave was fairly thin up near the top, so I
poked my head through it and took a look downstream.  The next fifty
yards looked like more of the same.  After that, though, the river
turned mean.

Two years later we emerged from the canyon.  It was the longest time
I'd spent on a raft since the N-N-Narrows.  Retch was gasping for air
as he knocked the water out of his ears.  Finley was lying on his back
with legs pointed downstream and backstroking with his arms.

"Knock it off, Finley," I said.  "You're still in the raft.  Did I
forget to mention you're supposed to keep your eyes open?"

"What?"  Finley said.  "We're alive?  I can't believe it!"

"Let this be a lesson to you," I said.  "Always scout a river before
you float it.  How many times do I have to tell you?  Everybody
okay?"

"I'm fine," Retch said.  "Swallowed about five gallons of water is all,
but that shouldn't bother me none.  The river couldn't possibly be
polluted way up here."

"Speak for yourself," Finley said.

"I'm all right, I think," I said.  "I've got this big lump in my
throat, probably just from fear.  On the other hand, it could be a can
of diet root beer.  How about You, Finley?"

"I don't think I'm injured, but my face feels funny," Finley said.

"Anything wrong with my face?"

"Nothing serious," I said.  "You've just got a look of absolute horror
frozen on it.  It'll wear off after a few weeks.  Just stay away from
restaurants and dinner parties in the meantime."

Never Cry "Arp!"

I have long maintained that it is not the fish caught nor the game shot
that makes the outdoor life so satisfying but the miseries endured in
the course of those endeavors.  I was first introduced to the
satisfaction of outdoor miseries by my good friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon,
who, at age eight, was a sort of magnet to injuries.  It was almost as
though Eddie scheduled his injuries for the day when he got up in the
morning.

8:00 Stub big toe of left foot.  8:35 Step on rusty nail with right
foot.

9:05 Get stung over left eye by bee.  10:30 Run sliver in hand while
whittling.  10:35 Cut finger while whittling.  11:00 Twist ankle
jumping off pigpen fence.  11:22 Get tick embedded behind left ear.

12:00 Lunch.  1:15

Get stung by nettles.  2:00 Get bitten by the Petersons' dog.

And so on throughout the day.  I never knew there were so many injuries
to he had until I met Crazy Eddie.  There were burns, bangs, bites,
breaks, cuts, conks, fractures, gouges, hits, knocks, punctures, pulls,
pinches, scrapes, scratches, smashes, stings, stubs, strains, sprains,
whacks, wrenches, and wallops.

And more.  By the end of a day, Eddie would acquire most of them.  He
would go home with a series of tear flows recorded in the dirt on his
face, like the various flows of lava from a volcano.  There would be
the eleven-o'clock twisted-ankle flow stopped just short of the
two-o'clock dog-bite flow.  A geologist could read the day's events on
Eddie's face.

It was Eddie who taught me never to cry over an injury, no matter how
painful.  He said you were just supposed to laugh it off.  For
instance, once Eddie was banging two big rocks together to see if there
were any gold nuggets inside, and one of his fingers slipped between
the rocks.  The distinctive sound still sticks in my mind: WHOCK WHOCK
WHOCK whib "Aaaaaaaziiiii!"  Eddie hunched over and hopped around with
his flat finger clutched in his crotch, performing a variation of the
adult outdoorsman's traditional crouch hop, but more agile and much
faster, like a basketball being dribbled at blurring speed.  He also
emitted strange, high-pitched sounds.

With much concern, I studied Eddie's face for signs of tears.  "Hey,
you're crying, Eddie.  You got tears runnin' down your face."

"Hiii-yiiii!  Ow ow!"  he yelled.  "No I ain't!  Owwwww!  Ha ha!

Owwwww!

Waaaa!  Ha ha!  See, I'm laughing it off.  Oww!  Waaa!  Ha ha!

Haaiiii!"

"I think you're crying."

"Nope, I'm not."

"Oh, sorry, I thought you was."

"Nope."

I never knew Eddie when he had all of his fingernails whole and
healthy.

Most of them would be in various stages of coming or going, either
shiny pink little nubbins or hideous black things.

"Hey, this fingernail is about to come off," he would tell me.  "Want
to see me peel it?"

"Sure."

"Ouch!  There.  What did you think of that?  I got another one about
ready to peel, too.  I'll let you know when it's time."

I never told Eddie, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but
watching him peel off his fingernails wasn't all that entertaining.  It
lacked the suspense of his slowly unwrapping a bandage so I could see
one of his nastier wounds.

Usually, Eddie accumulated his injuries sequentially.  But on one
occasion he got them all at once.

We were roaring down a steep hill on our bicycles when Eddie's bike
chain ate his pant leg.  At the same time, a hornet traveling at
supersonic speed hit him right between the eyes.  Eddie was knocked
backwards right off his bike.  He and the bike bounced and smashed and
crashed on down the hill, until at last they both racked up in a pile
against a signpost.  I braked to a stop on one of his arms.  Eddie
didn't seem to notice.  He and the bike looked as if they had been
wadded up and tossed out the window of a passing car.  Well, I thought,
if I'm ever going to see Eddie cry, this is it.

He didn't cry, though.  He just lay there in a tangle of bicycle,
saying something that sounded like "Arp arp arp."  I pulled his pants
leg loose from the bike chain, got him astraddle of the rear-fender
carrier on my bike, and pedaled him toward his house.

"Feel like playing some more, or you want to go home, Eddie?"  I asked
him.

"Arp arp arp," he replied.  So I took him home.

I dumped him off the bike in his yard and he just lay there on the
grass.

I figured I could leave him there, and sooner or later his mother would
find him.  If I stayed, I'd have to explain how it all happened and how
it wasn't my fault and all the other nonsense required on such
occasions.

"Arp arp arp," Eddie said to me.

"Oh, all right," I said.  "I'll go tell your mom."  For all his
shortcomings, Eddie had a way with words.

I knocked on the door, and Mrs. Muldoon called out for me to come into
the kitchen.  She smiled at me, wiping her hands on her apron.  "Land
sakes, Patrick, where did you get all those scratches on your face?"

"Eddie and me was climbing a thorn apple tree."

"Well, you're certainly a mess."

"Yeah, but wait until you see Eddie."

"Oh, that boy!  He's always getting himself so banged up.  But he never
cries, does he?"

"Nope.  But he says 'Arp arp arp' a lot."

"'Arp arp arp'?  Say, would you like a cookie and a glass of milk?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Mrs. Muldoon poured two glasses of milk and set them on the table with
a little pile of sugar cookies beside each.  I dipped a cookie in my
glass of milk and bit off the soggy portion.  There was a
ell-established technique for eating sugar cookies with milk.  The
cookie was too big around to fit all the way into the glass.  So you
dipped an edge of it as far as it would reach into the milk.  Then you
ate off that edge.  Next, you turned the cookie over and dipped the
opposite edge in the milk and ate it off.  Now the cookie was narrow
enough to fit all the way down into the glass, and you could dip it and
eat it in two bites.

Mrs. Muldoon smiled at me.  I could tell she knew a skilled
milk-and-sugar-cookie eater when she saw one.  "Where's Eddie?"  she
asked.

"Isn't he coming in?"

"Oh, I nearly forgot," I said.  "Eddie got hurt."

"Oh dear, that boy!  He is always getting himself so banged up.  What
is it this time?  His big toe?  Another finger?"

I expertly finished off a second sugar cookie.  "I don't know for
sure," I said, "but to me it looks pretty much like all of him."

Mrs.  Muldoon walked to the door and looked out.  "Good heavens!

Eddieeeeee!!  What happened to you?"

Faintly, I heard Eddie's answer.  "Arp arp arp."

I pocketed his sugar cookies and left.  He probably wouldn't feel much
like eating them anyway.

The next day I rode over to Eddie's house to see if he could play.  He
was in bed in his pajamas, with bandages sticking out the legs and
sleeves.

One of his ankles was as big as a grapefruit--a spoiled grapefruit.

Both his eyes were black and blue, and swelled shut, except for a
narrow slit in one eye.  I could see him peering at me out of that
slit.

"I didn't cry, did I?  If you say I did, you're lying."

"You didn't cry," I said.  "A lot of guys would have cried, but you
didn't.  Any more than I would have."

Eddie leaned back on his pillows and smiled with satisfaction.  "That
was a terrific crash, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," I said.  "The best I ever seen."

"Look at these eyes and my ankles.  They're awful, ain't they?"  He
grinned.  "Norm and Jackie and Kenny are all coming over this afternoon
to look at me.  Boy, I bet I almost make them sick."

"You almost make me sick," I said.

"Really?  You're not just saying that?  Hey, listen, I'm gonna get some
terrific scabs out of this.  When they get ready, you can come over and
watch me peel 'em off.  Okay?"

"Yeah, sure," I said.  "Well, I gotta go.  See ya later, Eddie."

Pedaling my bike back home, I couldn't help but feel depressed.  There
was poor Eddie in bed, all stung and sprained and cut and bruised and
scraped practically to pieces.  I couldn't understand why it had
happened to him, my best friend.  Some guys had all the luck.

Visions of Fish and Game Much study has been done on how fish and game
see.  For example, researchers are even now seeking to answer the
question of whether deer become alarmed at the sight of hunters wearing
bright orange camouflage suits or are merely amused.

Most of my own research into vision has been directed at determining
how hunters and anglers see, and what can be done about it.  The people
I hunt and fish with all seem to have eyes the equivalent of
twelve-power binoculars.

Nothing is more annoying than having your friends constantly pointing
out game at amazing distances.  I am now on the brink of solving this
problem once and for all.

Last weekend I was dove hunting with my friends Walt and Skip.  Every
so often they would squint off down the Snake River Canyon and shout at
me, "Comin' up!"  I would wheel around, gun at the ready, and there
would be nothing there.  After a few seconds, a speck would appear in
the distance, eventually expanding into a dove, which I would scare the
dickens out of as it whistled past.  Then Skip would yell, "Comin'
down!  and once again there would be nothing there.  Well, that sort of
thing can get on a person's nerves.

I decided to execute Ploy No.  18.  "Comin' up!"  I shouted.  Skip and
Walt both turned to face downcanyon.  I walked over and got my lunch
out of the pickup, opened a can of soda, and settled myself comfortably
on the tailgate.

After a while, Walt and Skip walked over and got out their lunches
too.

We were sitting there exchanging a few stories when a dove went past.

Walt and Skip stared at it.  "Boy," I said, "that ole dove was sure a
far piece off down the canyon.  I don't blame you fellas for not
waiting for it."

One must be fairly immune to dirty looks if he is to get full enjoyment
out of the use of Ploy No.  18.

One fellow I hunt with takes malicious pleasure in pointing to a white
speck on a mountain off in the hazy distance and saying, "Goat."

My practice used to be to grab my binoculars and focus them on the
white speck.  Then I'd say, "Just a patch of snow!  Ha!  And you
thought it was a goat, Fred!"

"It is a goat," Fred would reply.  "See, it's moving along that
ridge."

I'd look again through my binoculars, and sure enough, the white speck
would be moving along the ridge.

"Well," I'd respond, "sometimes patches of snow move along ridges just
like that this time of year."

Since a hunter can stand only so much humiliation, I started using Ploy
No.  5 on Fred.  Whenever he pointed at a distant white speck and said,
"Goat," I'd reply, "Yes, I've been watching it for some time.  A small
billy, if I'm not mistaken.  What do you think, Fred?"

Ploy No.  5 works wonderfully well.  Nowadays a mountain goat could be
standing on the hood of our car nibbling the windshield wipers and Fred
wouldn't point to it and say, "Goat."  And that's the way I like it.

Here's another technique I've used for keeping my eagle-eyed friends
properly humble.  I'll study a hillside for a few moments--any hillside
will do as long as it's several hundred yards off--and then say
casually, "Three deer up there.  Two does and a fawn, if I'm not
mistaken."

My friends stare at the hillside so hard beads of sweat form on their
eyeballs.  Finally, embarrassed, they start sweeping the hillside with
binoculars.

"There's no deer up there," one of them growls.

"The tracks," I say.  "Don't you see those three sets of tracks?"

"Tracks?"

"Yeah," I say.  "But I see now they're at least a day old."

Occasionally someone will actually spot a deer on a hillside where I've
indicated I've just seen one.  One must remember to remain cool and
detached in such cases and avoid blurting out things like "Really?"  or
"You're kidding me, right?"  Such responses are almost always a dead
give-away.

Last spring a fishing buddy of mine looked down into the murky,
swirling water by our boat and smugly reported, "I see the chironomids
are hatching."

I was impressed.  A chironomid would have had to be the size of a
volleyball for anybody to have seen it in that water.

"Very good, Bill!"  I said.

Smiling with satisfaction, Bill took out a cigar and lit it.  "Yep," he
said presently, "the chironomids are hatching.  I saw a piece of
chironomid shell float past."

I realized immediately that with any more encouragement, the man could
become a keen-observation fanatic.

"A piece of chironomid shell, hunh?"  I said.  "That's a good sign.

I've been seeing chironomid spoor in the water, but it appeared to be
several days old."  Bill hasn't mentioned a keen observation since.

Then there is the problem of dealing with illusions.  Obviously, the
first thing any hunter must learn is not to shoot at his illusions,
those peculiar practical jokes the eye is so fond of playing on us.

In early-morning darkness, I once kept an entire party of hunters
crouched breathless and freezing in the snow while I watched a herd of
dead trees cross over a ridge and head in our direction.  First light
seeping through the crack of dawn slowly revealed that I had been
watching not deer but frost-covered snags.  Embarrassed, I turned to my
companions, now also frost-covered, and signaled for them to sneak
around to the far side of the mountain, just in case the dead trees
should catch our scent and make a break for it.

Distance often plays a part in the creation of illusions.  I have often
observed the phenomenon in which hunters who make a shot of 150 feet
later judge the distance to be not less than 300 yards.  Strangely,
hunters who make a shot of 300 yards almost never think the distance
was only 150 feet.

Further research may someday solve the riddle of this strange
phenomenon.

I once so misjudged the distance across a lake that it nearly cost me
my life.  A resort owner had rented me a little twelve-foot boat and a
five-horse motor, assuring me they were more than seaworthy enough to
get me across the lake.  Even though the boat and motor appeared to
have been left behind by the Lewis and Clark expedition, it seemed to
me he was probably right, since the lake didn't look that large.  After
all, I could see lichen growing on the far shore.  Now I'm not sure
whether the motor conked out just before or just after the storm hit,
but it was about the time I discovered the lichen on the far shore was
full-grown trees.  It was a big lake!  I was soon simultaneously
performing CPR on the motor and contemplating how best to implant a
five-horse outboard in a resort owner.  The only question was whether
to remove it from the boat first.

One of my scariest illusions occurred on a camping trip when I was a
kid.

Kenny Thompson, Vern Schulze, and I had returned to our camp late in
the evening to discover a huge, bat-like creature fluttering about the
camp.  The monster was about the size of our tent, and after throwing
rocks at it for several minutes, we discovered that it was our tent.

We were all immensely relieved, and later agreed it would be best if we
didn't mention to anyone that we had tried to drive our tent out of
camp by throwing rocks at it.

Several times while fishing a river in grizzly country I have had large
tree stumps rear up in front of me and play havoc with my bodily
functions.

On the same river, a large gray rock with a bush growing out of it
chased a friend of mine across the river and up a tree.  He said later
he purposely selected a young tree, because large rocks have trouble
climbing the slender trunk.

Then there was the time I crawled on my belly all the way across a cow
pasture to get a close-up wildlife photograph of a rusty 1938 Plymouth
feeding in a creek.  I did not make the precise identification of the
species myself but was provided it by the farmer who owned the
pasture.

As he put it, "I thought-heeeYAAAhooo!-that dang ole' 38

Plymouth-WAAAAHHHee hee heee!-was gonna spook before-haahaaa!  sniff!

choke!-you got to it!"

Actually, a rusty 1938 Plymouth coupe looks a lot more like a cow moose
than you might suspect.

A Brief History of Boats and Marriage Young Harold Perkins and I were
out in my workshop the other day discussing one of our favorite topics.
 Harold got married a while back, but as he says, he still likes "to
look."  Well just as Harold was saying, "Pat, this Megan has the
sweetest little curves you ever saw," my wife, Bun, walked in.  Bun
just flipped out.

"Terrific!"  Bun snapped.  "That's really terrific, Harold!  Here you
are, married less than three months, with a baby on the way, and you're
already carying on like that.  Boy, that is so disgusting!  I would
expect that sort of thing from old Whatsis here, but not from you,
Harold."

I studied Harold, to see if he had developed any of the essential
marital reflexes yet.  I wasn't surprised to see that he hadn't.  He
stood there looking embarrassed and apologetic.  I let him suffer for a
few seconds, and then stepped in and saved him.

"What are you getting so upset about?"  I said to Bun.  "We're just
talking about women."

"Women?"  Bun said.  "Oh.  Gee, please excuse me, Harold.  I thought
you were talking about boats."

"Naw," I said.  "Just beautiful women, the ones who find me so
attractive."

"Yeah, I know the type," Bun said.  "The ones who like pudgy old
guys."

Before I could whittle a retort to a sharp point, she slipped away,
chuckling fiendishly.  I find fiendish chuckling very unbecoming in a
woman, and I plan to tell Bun so, too.

"So where were we?"  I said to Harold, who still seemed a bit shaken
up.

"Oh, you were telling me about Megan."

"Yeah, right," Harold said.  "This Megan is a real beauty.  She's a
twenty-footer, tied up to the pier at Doc's Boat Works, if you want to
take a look at her.  But tell me something.  How come Bun got so upset
when she thought we were talking about boats?"

I was surprised that Harold knew so little about the facts of marital
life.  Here was a hip young man, twenty-four years old, married almost
three months, baby on the way, and no one apparently had ever sat him
down and had a man-to-man talk with him about boats and marriage.  As
I've often advocated, we need a boat-education course in the schools.

Otherwise, youngsters are simply going to pick up on the streets and
playgrounds a lot of misinformation about boats.  Then they enter into
matrimony, holy or otherwise, with their heads crammed full of
nonsense.  No wonder 50 percent of all marriages now end in divorce.

"Sit down, Harold," I said.  "Let me tell you something about the
relationship between a man, his wife, and his boats.  First of all, the
proper understanding of boats is essential to marital bliss.

Otherwise, the reference to boats would not be included in marriage
vows, as in 'Do you promise to love, honor, and obey your husband and
not speak ill of his boats."

" "Gee, boats weren't referred to in our marriage vows," Harold said.

"They weren't?"  I said.  "Too late to do anything about that now.

You've got to slip the guy performing the ceremony an extra ten bucks
to get that phrase in.  Well worth the dough, too, I can tell you
that."

"But what good does it do?  Bun speaks ill of your boats all the
time."

"Yeah, but she doesn't honor and obey me either.  You see what I
mean?"

"No."

"Well, there you go.  You young guys today can't seem to follow a
simple line of reasoning.  Anyway, as I was about to say, since almost
the beginning of humankind, men have been driven by this vague but
powerful urge to cross over bodies of water without getting wet."  I
went on to give Harold a brief history of boats and wives, which is as
follows.

In the beginning, or maybe a little before, early man tried to satisfy
his urge for crossing bodies of water by running really fast over the
surface of lakes, but that, as you know, proved unsuccessful,
particularly for trolling.  That also is one of the main reasons
scientists now believe early man may have had webs between his toes,
and probably between his ears, too.

Then, according to pictographs found on the walls of caves in Montana,
which at that time was a small suburb of Kansas City, a man by the name
of Org, or possibly Gor, discovered that by clinging to a log and
kicking with his feet, he could propel himself across water.  He
started with a little twelve-foot log, moved up to a sixteen, then an
eighteen, and finally a twenty-two-footer, a pattern followed even
today by boat-buyers.  Org told his mate, Gord, that he thought he
really needed a thirty-footer, but she said, "Ye gods, Org, not another
log!  You already have four!"  Oddly enough, this attitude of wives
toward boats is still prevalent.

Org found the log not totally satisfactory as a flotation device.

Seldom was he able to bring one of his logs up to planing speed, and
then only because he was hotly pursued by a herd of venomous water
spiders the size of sage grouse.  Besides their other drawbacks, Org
also found the logs difficult to trailer, not realizing the wheel
hadn't yet been invented.  For a while, he tried using Gord as a boat
trailer but had too much trouble hooking up her lights, at the time
merely small dabs of flaming pitch.  Even now, wives cringe at the
mention of boat-trailer lights.  That is because one of the major
marital functions of a wife is to stand behind the boat trailer and
respond to her husband's questions, as he lies amid a tangle of wires
beneath the towing vehicle: "Now what light is on?  Are you sure it's
the left turn signal?  Cripes!  Okay, now did the right taillight
flicker?  It didn't?

Cripes!"

It finally occurred to Org that if the log were hollowed out, he could
sit inside it and remain dry while crossing over water.  He employed a
clan of Neanderthals to hollow out a log with stone axes.

Unfortunately, he made the mistake of paying them by the hour and soon
went bankrupt.  (Note: Some boat-repair shops appear to employ
Neanderthals with stone axes even today; however, they are only crude
replicas.  True Neanderthal man became extinct thousands of years ago,
much to his surprise and disappointment, because he had been looking
forward to "Monday Night Football.") Three centuries later, the log was
finally hollowed out, but, tragically, Org was not around to see his
idea come to fruition.  As a result, no one knew the reason for
hollowing out the log in the first place, so it was used as a fruit
bowl.

Then a young Homo sapiens by the name of Dick thought it might be fun
to put the hollowed-out log in the river and paddle about in it, which
he did.

The significance of Dick's discovery, however, went unnoticed by the
clan elders, who became concerned about the sanitary effects of a naked
man paddling about in their fruit bowl.  As one of the elders said,
"You crazy, Dick!  We got to eat out of that thing!"  Thus are many of
the great scientific advances misunderstood by ignorant and
shortsighted leaders.

Eventually, the hollowed-out log became accepted as a means of getting
about on water.  Propulsion was accomplished by pushing or paddling the
log about with sticks, but then a man by the name of Norman came up
with an ingenious idea.  He strapped his next-door neighbor, Ralph, to
the stern of the boat and tossed a couple of the venomous water spiders
in behind him.  To Norman's delight, he discovered that he could by
this means get two or three knots out of Ralph on a calm day.  By
adding or reducing the number of water spiders, he could control the
speed of his boat.  Little did Norman realize that he had invented not
only the first outboard motor but also a crude form of the throttle.

Fueled by nothing more than a few inexpensive water spiders, Ralph
would roar about the lake for half an hour or more, often becoming
quite hoarse.

When Norman told his wife, Vera, about his amazing invention, she could
scarcely contain herself, finally shouting out, "I wish you would stop
messing with that stupid hollow log and do some work around this
place."

Even now, variations of this same cryptic plea reverberate through the
homes of boaters, but so far remain indecipherable.

Sadly, Norman never lived to profit from his invention.  He vanished
one day after running out of spiders and asking Ralph to help him round
up a few dozen to get back home on.  Ralph came home alone, paddling
the boat with the thighbone of a thesaurus.  Everyone expected Norman
eventually to return with wonderful tales about his adventures,
although Ralph was fairly pessimistic about that possibility.

Ralph, incidentally, made his own contribution to science.  He
demonstrated how the thighbone of a thesaurus could be used for
knocking some sense into people's heads.  As a result Neanderthal man
soon became extinct.

Neanderthal woman, on the other hand, at last liberated from the
drudgery of cave-keeping, went on to prosper and today puts in frequent
appearances on "The Phil Donahue Show."

"Well," I told Harold, "that's all the time I have for the history of
boats and wives.  I think I'll go down to the pier and take a look at
this Megan."

"You're going to absolutely love Meagan," Harold said.

At that moment Bun returned.  "What about loving Megan?"  she asked,
her eyes narrowing to mean slits.

"Uh, she's the new harmaid down at Kelly's Bar and Grill," Harold
said.

The kid learns fast, I'll say that for him.

Boating Disorders For several years I was a student of Sigmund Freud. 
Then someone told me Freud was dead, which explained why his classes
were so boring.  Why am I always last to be told?  If you ask me, they
are carrying the concept of faculty tenure much too far.

After graduating from the university, I set up shop as a
psychiatrist.

Business flourished, despite my degrees either in agronomy or English
literature.  The State Licensing Board for Psychiatrists from time to
time questioned my qualifications, particularly my inability to spell
psychiatry the same way twice.  I promised to work on my spelling and
refer wealthy patients to the board members.  They said, "In that case,
don't worry about the spelling.  It's your positive attitude that
counts."

My specialty was boating disorders.  Many people buy a boat without the
slightest notion that it will soon dominate their lives.  They see a
boat in a showroom and it looks so innocent and seaworthy sitting there
on a shag carpet.  They take the new boat home, park it in the
driveway, and start to go in the house.  The boat says, "Hey, what do
you think you're doing?  You can't leave me out here in the driveway.

Get that stupid car out of the garage and put me in there, until you
can build me a suitable shelter of my own."

"Gee, I didn't know boats talked," the new owner says.

"I didn't know boats talked!"  the boat mimics.  "You haven't heard
anything yet, buster.  I want my oil-injection system checked by a
specialist, new rollers on this cheap trailer you bought, a decent
depth finder installed, a ... what's that, a dog?  Get rid of the
dog.

You're not going to have time for a dog.  From now on, it's just you
and me, pal, so hop to it."

Most of my patients come to me complaining of the demands their boats
place on them.  "I hate to mention this, Doc, but I even hear my boat
ordering me around."

"Hmmmmm," I say.  "Well, as long as you do what your boat orders,
you'll probably be perfectly safe.  I do everything my boat tells me
and it hasn't seriously harmed me yet.  Any other problems?"

Because I myself am owned by several boats, I have an excellent
understanding of my patients' boating disorders, mostly nautical
dementia.

Just last week some idiot drifted his crummy little scow of a boat into
my brand-new Helga IV and put this hideous scratch on her hull.  I've
had to sit up with her every night since, listening to her cries of
"I'm not new anymore, I'm not new anymore!"  It tears my heart out.

But enough of my own traumas.  Here are some of my more interesting
cases as a boating psychiatrist.

Case #47

Milo S. came to me complaining of a lack of identity.  I explained to
him that the problem was rooted in the fact that he used only the
initial S for a last name.  After going through his billfold and not
finding any identification, I read off to him a series of last names
beginning with S until he found one he liked--Smith.  I agreed to take
him on as a patient if he would pay my fee in cash rather than by
check.  He reluctantly accepted those terms, and then babbled out the
following tale of woe.

Milo had been a take-charge kind of guy all his life.  He was tall,
handsome, smart, prosperous, and a born leader.  One day he bought a
large, expensive boat and trailered it out to a launch area.  A
half-dozen or so fishermen were there fiddling with their crummy little
boats when Milo arrived with his magnificent, gleaming craft and a
brace of highly attractive female companions, which often come as
accessories with such boats.  The fishermen stared in awe and envy at
the expensive boat, even as they ogled the attractive female
companions.

Milo backed his boat trailer straight as an arrow down the launch
ramp.

The boat slid gracefully into the waves, as one of the attractive
female companions held fast to the bow line.  Milo stepped from the cab
of his powerful pickup truck, expertly checked to see that everything
was shipshape.

Satisfied, he climbed confidently back into his pickup and roared back
toward the parking area--dragging his new boat up the concrete ramp
after him!  He had forgotten to unsnap the winch line from the bow!

When Milo stepped from the cab of the pickup to see what all the racket
was about and beheld his new two-ton boat sitting high and dry on the
corrugated concrete, his hair began to thin and whiten.  His
deep-bronze tan faded into a pinkish pallor.  He lost six inches in
height, and his muscles turned to flab.  Immediately, a line of three
hundred boaters trailering boats formed at the blocked ramp and began
honking their horns.  Milo felt like an insufferable boob.  "You
insufferable boob!"  screamed one of his attractive female companions,
thereby confirming Milo's own self-image.  He then slunk off to the
nearest telephone booth, called his mom, and asked if he could have his
old room back and had she by any chance saved his teddy.

Thus can boating turn strong men into spineless wimps in the blink of
an eye.  Milo is now participating in a group session I hold on
Wednesday nights for insufferable boobs.  There's not much chance he
will be cured, if for no other reason than that I was 147th in line at
the ramp he blocked.

Case #89

Curtis M. came to me suffering from a boating disorder that left him
incapable of saying anything except "I forgot to put the plug in!  I
forgot to put the plug in!"  I gave him a shock treatment, in which my
secretary sprang stark naked out of a closet and hit him in the face
with a cream pie.  "That will be all, Miss Evans," I said.  "I see the
patient has recovered the power of coherent speech."  And indeed he
had.  Curtis went on to relate the following bizarre tale.

He had just started a new job and thought he might make a few points
with the boss by taking him and his wife out for a boat ride.  Neither
the boss nor the wife, whom we'll call Mr. and Mrs. Jones for the
purpose of avoiding nuisance litigation, had had any experience with
boating.  Prior to the outing, Curtis had turned a garden hose on the
interior of his fishing boat and blasted out several years'
accumulation of fish scales, dried worms, rotten salmon eggs, rusty
fishing lures, half-eaten sandwiches, and the usual sand and mud, all
of which, as experienced fishermen know, are applied to the inside of
fishing boats for the purpose of soundproofing.  Curtis, of course,
realized that it would take at least two years to get the boat back in
shape for serious fishing, but he thought the inconvenience was worth
it to impress his boss.

Curtis launched the boat, boarded his guests, and roared out across the
lake at a nifty clip.  He talked a little boat talk to Mr. and Mrs.
Jones--"bow, stern, lines, blaw blaw, pitch, beam, starboard, port,
blaw blaw"because boat talk increases passengers'confidence in the
skill of the skipper and puts them at ease.  After a bit, Mr. and Mrs.
Jones began asking boating questions.

"My goodness, what are all those switches for?"  Mrs.  Jones asked.

Curtis was very proud of all his switches.  For many years, he had been
too poor to own a boat with a single switch.  He happily explained that
the switches were for running lights, live well, bilge pump (broken),
exhaust fans, and the like.

"Well, what have we here?"  asked Mr. Jones.  "This is a
complicated-looking instrument."

"That's my electronic fish-finder, sir," Curtis explained.  "It
indicates how deep the fish are."

"And what's this little thing?"  asked Mrs.  Jones.

"Oh, that's a plug," said Curtis.  "It fits in a drain hole in the
stern of the boat.  If the drain plug isn't in, the lake drains into
the boat.  Ha ha."

"Ha ha," said Mrs.  Jones.  "So this is a spare plug then?"

"And over here," said Curtis, "are what we call personal flotation
devices, commonly referred to as life jackets.  Why don't you each try
one of them on, while I turn the boat around and head for shore?"

With water lapping against his ankles, Curtis made some calculations:
"If X gallons of water gush into a boat every minute and Y minutes have
passed and the boat travels at the rate of Z miles per hour ..."  Never
being good at story problems, Curtis was still working on his
calculations when the boat sank to its gunnels.  "Now here's something
you'll find interesting," Curtis said to his guests.  "This boat floats
even full of water and with three people in it.  In fact, you could
take a chain saw and cut the boat into three equal pieces and it would
still float with three people."  His boss replied that as soon as he
could find a chain saw, he was going to cut Curtis into three equal
pieces.

As I explained to Curtis, almost every boater at one time or another
forgets to put in the plug.  That is why the psychiatry business
flourishes.

One of my patients launched his boat from the trailer, tied it up to
the dock, and left to drive his truck and trailer up to the parking
area.  When he returned, all he could see of his boat was the bow line
straining at a sharp angle down into the water.  On all such occasions,
even though you haven't seen another person in the last three weeks, a
crowd instantly assembles and shouts gleefully, "You forgot to put the
plug in!"

As my contribution to the mental and emotional well-being of my fellow
boaters and patients, I have redesigned the boat plug so that the
instant you put the boat in water, you are alerted to the fact that the
plug is missing.

Traditionally, of course, you learned of a truant plug only when you
were out in the middle of the lake and noticed water lapping against
your ankles.  The reason for this is that the standard plug is only an
inch or two in diameter, allowing the water to spurt in unnoticed until
you are far from shore.  The plug I've designed, on the other hand, is
only slightly smaller than a man hole cover.  You put the boat in the
water, and--presto!--it sinks.  it slides off the trailer and goes
instantly to the bottom, before lives can be endangered.  The Coast
Guard may require my plug on all new boats as a safety device.

I also gave Curtis a method for dealing with the embarrassment
associated with forgotten boat plugs.  You should always carry a
clipboard, a few sheets of paper, and a pencil in the boat with you.

As you are piloting your foundering boat back to shore, you wait until
you are within a few yards of the assembling crowd of onlookers, people
whose only purpose in life is to show up on the scene of forgotten
plugs and shout, "Bet you forgot your plug!

Hahahahah!"  You then pull out your clipboard and start making marks on
the paper with the pencil, exclaiming, "Wow!  Floated twelve point
seven minutes with the plug out!  The engineers won't believe the
results of the test!"

This little ploy works very well, unless you have other occupants
aboard, in which case they should be discouraged from leaping out of
the boat, kissing the ground, and yelling, "Cripes!  We made it!  I
thought we were all going to drown!"

Case #137

On his first visit to my office, Delbert J. displayed symptoms of
paranoia, glancing over his shoulder, peering under my desk and table,
and even looking in the closet.  He shut the closet door and said, "Do
you know you have a naked lady standing in your closet with a cream
pie?"

"Yes," I said.  "We have a shock treatment to perform this afternoon,
but it has nothing to do with you.  What seems to be your problem,
Delbert?"

"People keep standing on my face," he said.

"I see," I said, realizing the poor chap was suffering from delusions,
although that did not entirely explain my urge to stand on his face.

"Why don't you tell me about it?"

Delbert and his wife had been fishing at a remote lake and were
returning home late at night along a deserted highway.  Delbert had
heard that the Mean Nasties motorcycle gang often used the highway.  He
could not shake a premonition of impending doom.  Suddenly, he heard
whoppity whoppity whoppity on the road behind him and realized his boat
trailer had blown a tire.  His spare tire for the trailer turned out to
be flat, too, which was strange, because he had checked it just nine
years before and it was okay then.

His wife volunteered to stand guard over the boat and trailer while
Delbert drove off in search of an open service station, which probably
didn't even exist.  Delbert said he wouldn't hear of her volunteering
for such a risky chore.  He suggested cutting cards.  Delbert lost.

Toward dawn, the Mean Nasties came by, returning from a combined picnic
and fire-bombing.

Delbert helped them strip his boat, after which they showed their
appreciation by not killing him, although they did take turns standing
on his face.

Eighteen hours later, his wife returned with the inflated spare and a
new hairdo.

The following week, Delbert was out on another lake.  His boat was
nearly out of gas, a storm was blowing in, and it was almost dark.

Delbert decided he had better head back to the launch area.  He was
cruising along when he saw an emergency flare fired from a big sleek
speedboat.  He went over to offer assistance to the boaters and
discovered they were the Mean Nasties.  They recognized him.

"Hey, man, we're sorry we stripped your boat and stood on your face,"
one of them said.  "It was all in fun.  Now how about giving us a tow
back to the launch ramp?  Our motor conked out and it will take us two
hours to paddle back.  Two hours!"

Delbert told the Mean Nasties off, gestured crudely at them, and roared
off, laughing.  When he neared the launch ramp, he discovered boats
lined up practically to the middle of the lake.

"What's wrong?"  he asked a fisherman.

"Some insufferable boob forgot to unsnap his winch line and dragged his
boat up high and dry on the ramp.  The ramp is blocked!"

"How long before they get it unblocked?"  Delbert asked.

"Three hours."

Scarcely was Delbert out of the hospital than he found himself in
another predicament.  He had just launched his boat and was attempting
to start the motor when he noticed he was drifting toward a
brand-spanking-new craft.  The proud owner of the craft was out
spit-polishing the chrome fittings.  As Delbert frantically tried to
start his motor, his boat drifted closer and closer to the new boat,
the owner of which was now jumping up and down and trying to wave him
off.  Then, horribly, as Delbert jerked helplessly at the pull cord on
his motor, the two boats grated together in one long hideous
Scraaaaaattttttttcccchhhh!  The new boat was permanently scarred, the
owner sick with grief.  Before he could get his face stood on, Delbert
cranked up his motor and sped off.

"What do you think, Doc?"  he asked me.  "Can I be cured?"

I now remembered why I recognized Delbert.  "Maybe," I said.  "We will
try a new technique.  Please lie down flat on the floor.  Face up."

Try Not to Annoy Me I never met an outdoorsman I didn't like, although
I find a good many of them annoying.  Being a methodical person, I have
entered into my computer all the outdoorsmen I know and categorized
them according to annoyance.  A few of the several hundred categories
are as follows.

Methodical Person--Boy, this guy really gets on my nerves.  You're
already late getting started on a camping trip, and he will say, "All
right, now let's make sure we have everything."  He pulls out a
checklist four feet long and begins checking off items: "Toothpaste,
okay, toothbrush, okay, mouthwash, okay, toothpicks--where are the
toothpicks?  Anybody seen the toothpicks?  Okay.  Dental floss ..."

The guy will spend ten minutes checking off items related just to oral
hygiene, never mind that once he is in hunting camp he brushes his
teeth with a finger dipped in whiskey and then only on Wednesdays.  His
breath kills trees.  His is the acid rain of bad breath.  I once saw a
dressed-out elk get up and run three hundred yards just because this
guy breathed on it.  But he insists on being methodical.  Finally, we,
his hunting companions, throw his junk in the truck and him and his
list in on top of it.  "Toilet tissue!"  he cries.  "I didn't check off
toilet tissue!"

Someone then makes a crude remark about his list.

Easily Annoyed Person--Some little thing will go wrong on a hunting
trip, such as forgetting to bring any toilet tissue, and the guy will
say, "Really, I find this very annoying."  Or he will say, "All right,
who's got mud on his boots?  Who's tracking mud into the tent?  Boy, is
this annoying!"  While he is thinking up new annoyances, he forgets to
set the hand-brake on the hunting vehicle, which runs over our tent and
leaks crankcase oil all over our grub, and he says, "Complain,
complain!  All you guys do is complain.  It's really, you know,
annoying."  I find persons who get annoyed easily particularly
annoying.

Graduate of the Will Rogers School of Philosophy--Three days in a
hunting camp with this fellow and you're ready for the intensive-care
unit of a psychiatric hospital.  In real life, he wears a three-piece
suit and speaks like John Houseman "making money the old-fashioned
way."  In hunting camp, he wears a sloppy old Stetson and turns into
Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher.

"I never met a man I didn't like, but you birds are shore puttin'me to
the test," he will say.  Almost nothing occurs that he can't direct his
cowboy philosophy at: "If we could somehow feed some of this coffee to
the politicians we'd git that mess in Washington cleaned up real
fast."

"What they need in Washington, D.C is a class in gun safety.  Hardly a
day goes by there that some politician don't shoot off his mouth."

"If you ask me, the national debt is like this here elk steak.  The
more the politicians chew on it, the larger it gets."

And so on and on and on.  Hunting with a cowboy philosopher is like
...

is like ... Well, I can't think of anything it's like, but it's real
hard on the nerves.  I guess cowboy philosophy is something you have to
be born with.

Explainers--I am easily annoyed by people who feel they must explain
everything to you.  "The reason you can't get that fire started is the
wood's too wet."  Oh?  That never would have occurred to me.  "You know
why that fish snapped your leader?  Your leader was too light."  Gee, I
would never have guessed.  "The reason a compass always points north is
..."  Half their sentences begin, "The way that works is ..."

Explainers apparently assume you have spent your entire life inside a
paper bag and therefore have not the slightest notion of the reason for
anything.  But wait until you actually do need something explained,
such as why your vehicle suddenly expires forty miles back in the
wilderness, or better yet, how to get the thing started again.  "Beats
me," they say.  "You expect me to know everything?"

Fixers--You notice a loose screw on your fishing reel and start to
tighten it.  "Here, let me do that," says the fixer, prying the
screwdriver out of your hand.  Or you start to adjust the idle on your
outboard motor.

"Here, let me do that," the fixer says, shoving you out of the way.

Fixers are of the belief that you are totally incompetent to perform
the simplest task.  If you're buttoning your hunting jacket, they say,
"Here, let me do that for you."  Fixers are basically good-hearted
chaps and really don't annoy me that much.  I've noticed that when it
comes to wading into icy water up to my armpits to adjust a one-ton
boat evenly on a trailer in the dark, a fixer will always step forward
and say, "Here, let me hold your coat for you."

Impressionists--You are up to your armpits in icy water trying to
adjust a one-ton boat on a trailer in the dark, and the impressionist
yells, "Hey, Pat, look!  Here's my impression of George Burns talking
to Groucho Marx."  I was once on a fishing trip with an impressionist
who got stuck in a John Wayne impression and couldn't get out of it.

"Pass me the salt, Pilgrim," he'd say, "and don't be all day about it
neither."  I finally had to shoot him.

Stand-Up Comics--These guys tell jokes end to end, always beginning,
"Did you hear the one about ..."

"Yeah, we heard it," you say.

"But probably not this version of it.  Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon,
and a hippie are on this plane together ..."  There is no way to stop
stand-up comics.  After the fourth joke in a row, shoot them.

Take-Charge Guys--Every outing of more than one person has a
take-charge guy: "Okay, the way we're going to do this is, Pat, you do
this, Fred, you do that, and Arnie, you do the other thing.  Everybody
knows what he's supposed to do?  Good.  We'll meet back here at four
o'clock."  The take-charge guy is a born leader.  Unfortunately, as we
all know, born leaders often have the IQ of a rock.  That's what makes
them so easy to follow.

Whiners--Your vehicle suddenly expires forty miles back in the
wilderness, and the whiner says, "I knew something like this would
happen!

Now what are we going to do?  Why do these things always happen to me
when I'm out with you guys?  I just wish you would check these things
out to make sure they're running properly before you haul me all the
way out here in the middle of nowhere on a wild-goose chase."

The only fit punishment for a whiner is to lock him up inside the
vehicle with the Explainer, the Cowboy Philosopher, and the
Impressionist.  Sure, it's cruel and unusual punishment, but it serves
the wimp right.

The Grasshopper Trap By PATRICK F. McMANUS An Owl Book Henry Holt and
Company New York Copyright (C) 1985 by Patrick F. McManus All rights
reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form.

Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 521 Fifth Avenue New York,
New York 10175

Published simultaneously in Canada.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McManus, Patrick
F.

The grasshopper trap.

1. Outdoor life--Anecdotes, facetiae, satire, etc.  2.

Hunting--Anecdotes, facetiae, satire, etc. 3. Fishing--Anecdotes,
facetiae, satire, etc.  ISBN 0-03-000738-0

ISBN 0-8050-0111-5 (An Owl Book) (pbk.) First published in hardcover by
Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1985.

First Owl Book Edition-1986

Designed by Kate NicholsPrinted in the United States of America All
stories in this book appeared previously as follows: In Outdoor Life:
"The Skunk Ladder"; "How to Go Splat!"  (originally titled "Into Each
Life a Little Fall Must Reign"); "The Human Fuel Pump"; "'Twas a Dark
and Dreary Night"; "Trailer Trials"; "The Grasshopper Trap"; "Get
Lost!"; "Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor Phenomena Wives Don't
Understand" (originally titled "Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor
Phenomena"); "The Swamp"; "A Hunker Is Not a Squat"; "Why Wives on
Christmas Mourn" (originally titled "I Heard the Wives on Christmas
Mourn"); "The Hunting Lesson"; "Nincompoopery and Other Group Terms"
(originally titled "Off On a Lark"); "Character Flaws" (originally
titled "Flaws"); "Mean Tents"; "Crick Ritual"; "Hunting Camp
Etiquette"; "Stone Soup" (originally titled "The Runaways"); "The
Wager"; "Sweet Sweet Sixteen"; "Down and Way Out in Brazil"; "Strange
Encounters of the Bird Kind"; "The Outing"; "I, the Hunted".  In
Gutmann Knife Annual: "First Knife" (originally titled "That First
Knife").  In Field & Stream Hunting Annual: "The Case of the Missed
Deer."  In Hunting Guns: "Gunrunning" (originally titled "How to Buy a
Gun ... Without Your Wife Finding Out").  In Field & Stream: "Bad
Company"; "Letters from Camp"; "Never Cry Snake!"  (originally titled
"Don't Never Cry Wuff").

ISBN 0-03-000738-0 HARDBOUND ISBN 0-8050-0111-5 PAPERBACK Also by
Patrick F. McManus Kid Camping From Aaaaiii!  to Zip A Fine and
Pleasant Misery They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

Never Sniff a Gift Fish Dedication To Claire Conley who bought and
published the first humor piece I ever wrote and without whose
encouragement and counsel I would never have become a writer of short
humor.  Still, he meant well.

Contents The Skunk
Ladder.............................................................1

How to Go
Splat!.............................................................8

The Human Fuel
Pump.........................................................15

'Twas a Dark and Dreary
Night...............................................24

Trailer
Trials..............................................................32


The Grasshopper
Trap........................................................40

Get
Lost!..................................................................


50

Never Cry
Snake!............................................................56

Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor Phenomena Wives Don't
Understand............61

The
Swamp..................................................................


66

A Hunker Is Not a
Squat.....................................................74

Why Wives on Christmas
Mourn................................................84

The Hunting
Lesson..........................................................89

First
Knife.................................................................9


Nincompoopery and Other Group
Terms........................................102

Bad
Company................................................................


06

The Case of the Missed
Deer................................................"5

Character
Flaws............................................................120

Mean
Tents.................................................................1


5

Crick
Ritual...............................................................13


Hunting Camp
Etiquette.....................................................142

Stone
Soup.................................................................14


Gunrunning.............................................................


...157

The
Wager..................................................................


63

Letters from
Camp..........................................................170

Sweet Sweet
Sixteen........................................................178

Down and Way Out in
Brazil.................................................185

Strange Encounters of the Bird
Kind........................................196

The
Outing.................................................................


02

I, the
Hunted..............................................................210


The Skunk Ladder Driving out to the country the other day, my wife,
Bun, and I passed the aromatic remains of at least ten road-killed
skunks.

"Must be a good year for skunks," I observed.

"Looks like a bad one for them, if you ask me," Bun said.

"I mean there's obviously a large skunk population this year."  I
sniffed, instantly realizing that I shouldn't have sniffed, because at
that moment we were passing another skunk carcass.

just then a live skunk scurried out in front of the car.  I swerved to
the left and back to the right, and we managed to screech safely around
it.

Bun screeches quite often but it was the first time I had screeched in
years.

"Goodness, that was close!"  Bun said.  "What would you have done if
you'd hit that skunk with the car?"

"The only decent thing," I replied.  "I'd have stopped and buried it in
the ditch.  I might even have buried the skunk along with it."

"You talk as if you've had a lot of experience with skunks," she
said.

"You bet," I said.  "Mostly when I was a kid.  You mean I've never told
you about the skunk ladder?  Boy, do you have a treat in store for
you!"

"Sorry I mentioned it," she mumbled, possibly in an attempt to conceal
her intense interest in the bizarre tale.

As I told Bun, my friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I were sitting on the
Muldoon corral fence one summer afternoon, trying to think of something
to do.

This was shortly after I had nearly drowned in the creek while testing
Eddie's deep-sea diving apparatus, and after we had crashed in our
homemade plane during takeoff from the roof of the Muldoon barn, and
after our submarine had failed to surface with us in the pond, but
before Mr. Muldoon started being treated by old Doc Mosby for a
mysterious nervous condition.  I recall mentioning to Eddie that his
father seemed to be awfully jumpy that summer, and Eddie said he had
noticed it, too, and wondered if it might not be caused by eating
vegetables.

Even as we sat on the fence, Mr. Muldoon came by on his tractor and
stopped to study us suspiciously.  "What are you two up to now?"  he
demanded.

"Nothin', Pa," Crazy Eddie said.  "Just trying to think of something to
do."

Mr. Muldoon shuddered.  "Well, when you think of it, you let me know
before you start to do it, you hear?"

"Sure, Pa," Eddie said.  "I guess what we'll do is go dig in the
dirt.

We've been talkin' about doin' that."

"Okay," said Mr. Muldoon, shifting his tractor into gear.  "Just don't
build nothin'!"  Then he drove off.

"What kind of hole are we going to dig?"  I asked Eddie.

He stared off into space, his face enveloped in that dreamy expression
that always accompanied one of his wondrous new ideas.  "A big hole,"
he said.

"A real big hole."

Digging the hole occupied us for most of a week.  One of the problems
with digging a big hole is that it is difficult to know when it is big
enough and deep enough.  There are basically two kinds of holes dug in
the ground: (1) applied holes, such as for posts, wells, mines, etc and
(2) holes for holes' sake.  Eddie and I were digging one of the
latter.

Eventually, the hole was so deep we could barely heave shovelfuls of
dirt up over its sides.

At that point, Eddie judged it to be finished.

Since Eddie had insisted that we keep the sides of the hole squared up,
we had to pull ourselves out of it on a rope, one end of which was tied
to a pile of stumps nearby.  The stump pile also served to screen our
digging activities from the view of Mr. Muldoon, who was cutting hay
in a field on the far side of the farm.  As Eddie often pointed out,
any kind of engineering feat should be screened from the eyes of the
engineer's parents.  That way you could concentrate on your work and
didn't have to be answering a lot of dumb questions all the time.

We were immensely proud of the hole, and I still don't believe I've
ever seen a nicer one.  It was so nice, in fact, that Eddie abandoned
his view of it as purely an aesthetically pleasing hole and began
trying to think of it as practical.

"You know what we could do with this hole?"  he said.  "We could make a
wild animal trap out of it, you know, like Frank Buck does in Africa.

We could cover it up with branches and leaves and grass, and wild
animals would come along and fall into it.  Then we could tame them and
teach them to do tricks."

Eddie fairly glowed with enthusiasm as his idea began to take shape.

"And then we could start our own circus," he went on.  "We could charge
people to see our animals do tricks.  We might even get rich.  Gosh, I
bet we could catch a deer or an elk or a bear or a mountain lion
or..."

"One of your father's cows," I put in.

Eddie's glow of enthusiasm faded.  "Yeah," he said.  "I never thought
of that."

Both of us stood there silently for a moment, thinking of Mr. Muldoon
staring down into the hole at one of his milk cows.  It was unpleasant
to think about.

"Tomorrow we'd better fill the hole back in," Eddie said.  "How about
tonight?  Maybe a cow will fall in tonight."

Eddie pondered this possibility for a moment.  "I got it," he said.

"There's a big ol' door out behind the barn.  We'll drag that down here
and put it over the hole."  And that is what we did, before knocking
off work for the day, secure in the knowledge that the door would save
us from the uncomfortable experience of watching his father undergo one
of his fits of hysteria.

Early the next morning, Eddie and I headed for the big hole, prepared
to start the tedious task of undigging it.  As we approached the
excavation, a familiar odor reached our nostrils.

"Must be a skunk around here someplace," Eddie said.

"Maybe it's in the hole," I said.

"Couldn't be.  We covered it with the door."

Nevertheless, the skunk was in the hole.  He had apparently found an
open space under the door, slipped in for a look around, and plummeted
the eight feet or more to the bottom of the hole.  Oddly, he did not
seem to be frightened of us.  Even stranger, for we did not know that
skunks were great diggers, he had hollowed out a huge cavern under one
side, in an attempt to dig his way out of the hole.

"We can't fill in the hole with the skunk in there," I said.  "How are
we going to get him out?"

"Maybe one of us could drop down in the hole, grab him real quick
before he sprays, and then throw him out," Eddie said.  "I'll yell real
loud so he'll look at me and won't notice when you jump in and grab him
and ..."

"I don't like that idea," I said.  "Think of something else."

"I got it!"  Eddie exclaimed, snapping his fingers.  "We'll go up to my
dad's shop and build a ladder.  Then we'll stick it down the hole and
hide someplace while he climbs the ladder.  A skunk should be able to
figure out how to climb a ladder."

Eddie and I were working on the ladder when his father walked into the
shop.  "I thought I told you not to build anything," he growled.

"What's that?"

"Just a skunk ladder," Crazy Eddie said.

"Oh," his father said.  "Well, don't build nothin' else unless you tell
me first."

Eddie and I went back out to the hole and stuck the ladder in it.  The
skunk showed no inclination to climb it, choosing instead to hide in
the cavern it had hollowed out.  just then we heard Eddie's father
yelling at us: "What did you mean, skunk ladder?"  We peeked out around
the stump pile, and there was Mr. Muldoon striding across the pasture
toward us.

"Quick," said Eddie.  "Help me put the door back over the hole!"

We threw the door over the top of the hole, neatly hiding it from
view.

Before we could think of a good explanation for a big pile of dirt out
in a corner of the pasture, Mr.  Muldoon charged up.

"Now what?"  he cried.  "Where did that dirt come from?  What's my door
doing out here?"

He reached down and grabbed the edge of the door.

"Stop, Pa, don't!"  Eddie yelled, rushing forward.

From that point on, the actions of the parties involved all blurred
together.  It is difficult to recall the exact sequence of action, but
I will try.

Mr. Muldoon grabbed the door and flipped it off the hole.  Then he
said, "Smells like a skun ..."  at which time he shot out of sight,
leaving his straw hat suspended in the air for perhaps a quarter of a
second.  (Later, I deduced that Mr. Muldoon had stepped on the edge of
the hole, beneath which the skunk had hollowed out its cavern.) A cloud
of dust puffed up out of the hole when Mr.  Muldoon hit the bottom.

Then he yelled several serious swear words with the word "SKUNK!"

mixed in with them.  Next there were a lot of earthy scrabbling sounds,
and Mr. Muldoon came clawing his way up the side of the hole, but the
dirt gave way and he fell back in, saying something like "Oooff!"  It
is important, perhaps, to realize that all the activity so far had
taken place in a span of no more than four seconds.

Eddie had meanwhile charged forward, yelling, "Pa, Pa, don't hurt
him!"

He was standing at the top of the ladder when the skunk rushed up that
contrivance and emerged from the cloud of dust.  Startled, and not
wanting the skunk to reverse ends and spray him, Eddie grabbed the
little animal by the head.  The skunk started scratching and biting, so
Eddie threw it back down in the hole, where its arrival was followed by
a savage bellow from Mr. Muldoon, who, to our surprise, then came
racing up the skunk ladder himself.

This was the signal for Eddie and me to start running, which we did,
and we continued running until the thunderous sounds of Mr. Muldoon's
clodhopper boots faded behind us, and still we ran on, finally
outdistancing even the nostril-searing smell of Eddie's father.

Eddie eventually made his way home and placed himself under the
protective custody of his mother, until Mr. Muldoon's rage subsided
into the odd little facial tic that was to remain with him for several
months.

In the ruckus at the skunk ladder, Eddie had been hit in the face with
a slight charge of skunk spray.  Worried at first that the spray might
have affected his brain, Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon finally assumed there
would be no lasting ill effects.  Twenty years later, however, Crazy
Eddie became a Ph.D. in chemistry.

How to Go Splat!

One of the most common activities engaged in by outdoorspersons is
falling.  Oddly enough, almost nothing has been written on the
subject.

It is not surprising, then, that few hunters and anglers know how to
fall properly, or, if they do, how to score the fall on a scale of one
to ten.  The assumption is that any fall that results in a full-body
cast automatically scores a ten.  That is false.  The full-body cast in
and of itself rates only a five.  Other factors must be taken into
account, including overall style of the fall, the hunter's conduct
before, during, and after the fall, and whether the fallee merely lies
there groaning or manages to come up with a comically droll statement
with which to describe his injuries.  No one who fails to come up with
a comically droll statement should ever have his fall rated as a ten.

I have been falling for years, in streams, over logs, out of boats and
duck blinds, off horses and cliffs, and even from moving vehicles, to
name but a few variations I have managed to work out.  As a child, I
was always falling.  When I was five years old I fell out of a speeding
bus.  I can still remember my mother screaming as I bounced like a
Super Ball along the icy roadway.  "Not in your new snowsuit," she
shrieked.  "How many times do I have to tell you!"

Among my fishing and hunting companions, I am considered one of the
world's leading experts on falling.  They have become blase about even
my most spectacular plummets.  Last summer I slipped on a mossy rock in
a trout stream and shot over a small waterfall.  My friend Retch
Sweeney was so concerned he almost paused in his casting.

Unable to come up with a comically droll statement, I yelled at Retch,
"Quick, get me to a doctor before this starts hurting!  I've crushed my
right thigh!  It's a pulpy mess!"

Then I discovered the pulpy mess was a banana I'd stuffed into my
pocket.

Since medical science has not yet come up with a cure for smashed
bananas, I told Retch to forget about calling the doctor, which he may
have been thinking about doing as soon as he tied on a new fly and
tested it.  "Heck," I said, " I can fish with a crushed thigh.  I'll
just smear some banana on it to ease the pain."

The type of fall I hate most is the one-legger.  This is where one leg
shoots down a beaver hole or an empty posthole all the way up to the
confluence of your anatomy.  Your other leg is still running about up
on the surface.  The problem with the one-legger is that it lacks
style.  The person doing a one-legger almost always omits the comically
droll comment and goes right to serious cussing.  I recall the time my
stepfather, Hank, did a one-legger down a beaver hole while we were
fishing along a brushy bank of the creek.  Hank had a talent for
creative cussing, but the one-legger inspired him to heights that must
have approached those of genius.  He dredged up archaic curses from the
distant past, combined them with current profanity, worked in a
half-dozen anatomical references, embellished those with all the known
vulgarities related to bodily functions, invented several new
cuss-words on the spot, and finally wove all these elements into a
verbal tapestry brilliant in color and blinding in intensity.  Hank
never swore much afterwards, possibly because he knew he had achieved
his ultimate in that field, or possibly because he was too occupied
with his new hobby, which consisted of lurking about the beaver dam on
the creek, baseball bat in hand.

The only fall more lacking in pure aesthetics than the one-legger is
the pack-flip.  This is where you're going down a steep grade with a
heavy pack and suddenly stumble.  This causes the pack to flip over
your head, and the straps pick you up by the armpits, whip you over the
top of the pack, and slam you down on the trail.  Sometimes this
sequence is repeated over and over, as with those little toys that walk
down stairs: whip ... SLAM!  ... whip ...

SLAM!  ... whip ... SLAM!  I once saw a guy who was packing out a
hindquarter of elk do a multiple pack-flip down a steep, rocky trail.

By the time they were finished, the hindquarter of elk looked to be in
better health than the hunter.

In regard to style, it is important to maintain proper facial
expression during the duration of the fall.  I prefer a look of casual
disinterest, at least until I have plummeted past the ten-foot mark.

Then I employ the standard grimace.  The important thing to remember
about the grimace is not to do it too long or too hard.  Otherwise, the
grimace may last longer than the injuries.  I've known outdoorsmen who,
three months after they had recovered from a fall, still looked as if
they were about to hit.

What to say at the start of a fall is an important aspect of style.

Many outdoorsmen are caught unprepared in this regard and have to
resort to such cliches as "Yipe!"  or "Yaws!"  Therefore it is a good
idea to prepare some appropriate comments well in advance of any falls
you might take.  Brevity, of course, should be striven for.  The start
of the fall is no time to launch into something like the Gettysburg
Address.  (Even worse would be to finish reciting the Gettysburg
Address.) Something like "Geronimo-o-o-o-o!"  is about right.  Even
that is too long for a minor fall and may be too complicated to
remember under pressure.  I have had it come out "Oronagiroooo" which
sounds dumb and ruins the desired effect.  "Oops" is a good one for any
simple fall of less than ten feet, unless you happen to be still
leading a packhorse, in which case you might wish to come up with
something a little less frivolous.

Having established my expertise in regard to outdoor falls, I would now
like to examine in detail one fall of which I am particularly proud.

As I mentioned earlier, many outdoorsmen are not truly cognizant of the
proper method for scoring falls.  The following letter, from Gene Floyd
of Walla Walla, Washington, is a case in point.  I had accompanied Gene
and his wife, Jane, and Bill Smith on a black-powder elk hunt last
December, during which I attempted to instruct Bill in one of the
advanced techniques of falling.

"Bill was impressed," Gene wrote, "with your
falling-out-of-a-moving-truck trick, even though it was obviously your
first attempt.  He felt you did exceptionally well on the 'screams
portion' but needed improvement on your form.  Since you did display a
somewhat individual style on overall performance, he scored you an
eight.  He briefly considered awarding you a nine but dismissed the
thought when he recalled your arms were rotating like blades on a
windmill, and definitely should have been kept neatly tucked to your
sides."

I was shocked by the news that Bill had given me a mere eight.  He is
himself an experienced faller.  Once, on an elk hunt, he stepped out
onto an icy area being crossed by a large bull.  just as Bill was
taking aim with his muzzleloader, the elk slipped on the ice and went
down.  While he was pondering whether it would be sportsmanlike to
shoot an elk that had slipped on the ice, Bill's own feet slipped out
from under him.  He did a two-and-a-half gainer and landed on his back,
firing the muzzleloader straight up in the air.  "I figured the elk and
I were even at that point," says Bill.

He then jumped up, reloaded, and shot the elk.  What I want to know,
though, is whether it is sporting to shoot an elk that is laughing so
hard at the hunter's antics that it can hardly walk, let alone run.

My first mistake was to accept an invitation to go on an elk hunt with
this Walla Walla crowd.  None of them knew the first thing about
hunting etiquette as it applies to visiting writers.  As Emily Post has
pointed out, it is not polite for the hosts to walk straight up and
down mountains without even making a pretense of breathing hard.  The
approach recommended by Emily is for the hosts to feign approximately
the physical condition of the guest, which in this case would have
consisted of sagging against trees, making strange rattling sounds with
the throat, and occasionally stopping to scrape leaf mold and dried
pine needles off the tongue.

But the important matters here are the fall from the moving vehicle and
the method of scoring.  It was decided at one point during the hunt
that we should get into Gene's four-wheel-drive pickup and move higher
up the mountain.  We had already done this several times previously,
with the four of us wedged tightly in the cab of the truck.  I wouldn't
have minded so much if I had been wedged against Jane, but Bill always
managed to beat me to that position, and I ended up being wedged
between him and the door.  This time, however, Gene suggested that Bill
and I sit on the open tailgate of the truck.

The idea seemed sound enough at first, at least until the truck began
clawing its way up a sixty-percent grade and over rocks the size of
basketballs.

Since I was holding my muzzleloader in one hand, the only really good
grip I had was with the other hand on a tailgate brace.  Also, I was
sitting on a little domed rivet head, and I got as good a grip on that
as I could manage.  I was doing all right until an ice chest in the
truck broke loose and tried to ride me piggyback.  The ice chest caused
me to lose my grip on the rivet head, and I could feel myself slowly
vibrating off the tailgate.  Then Bill reached out a hand to steady me,
or so I assumed.

"Better hand me your rifle," he said.  "No sense in it getting all
busted up in the fall, too."

I handed him my rifle, even as I turned over in my mind his use of the
word "too."

Then I was gone.  I executed a perfect three-bounce routine, including
the difficult stunt of pressing one's nose between one's shoulder
blades.  I also managed to work into my routine the ice chest, which
had followed me off the tailgate.  If no rock of sufficient size was
available for me to land on, I substituted the ice chest, a bit of
creativity that Bill apparently overlooked in judging my fall.

When I regained my senses, I looked around for the truck, which I
supposed would have stopped long enough to bury the body.  But it was
still clawing its way up the mountain, Bill perched on the tailgate, a
rifle in each hand.  I don't know why he didn't fall off, unless he was
sitting on a larger rivet head than I had been.

As was reported to me later, when the truck finally reached the top of
the mountain, Gene and Jane asked Bill where I was.

"Oh, he fell off about a quarter-mile down the mountain," Bill said.

"I heard he was pretty good at that," Gene said.  "Did he get off a
comically droll comment before he fell?"

"I'm not sure," Bill said.  "Does 'Oronagiroooo!"  mean anything to
you?"

I finally figured out why Bill scored my fall a mere eight.  He was
going by the Walla Walla system of scoring, while I am accustomed to
the North Idaho system.  In the North Idaho system, we give points not
only for screaming but for the originality of what is screamed.  We
also go in for arm-waving in a big way.  I once fell off a high log
over a stream and, by fanning both my arms and my legs, managed to
suspend myself in midair for a few moments.  I started off in a
northeasterly direction, changed my mind and shifted to due north, and
then set a course for the far bank.  I probably would have made it,
too, if I hadn't been losing altitude so fast.  I scored the fall a
perfect ten, even though it was several years before I thought of a
droll comment sufficiently comical to fit the occasion.

The Human Fuel Pump Alphonse P. Finley and I were standing on his front
porch discussing the desirability of field-testing his new snow blower
on my driveway.

"No!  No!  No!"  Finley cried.  "I know how you are around machines!

Machines don't like you.  They stop and never run again.  They fall to
pieces and blow up and make strange noises!  My lawn mower has gone
'punkity punkity punkity' ever since I loaned it to you last summer!"

"Nonsense," I replied.  "That lawn mower went 'punkity punkity punkity'
long before I borrowed it.  Now be a good chap and get your new snow
blower for me.  You wouldn't want me to catch an infarction from
shoveling my driveway, would you?"

"Hmmmm," Finley said.  "Let me study on that for a minute.  Hey, I got
an idea.  Maybe you could go down to the store and buy a new snow
blower of your own.  How about that?"

"Are you crazy?"  I said.  "You know I fish and hunt.  I've got guns
and rods I have to buy.  I can't be wasting my money on snow
blowers."

just then a battered old four-wheel-drive pickup pulled up in front of
my house.

"It's Retch Sweeney," I said.  "I wonder where he got the new
pickup."

"I would scarcely call it new," Finley snorted.  Al doesn't care much
for Retch and frequently refers to him by certain crude anatomical
names.  "I wonder what that elbow is up to now," he said.

Retch got out of the truck and walked toward us, beaming.  "What do you
think of my new truck?"

"It's beautiful," I said.  "It looks as if it would go anywhere."

"Hmph," Finley said.  "It looks as if it's already been there."

"Ah, it's just been broke in good," Retch said.  "When I get done
fixin' her up, this baby will climb trees if I want it to.  First thing
I'm gonna do is put a wench on the front bumper."

"You're going to put a wench on the front bumper?"  Finley said.

"That's certainly a novel idea.  Why would you do that?"

"Why, to pull logs out of the woods with, and to drag the truck out of
mud holes when it gets sunk in too deep."

"I see," Finley said.  "You would need a pretty husky wench to perform
those chores, I should think.  Or perhaps you mean 'winch'?"

"Winch, wench, what's the difference?"  Retch said, turning around to
admire his truck.

"In your case, probably not all that much," Finley said.

"Still, I do rather like the idea of a wench riding around on your
front bumper."

Retch was too excited by his new purchase to pay much attention to
Finley's needling.  He invited both Al and me to go for a ride with
him.

"We'll run her up into the mountains and try out the four-wheel drive
on some really rough terrain."

I was a bit hesitant.  One of the things I've learned over the years is
that four-wheel-drives, like rubber rafts, will take a person into
places he ought not to go.  On the other hand, I couldn't disappoint
Retch, and besides, I thought it might be fun.  Finley, however,
declined.

"First of all," he said, jerking a thumb at me, "it's against my better
judgment to associate with him in an enterprise in which a mechanical
apparatus of any kind is involved.  McManus apparently is surrounded by
a powerful magnetic field that does strange things to machinery, like
making it go 'punkity punkity punkity."" "Now, stop exaggerating,
Finley," I said.  "Retch won't know you're joking."

"I am not joking!  Besides, gentlemen, I am going to spend the rest of
this cold, miserable afternoon curled up in front of the fire with a
good book."

"It's all right, Finley, I understand," I said, patting him on the
shoulder.  "When I get old, that's how I m going to spend my
afternoons, too.

Okay, let's go see what that truck of yours can do, Retch."

"Hold it!"  shouted Finley.  "I'm going!"

Much to his amazement, Finley enjoyed riding around in Retch's
four-by-four.  We took the truck up into the mountains, plowing easily
along through foot-deep snow.  Al had never been in the mountains right
after a fresh snowfall, and was delighted with the beauty that
surrounded us on all sides, the evergreens bundled up in coats of
ermine, tall pines streaming with wedding veils of snow, creeks winding
dark and shining through downy whiteness, and finally the mountains
turning a delicate shade of pink in the pale light of the setting
sun.

"This is marvelous!"  Finley exclaimed.

"No kidding," Retch said.  "And I ain't even put her into low gear
yet.

Now let me show you what this baby can really do."

"I was referring to the scenery," Finley said.  "Wait!  Stop!  You're
going off the road, you crazy kneecap!"

"Cool your jets," Retch said.  "I'm just going to take her up this old
skid trail and over the top of that knob."

"Knob!"  shouted Finley.  "That's no knob, you clavicle, that's a
peak!"

Retch and I chuckled.  Obviously, Finley had no idea what a
four-wheel-drive vehicle was capable of.  He continued to shout, whine,
and screech as the truck growled its way up the side of the mountain.

We wound in and out among the trees, climbed over rocks and logs, and
eventually clawed our way to the top of the knob.  By now it was nearly
dark.  The skid trail, if indeed it was a skid trail, dropped sharply
down the other side.

"By gosh, I bet this ol' truck can handle that grade even in the snow,"
Retch said, gunning the truck over the top.

"No, no!  It's too steep, you bellybutton!"

As for Finley, he was too paralyzed with fear even to speak.

Miraculously, the truck clung to the earth and, twisting and grunting,
carried us along a narrow ledge with a drop-off to the right and an
ice-covered cliff to the left.  The floor of the cab was awash in cold
sweat by the time we arrived safely at the bottom of the canyon.

"How about that!"  Retch said.

"Mumph," Finley replied.

"Phimph," I added, discarding a handful of upholstery.

"One problem," Retch said.

"What's that?"  I asked.

"It's too narrow to turn around down here.  We're going to have to go
back up the mountain in reverse."

Finley moaned cravenly.  "I knew I should have stayed home and read a
book by the fire.  Now I'm down in the middle of a frozen canyon in the
dark and there's no way to turn around and I'm in the company of two
maniacs!  This is the ultimate!"

Actually, it was not yet the ultimate, for at that moment the truck's
engine began to make a peculiar sound.

"Huh," Retch said, his forehead wrinkling.  "I never heard anything
like that before.  You ever hear an engine go 'punkity punkity
punkity'?"

"Once or twice," I said.

"Ye gods!"  cried Finley.  "It's McManus's magnetic field at work!"

Then the engine stopped altogether.  The three of us got out and raised
the hood.  Retch and I prodded and poked at the engine in the routine
manner and with the standard absence of any hope of determining the
cause of the malfunction, let alone of repairing it.

Suddenly, Retch snapped his fingers.  "I know what it is!  It's the
fuel pump!  The fuel pump is shot!"

"Phew!"  I said.  "I was really worried there for a minute."

"Yeah, me too," Retch said.

Finley stopped whimpering.  "You mean it's okay?  You can fix the fuel
pump?"

"No, can't fix it," Retch said.

"Oh, you have a spare fuel pump then?"

Retch and I looked at Finley.  "Sort of," we said in unison.

"Thank goodness," Finley said.  "Look, I take back all the nasty things
I said about you guys.  I won't ever do that again."

"Promise?"  I said.

Retch and I went into action.  We quickly removed from the engine
compartment the tubing and reservoir tank of the windshield-washing
unit.

This activity caused Finley a certain amount of puzzlement, but there
was no time to explain.  It was growing colder by the minute, and both
Retch and I were aware of the dangers of hypothermia.

Once the window-washer tube and the reservoir were extracted, we used
the tube to siphon gas from the truck's gas tank into the reservoir.

While Retch was reattaching the tube to the reservoir, I removed the
air-filter cover from the carburetor.

"The way it works," I explained to Finley, who was standing about
rubbing his hands and stomping his feet, "is that we use the reservoir
and tube to dribble gas directly into the carburetor."

"Ingenious!"  cried Finley.

"Yes, it is, if I do say so myself," I said.

"But how do you fix it so just the right amount of gas is dribbled into
the carburetor?"  he asked.

Retch and I couldn't help but smile at the naivete of the man.

"Well, it's like this," I said.  "One of us has to sit on the fender,
with his feet in the engine compartment, and hold the tank in one hand
and the tube in the other.  Then he squeezes the tube so just the right
amount of gas goes into the carburetor.  It works like a charm."

"Oh," Finley said.  "Well, which of you two is it to be?"

"I thought you might ask that, Al, ol' buddy," I said, "but the problem
is this, you see.  Retch is the only one capable of backing this rig up
the side of the mountain and working it along that narrow spot without
getting us all killed.  And I'm too big to fit into the engine
compartment, bad as that makes me feel.  That leaves you, Finley."

Possibly I have heard such wailing and gnashing of teeth before, but I
couldn't remember when.  I asked Retch about it, and he said he thought
this was about the best wailing and gnashing he'd ever heard, but he
wished Finley would get finished with it so we could start driving out
of the canyon.  A blizzard was in the making.

We showed Finley how to clamp one leg against the wheel well down by
the generator and to prop one foot against the radiator cap so that leg
wouldn't slip into the fan and get chewed up.  We warned him not to
allow himself to get bounced forward onto the battery, because battery
acid can eat the rear end right out of a pair of pants and usually
doesn't stop there.  To his credit, Finley paid a good deal of
attention to all this advice.  Finally we instructed him on how to
regulate the flow of gas into the carburetor, and at last we were ready
to make our run up out of the canyon.

Retch and I got in the cab, and an instant later the engine roared to
life.  I shouted out the window to Finley and asked if he was ready.

He replied with a stream of crude anatomical terms and something about
a good book and a fire.  I took this as the signal he was as ready as
he ever would be.

The truck tore backwards up the mountain, whining, bellowing, and
kicking logs and rocks in all directions.  There was a good deal of
strain on me, because I had to keep yelling out the window, "More gas,
Finley!  Less gas, Finley!"  And so on.  Since all I could see of
Finley was his rear end, kind of pinched down on the fender, I could
never be quite sure if he heard me or not.  I thought the very least he
could do was to shout back a reply of some kind, just so I would know
he had heard.  But that's the way Finley is--inconsiderate.

Scarcely twenty minutes later we backed onto the main road and were
able to drive forward, with Retch leaning out his window so he could
see around the open hood.  He complained of the cold, and said he hoped
Finley appreciated the suffering he was going through just to get him
back to his warm fire.  I said I doubted he would, because that just
wasn't the kind of person Finley was--appreciative.

When we reached the highway and headed back to town, it occurred to us
that we had driven over twenty miles on the mere two quarts of gas in
the window-washer reservoir.

"You know what?"  Retch said.  "This is the best dang mileage I ever
got with this truck."

"Maybe you should hire Finley to be your permanent fuel pump," I said,
and we had a good chuckle over that little joke.

We didn't know that the gas in the reservoir had long ago been used up
and that somewhere along the way the fuel pump had started functioning
again.

Finley had discarded the empty container, an unconscionable act of
littering, and was now merely crouched under the hood trying to thaw
his hands over the engine block.  This no doubt surprised some oncoming
motorists, or so we assumed from the erratic swerves the vehicles made
as they passed.  Many people have never seen a man crouched in the
engine compartment of a truck speeding through a blizzard, and the few
who have may choose not to believe it anyway.

Even the boys at Pete's Gas Station apparently had never before seen
such a spectacle, judging from the way they gathered around and stared
slack-jawed at Finley.

"D-don't anybody s-say anything," Al growled, "not a w-w-word!"

Someone commented later that the older Finley gets the more crotchety
he becomes, and it's true.  As I often tell him, he is indeed becoming
old beyond his years.  Otherwise, how do you explain his spending most
of the following day in bed?  Since Finley was too feeble to answer the
door, his wife was kind enough to loan me his snow blower to clear my
driveway.  When I was almost finished, I noticed Finley glaring down at
me from his upstairs bedroom window.  I guess he had been awakened by
the 'punkity punkity punkity' sound of his new snow blower.  Old age
tends to turn people into light sleepers, no question about it.

'Twas a Dark and Dreary Night Back during my single-digit years, I
often thought about running away and joining the French Foreign Legion.
 The uniform was nice, and I liked the idea of riding horses and camels
across the desert.  Only one thing bothered me.  I wondered if the
Legionnaires were issued night lights.  My love of adventure had its
limits.  I could easily imagine a battle-hardened Legionnaire sergeant
reporting to his company commander, "Looks grim, sir.  We've run out of
food and water and the ammunition's nearly gone.  Worse yet, we're
short on fuel for the men's night lights."  With my luck, I'd be the
one whose night light ran out of fuel first.

I realized, of course, that fear of darkness was a serious flaw in my
character.  Since my character was riddled with flaws anyway, I didn't
worry much about one more.  Nevertheless, I didn't want my friends to
find out I was afraid of the dark, and I went to great lengths to keep
my secret from them.

Take, for instance, the time Ronnie Ditmire came out to our farm to
spend the night with me.

Ronnie had no sooner set foot in the house than he came up with the
suggestion that he and I sleep out in the backyard.  He said he'd had a
lot of experience sleeping out in backyards in town, but this was his
first opportunity to do so in the country.

"Yeah, well," I said.  "Sure.  In the dark, you mean.  Sleep out.  That
would be fun.  You don't mind a lot of black widow spiders crawling all
over you, do you, Ronnie?"

"You got black widow spiders in your yard?"

Patting my hair back down, I retracted a few premature goosebumps.

Unfortunately, my evil sister, the Troll, overheard our conversation
and rushed to put in her oar and roil the waters.  "What are you
telling Ronnie?

There are no black widow spiders in our yard, you silly!"

"There are too," I said nervously.

"Ma!"  the Troll roared.  "Are there any black widow spiders in the
yard?"

Mom, ever ready to rush to my defense, stuck her head out of the
kitchen.

"No, of course not.  Where did you ever get a dumb idea like that?"

"See?"  the Troll said.

"I thought there were," I said, smiling weakly at Ronnie.

"Good," he said.  "Then we can sleep out in the yard tonight, after
all."

"I can't think of any reason why not," I said.  "Unless you happen to
be bothered by poisonous snakes.  Ever seen anybody get snake-bit?

First they swell up into a great big horrible ball, and then they turn
blue and green and yellow and then it starts to get real bad."

"My dad says there ain't any poisonous snakes around here," Ronnie
said.

"So we don't have to worry about snakes."

"I thought we did," I said.

"Of course not," the Troll put in.  "There aren't any poisonous snakes
around here--not even when it's dark!"  She cackled trollishly.

"Ma!"  I yelled.  "The Troll is bothering us.  Tell her to leave us
alone!"

"Don't refer to your sister as the Troll," my mother said.  "Now,
Trudy, get out of there and leave the boys alone."

The Troll backed slowly out of the room, grinning evilly.  "Hope you
have a good time sleeping out-in-the-dark.  The weather report in the
paper says there's going to be heavy darkness all night tonight cackle
cackle!"  just my luck--heavy darkness.  And here was Ronnie, pressing
ahead with his plan for sleeping out.  This was getting out of hand.

We were actually getting some old blankets and quilts down out of the
attic to make a bed in the yard.  What madness!  I considered asking
Ronnie to take an oath of secrecy and then confessing to him my
disgusting fear of darkness.  He would probably understand.

"I'll tell you something weird," Ronnie said.  "I tried to get Fred
Phelps to sleep out with me one night, and he said he couldn't, he was
afraid of the dark.  A big guy like Fred, you wouldn't expect him to be
yellow-bellied chicken, would ya?  He even made me take a secret oath
not to tell anybody."

"Fred's dumb, too," I said.  So much for that idea ...

Darkness was already coming down off the mountain, crawling out of the
woods, and oozing up from the creek bottom.  Down in the swamp, a
chorus of frogs welcomed the coming of night.  Stupid frogs.

Several times in my young life, through some monumental miscalculation,
I had been surprised by darkness while playing with friends at a
neighboring farm.  Galloping along at the head of a column of French
Legionnaires, I would yell over my shoulder, "Watch out for an ambush,
men.  It's getting dark and .

.

Whoa, hoss.

I take a look around.  Hannnnnhhh!  My deadly enemy, darkness, has
slipped in between me and my house!  "Uhoh," I tell the other
Legionnaires.

"I'm late for supper."  And then I fire myself into the darkness.  I
can feel its long, bony fingers clutching at me, its grisly jaws
nipping at my heels, and I streak, streak I say, through the silent,
creepy blackness until, at last, I burst into the benevolent,
life-saving light of my kitchen.  Startled by the bang and whoosh of my
sudden arrival, the womenfolk emit small shrieks and bound about in a
mist of hairpins.  Ah!  Once again I have defeated the enemy!  I slide
into my chair and ask, "What's for supper?"

The Troll detected my fear of darkness early on, and used it for her
own amusement.  Once, walking home with her through the woods in
winter, I noticed that the shadows of the trees had lengthened and were
now blending together into great patches of darkness.  The last of the
daylight slid up the barren birches as if being sucked through giant
straws into the gaping maw of night.

"It's getting dark!"  I warned.

"So what?"  the Troll said, crunching on ahead through the snow.

"We'd better run," I said.  "We don't want to get caught out here after
dark."

The Troll stopped, turned around, and studied me thoughtfully.

"We can't run," she said.  "If we run, the wolves will attack."

I looked around, as one is wont to do after such an announcement.

"What wolves?"

"The wolves that have been following us," she said.  "Don't tell me you
haven't seen them!"

Well, now that she mentioned it, I did indeed see the wolves, slipping
along through the shadows to the left and right of us.

The Troll calmly studied my reaction.  "Why are you twisting yourself
all up like that, you silly?"

Apparently she had never before seen anybody wind up the mainspring.

Not run!  I would have laughed if I'd had the time and the inclination,
but I had neither.  Sprannnnnnngg!  And I was gone.

At the time, I knew nothing about the infectious nature of panic.

Otherwise I wouldn't have been so surprised when, upon reaching my top
cruising speed, I noticed the Troll passing me on the left and still
accelerating, her braids snapping like bull-whips as she cut in front
of me.

Maybe she thought there actually were some wolves following us, I don't
know.

More than likely it was simply that panic loves company.  For my part,
I couldn't have cared less about a mere pack of wolves.  A pack of
wolves wasn't even in the same league as a pack of darkness.

But now here were Ronnie and I, engaged in the insanity of actually
spreading quilts and blankets on top of an old hay tarp in preparation
for spending the night outdoors.  if I even relaxed my feigned
enthusiasm for the undertaking--good word that, undertaking-Ronnie
would become suspicious.  Then both Fred Phelps and I would become
outcasts at school next fall, when Ronnie spread the word that we two
yellow-bellied chickens were scared of the dark.

Poor ol' Fred's reputation was already shot; mine hung in precarious
balance.

Of course, all I needed was a tiny little night light.  Something the
size of a birthday-cake candle would do--a fifteen-foot birthday-cake
candle.

Any obvious night light, though, would cause Ronnie to put some tough
questions to me, like, "What you doing with that flashlight and the big
stack of batteries?"  Even if I'd had a big stack of batteries, I
couldn't have risked it.

"What say we turn in?"  Ronnie asked.  "It's already dark."

"I noticed," I said.

I glanced longingly up at our house, the lights of which were being
flicked off one by one as my mother made her final rounds.  She opened
the back door and called out, "I'm going to bed now.  You boys all
right?"

"Yep," Ronnie said.

"Yaup," I said.

Mom went back inside, and minutes later the last light on our side of
the house flicked off.  Ronnie and I were in TOTAL DARKNESS!  Not just
the well-defined cube of darkness that filled a bedroom, but a great
shapeless ocean of night!

"You ever hear the story about the stranger who got himself hung for
claim-jumping, and his ghost still wanders these parts looking for
revenge?"

Ronnie said.

"Yeah, I heard it."

"Well, my pa seen that ghost crossing a field right out this way one
night.  Foggy it was, he said, and ..."

Idea!  Why hadn't I thought of it before!  I leaped out of the covers
and told Ronnie I'd be right back.  "I forgot to brush my teeth," I
said, rushing toward the house.  In the bathroom, I jerked the string
on the overhead light, waited an appropriate length of time, and then
sauntered back outside.

Perfect!  The light from the bathroom window cast a nice rectangular
patch of light right next to my side of the hay tarp.

"You left the bathroom light on," Ronnie said.

"Dang," I said.  "If that doesn't beat all!  Oh, well, a little light
won't hurt anything."

"This ghost story is better if it's plumb dark," Ronnie said.  "But
anyway, this ghost ..."  He droned on about the ghost and its horrible
doings.

I smiled sleepily, starting to drift off as I secretly stroked the
grassy patch of protective light, occasionally turning to admire it in
all its loveliness.

Without warning, an ominous shadow suddenly appeared in my patch of
light.  Wha?  I turned and looked up at the bathroom window.  No!

There, framed in the window, stood the Troll!  She was in silhouette,
so I couldn't see her face, but I knew she was grinning her evil grin
as she stared down in my direction.  Slowly her hand reached for the
light string.  NO!  DON'T DO IT!  She made several teasing motions with
the light string, then.  Zap!  The light was gone.  Faintly, off in the
darkness, I could hear the hollow sound of trollish laughter.  She
would have already locked all the doors to the house.  Trolls are
nothing if not thorough.

So now there was nothing to do but suffer the night away.  For me, the
Troll had murdered any hope of sleep.  Under my breath I put a curse on
her: May a garter snake turn up in your underwear drawer!  (And a
garter snake would, which shows you can't discount the power of
curses.) A friendly wind swept back the clouds and a few stars
appeared.

Starlight was better than nothing.  I noticed several little black
shapes flitting about among the stars.

"And after the ghost got done with the two boys ..."  Ronnie was
saying.

"Hey, what are those black shapes flitting about among the stars?"

"Just some bats," I said.

"Bats!"  cried Ronnie.  "I can't stand bats!  Quick, let's go
inside!"

"Too late," I said.  "The Troll has locked all the doors."

"Aaaaiiiiigh!"  Ronnie said.  "What'll we do?"

"I don't mind bats, myself," I said.  "But if they scare you, maybe you
can hide under the covers.  Sometimes bats like to crawl under the
covers, but if I see any try it, I'll drive them off."  I studied the
quivering lump under the blanket.  "I'm going to be awake anyway."

Trailer Trials Shortly after man invented the wheel he invented the
trailer.  Ever since then, he has been trying to figure out how to hook
up the lights.

I know a man who claims the lights on his boat trailer once worked
twice consecutively.  Anyone with one or more trailers will instantly
recognize this as an outrageous claim, but the man is a member of the
clergy, and for that reason alone I believe him.  On the other hand,
he's also a fisherman, so he may be exaggerating a bit.  Possibly his
trailer lights worked only once consecutively.

Over the course of his life, any sportsman worthy of the name will own
a dozen or so trailers of various kinds--utility trailers, tent
trailers, boat trailers, house trailers, horse trailers, trail-bike
trailers, and snowmobile trailers, to name but a few.  That is the
reason researchers estimate that one-eighth of a sportsman's life is
spent trying to hook up trailer lights.

The trailer comes equipped with a rectangular light, whereas the plug
on your car is round, or perhaps vice versa.  In any case, you can be
sure the two plugs won't match.  Therefore you must replace the
original trailer plug with one that matches the car's, a task that
seems simple enough.  You reason that since only four wires lead from
the trailer plug and four wires lead from the car plug, there exist
only a limited number of wrong combinations.  True.

The limited number is 4,389.

Once you have wired the new plug to your trailer and plugged it into
the car plug, the standard procedure for checking the trailer lights
consists of having your wife, Alice, if that is her name, stand behind
the trailer and call out reports on what is happening to its lights.

The dialogue goes something like this: "I've got the left-turn signal
on, Alice.  Is the trailer's left-turn signal blinking?"

"NO."

"What's blinking?"

"Nothing's blinking.  But the other light got real bright.  Then it
went out."

You switch a few wires around.

"I've got the brake lights on, Alice.  Did the trailer brake light go
on?"

"No.  But the left-turn signal is blinking.  Is that good?"

The check-out procedure continues throughout the day until it is too
dark to work, Alice goes in the house and phones a divorce lawyer, or
you are dragged off to an asylum.  The divorce rate among trailer
owners, by the way, is nine times that of the rest of the population.

Trailer lights have little insidious tricks they like to pull on you.

For example, the left-turn signal will start blinking of its own
accord.  The drivers of the cars following you think you are about to
turn left, of course, and thus are hesitant to pass.  Noticing the line
of cars stretching out behind, you drive slower to make it easier for
them to pass.  The other drivers think you are slowing down to make
your turn, and they are now even more hesitant to pass.  Eventually,
some of them become irate.  The others merely hope you will pull into
the next rest stop so they will have the opportunity to beat you with
tire irons.  While hauling a trailer, I avoid rest stops.

Another little trick of trailer lights is to black out entirely,
particularly on dark and stormy nights.  The emergency procedure
requires Alice to ride in the trailer and shine a flashlight to the
rear.  Since it is illegal for passengers to ride in trailers, however,
she must be fitted out with a disguise.  Wrapping her with a tent works
fine, although there may be some difficulty explaining to a highway
patrolman why a tent should be holding a flashlight and cursing.

Trailer hitches can be a problem, although they are nothing as compared
with trailer lights.  The hitch simply clamps down over a steel ball on
the car.  The steel balls come in three sizes-too large, too small, and
just right.  The just-right ball is the one you lent your neighbor to
haul a trailer to Nova Scotia, because he had one of the other two
sizes.

Once you have placed the hitch on the ball, you pull back a lever that
activates a locking mechanism which always jams for a reason no one has
ever been able to understand.  Here's a tip.  To clamp the hitch jaw
against the ball, insert two fingers up between the jaw and the ball
and then press down hard on the lever.  The two fingers volunteered for
this operation should be minor ones for which you have no immediate
plans, or better yet, those of the neighbor who borrowed your
just-right ball.

Trailers seldom come equipped with spare tires.  Naturally, you assume
you can purchase a spare.  The trailer's wheels, you then discover, are
of a size and style manufactured only by a small firm in Lower Tibia
before the revolution.  This creates the suspense of hauling a trailer
without a spare tire for it.  Getting a flat on a trailer without a
spare rates as one of life's great predicaments.  Your options are
few.

You can leave the trailer parked by the road to be plundered while you
haul the flat to the nearest town to be repaired, or you can try to
persuade Alice to run along holding up one side of the trailer,
provided it is of the lightweight variety.  If the latter course is
chosen, I suggest you keep your speed at no more than five miles per
hour and even slower on upgrades.  Sure, driving that slow can be
boring, but Alice deserves some consideration for doing her part.

Speaking of boredom, here's something guaranteed to relieve it.  Going
down a steep grade, you glance out the side window and notice some
idiot trying to pass you on the wrong side.  Then you see it is your
trailer.  Oh, it is a thrilling sight, I can tell you, especially if
the trailer is carrying an eighteen-foot boat.  Some people are
thrilled right out of trailering.

Others vow never again to try to get by with the too-small ball when
only the just-right ball will do.

Safety chains, by the way, are required on all trailers.  Their
purpose, should the hitch come loose, is to rip the rear end off the
towing vehicle, thus further punishing you for using the wrong ball.

I bought my first trailer a few years after getting my family
started.

Like any outdoorsman, I needed to haul stuff but couldn't afford a
pickup truck in addition to the family sedan.  The trailer served as a
compromise.  A World War II surplus trailer, it was designed to be
hauled behind a jeep.

After much dickering, the proprietor of Grogan's War Surplus, Henry
P.

Grogan himself, finally threw up his hands in exasperation and sold me
the trailer for practically nothing.  It was a steal, the only one I
ever got from the shrewd, tightfisted Grogan.

As a kid, I had distinguished myself as the most loyal and frequent
customer of Grogan's War Surplus, which looked as if some minor battle
of the war had been fought right in the store.  It was a delirium of
fantastic war stuff--helmets, fatigues, web belts, canteens, sleeping
bags, guns, bayonets, machetes, rubber rafts, jungle hammocks, jerry
cans, landing nets, and the like.  During the years of my youth, I
bought several of each item, with the exceptions of machine guns and
tanks.  Not that Grogan wouldn't have sold me machine guns and tanks if
I'd had the cash.  I was, after all, his favorite customer.

The war was long over now, and Grogan no longer prospered as he once
had.

The day I walked in looking for a trailer, I noticed him giving a
customer the hard sell on a piece of merchandise.

"But what do I need a flamethrower for?"  the man said.

"Why, it's good for all sorts of things," Grogan said.  "Ridding your
lawn of weeds, for example.  You just go whoosh with this thing and the
weeds is gone.  Never come back, neither.  You can burn out stumps with
it, too, and let's see, ah, it works good for scaring off prowlers.

Yessir, works real fine for that."

Grogan looked disappointed when the man walked out shaking his head,
but he brightened at the sight of me.

"My gosh, boy, where you been?  Haven't seen you in a year."

"Hi, Mr.  Grogan.  How's business?"

"Bad.  But I expect it to pick up right away.  What can I do for you,
boy?  Got anything you need burnt up real quick?"

"No, but I saw a rotten, rusty, old beaten-up trailer grown over with
weeds in your back lot.  How much do you want for it?"

Grogan scratched his chin stubble.  "You must be referring to my little
Sadie.  That's what I calls the trailer, little Sadie.  Got a
sentimental attachment to her.  How much was you figgerin' on
spendin'?

Not that I would let her go for any price."

"Twenty-five dollars."

"Twenty-five dollars!  It cost me more than that to have a coat of rust
put on her to protect the metal!  No way you're gonna get that trailer
for twenty-five dollars!"

Four years of college education gave me an edge over Grogan that I had
lacked in the old days, when he constantly took advantage of me.  At
the end of some heated dickering, he finally gave in and sold me the
trailer for not one penny over twenty-five dollars.  It was a sweet
deal, if I do say so myself.

When I got home, my wife could scarcely believe I had dickered Grogan
out of the trailer for a mere twenty-five dollars.

"What's all that stuff in it?"  she asked.

"Just a few helmets, bayonets, jerry cans, web belts, a landing net,
and a few other things I bought from Grogan that might come in handy
sometime.

Now you take this contraption here--if we ever have a lawn and it needs
some weeds burned out of it, this baby will do it!"

The first thing anyone does with a new used trailer is to paint it.

Typically, the previous owner will have slapped a coat of leftover
house paint on it, brown or white being the favorite colors.  I would
not degrade a trailer with such a paint job.  I painted mine green and
purple, but mostly purple, since the can of green paint was almost
empty.  It was not unattractive.  The one green fender made it stand
out from all the other purple trailers around.

"Let's go camping," I told my wife.  "You go toss our camping gear in
the trailer and I'll wire up some lights for it."

That night as I lay on my back under a sky ablaze with stars, I said to
Bun, "Okay, now I'm touching the little green wire to the big red and
white one.  Which light goes on?"

Scarcely a week later, I had the lights working and we took off on the
camping trip.  As we wound up a narrow, winding road in the mountains,
we entertained the kids by playing Twenty Questions.

"Is it a bicycle?"  Kelly asked.

"Nope, not a bicycle," I said, chuckling.

"A wagon!"  cried Shannon.

"Nope, not a wagon.

"A train!"  yelled Peggy.

"Nope, not a train."

"A logging truck!"  shouted my wife.

"Nope, not a ... LOGGING TRUCK!"

By the time I had ground our old sedan into reverse, I could count the
smashed bugs on the grill of the logging truck, a fate we seemed about
to share.  Expertly, I backed the trailer three hundred yards down the
road to a wide spot, into which I swerved with several nifty little
whips of the steering wheel.

"Good heavens, that was close," Bun said as the logging truck thundered
past.  "And to think, you've never even backed up a trailer before.

Wow!

That was wonderful!"

"Cut the sarcasm," I said, "and let's see if we can get the trailer out
of the trunk."

I kept that first trailer for nearly thirty years, as kind of a momento
of my introduction to trailering.  It served me well, hauling my
firewood, camping gear, rowboats, rubber rafts, and the fruit of my
big-game hunting (usually apples, but occasionally pears, given me by
sympathetic farmers).

Last summer I finally offered to sell the trailer to a young man who
needed it more than I. And for twenty-five dollars, too.

He tried to hide his appreciation.  "Twenty-five bucks for a purple
trailer with a green fender?  You must be crazy, man.  You should pay
me twenty-five dollars just to be seen with it."

"Yeah," I said.  "But it's still in great shape.  Of course, the lights
need a little work.  Ever hook up trailer lights?  Oh.  Well, don't
worry, you'll get the hang of it in no time."

"Gosh, I don't know," he said.  "Maybe it is worth twenty-five
dollars."

"Sure it is," I said.  "And don't forget all the extra stuff I'm
throwing in with it.  See this thing here?  You got any weeds in your
lawn, pal, this baby will get rid of them fast."

The Grasshopper Trap Retch Sweeney and I were taking a lunch break from
pheasant hunting, our backs propped against fenceposts on the edge of a
stubble field.

Suddenly, Retch's sandwich slipped from his fingers.  Then he lunged
forward onto his belly and began frantically slapping the ground with
both hands.  Had we purchased the sack lunches anyplace other than
Greasy Gert's Gas 'n' Grub, I might not have been so alarmed.

"Quick, tell me!"  I yelled at him.  "Was it the ham-on-rye or the egg
salad?"

Retch got slowly to his feet.  "Dang!  Missed him!"

"Who?"  I said, wondering about the possible hallucinogenic effects of
egg salad.

"A grasshopper," he said, picking up the sandwich and dusting it off.

"Biggest dang grasshopper I've ever seen.  The brookies up at the
beaver pond wouldn't have been able to resist him."

"Oh," I said.  "A grasshopper."

"Yeah.  Hoppers are probably the best brookie bait there is.  Too bad
they're so hard to catch.  You'd think somebody would invent a machine
for catching them."

A grasshopper-catching machine!  The mere mention of such a contraption
drew me back into the mists of time.

"Oh, no!"  Retch groaned.  "I hate it when you get drawn back into the
mists of time.  I'm gonna take a nap."

The mists cleared.  I was a boy again, running, lunging, and careening
about our back pasture with Crazy Eddie Muldoon.  The old woodsman
Rancid Crabtree hunkered in the shade, shouting orders.

"Thar's a bigun landed on thet weed behind ya," Rancid yelled at me.

"Gol-dang!  You missed him.  You got to be quick if yer gonna catch
hoppers.

Listen to what Ahim tellin' ya now, or we's gonna be too late to do any
fishin'.  How many's you caught?"

"Six altogether," Crazy Eddie said.  "But that's counting two that
sneaked out of the jar when we were putting another one in."

"What we gonna do with three measly grasshoppers?"  Rancid yelped.

"You fellas jist ain't quick enough."

I held up the quart jar and peered in at the four measly
grasshoppers.

They stared back, their eyes filled with accusation.  "You'd think
there'd be an easier way to catch hoppers," I said.

Crazy Eddie looked at me.  "Say, I've got an idea!"

"Forget it," I said.  Already that summer I'd had too many narrow
escapes as the result of Eddie's ideas.

"But this is a great idea," he cried.  "We can build a grasshopper
trap!"

Rancid dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.  "Wouldn't work.

Ain't no way you could make a trap small enough to clamp on to a
hopper's foot."

"Not that kind of trap," Eddie said.  He then went on to explain his
idea to Rancid and me.  It was dumb, probably the dumbest idea Eddie
had ever had, and maybe even dangerous, if the completed contraption
bore any resemblance to Crazy Eddie's other inventions.  I was thankful
that for once a mature adult was on hand to point out the risk and
stupidity of such an idea.

"Sounds good to me," Rancid said.  "Let's go over to maw place and
build it."

Rancid's place, occupying a ragged clearing in the woods at the foot of
Big Sandy Mountain, consisted of a pine-slab shack with a rusty
stovepipe askew on the roof and various big-game skulls, antlers, and
moldering hides decorating the exterior walls.  It was not
unattractive.  A bullet hole in a window had been preserved as a
memento of the time an offhand shot had been fired from inside the
shack at a bobcat prowling among the junk cars in the yard, the sneaky
beast no doubt intent on stealing one of the wrecks.

Contributing to the overall aesthetic effect, ghosts of slain skunks
haunted the air of the Crabtree estate, effluvial evidence of the
owner's vocation of trapping.  The odor of skunk, however, seemed but a
gentle wafting fragrance to anyone working in close proximity to
Rancid, a situation in which I soon found myself.

I struggled to hold in place a final piece of the grasshopper trap
while the sweating old woodsman hovered above me, stretching and
twisting strands of baling wire.

"Whew!"  I gasped.

"Gettin' tard?"

"Nope.  Wheweee!  How much longer?"

"Jist about got her done.  Thar!"  Rancid stepped back, snapped his
suspenders, and proudly surveyed the grasshopper trap.  "Now ain't thet
purty!"

"Super neat!"  cried Crazy Eddie.

The grasshopper trap seemed to consist largely of baling wire, which
held a legless chair to the right front fender of Rancid's old pickup
truck.  A gunnysack dangled limply from the end of a slender pole.  A
barrel hoop held the mouth of the sack open in the manner of an airport
windsock.  The pole was suspended with strands of baling wire from a
superstructure of two-by-fours baling-wired to the chair.

"You see how it works?"  Crazy Eddie asked me, apparently taking my
silence to be the result of ignorance.  "The pickup drives along a road
and one of us sits in the chair and works the pole so that the
gunnysack scoops up the grasshoppers from the weeds in the ditch.  Get
it?  The guy in the chair ..."

"I get it, I get it!"

The three of us climbed into the pickup and went rattling off in search
of a good grasshopper road.  From long experience, I knew that Crazy
Eddie would try to persuade me to take the first turn in the chair.

After his invention proved safe, as his inventions seldom did, he would
then take his turn.  But not this time!

Presently Eddie said, "I'll bet this grasshopper trap will catch a
whole lot more grasshoppers than we can ever use."

"Ah bet it will too," Rancid said.  "In fact, Ah bet Ah could sell the
extras.  Ah could build a pen outta wire screen to keep 'em in, and
when a fisherman come along lookin' fer bait, Ah could jist net him out
a dozen or so.  Probably get a nickel apiece fer 'em.  Hot dang, thet's
good idear!  Ah might even git rich offen sellin' hoppers!"

"How about me?"  Crazy Eddie said.  "The grasshopper trap was my
idea."

"And me?"  I said.  "I helped build it."

The great grasshopper magnate turned his shrewd, beady, capitalist's
eyes on us.  "We'll work something out," he said.  "We'll work
something out.  Heh heh."

We soon arrived at a rough, narrow road that wound along Sand Creek.

Hordes of grasshoppers crackled and sizzled among dry weeds in the
ditch.

"Here's the spot," Rancid said.  "Looks like the mother lode of
hoppers.

Now who's gonna be the Just one to try out the trap?"

I could feel Crazy Eddie studying me out of the corner of his right
eye.

"Gee, I don't know," he said.  "It's sure gonna be a lot of fun,
sittin'out there on the fender, watching those ol' hoppers pour into
the trap."  He paused to check the effect on me, which was nil.

"Bouncing along out there, the wind blowing in your face.  Be just like
a carnival ride, I bet, and ..."

"Say," Rancid said, "either of you two fellers know how to drive?"

Crazy Eddie and I looked at him.  "Why, sure I do," Eddie said.  "Of
course, I'm not old enough to get my license yet."

"Hot dang!"  Rancid said.  "I'll try the hopper trap Just, just to test
her out.  And don't worry none about not havin' a license, Eddie.  Thar
ain't gonna be no policemen way out here in the dingles."

Rancid gave Crazy Eddie a quick lesson on some of the nuances of
driving the old truck.  "Jist stomp down on this here knob iffen you
wants to go faster, or you can pull out this thang.  Sometimes you got
to pump up and down real fast on the brake pedal to get her to take
hold.  Now if she gits to jumpin' and jerkin' like she does sometimes,
you can either do this or that.

You know how to shift?  Good."

Rancid got out and Crazy Eddie slid over behind the steering wheel.

"One more thang," Rancid said.  "Iffen Ah waves maw left hand, thet
means go faster.  Iffen Ah waves maw right, thet means go slower."  He
then squirmed through the network of baling wire and, with much
grunting and groaning, got himself seated in the tight confines of the
rickety chair.

"Let her rip!"  he shouted.

Crazy Eddie stretched to peer up over the dashboard, while trying to
reach the foot pedals on the floor.  He pulled the gear shift down with
a terrible grinding sound, and the truck lurched forward.

I was impressed.  "Gosh, I didn't know you knew how to drive, Eddie."

Eddie's brow was furrowed in concentration as he wrestled the big
steering wheel.  "Well, it ain't like I ever actually drove before.  I
just know how.  I've watched my pa do it hundreds of times.  There
ain't much to it."

To my surprise, the grasshopper trap worked wonderfully well.  Eddie
steered the truck along the edge of the road, while Rancid raked the
weeds with the grasshopper trap.  We could see the hoppers pouring into
it.

Such was the initial success of the grasshopper trap that Rancid
apparently decided he could easily double his profits by increasing the
speed of the truck.  Even though he was being bounced about a good
deal, he waved his left hand.

Crazy Eddie ground the truck into a higher gear.  "Would you pull out
that thing there that makes the truck go faster?"  he said to me.  "My
leg's getting' tired of pressing down on the gas knob."

I pulled out the thing on the dashboard.  The truck leaped forward with
a roar, sending Rancid's hat sailing away behind us.  He hunched
forward in the chair, his long hair streaming back.  The grasshopper
trap clipped madly along through the weeds, harvesting hoppers.  Crazy
Eddie's face beaded with sweat as he wrestled the steering wheel and
strained to see over the dashboard.

"He's waving his left hand again," I said.  "He wants you to go even
faster."  I couldn't believe the greed of the man.

"Okay," Eddie said, grinding into the next gear.  "Pull that thing on
the dashboard all the way out.  Wow!  I didn't know this old truck
could go so fast!  Now what's Rancid want?"

"Careful, Eddie, you're getting into the ditch on this side--watch out
for those thorn apples!"

The thorn apples raked the side of the truck.  We bounced over several
large rocks, ricocheted off a tree, hit a culvert, and landed back on
the road.

"Okay!  Okay!  Stop yellin'!"  Crazy Eddie said.  "I got her back on
the road, didn't I?"

"Rancid's waving both hands now.  What do you think that means?"

"I don't know.  I wish he'd make up his mind.  Maybe he's trying to
signal we're coming to Deadman's Hill.  Heck, I know that."

"It's all right," I yelled out the window to Rancid.  "Eddie knows
about the hill!"

"Now what's he trying to do?"  Eddie said.

Rancid had turned into a large, bouncing blur on the right front
fender.

I could tell that his antics were getting on Eddie's nerves.  "He's
just showing off," I said.  "But he'd better stop fooling around and
sit back down in that chair, because we're coming to the hill.  Oh,
no!

He let the grasshopper-trap pole get broken off!  What's he thinking
of?"

"If that don't beat all!"  Eddie said.  "Well, I guess we'll just have
to stop."

"I thought you were going to stop, Eddie."

"I'm tryin' to!  Now which one of these things did he say was the
brake?"

We passed the sheriff's car going in the opposite direction halfway
down the hill, but not by much.  Even so, there wouldn't have been any
problem if we hadn't been passing a wagonload of hay at the same
time.

The sheriff whipped his car around and came after us, red light
flashing and siren wailing.  As Eddie said later, it sort of scared
him.

"What do you suppose he wants?"  Eddie asked.

"Beats me," I said, tossing a bunch of hay out the window.  "Maybe he's
never seen a grasshopper trap before."

The truck stalled on the uphill grade on the other side of the Sand
Creek bridge.  The sheriff pulled in ahead of us and slid to a stop.

We got out of the truck and walked over to find out what he wanted.

The sheriff was grim and sweaty and looked tired.

"What you boys doin' drivin' that truck?"  he growled.

Then he noticed Rancid, still perched in the tangle of baling wire on
the fender.  The grasshopper magnate was covered with dust, hay, weeds,
and splattered bugs, some of which may have been grasshoppers.  He had
a comical expression on his face.  I hoped he wasn't thinking about
getting off one of his jokes, because the sheriff didn't seem to be in
the mood for it.

"Crabtree?"  the sheriff said.  "Is that you?"

"Mawf fass phimpun grussheepers un tered."

"Watch your language, Crabtree!"  the sheriff snapped.  "Young boys are
present!"

Crazy Eddie interrupted.  "It's all real simple, Sheriff.  You see,
it's a grasshopper trap.  Rancid's going to catch these grasshoppers
with it and we'll put them in a pen and sell them for a nickel apiece
and get rich and ..."

The sheriff sagged.  Wearily, he held up his hand for Eddie to stop.

"Please don't explain it to me, son," he said.  "I don't want to
hear."

The sheriff harangued Rancid for a couple of minutes and then drove
off, shaking his head.  Rancid raised a fist and shook it at Crazy
Eddie.  "Why didn't you slow down when Ah waved my right hand here?"

he yelled.

"'Cause that's your left," Eddie said.

"It is?"  Rancid said.  "Ah always thought it was maw right.  You sure
about thet?"

As we were driving home, I tried to cheer up the old woodsman.  "Look
at it this way, Rancid, at least we know the grasshopper trap works."

"Don't talk to me about it!"

I held up the grasshopper trap's gunnysack, which appeared to have been
run over at least twice.  "I think we might be able to use some of
these grasshoppers to go fishing."

Rancid raised an eyebrow.  "You mean some of them hoppers ain't
squished?"

"Well, no, they're all squished," I said.  "But we could make little
balls of grasshopper paste and put them on our hooks."

Rancid sputtered.

At that moment I returned from the mists of time to the stubble field,
where Retch Sweeney was just waking up from his nap.  Retch blinked and
yawned.  "You ready to do some more hunting'?"

"Yeah," I said.  "But first let me ask you something.  Can you imagine
a grown man going berserk just because someone suggested fishing with
balls of grasshopper paste?"

Get Lost!

Several years ago I wrote what many experts consider the most
authoritative work ever published on the topic of getting lost.  The
idea for the article germinated out of my observation that whereas
millions of words have been written on how to survive when lost,
absolutely nothing I had ever read dealt with the basic problem--how to
get lost in the first place.  What's the point of knowing how to
survive if you don't know how to get lost?

Getting lost was a subject I knew firsthand.  During my formative
years, or approximately to age forty-five, I had deliberately contrived
to discover all the various ways of getting lost, not only in the easy
places, such as forests, mountains, and swamps, but also in less
obvious terrain--vacant lots, shopping malls, parking garages,
passenger trains, and tall buildings.

I discovered early in life that I had a natural talent for getting
lost, a talent that through practice and discipline I honed to a sharp
edge.  By my mid-twenties I could set out for the corner grocery two
blocks away from my house and, with practically no effort at all, end
up several hours later in a trackless wasteland without the vaguest
notion of how I had gotten there or how to get back.  It reached the
point where my wife would not allow me to go down to the basement to
clean the furnace without map, compass, matches, and a three-day supply
of food and water.  I eventually compiled all my research on the
subject of getting lost into an article entitled "The Modified
Stationary Panic," which stands to this day, in the opinion of many, as
the consummate work on the subject.

Although many scholars are satisfied to rest on their laurels, I am
not.

Several years passed without my becoming seriously lost even once, and
I realized that I might lose the knack altogether, if I did not get out
and do some fresh research.  Thus, when my friends Vern and Gisela
Schulze invited me along on a November deer-hunting trip in the snowy
mountains north of their Idaho home, I quickly accepted.

The hunting trip started off in typical fashion.  Vern assumed command
and laid out the plans for the hunt, which included the admonition to
me not to stray out of his sight.  Vern and I have hunted, fished, and
backpacked together ever since childhood, and I like to think that I
have enriched his outdoor life immeasurably in providing him with
countless hours of searching for me.  Vern loves a good search.

Several opportunities to get lost offered themselves during the
morning, but every time I thought to take advantage of them, either
Vern or Gisela would come bounding out of the brush and herd me back to
the trail.  Then, about noon, I managed to give them the slip.  I found
a fresh set of deer tracks and followed them around the edge of a
mountain--one of the best methods I've ever found for getting lost, and
I highly recommend it.  Soon the wind came up and snow began to fall,
obliterating my own tracks so I couldn't retrace my trail, a nice bonus
indeed!  I can't begin to describe my elation upon suddenly stopping,
peering around at the unfamiliar terrain, and discovering that I could
still tell due north from my left elbow, but only because one of them
itched.

I immediately began to perform the Modified Stationary Panic, which
consists of running madly in place, whooping and hollering as the mood
dictates.  The panic will thus conclude in the same spot it began,
rather than, say, in the next state.  The Modified Stationary Panic,
one of my own inventions, eliminates chances for serious injury, as
often occurs in the Flat-Out Ricochet Panic, and also does away with
the need for your rescuers to comb a four-county area in their search
for you.

No sooner had I completed the panic than Vern showed up.  I did my best
to conceal my disappointment.

"I thought you were lost," he said.

"No," I said.  "I was right here."

"Good," he said.  "Maybe you've finally outgrown the tendency.  Anyway,
I just spotted the fresh tracks of a big buck going up over the
mountain, and I'm going to see if I can find him.  You swing around the
north edge of the mountain till you come to an old logging road.  You
can't miss it.  When you hit the logging road, follow it back to the
car and I'll meet you there."

"Right," I said.

Ha!  Vern's mind was going bad.  Here he had just presented me with the
classic formula for getting lost, and he didn't even realize it.  "The
old logging road you can't miss" is one of the great myths of hunting
lore.

As darkness closed in, accompanied by an icy, wind-driven rain, I found
myself scaling a precipice in the presumed direction of the mythical
logging road.  My spirits had long since ceased to soar and were now
roosting gloomily in my hungry interior.  About halfway up the side of
the cliff, I paused to study a loose rock in my hand and recognized it
as one that was supposed to be holding me to the side of the
mountain.

My plummet into space was sufficiently long to allow me time for
reflection, although on nothing of great philosophical significance.

My primary thought, in fact, consisted of the rudimentary, "Boy, this
is going to hurt!"

Sorting myself out from a tangle of fallen trees at the bottom of the
cliff, I took roll call of my various extremities, and found them
present, with the exception of the right leg.  Rebellious by nature,
the leg now appeared to be absent without leave.  Well, I could not
have been more gratified.  Not only was it getting dark and raining ice
water, but I was incapacitated at the bottom of a canyon where no one
would ever expect me to be.  Even so, sensing that searchers might by
luck find me too easily, I struggled upright on my remaining leg, broke
off a dead tree limb for a crutch, and hobbled for another mile or so
away from the beaten track.  "Just let them find me now," I muttered to
myself, struggling to restrain a smirk.

"This is lost.  This is real honest-to-goodness lost.  It may be years
before anyone finds me."

Detecting the onset of hypothermia, I built a fire to keep warm.  But
that is to put it too simply, too casually.  No fire ever enjoyed such
devoted attention.  Cornea transplants are slapdash by comparison.  The
proceedings opened with a short religious service.  Then pieces of
tinder were recruited individually, trained, and assigned particular
duties.  Over the tinder I placed larger pieces, some approaching the
size of toothpicks.  At last the delicate structure was ready for the
match.  And another match.  And still another match!  I melted the snow
from the area with a few appropriate remarks, and tried again to light
the fire.  This time it took.  A feeble, wispy little blaze ate a piece
of tinder, gagged, and nearly died.  I gave it mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation.  It struggled back to life, sampled one of the
toothpicks, found the morsel to its liking, and ate another.  The flame
leaped into the kindling.  Soon the robust blaze devoured even the wet
branches I fed to it, first by the handful and then by the armful.  A
mere bonfire would not do, I wanted an inferno.  A person lost in
winter knows no excess when it comes to his fire.

Next to the inferno, I built a lean-to with dead branches pried from
the frozen ground.  I roofed the lean-to with cedar boughs, and spread
more boughs on the ground for a bed.  Well satisfied with my woodcraft
and survival technique, I stepped back to admire the camp.  "Heck, I
could survive here until spring," I said to myself.  "Then again, maybe
only three hours."

Once the lost person has his inferno going and his lean-to built, the
next order of business is to think up witty remarks and dry comments
with which to greet his rescuers.  It's unprofessional to greet
rescuers with stunned silence or, worse yet, to blurt out something
like, "Good gosh almighty, I thought you'd never find me!"  One must be
cool, casual.  Lying on the bed of boughs, next to the inferno,
roasting one side of me and freezing the other, I tried to come up with
some appropriate witticisms.  "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," was one I
thought rather good.  Wishing to call attention to my successful
fire-building technique, I thought I might try, "Did you bring the buns
and wieners?"  It is amazing how many witticisms you can think up while
lying lost in the mountains.  Two are about the limit.

I drifted off into fitful sleep, awakening from time to time to throw
another log on the fire and check the darkness for Sasquatches.

Suddenly, sometime after midnight, a voice thundering from the heavens
jolted me awake.

"Kneel!  Kneel!"  the voice roared.

So it has come to this, I thought.  I stumbled to my feet and, wearing
my lean-to about my shoulders, peered up into the darkness.  A light
was bouncing down the side of the canyon!  And the voice called from
above, "Neil!  Neil!

Have you found him?"

Within moments, Vern, Gisela, Neil, and the other members of the
Boundary County Search and Rescue Team were gathered around me.  It was
a moving and dramatic scene, if I do say so myself.  Calmly shucking
off my lean-to, I tried to recall one of the witticisms I had thought
up for the occasion.  But the only one that came to mind was, "Good
gosh almighty, I thought you'd never find me!"  All things considered,
that wasn't too bad.

Never Cry Snake!

I never have been particularly fond of snakes, but they have their
uses.

As a child, I used them to good effect in psychological studies I
conducted on my older sister.  The Troll, as she was known by me, was
older and stronger than I, and won most of the skirmishes in the long
sibling war we conducted over the years of my youth.  Then I discovered
her fear of snakes.  By suddenly whipping a little garter snake out of
my pocket I could stop one of her frontal assaults in mid-stride and
send her into bellowing retreat.  My mother once accused me of turning
the Troll into a "nervous wreck."  My feeling was that Herbie the snake
and I had improved her reflexes by about three hundred Percent.

In college, I discovered this same fear of snakes in my roommate, a
nervous chap named Richard.  (How nervous he was before becoming my
roommate, I don't know, but he was certainly nervous afterwards.) I had
become interested in the occult sciences by this time, and discovered
that by placing a toy rubber snake beneath his sheets, I could induce
Richard to levitate three feet straight up from the bottom bunk, where
he would then cling like a possum to the springs of the top bunk.  (I
should point out that it is difficult to precipitate this reaction with
a rubber snake unless the subject has first been conditioned by sudden
and unexpected exposure to real snakes, such as might turn up in the
subject's study desk.) Richard's screaming of vile epithets at me would
bring Thorton, the senior who supervised our dorm hall, on the run.

Thorton enjoyed an experiment in levitation as much as I did.

I ceased my levitation work on Richard right after my bedtime bowl of
popcorn began to taste funny.  "Eat some more," Richard would say.

"How do you feel?  Like a little more salt on it?"  It then occurred to
me that pharmaceutical majors are entirely unsuitable as subjects in
scientific experiments, or so I deduced from the fact that my hair had
begun to turn green.

My hunting partner Retch Sweeney, a tough, burly fellow, goes
absolutely berserk at the mere mention of snakes, something that used
to happen quite routinely when hunting was slow and I needed some
amusement.  As we walked through tall grass, I would suddenly turn,
point at Retch's feet, and yell, "Snake!"  He would instantly turn into
a darting blur--a reaction that prompted me to nickname him "the Blur
Darter."

Over the years, I refined this technique to the point where I needed
only to point at the ground by Retch's feet and he would respond
appropriately, bounding up into the air and darting about in a blur.

Then one day while hunting chukars on the Snake River, of all places, I
pointed suddenly at Retch's feet.  He didn't bound into the air and
dart about.  "Snake!"  I cried.  He grinned at me.

"Ha!"  he said.

It seemed scarcely less than miraculous.  Perhaps through my diligent
work with him, I had cured Retch of his abnormal fear of snakes, an
amazing achievement for a person still in his twenties and whose only
credential was a "D" in Psych 101.  I tried to conceal my
disappointment.

"You ain't never gonna scare me with snakes again," Retch said.

"Well, the least you can do is thank me," I said.  "It wasn't easy for
me to cure you.  Furthermore, I did so at the cost of losing one of my
favorite forms of entertainment."

"Wasn't you what done it," Retch said.  "I took this workshop with a
psychologist on how to get over fear of snakes.  First we just looked
at pictures of snakes.  Then we looked at a stuffed snake.  Finally we
looked at live snakes.  At the end of the workshop, I actually held a
live snake!  The doc showed us it was all in our minds."

"Gosh, that's really wonderful," I said.  "Snake!"

Retch didn't blink an eye.  "See?  I'm cured."

We continued our hunt for that mythical bird, the chukar, but saw nary
a one all day.  Our faithful hunting dog had disappeared hours earlier
and was now probably Out on the highway, trying to hitch a ride back to
town.  The sun pounded us, insects gnawed us, stickers stuck us, but we
pressed on.  Working our way up a rocky canyon, we discovered it came
to a dead end.  A dilapidated corral sagged into the earth beneath a
rock cliff.  We leaned against the corral boards and studied the
precipice.

"Looks like we got to turn back without any chukars," Retch said.

"Yeah," I said.  "Wait!  See that ledge over there?  It's only about
ten feet high at the low end.  If you can boost me up onto that ledge,
I can work my way up along the mountain and maybe I'll run some chukars
down to you."

"Sounds good to me," Retch said.  "Let's give it a try."

We walked over to the ledge, Retch crouched down, and I climbed onto
his shoulders, leaning against the rock wall for balance.  He handed me
my shotgun.

"Ready?"  he asked.

"Ready."

As Retch, grunting and complaining, slowly straightened up, my head
rose above the brink of the ledge.  I gasped.  There, mere inches from
my protruding eyeballs, lay a huge, coiled rattlesnake, ready to
strike.

Speechless, I pushed back from the wall.  Retch staggered about beneath
me, his big hands clamping my feet to his shoulders.

"Sn-sn-sn ...!"  I said.

Retch slammed me back up against the cliff.  "Stop fooling around and
climb on up there!"  he snarled.  "You're not the lightest person in
the world, you know."

"Sn-sn-snake!"  I stammered.

"I said cut out the fooling around!  That stupid 'snake' nonsense don't
work on me no more!  Now get on up there!"

He planted a hand beneath my rear and tried to boost me up onto the
ledge with a mighty shove.  "Ya gah gah aaaakkkh!"  I said, unable to
think of anything more intelligent.  The rattler and I were nose to
nose!  And then I realized that the snake was dead.

Some insensitive lout who liked to scare people with snakes, realizing
that this was the only spot possible to ascend the cliff, had coiled
the dead rattler right at the brink of the ledge.  I loathe people like
that.  In total disgust, I thrust out my shotgun barrel and swept the
rattler off the ledge.

"It's just an old dried-up dead snake that some stupid jerk ..."  I
never got to finish the sentence.

Retch cleared one side of the corral cleanly and took only the top
board off the other side.  He banked high on the rock wall as he roared
around a narrow curve in the canyon, then accelerated flat out on the
straight stretch.

Six hundred yards later, he finally ran out of adrenaline and chugged
to a stop, streaming sweat and gasping profanity.  I let go of his hair
and dropped from his shoulders to the ground.  "It was dead," I said.

"The snake was dead!"

"I know that."

"So how come you went berserk?"

"Well, my mind knows there ain't no reason to be afraid of snakes, but
my feet ain't learned it yet, that's how come!  So don't let me catch
you smirking.  Another thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't never cry 'snake' again."

And I haven't.

Metamorphosis and Other Outdoor Phenomena Wives Don't Understand I had
done nothing peculiar.  That's why I was somewhat surprised when Bun
asked, "All right, what have you been up to?"

"Nothing," I said, innocently enough.  "Why do you ask?"

"Because you haven't been acting peculiar lately.  Every time you put
on a show of being normal, I know you are up to something."

"Well, maybe I'm having a sordid affair with some beautiful and
mysterious woman.  Have you considered that?"

My little suggestion provoked quite a scene.  It was easy to see why my
wife might be jealous.  Beautiful, mysterious women find it virtually
impossible to resist handsome, debonair sportsmen.  Nevertheless, I
think it quite unladylike for a wife to display her jealousy by
squealing with laughter and repeatedly slapping her thighs.  In a fit
of jealousy, a wife knows how to cut right to the quick.

"No," she said, wiping away tears of mirth, "I never considered that.

Now stop, no more jokes.  My sides ache.  Oh dear, but you do get off a
good one from time to time.  Seriously, I will tell you what I
suspect.

I suspect you sneaked a new gun into the house without telling me.

Right?"

"Wrong!  Wrong!  I'll have you know I do not sneak new guns into the
house."

"Oh, yeah?  Then how come you have nearly twice as many guns now as you
did three years ago?  Explain that."

Here was a classic example of a wife's stumbling upon an outdoor
phenomenon totally beyond her comprehension.  Over the years I have
noted many such phenomena.  I have discussed the matter with other
outdoorsmen and found to my dismay that my own experience in the matter
is not unique but universal.

What had never occurred to Bun was that guns, confined in the limited
space of a gun cabinet, breed and produce offspring.  just last summer
I discovered a brand-new little Browning over/under 20-gauge shotgun in
my gun cabinet.  It was nestled right in between a 12-gauge Browning
automatic and a 16-gauge Browning pump.  I had no problem guessing what
had happened.  The gestation period of a new gun is exactly six
months.

I counted backward to the Christmas holidays, when the gun cabinet had
been left unsupervised for a few days.  Those rascals!  No doubt they
gave the Winchesters, Remingtons, and Marlins some ideas of their
own.

I thought about writing the Browning people to complain, but instead
I'm raising the little 20-gauge just as if it were one of my own.  The
little devil has already gobbled up a case of shells, too.

Here's another example of outdoor phenomena that wives can't
understand.

A while back I told Bun I needed another boat.  She agreed to listen
calmly to my reasonable explanation, after I had pried her fingers from
around my trachea.

"It's this way," I explained.  "I have the big boat, right?  Right.

Then there's the rubber boat, which I couldn't do without.  Sure, I
have the two canoes, but I keep one only out of sentimental
attachment.

The other one is the work canoe.  Of course, there's the duck boat.

The rowboat?  That's a toy for the kids.  Now what I need is a simple
little fishing boat--nothing fancy--that I can putter about the lakes
in.  Is that too much to ask?  Here I work my fingers to the bones day
after day trying to keep us afloat--uh, inapt metaphor
there--financially secure, I meant to say, and you raise a fuss over my
wanting a little ol' fishing boat."

"Oh, all right," Bun said.  "I guess you can have a little ol' fishing
boat if you want it.  I do hope it comes with decent oarlocks.  I hate
the ones on the rowboat."

Oarlocks?

A few days later I brought the new boat home.  When I showed it to Bun,
she ran back into the house to climb a few walls.  (We have one of
those new phones where by pushing single buttons you can dial the
police, the fire department, or the divorce lawyer.) Eventually I
managed to get her settled down long enough to explain the phenomenon
to her.  "Look," I said patiently, "this sort of thing happens to an
outdoorsman all the time.  He goes down to the marina to buy a little
ol' fishing boat and finds about what he's looking for, a twelve-foot
aluminum job with a little fifteen-horse kicker for power.

So he dickers with the salesman a bit and they finally work out a
deal.

He starts to haul the boat home, but discovers it's grown to sixteen
feet while he was dickering with the salesman.

By the time he's three blocks from the marina, the boat's bigger than
his car.

He has to speed all the way home before the boat grows so big he can't
tow it.

That's nearly what happened here."

"Will it get any bigger?"  Bun asked, gnawing a young elm by the
porch.

"Nope, that's it.  Twenty feet and three tons, with just enough room
for two bass fishermen.  it's so fast it's got an altimeter in it
instead of a depth-finder."

"Well, if it makes you this happy, I suppose its worth it," Bun said.

"You are happy, aren't you?"

"Oh, sure.  But I still need a little ol' fishing boat.  Maybe I can
pick one up ..."

Have you ever had anyone try to run you through with a gnawed-off
elm?

No, I suppose not.

We now come to the problem of metamorphosis.  (No, dummy, you can't
catch it from a handful of leaves.) Metamorphosis refers to the
transformation of a tadpole into a frog, a caterpillar into a
butterfly, that sort of thing.  You don't hear much about it because
nobody can pronounce "metamorphosis."  Even though you don't hear much
about metamorphosis, there's a lot of it around, especially at our
house.

Metamorphosis is one of those phenomena Bun just can't comprehend.  For
one of her many birthdays, I bought her one of those food processors,
an expensive job.  You could leave it home alone and it would have a
six-course meal on the table when you got back.  I wrapped it up in a
nice package a few weeks before Bun's birthday and hid it in the back
of a closet.  That was my mistake.  The closet was too warm, and
metamorphosis occurred.  By the time Bun opened her presents, the food
processor had turned into a shotgunshell reloader!  It was one of those
miracles of nature you hear so much about, the kind that leaves you
sort of awestruck and even a little reverent.

Metamorphosis occurs so often on her birthdays and at Christmas that
Bun may be getting some slight grasp of this mystery of nature.  Last
December, for example, she hinted to me that she would like a really
nice string of pearls for Christmas.

"No problem," I said.

"But they're too expensive," she said.

"No problem.  I doubt they would cost a bit more than the neat little
automatic I was looking at the other day."

"Well, you certainly don't need another pistol."

"Of course not."

The pearl necklace I bought set me back a sizable bundle, but I must
admit it was lovely.  Oddly enough, the box it came in was about the
same size one might expect for a neat little automatic.  Carelessly
forgetting the possible consequences, I hid the package in the back of
the same closet.

Christmas morning we let the children open their presents first, and
then Bun and I opened ours.  She unwrapped the pearl necklace last.

As usual, she seemed stunned.  "You shouldn't have!"  she yelped.

"Don't blame me," I said.  "Blame old Mother Nature.  She's the one
responsible for metamorphosis."

I mean they're much too expensive!"  And she pulled out this beautiful
string of pearls.  She was right.  They were much too expensive.  If
you can't trust Mother Nature, whom can you trust, that's what I want
to know.

"Dad's acting peculiar," one of the kids said.

"Good," Bun said.  "It's nice to have him back to normal."

The Swamp We had just been sprung from eighth grade for the summer.  To
celebrate, Birdy Thompson and I talked the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree
into taking us fishing on Pack River.  Rancid considered most of my
friends "a bunch of smarty-pantses" but he liked Birdy, probably
because of Birdy's having been born with a serious psychological
defect--chronic gullibility.  Birdy believed everything Rancid told
him.

As we rattled along in Rancid's truck, the woodsman poured forth a
stream of "facts" so strange they threatened to erode the very
foundations of science.  Through the mercy of time, I have forgotten
most of the oddities of nature Rancid claimed to have observed
firsthand "with maw own eyes," but I do recall the cross between a
skunk and a porcupine.

"Now thar was a smug critter.  Why, he could spit in a coyote's eye,
and the coyote'd say, 'Scuse me, suh, fer getting' maw eye in yer
way."" Birdy was awash in awe.  "Gee, Mr. Crabtree, I wish they taught
interesting stuff like that in school."

"They should," Rancid responded.  "But all them teachers knows is
book-larnin'.  They don't git out in the woods whar all the interestin'
stuff is."  Then he glared at me.  "What you lookin' like thet fer?"

"No reason," I said.  "I was just rolling my eyes, and they got stuck
back in my head for a second."

Presently we came to the river.  I had fished every inch of Pack River
except for a section that meandered into a wild and swampy region.  The
river emerged from the swamp a dozen or so miles away, where it crossed
under the road.  I had never met anyone who had followed the river
through the swamp, and it occurred to me that the fishing back in there
might be fantastic.

"You ever hear of anybody who followed the river through the swamp?"  I
asked Rancid, interrupting his account of a tree-climbing rabbit.

"The only person Ah ever heard of to foller the river through the swamp
is me.  And Ah didn't have to hear 'cause it was me what done it."

"You never told me that."

"Waal, thar's a whole lot Ah ain't told you, mainly 'cause you don't
pay attention to what Ah tries to teach ya.  Now iffen you was more
like Birdy here, instead of bein' such a smarty-pants, you might larn
something'."

Birdy gave me one of his smug smiles.  If there was one thing I
couldn't stand, it was smug smiles from gullible guys like Birdy.

"Oh, yeah?"  I said.  "If you know so much about the swamp, Rancid, why
don't we ever go back in there fishing?"

Rancid thought for a moment.  "Thar's a lot of strange critters back in
the swamp.  Ah seed a killer bat the size of a goat in thar.  Might of
got me, too, 'cept Ah managed to git outta the swamp whilst it was
still daylight.  A feller shore wouldn't want to git caught back in
thar after dark, Ah can tell you thet!"

"Sure," I said.  "Listen, it's still early morning.  Why don't we build
a raft and float the river through the swamp?  I bet we can catch some
terrific fish."

"Ah ain't too hot fer the idear mawsef, what with the killer bat and
all."

"Birdy," I said, "it's bad enough you believe everything Rancid says,
but talking like him is too much."

"Sorry," Birdy said.

"What do you say, Rancid?"  I said.  "Let's build a raft and float the
river through the swamp."

"Might be kinder fun," Rancid said.  "Shore, let's do it!  Ah got a saw
and ax in the back of the truck.  We can whup together a raft in no
time."

Birdy looked wildly from me to Rancid.  "But what about the killer bat,
Mr.  Crabtree?"

"Killer bat?"  Rancid said.  "Oh, the killer bat.  Waal, we don't have
to worry 'bout him lessen we gets caught in the swamp after dark.  As
Ah recollects, it only takes three or four hours to float down to the
road.

We'll be outta the swamp no later than noon."

Rancid's predictions had a way of sending chills down my spine.  I
didn't for an instant believe his story about the killer bat, but just
on principle I didn't want to be caught out in the swamp after dark.

It was still only about eight in the morning, however, and since
Rancid's prediction had a margin of error of approximately eight hours
of daylight, I knew there was no way we wouldn't be through the swamp
by sundown.

Immediately after sundown, one of the first things I noticed about the
swamp was that it had become excessively creepy.  We had been lost for
hours.

The bleached skeletons of long-dead trees seemed to take on a ghostly
glow in the fading light.  Wispy strands of moss reached down for us
like long gray fingers from the overhanging limbs.  Darkness oozed into
the swamp from all sides and began to close in on us.  There was a
stillness in the air, broken only by the sounds of water burbling
against the raft, the splashes of our poles, and a strange, eerie
moaning.

"For cripes sake, Birdy!"  I said.  "Would you stop your dang eerie
moaning!  It's getting on my nerves!"

"We're never gonna find our way out of here, I just know it!"  Birdy
whined.

"Go back to the eerie moaning," I said.

Rancid, seated on an apple box in the middle of the raft, scratched the
stubble on his jaw thoughtfully.  He had early on assumed the dual
positions of captain and navigator of the craft, while Birdy and I did
the poling.

"What are you thinking about, Rance?"  I said, hoping he was about to
come up with a brilliant idea that would lead us out of the swamp.

Even at that young age I had discovered that when a group of people
finds itself in a predicament, nothing so calms fears and nourishes
hope as the expression of calm deliberation on the face of one of the
members.  It is an expression that conveys the message, "This mess
we're in is but a riddle, which I am about to solve with my powers of
inductive and deductive reasoning."

"C'mon, Rance," I said.  "What are you thinking about?  Have YOU
figured out how to get us out of here?"

"Wha?  What'd you say?  Ah must hev drifted off thar fer a spell.  You
fellers got any idear whar in tarnation we is?"

Sometimes, of course, the person with the expression of calm
deliberation on his face has the reasoning powers of a golfball.

Birdy raised his eerie moaning by two octaves.  "We're gonna die in
this stupid swamp, I just know it."

For the first time that day, I thought Birdy might have a point.  In
its upper reaches, the river was an energetic, boisterous stream that
flowed from one point to another in a no-nonsense manner.  In the
swamp, however, it turned lazy and slothful, sprawling out in a drunken
stupor of aimlessly meandering channels.  Most of the channels ended in
bogs that could have slurped down a team of plow horses, had the plow
horses been dumb enough to pole a raft into the swamp.  Our problem was
how to find the main channel.

Dark, shimmering clouds of mosquitoes and gnats hovered above us, kept
at bay only by the periodic bursts of sizzling profanity from the old
woodsman.

As hoarseness overcame Rancid late in the day, however, the insects
unleashed their pent-up fury and ravenous appetites upon US.

"Gol-dang," Rancid croaked through a haze of gnats.  "Ah thank we
oughtta go in the direction of that big dark shadow over thar."

"Which dark shadow?"  I said.

"The great big'un.  The one what's shaped like a barn."  Birdy and I
started poling the raft toward the shadow shaped like a barn.  Suddenly
we detected some current in the water.

"Maybe we've hit the main channel!  " I yelled.

"Ah told you Ah knew what Ah was doin'!"  Rancid gloated.

We poled into the shadow feeling our way through low-hanging
branches.

Dead moss hair brushed our faces, strange protuberances reached up for
us from the watery depths.  Then moonlight began filtering into the
swamp.  Mist rose from the water in a manner befitting a Count Dracula
movie.  Swamp creatures filled the night with eerie sounds--screeches,
hoots, howls, chitters, chatters, and wails.

"Stop the wails, Birdy," I said.  "They give me the creeps."

"S-say, Mr. Crabtree," Birdy said.  "A-about where was it in the swamp
you saw the killer bat as big as a goat?"

"Huh?  What?  Oh, the killer bat.  Heh heh.  Waal, Ah cain't rightly
say whar it was.  Might of been right near here.  Area looks kinder
familiar."

Birdy started with the wails again.

"Geez, Birdy," I said.  "You'll believe anything anybody tells you.

There's no such thing as a killer bat as big as a goat."

"Is too," Rancid said.

"Is not."

"Is."

"But M-Mr.  Crabtree s-saw it," Birdy said.

"Thar!  Thet proves it!  " Rancid said.  "And it was a
fearsome-lookin'critter, Ah can tell you.  Ah shore hope he don't
notice us."

Rancid's mood had improved considerably, since it was now obvious we
had found the main channel.  Indeed, the water had stretched out into
something vaguely resembling a river.

"Say, Rance," I said.  "Let's make this ol' raft get up and move.

Birdy's getting' awfully tired.  Why don't you take a turn at his
pole?"

"Oh, all right," Rancid said, and the two of them exchanged places,
Birdy almost instantly slumping into a slumber on the box in the middle
of the raft.

We glided swiftly and smoothly along, the current now helping to carry
the raft.  It did seem to me that Rancid was working on a ratio of one
stroke of his pole to every three of mine.  In fact, sometimes there
was such a long period between strokes of his pole that I suspected he
was catching himself a quick snooze.  it was during one of these
periods that I noticed two Canada geese drifting on the water directly
ahead.  I expected them to take off at any second, but they too were
apparently snoozing.  Well, I thought, it will be interesting to see
how close we can get to them.  I knew both Rancid and Birdy would
welcome the opportunity to see two wild geese close up, a wonderful bit
of relief from the monotony of poling through the swamp.

The raft glided up beside the geese.  When they were right next to
Birdy--he could almost have reached out and touched them if he had been
awake--they became aware that this strange floating thing going past
consisted in part of three human beings.  The geese exploded into the
air over the raft with a thunderous beating of wings and deafening
goose sounds.

"The killer bat!"  screamed Birdy.

"Gol-dang a-mighty!"  shouted Rancid, who obviously also thought it was
the killer bat.  He thrust at the geese with the ten-foot rafting pole
as though it were a fencing sword.

"They're honkers!"  I yelled, but in the excitement and confusion of
the moment, this apparently was misinterpreted as "We're goners!"

"Not yet!"  Rancid roared.  "The bleep-of-a-bleep ain't got us yet!"

Then the geese were gone.  Waves beat against some dark bank, but
otherwise there was only silence in the swamp, and the sound of heavy
breathing.  The three of us stood on the raft, shaking.  Even though I
had known all along that the ruckus was caused by geese, the experience
unnerved me.  Birdy was momentarily paralyzed by fright, as I suppose
anyone would be who thought he had just narrowly escaped the fangs of a
giant bat.  Rancid recovered much faster.

"Ahim getting' mighty tired of this gol-dang swamp," he said.  "Sit
down and gitcher selves a grip on something'."

He then poled us out of the swamp by himself.  I remember the feat
especially well, because it was the only time I've ridden on a log raft
that achieved planing speeds.

Later, as the three of us walked up the road to get the truck, Rancid
said, "You boys are dang lucky Ah was along.  Warn't fer me fightin'
'em off, them killer geese might of got both of yuz."

"There ain't no such thing as killer geese," Birdy said.

I was astonished.  Maybe the swamp had cured Birdy of gullibility.

Rancid walked on in silence for a moment, then said, "You know
something', Birdy?  If you're not careful, you could very easy become a
smarty-pants just like somebody else Ah knows."

A Hunker Is Not A Squat One reason diplomats have so much trouble
coming to any kind of agreement is that they sit in soft chairs around
a large table with yellow pads in front of them to doodle on.  They're
too comfortable for serious negotiation.  My theory is that world peace
could be achieved in short order if the diplomats were made to hunker
out in a barnyard and draw their proposals on the ground with sticks.

For hundreds of years, hunters have employed the hunker successfully in
negotiating with farmers for permission to hunt their property.  I
myself am an expert hunkerer and would be willing to teach the
technique free of charge to both Russian and American diplomats, just
so we can get the present mess straightened out in a hurry.  Most of my
fishing and hunting buddies are skilled hunkerers too, and would be
glad to help out.  The diplomats, however, should let me know a week in
advance if they want to attend my workshop in hunkering, so I can
reserve a barnyard.  I al ready have the sticks.

An ancient posture, the hunker was first employed by primitive man.  He
hunkered in the evenings by his campfire, watching simple little dramas
played out by the dancing flames, although usually only reruns of
previous campfires.

During commercials, he picked moss from between his toes, having no
bathroom or refrigerator to run off to.  Then one night he discovered
he could change the channel by poking a stick into the flames.  During
a particularly inane sitcom, he started doodling in the sand with the
stick, and thus was born the classic hunker as we know it today.

Primitive man referred to the hunker only as "Ooo-ah," which may either
have denoted the hunker or possibly have been only a natural response
to the leg cramps associated with it.  Even today I have heard men go
"OOO-AH!"  while attempting to rise from a long hunker.  The word
"hunker" probably derives from the early Scots word for haunches, which
was "hunks."  To sit down on one's haunches was, therefore, to
hunker.

Then, of course, it may not have derived from that at all, but who
cares?

The hunker should be practiced at home until it is mastered and
certainly before employing it to negotiate with a farmer in a
barnyard.

it is not uncommon for the unskilled hunkerer to settle down on his
haunches, lose his balance, and then topple over on his back--fine and
good on a shag carpet, but disastrous in a barnyard.  True, farmers do
get a good laugh out of seeing a hunter topple over on his back in a
barnyard, but afterwards they are not about to trust him with a loaded
gun out among the cows.  It is the cows, after all, that make toppling
over on one's back in a barnyard Such a memorable experience.  (The
bill from the cleaners may contain a substantial surcharge and even a
death threat.) I don't know why farmers insist on keeping cows, when
they have all those pheasants and deer running around.

I've talked to several of them about getting rid of the cows, but they
won't listen to reason.

To hunker properly, bend your knees and slowly settle your rear down
until it comes to rest just above your ankles.  Your feet should be
spread about eighteen inches, to prevent you from toppling over
sideways, which is even worse than toppling over on your back.  Your
forearms should rest comfortably on your knees; if your belly is
hanging out over your knees, however, you can rest your forearms on
your belly, which isn't quite as good, but you have to rest your arms
somewhere.  Otherwise your hands drag in the barnyard.  A barnyard
ranks among the top three worst places in the world to drag your
hands.

Now take your stick and.  Oh, I forgot to mention the stick earlier.

You always want to find your stick before you begin your hunker.  if
you don't find your stick first, you have to waddle around in your
hunker looking for one.  That makes you look ridiculous and causes the
farmer to think maybe he can't trust you out among the cows.  One of
the main objects of the hunker is to impress on the farmer that you are
a responsible person, and waddling about like a duck in his barnyard
can blow your image all to heck.

Okay, let's say you are now hunkered and have your stick in hand.  You
want to use the stick to draw maps in the dirt to show the farmer how
responsible and smart you are.  While drawing the little maps, you
explain to the farmer what you are drawing, because otherwise he will
think you are just scratching up his barnyard.  Don't go into too much
detail with your drawing.

Sketch in a few trees to indicate a woodlot, but don't try to do pines
or oaks, say, because that will take all day and farmers are busy
people.  You should say something like this, as you point to the
various lines: "Now here's your north pasture, right, and you don't
want me to hunt there because you have a hoard--uh herd--of cows up
there.  So, your woodlot is here and over here is your stubble field,
where all your pheasants are.  Those little dots there are the
pheasants.  I just want to hunt the little dots.  What do you say?"

In hunkering with your farmer, you should be careful to draw him down
with you into the hunker.  You lose much of your persuasive power if
you are hunkered and he is standing over you looking down and you have
your neck bent way back in order to look up.  This has happened to me
on occasion, and I've found it to be quite embarrassing.  Once, the
farmer continued walking about the barnyard doing his chores and I had
to waddle alongside of him, trying to draw quick little maps in the
dirt every time he stopped to slop a hog or something.

Modern farming methods have complicated hunkering.  Big corporate
farmers now work in large steel-and-glass office buildings hundreds of
miles from the actual farm.  They milk the cows, slop the hogs, and
shovel out the barn all by computer, and I can't say I blame them one
darn bit.  The farther you can get from either end of a cow or pig, so
much the better, at least in my opinion.  But getting a big corporate
farmer to hunker right there in his office with secretaries running in
and out can be a problem.  Right away, for example, he wants to know
why you're carrying a stick into his office.

If he offers you a chair by his desk, you're stuck and you might as
well get right to the point: "May I get permission to hunt on your
nine-million-acre farm out by Turnipville?  I'll close the gate behind
me."

Under such circumstances, you've got about a ten-percent chance of
getting permission.  Draw him into a hunker, though, and you're already
halfway through his gate.

You are in luck if the corporate farmer has a couch and easy chair off
in one corner of his office.  Plop down on one which will force him to
sit on the other, unless he wants the conversation to be carried on by
shouting back and forth across the office.  Next, reach the stick way
out in front of you and draw a little imaginary circle on the carpet.

(if you draw a real circle, that means you forgot to wash the stick
after hunkering in a barnyard, and right then you can wave good-bye to
getting permission to hunt.) Now sketch out the rest of the farm.  As
you do so, slowly slide off the couch or chair, whichever you've
selected, and into your hunker.

You need to do this with a smooth gliding motion, so as not to be
obvious about it.  Once you are securely hunkered, the farmer, if he
has an ounce of true farm blood in him, should slide off his chair into
his hunker.  Right then you're as good as hunting the farm.

I once drew a corporate farmer into a hunker in the middle of his
office by pointing out a tiny, intricate design on one of his Oriental
rugs.  He dropped into a hunker to examine it closer.  Once we were
hunkered, I switched the conversation to hunting and soon got
permission to hunt.  The man was an old-style farmer, though, and loved
to hunker.  He took my stick and began drawing on the rug himself,
talking about shoats and goats and oats and other strange things.  He
had coffee and cookies served to us while we hunkered, and then we had
cigars and brandy until at last I could bear it no longer and rose
quaking and quivering to my feet.  "OOO-AH!"  I said.

"Pardon?"  he said.

Just another name for the hunker," I said, hobbling toward the door.

"Thanks for letting me hunt the farm.  I'll close the gate.  OOO-AH!

OOO-AH!"

The hunker is often mistaken for a squat, which is something entirely
different.  The squat has its uses, but it is an ugly posture, lacking
in both grace and dignity.  If you happen to catch a person in a squat,
he is usually embarrassed and shows no inclination to engage in even
small talk, let alone serious conversation.  Seldom, in fact, do you
ever find two people squatting together.  If you inquired of a person's
whereabouts and were told, "Oh, he's squatting out behind the barn," I
doubt that you would have any inclination to go seek him out.  I
certainly wouldn't.  On the other hand, if you're told, "Oh, he's
hunkered out behind the barn," why, then you know the man is receptive
to visitors and probably would enjoy a good chat about his lower forty,
which is practically being eaten bare by the population of pheasants.

The hunker is conducive to genial conversation.  The squat, at best,
may be conducive to some low-grade contemplation, but that's about
it.

My first experience with the hunker as the ultimate posture for
communication and persuasion occurred when I was about sixteen.  Retch
Sweeney and I enjoyed fishing the creek that ran through a farm
belonging to Homer Poe, but we had avoided a particular stretch because
it was too difficult to fish.  The difficulty arose from the fact that
Poe's house looked right down on this section of creek, and Poe had
told us several times he would skin us alive if he ever caught us
trying to catch his fish.  We knew, of course, that he was
exaggerating.  The cantankerous old farmer would never even consider
actually skinning us alive.  He would undoubtedly kill us first.

Still, the unfished stretch of creek below the Poe house proved
irresistible.  The high risk of fishing the Poe farm added considerably
to our enjoyment, and we should have been satisfied with that.  At the
first easing of darkness one morning, we sneaked onto the Poe farm and,
concealed in brush, began casting out into the creek, all the while
keeping an eye on the Poe house for any signs of life.  Hauling out one
huge brookie after another, we soon forgot all about the farmer and his
dire threats.

Suddenly, Retch glanced up.  "Poe!"  he whispered.

Sure enough, there was the farmer striding down the trail from his
house right toward us.  Since he wasn't screaming and shaking his fist
and in general behaving like an enraged lunatic, we guessed that he
hadn't yet seen us.  Walking behind him were the two gaunt timber
wolves he kept as watchdogs.

The dogs would run us down in no time if we attempted to flee.

Quick," I whispered to Retch.  "Let's hide in the old pumphouse."

Neither of us wanted to hide in the pumphouse, but it was our only
chance to escape with our hides intact.  Many years before we were
born, or so legend had it, a man had hanged himself in the pumphouse.

The possibility that his ghost might still be uh, hanging about
contributed nothing to the desirability Of the pumphouse as a hiding
place.  Constructed of stone on the bank of the creek, it had grown
over with some kind of creepy vine.  Poe had installed an electric
pump, but the old pipes dribbled water and the place smelled of mold
and rot and dampness.  Crawling through the cool, wet darkness, we
shuddered at the ugly little scurrying sounds in the pumphouse and the
cobwebs grabbing at us from all sides.

just as I was about to convince myself that I didn't believe in ghosts,
I felt a cold and clammy hand on the back of my neck.

"Hush!"  Retch said.  "You want old Poe to find us?  I didn't mean to
grab your neck.  I thought it was a pipe."

We pressed ourselves against a wall, holding on to the icy-cold water
pipes to steady ourselves.  We hoped that whatever business Poe had
down by the creek, he would get it taken care of quickly and we could
make our escape undetected.

Then Poe jerked at the door of the pumphouse.  His wolves began to
growl.

Had he seen us after all?  I felt Retch stiffen as he pressed back into
the stone wall.  But Poe didn't come into the pumphouse.  Instead he
reached in with his long bony arm and began feeling around for the
switch that turned on the pump.  Obviously he didn't like entering the
haunted pumphouse any more than we did, particularly if he could reach
the switch from the door.  Then all hell came loose.  Poe screeched
like a burst air hose.  His dogs fled howling for home.  Retch was
whipped back and forth from one side of the pumphouse to the other.  I
thought the ghost had us all for sure.  Wishing not to be outdone, I
contributed what I could to the overall clamor.

Retch sprang through the door, with me running up his back.  The wolves
were now just black streaks going up the hill toward the Poe house.

Poe was flailing about on the ground performing what looked like the
Australian crawl on more-or-less dry land.  Retch and I left him in a
cloud of dust.  Since we were covered from one end to the other with
slimy cobwebs, he couldn't possibly have recognized us.

"I don't know what made me do it," Retch said later.  "All I could see
was Poe reaching for the switch, and before I knew it I had grabbed him
by the hand.  He dang near tore off my arm before I thought to turn him
loose."

After that, we didn't fish the Poe farm anymore.  A person has just so
much luck and when you use up such a big dose of it all at once, you
don't want to fritter away what's left just to catch a few fish.

A month or so after the great pumphouse scare, the old woodsman Rancid
Crabtree asked me if I wanted to go with him to fish Homer Poe's
creek.

"Not me," I said.  "Poe darn near caught me the last time I sneaked
onto his farm to fish."

"We ain't gonna sneak," Rancid said.  "Ah'Ll jist ask him real
nice-like iffen we can fish his crick."

"You mean you think Homer Poe is going to let us fish his crick just
because you ask him real nice?"

"Shore.  'Course, Ah might have to hunker with him a spell."

And that's what he did.  We drove over to Poe's and Rancid got out and
confronted the old farmer in his barnyard.  I could see Rancid's jaw
working up and down and Poe shaking his head.  Then Rancid picked up a
little stick and sank down into his hunker and began drawing on the
ground.  Pretty soon Poe sank down into his hunker.  After a bit, Poe
began to laugh.  I couldn't believe it.  I thought Rancid must be
drawing dirty pictures in the dirt, to make Poe laugh like that.  After
about an hour of hunkering, Ran cid came back to the truck.

"Ooo-ah!"  he said, rubbing his haunches.  "That Poe is a tough man to
hunker with, and purty dang strange, too.  Asked me iffen Ah knew
anythang about riddin'a pumphouse of ghosts, 'cause his garden is
dryin' up fer lack of water.  Now grab your fish pole and let's go
fishin'."

The great thing about hunkering is that it has its own built-in time
limit.  A man can hunker for an hour, but after that his hunks begin to
cramp and pretty soon he has a charley horse that could run in a
steeplechase.  When you enter into a hunker with another person, you
know you have just so much time to conduct your business and you'd
better get to it.  That's one of the reasons I think we should get rid
of those ridiculous seats at the United Nations and make all the
diplomats hunker there on a dirt floor.  Give the diplomats each a
stick with which to draw in the dirt or otherwise wave at each other,
and we'd get some of these world problems straightened out in no
time.

I can almost hear the debates now: "Does the ambassador from the Soviet
Union have any objections to the all-inclusive plan for world peace set
forth by the ambassador from the United States?"

"Nyet!  Nyet!  OOO-AH!  OOO-AH!"

Why Wives on Christmas Mourn Christmas is nearly upon us, and once
again I have neglected to patent my gifts-for-outdoorsmen inventions
early enough to get them on the market.  Next year!  For now I will
merely tantalize you with descriptions of the delights that lie in
store for you next Christmas.

The Handy Dandy Hook-Remover--This item relieves anglers of the worst
chore related to fishing.  it weighs eighty pounds and consists of an
air-cooled, gas-powered engine, a heavy-duty cutter, an air compressor,
a gouger, and a ripper.  No more will you have to suffer the
frustrations of trying to remove hooks and lures from the plastic
bubble-packages they are sold in.

The Exercise Machine For Outdoorsmen--My invention combines the major
components Of stationary bicycles, rowing machines, cross-country
skiing machines, and weightlifting apparatus.  The way it works is that
you balance on a slick stainless-steel bar that simulates a peeled
log.

Then a 150-pound weight drops onto your back, the steel bar begins to
spin under your feet, and as you run to stay on top of it, plastic
branches slap you in the face.  When you are totally exhausted and
begin to collapse, a lever is tripped that causes the machine to throw
you against a far wall.

Deer and Elk Hauler--Numerous devices have been invented to help pack
deer and elk out of the mountains, but almost all of them are
cumbersome and still require considerable labor.  My invention is
simple, tiny enough to be carried in a pocket, and relieves you of all
the strain of packing.  It will sell for a measly $1.98, too.  When the
time comes for you and your companions to pack out a large game animal,
you remove the hauler from your pocket and show it to your
companions.

It looks like an authentic pharmaceutical prescription bottle with the
words HEART MEDICINE in type large enough to be read from ten feet
away.  Then all you have to say is, "Well, I'd better take a couple of
my heart pills," and your share of the elk or deer will be packed out
to the hunting vehicle as if by magic.  It is important, though, that
your hunting partners be compassionate and civilized persons.  When I
tested the "hauler" on my friend Retch Sweeney, he growled, "You better
take the whole dang bottleful, 'cause I ain't packin' this elk outta
here by myself!"

Usually, however, you hunt with persons more considerate than Retch
Sweeney, in which case the "hauler" works like a charm.

Fishing Computer--I have been working on a portable computer programmed
to analyze fishing conditions, make recommendations on the most
effective bait or lure to use, identify species, keep track of the
number of fish caught, and weigh and measure them.  I have based the
program on my own vast knowledge of fishing.  In effect, it will be
just as if the fisherman had me at his side, offering expert advice.

As soon as I can figure out why the computer keeps telling outrageous
lies and reminiscing about the old days, I'll get it patented.

Thumb Protector--All outdoorsmen know the damage their thumbs suffer
during an extended camping trip.  The thumb protector is a hard,
plastic sleeve that fits over the thumb, enabling you to stir your cup
of camp coffee in complete comfort and safety.

Automatic Fish Cleaner and Scaler--There are many useful devices on the
market to assist in cleaning and scaling fish, but none so totally
automatic as mine.  Imagine, there you are, relaxing in camp, a cool
drink in hand, while the automatic cleaner/scaler takes care of the
day's catch!  With proper adjustments, the only sound during the
cleaning and scaling is a rhythmic humming.  Now here Is the amazing
thing: the scaler will cost only $4.95!  It is so small it can be used
as a stocking-stuffer.  In fact, the operative part of the device
consists only of a small, shiny ball attached to the end of a string.

As the directions explain, the ball is dangled in front of the eyes of
your spouse while you chant, "Your eyelids are becoming heavy, heavy
...

you are now in a deep sleep ... you love to clean and scale fish ...

you will hum rhythmically while cleaning and scaling fish ..."

Canary in a Cage--This is a safety device to be employed in any tent or
cabin occupied by more than two hunters after the third day of a
hunt.

When the canary topples from its perch and strikes a bell, the alarm
warns hunters that the air has become lethal.  The canary can also be
used to test individual hunters as they enter the shelter.  Merely
sweep the cage over the subjects much as you would use a Geiger counter
in checking radiation levels.

if the canary wobbles on its perch, coughs, or chokes, the offending
individual should be forced to sleep outside.  Replacement canaries are
available for $29.95.

The Complete Float Tube--As you know, the standard float tube requires
that you paddle it about with rubber flippers on your feet.  The
Complete Float Tube, however, is equipped with a one-horse outboard
motor.  But, you ask, won't your feet get caught in the prop?  After my
product tester, Fred "Stubby" Phipps, complained about just that very
problem, we enclosed the prop in a wire-mesh cage, which solved the
difficulty.  The CPT also comes with a sail.  So far we have had only
one opportunity to test the sail, and that was on Puget Sound during a
nasty storm.  The only problem we detected with the sail was that it
hung up on the mast, preventing its being lowered.  I will get that
little bug worked out as soon as Stubby returns.  He was last seen off
the Aleutian Islands doing about twenty knots, which isn't bad for a
float tube.

Sleeping-Bag Shucker--Every outdoorsman knows how difficult it is to
shuck his companions out of their sleeping bags on cold mornings,
particularly when it is their turn to build the fire.  The Shucker can
now take over this difficult chore.  It consists of a large inflatable
bear, which you blow up and place next to your companion after he has
gone to sleep.  The next morning, all you need do is yell "Bear in
tent!"  to shuck the person out of his sleeping bag.  This obviously is
a great improvement over my previous design for a sleeping-bag shucker,
which required you to get up, insert the bottom of your companion's bag
between the rollers, and crank it through.

Anti-Purist Fly Box--Here is the perfect gift for you if you must
associate with fly-fishing purists.  It appears to be a standard fly
box, but when a secret button is pressed, a panel slides open to reveal
a matched set of night crawlers.

Well, that's enough Christmas delights to tantalize you with.  Now, I
have to go clean the basement.  I love cleaning the basement.  Before
my wife found out how to work the Automatic Fish Cleaner and Scaler, I
didn't care that much for cleaning the basement.  Hmmm.  Hmmm.

Hmmmm.

The Hunting Lesson Over the years it has been my distinct honor and
pleasure to introduce numerous persons to the sport of hunting.  It is
odd, however, that a man can have a thousand successes and one failure,
and it will be the failure that sticks in his mind like a porky quill
in a hound's nose.

Thus it is with my single failure, one Sidney Sample.  Even now, five
years later, I torment myself with the question of where I went
wrong.

How did I slip with Sample?

The affair started off innocently enough.  One fall day, with none of
my regular hunting partners available for the following weekend, I
strolled next door to Sidney's house to invite him to go deer hunting
with me.  I found him digging up bulbs in the garden, and greeted him
informally, namely by sneaking up behind him and dumping a basket of
moldering leaves over his head.  Not one to enjoy a good joke on
himself, Sidney growled malevolently and thrust blindly at me with the
garden trowel.

"Sidney," I said, holding him at bay with a rake handle.  "I am about
to give you the opportunity of a lifetime.  How would you like to go
deer hunting with me?"

"Not much," he replied, fingering leaf mold from his ears.  "In fact,
my desire to go hunting with You is so slight as to escape detection by
modern science!"

"Don't like hunting, huh?"  I said.  "Well, many people who have never
been exposed to the sport feel that way about it.  Listen, I can teach
you all about hunting.  One weekend out with me, and you'll come back
loving it."

"No," Sidney snarled.

"If nothing else, you'll enjoy getting out in the crisp mountain air.

It will invigorate you."

"No!  No!  NO!"

"Sid, I just know you'll enjoy the camaraderie of the huntingcamp, the
thrill of the pursuit, the ..."

"No, I tell you, no!  Go home!"

"... the free meat and ..."

"Free meat?"

"Sure.  just think of packing away all those free venison steaks and
chops and roasts in the freezer."

"Free meat.  Venison's good, too.  I tasted it once.  Yeah, I wouldn't
mind getting a bunch of free meat.  Then, too, as you say, there's the
hunting-camp camaraderie, the crisp mountain air, and the thrill of
pursuit.

But I am willing to put up with all that stuff if I can get some free
meat."

I would have patted him on the shoulder, but I didn't want to get my
hands all dirty with leaf mold.  "I can see right now you have the
makings of a true sportsman," I told him.

"So how do I get this free deer?"  Sidney asked.

"Well, you just go out with me and get it.  Of course, there are a few
odds and ends you'll need to pick up down at Duffy's Sporting Goods."

"Like what?"

"Oh, let's see.  You'll need a rifle, of course.  Outfitted with scope
and sling.  A couple boxes of shells.  Seems to me there's something
else.  A knife!  You'll need a good hunting knife.  And a whetstone.  I
nearly forgot the whetstone.  That should be about it.  You have a good
pair of insulated boots, don't you?  No?  Oh, wool pants, you'll need
wool pants and some good wool socks and a wool shirt and a down parka
and some thermal underwear and an orange hunting vest and a red cap.

Heck, that should do it.  Good, you're making a list.  Did I say
gloves?  Get some gloves.  Oh, binoculars!  And a first-aid kit.  And a
survival kit, with a daypack to carry it in.  Rope, you'll need a
length of rope for dragging your free deer out of the mountains with.

We could use my tent, of course, but it has a rip in the roof on the
guest's side.  You might want to buy a tent.  A sub-zero sleeping bag,
did I mention that?  You'll probably want an insulated sleeping pad,
too.  Down booties are awfully nice to slip into when you take off your
hunting boots, but they're optional.  Then there's the grub, and that's
it.  Did I mention the hunting license and deer tag?"

"Hmmmm," Sidney said, studying his list.  "Just how big are these free
deer, anyway?"

"Big!  " I said.  "Real big!"

"Geez," he said, "I don't know how I can afford to buy all the stuff on
this list."

"Take some advice from an old experienced hunter--mortgage the
house."

After Sidney purchased his outfit, I took him out to the gun-club range
and we sighted in his rifle.  He grouped his last five shots right in
the center of the bull's-eye.  Then I showed him my technique of
scattering shots randomly around the target because, as I explained,
you never know which way the deer might jump just as you pull the
trigger.

"How long before I learn to do that?"  Sidney asked.

"Years," I said.  "It's not something you master over-night."

The day before the hunt, Retch Sweeney called up and said he would be
able to go hunting after all.  "How come he's going?"  Sidney snapped
when i told him the news.  They are not exactly bosom buddies.

"He's between jobs," I said.

"I didn't know he ever worked," Sidney growled.  "When did he get laid
off?"

"Nineteen fifty-seven."

I explained to Sidney the absolute necessity of being ready when Retch
and I came to pick him up the next morning.  "We'll arrive at your
house at two sharp.  Got that?  Two sharp!"

"Right," he said.

"Don't bother about breakfast.  We can grab a quick bite at Greasy
Gert's Gas 'n' Grub just before we turn off the highway and head up to
our hunting area.  Now remember, two sharp!"

We picked Sidney up the next morning at exactly 5:35.  He was
furious.

Naturally, Retch and I were puzzled.  Then it occurred to me that since
this was Sidney's first hunt, he didn't realize that when hunters say
"two sharp," they mean "sometime around five."

"Stop whimpering and toss your gear in back," Retch said.  "You better
not have forgot nothin' either, because we're not turnin' around and
comin' back for it.  Now put your rifle in the rack next to mine."

"What do you mean, next to yours?"

"That ol' .30-06 right there ... Say, I wonder if you fellas would mind
swingin' by my house again.  just take a few minutes."

After Retch had picked up his rifle and I had returned to my house for
my sleeping bag and then we had gone back to Retch's for his shells, it
was almost six-thirty by the time we got out to the highway.

"Aren't we going to be awfully late with all these delays?"  Sidney
asked.

"What time will we start hunting?"

Retch and I looked at each other and laughed.  "Why, man, we're already
hunting!"  Retch said.  "This is it.  This is what hunting's all
about."

We drove along for an hour, as Retch and I entertained Sidney with
detailed accounts of other hunting trips.  "It was a tough shot, looked
impossible to me at first," Retch was saying.  "That six-point buck was
going away from me at an angle and ..."

I held up my hand for silence.  "Okay, now we got to get serious.

We're coming to the most dangerous part of the trip.  We get through
this ordeal and we should be okay.  You guys watch yourselves.  If you
start to feel faint or queasy, Sid, let me know right away."

"Cripes!"  Sidney said nervously.  "What do we have to do, drive up a
sheer cliff or something?"

"Worse," I said.  "We're going to eat breakfast at Greasy Gert's."

Dawn had long since cracked and spilled over the mountains by the time
we arrived at our hunting spot.  Retch looked out the window and
groaned.

"What are you groaning for?"  I asked.  "I'm the one that had Gerty's
chili-pepper omelette."

"It's not that," Retch said.  "I see fresh tracks in the snow all over
the place.  if we'd been here an hour earlier, we'd have nailed us some
deer."

"Listen," I said.  "Did we come out to nail deer or to go hunting
today?

If we're hunting, we have to get up two hours late, forget a bunch of
stuff we have to go back for, and then stop for breakfast at Gerty's.

You know how it's done."

"Yeah, sorry, I forgot for a second when I saw the tracks," Retch
said.

"I got carried away.  Who cares about nailing deer right off!"

"I do!"  Sidney yelped.  "I just bought twenty-five hundred dollars
worth of hunting stuff, and I want to get my free deer!"

It was clear that Sidney had a lot to learn about hunting, so I lost no
time in starting on his first lesson.  I put him on a stand and told
him that Retch and I would sweep around the far side of the ridge and
drive some deer past him.  "We'll be back in an hour," I told him.

"Don't move!"

Retch and I returned three hours later and found Sidney still on the
stand.  He was frosted over and stiff as an icicle.  We leaned him
against a tree until we got a fire going to thaw him out.

"How come you didn't move around?"  I asked him.

"Y-you t-told me to stay on the st-stand.  You said y-you would be
b-back in an hour, and for me not to m-move."

"I'm sorry, I should have explained," I said.  "When a hunter says
he'll be back in an hour, that means not less than three hours.

Furthermore, nobody ever stays on a stand as he's told to.  As soon as
the other hunters are out of sight, he beats it off to some other place
where he's sure there's a deer but there never is.  That's standard
procedure.  I guess I should have mentioned it to you."

"Yeah," Retch said.  "Anyway, next time you'll know.  It takes a while
to catch on to deer hunting.  Well, we might as well make camp.  We
ain't gonna get no deer today."

"Oh, I got one!"  Sidney said.  "See, he's lying over there behind that
log.  He was too big for me to move by myself.  Right after you fellows
left, he came tearing along the trail there, and I shot him."

"Oh-oh!"  I said.  "Better go have a look, Retch."

Retch walked over to the deer, looked down, shook his head, and walked
back.

"We're in for it now," he told me.

"How bad is it?"  I asked.

"Six points."

"Cripes!"  I said.

"Did I do it wrong?"  Sidney asked.

"We'll have to wait and see," I said.

Sidney thought for a moment, then said, "Say, wouldn't it be funny if I
was the only one to get a deer and it was my first trip and all, and
You guys were teaching me how to hunt.  Not that I would ever mention
it to the guys down at Kelly's Bar & Grill, but ... Is six points
good?

Say, let me tell you how I got him.  it was a tough shot, looked
impossible to me at first.

The six-point buck was going away from me at an angle, and ..."

"It's going to be even worse than I first thought," Retch said.

"Yeah," I said.  "Ol' Sidney learns fast.  Well, you can't win 'em
all."

First knife In the time of my youth, the eighth birthday was special
because that was the one at which your first pocketknife was bestowed
upon you.

Seven-year-olds were considered too immature and irresponsible to carry
knives.  Only when you turned eight did you grasp the absolute wisdom
of this parental policy.  It suddenly became quite obvious that the
only reason God had made seven-year-olds at all was to heighten the
satisfaction of eight-year-olds in owning a pocketknife.

"c'mon, lemme whittle with your knife, jack," a seven-year-old brother
would beg.

"Sorry, Willy, I can't do it," the eight-year-old would respond
maturely.

"You're too little."

"But, jack, you cut yourself!"

"yeah, but I'm bigger, see.  i got more blood.  I can spare the
blood."

When parents made the presentation of the pocketknife, they always
warned the kid, "Now don't cut yourself!"  For some reason it was
generally assumed that cutting himself was high on the kid's list of
priorities.

The kid did four things with his new knife.  First, he whittled a
stick.

Second, he cut himself.  Third, he sharpened the knife.  Fourth, he
lost it.

All four activities occurred within approximately twenty-four hours
after the knife was presented to him.  Many authorities on the subject
believe that the fourth thing the kid did with his first knife was to
break the point off the big blade trying to pry the cap off a bottle of
pop, but they are wrong.  That always happened to the second knife.

The first knife was never around long enough for the kid to think of
prying a pop-bottle cap off with it.

Let's consider in more detail the four applications of the first knife
during its brief history.

Whittling--You would select a straight-grained piece of cedar from the
kindling box and reduce it to a pile of shavings.  These shavings would
then take on a life of their own, migrating to the sofa, your mother's
favorite rug, and the linen closet.  They would turn up on your
father's new suit and your sister's party dress.  It was not unusual to
find one sailing across a bowl of gravy during supper.  The shavings
seemed to reproduce themselves.

After being freed from the stick, they went forth and multiplied.

Parental threats against your person also multiplied, and you would
from time to time hear muttered accusations exchanged between mother
and father about whose idea it was to give you a knife anyway.  Still,
there was no turning back.  Once you had whittled, you had the need
always to whittle.

Cutting Yourself--Cuts were not distributed randomly about your body,
as many mothers feared and predicted.  They were almost always confined
to the section between the first and second knuckles on the index
finger of the hand opposite the one that held the knife.  Usually the
first knife was only around long enough to produce one cut.  This cut
came as a great surprise and was never the result of carelessness but
of some extraordinary circumstance.  "A gust of wind blew my hand," you
would tell your mother.  As she applied the bandage, she would wonder
aloud if the blood-stains would come out of her favorite rug, your
father's white shirt, your sister's party dress, the drapes, and
various other odds and ends.  You move around quite a lot during the
ten seconds or so immediately following your first cut.

Sharpening the Knife--Acting on the folk wisdom of the day that it was
the dull knife that cut fingers, you would get out the whetstone and
hone your knife's blades, one big and one little, down to about
one-half their former dimensions.  Now you had what was known as a
sharp knife.  You would take the knife in to show your mother and
father, and tell them, "Look, my knife's sharp as a razor!"  Your
father would smile and go back to reading his paper, and your mother
would make a show of turning pale.  Later you would wonder if maybe you
had overplayed your hand in comparing the knife's sharpness to that of
a razor.

Losing the Knife--The disappearance of your knife had a certain eerie
quality to it.  you would remember having placed the knife carefully on
top of your dresser when you turned in for the night.  The next morning
it would be gone.

"I can't find my knife," you'd tell your father.

"What?"  he'd yell.  "You just got it!  That knife set me back a whole
dollar!  How could you be so careless as to lose it already?"

He would continue to carry on in such a fashion for the better part of
an hour, the authenticity of his ravings relieving him of any suspicion
in the knife's disappearance.

"I can't find my knife," you'd tell your mother.

"Don't bother me now," she'd say.  "I have to sort the wash."

Somehow the urgency of your mother's having to sort the wash and the
disappearance of your knife seemed related, but you could never find
any real proof of maternal culpability.  Having once owned a knife, you
now discovered that the craving to whittle was almost overpowering.

You couldn't look at a piece of cedar kindling without being overcome
with the urge to reduce it to shavings with your own pocketknife.  But
there were only two options open to you for acquiring a new knife.  The
first consisted of finding a job and earning enough money to buy one,
but there were few employment opportunities for eight-year-olds.

Consequently, you resorted to the child's version of the credit card:
begging.

Sooner or later, begging would produce a second knife.  The second
knife would bear an uncanny resemblance to the first knife.  Your
mother would explain that she found it in the attic.  Reluctantly
offering it to you, she would advise, "Now don't cut yourself!"

Whittling was the main application of the pocketknife.  You would
whittle chains out of a single block of wood, as your grandfather had
done, although you never progressed beyond the first link, which
uninformed observers often mistook for a notch cut in the end of a
piece of kindling.

Willow flutes were turned out by the gross.  Inexplicably, the flutes
would stubbornly refuse to produce a single toot, but they were great
for humming through.  Sometimes you could cut off the end of the flute
and come up with a passable pea-shooter, which, smartly aimed, could
produce a high C note from one of your associates.

Of all the satisfactions to result from owning a knife, perhaps the
greatest was the one of lending it to somebody--preferably a
grownup!--to perform some cutting chore.

Sometimes you'd wait a year or two for such an opportunity.  Then it
would happen.  You and a couple of your sidekicks would be standing
about watching an adult perform some task, anything from undoing a sack
of grain to overhauling an engine.  No doubt the adult would have
expressed some displeasure about the presence of his young audience,
largely because it limited the use of colorful expressions in the
release of frustration.  You and the guys would be a bit nervous, but
not enough to reduce your curiosity about the task being performed, or
the hope you would get to hear a colorful expression.  Then the adult
would straighten up and dig into his pants pockets.  Not finding what
he sought, he would fix his attention on the spectators and speak the
long-awaited words: "Anybody got a knife on 'em?"

Ah, how delicious was the sound of that request!  Even better was if
the adult looked directly at you and asked "Gotcher knife on ya?"

Your knife.  This indicated that the adult thought you the sort of
mature and self-reliant and reliable person who would obviously carry a
pocketknife.

if it happened that the other kids in the audience didn't have knives,
had never owned knives, and even if they were only six or seven years
old, they would still dig into their pockets and feel around among the
contents in order to give the impression that they usually, almost
always had a knife, but through some miserable stroke of fate had
managed to leave it at home.

Your response to the question of whether you had a knife on you had
been thought through months and possibly years in advance.  If you were
fortunate enough to be chewing on a toothpick, you would reach up
slowly, deliberately, and remove the toothpick, then flick it back over
your shoulder, possibly creating the impression in the adult that you
couldn't chew a toothpick and reach for a knife at the same time, but
no matter.  There was a right way to do a thing and a wrong way, and
this was the right way.  Next you bent sideways from the hips, furrowed
your brow slightly, and dug your hand into the pocket of your jeans,
your fingers expertly sorting through such items as throwing rocks, a
dried frog, a steel marble, your reserve wad of bubble gum, and the
like, until they closed around the knife, your knife, the one that had
been requested by an adult.  You withdrew your knife with slow
deliberation and expertly opened it, always selecting the big blade, of
course.  Then you handed it to the adult, who probably would have
preferred to open the knife himself.  And finally, at long last, you
got to say it, not smugly or disrespectfully, of course, but
matter-of-factly, maturely, and possibly with just the slightest touch
of pride: "Careful you don't cut yourself--that blade is razor
sharp."

Nincompoopery and Other Group Terms My dictionary informs me that the
proper term for a group of larks is an exaltation.  An exaltation of
larks!  That's wonderful!  And it's so descriptively accurate.  You
outdoorsmen probably think you're pretty smart and know all the terms
for groups of creatures.  We'll see about that right now.

Let's start with an easy one, a group of grouse.  "Covey" you say,
clapping your hands gleefully.  But covey means a "family" of grouse.

Suppose you have several families of grouse living together, what do
you call that?

If they're like the families I know, it would be a "mess."  Actually, a
group of grouse larger than a covey is a pack.  In the interest of
linguistic purity it is important to know the difference between a
covey and a pack of grouse.

To do this you must learn to distinguish between members of the
immediate family and distant relations who have moved in for a bit of
freeloading.  This is not so difficult as you might think.  The
freeloaders are the grouse that get up at noon, go around unshaven, and
keep asking, "What's for supper?"

Here's something a little tougher.  What is the proper term for a group
of ferrets?  Don't just sit there scratching your head--guess.  Okay,
it's a business of ferrets.  What business are the ferrets in?  I don't
know for sure, but it's probably loan-sharking.

The next term is a cinch--a group of geese.  Flock is correct, but only
if the geese are standing around killing time.  If the group of geese
is flying, it becomes a skein.  If the geese are on the water, they're
a gaggle.

Subtract fifty points from your score if to any of the above you
answered a bunch of gooses."

One of my favorites among the terms for groups of creatures is a crash
of rhinoceros.  I can imagine an African guide saying to his client,
"Shoot, dammit, shoot!  Here comes the whole bloody crash of
rhinoceros!"

You toad hunters out there probably don't even know that a group of
toads is called a knot.  Personally, I think I'd just as soon come
across a crash of rhinoceros as a knot of toad.

Some of my other favorite group terms are: A convocation of eagles. 
(Not to be confused with a convention of Eagles, who are the ones
wearing hats.) A charm of hummingbirds.

A skulk of foxes.

A chattering of starlings.

A mustering of storks.

An unkindness of ravens.

A siege of herons.

A leap of leopards.

A murder of crows.

A screaming meemie of snakes.  (i just tossed that in.) To finish off
this quiz and give you a chance to redeem yourself, here are two easy
ones-a group of elk and a group of bears.  The answers are a gang of
elk and a sloth of bears.  Surely you and your fellow outdoorsmen say
things like, "All at once I found myself right in the middle of this
gang of elk," or maybe, "Look, Fred!  Here comes a sloth of bears! 
Run!"

I myself use all of the above terms, although it has been some time
since I've come upon a leap of leopards.  Actually, when it comes to
group terms, I prefer "a whole mess of," which is easy to remember in
tense situations, such as when a sloth of bears is heading your way.

Sadly, there are no group names for outdoorsmen, who deserve their own
group terms just as much as do other wild creatures.  In the interest
of lexicography, I have invented my own group terms.  Let's begin with
Cub Scouts.  As with geese, the group terms vary according to what the
Cubs are doing.  If they are meeting at someone else's house, for
example, they are referred to as a den.  If they are meeting at your
house, they are a din of Cub Scouts, a very important distinction,
believe me!  A group of den mothers, the adult leaders of Cubs, is a
frazzle.  Collectively, the husbands of den mothers are the weekly
poker game.

There are different names for groups of fishermen in different
situations.  A group of fishermen driving out to begin a day of fishing
is an exuberance.  If the day turns out to be unsuccessful, the group
is variously referred to as a sulk or a grumble.  Fishermen surprised
by a herd of mean cows (sometimes known as a mayhem of cows) become a
panic of anglers or sometimes a skein of anglers.  A group of ice
fishermen is a chatter or a chill, although the term loony is often
used, particularly by wives of ice fishermen.

As a group, spouses of fishermen off on a three-day lark, or even an
exaltation of larks, are variously a crash of wives, a leap of wives,
and sometimes a murder of wives.  Often a single wife will appear to be
a whole group under these circumstances and it is all right to use the
appropriate group term, if you get the chance and think it will do you
any good.

Strangely, there are few interesting group names for hunters.  For
example, a group of lost hunters is referred to as "a group of lost
hunters," although wives will occasionally refer to such a group as a
nincompoopery.  A boast of hunters refers to any group of hunters
larger than one.  A tedium is any group of hunters who get started
talking about their first deer, first elk, or any of their other
firsts, of which there are whole exaltations.

As a child, I once joined a berserk of kid campers heading for home
after a mountain lion screamed near our camp.  It might have been a
whole pride of mountain lions, for all I know, but even one was
excessive.

A whiff of skunk trappers is one of my favorite group terms, as is a
cramp of camp cooks.

But what's that?  Did I just hear a lark beckoning me?  Gee, it may
even be several larks, a whole exaltation of them.  It's been a long
time since I've gone off on an exaltation.  if there's not a leap of
wife outside my door, I might go investigate.

Bad COMPany Back when I was a kid, my mother constantly warned me about
falling in with bad company.  Then one day it occurred to her that I
was probably the bad company, and she had to warn the other kids about
falling in with me.

Personally, I've always preferred bad company to good.  Bad company is
so much more interesting.  Outdoorsmen, and outdoorswomen too, for that
matter, are the best of bad company.  They have all these wild and
terrible enthusiasms that inevitably lead to catastrophe.  I don't much
care for arriving at the catastrophe, but getting there can be a lot of
fun.

Not everyone is cut out fOr bad company, however, and it is always sad
to see such a person, a man or woman of sensibilities, fall in with the
wrong crowd, which nine times out of nine consists of hunters and
anglers.  What usually happens is that the person of sensibilities
becomes caught up in the wave of enthusiasm generated by bad company
and gets swept along toward a catastrophe he doesn't expect and isn't
mentally or emotionally prepared for.

Some people just don't have the nerves or stomach for catastrophe.

I recall the time a nice young fellow by the name of Farley overheard
Retch Sweeney and me planning a hunting trip and asked if he could come
along.

We said sure.  Fortunately, it turned out to be an uneventful trip.  I
don't know what would have happened if the outing had been typical,
because it soon became evident that poor Farley wouldn't have been up
to a full-scale catastrophe.

True, there was one small incident, but it's scarcely worth
mentioning.

Retch slipped on some ice and grabbed Farley by the arm, so that they
both went down together.  That's about it.  The fall couldn't have been
more than ten feet.  Besides, the thin ice on the creek cushioned their
fall and prevented serious injury.  Both Retch and I thought it was
hilarious, all that flailing of arms and legs as they went through the
ice, with Retch cussing a turquoise-blue streak and Farley screaming.

I built a roaring fire so we could dry out their clothes, and even let
Farley wear my down jacket.  He looked so pitiful standing there naked
and hunched over the fire, with snowflakes falling on his bare skin.

To cheer him up, I explained that the fire would probably attract the
attention of a search plane.  After a hunting party has been lost in a
blizzard for four days, I told him, the National Guard usually sends
out a search plane.  Then Retch and I tried to get him to join in the
joking and singing and other festivities, but he would have none of it,
choosing instead to stand around looking morose, with his teeth
chattering and his skinny blue legs sticking out from under my
jacket.

Later we invited Farley on another hunting trip, but he declined,
rather brusquely I thought.

"Do you think it was something I done?"  Retch said.

"No," I said.  "I thought you treated him rather well,just as if he
were one of the guys."

"Maybe he didn't like the coffee we had to make with water from mud
puddles," Retch said.  "He never caught on to the knack of straining
out the pebbles with his teeth."

"That could have been it," I said.  "Mostly, though, I think it was
because he had too many sensibilities."

"Yeah, you're probably right.  I had a sensibility once, and it was
nothing but trouble."

The case of Farley serves to illustrate what happens when a person of
sensibilities falls in with bad company but through rare good fortune
avoids catastrophe.  But suppose such a person doesn't avoid the
standard catastrophe; what is the effect on him?  Do his sensibilities
survive?  Does he survive?  Is the money spent on therapy wasted?  The
following report answers these questions.

One day when I was about twelve, Rancid Crabtree and I discovered a bee
tree high up on the mountain behind his place.  An ancient logging
road, grown over with brush and small trees, ran past the tall, silvery
snag, which seemed fairly alive with thousands of bees busily and
mindlessly storing more honey on top of the tons they had already no
doubt collected over the years of undisturbed diligence.

"Hot dang!"  Rancid said.  "We got ourselves a honey tree!"

"So?"  I said.  "What good does it do us?  We can't get the honey out
of it without getting stung to death."

"Thetjist goes to show how little you knows about honey trees," Rancid
said.  "Shoot, thar ain't nothin' easier.  The Just thang you does is
to make a torch out of some rags, one thet'll put up a big cloud of
smoke.  Then you gits some gloves and heavy clothes the bees cain't
sting through, and a hood of cheesecloth to protect the face.  Then all
that's left is to git the tree chopped down and the honey scooped
up."

"It doesn't sound so easy to me."

"Waal, thet's because Ah ain't told you the best part yet.  Once you
git all the gloves and heavy clothes and the cheesecloth hood, you
talks some dumb feller into puttin' 'em on and chopping' down the tree
fer ya.  Ha!"

"Not me!"

"No, not you.  Even you ain't thet dumb!  Ah was thankin' of Murph."

It was nearly dark before we tracked down Murph.  He was lying on the
floor in Fat Edna's tavern, with Fat Edna sitting on his chest.

"You take that back, you little shrimp," Fat Edna was saying.

"How you doin', Murph?"  Rancid said.

"About the usual," Murph said.  "How you?"

"Ah's fine.  If you got a minute, Ah'd like to ask a favor of you."

Fat Edna grabbed Murph by the hair and thumped his head up and down on
the floor.  "Can't you see Murph's busy?"

Rancid hoisted Fat Edna off Murph.  "You can finish this later.  Ah
needs to see if Murph knows anythang 'bout gittin' honey out of a bee
tree without gittin' stung too bad."

There was plenty of bad company in the tavern that night, and upon
hearing the mention of the bee tree, every last pitiful soul there
rushed forward to offer a theory on how to get the honey away from the
bees without getting stung.  In no time at all, a great wave of
enthusiasm began to build, a wave I later learned from association with
bad company inevitably crashes down on the rocks of catastrophe.  Half
the regulars of the tavern and Fat Edna herself soon piled out of the
tavern and into cars and trucks to go help Rancid and me chop down the
honey tree.  Rancid drove Murph's truck, since he knew the way to the
tree.  Fat Edna squeezed into the cab with him, and Murph, Pinto jack,
and I, and several of the tavern's regulars jumped onto the truck
bed.

As we roared out of town, I noticed a stranger in the group.  He was
tall, thin, bald, and wearing a white suit that shimmered in the light
of the moon.  "Hi," he said to me.  "My name's Howard.  This is so
exciting, isn't it?  My goodness, I just stopped by the tavern for a
little nightcap before going to my hotel room, and now I'm involved in
an adventure.  What's your name, son?"

I told him.  There was something that made me feel uneasy about
Howard.

He didn't seem to fit in with this crowd, which was very bad company
indeed.

One of the regulars tilted up the communal jug of wine, took a swigg
and then passed it to me.  "Here, kid, give your friend a drink."

Although I never drank from a communal jug, or at all for that matter,
I had studied the technique with care.  I handed the jug to Howard.

"You'd better take a drink," I said.  Getting my drift, Howard studied
the loathsome flotsam on the surface of the wine.  Obviously none too
pleased with the results of his study, he nevertheless shut his eyes
and manfully took a tiny swig.  The regulars and I almost gagged.

Howard didn't realize that you are supposed to tilt the jug way back,
so that the surface of the wine rises above the mouth and the drinker
can sip from the clear wine beneath the flotsam.  When you associate
with bad company, bits of knowledge like that can be beneficial, both
socially and hygienically.  Ignorant though he might be of the finer
points of etiquette, Howard had won our respect.  The man had grit.

When we started lumbering up the overgrown mountain road, we lost most
of the caravan of vehicles that had followed us from the tavern.  The
others soon gave up their pursuit and turned back when the road proved
too treacherous.

Our group of honey-seekers bounced and rattled about on the bed of the
truck, seeking handholds where we could.  One by one the regulars
vibrated off the end of the truck, presumably to pick themselves up and
stagger off down the mountain.  By the time we reached the bee tree,
the only survivors were Murph, Pinto jack, Howard, and me, and of
course Rancid and Fat Edna in the cab of the truck--still more than
enough of us, however, to work up a major catastrophe.

"There's the bee tree!"  I shouted, pointing to the silvery snag.  The
level of enthusiasm was instantly restored and everyone leaped from the
truck shouting orders and advice, for that is the favorite activity of
bad company.

"Fire up the torch," yelled Pinto jack.

"Make the cheesecloth hood," shouted Rancid.

"Gimme my ax," cried Murph.

My goodness," said Howard.  "This is so exciting it gives me
goosebumps."

The first order of business was a lengthy argument over how to chop
down the tree.

"Notch her on the back," yelled Pinto Jack.  "That will drop her
alongside the road."

"And on toP of my truck," shouted Murph.  "No sir, she's got to drop
downhill."

Without anything being settled, Murph, Pinto jack, and Rancid, all of
them still shouting and arguing and calling each other names, went off
toward the tree, carrying the ax, the heavy clothes, a lantern, and the
smoky torch.

Presently the ruckus died down, only to be replaced by ominous, hollow
sounds of chopping.  it occurred to me that Rancid, caught up in the
wave of enthusiasm, had forgotten his own maxim of letting someone else
do the dangerous work.

Fat Edna's cigarette glowed in the dark as she, Howard, and I stood
listening to the attack on the bee tree.

"I sure hope nobody gets killed this time," Fat Edna said.

"How's that?"  Howard asked.  "Pardon?"

"Or maimed," Fat Edna added, looking at me.  "You remember poor old
Wally Jackson the time we tried to rope the bear that got into Murph's
hog pen?"

"Yeah," I said.  "Lefty Jackson."

"Lefty?"  the man in the white suit said.

"And poor Harry Logan at the chainsaw races?"

"Yeah, Stumpy Logan."

"Stumpy?"  the man in the white suit said.  "Maybe we should ..."

Suddenly the chopping ceased.  "Ow!"  somebody yelped, off in the
darkness.  And then somebody else shouted, "More smoke!  More smoke!

Ow!

ow!"

"I thought something like this might happen," Fat Edna said.

Rancid, Pinto jack, and Murph rushed past us in a tight little cluster,
slapping and howling.  Then we too were caught up in a roaring tornado
of angry bees.  "Everybody into the truck cab!"  yelled Rancid.

I was the last through the door, scrambling in on top of Fat Edna.

Rancid fired up the truck, cut a U-turn, and we roared off down the
mountain, dispatching bees as best we could in tight quarters.  A
catastrophe was in full progress.

"We missin' anybody?"  Rancid asked.  "Ow!  Gol-durn bee!  Whar's
Murph?

Ah don't see Murph!"

A muffled sound came from under Fat Edna.  "I'm still here, but I'm
going fast!"

"The man in the white suit!"  I said.  "He's not here!"

"Good gosh almighty," Rancid said.  "The pore devil will git hisself
stung to death!"

"I knew something like this would happen " Fat Edna said.  "I just knew
it!"

"Aaaaa," said Murph.

"What's that ahead?"  said Pinto jack.

The beam of the truck's single headlight illuminated a tall white
figure sprinting down the road.  Howard!  I rolled down the window and
yelled at him to jump on the running board.  He jumped, hooking one arm
over the door.

Crouching on the running board, he screwed his face into a terrible
expression as we roared into the first turn.  Years later the image of
his face at that moment would wake me in a cold sweat from my worst
nightmares.

"Everybody hold on, Ah got to hit the brakes fer the next tarn," Rancid
said.  "We'll never make it at this speed!"

The muffled voice of Murph came from under Fat Edna.  "What brakes?

This truck ain't got no brakes."

We hurtled around the curve, bounding over rocks and brush and small
trees, Rancid wrestling the steering wheel as though it were a crazed
beast.

Then we shot over the brink of the last and steepest grade and
plummeted toward the bottom of the mountain.

"We got her made now," Rancid said.  "Leastwise, iffen we don't hit too
hard."  Then he glanced at the stranger, whose face was knotted up in
one of the worst grimaces I've ever had the misfortune to witness.

"You done real good, feller" Rancid complemented him.  "Ain't everybody
could survive a ride like thet, with nothin' more to stand on than a
runnin' board."

"What runnin'board?"  Murph croaked.  "This truck ain't got no runnin'
board on that side."

Nobody at Fat Edna's ever again saw the man in the white suit.  If he
did pass through town, he chose not to stop by the tavern for a
nightcap.  Rancid said he sort of liked the stranger, too, but that
there was something odd about him.  Although I didn't say so, I knew
what it was.  Howard just wasn't cut out for bad company.

The Case of the Missed Deer The sun spread out against the western sky
like a drop of blood on a blotter.  The frozen ground under my feet
felt like frozen ground, which was strange, since frozen ground usually
feels like peanut brittle.  I felt like a cigarette.  If you don't know
what a cigarette feels like, you probably don't read private-eye
novels.  Fictional private eyes often feel like cigarettes.

Many of them even think like cigarettes.  That is because private-eye
novels are often written by persons who write like cigarettes.  It goes
with the territory.  I should know.  I write private-eye novels.

That's why I was surprised when this outdoor editor called me up.

"McManus?"

"Yeah, that's me," I said, cradling the phone with my shoulder while I
ground out a cigarette in the palm of my hand.

"What's wrong?"  the editor asked.  "Why the screech?"

"Nothing, " I said.

"Why I'm calling," the editor continued, "is I want to hire you to
write a hunting article."

"I get fifty dollars a day plus expenses," I said.

The editor laughed.  "I heard you did humor, but I had no idea you were
that funny!  See if you can work some great jokes like that into the
article."

He hung up, chuckling.

Business had been slow lately.  By "lately" I mean the last fifteen
years.  I decided to take the job.

The best part of writing a hunting article is the hunting.  The writing
comes later.  That's when this business gets rough.  I can't count the
times I've stared into the cold muzzle of a blank sheet of paper.  I
won't even tell about the dangling participles that keep slipping up on
you.  And the commas!

God, how I hate commas!  Then there are the semicolons, the commas with
the dots over them.  I've never yet seen a semicolon that could be
trusted.  If you don't have guts enough to rub out a semicolon when you
see one, you don't belong in this business.

As soon as the outdoor editor had hung up, I put on my hunting togs,
slipped a gun into my shoulder holster, and headed for the door.  My
secretary, a tough blonde broad--or a tough broad blonde, to be more
accurate--yelled at me.  "Hey, Nick, your gat is showing."

I made a swift check of my person and immediately detected the cause of
her alarm, at the same time allaying my own worst fear.

"That's a problem with these shoulder holsters," I said.  "They're just
too short for a rifle."

"What are you going after this time--deer?"  Stella asked.

"I'm glad you asked that, sweetheart," I said.  "I'm going after
deer."

"Get lost!"  she riposted.

That's how I came to be standing behind a tree on a mountainside,
running a surveillance on a clearing directly ahead of me.  The sun was
no longer like a drop of blood on a blotter.  It was more like a smear
of orange marmalade on burnt toast.  The frozen ground still felt like
frozen ground, but I now felt like peanut brittle.  It was cold.

Doc Watson accompanied me on the hunt.  He is not a real doctor but a
Ph.D. in economics.  Despite this handicap, Doc has a tremendous sense
of humor.  Whenever people hear him referred to as "Doc," they assume
he is a medical doctor and start asking for advice.  Doc loves to
string people along, sometimes telling them that the prime rate is too
high and may cause their business to fall off.  This almost always
scares the bejeebers out of them.

As a joke, he once performed an appendectomy.  It was hilarious.

"Something's wrong here, Doc," I said.  "I was supposed to meet a deer
in this clearing and it hasn't shown up."

"Three deer have already walked across the clearing," Doc said.

"How come I didn't see them?"

"BeCause you're standing behind a tree."

That's the kind of mind Doc has--sharp!  He can analyze a complex
situation instantly.  Moving only six inches to one side, I discovered
that the trunk of the tree no longer blocked my vision.

"Well, I'll be danged," I said.  "The solution was so obvious.  Why
didn't I see it?"

"Possibly it's because you had your mind on other matters," Doc
analyzed.

"On the other hand, it's probably because you're dumb."

On the far side of the clearing, the brush parted and a nice buck
stepped out.  He was a big old fellow, and I could tell he had been
around and knew the score, which was Deer--15, Me--0.  That is why he
sauntered casually along, broadside to me and no more than fifty yards
away.  He was close enough that I could see the smirk on his face.

Such insolence in a deer is unforgivable, and I decided to settle his
venison right then and there.

In a smooth, swift motion, I brought the rifle to firing position,
neatly dislocating my left shoulder.  In my haste, I'd forgotten to
remove the rifle from its holster.  Shrugging off the pain, I danced
around yelling and cursing.

"Good thing I brought my bag with me," Doc said.  "I may have to remove
that shoulder if it becomes inflationary."

I gave Doc a hard look.  He was standing there smugly eating a
sandwich.

"Just for that, I'm going to waste that turkey," I snarled.

Doc looked startled.  "Why don't you waste the pastrami instead?  I'm
eating the turkey."

With a sardonic laugh, I snatched the sandwich from his hands and
ground it under my boot.  Instantly I felt better.

"Let that be a lesson to you," I told Doc.  "And if you don't shut up,
I'm going to waste your fruit drink and pudding CUP."

Doc has no stomach for violence, although his liver enjoys a Clint
Eastwood film from time to time.  He walked off a ways to Pout.

Surprisingly, the deer was still standing in the clearing watching us,
his smirk now transformed into a broad grin.  I settled the crosshairs
of the scope just behind his front shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

It was an easy shot.  So easy, in fact, that there was no way I could
miss.  Afterwards, I even felt a little ashamed.  The least I could
have done was to give the buck a sporting chance.  That would have
explained the miss.  But to miss him while he was just standing there
grinning at me!  It was humiliating.

"What's the score now?"  Doc asked.

"Deer--16, Me--0," I said.

"And you have to write a hunting article about this," Doc said.  "How
are you going to do that?"

"With great difficulty," I said.  "But I've got to do it."

Driving back to town, I told Doc about the kinds of atrocities editors
had committed on writers who didn't get articles in on time.  He
shuddered.

"Maybe you could just make up something," Doc said.  "That's what we
economists do.  Heck, just say that you got the deer.  Who's to
know?"

"I can't do that," I said.  "But I think I've figured a way out of this
mess.  I'Ll just tell the truth."

"It's easy to see you're no economist," Doc said.  "What's your
angle?"

"Well," I replied, "I thought I'd start off with 'The sun Spread out
against the western sky like a drop of blood on a blotter."" Character
Flaws As an outdoorsman, you frequently run the risk of finding
yourself locked into a week-long stay at a remote hunting camp with a
person you barely know.

By the end of the week, you know the person very well indeed, and may
fervently wish you didn't.  This problem can be avoided by putting any
new acquaintance through a series of psychological tests to determine
his mental and emotional shortcomings, just in case you are ever forced
to spend a week with him at a remote hunting camp.

Before committing yourself to a hunt with any new acquaintance, you
should first take him on an overnight camping trip, one of the very
best of all psychological tests.  Then note the following indicators to
his qualities as a hunting camp companion.

Grub can be an excellent indicator of flawed character.  For example,
if the fellow cooks up a supper consisting of fried wieners, fried
cabbage, fried potatoes, fried beans, fried bread, and fried custard,
he is obviously all right.  Give him five bonus points if, as a final
course to the meal, he serves individual bowls of Turns with whipped
topping.

On the other hand, if the chap attempts to feed you something like
boiled beets, he should be regarded with suspicion.  Clinical
psychologists universally interpret the act of serving boiled beets to
armed men as evidence of a massive psychological disorder.  The man
obviously has no inkling what the mere sight of boiled beets can do to
the morale of exhausted hunters who have spent the day tramping up and
down mountains in a freezing rain.  Under such circumstances, a small
serving of boiled beet cubes once caused Retch Sweeney to sob
uncontrollably for over an hour.  The perpetrator of the crime was
quite upset by the incident, as he probably would have been even if
Retch hadn't been twisting his arm.

Green hash provides another good test for character flaws.  Cook up
your own special recipe and serve it to the subject.  (Since you are on
a camping trip lasting only a couple of days, you may have to use green
food coloring, rather than allowing the green to develop naturally, as
it does in the typical hunting camp.) Note the reaction of the subject
to the green hash.  Does he politely gobble it down without
complaint?

Does he jump back and hit at it with a stick?  Such nuances of behavior
can tell you much about the individual's character.  Obviously, no
rational person will eat green hash, nor will experienced hunters.

Keep in mind that if you decide to conduct the test with naturally
green hash, any subject who eats it won't be available for the hunting
trip anyway, thus saving you the embarrassment of telling him he can't
go.  A get-well card is optional.

The subject's response to discomfort should be carefully noted during
the test camping trip.  Does he howl and yelp over every dozen mosquito
bites, moan all through the night because his sleeping bag is wet,
complain bitterly because the campfire smoke gets in his eyes, and so
on?  Or does he cheerfully accept these discomforts as a matter of
course?  As the true outdoorsman knows, anyone who cheerfully accepts
the discomforts of camp as a matter of course is absolutely unbearable
and should be rejected without question.

Check to see if the individual has a sense of humor.  In the middle of
the night, seal him in his sleeping bag by placing a few wraps of duct
tape over the bag's zipper.  Then slosh him with a pail of cold water
and yell, "Run for your life!  The dam broke!"  When you present him
with the prize for "fastest hopping in a sleeping bag," does he
smile?

If so, it is probably safe to let him out of the sleeping bag.  Whether
you wish later to spend ten days in a wild and remote area with this
individual is up to YOu.

The prospective hunting-camp companion should have a sense of
modesty.

Nothing is quite so embarrassing as having a member of the group
running around stark naked.  For this test, hide the subject's clothes
in the typical manner associated with most hunting camps.  Then note
carefully whether he wraps himself in a towel before chasing you with a
hatchet.

Does the subject willingly jump in and do his share of the camp
chores?

Such people generally turn out to be excruciating bores, as well as
making all the other hunters in camp feel guilty.

Is the subject particularly keen on hunting?  Check this out by
questioning him thoroughly.  I have on occasion been in hunting camps
where one individual would insist upon going out hunting every day.  As
another hunter once commented, "What does Joe think we come all the way
out to this hunting camp for, to hunt?  The guy's weird.  Now whose
turn to deal?"

(Oddly, many nonhunters think the reason hunters go off to remote
hunting camps is to hunt.  Your wife, for example, may express surprise
when you reply to her question of whether you had any luck, "Not bad.

I won thirty bucks."

Since the expression of her surprise will consist only of a very slight
elevation of one eyebrow, you have to watch closely for it.)
Storytelling skill ranks as one of the most important qualities in a
prospective hunting-camp companion.  The test consists of asking the
subject about one of his scars.  Suppose he replies, "You mean this
little scar on my thumb?  I got that on a broken bottle when I reached
into a grocery sack.  Why do you ask?"  Then, of course, he flunks.

Any halfway decent storyteller should be able to get at least twenty
minutes' worth of story out of any scar.

Technique should also be studied.  In response to the inquiry regarding
the scar on his thumb, does the subject stare off into the distance as
if reflecting on the miracle that the thumb is still attached to his
hand?  This indicates that he is making up a really good story about
the scar, complete with gory details.  Hunters like a story with lots
of gory details, even though they are not going to believe a word of
it.  WARNING: Any hunter who can go for more than two hours on a single
scar should be considered for rejection.  He is too good and will
demoralize his companions to the extent that even the fellow who had
his leg half gnawed off by a panther will hesitate to mention it.

Is the subject overly cautious?  Does he bring along an extra set of
clothes in case he falls in a river or something?  A hunter possessing
this absurd character flaw should be shown tolerance and invited along
to the hunting camp.  Making allowances for such a hunting companion is
always desirable, although not to the extent that he varies from you by
more than one size either way.

Does the subject enjoy a good practical joke?  Or does he sleep with a
cocked revolver in one hand and a machete in the other?  Such a
mannerism can take much of the fun out of practical-joking.  Try a few
mild practical jokes on the subject.  By "mild" I mean stop short of
building a fire in one of his boots, for example.  Sewing the rear flap
shut on the subject's long-johns should also be avoided.  Should your
hand slip, it is too difficult to explain to a relatively new
acquaintance why you interrupted his sleep by poking him with a
needle.

Many promising new friendships have ended for lesser cause.

That completes the psychological examination.  If the subject passes
all these tests, he will make the perfect hunting-camp companion.  On
that basis alone, he must be rejected.  Who wants to spend a week in a
remote hunting camp with some guy who's perfect?

Mean Tents I once shot three arrows through my cousin Buck's brand-new
wall tent.

This may not seem remarkable to you, but it was to Buck.  I can still
recall several of his remarks, in fact, even though at the time they
were made, I was vaulting a high board fence as he tried to tear off
one of my legs.  It happened like this.

I was out in Buck's backyard, practicing with his bow and arrows, when
he showed up carrying a large bundle of canvas on his shoulder.  Buck
was four years older than I, or about twenty.  He had a job and could
afford to buy all kinds of neat hunting and fishing stuff.  I could use
his stuff anytime I wanted, provided Buck wasn't around.  His mother,
my Aunt Sophie, who thought highly of me, was always eager to help the
less fortunate, who in this case happened to be me.  She would unlock
the door to Buck's bedroom and even help me disarm some of the booby
traps her ingenious son had set to maim or kill me, should I sneak in
to use his stuff.

"What are you doing with my bow?"  Buck snarled, even though it was
perfectly obvious I was target-practicing.

Pretending not to hear, I said, "Gosh, Buck, what's that you got
there?"

Instantly his mood flip-flopped.  "A new wall tent!"  he exclaimed.  "I
just bought it.  Wait till you see this baby.  I'm gonna take it up
into the mountains next fall and set up a hunting camp like you
wouldn't believe.  I got this little wood stove I'm gonna put in it for
heat, and a little table and chairs, and a couple of cots ..."

Having distracted him from uncharitable thoughts about my use of his
bow, I helped him drag the tent across the backyard to a flat area
about ten feet from the bale of hay I had been using as a target.  We
soon had the tent pitched, its canvas taut and gleaming in the sun.  I
had to admit it was a nice-looking tent.  Buck thought it was
beautiful.  We stepped back to admire it.

While he was in such a good mood, I said, "Yeah, that's a terrific
tent, Buck.  Mind if I shoot a few more arrows?"

"What?  Oh, yeah, go ahead.  Now, you see that canvas?  It's special
canvas.  That canvas is windproof and waterproof."

I casually let fly with an arrow at the target.  The arrow curved like
a boomerang in flight and, with a tiny phutt!  zipped through the roof
of the tent.

Buck's eyes widened.  His jaw gaped as if held by a weak spring.

"It was an accident, Buck," I cried, snatching up another arrow.  "Your
arrow must have been crooked.  See, I shot it just like this."

Phutt!

The second arrow zipped through the tent!

I could not believe this was happening.  It was as if the tent had a
magnetic attraction for arrows.  I glanced at Buck.  He seemed okay,
except for possible paralysis of his entire nervous system.  His lips
made little jerking motions, but otherwise he was immobile.

"I can explain, Buck.  Some of these arrows are crooked.  They curve
when you shoot them.  Now this arrow is straight.  Watch, it'll hit the
target.

Those other two arrows were crooked.  It's not my fault you have
crooked arrows.  Here goes."

Phutt!

It was the strangest occurrence I had ever encountered.  Having
considerable interest in science, I would have liked to study how not
one, not two, but three arrows could be drawn ten feet off course and
through the roof of a tent.  By this time, however, Buck had come
unthawed and unwrapped, cutting short any hopes I might have had for
discovering the attraction of tent canvas for arrows.  I took my usual
escape route over the back fence, sacrificing only half a pantleg to
the clawing hands of my crazed cousin.

Thirty years later Buck would still be convinced that I had
deliberately shot the arrows through the tent for no better reason than
to aggravate him.

But I was innocent.  The guilty party was the tent itself, its motive
nothing more than to cause me trouble.  In fact, tents have always had
it in for me.

Remember the old Interior-Frame Umbrella Tent?  The one with the
contraption called the "spider" that was supposed to hold everything
together?

We used one of those tents for fifteen years.  Every camping family in
America owned one.  Few people know, however, that they were originally
developed by research psychologists as a stress test to determine the
limits of sanity.

Later, the U.S. Army got ahold of the I-FUT, as the Interior-Frame
Umbrella Tent was known, and experimented with it as a means of
training recruits in hand-to-hand combat.  When it was rejected by the
army as too demoralizing to the troops, tent manufacturers decided the
I-FUT was perfect for campers.

After all, they reasoned, campers go out seeking hardship and
adventure.

Pitching the I-FUT would provide the average camper with about all the
hardship and adventure he could stand.

Even though we last used our I-FUT more than ten years ago, before we
moved up to the Exterior-Frame Tent, I can still recall vividly the
typical routine of pitching it: I have just staked down the floor of
the tent.  The tent came with tough plastic stakes, which greatly eased
this task, but of course all of the stakes have now been lost.  I have
substituted crooked pieces of tree branch for the plastic stakes,
pounding them in with a flat rock.

This results in my having to perform the Crouch Hop, a primitive dance
in which the performer holds one hand between his thighs and hops about
chanting "Hai-yi-yi-yi!"  and other chants, while his wife holds her
hands over the ears of the youngest child.

Now comes the dreaded part.  I must crawl into the shapeless mass of
canvas to insert the interior frame.  Powdery remains of last year's
insects come sprinkling down onto my face.  The tiny, stickery legs are
the worst, particularly when they go down the back of your shirt
collar.  I sneeze.  As a cause of sneezing, powdered bug is just as bad
as pepper.  Some people think it's a whole lot worse.  Squeamish people
almost always abandon camping during this phase of pitching the
I-FUT.

Not all the bugs are dead.  At least one daddy longlegs will have
survived the winter for the sole purpose of racing up under your
pantleg.

When you are standing in the dark with a collapsed tent around your
head, a daddy longlegs racing for your vitals feels as big as a
Dungeness crab.

The part of the frame called the "spider" has four arms, each of which
extends out to a corner of the roof tent.  The upright poles, in theory
at least, insert into the outer ends of the spider arms.  A short,
sharp-edged pipe protrudes downward from the center of the spider.  The
sharp end of this pipe is placed on top of your head to hold the spider
in place while you attach the poles.  This explains why all old-time
tent campers have a series of little overlapping circles on the tops of
their heads.

I am now standing in the tent with one spider charging up my leg and
the other "spider" cutting doughnut holes in my scalp.  Quickly I
insert the first pole into the spider, but it won't stay in place by
itself until another pole has taken the slack out of the tent.  I
balance on one eg and hold the pole up with the other.

"Quick," I yell to my little helpers outside.  "Hand Daddy another
pole."

I immediately hear the sound of scurrying feet, followed by heated
argument.

"I got it first!  Leggo!"

"Aaaaaah," I say.  "Just get Daddy the pole!"

"Daddy wants me to do it!  Give it here!"

"Aaaaaahh!"  I say.  "Hur-reeee!  Aaaah!"

"Gimme that pole!  " "Aaakkkk!"  I say.

"I got it!  Here I come, Daddy!"

I can hear little feet charging for the door of the tent.  "Easy!

Easy!"

I yell, but too late.  The pole comes through the flap of the tent like
a spear thrust.

"Just think," my wife says later, "if we had just one more kid, you
could stand one in each corner of the tent to hold a pole while you
hook up the spider."

"That possibility has just been rendered academic," I say.  "So maybe
we'll buy a camper."

I still have our old I-FUT out in the corner of the garage, and it's in
surprisingly good shape.  My wife says I should donate it to the
Salvation Army so it can be passed on to a needy family.  I point out
to her that needy families already have enough problems without my
inflicting an I-FUT on them.

Besides, I like to keep the I-FUT around for old times' sake.  Whenever
I get depressed, I can go out and kick it hard several times.

Immediately I feel better.

My very first tent was a tepee.  I made it out of three crooked
branches and a blanket when I was about six years old.  It served me
well for an hour or two, until I decided to take the chill out of the
air by building a fire in it.  Presently my father came wandering out
of the house and saw me standing by my tepee, which was putting up
little puffs of smoke.  It is a traumatic experience, let me tell you,
for a small child to see his father stomp out his tepee!  To complicate
matters, Dad never understood what it was he had stomped out.  He
thought I just liked to set fire to blankets.

Speaking of strained relations between father and son, I'm reminded of
the time a couple of years later that Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I made a
tent out of gunnysacks.  We had found the sacks in the back of the
Muldoon barn.

Although they were moldy and half rotten and flecked with dried cow
manure, Eddie said they would still make a good tent.  We obtained a
large pair of shears and a curved sacking needle from his father's
toolbox, which Mr. Muldoon had thoughtfully left within our reach.  By
suppertime the tent was finished.

I tried to conceal my disappointment over the appearance of the
finished product.  To me it looked more like a large, shaggy cocoon
than a tent.  Crazy Eddie, however, was delighted with it, as he was
with all his creations.

"We'll set it up in the backyard and sleep in it tonight," he
announced.

"Okay," I said.

Eddie and I had been trying to sleep out all night in his backyard for
most of the summer, but our efforts had always been thwarted by the
elements--torrential darkness being the most frequent.  So far, our
best time had been 9:30.  But Eddie had recently discovered a secret
weapon: his father's powerful, six-battery flashlight.  Furthermore,
his father was away on a trip and not expected back until late that
night.  We would simply leave the flashlight on all night and return it
to his father's shop in the morning before he was awake and hovering
about, eyeing us with suspicion.  Mr. Muldoon would never know the
difference.  It would teach him a good lesson, too, for guffawing and
teasing us about our failures at sleeping out past 9:30, even though we
gave him detailed reports on the large, weird creatures we had seen
prowling the yard.

The disaster resulting from this innocent plan cannot be properly
understood without knowing the exact sequence of events, which is as
follows: 7:30 p.m.: Crazy Eddie and I haul a quilt, a blanket, and two
pillows out to our tent and make our bed.

8:00 p.m.: We crawl under the quilt and lie there looking at the stars
through the roof of our tent.  We have routinely checked the laces on
our tennis shoes for tightness.  Kids we know have thrown a shoe coming
out of the starting blocks on their way into the house on a dark
night.

The loss of traction on one side has caused them to waste precious
seconds running in a circle.

9:00 p.m.: The condition known as "pitch dark" has been achieved.

Crazy Eddie flips on the powerful flashlight.  The beam shoots out
through our tent and illuminates the countryside for a hundred yards.

it seems adequate.

Eddie and I exchange smiles of confidence.

10:00 p.m.: Mrs.  Muldoon turns off the house lights and goes to bed.

Only the feeble porch light remains on.  A sense of apprehension fills
the gunnysack tent.  The beam of the flashlight has weakened.

10:15 p.m.: Mr. Muldoon gets in his car and begins the long drive
home.

He turns on the radio to listen to country western music.

11:00 p.m.: The power of the flashlight has diminished to that of a
firefly.  The porch light provides some illumination.  A dark shadow
passes over the tent.  Eddie and I dig starting blocks with the heels
of our tennis shoes through the floor of the tent.

11:05 p.m.: Mr. Muldoon flicks the radio dial to "The Creaking
Door."

Tonight's program is about a mummy that tracks down and takes revenge
on an archaeologist for disturbing its tomb.  Mr. Muldoon shudders at
the dry, rustling sound of the mummy's loose wrappings as they drag
across the floor.

The mummy says, "Urrr-uh!  Urrr-uh!"  which may not be all that
articulate, but is pretty good for a mummy.

11:25 p.m.: Mr. Muldoon pulls into his driveway.  On the radio, the
archaeologist is screaming, "No!  No!  Stay away from meeeee!"  Then
there's the sound of wrappings scraping across the floor.  "Urrr-uh,"
says the mummy.

"Urrr-uh!"  Mr. Muldoon shuts off the radio, gets out of the car, and
heads for the house.  Then he goes back and shuts off the car lights.

The wind rustles in the bushes.  Mr. Muldoon rushes into the house and
turns on the lights.

Eddie and I have heard Mr. Muldoon drive in.  Our flashlight is
dead.

Our tennis shoes are dug into the starting blocks, but now we must wait
for Mr. Muldoon to go to bed.  Otherwise he will tease us
unmercifully.  Outside, there is a strange rustling sound, coming
closer and closer.  It's a good thing we haven't heard the mummy
program.

11:35 p.m.: Mr. Muldoon shuts off the kitchen light and the porch
light.

He has no reason to expect his son and me to be outside after 9:30.  He
goes into the bathroom to take a shower, still thinking about the
mummy.

11:45 p.m.: The rustling around the tent has increased.  Eddie is
fumbling with the knots on the door, but can't untie them in the
dark.

In a few minutes, Mr.  Muldoon will be in bed asleep.

11:46 p.m.: Eddie's dog, Oscar, returns from a date at a neighboring
farm and slumps down exhausted on the porch.  Oscar has no reason to
expect Eddie and me to be outside after 9:30.

11:50 p.m.: Mr. Muldoon thinks he detects a sore throat coming on.  He
walks into the darkened kitchen, pours some salt into a glass of hot
water, and begins to gargle.  He is wearing only a towel, wrapped
around his middle.

11:50:30 p.m.: Eddie groans.  "I can't get these dang knots untied in
the dark.  Let's go inside.  We can take the tent off in there."  A
shadow passes over the tent, accompanied by a rustling sound to our
rear.  We shove our feet through the burlap floor and, hugging the tent
around us, hit the starting blocks.

11:50:31 p.m.: On the porch, Oscar opens his bleary eyes.  A large,
amorphous shape is charging him!  Almost on top of him!  Probably going
to eat him!  He tries to bark but has momentarily swallowed his
tongue.

"Urrr-uh!"  he growls.  "Urrr-uh!"

11:50:32 p.m.: Eddie and I crash through the door into the kitchen.

Instantly we hear a horrible sound.  We don't know what it is, never
before having heard a naked man surprised in mid-gargle by a gunnysack
tent.  Oscar follows us into the house, still trying to bark.

"URRR-UH!  URRR-UH!"  Water splashes on the floor and there is the
sound of naked feet frantically trying to get traction on slippery
linoleum.  "Gargle, gurgle, choke!"  cries Mr.  Muldoon.

"St-stay-hack-gargle-away-choke-from-meeeeee!"

We didn't get the mess all sorted out and reconstructed until the next
morning.  Mr. Muldoon seemed quite embarrassed by the whole episode,
and never again teased us for abandoning a backyard camp in the middle
of the night.

Later, though, he enjoyed recalling the episode of the gunnysack tent
and having a good laugh over it.  I was away at college by then,
however, and never got to hear him.

Crick Ritual Retch Sweeney is on the phone.  "Want to go fish the crick
tomorrow?"

"Oh, I suppose so."  I say.  "What time you want to leave?"

"Four sharp," he says.  "You know the crick.  The best fishin' is
always at first light."

"Okay.

Note the casualness of the conversation, the hint of indifference.  The
tone conceals any hint of reverence for the proposed undertaking--to go
fish the crick.  But both Retch and I know that we speak of solemn and
elaborate ritual.  We are talking religious experience here, mysticism,
transcendentalism even.  Yes, transcendentalism.  What we hope to
transcend is time--thirty, forty years of time, back to the days of
ancient summers with the crick flowing through our fresh, untarnished
lives.

Rituals must be performed with precision.  One flaw, one misstep, one
missed cue, and the spell is broken.  I must take care tomorrow to do
everything exactly right.  Otherwise, my one day of fishing the crick
this year will be ruined, and I will be left with insufficient mental,
emotional, and spiritual resources to sustain me for the next twelve
months.

"Where's my black tenner shoes?"  I ask my wife.

"You mean those wading shoes you blew eighty dollars on?  They're in
your closet."

"Not those.  The black tenner shoes with the little rubber ankle
patches that are starting to peel off.  The ones that are worn through
on the sides."

"Oh, no!  Don't tell me it's time for you and Retch to fish the creek
again!"

"Crick," I correct her.  "The proper technical term for this sort of
stream is 'Crick."  A creek is something entirely different."

"Well, your tenner shoes, as you call them, are out in a corner of the
garage where you left them a year ago."

"Good" I say.  "You haven't seen my fish pole, have you?"

"What do you mean?  You have twenty or thirty fishing rods on the wall
of your office."

"I know where the rods are.  What I'm looking for is the fish pole.

it's steel and has three sections that telescope into each other, kind
of green and rusty.  It's got the old baitcasting reel on it, the one
that makes the horrible sound because of all the sand in the gears."

"Oh, that one.  Its out in the garage by your tenner shoes."

Early the next morning I head over to Retch's.  I have brewed myself a
large vacuum bottle of strong coffee and constructed a delicious lunch:
thick sandwiches of fresh homemade bread piled high with roast beef,
cheese, and onion; a banana; an orange; two candy bars; and a slab of
apple pie.  It makes my mouth water to think of the lunch, nestled
there next to my bottle of rich black coffee.  There?  Too late I
remember the coffee is still on the kitchen table with my lunch next to
it.  Drat!  Damn all kitchen tables, those incorrigible thieves of
fishermen's lunches!

It's nearly six when I arrive at Sweeney's house, two hours late.  He
will be steamed.  I ring the doorbell.  Five minutes later Retch opens
the door.  He is still in his pajamas.  "Wha'?"  he says.  "What are
you doin'here in the middle of the night?"

"It's six o'clock," I snap.  "Remember?  We're going to go fish the
crick today?  I've been waiting out in the yard two hours for you to
wake up!"

"Good gosh, the crick!  That's right!  Look, I'm sorry.  Don't be
mad."

"Oh, all right.  It's just that I have such high regard for
punctuality."

Retch leaves and returns a few minutes later.  He is wearing his rotten
old tenner shoes and carrying his fish pole.  There is a dried worm on
the hook that dangles beneath a quarter pound of split-shot sinkers.

"What kind of leader you got on?"  I ask.

"Twenty-pound," he says.  "The usual."

"Good," I say.  "We don't want any fish bustin' off.  Now where are the
worms?"

"Worms?"  Retch says.  "You was supposed to dig the worms."

"Oh, no!  I dug them last year, remember?"

Yeah, I got an exact recollection.  I dug 'em.  And the year before
that, too.  Well, c'mon, let's go dig some out behind the woodshed.

Grab the shovel.  You can dig and I'll pick up the worms."

"Why don't you dig and let me pick up the worms?"

"'Cause it's my shovel, that's why."

We go out behind the woodshed, I spade up half an acre of ground, and
we find only three scrawny worms.  The next day Retch will plant his
garden in the area I spaded up, but he fails to mention his plan to me
now.

"Hey, I know where we can find some worms," he says.  "Over in my
compost pile."

In five minutes we fill the can half full of worms from his compost
pile.

Odd that he didn't think of the compost pile first.  Mysteries like
this tend to nag at one's mind.  I suggest that we divide the worms
between two cans, but Retch says no, we will be fishing together so we
can both use the same can.  Besides, he says, he has only one good worm
can.

it is ten o'clock when we arrive at the crick and start fishing.  As
Retch says, ten o'clock is the best time to start fishing the crick,
because the fish were expecting us for the early-morning feed and will
now be caught off guard.  I agree.

The crick, still fed by melting snows in the mountains, is icy cold.

We rule out trying to wade it, which means that we must hurl our lines
ver the wall of brush bordering the crick on our side and listen for
the splash of the sinkers hitting the water.  No splash means the hook
snagged on a branch above the water, where it's unlikely to attract
fish.  We make several casts without hearing a splash.  We then decide
to cross to the far bank, which has less brush.  We will cross the
crick on two strands of barbwire, the remains of an old fence suspended
above the water.  The trick to crossing a stream on such a fence is to
walk on the bottom wire and hold on to the top wire for balance.

Retch bounces on the fence over the middle of the crick.  He begins to
lean forward, pushing the top wire ahead of him with his hands, the
bottom wire out behind with his feet.  "Hanhh hannhh hanh!"  he says,
but I am uncertain as to what this means.  He reverses his posture and
is now leaning backward over the crick.  "Hannnnhhh!"  he repeats, but
with no more clarity of meaning.  He gives the top wire a Vicious pull,
and faster than the eye can follow, flips forward.  His body is now
parallel to the crick, face-down, about a yard above the water,
straining between the two screeching strands of wire.  "Gah gah gah" he
says.  I cannot help but be amused by this marvelous acrobatic
performance, but enough is enough.

"STOP fooling around," I say.  "You're going to drop the worm can."

My admonishment comes too late.  His belly sags toward the water, even
though he makes a valiant effort to suck it back up.  He now makes a
sound similar to that of a dog tugging on a rag--ERRRRRRRERRR!  Then
there is a whir and a yelp, and Retch plops into the crick.  I knew he
would mess around until something like this happened!  "Don't drop the
worm can!"  I yell.  "Don't drop the worms!"

Ignoring my admonition, he splashes out of the crick on the far side,
his mouth spewing out a stream half crick and half profanity.  This is
a bad omen.

I walk around a bend in the crick and find a cottonwood log that a
considerate family of beavers had the decency to chew down so that it
fell from one bank across to the other.  Many people do not like
beavers, but ...

Halfway across the log, I notice that the spatula-tailed vandals have
maliciously chewed a section of the far end down to the dimensions of a
toothpick!  I try to retreat.  Too late.

"Pretty fast moves there," Retch says.  "The first five steps across
the water you hardly sunk a bit.  But that sixth step was a doozie."

"Very funny," I say, wringing out my hat while waiting for Retch to
stop cackling.  "Since we're wet and freezing anyway, we may as well
just wade down the crick.  I'm glad to see you didn't lose the worms.

Give me a handful of them.  I don't want to chase after you every time
I need a worm."

"Whatcha gonna put 'em in?"

"Why, my pants pocket, of course.  They might ice up a bit in there,
but I don't think it will hurt them, except they might not be able to
have any more children."

About noon, the fish start biting.  Two of them, a small one and a big
one.  We put them on a forked stick and divide the rest of the day
between fishing and trying to find the last place we laid the forked
stick.  Retch deliberates whether he should eat the big fish or have it
mounted.  I mention it will cost him ten dollars an inch to get it
mounted.

"In that case, I better eat it," he says.  "I don't have an extra
eighty dollars."

We pass up the best fishing hole on the crick.  I am tempted to try for
a quick cast on my way past the hole, but I might break my stride.

That's what fast, mean cows watch for, a break in the fisherman's
stride, and then they've got him.

"Shall we-pant-try to-pant-vault the fence or-pant-roll under it?"

Retch says.

I glance back.  The nearest cow is fifteen inches behind us and
gaining.

"Vault."

We vault and land safely on the other side of the fence.  Not bad for a
couple of pudgy, fifty-year-old men.  The few little pieces of us left
on barbwire are relatively unimportant.

We slip down to the Old Packard hole.  It is called the Old Packard
hole because years ago someone dumped an old Packard into the crick
there.  My cousin Buck once drifted a worm through the broken
windshield of the Packard and caught a big fat brookie out of the back
seat.  It is now late in the day.

I think just possibly Buck's brookie's
great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild might have taken up
residence there.  So for my final effort of the day I drift a worm
through the windshield of the old Buick.  The worm drifts down into the
dark water of the back seat.  I twitch the line ever so gently.  I
wait.  Perhaps there is no big fat brookie there, I think.  Then, like
a flash of lightning, it happens: I am struck by the revelation that I
am never going to catch a fish out of the Old Packard hole.  Retch and
I give up and head for home.

Driving back to town, wet, cold, exhausted, bruised, cut, and
punctured, with only two measly fish between us, we stare silently
ahead.

"I kind of expected it would turn out like this, the way the day
started," Retch says.  "You forgot your lunch, I forgot to set my alarm
clock, we had to dig up half the countryside to find any worms, we both
fell in the crick right away and then got chased by cows, all for two
little fish."

"Yeah," I say.  "it was perfect, wasn't it?"

"Yep," Retch says, grinning.  "Just like when we was kids.  Funny,
ain't it, how after all these years we can remember how to do
everything just right."

"That's what a ritual is," I say.  "Doing it all just right."

Now my wife is shrieking down in the laundry room.  After all these
years, you would think she would know better than to reach into a
fisherman's pants pockets, especially after he has just returned from
performing a crick ritual.

Hunting Camp Etiquette Once again it is time for my question-and-answer
column in which I dispense bits of wisdom, helpful hints, and an
occasional downright dangerous piece of advice.  The topic for today is
"Hunting Camp Etiquette."

Dear PFM: I am just getting started in the sport of hunting.  Last fall
I happened to ask the camp cook what was in the stew.  Everyone seemed
shocked by my question.  The cook went into his tent and pouted for the
rest of the evening.

What did I say wrong?

Puzzled in Detroit Dear Puz: "What's in the stew?"  is The one question
you never ask a camp cook.

You can be quite certain the cook does not wish to reveal the contents
of any of his dishes, even if he knows what they are.

The other hunters present want even less to hear the concoction
described in any detail.  Simply eat your stew like a man and don't ask
questions.

Afterwards, however, you should try to monitor your vital functions for
at least two hours.

Another problem with asking the cook about his stew is that it may not
be stew.  It may be hash or scrambled eggs or pancakes, which could
explain why the cook went to his tent to pout.  Can you blame him?

Dear PFM: I have trouble getting to sleep the first night in camp.  The
other fellows in my tent seem to drop right off the minute they hit the
sack.

Then they start to snore, which makes it even more difficult for me to
get to sleep.  Is there any polite way of inducing them to stay awake
until I fall asleep?

Nodding-off in Birmingham Dear Nod: Yes, there are two proven methods
for doing this.  If you have had stew for supper, a mere suggestion
planted in the minds of the other hunters can be quite effective in
keeping them awake for hours.  As soon as everyone is in his sleeping
bag, simply shout out, "I can't feel my legs!  I can't feel my legs!" 
This is a wonderful way of gaining the attention of the other
hunters.

They all leap up and rush off to the nearest poison center.  Try to get
some sleep before they return.

Another ploy is to wait until the other guys are nearly asleep and then
say, "What the devil was that?  Did you guys hear that weird sound?"

The only thing that remains to do then is to plump up whatever it is
you are using for a pillow and get some shuteye.  The other guys will
lie awake for hours, listening.

Dear PFM: We had a fellow in camp this year who kept asking things
like, "Tell me again, which side of the trees does the moss grow on?" 
Should a person like this be allowed to wander away from camp by
himself?

Wondering in Seattle Dear Won: Only if he is your guide.  I once had a
guide who constantly argued with his compass.  "That can't be north,"
he would say.  "This stupid compass shows north in the southeast! 
Stupid instrument!  well, forget that!  This way, guys.  The road has
to be right on the other side of that mountain."  Once he got us so
lost I resorted to firing three shots in rapid succession.  But the
light was bad and I missed him.

Dear PFM: The other fellows in my hunting camp sit around each evening
sipping whiskey, chawing on tobacco, and telling coarse jokes.  I have
never done any of these things.  Naturally, I don't want to offend my
friends, but what can I do?

Pure in Pasadena Dear Pure: This is a very delicate matter and you must
treat it as such.  Sipping whiskey while chawing tobacco and telling
jokes can be downright disgusting if not done properly, and I can
understand how you might disgust your friends if you're just a
beginner.  I suggest you practice at home behind the garage until you
get the technique down.

Dear PFM: A member of our hunting party volunteered one freezing
morning to get up and build the morning campfire.  As he stepped out
onto the frosted ground barefoot and wearing only his longjohns, he
spotted a buck deer crossing a clearing up on the mountain.  Snatching
up his rifle, he charged off after the buck.  Several hours later he
returned to camp, dragging the deer.  His underwear was torn and
filthy.  Although his feet were half frozen, he danced around camp
laughing and joking and telling us about how he had tracked down the
deer.  Is this abnormal behavior for a hunter?  What is the proper
thing for us to do?

Concerned in Cody Dear Con: This is the most serious case I've heard
about in years.  Anyone who volunteers to get up and build the morning
campfire has to be crazy!

Encourage him to seek professional help, particularly if you notice any
other odd behavior on his part.

Dear PFM: A friend of mine recently stunned a large buck with his last
shell.  As Joe approached the fallen animal intending to finish it off
with his knife, the deer staggered to its feet and began wobbling up a
hill.

Joe grabbed the buck by the tail and tried to pull it back down.  The
deer, however, began not only to recover its senses but to pick up
speed, and soon it was fairly tearing up the hill with Joe hanging on
to its tail.  As they topped the hill, they practically trampled a
young hunter by the name of Rich, also from our camp, who had just come
up the hill from the far side.  At that moment, Joe let go of the
deer's tail, did a couple of somersaults, sat up, shook his head in
disgust, and thrust the knife back into its sheath.  "Dang," he said to
young Rich, "I'm just getting too old to run deer down with a knife.

From now on I'm going' to use a rifle!"  My question is, do you think
if we told young Rich the truth, it would help him recover, or should
we just let him continue to stare off into space?

Sincere in Cincinnati Dear Sin: This is an extremely dangerous
situation.  I have heard that story told at least five hundred times in
hunting camps, and the next person who tries to tell it will be sealed
in his sleeping bag and freeze-dried as a warning to others.

Dear PFM: I pulled this practical joke on my hunting companions.  After
they had gone to sleep and the fire was out, I filled their rubber
boots full of water.

The next morning they jumped out of bed to go duck hunting and their
boots were solid ice.  Ha ha!  Since mine were the only boots without
ice in them they knew who had pulled the joke on them.  Ha ha!  I will
be out of the hospital soon and want to know if I did anything wrong
when I pulled this joke on my former buddies.

jokester in jersey Dear Joke: You most certainly did do something
wrong!  Anyone who pulls a great practical joke like that should be
smart enough to sleep with his boots on.

Dear PFM: Some of the guys want you to settle an argument: Which is
proper to use with camp meals, paper or cloth napkins?  Also, should
dishes be passed left to right or right to left?  And finally, should
the salad fork or the cocktail fork be placed next to the dinner
fork?

Mannerly in Missoula Dear Man: Every time somebody sets up a new
hunting camp, these same questions arise, and I am sick and tired of
answering them!  For the last time: cloth, left to right, and salad!

Dear PFM: We recently discovered an abandoned hunting camp, complete
with a big old log cabin, which we have fixed up.  The hunters who
owned the cabin disappeared rather mysteriously, or so we are told by
some of the locals.

What bothers us, though, is we think the cabin is haunted.  In the
middle of the night we hear this strange moaning in the room.  Then a
quavering voice repeats over and over again, "Don't eat the stew!

Don't eat the stew!"  What do you think it means?

Fearful in Fargo Dear Fearful: Don't eat the stew, dummy.

Stone Soup Early one summer morning, Crazy Eddie Muldoon stopped by my
house and told me he was running away from home.  "Want to come along?"
 he asked.

I was out feeding the chickens at the time.  When you're eight years
old, feeding chickens can be complicated.  On this particular morning
it had been necessary for me to scratch a huge smiling face in the dirt
with a stick and then carefully pour wheat along the lines before
letting the chickens out of their house.  Crazy Eddie seemed unaware
that he was standing right next to a living, scratching, pecking work
of art, a smiling face composed entirely of live chickens.

"How come you're running away?"  I asked.

"My folks work me too hard," he said.  "I'm fed up."

Offhand, I could not remember ever seeing Eddie do any work for his
folks, but maybe they worked him nights, when I wasn't around.

"Mine too," I said.  "You see these chickens?  It must have taken me an
hour to feed them this morning."

Eddie tossed the hair back out of his eyes, still ignoring the chicken
face.  "Well, you want to run away?"

Lacking any other plans for the day, I said, "Okay, when do we
leave?"

"Right now," Eddie said.

"I can't go right now," I said.  "I've got to eat breakfast and clean
my room first."

"Well, hurry," Eddie said.

"I'll get my mom to make us a lunch while I'm cleaning my room," I
said.

"Don't do that," Eddie said, his freckles merging into an expression of
disgust.  "You can't have your mom make a lunch.  You have to sneak the
food.

Don't you know anything about running away?"

"This is my first time," I said.  "I'll try to sneak some food."

"Good," Eddie said.  "I brought along a gunnysack to carry our food and
stuff in.  Now hurry.  And don't get caught."

Don't get caught!  What a wonderful expression!  If there was one thing
Eddie knew how to do, it was to charge me up for a new adventure.

My mother was in the kitchen clearing away the breakfast dishes when I
rushed in.  I snatched a couple of pieces of cold toast and a strip of
bacon off a moving plate.

"You made it just in time, buster," she said.  "Land sakes, I never
knew anybody to take so long to feed chickens!  Now go clean up your
room.  Smells like something died in there!"

Actually, it had died on the highway, squashed flat by a big truck, but
this was no time to argue fine points.  I waited until Mom left the
kitchen, then sneaked as much food as I could Cram into a paper sack
and took off.

Crazy Eddie was waiting out behind the woodshed.  "That was fast," he
said.

"Yeah," I said.  "I didn't clean my room.  I figured what's the use
cleaning my room if I'm running away."

"I wondered about that," Eddie said.  "You're starting to catch on."

I put my paper bag of sneaked food into our pack.  Eddie swung the
gunnysack over his shoulder, staggered back a few steps, caught his
balance, and then started off in the direction of the creek.

"Where we running away to?"  I asked.

"Well, the first thing, we got to wade up the crick to the railroad
bridge."

"How come we got to wade up the crick?"

"'Cause that's the way it's done, don't you know that?  It's so the
sheriff and the posse can't follow your trail."

"Hold up a sec, Eddie," I said, my tennis shoes squeaking on the grass
as I slid to a stop.  "Tell me that again about the sheriff and the
posse."

"They always send the sheriff and the posse after run aways," he
said.

"But don't worry.  By the time they find out we're gone, we'll be so
far away they'll never catch us."

"How are we going to get so far away?"

"We'll hop a freight."

Amazing!  After all the wild and ridiculous ideas Crazy Eddie had come
up with that summer, he had finally hit on something sensible.  He went
on to explain how we would become hoboes and ride freights all over the
country and camp out under the stars.  After our food ran out, he said,
we would live off the land, picking wild berries and catching fish and
stuff.

"Which reminds me," he said.  "What kind of food did you sneak?"

"Let's see, I got half a box of cornflakes, a jar of milk and some
sugar to eat on the cornflakes, a can of pork 'n' beans, four pieces of
fried chicken, half a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, a bunch of carrots,
about a dozen sugar cookies, some raisins, three apples, and a package
of graham crackers."

I could tell from the expression on Eddie's face that he disapproved of
my selection.

"What'd you bring carrots for?"  he said.  "They're one of the reasons
I'm running away."

We waded up the creek toward the railroad bridge, the water reaching
only slightly above our ankles but still deep enough to throw the
sheriff and the posse off our trail.  Some of the families who lived
along the creek used it for a dump.  This was back in the days before
we had either ecology or environment, and creeks were often regarded as
good garbage collectors.  Eddie and I sorted through several dumps and
found an old kettle and a few other odds and ends to use on our
adventure.  We added the new finds to the gunnysack, under the weight
of which we took turns staggering along toward the railroad bridge.

Running away had turned out to be much harder work than I expected.

We reached the railroad bridge about noon and were surprised to see two
men sitting in the shade beneath it.  They had built a fire and were
roasting a chunk of baloney on the end of a sharpened stick.  Both of
them were gazing at the sizzling meat as if it were the most
fascinating thing they had ever seen.  Then they noticed us.

I whispered to Eddie, "What'll we do?"

"They're hoboes," he said out of the corner of his mouth.  "Real
hoboes.

Maybe they'll want to talk to us."

"Maybe they'll want to murder us," I said, lacking Crazy Eddie's
natural optimism.  I lowered the gunnysack to a sandbar, looked around
for an escape route, and began silently to rev my internal-combustion
engine.

One of the men had dirty white hair reaching nearly to his shoulders.

He beckoned to us with a long, bony finger.

"It's okay," Eddie said.  "Look.  They're smiling."

Well, that was a relief!  I hoisted the sack back onto my shoulder and
we slogged up the creek to the bridge.  "Howdy," Eddie said.

"Howdy," the white-haired man said.  "What you boys doin' out here?"

"We're running away," said Eddie.  "Gonna be hoboes and ride freight
trains around the country."

The man nodded, still smiling broadly.  "Runnin' away," he said.

"Gonna be hoboes.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe Wild Bill and me can show you a few
of the ropes.

This here's Wild Bill.  I'm Whitey.  Me and Bill been hoboin'a long
time, ain't that right, Bill?"

"Yep," Wild Bill said.  He was tall and gangly, with black hair and a
big mustache that curled up on the ends.  He didn't seem nearly so
friendly as Whitey.  "Whatcha got in the gunnysack, kid?"  he said to
me.

"Nothing much," I said.  "Just some food."

Wild Bill and Whitey both stared at the sack as though it were an
unexpected birthday present.

"What kind of food?"  Whitey said, leaning forward.

Pleased by their obvious interest, I reached in the sack and pulled out
the first thing I could find.

Wild Bill and Whitey seemed to sag.  "Carrots," Bill said.  "Cripes,
that's why I run away from home myself."

I tossed the carrots in the creek and began to haul out, one by one,
each item of our food supply.  With the appearance of each new course,
Bill and Whitey oohed and aahed as if they were watching a Fourth of
July fireworks display.  In addition to my sneaked food, Eddie had
sneaked a chunk of roast beef, a slice of fried ham, three wieners,
some cheese, an onion, several quart jars of fruit, a jar of dill
pickles, and a jar of canned rabbit.  As I arranged the food in neat
rows along the bank, Wild Bill and Whitey looked as if they were about
to cry.

"I told you there was a God," Whitey said to Bill.

Why Wild Bill might have had any doubt, I couldn't imagine.  Of course
there was a God.  Everybody knew that.  Where did Bill think babies
came from?

"Boys," Whitey said, " we was just fixin' a bite to eat."  He pointed
at the blackened chunk of baloney on the end of the stick.  "Care to
join us?"

"Naw," Eddie said.  "You don't have enough.  Pat and me will just eat
some of our own food."

One entire side of Wild Bill's face twitched.  "You don't seem to get
the pitcher, kid," he said, with possibly a hint of menace.

"Ha ha," Whitey laughed.  "You see, the first thing you got to learn
about hoboin' is that when a bunch of us hoboes gets together, we
always share whatever food anybody's brought.  It's only polite, and
that way the hoboes what don't have much food, they don't try to kill
... uh, don't get peeved at you for not mindin' your manners."

"Oh," Eddie said.  "in that case, we'll share our food.  We've only
been hoboin' for a few hours and didn't know."

"That's all right," Whitey said, as he and Bill each grabbed chicken
drumsticks and sucked them to the bare bone in a single slurp.  Then
they snatched up the rest of the chicken and repeated the
performance.

Whitey wiped his mouth on his sleeve and rolled his eyes, pretending
those old cold pieces of chicken were about the best thing he had ever
tasted in his life.

Eddie and I laughed appreciatively at their clowning.

Wild Bill now seemed to be in a better humor.  "Say, Whitey, maybe we
should make the boys some soup.  We can heat up this canned rabbit for
ourselves and they can eat the soup."

"Good idea," Whitey said.  "You boys like soup?"

"What kind of soup ?"

"Hobo soup.  It's made with a soup stone."

"I never heard of a soup stone," I said.  "What does it taste like?"

"Any flavor you like.  All us hoboes carry a soup stone.  When a hobo
ain't got nothin' else to eat, he gets out his soup stone and boils it
in a pot of water, with a little salt and pepper."

"Hey, yeah," Eddie said.  "We'd like to try that.  Where do you get
these soup stones, anyway?"

"Mexico," Bill said.  "They're kind of expensive, but you boys get to
hoboin' down that way, you want to pick up one.  You got the soup
stone, Whitey?"

"I left it down here by the crick," Whitey said.  "Ah, here it is."  He
bent over and picked up a gray, rounded stone.  You had to look at it
pretty carefully to see that it wasn't just an ordinary old gray rock,
but the way Whitey handled it, you could tell the stone was precious.

He placed it gently in the bottom of a tin can, scooped the can full of
water from the creek, and set it over the fire.

While our soup and their rabbit were warming over the fire, Whitey and
Wild Bill entertained us by eating our food in a comical manner.  Bill
slurped down a whole jar of peaches without even taking a breath, while
Whitey hacked off two thick slabs of bread and made himself a sandwich
that must have weighed nine pounds.  The rabbit had only heated to
about luke-warm before they devoured it.  Then they lay back burping
and groaning happily to watch Eddie and me eat our soup.

"How's the soup?"  Whitey asked.

I smiled and smacked my lips politely.  "Real good."

"I think it needs a little salt," Eddie said.

"Believe me, it tastes a whole lot better after you been hoboin'
awhile," Whitey said.

"You bet," Wild Bill said, massaging his belly.

"Say, you were going to teach us the ropes about hoboin'," Eddie
said.

"Oh, yeah, that's right," said Whitey.  "Well, it's pretty exciting,
particularly at night in the boxcars.  That's when the big hairy
spiders come out.  They're about this big."  He put his hairy hand down
claw-like on the ground and made a scrabbling motion with it toward
Eddie and me.  We jumped back, almost spilling our soup.  Wild Bill and
Whitey chuckled.

"Tell 'em about Hatchet Harvey and how he killed them two young fellas
to get their soup stone," Wild Bill said.

"Not while they're still eatin' their soup," Whitey said.  "I don't
want to spoil their appetites.  Youngsters need lots of nourishment.

But look here at this, boys."  He rolled up one of his dirt-caked
pantlegs and showed us a huge, horrible, appetite-spoiling sore on his
leg.  "Just look at this.  One of them big ol' hairy spiders did it to
me.  Oh, it hurt like blazes, and I was howlin' and screamin' and
tryin' to pull that ol' spider off, but he had his ugly jaws clamped on
to my leg right down into the meat and was shootin' his poison in
..."

A couple of hours later, Crazy Eddie and I were poking along the road
that led back to our homes, Eddie having decided it would be better to
postpone running away until after his birthday the following month.

"You think that was true, what Whitey told about the spider?"  he
asked.

"Naw," I said.  "He was just tryin' to scare us."

"That's what I thought, too," Eddie said.  "Both Wild Bill and Whitey
must be pretty dumb to think we'd believe those stories."

"Of course they're dumb," I said.  "Why else would they let us trade
them the rest of our food for their soup stone?"

Gunrunning Hubert, a young married fellow of my acquaintance, confided
in me the other day that he and his wife had just had their first
quarrel.

"Oh, yeah?"  I said.  "What about?"

"About practically nothing," he said.  "I've been needing a new rifle,
so I went out and bought one and took it home to show Joyce.  Well, if
she didn't hit the ceiling!  Mad?  Whew!  Can you believe it?"

"That was dumb, Hubie," I said.  "Risking your marriage over a new
gun.

I thought you were smarter than that."

"I shouldn't have bought the gun, huh?"

"Of course you should have bought the gun.  You needed it, didn't
you?

You just shouldn't have shown the gun to Joyce.  Have a little
consideration for her feelings, Hubie.  Wives have feelings too, you
know.  The only decent thing for a husband to do is to sneak the new
gun into the house.  Learn to sneak, man, learn to sneak."

"Really?"  Hubie said.  "I didn't know."

During my talk with Hubie, it occurred to me that there are probably
many other young married hunters out there who are equally in need of
marriage counseling.  In the interest of averting as much marital
discord in the hunting fraternity as possible, I have put together the
following primer on strategies and tactics for bringing home a new
gun.

First of all, let us consider the psychology of the young wife as it
pertains to her husband's guns.  It is important to note that the first
gun the husband brings home is greeted with considerable enthusiasm by
the spouse, and she may even brag about it to her friends.  "Fred
bought a new gun the other day to hunt elk and doves and things with,"
she will say.  Of course, Fred must then explain that the gun is
limited to hunting elk or deer.  For hunting doves he needs a shotgun,
he tells her.

"Why can't you hunt doves with the same gun?"  she says.  "I really
think you could if you wanted to."

Fred then explains the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, and
his wife finally agrees that he probably does need another gun.

Now that's the typical situation the young hunter faces.  He starts
with a base of two guns, his wife granting him the benefit of the doubt
that two guns are actually needed.  After the second gun, the argument
that he needs a new gun will be dismissed by the wife with an upward
roll of the eyeballs and a big sigh.  We are talking only third gun
here, remember, nothing more.  If you're just married, upward-rolling
eyeballs and big sighs may seem formidable obstacles, but they're
really not that serious.  Go buy the gun and bring it home.  The
eyeball-rolling and big sighs will let up after a few days.  Now comes
the biggie--the Fourth Gun!

With the mere mention of your need for a fourth gun, the wife skips
right over the eyeball-rolling and big sighs and goes directly to a
recital of your deficiencies of character, weird masculine quirks, and
all sins committed to date.  She will bring up such matters as saving
for the baby's college education, the fact that she is still wearing
the clothes her parents bought her in high school, the threatening note
from the electric company, etc. "And you want another gun!"  she will
finish, the sarcasm flickering about the room like sheet lightning.

The fourth gun is the tough one, and in the face of this spousal
assault, there is always the temptation to sneak the fourth gun.

That's a mistake.

Your wife's knowing you purchased a fourth gun is essential to further
development of your gun collection.  Here's why.  After you bring the
gun home and show it to your wife, she will shake her head and say, "I
don't know why you need all those guns."  Note that she doesn't say
"four guns" but rather the vague and general "all those guns."

Henceforth, she will think of your gun collection not in terms of
specific numbers but as a single collective entity--all!

To thoroughly grasp this important concept, suppose your wife is
dusting the gun case.  "Him and all those guns," she might say to
herself, possibly with a very tiny tolerant smile.  What she fails to
notice is that there are now five guns in the case!  Once the
psychological barrier of the fourth gun is crossed, the gun collection
can be expanded indefinitely without the wife's noticing, provided the
husband uses some common sense and doesn't add too many guns at once.

Two or three a year is about right, spaced at decent intervals.

There is one pitfall in this strategy--the gun cabinet itself.

Although the wife will never bother to count the guns, she will notice
that there are three empty slots in the cabinet.  Therefore, you must
make sure that there are always three empty slots in the cabinet, even
as your collection expands from four to sixty guns.  If you plan on
enlarging your collection, buy a gun cabinet that can be expanded by
adding new sections, so that there are always three or more empty
slots.  It works.  My wife of thirty years told me the other day that
she must be slowing down with age.  "When we were first married," she
said, "I could dust that gun cabinet of yours in ten seconds and now it
takes me nearly half an hour."

But how do you get all those guns into the house without your wife's
knowing, you ask.  Actually, it is all right if every few years you
simply walk right into the house and say, "Look, dear, I bought a new
gun."

"Neato," she will say.  "I'm ecstatic.  Now tell me, what did you want
to buy another gun for when you already have all those guns?  I'll bet
you haven't shot most of them in the past five years."

Shot them?  Yes, a wife will actually say that.  She will not be able
to comprehend that you needed the gun because you needed it.  She will
not understand that you need the guns just to be there, to be your
guns, to be looked at and fondled from time to time.  She will not be
able to fathom that you need the guns even though you don't need to
shoot them.  Tell her a gun collection is like wilderness.  Even though
we don't use all of it all the time, we need to know it's there.

Probably it won't do any good to tell her that, but it's worth a try.

Stating the simple truth often works in explaining an occasional gun
purchase to your wife.  But why take unnecessary risks?  Go with your
best lie and get the gun stashed in your expandable gun cabinet as
quickly as possible.

Oddly enough, there are few really good lies for explaining the
purchase of a new gun.  There's the classic "A Fantastic Bargain," of
course, in which you tell your wife that the gun you just paid $300 for
was on sale for $27.50.

If her eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, you mention that three men in
white coats showed up at the sport shop and led the manager away before
he could slash the prices on the rest of the guns.  Indeed, you say,
you could have picked up five more brand-new guns for a total of
eighty-five dollars, but you didn't want to take excessive advantage of
a crazy person.

The "Play on Her Sympathy Ploy" works well on young, inexperienced
wives.

It goes something like this: Rush into the house wiping tears of joy
from your cheeks.  Then cry out, "Look, Martha, look!  A man at the
garage sold me this rifle.  It's identical to the one my grandfather
gave me on his deathbed.

Gramps said to me, 'Boy, I'm givin' you ol' Betsy here, because every
time you shoot it, you will remember all the good times you and me had
together."  Oh, how I hated to sell that rifle to pay for Momma's
operation!  But now I got one just like it!  Or maybe it's even the
same rifle!  Do you think it might actually be the same rifle,
Martha?"

Warning!  Don't ever try the Sympathy Ploy on a wife you've been
married to for longer than five years, unless you want to see a woman
laugh herself sick.  It's a disgusting spectacle, I can tell you.

The "Fantastic Investment" lie will work on occasion, provided you lay
the groundwork carefully in advance.  "That ol' Harvey Schmartz is a
shrewd one," you say.  "He bought this .48-caliber Thumblicker for six
hundred dollars as an investment.  Three weeks later he sold it for
eighty-seven thousand dollars!  Boy, I wish I could lay my hands on
a.48-caliber Thumblicker.  We'd sell it when I retire and buy us a
condo in Aspen and tour Europe with the change."

After you've used up all your best lies, you are left with only one
option.  You must finally screw up your courage, square your jaw, and
make up your mind that you are going to do what you probably should
have done all along--sneak the new guns into the house.

Here are some proven techniques for gun-sneaking: The Surprise
Party--You arrive home and tell your wife that you have to go to a
surprise birthday party for one of your hunting partners and picked up
the special cake on your way home.  "Oh, how cute!"  she will exclaim. 
"A birthday cake shaped like a rifle!"  This is also known as "The
Gun-in-Cake Trick."

The Lamp--You buy a lampshade and attach it to the muzzle of a new
rifle.

"Look, sweetheart," you say to your spouse.  "I bought a new lamp for
the living room."  She gags.  "Not for my living room," she growls.

"Take it to your den and don't ever let me see that monstrosity
again!"

A variation on this ploy is to tie a picture wire to the new rifle and
call it a wall hanging.

The Loan--A hunting friend shows up at your door and hands you your new
gun.  "Thanks for loaning me one of your rifles," he says.  "I'll do
the same for you sometime.  Make sure your accomplice can be trusted,
though.  I tried "The Loan" with Retch Sweeney one time and he didn't
show up at my door with the rifle for three weeks, on the day after
hunting season, as I recall.

Spare Parts--Disassemble the gun and carry it home in a shopping bag.

Mention casually to the Mrs. that you picked up some odds and ends
from the junk bin down at Joe's Gunsmithing.  Works like a charm!  (By
the way, does anyone know where the little wishbone-shaped gizmo goes
in an automatic shotgun?) The Wager It's no secret that everyone I go
fishing with catches more fish than I do.  (I have tried to keep it a
secret, but that's impossible when you fish only with a bunch of
blabbermouths.) The true reason I catch so few fish is that I am a
conservationist.  My fishing partners refuse to accept this true
reason.  They say the actual true reason I catch so few fish is my
lousy casting, which they compare to the technique of an old woman
beating out a rug with a broomstick.  Little do they know how difficult
it is for a person possessed of my mastery of fishing to feign lousy
casting technique in the interest of conservation.

I am reminded of a fishing trip I went on with Dave Lisaius and Jim
Abrahamson, which isn't too difficult to be reminded of, since it took
place just last week.  Dave and Jim may leap to the conclusion that I
am reminded of the trip merely in retaliation for the unmerciful
ridicule they directed at my apparent inability to catch more than two
fish a day.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I bring up the
fishing trip only for the purpose of illustrating certain ethical,
psychological, sociological, and economic concepts.  So there!

I will not mention the name of the lake here, because then thousands of
anglers would descend upon it, thereby enriching the resort owner,
whose wife, joining in the fun over my take of two measly fish a day,
told me her secret to catching the really big ones was to bait the hook
with a piece of Bit-O-Honey candy bar.  Ha!  She probably thought I was
dumb enough to fall for that one, particularly since I was fishing with
two weird guys like Jim and Dave.  If there's one thing I'm not, it's
gullible, no matter what my mother goes around telling people.

On the morning of the third day of the trip, I arose in my typically
responsible manner and went outside to chop kindling and firewood to
build a fire in the stove of our rustic cabin.  As soon as the fire was
crackling, the coffee perking, and the bacon sputtering, I detected for
the first time in eight hours a pause in the thunderous din that Jim
modestly refers to as his "snoring."  (Upon hearing his first snore
from the loft above me, I mistook it for the sound of huge claws
ripping shingles from the roof.  I was much relieved to learn it was
only Jim's snores ripping shingles from the roof.) Jim soon descended
the stairs from the loft, scratching and grumbling, and asking what's
for breakfast.  He quickly wolfed down a slab of huckleberry pie,
dribbling the juice down the front of his long underwear until he
looked like a victim in a horror movie.  (This mention of his uncouth
eating habits serves only to illustrate a sociological concept.  It in
no way relates to the abominable delight Jim displayed over my failing
to catch more than two fish a day.) The spectacle of Dave's arising in
the morning provokes such queasiness among even hardened observers that
my editor has asked me to delete the description of it in the interest
of good taste.  I will mention, however, that Dave claims his new
sleeping bag came equipped with a thermostatically controlled zipper
that allows him to emerge from the bag only after the surrounding
temperature reaches seventy-two degrees.

It looks like an ordinary zipper to me, but every time I mention it,
Dave launches into a long speech about the marvels of technological
miniaturization.  To test the zipper, I tape-recorded the sounds of a
fire crackling, bacon frying, and coffee perking.  Although I haven't
tried out the recording yet, I am reasonably sure it will trip the
zipper on Dave's sleeping bag on even a sub-zero morning, the marvels
of technological miniaturization not withstanding.

Dave was in his usual ghastly good humor.  "Boy, are my arms ever sore
from fighting big rainbows all day," he said to me.  "You're sure lucky
you don't have to put up with this kind of suffering."  Then he began
emitting the sharp little barks that after some study I have identified
as his laugh.

"Hmmmph!"  I shot back.  (My well-known facility for repartee seldom
peaks before noon.) Jim began talking with his mouth full.  "You know
what?  I think we should do something to make today's fishing more
interesting for ol' Pat.  It can't be much fun for him, sitting in the
boat all day watching us catch fish."  Here he erupted into an
explosion of mirth that splattered two walls of the cabin with chewed
morsels of food.  I was glad he had previously finished with the
huckleberry pie.

Otherwise, future renters of the cabin might easily have supposed an ax
murder had taken place there.

"Good idea," said Dave, trying to scratch between his shoulder blades
with a table fork.  "I think we should work out a little wager, where
the guy who catches the fewest fish pays each of the other two guys one
dollar for each fish they catch more than he does."

"I like it!"  cried Jim.  "But why not make it five dollars per
fish?"

I shook my head in disgust.  "That's a terrible idea," I said.  "Do you
know what you are suggesting?"

"Yup," said Dave.  "A way to buy a new graphite rod I've been looking
at."

"Not at all," I said.  "You are suggesting that we reduce the pure
sport of fishing to nothing more than a stupid, mundane game upon which
to bet, like golf!  Besides, the whole idea violates my conservation
ethic."

The two of them sat there with egg on their faces.  How they had
managed that with hard-boiled eggs, I don't know.

"Yeah, you're right," said Jim.  "I certainly wouldn't want to do
anything that contributes to fishing gluttony."

"Me neither," said Dave.  "So suppose we bet one dollar on catching the
first fish and five dollars on the biggest fish."

"Great!"  said Jim.  "That will keep Pat's interest up, and he won't
pout all day.  But why don't we make it seven-fifty for the biggest
fish?"

"We're not having any ridiculous bets like seven-fifty," Dave said
sternly.  "We'll make it ten for the first fish and another ten for the
biggest fish."

"Okay, you're on," I said.

Dave and Jim clapped their hands in glee, putting me in mind of
preschoolers who have just been told to expect a surprise.  (Once
again, I mention these peculiar idiosyncrasies of my companions only
for the purpose of illustrating certain psychological concepts and not
because of their disgusting merriment over my catching only two fish a
day.) After breakfast, I washed the dishes and tidied up the cabin,
while Jim and Dave studied the fishing regulations pamphlet.  They did
much better than on the previous day, and I only had to help them sound
out four or five of the longer words.  As soon as the lesson was over,
we headed for the lake.

I had promised the guys that they could back the trailer into the water
and launch the boat themselves.

"Now don't tell us anything," Dave said.  "We want to do it all by
ourselves."

I didn't say a word, and presently we were in the boat, churning our
way up the lake.

"Seems to be a bit sluggish," Dave said.

"Yeah," said Jim.

"Want me to tell you why?"  I asked.

"Oh, all right," Dave said.

"You're supposed to take the boat off the trailer."

Both Dave and Jim are banking executives, and I suppose they can't be
expected to know about boats too.  Still, I could not help wondering
whether there might not be an inverse ratio between intelligence and
blabbing all over town about how many more fish they catch than I do.

When my competitors weren't watching, I baited up with my new miracle
fish-attractor.  After an hour without a single strike, it became clear
to me that the new miracle fish attractor was a total flop.

Fortunately, Dave and Jim hadn't got a nibble yet either, so I was
still in the running for first fish.

"Either of you guys want the rest of this?"  I asked amiably,
indicating the new miracle fish-attractor.

"Sure," said Jim.  "I love Bit-O-Honey candy bars.  How come you
brought it along if you don't want to eat it?"

I gave him my inscrutable smile and tied on a pink lure.

A few minutes later my rod whipped down and the reel began singing like
a goosed soprano.  I boated THE FIRST FISH OF THE DAY.

Jim and Dave turned glum.  I don't know whether it was because they
thought I had already won the wagers for both the first fish and the
biggest fish or because they were worried that my dancing an Irish jig
would capsize the boat.

Several times during the day, both Dave and Jim hooked fish that might
have been larger than mine, but when I attempted to net the thrashing
lunkers for them, the fish managed to wrap the line around the net
handle and get away.  Naturally, the lads both screamed at me on these
occasions, even though I explained that it is not unusual for an
angler, caught up in the excitement of netting one of his competitors'
fish, to dip the net in the water handle-first.

Toward the end of the day I could tell that Dave and Jim were getting
nervous about the wager, when they began discussing its terms.

"Let's see, the largest fish was seven-fifty, wasn't it?"  Jim said.

"I recall five," Dave said.  "Remember, you said let's make it
seven-fifty and I said, no, five is enough."

"I remember ten bucks for the biggest fish," I said.  "And furthermore,
when we were discussing the bet, I made a tape recording of our
conversation."

"You did?"  Dave said.  "Why, that's the most dishonorable thing I've
ever heard of!"

"Right," I said, taking the recorder from my pocket.  "Now let me play
back to you the exact terms of the bet."

They listened to the recording for a few seconds, becoming increasingly
puzzled.

"Sounds to me like a fire crackling, bacon frying, and coffee perking,"
Dave said.

"Wrong recording," I said.

As it turned out, the recorder had malfunctioned during the discussion
over the terms of the bet, and I had to settle for $7.50 for FIRST
FISH, plus another $7.50 for *****LARGEST FISH*****, although I would
be loath to call attention to the fact that my first fish was also
largest of the day.

Dave and Jim were so upset over my winning the wager that they could
scarcely wait to get back to town and begin regaling our mutual
acquaintances with comic descriptions of my catching only two fish a
day.  Which reminds me of some of their other bad habits, strange
behavior, and loathsome table manners.  One night when I was pleading
with them not to go carousing in sleazy bars ...

Letters from Camp I have recently come into possession of some letters
from camp.  They were written by my next-door neighbor, Fenton
Quagmire, during the course of a hunting trip he, Retch Sweeney, and I
took to Montana a few years ago.  The letters, written to Quagmire's
wife, Marge, are of interest for a number of reasons.  First of all,
they show a childish and peevish man growing quickly to maturity as a
result of enduring the hardships of his first hunting trip.

Second, the letters were introduced as evidence in two lawsuits, one a
divorce case that Mrs. Quagmire brought against her husband, and the
other an alienation-of-affection case she filed against Sweeney and
me.

I am happy to report that Marge eventually regained possession of her
senses and withdrew both suits.  In fact, it was she who gave me the
letters, along with some blunt advice as to their disposition.  I
thought the advice a bit extreme, if not unladylike, and have chosen
instead to publish the letters here in the hope that they will show the
therapeutic effects of a simple hunting trip.

Saturday, 12:30 p.m. My Dearest Darling Dumpling, Am writing these
letters to you in case I don't survive this trip with the two madmen
and so you will have something to remember me by.

Have stopped briefly in middle of a godforsaken prairie here in
Montana.

The two madmen, McManus and Sweeney, have got out of car to settle
dispute between them.  Sweeney claims Indians used to attract buffalo
within range of arrows by waving white flag.  McManus argues trick was
used on antelope.

Small herd of buffalo near highway, and McManus is standing out there
laughing uproariously, as is his fashion, while Sweeney waves T-shirt
at buffalo.

Why I ever let them talk me into this trip I'll never know.  To think
that I'll be in their company for another whole week is almost more
than I can stand.  Must admit, however, that so far trip has exceeded
my wildest expectations, which is to say that I am still alive and
unmaimed and if I ever ge Saturday, 3:30 p.m. Dearest Darling Dumpling,
Back again.  McManus peeved and even more sarcastic than usual, if you
can imagine.  Asked him straight out, would he rather cling with his
fingers to rain gutter of station wagon for few hundred yards at high
speed or have both vehicle and himself wiped out in buffalo stampede?

just fortunate for all concerned I had presence of mind to throw wagon
in gear and stomp on accelerator.  You'd have been proud of
HubbyWubby!

As yet no sign of Sweeney.  Have told McManus to calm down, not to
worry.

When Sweeney went over top of hill he had good lead on buffalo.  Don't
know how interested you are in buffalo lore, but their curiosity is
aroused by waving white T-shirt.

Your Hubby-Wubby Saturday, 5:30 p.m. Dearest Darling Dumpling, Back
again.

Have left prairie behind and moving up into mountains.  Scenery
absolutely splendid.  Peaks frosted with snow, foothills ablaze with
colon-chokecherry, birch, alder, quaking aspen.  Which reminds
me--Sweeney back with us again and none the worse for wear.  Looks
better for having shed a few pounds.  Managed to run in a wide circle
and, as I anticipated, we intercepted him as he crossed highway,
although not until second time around.

Buffalo exhausted.  Sweeney recuperating fast, to judge from his
determined but feeble attempts to reach up and squeeze my throat.

Sweeney great clown!

Such crude humor, tho, not to my taste.

Should make camp soon.  Will try to add note to this letter before we
hit goosedown.

Love, Hubby-Wubby Saturday, 9:30 p.m. Dearest Darling Dumpling, At my
wits' end!  Oh, how I long to be curled up beside you under our
dual-control queen-sized electric blanket!  These imbeciles!  These
morons!

Cannot believe what they perpetrated against me.  One of the fatheads
forgot his sleeping bag!  Neither, of course, will admit to being the
villain.

Even tried to make out it was I who forgot my sleeping bag.  What they
have suggested--no, in fact demanded--is we zip the two sleeping bags
together and all three of us sleep in the communal bag!  Can you
imagine such a disgusting thing?  Have told them I will sit outside
tent all night by fire, rather than submit to gross indignity of such
arrangement.

Your Hubby-Wubby, Fenton Sunday, 10:00 a.m. My Dearest Darling
Dumpling, Place where we're camped very wild, apparently inhabited by
sizable population of grizzly bears.  Last night one started howling
short distance from camp.

McManus identified the hideous wailing as that of grizzly.  Still
shudder when I think of it.  Am exhausted, having got almost no sleep
last night.  Have you ever slept in a double sleeping bag with two men
who snore?

No, I suppose not.  Most uncomfortable and distasteful, particularly
when you are in the middle and other two have been chased by buffalo
earlier in day.

Food terrible.  McManus whipped up his infamous Watchagot stew for
supper last night.  We ate it in pitch darkness, the only redeeming
feature of meal.

Coffee tasted like boiled socks, biscuits had to be cracked with
hatchet.

Whipped topping McManus sprayed on instant dessert turned out to be my
shaving cream.  Ate only the shaving cream since didn't trust
dessert.

Must run now.

Your ever-loving Hubby-Wubby Sunday, 7:00 p.m. Dearest Darling
Dumpling, Today uneventful.  Went on first hunt.  Sport highly over
rated.

Meatheads took me out to a cleared area and told me to watch it while
they circled around mountain and "drove" toward me.  Nothing more
boring than watching a clearing, unless perhaps it is listening to
McManus reminisce interminably about his childhood.

Finally, out of boredom and for joke, made huge grizzly track in soft
dirt, left my hat on ground a few yards away, then went back to camp
and caught some shut-eye in communal sleeping bag.  Must have been
exhausted because didn't wake up until heard McManus & Sweeney talking
outside tent.

You would have laughed!

"Poor Quagmire," McManus said.

"Yep," said Sweeney, "he was nice little guy."

"You think a grizzly got him?"

"Maybe.  Never seen a grizzly track that big before--eighteen claws!"

"We're going to have to tell his wife what happened to him.  Now don't
let me forget!"

"I won't.  She's probably going to be upset."

"Probably.  You know what this means, don't you?"

"Yeah.  We can each have our own sleeping bag tonight."

Fearing they would turn maudlin, I leaped out of tent and yelled,
"Surprise!  I'm alive!"

"We thought you got et," was all Sweeney could bring himself to say.

McManus struggled to control his emotions.  "Anyway, tonight's my turn
to sleep in the middle," he said.

Sort of moved by their reaction.  Hadn't realized they liked me.

Love, Hubby-Wubby Monday Dearest Darling Dumpling, McManus & Sweeney
teaching me all kinds of good stuff about hunting and camping.  Let me
build campfire this morning.  Rather amusing, since both wanted to
build it.  After brief argument, McManus said, "Heck, why don't we let
Quagmire build the fire?  It's not fair for you and me to hog all the
fun."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Sweeney said.  "Fenton, you get to build
the fire."

Building campfire isn't as easy as you might think.  First had to knock
all the snow off the firewood.  Nearly froze to death before I got fire
going.

But it was worth it.  McManus & Sweeney came out of tent later and
critiqued fire.

"Not a bad fire for your first time," McManus told me.

"Yeah, you done good, Fent," Sweeney said.

"All he needs is just a bit more practice to get his fire-building
technique perfected, don't you think, Retch?"

"Maybe we should let him get up and build the fire every morning,"
Sweeney said.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right."

Then they made me the official fire-builder!  It's quite an honor.

Know it sounds crazy, but can't tell you how pleased I am that they
would entrust me with this important chore.  They even talk about
letting me make the coffee in the morning!  Which reminds me, Sweeney
found the sock he lost.

Coffee has since improved.

Now for the best news.  Sweeney shot nice buck today; and I nearly shot
one!  Herd of deer came right by me.  Slipped rifle safety off and
aimed just behind shoulder of big buck, held breath, and slowly
squeezed trigger, just like McManus showed me.  He watched through
binoculars and said later I did everything just right!  Said he is
really pleased the way I handled myself.

"Starting tomorrow, Fenton," he told me, "you get to put shells in your
rifle."  Can hardly wait!

Love, Hubby Thursday Dear Dumpling, You're not going to believe this,
but I'm now official camp cook.  Pat and Retch say they've never seen
anybody catch on to hunting camp routine so fast.

Turns out that I'm a surprisingly good shot.  Got two grouse today with
my rifle and cooked them for supper.  Wrapped them in aluminum foil
with a bit of bacon and baked them in coals.  Pat said they were almost
as good as his Whatchagot stew, which is great compliment from him.

For breakfast tomorrow I'm cooking pancakes and venison steaks.  Pat
and Retch have offered to do dishes, clean my rifle, and oil my
boots.

Love, Hub Friday Dear Dump: Good ol' Pat got his deer today, a
four-point mulie.  Even asked my advice, if you can imagine that.  Told
him I figured deer would be bedded down on the leeward side of the
ridge because a sharp wind blowing all morning.

Told him I'd swing around on the downwind side and see if I couldn't
flush deer out onto open ground and that if he was in a good position
to cover the ridge he'd probably get a shot.  That's just the way it
worked out, too.

Well, I'd better turn in.  Exhausted and exhilarated.

Love, Fenton Saturday Dear Marge, Got my deer!

To tell truth, I hadn't known what this sport all about until now.

My old buddies Pat and Retch showed me how to dress out deer.  Did it
all by myself!  Took me quite a while, but Pat and Retch said to take
my time and do it right and not to worry about the camp chores because
they were tired of me hogging all the fun and from now on they get to
share them with me.

Best wishes, Fenton Sunday Marge, The three of us talked it over and
decided we won't be home for another week.  Driving into town tomorrow
for elk tags.  Will mail these letters to you then.  Don't worry if you
don't hear from me for a while.

Cordially, Fenton Quagmire Sweet Sweet Sixteen I had been sixteen years
old for a long time now.

Sixteen was an age I felt comfortable with.  It was an age filled with
exuberance, expectation, and surprise, with just a dash or two of
madness.  As is the nature of youth, I thought I would remain sixteen
forever.

Vern and I had been fishing the river above the falls that day, and I
remember snagging my favorite fly near the far bank and wading through
the icy water up to my armpits to retrieve it.  The force of the
current lifted my feet and caused them to skitter dangerously over the
rocks on the bottom, but I got the fly back and returned safely across
the river, and Vern and I laughed because I hadn't been swept over the
falls and drowned.  Then we ate lunch, which was very soggy because I
had been carrying it in the back of my fishing vest when I waded the
river.  We had to wring out the sandwiches before we could eat them.

We cooked some of our smaller fish in a foil pan over a driftwood fire,
seasoning them with salt, pepper, a whole cube of butter, and ashes and
sand, and we ate the fish crisp and hot with our fingers.  For dessert
we ate handfuls of plump, sun-warmed huckleberries, the big fat reddish
ones that grow on the tall bushes in the shade by the water.

For dinner music, the river and the falls performed a symphony in the
background, Mozart I think.  Then it was time to climb the steep,
winding trail up to the car on the logging road and head home.

"You know," I said to Vern, "I think I'll stay sixteen forever."  He
gave me a funny look and started up the trail.

When I got home that evening and squished into the kitchen, the family
was gathered around the dining room table, one end of which was piled
high with decoratively wrapped packages.  "Surprise!  Happy birthday!

Happy birthday!  Yea!"

"My birthday?  Again, so soon?  I thought we just celebrated it.  Well,
no matter, I do love my birthday.  This looks a bit more festive than
usual, though."

"Of course," my wife Bun said.  "It's not every birthday you turn
fifty."

"I suppose not," I said.  "Hey, this is great.  What a surprise!  Let
me at those presents.  This one looks about the size of a fly reel.

Now who could have guessed I needed a new ... what did you say?"

"I said it's not every birthday you turn fifty."

"What is this, some kind of cruel joke?  You know I'm not fif-fif ...

anywhere near that old.  That's the age of old geezers, like
grandfathers."

"Ha!"  Bun said.  "And just who do you think these four short people
sitting here with the party hats on are?"

"My grandchildren?  You're kidding!  I thought they belonged to the
neighbors."

"You have to start paying more attention," Bun said.  "You're not
sixteen anymore."

"I'm not?  You mean this isn't a hoax?  I really am fif-fif-fif ...?"

"That's right, fifty--the big five-O."

It was a shock.  I suppose if I had aged gradually, it wouldn't have
hit me so hard, old age.  Say if, for example, the previous year I had
been forty-nine and the year before that, forty-eight, and so on, I
could have accepted such a dismal fate as inevitable.  But it hadn't
happened gradually.

I jumped right from sixteen to fif-fif ... to half-a-century old.  The
jolt of it staggered me.

After the party, I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

Staring back at me was a person with gray hair, skin lined and blotched
by the sun, a white mustache, a grizzled beard, and two chins, both of
which began to quiver.  So, it was true.  This was not the face of a
sixteen-year-old.  This was a face that had been kicking around for
half a century, the face of an old geezer--a grandfather!

Instantly my joints began to ache, my back to stiffen, my shoulders to
slump.  I felt my wrist--weak, fluttering pulse.  I could practically
hear the old ticker chugging and wheezing like a worn-out bilge pump.

And to think, just a few hours before I had waded a cold river up to my
armpits to retrieve an eighty-five-cent fly!  Of course, I had still
been only sixteen then.

Something like that could kill an old geezer.  I felt tired and weak
and went into the den to take a nap, the first I'd taken since the age
of three.  From now on, I'd need lots of naps.

The next morning I got up feeling my age, which was old.  I puttered
about the house for a while.

"What in heaven's name are you doing?"  Bun asked.

"Puttering about the house.  Why?"

"Well, stop it!  You don't know anything about puttering, and it's
getting on my nerves."

"Got any stale bread around?  Maybe I'll go sit on a park bench and
feed the pigeons.  It shouldn't be too hard to learn how to sit on a
park bench and feed the pigeons.  Where's the park, anyway?"

"We don't have a park.  Go sit on the porch and feed the sparrows."

"I'd better put on a sweater.  I wouldn't want to catch a chill."

While I was sitting on the porch, Raymond, a neighborhood kid, rode up
on his bicycle.  He is a shaggy, rumpled person, with more knees and
elbows than average, or so it seems, possibly because his bike is much
too small for him.

"Hey, whatcha doin' sittin' out here all by yourself on the porch?  You
look like some broken-down old geezer, ya know?"

"Beat it, Raymond.  I don't need any cheering up."

"C'mon, I was just puttin'ya on.  I heard ya turned fifty yesterday.

So what!  It ain't the end of the world."

"What do you know about it?"

"You can still have some fun.  Like you could, uh, uh, no, I guess you
couldn't do that, but you could, uh, uh, how about feed pigeons in the
park?

I admit it don't sound like a real blast to me, but lots of old guys
seem to dig it."

"I've already thought about the pigeons, but there's no park around
here.

What do you want, Raymond?  I know you didn't just come over here to
shoot the breeze with a geeze."

"Well, now that you mention it, I thought you might advance me a couple
bucks on mowin' your lawn."

"Raymond, you already owe me mowed lawns up into 1989.  Say, what do
you do when you're not speculating on lawn futures?"

"Ah, nothin' much.  I hang around.  What's to do?"

I couldn't believe he had said such a terrible thing.  He's only
sixteen.

When I was sixteen, which happened to be the day before, I had
1,589,643 things to do, not even counting the things I didn't want to
do.  I was only up to 5,854 on the list, too, when I so suddenly got
old.

"Raymond, don't talk like that.  There are a million things to do.

Actually, there are well over a million and a half things to do."

"All you old guys talk like that.  Give me some examples."

"Well, you could take up fishing, for instance."

"That's one.  What else?"

"What else!  What do you mean, what else?  Fishing is at least 800,000
things to do, all by itself.  After you take up fishing, there's never
again a moment when you don't have something to do.  Take organizing a
tackle box, for instance.  You can spend your entire life just
organizing a tackle box."

"You organize your tackle box a lot?"

"No, I've never organized it, but the point is it's always there
waiting for me to organize it when I don't have something better to
do.

When you're a fisherman, though, there's always something better to do
than organize a tackle box.  Of course, you never have just one tackle
box waiting to be organized.  You have a tackle box for panfish, one
for trout, one for bass, a couple for saltwater fishing, and so on.

Over the years the contents of the various tackle boxes all get mixed
up together.  That's one of the things that make fishing such a
wonderful challenge."

I then went on to tell Raymond about my long, unrequited love for
fly-fishing and all the hundreds of different flies I still wanted to
tie, as soon as I took lessons in the basics of fly-tying, and the fly
rods I wanted to build as soon as I learned how, and all the famous and
exotic lakes and streams I wanted to fish as soon as I accumulated the
necessary cash.  I told him about the purity of fly-fishing--the thrill
of going up against wily trout with nothing more than a slender rod,
some line, a tapered leader and a few flies, and that's all, except for
the canoe, float tube, rubber raft, fly books, landing net, hip boots,
boot waders, stocking waders, vest, extra rods, extra reels,
thirty-seven different lines, salves, oils and ointments, hook
sharpeners, wading staffs, and the ten dozen or so other essentials.

"Geez," Raymond said.  "Do you have all the stuff you need for
fly-fishing?"

"No, nobody has all the stuff you need for fly-fishing.  It would
require a warehouse to store just half of it.  You see, no matter how
much stuff you have for fishing, there's always more stuff you need.

There's always new great stuff that you absolutely have to have, even
though you didn't know you needed it before you saw it in a catalog.

Fishermen spend hours poring over catalogs to find new stuff they can't
possibly get along without.  It's wonderful!"

"Yeah, fishing does sound like it might be fun."

"Fun?  Raymond, I can't begin to tell you how fantastic it is--an
evening hatch coming on, the light soft and mellow on the water, and
you lay a dry fly soft as thistledown right next to the swirl of a big
trout.  Hey, let's go fishing right now!  C'mon out to my warehouse and
I'll get you outfitted."

"All right!"

"Listen, Raymond, you're going to love fishing.  Never again in your
whole life will you have nothing to do.  I'll show you all the
techniques, too--how to cast and tie knots and everything, even how to
wring out sandwiches."

"Wait a minute," Raymond said.  "I thought you had gotten too old for
this sort of thing."

"Where did you get that idea?  Sixteen isn't old, Raymond."

Down and Way Out in Brazil He was an old man who fished alone in a
skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without
taking a fish.--Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea Ever since
the distant time of my youth and early manhood, Hemingway has been my
hero, as a writer and as a hunter and fisherman.  I particularly envied
Hem's capacity for finding far-off and exotic places to fish, and I
have tried to emulate him.  For example, when Delroy Heap offered to
let me fish the beaver ponds on his farm, I jumped at the chance.  An
opportunity like that may come only once in a lifetime, particularly
when Delroy Heap happens to own the farm.  If you knew Heap, you would
understand, but you probably don't know him, which is no reason to
think your life is a failure, believe me.

Anyway, fishing Delroy Heap's beaver ponds was about as close as I've
come to exotic fishing, let alone far-off, until one day last
September.

The voice on the phone claimed to be that of the editor of Outdoor
Life, Clare Conley.  "Pack your bags," the voice said.  "I'm sending
you to Brazil."

"Who is this really?"  I said, chuckling.  "Jim Zumbo?  Ha, you can't
fool me, Zumbo!  I'd recognize your voice anywhere."

"This is not Zumbo, this is Conley!  Now shut up and listen.  I want
you to accompany some pro football players and travel agents into the
wilds of Brazil on a fishing trip."

Football players?  Travel agents?  Fishing in the wilds of Brazil?

"You sure this isn't Zumbo?"

But it was actually Clare Conley and he was actually assigning me to do
a story on fishing in Brazil.  I dropped the phone and ran to tell my
wife.

"Bun!  Bun!"  I shouted.  "I'm going to Brazil!  Clare just assigned me
to do a fishing story in Brazil!"

Bun gave me an astonished look.  "Didn't I just wash and iron that
shirt this morning?  Now you've dribbled your pipe ashes all down the
front!"

"Listen to what I'm saying!  Clare just assigned me to do a fishing
story in Brazil!  I get to fish in a far-off, exotic place, just like
Hemingway!"

"Quick!"  she shouted.  "Start growing your beard!"

"I'm trying," I said.  "But I leave in three days.  That's just enough
time to learn to write like Hemingway!"

The six Americans hid out in a dark corner of the hotel bar, tossing
back double shots of Alka-Seltzer.  The Old Man ordered another round
for everyone and after that there was only the sound of the
Alka-Seltzer going plop-plop, fizz-fizz and occasionally a groan or a
muffled burp.  They were too tired to run anymore or even to shuffle
along slowly.  Their eyes were red and puffy with large dark bags under
them and in some cases satchels and valises.  The Americans had been in
Rio de janeiro, Brazil, for eighty-four days without taking any sleep
and they now believed that the man known only as Carlos was trying to
kill them.

"But why us?"  Mac Beatty said.  "All we want to do is catch a few
fish."

Mac was the owner and president of Travelwise, a travel agency in
Portland, Oregon.  He had fished all over the known world and a good
deal of the unknown world but he had never come up against anything
like Rio, where the only fish he had seen were on plates in
restaurants, which is not the same as catching your own.  "This is
supposed to be a fishing trip, is it not?"

The Old Man laughed sardonically, which was not easy while gulping
Alka-Seltzer.  He explained the probable scenario that had set in
motion the threat to their lives.

Carlos's boss in the Brazilian Tourism Authority, Embratur, had ordered
the six Americans to be "taken care of while they were in Rio.

Carlos nodded.  "How do you want it done?"

"The usual Brazilian way," his boss said.  "Party them to death."

The Americans knew if Carlos took them to one more party they were
finished and all the Alka-Seltzer in the world would not save them.

Their only hope was to get out of Rio fast and start the fishing before
someone asked for whom the bell tolls and nobody could come up with a
good answer except to look at the Americans and smile sadly.

The two quarterbacks looked as if they were done for anyway, and the
Old Man wondered aloud if he shouldn't give them the last of his
Rolaids and leave them behind while he and the travel agents escaped to
the fishing camp.

"No way," said Cliff Stoudt, who was the great quarterback of the
Birmingham Stallions.  "You're not leaving Brian and me behind,
although I wouldn't mind having the last of your Rolaids in any
case."

"Yeah, we can make it," said Brian Sipe, who was the great quarterback
of the New jersey Generals.  "You're not done for until you're done
for."

After that the Old Man could see that Sipe was even worse than he had
first thought and decided to finish off both quarterbacks quickly by
doing his impersonation of Howard Cosell.  They both cringed when he
squeezed his nostrils together but said later they didn't realize he
was getting ready to do his Cosell.  His Cosell usually resulted in a
clean kill but not always and sometimes he had to track the wounded
into the bush and they would charge him, coming very fast and mean, and
he would have to drop them with his Johnny Carson at close range.

But then Carlos came into the bar and saw the Americans slugging down
double Alka-Seltzers.  He complimented them for having eaten and drunk
well and endlessly and for still showing some faint signs of life.

"Tomorrow you can go fishing," he said.  "Usually Americans do not
survive nine Brazilian parties in a row, but you have.  You have beaten
me fairly and honorably and tomorrow you can go fishing."

"Good," the Old Man said.  "I have been in Brazil eighty-four days now
without catching either a wink or a fish."

"You have been in Brazil only three days," Carlos corrected him.  "But
tomorrow you will catch many fish in the Pantanal."

At the mention of Pantanal, the Old Man's spirits rose.  He had read
much literature about the Pantanal and knew that it was a paradise for
zoologists and botanists and ecologists and, of course, fishermen.  A
great unspoiled wild place the size of Montana, the Pantanal teemed
with strange and beautiful animals and with so many plants and flowers
some of them had never even been named.  Although the Old Man liked to
think of it as a lovely, endless marsh, experts in such matters said
the Pantanal was actually a lowland plain whose many broad, placid
rivers gently flooded it during the rainy seasons.  In other words, a
marsh, thought the Old Man, who never really liked experts anyway.

"What time do we leave?"  Ron Hart asked Carlos.  Ron was an old South
America hand, and president of Sportsman's Safaris out of Reno,
Nevada.

He and his partner Ted Kaphan were in Brazil setting up fishing and
nature safaris on the Pantanal rivers for next summer, when they joined
up with Mac, Cliff, Brian, and the Old Man.

"You leave for the fishing camp at dawn tomorrow," Carlos said.  "Right
after tonight's send-off party."

The Old Man was pronounced dead twice during the send-off party but
revived both times asking, "Do we fish now?"

The next morning the Americans were flown a thousand miles inland to
Cuiabd, the capital of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.  From there,
they were to be taken by bus into the Pantanal but were first rushed
off to a welcoming party, where they were mistaken for zombies.  After
the party, they were allowed to sleep for three hours and then rousted
out for a breakfast feast.

"Maybe they will let us rest for a day before going to the fishing
camp," Brian said.

A tall young man appeared in the doorway.  He wore the attire of a
guide, including a large, wide-brimmed hat.  The Americans stared
sullenly at him.

"Excuse me," the guide said.  "Let's go."

His name was Paulo and henceforth he would oversee the Americans' every
waking moment during their expedition into the Pantanal.  Eventually
they would come to look upon him as a friend and one of the great
guides of the world and a wonderful human being, but not until after
making several unsuccessful attempts on his life.

On the long, dusty ride into the Pantanal, the Old Man was amazed at
the lavish spectacle of nature stretching out as far as the
sleep-sodden eye could see on both sides of the narrow, dike-like
road.

Ron Hart identified many of the birds for Brian and Cliff: garcas
(herons), emas (small ostriches), siriema (large nonflying
birds),jabiru (large storks), toucans, macaws, and so on.  Where Ron
left off, the Old Man took over.

"There's a duck," he said.  "Some kind of weird duck."  He hoped he
wasn't being too technical.

Every few miles, Paulo would stop the bus.  "Excuse me, let's go."

Then the Americans would get off the bus and take pictures of
alligators.  They took 4,784 pictures of alligators.

Once, the Old Man made a serious mistake.  He said to Paulo by way of
idle conversation, "I wish I could get a good tight close-up of one of
those 'gators."

"You want close-up of alligator?"  Paulo cried.  "Wait here!"  Charging
into the murky water, he began herding the alligators toward the
Americans, and then there was much yelling and rushing about, although
mostly by the Old Man, who was allergic to alligator breath.

A few miles down the road the bus stopped again.  "Excuse me, let's
go.

Take pictures of dead alligator."

The alligator was very dead and had been that way a long time and was
dried up and cracked and coming apart at the seams.  Nobody wanted to
take pictures of the dead alligator, since it already had enough
problems.

"Yuck," Ted Kaphan said.  "That's really awful."

"I've seen worse," Cliff Stoudt, the quarterback, said.  "Tape him up
and send him in for the second half."

The bus was hot and humid and the Old Man began to feel like the
Gremlin that got cooked in the microwave.  He stared out the window.

Thousands of egrets blanketed the landscape like restless snow.  Off in
the distance, near the treeline, a small red deer with huge antlers
browsed among wandering families of capybara, the world's largest
rodent.  The knobby eyes of alligators stared back at the Old Man from
every pond of water.  "The Pantanal is a very birdy and alligatory
place," he thought.  He wondered if it was also a very snakey place.

"Excuse me, let's go.  Take pictures of anaconda."

The huge snake, disturbed from its nap in the middle of the road, did
not want to have its picture taken.  Before everyone had grabbed a
camera and leaped off the bus, the anaconda had slithered off the road
and down into a thick, boggy patch of brush.  The Old Man thought his
one chance to photograph an anaconda had vanished forever, but he did
not yet know Paulo well.

The guide held up his hands to silence the cries of the disappointed.

"Wait here.  I be right back."  Then he charged down into the brush
after the anaconda.

Horrible sounds came from the brush: grunts, crashes, snarls, snaps,
thumps, and thuds.  The men on the road listened for sounds of severe
squeezing.  "Well," the Old Man thought, "no more 'Excuse me, let's
go."" And then Paulo lunged out of the brush, dragging the anaconda
over his shoulder like a hawser.  He threw the snake down in the middle
of the astonished photographers, who leaped into the air and made
ineffectual running motions.

The snake, however, lay placidly on the road, too tired to squeeze
anybody.

It knew when it had met its match.

Late in the afternoon, the bus stopped abruptly at the Cuiabd River,
which was a good thing because the road ended there and the river was
full of piranha.  At the fishing camp the men were given cabins with
live frogs on the walls of the bathrooms.  Later, Mac Beatty would step
on a frog with his bare foot on the way to the bathroom in the dark and
would wake the whole camp.

The men dropped their gear on the floor and fell into their beds and
made deep rattling sounds with their throats.  Finally, they would get
some sleep.

"Excuse me, let's go."  Paulo herded the Americans out to an all-night
welcoming party thrown by the manager of the fishing camp, where they
were once again mistaken for zombies.  Brazilians love a good party.

The next morning the Americans finally got to go fishing.  They got
into two long, narrow, very tippy boats, and Indian guides took them
far upriver very fast.  The Old Man thought that maybe the reason the
boats seemed so tippy was that the river was full of piranha.  He
remembered once seeing a film in which a cow waded into one side of a
piranha river and came out the other side as a loose assortment of
naked bones.  The Old Man worried a great deal about the boat tipping
over and wondered if he could swim to the near bank and survive to the
extent that he could at least be identified by his dental X-rays.

The Cuiabd River was broad and languid and about the color of chocolate
milk.  The steep banks on both sides were backed by jungle.  There were
jaguars in the jungle but they were seldom seen because they come out
only at night, and only a fool would want to be in the jungle at
night.

The Old Man was no fool.

Mac Beatty was in the bow of the Old Man's boat.  It was good to have
Mac in the bow of the boat, because otherwise the Old Man might have
been there and the alligator might have got him.  The Indian guide did
not see the alligator on the bank and started to drive the boat in
right beneath the ten-foot reptile.  Mac did not see the alligator
either, because he was busy fitting together his fly rod.  Since the
guide spoke only Portuguese, the Old Man yelled at him, "Naranja sopa,
porfavor!  Naranja sopa!"  Later he learned this meant, "Orange soup,
please!"  which may have explained why the guide looked puzzled and
continued to drive the boat toward the alligator.

The alligator charged out over the top of Mac and bellyflopped into the
water beside the boat.  Mac instantly filled the air with karate chops
but the alligator got away unharmed.  Afterwards, Mac kept looking up
to see what was about to jump on him, and that night he stepped on the
frog with his bare foot.

Mac was a great fly fisherman and enjoyed the fight the big piranha put
up against his light tackle.  The guide thought Mac was crazy.  He then
demonstrated to Mac, Ted Kaphan, and the Old Man the proper way to
catch fish.

He baited a 10/0 hook with half a piranha and hurled the eighty-pound
line and chunk of lead out into the river.  Presently he jerked on the
line and brought it in hand-over-hand very fast, clubbed the big fish,
and dragged it into the boat.  He had landed the fish in thirty
seconds.  He could not understand why the Americans liked to play with
their fish.

The Americans caught many fish that morning, including piranha,
dourado, pintado, piraracu, and others they could not identify.  Ron
Hart had told them the Pantanal rivers also held cachurro, peacock
bass, filhote, and fish even Ron didn't know.  The Old Man followed his
practice of catching the fewest and smallest fish, so as not to
embarrass his companions, but even his fish were big and strong and
fought well, and after four hours the Old Man's arms ached from
catching fish.  Ron had said that the Cuiabd was by no means the best
of the Pantanal's fishing rivers, and that there were many others much
better, but the Old Man was satisfied with the Cuiabd and even
elated.

It beat the heck out of ol' Delroy Heap's beaver ponds.

At noon the guides took the Americans back to the fishing camp, where
they ate piranha soup, which was very good and had just a tiny bite to
it.

Then the Americans fell into their beds and slept for two hours
straight, until Paulo awoke them and said it was time for the farewell
party.

"What farewell?"  Stoudt croaked.  "We just got here!"

"Yeah," Kaphan said.  "We're supposed to fish for three more days!"

"I'm just getting the hang of catching all these weird fish," Sipe
said.

"We can't leave now."

But Paulo said there had been a change of plans.  The Americans had to
be rushed back to Cuiabd for a round of parties.  There appeared to be
no end to Brazilian hospitality, and the Old Man thought he had never
met a friendlier and warmer people.  Still, he wanted to fish.  By the
time he returned home, he would have traveled a total of fourteen
thousand miles to fish a total of four hours, which was not nearly
enough.  Hemingway would not have left after only four hours of
fishing.

After the farewell party the next morning, the Old Man tried to detect
sensation in his extremities but could find none.  The other Americans,
Sipe, Stoudt, Beatty, Hart, and Kaphan, stared forlornly at the river
and remembered the great four hours of fishing they'd had there.

"Maybe there's been some mixup and they got it all straightened out and
we'll get to fish for another three days," the Old Man said.  "Look,
here comes Paulo.  He's smiling!  I bet he's going to tell us we get to
stay here and fish!  What do you say, Paulo?"

"Excuse me, let's go."

Strange Encounters of the Bird Kind Many people go through life without
having weird confrontations with birds, but I am not one of them.  When
I saw Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller The Birds, I thought it was
a documentary.  Several times during the movie, my wife screamed.

"Oh, that's so ghastly!"  Bun said of one scene.

"Yeah, I know," I said.  "It happened to me last week.  See that big
ugly bird pecking the guy's head?  I think I recognize it."

Bun claims my attitude toward birds is neurotic.  She likes birds.

Once she hung up a hummingbird feeder outside our kitchen window and
filled it with sugar water.  For a week or so, even I enjoyed watching
the birds slurp away at the feeder while I ate breakfast.  It wasn't
long, however, until word spread among the hummingbird population that
there was a free handout to he had at the McManus house.  Soon dozens
of hummingbirds were flying holding patterns over our backyard,
awaiting their turn at the sugar water.

I will admit that in the beginning the hummingbirds were orderly and
well behaved, as anyone would be who had a sugar daddy like me on the
string.

After all, I was the one earning the bread to buy the sugar for their
sugar water.  It wasn't long until matters took a turn for the worse.

One day the feeder ran dry and I forgot to pick up sugar at the store
on my way home.

"Maybe you should go back to town and get the sugar," Bun said
nervously.

"The feeder has been empty all day."

I was indignant.  "Listen, I'm not--I repeat, not--climbing into my car
and driving six miles to buy sugar for a bunch of freeloading
hummingbirds.

They can wait until tomorrow."

"But," Bun said, glancing out the kitchen window, "they're becoming,
well, sort of unruly."

Sure enough, they were.  A dozen or more hummingbirds were hovering
just outside the window, glaring in at us, their beady eyes aglitter
with accusation.

"I don't like the looks of this," I said.  "They're turning into a
mob.

There's no telling what they might do if they get out of hand.  I've
seen birds run amuck before.  Maybe I will drive back to town for some
sugar.  Lock the doors and don't let anyone in, particularly if they're
only an inch tall and wearing feathers."

It was a close call.  Afterwards, I made sure we always had plenty of
sugar on hand.  When the hummingbirds went to the Caribbean for the
winter, Bun and I heaved a sigh of relief and gave the feeder to the
johnsons, who live a couple of miles down the road.  I never cared much
for the johnsons anyway.

The first birds I had trouble with were the family chickens when I was
a young boy.  They filled me with a sense of guilt that I never got
over.

Every Saturday my grandmother and I would go out to the backyard,
capture one of the chickens, and kill it for Sunday dinner.  Gram, a
stout, tough little old pioneer lady, did the actual killing.  My job
was to capture the luckless chicken.

"Git that one over there," she would order.  As soon as the chicken saw
her pointing at it, it would take off and try to make it to the county
line.

I would eventually run it down and start carrying it back to Gram, who
waited at the chopping block, double-bitted ax in hand.

"Wait!  Hold it!"  the chicken would say to me.  "You're making a
terrible mistake!  I didn't do anything!  I'm innocent!  Fred did it.

You're mad about what happened last Tuesday, right?  Well, that was
Fred's fault.  I saw him do it.  I really did.  Wait!  Stop!  Don't
hand me over to that old lady!  She's crazy!"

The part I played in these executions gave rise to such profound and
enduring feelings of guilt that even as an adult I will often
deliberately miss an easy shot at a game bird.  just as I am about to
squeeze the trigger, a little voice inside me will plead, "Wait!  Hold
it!"  and I will pull slightly off to the right or left of the
target.

My hunting companions, an uncouth and insensitive lot, respond to this
explanation with raucous ridicule.

"Yeah, yeah," Retch Sweeney says.  "And I suppose you helped your
grandma chop the heads off clay pigeons, too!"

I haven't yet told him about the deeply disturbing childhood experience
I had with a clay pigeon, because he probably would only scoff.  There
was also an extremely traumatic event involving the bull's-eye of a
paper target, but I would rather not speak about it.

Birds have caused me the most problems, however.  Take crows, for
example.  I crawl on my belly over ice and snow and sharp rocks to a
place of concealment above a game trail.  I crouch there, cramped and
freezing, until months later I hear the sounds of deer or elk moseying
up the trail.  I ease off the rifle safety, curtail my breathing,
gently bend my trigger finger to crack the ice from it.  Any moment
now.  Suddenly there is a rush of wings.  A crow flies into the tree
above me.

"Holy smokes!"  he squawks.  "There's a guy down here with a gun!  What
are you doing with that gun?  Hey, fellows, there's some joker crouched
under this tree with a gun!"  Instantly other crows take up the cry,
reporting my presence to the world at large.  The woods are in
turmoil.

I manage nevertheless to get off a single shot, but miss, which doesn't
surprise me.

When it's panicked and angling away from you at top speed, a crow is
almost impossible to get in the crosshairs.

A crow once caused my veracity to be called into question.  My veracity
at the time wasn't of particularly good repute anyway, and the crow
didn't help matters.  One day when I was about fifteen, I strolled
aimlessly out of the house eating a cinnamon roll, and there right in
front of me was a crow, perched on top of the family sedan.  I was
somewhat surprised, since the car was inedible and too big for the crow
to steal.  Continuing to amble toward the car, I expected the crow to
fly off at any second.  But it didn't.  it just stood there, eyeing me
and my cinnamon roll.

When I was right next to the car, the crow still hadn't flown.  I
became slightly nervous.  The crow did a little shuffle with his feet,
and then said in a clear voice, at least clear for a crow, "Hello."  He
sounded a bit like George Burns.

I was dumbfounded, never having met a bird that spoke human before.

"Hello," the crow said again, possibly thinking that I was slow-witted
or hard of hearing.

I made a quick check to the left, right, and behind me, not wishing to
be caught in the act of conversing with a bird, and then said, "Uh,
hello."

The crow, it turned out, knew quite a few words, and we carried on
something of a conversation, which, though it fell somewhat short of a
discussion of politics or philosophy, was sufficient to cause me no
little amazement.  I must admit that at first I had difficulty
identifying the particular topic of our little chat, but I soon deduced
that for the crow's part it involved my cinnamon roll.  This was
communicated to me less from the words spoken than from the crow's
cocking his head to eye the roll.  I gave him half of it.  He then flew
off, and I never saw him again.  At least I don't think I ever saw him
again, since he bore an exact resemblance to all other crows.

Occasionally I would yell "Hello!"  to a passing crow, but he would
look at me as if I must be mad, talking to a crow.

The crows, however, weren't the only ones to think I was, as my
carpenter stepfather put it, "about a half-bubble off plumb."

Immediately after the talking crow's departure, I rushed into the house
to report the news.  It was a Sunday, and the family was sitting around
the dinner table playing cards.

"Guess what!"  I shouted.  "There was a crow standing on top of the car
just now, and it knew how to talk!"

All eyes turned toward me, even as they narrowed to slits of suspicion
and disbelief.  Lips tightened in preparation for directing slander at
my person.  But my mother, a woman who did not casually dismiss odd and
rare phenomena as being beyond the realm of possibility, turned to my
grandmother and said, "Whose bid?"

There was the time, too, when a vicious grouse charged out of the brush
and broke my arm.  I, of course, had seen ruffed grouse charge people
before, but it was apparently a new experience for the horse I was
riding, or so I judged from its attempt to climb a mature ponderosa
pine.  The horse was well up into the lower branches, when ... But my
psychiatrist says I'm to try not to think about it, and he's probably
right.

The Outing Afterwards, my mother, grandmother, and sister all wailed
and gnashed their teeth and claimed that I had ruined them socially, a
classic case of overreaction if I had ever seen one.  You would have
thought I was the first person in history to receive a dishonorable
discharge from the Cub Scouts.

What initiated the whole disaster was Mr. Wilson's getting sick, or so
he claimed, thus leaving our den of Cubs without an adult leader for
our first overnight outing.

"I'll be the leader, then," I volunteered.  "I know how to build fires
and stuff."

"No, no," said Mrs.  Slocum, the den mother.  "That would never do.

I'm afraid the trip must be postponed until some gentleman is available
to lead you."

All the Cubs groaned, knowing it would take weeks or months for one of
the mothers to browbeat her husband into leading us on an overnight
outing.

"Hey!"  I said.  "I bet I know somebody who can take us!"  "You do?"

said Mrs. Slocum.  "That's wonderful!  Why don't you ask the
gentleman?"

Rancid Crabtree rocked his porch chair back against the slab wall of
his shack, spanged a round of tobacco juice into a rusty coffee can,
wiped his chin stubble on his sleeve, and said, "Tell me again, what
was it Mrs.  Slocum called me?"

"A gentleman."

Rancid nodded thoughtfully, apparently in agreement with this
assessment of his character.  "How come you and the widder Slocum was
talkin'about me anyways?"

"Oh, why, she's the den mother of us Cubs.  Her son Richie is a Cub and
every week we meet at the Slocum mansion and tie knots and stuff.  Boy,
is she ever rich!  They even got two cars."

"So?"  Rancid said.  "What about me?  Where does me being a gentleman
come in?"

"I was just getting to that.  You see, we don't have an adult leader, a
gentleman actually, to take us on an overnight camping trip.  So I
volunteered you."

Rancid's eyes narrowed to slits.  "You gotcher nerve!  if you thank
Ahim gonna nursemaid a bunch of you brats on a campin' trip, you got
another thank comin'.  jist thankin' about it makes maw rheumatiz act
up.  Hand me thet quart jar of maw rheumatiz medicine."

I handed him the jar and watched him take a big enough swig to cure
half the county of rheumatism.

"I thought you might feel that way about it," I said.  "But you know
how rich and pretty Mrs. Slocum is, and I thought maybe while you were
in picking up us Cubs to go on the camping trip, you and Mrs. Slocum
would get to talking and she would invite you in for coffee when we got
back.  You know, she doesn't have a man around the house to fix things
for her, just ol' Richie, and he doesn't amount to much, so maybe she
would say,'Rancid, there's something wrong with the light in the
bathroom.  Do you suppose you could fix it for me?"  And you would fix
her light and she would be so grateful that after a while you and her
would go out dancing together and after that maybe get married and you
would be rich.  But I suppose you're right.  Well, so long, Rancid, I
got to get home."

"Wait!"

I hardly recognized Rancid when his old truck rattled up in front of
the Slocum mansion the following Saturday.  He was wearing new bib
overalls, an old suit jacket, a reasonably white shirt, and his
battered felt hat.  His face was clean-shaven and pink from
scrubbing.

"Rancid!"  I shouted.  "You look great!"

"Don't holler," he said, wincing.  "It harts maw hide."

Mrs. Slocum swept down the walk from the mansion holding out her
hand.

"I'm so pleased to meet you, Mr. Crabtree.  Pat has told me so much
about what a fine woodsman you are.  I just know you will teach the
boys some wonderful nature lore.  It's divine of you to take the boys
camping."

Rancid blushed, shaking her hand.  "Waal, Ah was a Grub once mawsef!"

"Cub," I corrected him.

"Cub, Ah mean."

"Oh, you're so amusing, Mr.  Crabtree.  May I call you Rancid?"

"Shore."  By then all the other Cubs had loaded the gear into the back
of the truck and were yelling for us to get started.  Rancid and I got
in the cab and the other boys climbed on behind.  Mrs. Slocum took out
a dainty handkerchief and waved it at us as we roared off down the
street.

"Have a good time, all," she called after us.

Rancid grinned all the way out of town.  "You see how she wanted to
call me Rancid right off," he said.  "Ah guess Ah ain't lost it yet!"

"Lost what?"  I said.

"Ain't none of yer bidness."

Rancid drove up along Pack River until we came to a Forest Service
campground.  He pulled in and stopped.

"Okay, Grubs, this is it.  Git off and set up camp."

The Cubs stared at the campground.

"We don't want to camp here, Mr. Crabtree," Robert said.  "This is
practically civilization.  We want to climb to the top of that
mountain, where it's wild."

"Yeah," Henry joined in.  "We want to climb the mountain.  If we camp
here, we won't even get to carry our packs.  It won't be like a real
camping trip."

The rest of us Cubs shouted agreement.

Rancid slapped his leg.  "Gol-dang, what am Ah thankin' of?  'Course it
wouldn't be like real campin'.  It's been at least a week since the
bars et thet pore fella up on the mountain, but they's probably not
real hungry already.  Gitcher packs on and let's go."

"Wait a minute," said Richie.  "This campground seems pretty good to
me.

Why don't we stay right here, close to the truck?"

The other guys said the campground was looking better to them all the
time.  "Who wants to climb an old mountain anyway?"  said Norm.

"I didn't hear anything about bears eating anybody," I said to
Rancid.

"Shut yer yap and go fix a fahr," he said.  "Ah got to step behind them
trees over thar and prepare maw rheumatiz fer a night on the hard, cold
ground."

As soon as camp was set up, the Cubs started begging Rancid to teach
them some nature lore.

"What kind of insects are these, Mr.  Crabtree?"  Delbert asked.

"Jist yer basic wild bugs," Rancid said, cutting a chaw of tobacco from
his plug.

"What's the name of that bird flying around up there?"  Melvin asked.

Rancid squinted up at the sky.  "Iggle--a baldheaded iggle.  Bet you
Grubs never seed a baldheaded iggle before.  Went bald from baby iggles
asking' it so many questions.  Now why don't you boys go poke sticks in
the fahr or something'?"

That night as we sat around incinerating marshmallows, Rancid hunched
over the campfire with a blanket around his shoulders.  "This was yer
idear," he growled to me out of the corner of his mouth.  "The gol-dang
skeeters is eatin' me alive.  Ah know'd Ah shouldn't of took no bath!

Even iffen Ah wake up daid in the mornin', Ahim gonna hunt you down and
whup the tar outta ya fer gittin' me inter this mess."

"But ..."  I started to say.

"Mr. Crabtree," Delbert broke in, "why don't you tell us some ghost
stories?  Something real scary!"

"Don't know no ghost stories," Rancid muttered.

"Don't you know any scary stories at all?"  somebody asked.

Rancid thought for a moment.  "Hmmmm."  It was his wicked hmmmm.

"Waal, Ah know one true story thet's purty skeery.  But it'd bore you
Grubs.  Naw, Ah don't want to tell it."

"Tell it, Mr.  Crabtree, tell it!"

"Oh, all right.  It seems thar was this woodcutter lived up in these
hyar mountains.  Might still be runnin' 'round these parts, fer all Ah
know.

Anyhow, he went crazy.  Fust thang anybody know'd he'd gone crazy,
these campers was found all cut up in itty-bitty pieces.  Crazy ol'
woodcutter must have snuck up on 'em in the dark of night ... What was
thet?  You Grubs hear something'?  Oh, probably warn't nothin'.  Now
this crazy ol' woodcutter ..."

Driving back toward town an hour later, Rancid hummed and sang and beat
time to his own tune on the steering wheel, every so often interrupting
the tune to go "heh heh."

"There wasn't any crazy old woodcutter, was there?"  I said.

"Who knows?  Might hev been.  Dum dee dum dum heh heh.  Now here's maw
plan.  We go back to maw place, you and t'other Grubs camps out by maw
shack, and in the mornin' Ah hauls ya all back to town and nobody knows
the difference."

I tried to ignore the premonition unfolding in my innards.

Presently we came to a roadhouse ablaze with lights.  "Whoa, hoss!"

Rancid said, hitting the brakes.  "The night's still young.  Let's see
what's happening' in thar.  Ah'Il stand you and t'other Grubs to some
pops."

Looking back, I suppose our little group marching into the roadhouse
must have presented something of a spectacle, the tall, lanky mountain
man trailed by what appeared to be eight pint-sized Union cavalrymen.

"You can't bring those kids in here," the harman barked at Rancid.

"Ah thought Ah jist did," Rancid replied calmly.  "Set em up a round of
pops."

Snarling, the bartender set a row of glasses along the bar and, without
asking our preference, filled them with orange pop.  Rancid wandered
over to a card game being played by some hard-looking men.  "What do ya
call this game?"  he asked.

"Stud poker," the dealer said.

"Take long to larn it?"  Rancid asked.  "Mebbe Ah'Il set in fer a
hand."

"Rancid," I said, "we'd better go.  We're supposed to be camping."

"Don't pester me, boy.  Ahim jist gonna play a few hands to see if Ah
can git the hang of this, whatcha call it, stub poker?  You Grubs go
shoot some pool or play the slot machines, but stay outta trouble."

All the Cubs agreed later that it was one of the more interesting
evenings of our lives.  Delbert said it was just like in the movies,
and Melvin said no, it was even better.  They were referring to the
fracas that started when one of the cardplayers yelled something about
cheating, and the card table got knocked over, and Rancid shouted,
"Quick, fetch me one of them pool cues!"  And we all thought he wanted
the cue to play pool with!

One by one the parents of the Cubs came down to the sheriff's office in
the predawn hours to pick up their sons.  It was a memorable scene.  I
particularly remember Mrs. Slocum coming in, snatching Richie by the
hand, and heading for the door without saying a word to me or Rancid,
who was arguing with one of the deputies.  I knew right then that my
career in the Cub Scouts was over.  Then Rancid noticed Mrs. Slocum
dragging Richie out the door.

"Ma'am!"

Mrs. Slocum stopped, turned slowly, as if she had been quick-frozen
and was coming unthawed.  "Yessss, Mr. Crabtree?"  she said through
her teeth.

"Uh, ma'am," said Rancid, "Ah suppose this means you won't be wantin'
me to fix yer bathroom light."

I, the Hunted Five minutes more and I would once again have escaped to
relative safety.

From the baying sounds, I knew the pack had picked up my trail and was
now circling to my rear.  The scrawny tree into which I attempted to
blend like the bark itself offered no cover from that direction.  Ahead
of me lay an open grassy area.  I had no choice but to cross it and
seek concealment among some bushes on the far side.  Employing the
technique of the scurrying squat, I raced into the open--and right into
the trap that had been laid for me on the grounds of Delmore Blight
Grade School.

Curses!

Rupert Skraggs, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, snapped his famous
half-nelson on me.  Through bulging eyeballs I saw the clever ruse with
which he had tricked me--a blind assembled out of a group of quivering
fourth-graders!  His baying pack, consisting of Wilfred Hogmire, Fats
Moon, and Clarence Simp, had been but a diversionary tactic to flush me
into the open.

"You boys stop your fighting this instant or I'll send you to the
principal," screamed the harried teacher condemned to playground
supervision.

Even as Skraggs sighed and loosened his half-nelson, dropping me with a
plop to the ground, I wondered at the rarity of playground supervisors
who could distinguish between a fight and a beating-up.

"You lucked out this time, punk," Skraggs snarled.  "But I'll get you
after school."

"Oh, yeah?"  I croaked, massaging my Adam's apple back into something
resembling its original shape.  "You don't scare me, Skraggs."  I chose
not to explain why I had spent the lunch hour imitating the bark of a
tree.

"We'll see about that, you puny little rat!"  Skraggs snarled.

"Yeah, and you got dandruff," I retorted.  I made a mental note to work
on my repertoire of insults.  Dandruff, for pity's sake!

The bell rang, mercifully ending the lunch hour.

In retrospect, I now see that Rupert Skraggs taught me some important
lessons.  During my grade-school years, when I was still too young to
hunt, he provided me with the opportunity to serve an apprenticeship as
the hunted.

Nothing so well instructs a hunter about hunting as once having been
hunted himself.  Off and on during the years I was incarcerated in
grade school, Rupert Skraggs would hunt me for weeks at a time.  I
learned to move quickly, silently, covering my trail as I went.  I
learned to take on the protective coloration of my surroundings,
whether the school playground, a vacant lot, or the movie theater.  I
even learned to catch Skraggs's scent when he moved upwind of me,
although anyone who sat near him in a hot, humid classroom would
scarcely be impressed by this achievement.

Skraggs had lain in ambush for me in fourth grade.  When I was in
second, he was in fourth, when I was in third, he was in fourth, and
when I finally made it to fourth, Skraggs was still there, as if
waiting on stand for me to come to him.  He was then promoted right
along with the rest of us, just as if he knew how to read and write.  I
suppose the reason for his promotion related directly to the teacher's
dislike of having a fourth-grader who sported a mustache and
sideburns.

I should mention here that although Skraggs routinely beat up the rest
of us boys, apparently looking upon it as an inexpensive hobby, he did
so usually without malice, almost cordially.  What his beating-ups
lacked in pain, they made up for in humiliation.  You might smile and
wink debonairly at a pretty girl flouncing by after school, but the
effect was lost if your head at that moment was protruding from one of
Skraggs's half-nelsons.

Some of my friends held the opinion that it was best and safest to go
along good-humoredly with Skraggs's beating-ups.  The idea was to act
as if it were all in good fun and a welcome relief from your otherwise
boring existence.  I never liked that idea.  Perhaps that is why
Skraggs took such a serious dislike to me.  He considered me a
spoilsport.

I once made the mistake of trying to reason with Skraggs.

"Listen, Rupert, you're not proving anything by beating me up all the
time.  Why do it?"

He thought a moment, then suddenly brightened, as if having hit upon a
profound truth.  "'Cause it's fun, dummy!"  POW!

In my appeal to reason, I had failed to take into account the
entertainment factor.

I then decided to challenge Skraggs to a fair fight--my friends Bruce,
Peter, and I against Skraggs.  We confronted him on his way home from
school one day.

"Hold it right there, Skraggs," I said.  "I got a bone to pick with
you."

Skraggs turned, rolling up his sleeves over his burley arms.

"Yeah?  You and who else?"

"I'll tell you who-me and Bruce and..."

I was distracted by the sound of running footsteps diminishing into the
distance.

"Uh, well, me and my friend..."

The sound of another set of running footsteps diminished into the
distance.

"So, Rupert.  How ya doin' today?"

Six blocks away I managed to shake Skraggs off my tail, but I knew the
next time he caught me the beating-up would be a good deal less
cordial.

Most of my classmates harbored the hope that one day Skraggs would make
the mistake of beating up one of us badly enough that he would be sent
to reform school.  I was the odds-on favorite to gain status as his
ultimate victim.  I could tell from the looks my classmates gave me,
looks of sympathy, looks of relief.

It finally became clear to me what I would have to do.  I would have to
murder Skraggs.  Every day during the geography lesson, I would plot
the perfect murder.  It would be simple but ingenious.  The police
would be baffled: INSPECTOR: First time I've run into a case like this.
 The culprit is obviously a brilliant but diabolical chap.  Note,
Watson, the clever use of a homemade arrow, impossible to trace.

WATSON: The arrow killed him, then?

INSPECTOR: Not really.  The tip of the arrow was dipped in a highly
poisonous substance.  My guess is it's spoiled potato salad--deadly
stuff.  My own mother warned me about it.

WATSON: But what's this contraption?

INSPECTOR: A framework of old two-by-fours and fenceposts cleverly
constructed at the proper height to hold the crossbow.  Note how the
structure is covered with weeds to conceal it.  The string, you see,
leads from the trigger on the crossbow to the victim's bicycle seat.

Any pressure on the bicycle seat releases the arrow.  Absolutely
ingenious!  Do we know, Watson, if the victim had any enemies?

WATSON: Yes, sir.  Several dozen of them are at this moment out in the
street, cheering.

I never did get around to murdering Skraggs, although there was some
mystery about the framework of two-by-fours and fenceposts discovered
in the brush near his house.  It was probably just as well.  As the
years passed, a peculiar thing happened.  Skraggs began to shrink!  By
seventh grade, I was the same size as my old adversary.  By the time we
reached high school, I towered over him.  Oddly, the more he shrank,
the nicer and more ingratiating he became.

I am pleased to say that I am not the sort of person to hold a
grudge.

Even though I could have taken my revenge by beating up Skraggs anytime
I felt the urge, I did not do so.  In fact, I often took him pheasant
hunting with me, just to show him my appreciation for all he had taught
me in my years as his quarry.

My one disappointment with him as a hunting companion was that although
he learned to retrieve nicely, he never caught on to pointing worth a
darn.

On the other hand, I sort of enjoyed his whining when the late duck
season opened.

A FINE AND PLEASANT MISERY by Patrick F. McManus Edited and with an
Introduction by Jack Samson An Owl Book Henry Holt and Company New York
Copyright (C) 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976,
1977, 1978 by Patrick F. McManus All rights reserved, including the
right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 521 Fifth Avenue New York,
New York 10175

Published simultaneously in Canada.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McManus, Patrick
F.

A fine and pleasant misery.

1. Outdoor life--Anecdotes, facetiae, satire, etc.  2.

Camping--Anecdotes, facetiae, satire, etc. 3. Fishing--Anecdotes,
facetiae, satire, etc. 4. Hunting--Anecdotes, facetiae, satire, etc.
ISBN 0-8050-0166-2

ISBN 0-8050-0032-1 (An Owl book) (pbk.) First published in hardcover by
Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1978.

First Owl Book Edition-1981

All stories in this book originally appeared in Field & Stream.  The
title story, "A Fine and Pleasant Misery," was first published as "The
Misery Kit."

Designer: joy Chu Printed in the United States of America ISBN
0-8050-0166-2 HARDBOUND ISBN 0-8050-0032-1 PAPERBACK Also by Patrick F.
McManus They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

DEDICATION To Darlene and Mom CONTENTS
Acknowledgments........................................................


....ix Introduction by jack
Samson.................................................ri A Fine and
Pleasant Misery...................................................1

A Dog for All
Seasons........................................................9

The Modified Stationary
Panic...............................................14

Grogan's War
Surplus........................................................24

The Big
Trip................................................................33


The Theory and Application of Old
Men.......................................43

The Two-Wheeled
ATV.........................................................51

The Backyard
Safari.........................................................57

Shooting the Chick-a-nout
Narrows...........................................63

The Miracle of the Fish
Plate...............................................75

The
Backpacker.............................................................


83

Great Outdoor Gadgets Nobody Ever
Invented..................................89

The
Purist.................................................................


96

The
Outfit.................................................................


01

Kid
Camping................................................................


1

How to Fish a
Crick........................................................"8

Further Teachings of Rancid
Crabtree.......................................127

The Great Cow
Plot.........................................................137

The Mountain
Man...........................................................144

The
Rescue.................................................................


51

"I'll Never Forget Old
5789-A".............................................160

The
Ba'r...................................................................


65

The
Rendezvous.............................................................


74

Cigars, Logging Trucks, and
Know-It-Alls...................................179

But Where's the Park,
Papa?................................................186

A Yup of a Different
Color.................................................193

Mountain Goats Never Say
"Cheese!".........................................200

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I WOULD LIKE to acknowledge my debt to jack Samson,
editor of Field & Stream, who is largely responsible for bringing this
book into existence; to Clare Conley, former editor of Field & Stream,
who first detected some faint promise in me as a writer and whose
encouragement and direction sustained me in the early years; to my
mother, as an inexpendable source of wit and good humor; to my sister
(The Troll) for provoking me into writing; to my wife, who corrects my
spelling, grammar and taste; to my friend and colleague Dick Hoover,
who daily endures the indignities of close association with a humorist;
and to my friends Lloyd Humphrey and Vern Schultz, who have lived many
of these stories.

Introduction I GUESS Pat McManus sort of sneaked up on me.  I had been
editing his stories for a couple of years--from back around 1970--and I
really didn't read Pat that much.  Sometimes an editor is too busy
editing to settle down and really enjoy the material.

Oh, I knew he was good and everyone on the staff kept telling me how
funny he was.  And there was the constant flow of reader mail demanding
more of McManus in Field & Stream.  A typical reader letter would go
something like: "My husband and son have been subscribing to your
magazine for years because they are both ardent hunters and fishermen,
but I never read it because I am a golfer.  But the other day I
happened to read a story in Field & Stream by Patrick McManus.  He is
really funny!  I think he is a riot!  Now when the magazine comes in I
look for McManus before I give the magazine to my husband or son.

More!  [Signed] Mrs.  ..."

Then one day one of Pat's stories came in and I was not bogged down in
some administrative chore, I put my feet up on the desk and began to
read.

The story was called "A Dog for All Seasons," and by the time I had
gotten to the third page I was, literally, doubled over.  My secretary
said she had never--in all those years--heard me laugh so hard--or for
so long.  The more I read, the funnier McManus became.

The dog, which he had as a kid and which you will read about in this
collection of his best stories, was called Strange.  "His name in the
beginning had been Stranger," wrote McManus, "in the faint hope that he
was just passing through when they first saw him."  Strange was that
most wonderful of all dogs: a mutt.  A mutt with no redeeming
features.

According to Pat, the dog had only two chores around his house: to
attack prowlers, especially those whose character bore the slightest
resemblance to his own, and to protect the chickens.  On the second
point, Strange always thought it was the other way around.  He was also
constantly making snide remarks about Pat's grandmother's cooking.

He insisted on following McManus when he went hunting, or
fishing--something Pat claims he tried to prevent.

"An army of Cossacks could have bivouacked on our front lawn for the
night without his knowing a thing about it," McManus wrote, "but he
could hear the sound of a shotgun shell being dropped into a flannel
shirt pocket at a hundred yards."

Strange made slightly less noise going through the woods than an
armored division through a bamboo jungle.  Nevertheless, says Pat, they
usually managed to get a few birds, apparently because the birds
thought that anything that made that much noise couldn't possibly be
hunting!  "My dog," says McManus of Strange, "believed in a mixed bag:
grouse, ducks, pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, gophers,
skunks and porcupines.  if we saw a cow or a horse, he would shout
'There's a big one!  Shoot!  Shoot!'" Well, by now I am sure you see
what I mean about McManus and his sneaking up on you.  I quickly did
three things: wiped the tears from my eyes; called Pat at his home in
Spokane, Washington; and offered him a full-time job as an associate
editor of Field & Stream.  I have never been sorry, and I am delighted
the editors of my competing outdoor magazines were just enough dumber
than I was about how funny Pat is.

No, I did four things, come to think of it.  I dug up all the back
issues I could find in the office for which Pat had written and took
them all home with me that night.  I read every one of them, and my
wife was so annoyed at me for completely ignoring her that she went to
have dinner with her sister.  I never knew she was gone until she
returned home at about midnight to find me sleeping on the den couch--a
delighted smile still on my face.

A number of you reading this will remember the great American humorist
Robert Benchley.  You younger readers may not, but you sure missed a
funny man if you never read anything he wrote.  He used to write for
all sorts of magazines, especially the New Yorker.  He also wrote
books, and I guess a lot of his talent was inherited by his kids
because a couple of them also write--includincr his son Peter who wrote
Jaws.

Well, Pat McManus is the Bob Benchley of the outdoors.  When I heard my
close friend and associate Ed Zern say he thought Pat was one of the
funniest writers he had ever read I knew we had a winner, because
Ed--of "Exit Laughing" fame in Field & Stream--has got to be one of the
deans of outdoor humor.

We all have our favorite McManus stories and I guess mine (along with
"A Dog for All Seasons") is "The Modified Stationary Panic"--also found
in this collection which I have had the pleasure and privilege of
editing.  Pat was off on his own cloud nine about how easy it is to get
lost in the woods and how the experts on survival caution everyone not
to panic.  Pat disagrees with this theory.  He feels if one gets lost
he or she should, especially if they are a panicker as is Pat, get the
panic out of the system all at once.  He claims that holding panic in
may cause severe psychological disorders and even stomach cramps and
baldness.  Over the years, Pat says, he has been involved in several
dozen panics, usually as a participant, sometimes simply as an
observer.

"Most of my panics have been of a solitary nature," he says, "but on
several occasions I have organized and led group panics, one of which
involved twenty-some people.  In that instance, a utility company took
advantage of the swath we cut through the forest and built a power line
along it."

Pat says back in the earlier days of his panicking he utilized what he
refers to as the Full Bore Linear Panic (FBLP).  This is where you run
flat out in a straight line until the course of your panic is deflected
by a large rock or tree, after which you get up and sprint off in the
new direction.

"One time when we were kids," says Pat, "my friend Retch and I panicked
right through a logging crew and the loggers dropped what they were
doing and ran along with us under the impression we were being pursued
by something.

When they found out all we were doing was panicking, they fell back,
cursing, and returned to their work."

Nowadays, Pat says, he will advise against undertaking a Full Bore
Linear Panic unless, of course, one is equipped with a stout heart, a
three-day supply of food, and a valid passport.

Only McManus could have thought up "The Great Cow Plot"--also contained
in this collection.  All of us have been harassed by cows while fly
fishing for trout, but nobody but Pat could have realized the cows had
gotten together and planned the war against us.  Biologists and
science-fiction buffs have speculated about the earth's takeover by the
insect world, but Pat suggests perhaps the bovine species poses a far
greater threat.  Even when he plans a fishing trip forty miles back
into the wilderness, he says, a herd of cows usually will get wind of
it and go on a forced march to get there before Pat does.

"If I was on the nineteenth floor of a department store and stopped to
net a guppy out of an aquarium," he says, "a cow would get off the
elevator and rush over to offer advice."

Beginning to see what I am talking about?  McManus is not only funny,
there are more than a few suspicions around the Field & Stream
editorial offices that just maybe Pat ain't wrapped all that tight!

But if he has come unglued let us all hope he stays that way!  There is
altogether too little humor in the outdoor field.  What with all the
protectionists telling us we are responsible for every endangered
species from the Arizona pupfish to the California condor, we could use
a few laughs--those of us who love the outdoors.

Like a great many fine writers Pat went into newspaper work upon
graduation from Washington State University in 1956.  Also, he has been
a television reporter and later an English teacher.  He earned an
M.A.

in English from his alma mater in 1962 and now teaches at Eastern
Washington University--with the rank of professor.

But it is early life that prepared him for his outdoor writing.  He was
born and raised in Idaho where his mother was a schoolteacher.  He grew
up on a small farm with a creek running through it--like the creek
running through so many of his stories.  He writes about the outdoors
well because he has done a number of things in it besides fish, camp
and hunt.  He has been in heavy construction work, a truck driver, high
scaler, grease monkey, and a groundman for a power line construction
crew.

You will never forget his cast of characters from his boyhood pal
Retch; his mentor, old Rancid Crabtree; Grogan, of war surplus fame;
Grandma; and least of all Strange, the dog with no redeeming
features.

Look out world.  Here comes Pat McManus!

Jack Samson, Editor Field & Stream.

A Fine and Pleasant Misery MODERN TECHNOLOGY has taken most of the
misery out of the outdoors.

Camping is now aluminum-covered, propane-heated, foam-padded,
air-conditioned, bug-proofed, flip-topped, disposable, and
transistorized.  Hardship on a modern camping trip is blowing a fuse on
your electric underwear, or having the battery peter out on your
Porta-Shaver.  A major catastrophe is spending your last coin on a
recorded Nature Talk and then discovering the camp Comfort & Sanitation
Center (featuring forest green tile floors and hot showers) has pay
toilets.

There are many people around nowadays who seem to appreciate the fact
that a family can go on an outing without being out.  But I am not one
of them.  Personally, I miss the old-fashioned misery of old-fashioned
camping.

Young people just now starting out in camping probably have no idea
that it wasn't but a couple of decades ago that people went camping
expecting to be miserable.  Half the fun of camping in those days was
looking forward to getting back home.  When you did get back home you
prolonged the enjoyment of your trip by telling all your friends how
miserable you had been.  The more you talked about the miseries of life
in the woods, the more you wanted to get back out there and start
suffering again.  Camping was a fine and pleas ant misery.

A source of much misery in old-fashioned camping was the campfire, a
primitive contrivance since replaced by gas stoves and propane
heaters.

It is a well-known fact that your run-of-the-mill imbecile can casually
flick a soggy cigar butt out of a car window and burn down half a
national forest.

The campfire, on the other hand, was a perverse thing that you could
never get started when you needed it most.  If you had just fallen in
an icy stream or were hopping around barefooted on frosted ground
(uncommon now but routine then), you could not ignite the average
campfire with a bushel of dry tinder and a blowtorch.

The campfire was of two basic kinds: the Smudge and the Inferno.  The
Smudge was what you used when you were desperately in need of heat.  By
hovering over the Smudge the camper could usually manage to thaw the
ice from his hands before being kippered to death.  Even if the Smudge
did burst into a decent blaze, there was no such thing as warming up
gradually.  One moment the ice on your pants would show slight signs of
melting and the next the hair on your legs was going up in smoke.

Many's the time I've seen a blue and shivering man hunched over a
crackling blaze suddenly eject from his boots and pants with a loud
yell and go bounding about in the snow, the front half of him the color
of boiled lobster, the back half still blue.

The Inferno was what you always used for cooking.  Experts on camp
cooking claimed you were supposed to cook over something called "a bed
of glowing coals."  But what everyone cooked over was the Inferno.  The
"bed of glowing coals" was a fiction concocted by experts on camp
cooking.

Nevertheless the camp cook was frequently pictured, by artists who
should have known better, as a tranquil man hunkered down by a bed of
glowing coals, turning plump trout in the frying pan with the blade of
his hunting knife.  In reality the camp cook was a wildly distraught
individual who charged through waves of heat and speared savagely with
a long sharp stick at a burning hunk of meat he had tossed on the grill
from a distance of twenty feet.

The rollicking old fireside songs originated in the efforts of other
campers to drown out the language of the cook and prevent it from
reaching the ears of little children.  Meat roasted over a campfire was
either raw or extra well done, but the cook usually came out medium
rare.

The smoke from the campfire always blew directly in the eyes of the
campers, regardless of wind direction.  No one minded much, since it
prevented you from seeing what you were eating.  If a bite of food
showed no signs of struggle, you considered this a reasonable
indication that it came from the cook pot and was not something just
passing through.

Aluminum foil was not used much in those days, and potatoes were simply
thrown naked into the glowing coals, which were assumed to lie
somewhere at the base of the Inferno.  After about an hour the spuds
were raked out with a long stick.  Most of the potatoes would be black
and hard as rocks, and some of them would be rocks, but it didn't make
much difference either way.

Successive layers of charcoal would be cracked off until a white core
of potato was uncovered, usually the size of a walnut or maybe a pea.

This would be raw.  Sometimes there would be no white core at all, and
these potatoes were said to be "cooked through."  Either that or they
were rocks.

There were other fine sources of camping misery besides campfires.  One
of the finest was the old-fashioned bedroll.  No matter how well you
tucked in the edges of the bedroll it always managed to spring a leak
in the middle of the night.  A wide assortment of crawly creatures,
driven by a blast of cold air, would stream in through the leak.

Efforts to close the gap merely opened new leaks, and finally you just
gave up and lay there, passing the time until sunrise--approximately
thirty-seven hours--by counting off insects one by one as they froze to
death on your quivering flesh.

My bedroll, made from one of my grandmother's patchwork quilts, was an
oven compared to the first sleeping bag I ever spent a night in.  My
inconstant boyhood companion, "Stupe" Jones, told me one September day
that I would not need my bedroll on our outing that night because he
had discovered an honest-to-goodness sleeping bag in the attic of his
house and it was big enough for both of us to sleep in.  Now when I saw
what a compact little package a real sleeping bag could be folded up
into, I became immediately ashamed of my own cumbersome bedroll, which
rolled up into a bundle the size of a bale of hay.  I was glad that I
had not marred the esthetics of our little camping trip by toting the
thing along.  That night we spread the sleeping bag out on a sandy
beach alongside Sand Creek, stripped to our shorts (we had both been
taught never to sleep with our clothes on), and hopped into the bag.

The effect was much like plunging through thin ice into a lake.  Not
wishing to insult my friend or his sleeping bag, I stifled a shrill
outcry with a long, deep gasp disguised in turn as a yawn.  Stupe said
through chattering teeth that the sleeping bag was bound to warm up,
since it was, after all, a sleeping bag, wasn't it?  No two lovers ever
clung to each other with such tenacity as did those two eight-year-old
boys through that interminable night.  Later we discovered that some
sleeping bags come in two parts, one a nice padded liner and the other
a thin canvas cover.  What we had was the latter.

One of the finest misery-producing camping trips I've ever been on
occurred when I was about fourteen.  Three friends and I were hiking to
a lake high up in the Idaho Rockies.  What had been a poor, struggling
drizzle when we left home worked its way up and became a highly
successful blizzard in the mountains.  Before long our climbing boots
(called "tennis shoes" in more prosperous parts of the world) were
caked with ice.  The trail was slowly being erased before our very
eyes, and I was beginning to write news stories in my head: "The futile
search for four young campers lost in a snowstorm has been called
off.

..."  As we clawed our way up the side of the mountain, one of the
frailer souls--never ask me who--suggested that the better part of
valor or even of stark madness might be to turn back.  But he was
shouted down with such cries as, "When I come this far to fish, I am
going to fish!  " and "Who knows which way is back?"

Eventually we came to the tiny cabin of a trapper, who had either been
a midget or had crawled around on his knees all day, for the structure
was only four feet from dirt floor to log ceiling.  We tidied the place
up by evicting a dead porcupine, split up enough wood to last a month,
and started a fire in a little makeshift stove.  The stovepipe was a
foot short of the roof and this resulted in the minor inconvenience of
having the roof catch fire every once in a while, but nobody really
minded.

On the second day Kenny and I fought our way up to the lake, where he
carried out his vow to fish, and then we stumbled back to the cabin.

We stripped off our sopping clothes and sat down side by side on the
woodpile next to the stove, whose glowing pipe was sending out soothing
waves of heat from the flames howling up through it.  Now as was our
practice in those days, we had carried enough grub with us to feed a
regiment of lumberjacks for a week of full-time eating, and Norm, a
rather plump kid, decided to take the edge off his boredom by shooting
"baskets" with an excess of hard-boiled eggs he had discovered.  The
opening at the top of the stovepipe served as the "basket."  Kenny and
I watched in fascinated horror, as they say, as one of the rim shots
lodged on the edge of the glowing pipe and the whole contraption began
to topple toward our naked laps.  Now both of us worked up a sizable
amount of activity, but because of the cramped quarters, it was
insufficient to move us clear of the descending pipe.  In order to
avoid incurrence of potentially worse damage to our anatomies we caught
the stove pipe in our hands.

For two or three hundredths of a second we passed the glowing cylinder
back and forth between us, all the while calmly contemplating the best
course of action, since neither one of us could manage to accumulate
enough free time or leverage to get up from the wood pile.  At last it
occurred to us to simply drop the pipe on the floor, both of us
wondering why we hadn't thought of such an obvious solution sooner.  At
the time it seemed that we had juggled the stovepipe for approximately
two hours, but in retrospect, I doubt that the total time was more than
half a second.

Smoke, true to its nature, had in the meantime filled the cabin to
overflowing, and the four of us rolled out through the tiny door hole
as a single choking ball of adolescent humanity.  The storm outside,
particularly to those not wearing any clothes, was refreshing and
seemed to call for some strenuous exercise.  What followed, as Vern
remarked later, was something you don't see every day: two naked and
enraged people chasing an hysterical fat kid up the side of a mountain
in the middle of a blizzard.

In terms of misery, that camping trip was very fine.

I once launched my family on a program designed to toughen them up, on
the assumption that the more misery they could endure the more they
would enjoy hunting, fishing, and camping.  Whenever anyone skinned a
knee or thumped his "crazy bone," he was to reply in answer to
inquiries about the extent of his pain: "A mere detail."  Thus my
children were expected to ignore the minor miseries encountered in the
acquisition of outdoor knowledge and experience, and to make little of
mosquito bites, burned fingers, and that vast assortment of natural
projectiles known as " stickers."

As it turned out, though, I had to abandon the program.  One day on a
family camping trip, I picked up a large branch for firewood and
discovered an outlaw band of yellow jackets waiting in ambush.  A
running battle ensued.  I finally out-distanced the little devils, as I
called them, but not before several of them had inflicted some terrible
wounds on various parts of my person.  My family watched as I flitted
like a nymph through the woods, careening off of boulders and leaping
mammoth moss-covered logs.  Fortunately, as my wife said later, most of
my shouts were inaudible and the children were saved from traumas that
might have wrought psychological havoc.  When I finally lunged back
into camp, still sweating and snarling, my littlest girl consoled me
with the words, "Details, Daddy, mere details."

Well I decided right then and there if a kid can't distinguish between
real pain and a little old skinned knee, then I had better call off the
whole program, and that is what I did.  I mean you don't want your
children to grow up to be totally insensitive.

But camping misery is a thing of the past.  Like most of my fellow
outdoorsmen, having gathered unto the camper the fruits of technology,
I am protected from cold by propane, from hardness by foam rubber, and
from the insect world by a bug bomb.  Still, sometimes I have a
nostalgic yearning for some of that old-fashioned misery, and it came
to me that what we need nowadays is a misery kit.  I think it would
find a market, especially among older campers, who might enjoy a bit of
instant misery on a camping trip so they would have something to tell
the folks back home about.  There could be an aerosol can for spraying
a blast of cold air down your back every once in a while, another for
spraying smoke in your eyes.  There might even be a pair of
refrigerated boots that you could stick your feet into for a few
minutes each morning.  A rock or a pine cone could be included for
slipping under the fitted sheet of a camper bunk.  Everyone, of course,
would want a pre-charred spud.  There might even be a box of mixed
insects--yellow jackets, mosquitoes, ticks, jiggers, and deer
flies--but maybe that would be carrying misery a bit far.

A Dog For All Seasons One of these days they'll probably come out with
a mechanical bird dog that locates pheasants with a special scent
detector and radar.  A small on-dog computer will record and analyze
all available information and give the hunter a report: two roosters
and five hens in stubble field--253 feet.  A pointer on the dog's back
would indicate the exact direction.

There would be luxury models, of course, with built-in stereo and FM
sets, a special compartment for lunches, a cooler for beverages.  The
dog's nose would be a cigarette lighter.

The really high-priced jobs would not only retrieve the bird but pluck
it, dress it, wrap it in foil, and quick-freeze it.  By the time the
bird got back to the hunter it would be neat and trim as a TV dinner.

Since no self-respecting hunter would want to be seen carrying his dog
around by a handle, all but the cheapest models would be designed to
look like nifty attache cases.  If you passed by some good hunting
ground on your way home from work, you could get out and let your
attache case nose around in a thicket or two.

There would be minor inconveniences ("We'll have to go back, Harry.  I
thought I had my bird dog but it's just a bag of briefs."), but on the
whole, the mechanical bird dog, would have many advantages over the
standard makes most of us have now.

Still, I'm something of a traditionalist, and if the mechanical bird
dog were to go on the market tomorrow I'd probably stick with my old
ready-made hound, such as he is.  His eyes don't light up much anymore,
let alone his tubes, and you can't light a cigarette on the end of his
nose.  The sounds that come out of him are not stereo (fortunately) and
he has never been much on fidelity any way you look at it.  But I would
keep him nevertheless.  There was a time in my youth, however, when I
would have swapped my dog for a mechanical job and thrown in my T-shirt
decorated with bottle caps to boot.

Take the flaws of character you find in all dogs and most human beings,
roll them up in the hide of a sickly wart hog, and you would have a
reasonable facsimile of my dog Stranger, who was dirty, lazy, bigoted,
opinionated, gluttonous, conceited, ill-tempered, and an incorrigible
liar.

An old man once summed up Stranger's character succinctly.  "He's a
prevert!"  he said.  I didn't know what preverts were but had no doubt
Stranger was one of them.

We had called the dog Stranger out of the faint hope he was just
passing through.  As it turned out, the name was most inappropriate
since he stayed on for nearly a score of years, all the while biting
the hands that fed him and making snide remarks about my grandmother's
cooking.  Eventually the name was abbreviated to "Strange," which was
shorter and much more descriptive.

My mother used to say that Strange was like one of the family.  Then my
grandmother would bawl her out and say that was no way to talk about my
uncle George.  That was one of Mom's favorite jokes and was probably
the reason she allowed the dog to stay on the place.  At least nobody
ever thought of another reason.

I used to beg for a decent dog--a Labrador retriever, an Irish setter,
or just a regular old mongrel like most of the other guys had--but with
no success.  We just weren't a two-dog family, and since no one in his
right mind would take Strange and Mom wouldn't take advantage of anyone
who revealed his low mentality by offering to take Strange, I was stuck
with him.

Strange didn't even make good as a criminal.  In our part of the
country the worst crime a dog can commit is to run deer.  As soon as
Strange found this out, he rushed out into our clover field and tried
to run the deer that grazed there.  They would have none of it.  They
looked at the wildly yapping creature dancing around them and went back
to their munching.

Strange had only two chores, but he could never get them straight.  He
was supposed to attack prowlers, especially those whose character bore
the slightest resemblance to his own, and to protect the chickens.  He
always thought it was the other way around.

Whenever he was caught assaulting a chicken he would come up with some
cock-and-bull story about how the chicken had been about to set fire to
the house when he, Strange, happened along and prevented arson.  "Bad
enough we have a dog that attacks chickens, we have to have one that
lies about it besides!"  Mom would say.  (It should be understood that
Strange did not actually speak in words, or at least that anyone ever
heard, but with his eyes and gestures with feet, tail, and ears.) As
for prowlers, Strange would go out and invite tramps in off the road
for a free meal.  While the dog was out in the yard apologizing to the
tramp for my grandmother's cooking, the womenfolk would peek out
through the curtains and try to determine whether the fellow was
dangerous.  If so, they would wait until he had just about finished his
meal and then my sister would bellow, "Do you want the gun, Ma?  Do you
want the gun?"  This usually would bring the tramp to his feet and send
him at a fast walk toward the nearest cover, the ditch on the far side
of the road.  Even had the gun been real, which it wasn't, the tramp
would have been in no danger--unless of course he happened to step
between Mom and the dog.

As soon as I was old enough to hunt I would borrow a shotgun and sneak
out to the woods in search of grouse.  I had to sneak, not because Mom
disapproved of my hunting, but because Strange would insist upon going
along and contributing his advice and services.  An army of Cossacks
could have bivouacked on our front lawn for the night without his
knowing a thing about it, but he could hear the sound of a shotgun
shell being dropped into a flannel shirt pocket at a hundred yards.

just as I would be easing my way out the door, he would come staggering
out of the woodshed, his eyes bloodshot and bleary from a night of
carousing, and say, "My suggestion is that we try Schultz's woods first
and then work our way up Stacc's hill and if we don't get anything
there we can stop by the Haversteads and shoot some of their
chickens."

Strange made slightly less noise going through the woods than an
armored division through a bamboo jungle.  Nevertheless, we usually
managed to get a few birds, apparently because they thought that
anything that made that much noise couldn't possibly be hunting.

My dog believed in a mixed bag: grouse, ducks, pheasants, rabbits,
squirrels, chipmunks, gophers, skunks, and porcupines.  If we saw a cow
or horse, he would shout "There's a big one!  Shoot!  Shoot!"

Fortunately, Strange tired of hunting after about an hour.  "Let's eat
the lunch now," he would say.  If he had been particularly disgusting
that day, I would lie and tell him that I had forgotten to bring a
lunch, knowing that it was against his principle--he only had one--to
ever be caught more than an hour's distance away from a food supply.

He would immediately strike off for home with the look of a man who has
suddenly been deposited in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Thus it went through most of the years of my youth, until finally
Strange's years totaled what we supposed to be about a dozen.  He
sensed death approaching--probably the first thing in his life he ever
did sense approaching--and one day staggered to a window, looked out
and said, "A dog like me should live for a thousand years!"  Then he
died.

Everyone wept and said he hadn't been such a bad dog after all.

Everyone except my grandmother, who simply smiled to herself as she
stirred the gravy.

That night at dinner I said, "This sure is lumpy gravy," and "This pie
crust sure is tough."  It seemed the least I could do for Strange.

As I say, there was a time when I would have traded a dog like Strange
in an instant for a mechanical bird dog.  But now?  Well, let me think
about that for a while.

The Modified Stationary Panic Every so often I read an article on how
to survive when lost in the wilds, and I have to laugh.  The experts
who write these pieces know everything about survival but next to
nothing about getting lost.  I am an expert on getting lost.  I have
been lost in nine different countries, forty-three cities, seven
national forests, four national parks, countless parking lots, and one
Amtrak passenger train.  My wife claims I once got lost riding an
elevator in a tall building, but that is an unwarranted exaggeration
based on my momentary confusion over the absence of a thirteenth floor.
 (if you are a person with an inherent fear of heights, you want to
make certain that all the floors are right where they are supposed to
be, and you're not about to listen to a lot of lame excuses for any
empty space between the twelfth and fourteenth floors.) Since I have
survived all of these experiences of being lost, it follows that I am
also something of an expert on survival.

Consequently, out of my identification with and concern for that
portion of humanity that frequently finds itself in the predicament of
not knowing its way home from its left elbow, I have been motivated to
publish the following compilation of field-tested tips on how to get
lost.  I have also included information on how to survive, and, of
equal interest, how to pass the time if you don't.

The most common method for getting lost starts with telling a hunting
partner, "I'll just cut down over the hill here and meet you on the
first road."  Nine times out of ten, the next road in the direction you
choose is the Trans-Canada Highway.  That is, of course, unless you are
in Canada, in which case it may well be a supply route to a Siberian
reindeer farm.

Another good method for getting lost in a quick and efficient manner is
to rely on a companion who claims to have infallible sense of
direction.  Spin him around any time, any place in the world, according
to him, and he will automatically point toward home.  Your first clue
that his sense of direction is somewhat overrated comes when he says
something like, "Hey, now that's weird!  The sun is setting in the
east!"  There is, of course, an appropriate response to such a
statement.  Unfortunately, it may result in a long jail term.

My favorite method for getting lost is daydreaming.  I'll be trailing a
deer whose tracks are so old pine seedlings will have sprouted in
them.

When I have to count the growth rings on a tree to determine how fresh
a set of tracks is, my interest in the hunt begins to wane.  Pretty
soon I'm daydreaming.  I imagine myself shooting a trophy buck.  Then I
unsheath my knife, dress him out, and drag him back to camp, where my
hunting companions go wild with envy and astonishment.

"Would ya look at the size of that buck ol' Pat got!  "Man, where did
you ever get a beauty like that?"

"Just tracked him down " , I say.  "He was a smart one too, but every
so often he made the mistake of bending a blade of grass the wrong
way.

The wind changed and spooked him though, and I had to drop him on a
dead run at nine hundred yards and ..."

And I'll look around and I'll be lost.  The last time I had looked, I
was hunting in a pine woods on a mountain.  Now I'll be so deep in a
swamp the wildlife is a couple of stages back on the scale of
evolution.  (It's bad enough being lost without having to put up with a
bunch of feathered lizards learning to fly.) Undoubtedly, the surest
way to get lost is to venture into the woods as a member of a group. 
Sooner or later one of the boys, on a pretext of offering up a riddle,
says, "Hey, guys, I bet none of you can tell me which direction the car
is in.  Heh heh."  (The "heh heh" is tacked on to imply that he knows
the right direction, but truth is he couldn't tell it from a kidney
stone.) Everyone now points firmly and with great authority in a
different direction.

In every such case, the most forceful personality in the group gets his
way.

The effectiveness of this method arises out of the fact that the most
forceful personality usually turns out to rank on intelligence scales
somewhere between sage hens and bowling balls.  He is also an
accomplished magician.  With a wave of his arm and the magic words "the
car's just over that next rise" he can make the whole bunch of you
vanish for three days.

While the process of becoming lost is usually a lot of fun, the
entertainment value diminishes rapidly once the act is accomplished.

The first small twinges of fear, however, do not last long, and are
soon replaced by waves of terror.  There is also a sense of general
disorientation, the first symptom of which is confusion about which
side of your head your face is on.  Two questions immediately occur to
the lost outdoorsman: "What shall I do now?"  and "Why didn't I stick
with golf?"

I disagree sharply with most survival experts on what the lost person
should do first.  Most of them start out by saying some fool thing
like, "The first rule of survival is DON'T PANIC!"  Well, anyone who
has ever been lost knows that kind of advice is complete nonsense.

They might as well tell you "DON'T SWEAT!"  or "DON'T GET GOOSE BUMPS
ALL OVER YOUR BODY!"

Survival experts are apparently such calm, rational people themselves
that they assume a lost person spends considerable time deliberating
the question of whether he should panic: "Let's see, the first thing
I'll do is panic, and then I'll check to see on which side of the trees
the moss is growing."  It doesn't work that way.

First of all, one is either a panicker or one isn't, and the occasion
of being lost is no time to start fretting about a flaw in one's
character.  My own theory holds that it is best, if one is a panicker,
to get the panic out of the system as quickly as possible.  Holding
panic in may cause severe psychological disorders and even stomach
cramps and baldness.  Also, the impacted panic may break loose at a
later date, if there is a later date, and cause one to sprint across a
shopping mall yelling "Help!  Help!"  at the top of his lungs.

Shopping malls being what they are, no one would probably notice but it
might be embarrassing anyway.

Over the years I've been involved in several dozen panics, usually as a
participant, sometimes simply as an observer.  Most of my panics have
been of a solitary nature, but on several occasions I have organized
and led group panics, one of which involved twenty some people.  In
that instance a utility company took advantage of the swath we cut
through the forest and built a power line along it.

Back in the earlier days of my panicking I utilized what is known
technically as the Full Bore Linear Panic (FBLP).  This is where you
run flat out in a straight line until the course of your panic is
deflected by a large rock or tree, after which you get up and sprint
off in the new direction.  The FBLP is also popularly referred to as
the ricochet or pinball panic or sometimes simply as "going bananas."

Once an FBLP is underway there is no stopping it.  It gains momentum at
every stride, and the participants get so caught up in it they forget
the reason for holding it in the first place.

They'll panic right out of the woods, onto a road, down the road,
through a town, and back into the woods, all the time picking up
momentum.  One time when we were kids my friend Retch and I panicked
right through a logging crew and the loggers dropped what they were
doing and ran along with us under the impression we were being pursued
by something.  When they found out all we were doing was panicking,
they fell back, cursing, and returned to their work.

This tendency of panic to feed upon itself gives it ever-increasing
momentum and occasionally indigestion.

Although it will do absolutely no good, I must advise against
undertaking a Full Bore Linear Panic unless, of course, one is equipped
with a stout heart, a three-day supply of food, and a valid passport.

Instead, I recommend the Stationary or Modified Panic.  It offers the
same therapeutic effect and subsides after a few minutes with none of
the FBLP's adverse side effects, such as making your life insurance
company break out in a bad rash.

The Stationary Panic first came to my attention one time when a large
but harmless snake slithered across a trail a couple of yards ahead of
my wife.

She made a high-pitched chittering sound and began jumping up and down
and flailing the air with her arms.  It was a most impressive
performance, particularly since each jump was approximately a foot high
and her backpack happened to be the one with the tent on it.  The only
adverse side effect to the Stationary Panic was that the lone witness
to the spectacle could not help laughing every time he thought about
it, a reaction quickly remedied, however, by his sleeping most of the
night outside the tent in a driving rainstorm.

Although I immediately perceived the advantage of this form of panic, I
could not imagine myself bouncing up and down, flailing my arms and
chittering like an angry squirrel, particularly in front of the rough
company with whom I usually find myself in a predicament requiring a
panic.  Thus it came about that I invented the Modified Stationary
Panic, or MSP.

The key to the MSP is not to bounce up and down in a monotonous fashion
but to vary the steps so that it appears to be a sort of folk dance.

You can make up your own steps but I highly recommend throwing in a
couple of Russian squat kicks.  The chittering sound should be replaced
by an Austrian drinking song, shouted out at the top of your voice.

The MSP is particularly appropriate for group panics.  There are few
sights so inspiring as a group of lost hunters, arms entwined, dancing
and singing for all they are worth as night closes in upon them.  Once
you have established the fact that you are indeed lost and have
performed the perfunctory Modified Panic, you should get started right
away on the business of surviving.  Many survival experts recommend
that you first determine on which side of the trees the moss is
growing.  I'm not sure why this is, but I suppose it is because by the
time you get hungry enough to eat moss you will want to know where to
find it in a hurry.

If you think you may have to spend the night in the woods, you may wish
to fashion some form of temporary shelter.  For one night, a tree with
good thick foliage will serve the purpose.  Thick foliage will help
keep the rain off, and reduces the chance of falling out of the tree.

After a day or two, it is probably a good idea to build a more
permanent shelter, such as a lean-to.  A very nice lean-to can be made
out of large slabs of bark, pried from a dead cedar, pine or tamarack,
and leaned against the trunk of an upright tree.  If you have a
tendency to walk in your sleep, the lean-to should not be more than
fifteen feet from the ground.  After a couple of weeks, it might be a
good idea to add some simple furnishings and pictures.

Each day you are lost should be recorded by carving a notch on some
handy surface.  (This procedure should be skipped by anyone lost at sea
in a rubber life raft.) I've known people lost only a few hours and
already they had carved half a notch.  The reason for the notches is
that you may write a book on your experience and sell it to the
movies.

As is well known, a film about being lost is absolute zilch without an
ever-increasing string of notches.

The best film treatment of notches that I've seen was in a TV movie
about a couple whose plane had crashed in the Yukon.  They painted the
notches on the plane's fuselage with a set of oil paints.  It was a
great touch and added a lot of color to the drama.  I for one never go
out into the woods anymore without a set of oil paints, just in case
I'm lucky enough to be lost long enough to interest a film producer.

Many survival experts are of the opinion that lost persons have little
to fear from wild animals.  I disagree.  It is true that bear and
cougar will almost always do their best to avoid contact with human
beings, but how about squirrels and grouse?  On several occasions the
sound of a squirrel charging through dry leaves has inflicted partial
paralysis on my upper ganglia, erasing from my consciousness the
knowledge that one has nothing to fear from bear or cougar.  Having a
grouse blast off from under one's feet can cause permanent damage to
one's psyche.  The first-aid recommended for restoring vital bodily
functions after such occurrences is simply to pound your chest several
times with a large rock.  On the other hand, if the jolt has been
sufficient to lock your eyelids in an open position, it is best to
leave them that way.  This will prevent you from dozing off during the
night and falling out of your tree.

The excitement of being lost wears off rather quickly, and after a few
days boredom sets in.  It is then that one may wish to turn to some of
the proven techniques for getting one's self found.  Building a large
smoky fire is always good.  During fire season, this will almost always
attract attention and it won't be long before a team of smoke-jumpers
will be parachuted in to put out the fire.  They may be a little angry
about having their poker game back at camp interrupted but can usually
be persuaded to take you out of the woods with them anyway.  (The term
"survival tip," by the way, originated from the practice of giving
smoke-jumpers five dollars each for not leaving the fire-builder
behind.) There is always the possibility that a bomber may just fly
over and dump a load of fire retardant on you and your fire and you
will have to turn to other measures.

Scooping water up in your hat and pouring it down a badger hole is
good, if you are fortunate enough to have both a hat and a badger hole
handy.

Someone is bound to show up to ask you why you are doing such a fool
thing.

If this person isn't afraid of associating with a madman, he will
probably show you the way home.

Similarly, you can try your hand at catching some large fish.  If
you're successful, three anglers will immediately emerge from the brush
and ask you what bait you're using.  In case you don't have a valid
fishing license, one of the three will be a game warden who will place
you under arrest as soon as he has caught his own limit.  But at least
you'll be found.

When everything else fails and you are really desperate, you can always
resort to taking off all your clothes.  Even when lost, I've never
known this technique to fail in attracting a large crowd of people, no
matter how far back in the wilderness I happened to be.  Here's an
example: My friend Retch and I had been fishing a high mountain stream
at least three miles from the nearest road.  We hadn't seen a sign of
human life all day.  The fish had stopped biting and we were hot and
sticky and decided to take a dip in a pool beneath a small waterfall.

We took off our clothes and dove into the water, the temperature of
which instantly proved to be somewhere between damn cold and ice.  As
we popped to the surface, and started flailing wildly toward the ledge
from which we had dived, approximately twelve members of a mushroom
club rounded a bend in the trail and headed straight for us.  I would
like to be able to tell you that modesty forced us to remain submerged
in that liquid ice until they had passed, their pleasant outing
unblemished by nothing more lascivious than a patch of morel
mushrooms.

Unfortunately, that would not be the truth.  The startling spectacle of
two grown men lunging out of the water, snatching up their clothes and
racing off through a thicket of devil's club was at least mitigated by
the fact that most of the ladies in the group apparently thought we
were wearing blue leotards.  I was also relieved that a particularly
bad twelve-letter word had frozen on Retch's lower lip and didn't thaw
out until we were in the car driving home.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when lost is to accept the
experience in a philosophical manner.  Whenever I start becoming
slightly confused over which is my elbow and which the way home and
night is tightening its noose upon me in some primordial swamp, I never
fail to recall the folksy wisdom spoken to me under similar
circumstances by the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree.  Rancid spat out his
chaw of tobacco and in that comical, bug-eyed way of his said, "JUMPIN'
GOSH ALMIGHTY, WHERE IN HELL IS WE?!"  Somehow those words always seem
a fitting introduction to a lively folk dance and a rousing rendition
of an Austrian drinking song.

Grogan's War Surplus My old camping buddy retch, his eyes dreamy and
wet with nostalgia, leaned forward and stirred the fire under our
sizzling pan of trout with a stick.  I could tell he was getting deep
into his cups because that's the only time he turns sloppily
sentimental.  Also, we were cooking on a propane camp stove.

"You know," he said, "it seems like only yesterday that you and me was
crouched in the mud in some Godforsaken place using our bayonets to
roast a couple hunks of Spam over some canned heat."

"Yeah, and heatin' our water in a steel helmet," I said, sinking
suddenly into the morass of reminiscence.  "And lyin' awake night after
night in a pup tent, listenin' for the first sound of attack ..."

"And half our gear riddled with bullet holes," Retch put in, shaking a
tear off the end of his mustache.

"Yep," I said, "we really had some great campin' when we were kids.

It's just too damn bad kids nowadays don't have some of those old-time
war surplus stores around to sell them their campin' gear."

Retch forked a small, crisp trout out of the pan and munched it down
tail first.  "Say, what was it that was always attackin' us in those
days?"

"I'm not sure what they were called," I said, glancing out into the
surrounding darkness, "but they were always big and hairy and had red
eyes, and teeth the size of railroad spikes.  I haven't seen one of
them since I was twelve years old."  I leaned over and stopped Retch
from throwing a log on the fire.  "Not when I was sober, anyway."

"Say," Retch said suddenly.  "You remember ol' Grogan's War Surplus
store?"

Did I remember Grogan's War Surplus store!  Why, the mere sound of that
melodious name made my heart dance the Light Fantastic.  Grogan's War
Surplus.

Ah, how could I ever forget!

Immediately after World War II, Grogan had remodeled an old livery
stable and feed store in the style now referred to in architectural
textbooks as "war surplus modern," a decor that attempts to emulate the
aesthetic effects of a direct hit on an army ordnance depot.

The store front itself was elegantly festooned with gerry cans, yellow
life rafts, landing nets, ammo boxes, and other assorted residue of
recent history.  On the lot behind the store, the plundered wreckage of
a dozen or so military vehicles had been cleverly arranged in such a
manner as to conceal what had once been an unsightly patch of wild
flowers.  But all the really precious stuff was kept inside the store
itself, illuminated by a few naked light bulbs and the watchful eyes of
Henry P. Grogan.

The great thing about Grogan's War Surplus was not only did it sell
every conceivable thing that might possibly be used for camping, but it
was cheap.

With a few dollars and a sharp eye for a bargain, you could go into
Grogan's and outfit yourself with at least the bare essentials for the
routine overnight camping trip--a sleeping bag, PUP tent, canteen, cook
kit, entrenching shovel, paratrooper jump boots, leggings, packboard,
packsack, web belt, ammo pouches, medic kit, machete, bayonet, steel
helmet, fiber helmet liner, .45 automatic holster (empty), G.I. can
opener, and the other basic necessities.

Then if you had any change left, you might pick up a few luxury items,
things you had no idea what they might be used for but were reasonably
sure you would think of something--ammo box, camouflage net, G.I. soap,
parachute harness, and the like.

Naturally, you never took all of this gear with you on a simple
overnight trip.  Nine times out of ten you forgot the soap and probably
the can opener, too.

Since one of the rules of backpacking requires that all nonessentials
be omitted from the pack, we strained our imaginations to bring every
last piece of beloved war surplus into the realm of our necessities.

Take the bayonet, for example.  It was needed for cutting and spearing
things.  Frequently, it cut and speared things we didn't want cut and
speared, but this drawback was more than made up for by its otherwise
benign service as a cooking spit, paring knife, or even use as a tent
stake.

The machete was needed anytime you had to slash out your own trail.

This necessity arose more often than a person who is not a kid with a
machete might think.  Sometimes you had to walk several miles out of
your way in order for that particular necessity to arise but time was
of no consequence when you were in search of necessity.  Over the years
we slashed out literally hundreds of trails through the wilderness.

The longest of these was The Great Rocky Mountain Divide Trail.  It was
never used much by backpackers, but the mother of a friend of mine, who
lived at the jumping-off point, later put up a post at each end of the
trail and strung a clothesline between them.  The other trails we
built, of course, were not nearly so impressive as this one.

We had learned from war movies that steel helmets could be used for
boiling things in.  On hot summer days, we found out what--our heads.

The helmets could also be used for pillows.  If you went to sleep, your
head would slip off the helmet and bonk on the ground.  Bonking your
boiled head on the ground kept you awake all night, which was one of
the reasons for using a helmet for a pillow in the first place.

Filling up a .45 automatic holster was always a challenge, particularly
since our parents had indicated they would just as soon we didn't buy
any .45 automatics.  About the only thing you could do with the holster
was stuff a sardine-cheese-pickle-onion sandwich in it to be
quick-drawn anytime you got hungry.  Actually, a .45 automatic probably
would have been safer than some of our sandwiches.

You had to be a shrewd shopper not to get taken by Henry P. Grogan.  We
realized that some of the war surplus was brand-spanking-new.  Other
merchandise had obviously seen combat; it was cracked, tarnished,
stained, ripped, riddled, rotten, rusty, and moldy.  Frequently, Henry
P. would try to pawn off some of the new stuff on us but we weren't to
be fooled.  We held out for the authentic war surplus.  Ah, you can't
imagine how old Henry P. would roll his eyes and gnash his teeth every
time one of us kids outwitted him like that.  He'd get very angry.

The real treasure, of course, was any item with a bullet hole in it.

For a long time you practically never came across anything with a
bullet hole in it, and then one day Larry Swartze found a canteen with
what looked like an honest-to-goodness bullet hole drilled through
it.

Henry P. himself had to break up the fight to see who was going to get
the perforated canteen.

Immediately after that incident, all sorts of war surplus turned up
with bullet holes in it, and we kept ourselves broke trying to buy it
all.  Then it occurred to us that maybe old Henry P. was going around
at night with a hammer and large spike, counterfeiting bullet holes.

The bottom subsequently dropped out of the bullet-hole market at Henry
P's.

Shrewd as I was, Henry P. managed to take even me a few times.  One of
the worst things he did was to sell me what he called "one of the down
bags used by Arctic troops to keep them comfortable in 70-below
weather."  The bags turned out to be a secret weapon of the War
Department, designed to be dropped behind the lines in hopes that enemy
troops would attempt to sleep in them and either freeze or break out in
an itch that would occupy both hands scratching for the duration of the
war.  The stuffing consisted not of down but chicken feathers with, if
the size of the lumps in the bag was any indication, several of the
chickens still attached.  But the worst feature of the bag was
triggered by its getting even slightly wet.  Any time it rained on one
of our camping trips, I went home smelling like high tide at the local
chicken and turkey farm.

Another time, Henry P. induced me to buy a two-man mountain tent, so
called, I later discovered, because it was heavy as a mountain and took
two men to set it up.  The roof of the tent looked like it had been
made out of dried batskin, and was impervious to everything but wind,
rain, and heavy dew.

A tubular air vent extended from each end of the tent, an effect which,
combined with the batskin roof, gave it the appearance of a creature
dropped in from outer space.  It frequently gave us quite a start when
we returned to camp late in the evening and glimpsed the pterodactylous
wings of the roof flapping in the breeze and the vent tubes bobbing
about.  I remember one occasion when a brave kid named Kenny stood at a
distance and threw rocks, trying to drive our tent out of camp.

The tent was designed to sleep two grown men, providing they were both
Pygmies and on exceptionally good terms with each other.  We managed to
crowd four of us into it, after drawing straws to see who got to have
their heads by the air vents.  The losers had to suck their air through
bullet holes.  If a loud sound suddenly reminded us of unfinished
business at home, there was always a big traffic jam at the exit.

Sometimes we would be about halfway home and still not out of the tent
yet.

As a result of these drawbacks to the mountain tent, I was constantly
on the lookout for some kind of portable shelter that would afford me a
bit more comfort and protection.  One day, poking around Grogan's War
Surplus, I found it.  After sorting through the ever-present snarl of
nylon rope, I discovered a canvas tube attached to dried batskin and
mosquito netting.  The mosquito netting on one side had a zipper
running the full length of it.

"What is it?"  I asked Grogan.

"That, my boy, is a jungle hammock," he said.  "This canvas is the
hammock part, the mosquito netting is the walls, and then this tough
and very attractive fabric here is the roof."

Not having any jungles readily available, I inquired as to how it would
work in our part of the world.

"Just fine," he said.  "For example, there's some folks who don't much
care for slimy, crawly ol' snakes sneakin' into their nice, cozy
70-below down sleepin' bags to get warm, and they like this here jungle
hammock because it keeps 'em outta reach of the poisonous critters."

I didn't let on in the slightest to Grogan that he had just made
reference to my kind of people.  He nevertheless came to that
conclusion because he scooped up the jungle hammock and carried it
toward the checkout counter.

"How is it for bears?"  I asked in a tone of complete indifference,
following along behind him.

"Bears?  Oh, it's fine on bears.  In bear country you just pitch it a
little higher in the trees--say, about fifteen feet."

The roof of the jungle hammock had some bad cracks in it, several of
the ropes were frayed, the mosquito netting had small tears in it, and
the canvas looked as if it were being attacked by at least four
varieties of exotic mold.

Grogan didn't seem to notice though and let me have it for not much
more than he would have charged for a new one.

I lost no time in getting the jungle hammock home and suspended between
two trees in our backyard for a trial run.  It looked so secure
suspended up there in the ain-a modest ten feet from the ground--that I
decided I would spend the night there.

The family came out that evening to cheer me on as I climbed the
stepladder to launch myself on my maiden voyage in the hammock.  After
they had retreated back into the house, muttering enviously I thought,
I zipped up the mosquito netting, wiggled into my chicken-down sleeping
bag, and lay back to contemplate the closing in of my ancient enemy,
darkness.

After four or five hours of this contemplation, an unnerving thought
occurred to me.  I had not remembered to have the stepladder removed!

It continued to connect ground and hammock like a boarding ramp for any
ravenous beast that happened along.  I leaned over to kick the
ladder.

As I did so the hammock flipped on its side, sending me like a shot
through the mosquito netting, still encased in my sleeping bag.

As bad luck would have it, my crotchety old dog, Strange, had a short
while before staggered in from a night of carousing and collapsed on
the target area.  Nothing in his experience, of course, had taught him
to expect me even to be out at night let alone suspended in the air ten
feet above him.

Consequently, when a large, screeching shape wrapped in chicken
feathers plummeted down on him out of the darkness, it was certainly
reasonable for him to assume that he had fallen prey to some huge,
carnivorous bird of the night.

I, for my part, fully expected to be greeted by a hairy beast with
fast, snapping jaws, an expectation that did not go unfulfilled.

Within ten seconds we had fought ourselves to a state of total
exhaustion, perhaps not surprising when you consider the fact that we
had gone fully around the yard three times, failed in our attempts to
climb several trees and a lilac bush, battered open the door to the
house, and finally collapsed in a single panting heap on the kitchen
floor.  Both of us smelled of wet chicken feathers for days afterwards,
and it was a full week before I could brush the taste of dog off my
teeth.

After I had recovered from that night though, I couldn't help chuckling
over how I had put one over on ol' Grogan.  If Henry P. had known the
mosquito netting on that jungle hammock was eaten plumb through with
jungle rot he would have charged me twice the price that he did.

"Do I remember Henry P. Grogan's War Surplus store?"  I said to
Retch.

"Wasn't his that high-class place with the sign that said SHIRTS AND
SHOES MUST BE WORN ON THESE PREMISES?"

But he didn't hear me.  He was too busy blowing on the fire.

The Big Trip When I WAS VERY YOUNG and the strange wild passion for
mountains was first upon me, I wrote, produced, and directed for myself
a magnificent, colossal, 3-D, Technicolor, Wide-Screen, Stereophonic
fantasy--the fantasy of the Big Trip.

Whenever the jaws of tedium gnawed too harshly on my bones, I simply
turned down the lights on the murk and grind of the world outside and
projected the fantasy on the backsides of my eyeballs, each of which
was equipped with a Silver Screen.

The fantasy was primarily an adventure story set in the vast wilderness
of the Selkirk mountains.  It starred You Know Whom, who bore a
striking resemblance to a four-foot-eight-inch Gregory Peck.  The basic
plot was that the hero, a pack on his back, hiked far back into these
beautiful mountains, endured great hardships, overcame terrible
obstacles, and occasionally even rescued from perilous distress a
beautiful red-haired lady.  It was strictly a G-rated fantasy.  (The
Rand X-rated fantasies came later.) But I enjoyed it.  In fact, with
time, the Big Trip began to gain a strange sort of dominance over my
life.

Several times the fantasy prevented my perishing from a loathsome
childhood affliction: school.  Once in a seventh-grade English class I
stumbled into a nest of dangling participles.  Had I not been able to
get my fantasy going in time, those slimy, leech-like creatures would
have drained me dry as a puffball in five minutes.

On occasion, Mr. Rumsdale, our seventh-grade English teacher, would
unexpectedly break through the thick and buttressed walls of our
indifference and start throwing parts of speech in all directions.

Several of my friends were knocked silly by flying objects of the
preposition, but long before there was any threat to my own cherished
ignorance, the old fantasy would carry me to safety.  I would be
roasting a fresh-caught trout on the rocky shore of some high and
distant stream, or maybe just striding along under the sweet weight of
a good pack, and it would be morning in the mountains, with the sun
rising through the trees.

Mr. Rumsdale once lowered the battering ram he used for a voice and
told me that I had better stop this constant dreaming.  Otherwise, he
predicted, both he and I would probably die as old men in seventh-grade
English.

Even I knew by then that the Big Trip, for all its utility as an
antidote to boredom, could not endure forever simply as fantasy.  One
day I would have to turn it into the real thing.  I would have to take
the Big Trip back into the mountains and face great hardship and
overcome terrible obstacles.  To that end, I began serving an
apprenticeship in the out-of-doors.

I practiced "sleeping out alone" in the back yard, my ears ever alert
to the approaching footpad of some hairy terror, until at last I
conquered my overpowering fear of the dark and the ghastly things that
flourished there.  I learned to build fires, using nothing more than a
few sticks, a couple of newspapers, and a box and a half of kitchen
matches.  I studied the art of camp cookery, and soon could serve up a
hearty meal of flaming bacon, charred potatoes, three-pound pancakes,
and butterscotch pudding with gnat topping.

After a longer time, I even taught myself to eat these things.  Through
practical experience, I learned that it is best not to dry wet boots
over a fire with your feet still in them.  I learned that some sleeping
bags are stuffed with the same filler used in dynamite fuse and that it
is best not to let sparks land on one of them, particularly when it is
occupied by your body.

Thus did the Big Trip shape my life and give meaning even to its
failures and disasters.

As I grew older, I went off with friends on numerous lengthy trips into
the mountains, thinking each time that perhaps at last I was making the
Big Trip.  But I never was.  These were pleasant, amiable excursions,
occasionally distinguished by a crisis or two, but I was always
disappointed by the realization that they fell far short of the Big
Trip of my aging fantasy.  So one day in the summer that I turned
seventeen, I decided I would at last, once and for all, plan and
execute, or be executed by, the Big Trip.

When I announced and elaborated on my plans for the benefit of my
mother and stepfather, there was great wailing and a gnashing of teeth
already well gnashed from my previous and much lesser excursions into
the wilderness.  From then until the day I left, my mother could
scarcely take time out from climbing the walls to make the beds and
cook our meals.

The plans were indeed formidable, and in my unsure moments they even
caused me to wail and gnash a little.  The terrain I planned to cross
looked on a topographical map like the scribblings of a mildly demented
chimpanzee and spanned a distance of some thirty miles as the crow
flies.  If the crow walked, as they say, it was more like fifty.  The
area was unmarred by roads or trails.  It contained plenty of tracks,
though, some of which belonged to grizzlies.  And as everyone knows, a
grizzly, if he happens along at the right moment, can transform a quiet
walk to a privy into a memorable experience.

Preparations for the Big Trip were remarkably simple, since by this
time I knew that nothing destroys a Big Trip quicker than a surplus of
comforts or a dearth of hardships.  And a Big Trip is defined by its
hardships.

These hardships, of course, could not be left to mere chance.  A number
of them had to be prepared in advance and taken along, in the pack, so
to speak, to be trotted out any time the going got easy.  The basic
formula for creating hardships is to take no nonessentials and only a
few of the essentials.

One of the essentials you leave behind is most of the food.  My stock
of grub consisted of pancake flour, a slab of bacon, dried fruit,
butter, sugar, and salt.  For emergency rations, I took a bag of
dehydrated chicken noodle soup, enough, it turned out, to feed an army
of starving Cossacks for upwards of three weeks.

About the only gear I took was a sleeping bag, a knife, and a rifle.  I
carried along the rifle in case I ran into a grizzly, since my idea of
hardships did not include getting eaten by a bear.  Although I knew a
.32

Special couldn't stop a charging grizzly, I took comfort in the notion
that I might be able to take the edge off his appetite on his way to
the table.  In the early days of my fantasy, I had conceived of
building a stockade each night as protection against bears, but when
you have a grizzly coming for you, no matter how much encouragement and
incentive he might offer, it is difficult to get a stockade up in time
to do much good.  So I was taking the rifle.

At practically the last moment, I decided to take along a companion.

In light of the other meticulous preparations for the Big Trip, it
seems incongruous now that I should have selected my traveling
companion so casually.  Retch, as he will be known here, had just moved
to town recently and was probably the only person of my acquaintance
who had not heard of the Big Trip.  This gap in his knowledge may be
the reason that he was the only person I could find who was ready and
willing to accompany me on the expedition.  Perhaps in my last-minute
desperation for companionship I skipped a few details and did not
impress upon him the full magnitude of the trip.

"How would you like to go on a camping trip?"  I asked him.  "Spend a
few days hiking around in the mountains, catch some fish, cook out?"

Retch said he thought he would like that.  Somehow he got the
impression we were going on an extended fishing trip and marshmallow
roast.  Later, under somewhat harsher circumstances, he was to reveal
to me that never in his whole life had he nourished any fantasies about
a Big Trip.  I was appalled that a human life could be so sterile, so
devoid of splendor.

Even by the time my parents were driving us to the jumping-off spot,
Retch still did not fully comprehend the full portent of the Big
Trip.

My stepfather's funereal air, my mother's quivering lips, and my own
grim silence, however, began to undermine his confidence.

"It isn't as though we're going to be gone forever," he would say,
attempting to console my mother.  She would reply with a low, quavering
moan.

By the time we disembarked from the car, Retch was convinced that we
were going to be gone forever.  As things turned out, he was nearly
right.

For two pleasant days, the Big Trip did seem as if it were going to be
nothing more than an ordinary camping trip, and therefore not a Big
Trip at all.  The sky was an impeccable blue, the firewood dry and
fragrant, the trout in the lakes fat and hungry, the huckleberries
sweet.  I could scarcely conceal my disappointment at the good time we
were having.

On the third morning I was awakened by a howl of anguish from Retch.

"The deer got into our packs and ate everything but the bacon and
chicken noodle soup," he yelled.

My heart laughed up.  This, finally, was a real hardship.

"Don't worry," I said.  "We can always live off the country."  Then I
looked around.  The country didn't seem to be very edible.  Perhaps the
trip would be harder than even I expected.

Later that same day, we came across what we thought must be fresh
grizzly tracks.  Concluding that where there are fresh grizzly tracks,
there are likely to be fresh grizzlies, we quickened our pace.  Near
the top of the next mountain, we slowed to a dogtrot, which we
maintained for the rest of the day.

That night we camped on a barren ridge without water, and ate fried
bacon and soup for supper.  The soup, which wasn't much good with
water, was even worse without it.  (The fact that the deer had not
touched the chicken noodle soup proved to me once and for all that deer
are animals of good sense and discriminating taste.) After dinner, we
sat around the fire picking the bacon out of our teeth with noodles.

"I've got an idea," Retch said.

"What?"  I said.

"Let's quit," he said.

Our quitting then would have been like a skydiver's quitting halfway to
the ground.  "Don't worry," I said.  "It will be a lot easier from now
on."

Storm clouds were rising in the west when we crawled into our sleeping
bags.  Soon the heavy, black thunderheads were over us.  Lightning
licked the peak of our mountain a few times and then started walking
down the ridge toward us.  When it struck close enough to bounce us off
the ground, I predicted, breathlessly, "It's going to pass over the top
of us.  Next time it will strike down below.  .

By the time I was this far along in my prophecy, it was evident that I
didn't have much future as a prophet.  It didn't seem as if I even had
much future.

When you see lightning hit from a distance, it appears that the bolt
zaps into the ground and that's it, but when you are occupying the
ground the bolt zaps into, it's not that way at all.  First, a terrible
bomb goes off and you're inside the bomb, and then streams of fire are
going every which way and you're going every which way, and the brush
lights up like neon signs in Chinatown, and there are pools of fire on
the ground and high voltage sings in the air.  Then it's dark again,
black, sticky dark, and the rain hits like a truckful of ice.

The first thing I noticed, upon regaining consciousness, was that I was
running to beat hell down the side of the mountain.  I was wearing only
my shorts.  I do not know if I was fully dressed or not when the
lightning hit.

Something was bounding like a deer through the brush ahead of me, and I
hoped it was a deer and not a grizzly, because I was gaining on it.

Then I saw that it was just a pair of white shorts, or reasonably white
shorts, also running down the mountain.  I yelled at the white shorts
that I thought there was a cliff up ahead.  The white shorts gave a
loud yelp and vanished.

I found Retch sorting and counting his bones at the bottom end of a
ten-foot drop.  He said he might have been hurt worse, but some rocks
cushioned his fall.

"You didn't happen to bring an aspirin, did you?"  he said.

"No, "I said.

"I didn't think so," he said.

While we were draining our sleeping bags (it was raining, remember), I
made one last attempt at prophecy.

"Well, Retch," I said, "think of it this way: things just can't get any
worse than they are right now."

In the days that followed we were to look back upon that moment as a
time of great good fortune and decadent high living.

The driving, ice-cold rain continued through the night.  The next
morning we crawled out of our sleeping bags, stirred around in the mud
until we found our clothes, put them on, and with an absolute minimum
of jovial banter, spent an unsuccessful hour trying to start a fire.

For breakfast we stirred up some chicken noodle soup in muddy water.

The muddy water improved the flavor and texture of the soup
considerably, and by drinking it through our teeth we could strain out
the larger pebbles and even some of the noodles.

On all sides of us, as far as a bloodshot eye could see, was a vast,
raging storm of mountains.  Our soggy map told us we were ten miles
from the end of the nearest trail, more than twenty miles from the
nearest road.  Retch and I stared at each other across the pile of
steaming sticks that represented our aborted effort at fire-building,
and I could see a reflection of my own misery and despair swirling in
his eyes.  "What do we do now?"  I thought.

Then I remembered a sure-fire remedy for predicaments of this sort.  It
was recommended to me by a fierce, old man who knew the mountains well
and knew what they can do to a person.  "When everything else has
failed, there is only one thing to do," he said.  "You tough it out."

So that is what we did.  We toughed it out.  We went down mountains, up
mountains, around mountains, lunged over windfalls, through swamps,
across rain-swollen streams, and we ate handfuls of chicken noodle
mush, and then surged on across more mountains, streams, and
windfalls.

Had we run across a grizzly we would have eaten him raw on the spot and
strung his claws for necklaces.  There was nothing now, perhaps not
even a beautiful red-haired lady in perilous distress, that could have
interrupted our relentless march.

And then one day--or was it night?--we walked out of the mountains.

There were cars going by on the highway, people zipping comfortably
along through their lives at a mile a minute, looking out at us in mild
amusement and wondering what muddy, bloody fools were these.  We had
triumphed over the mountains and over ourselves and over the Big Trip,
but nobody knew or cared what we had done.  We limped along the road in
search of a farmhouse with a phone, our clothes torn, bodies aching,
jaws clenched on the bullet, and the last dehydrated chicken noodle
soup we would ever eat in our lives still matting our wispy beards.

Then I heard a strange, small sound in the empty air.  I glanced over
at Retch to see if he heard it too, and he did, and there was this
little pained smile on his cracked lips.  As we slogged along the sound
grew in volume, swelling up and filling the silence and emptiness,
until it reached a great thundering crescendo.

It was the sound of applause and cheering--the sound of a standing
ovation.

The Theory and Application Of Old Men EVERY KID SHOULD HAVE an old man.
 I don't mean just a father.  Fathers are all right and I'm not
knocking them, since I'm one myself, but from a kid's point of view
they spend entirely too much time at a thing called the office or some
other equally boring place of work.  If you're a kid, what you need is
someone who can take you out hunting or fishing or just poking around
in the woods anytime you feel the urge.

That's an old man.  Doing things like that is what old men were
designed for.

If you've never had an old man of your own before, you may not know
what to look for or how to use one once you find him.  I am something
of an expert on the subject, having studied under some of the best old
men in the business.

Someday I hope to get into the field myself.  In any case, I am
eminently qualified to advise you on getting and caring for your first
old man.

First off, let us consider the problem of identifying old men in the
field.  All old men are male.  This is important to remember, and even
then one can make a mistake.  Occasionally, on hunting trips I have
discovered that what I thought were men turned out to be old women.

Had they turned out to be young women, I would have been a good deal
less disappointed, but that turn of circumstance almost never happens
to me.

Here is a good basic description of an old man: He is a male person
with white hair, a stubbly beard, wrinkled hide, bifocals, long
underwear, chewing tobacco, and the disposition of a bull walrus with a
bad case of the shingles.

If you find a female person with these basic characteristics, she would
probably work just as well.

Old men come in various vintages.  The sixties are good, the seventies
are excellent, and the eighties are prime.  Nineties are fine too, but
there is always the risk they won't make it to the punchline on a good
story.

Every youngster should be properly trained in the safe handling of an
old man before he is allowed to take one out alone.  One good bit of
advice is to treat every old man as if he were loaded.  If a kid
accidentally triggers an old man, he is liable to get his vocabulary
peppered with colorful expressions that will send his mother into shock
the first time one tumbles off his tender lips.  As a boy, I once
addressed a piece of malfunctioning machinery in the appropriately
descriptive language of my own old man.  Quick as lightning my
grandmother struck, deftly boxing my ears in a one-two combination.

Fortunately for me, she used a small box.  "You been hangin' out with
that blinkety-blank old Rancid Crabtree again," she said.  "He jist
ain't the sort for a blinkety-blank young boy always to be traipsin'
after, and I'll tell him so next time I lay eyes on the
blinkety-blank!"  ("Blinkety-blank," by the way, was one of Mr.
Crabtree's favorite words.) The very next time the old man was in our
kitchen, ol' Gram lit into him, and he grinned like a shaggy old dog,
sitting there dunking a big sugar cookie in his coffee.  He was very
good at concealing his fear of Gram.

Mr. Crabtree, by the way, had a definite aura about him, a presence
that seemed to linger on in the house long after he had gone home.

Frequently, my mother would comment on it.  "Throw open the windows!"

she would shout.

Let us next consider the proper technique for starting an old man.

When you are older, you can start an old man simply by loading him or,
in the more common expression, "getting him loaded."  While you're
still a kid, however, you will have to use empty old men, who are a
good deal harder to start.  The best technique for starting an empty
old man is called "priming."  You say something like this to your O.M.:
"Mr. Jenkins, I'll bet fishing is sure a lot better nowadays than when
you were a kid."  That bit of priming should not only get him started
but keep him going for a couple of hours.

A kid may come across an old man who gambles, drinks, lies, cusses,
chews 'n' spits, and hates to shave and take baths, but there's also a
chance that he will run into one with a lot of bad habits.  There are
two kinds of old men in particular that he wants to watch out for--the
Sleeper and the Drifter.

Once you've gone to all the trouble of getting the Sleeper started, he
will set you up something like this: "So, that ol' sow b'ar shooshes
her cubs up a tree, an' then she comes fer me.  I can see she's got her
heart set on turnin' my bride into a widder woman.  Wall, I ups with my
twenty-two single-shot ..."

"Yes, yes?"  you say.  "Go on."

"Snort, mimph, wheeze, snore," he says.  Sleepers will drop off like
that every time, and you want to avoid them like the plague.

The Drifter is just as bad as the Sleeper and maybe even worse.  Keep
in mind that most old men are masters of the art of digression.  They
will start off something like this: "I recollect the time a bobcat got
loose in Poke Martin's plane.  Funniest thing I ever seen!  Poke, he
was flyin' supplies into Pat Doyle's camp at Terrible Crick--Terrible
Crick, that's whar I caught a twenty-pound char one time on a piece of
bacon rind.  Shorty Long an' me was runnin' a trapline that winter,
about the coldest winter since I got my tongue stuck on the pump handle
when I was a youngun.  Back in those days ..."  In this fashion the
average old man will digress back to about the time the earth's crust
was beginning to harden and then will work his way back to the original
topic, touching every base as he goes.  A brief anecdote is somehow
transformed into the history of western civilization, but it is all
entertaining and enlightening.  The Drifter, however, just leaves you
back there in the mists of time, the two of you looking about,
wondering what it was you had come for.

"But what about the bobcat?"  you ask, hoping to jog the Drifter's
memory.

"Bobcat?"  he says.  "What bobcat?"

My own luck with old men over the years has been exceptionally good.  I
still keep a stable of them around to remind me of a time when men (and
women, too) were measured not by whether their look was wet or dry but
whether they possessed a mysterious quality called "grit."  When I was
a youngster, grit was the chief remedy for a variety of ailments.

"What that boy needs, an old man would prescribe, "is more grit."  A
deficiency in grit was considered more serious than a shortage of
Vitamin B. It was generally felt that you couldn't live without it.

Grit, I've learned over the years, is one of the best things an old man
has to offer a kid.  That and fine lying, and maybe the proper use of
the language.

Most of my early language training was attended to by old men.  The
first person to truly appreciate the value of this linguistic tutoring
was my Freshman Composition teacher in college.  He called me into his
office and told me that my composition papers were filled with the most
outrageous lies ever inflicted on the consciousness of a civilized and
rational mind (meaning his) and that my spelling, grammar, and
syntactical monstrosities approached the absolute in illiteracy.  I was
embarrassed.  I just wasn't used to compliments like that.  I thanked
him, though, and said I realized I could write pretty good all right,
but I reckoned I could do even better if I put my mind to it.  Well, he
was dumbfounded to hear that I might even surpass my previous literary
efforts.  As he gently shoved me out of his office, uttering over and
over, "I don't believe it!  I don't believe it!  " I could tell he
wasn't a man who knew anything about grit, or old men either.

For a long while when I was growing up, I didn't have an old man of my
own, and had to borrow one belonging to a friend of mine.  The old man
was my friend's grandfather, which seemed to me like just about the
most convenient arrangement a kid could ask for.  Then my friend moved
away and left the old man in his entirety to me alone.  It was a fine
stroke of luck.  In the easy informality of the day, the old man called
me "Bub" and I called him "Mr. Hooker."  He didn't seem to mind the
familiarity.

Mr. Hooker was a prime old man.  One of the first things a kid learns
about prime old men is that they don't put up with any kind of
nonsense.

Included in the vast store of things that Mr. Hooker considered
nonsense were complaints, all of which he defined as "whining" or maybe
on occasion "bawling like a calf."  Consequently, when Mr. Hooker
would take me out on cold winter days to check his trapline along Sand
Creek, I would keep my complaints corked up until I could stand it no
longer.  Then I would articulate them in the form of a scientific
hypothesis.

"I wonder what happens when a person's toes freeze plumb solid?"  I
would say.

"Wall, when they gets warm again, they jist thaws out," Mr. Hooker
would reply, splattering a square yard of snow with tobacco juice.

"Then they falls off."

I would respond to this news in a manner of appropriate indifference,
as though I were unacquainted with anyone whose toes were at that
moment in just such a predicament.  Then Mr. Hooker would abruptly
change the subject.  "Say, Bub," he would ask me, "I ever show you how
to build a fahr in the snow?"

"A couple of times," I would reply.  "But I certainly wouldn't mind
seeing it again."

Then Mr. Hooker would make a few magical motions with his feet and
hands, and there would be a bare spot on the ground with a pile of
sticks on it.  He would snap the head of a kitchen match with his thumb
nail, and before I knew what was happening we would be warming
ourselves over a roaring fire, eating dried apricots, and talking of
crows.

I couldn't begin to relate all the things I learned from Mr. Hooker,
but maybe one will suffice.  Even though he was in his late seventies
and early eighties during the time that I knew him, he always insisted
on climbing to the top of the mountain in back of our place to pick
huckleberries.  He taught me that the best huckleberries always grow on
the top of the mountain.  They weren't any bigger or sweeter or more
plentiful up there than huckleberries growing at lower elevations.

They were the best because they grew on top of the mountain.  Some
people may not understand that.  If they don't, it's because they never
had an old man to teach it to them.

The winter I was a senior in high school, Mr. Hooker almost died.  It
made him pretty damn mad, too, because he still had some things he
wanted to do.  I could imagine Death coming timidly into Mr. Hooker's
hospital room and the old man giving him a tongue lashing.  "You
gol-durn ol' fool, you've come too soon!  I ain't even used it all up
yet!"  He lived to greet another spring run of cutthroat trout up Sand
Creek.

I was away at college the following winter when I got word that Mr.
Hooker had at last used it all up.  By the time I got home, the funeral
was over and the relatives had come and gone, paying their last
respects and dividing up among themselves his meager belongings.

"It would have been nice if they could have given you one of his
fishing rods or a knife or something," my mother said.  "I know he
would liked to have left you something."

I decided to snowshoe out into the woods for a while, just to get away
from people and hear what the crows had to say about the passing of Mr.
Hooker.  My eight-year-old nephew, Delbert, wanted to go along and try
out his Christmas skis.  Since I didn't consider him a people, I said,
"All right, come on."

After we had tracked nearly the full length of the old trapline,
Delbert raised an interesting point.  "What do you s'pose happens when
a person's toes freeze plumb solid?"  he said.

"Wall," I said, "they jist thaws out when they gets warm again.  Then
they falls off.  Say, Bub, I ever show you how to build a fahr in the
snow?"

The Two-Wheeled ATV MY FIRST all-terrain vehicle was a one-wheel-drive,
and it could take you anywhere you had nerve and guts enough to peddle
it.

Most of the other kids around had decent, well-mannered bicycles of
distinct makes and models.  Mine was a balloon-tired monster born out
of wedlock halfway between the junkyard and the secondhand store.  Some
local fiend had built it with his own three hands and sold it to my
mother for about the price of a good milk cow.

For two cents or even a used jawbreaker, I would have beaten it to
death with a baseball bat, but I needed it for transportation.  And
transportation, then as now, was the name of the game.

You could walk to some good fishing holes, all right, but when the guys
you were with all rode bikes, you had to walk pretty fast.

Perhaps the worst thing about the Bike, as I called it within hearing
range of my mother, was that you simply could not ride it in a manner
that allowed you to retain any sense of dignity let alone
savoir-faire.

The chief reason for this was that the seat was permanently adjusted
for a person about six-foot-four.  I was a person about
five-foot-four.

The proportions of the handlebars suggested strongly that they had been
stolen from a tricycle belonging to a four-year-old midget.  The result
of this unhappy combination was that wherever I went on the Bike my
rear was always about three inches higher than my shoulder blades.

I tried never to go any place on the Bike where girls from school might
see me, since it was difficult if not impossible in that position to
maintain the image I was cultivating among them of a dashing, carefree
playboy.

The seat on the Bike was of the kind usually found on European racing
bikes.  The principle behind the design of this seat is that the rider
goes to beat hell the sooner to get off of it.  The idea for
heel-and-toe walking races was conceived by someone watching the users
of these particular seats footing it back home after a race.

To get the proper effect of one of these seats, you might spend a
couple of hours sitting balanced on the end of a baseball bat--the
small end.  Put a doily on it for cushioning.

Whatever the other guys thought of my appearance on the Bike, they had
respect for me.  I was the fastest thing around on two wheels, thanks
to that seat.

The Bike had a couple of little tricks it did with its chain that the
Marquis de Sade would have envied.  One was that it would wait until
you had just started down a long, steep, curving hill and then reach up
with its chain and wind your pant leg into the sprocket.  This move was
doubly ingenious, since the chain not only prevented you from putting
on the coaster brakes, it also shackled you to a hurtling
death-machine.  Many was the time that a streamlined kid on a bike
streaked silently past cars, trucks, and motorcycles on grades where a
loose roller skate could break the sound barrier.

The Bike's other favorite trick was to throw the chain off when you
needed it most.  This usually happened when you were trying to outrun
one of the timber wolves the neighbors kept for watchdogs.  You would
be standing up pedaling for all you were worth, leaving a trail of
sweat and burned rubber two inches wide on the road behind you.  The
wolf would be a black snarl coming up fast to your rear.  Then the
chain would jump its sprocket and drop you with a crunch on the
crossbar, the pedals still spinning furiously under your feet.  The
wolf gnawed on you until you got the chain back on the sprocket or
until he got tired and went home.

The standard method for getting off the Bike was to spring clear and
let it crash.  If it got the chance, it would grab you by the pant leg
at the moment of ejection and drag you along to grim destruction.

The Bike would sometimes go for weeks without the front wheel bouncing
off.  This was to lure you into a false sense of security.  You would
be rattling hellbent for home past the neighbors, and for a split
second you would see the front wheel pulling away from you.  Then the
fork would hit the ground and whip you over the handlebars.  Before you
had your breath back, the wolf was standing on your belly reading the
menu.

I spent half my waking moments repairing the Bike and the other half
repairing myself.  Until I was old enough to drive, I went around
looking like a commercial for Band-Aids and mercurochrome.  I hated to
stop the Bike along the highway long enough to pick up an empty beer
bottle for fear people would stop their cars and try to rush me to a
doctor.  Even on one of its good days, the Bike looked like an accident
in which three people had been killed.  Much as I hated to admit it the
Bike was one of the truly great all-terrain vehicles.  it could
navigate streams, cross fallen logs, smash through brush, follow a
mountain trail, and in general do just about anything but climb
trees.

Several times it did try to climb trees but the damage to both of us
was sufficient to make continued efforts in that direction seem
impractical and unrewarding.

Our bicycles in those days were the chief mode of transportation for 10
percent of our camping trips.  Occasionally even today I see people use
bicycles for camping.  They will be zipping along the road on ten-speed
touring bikes, their ultralight camping gear a neat little package on
the rear fender.  When we went camping on our one-speed bikes, it
looked as if we had a baby elephant on the handlebars and the mother on
behind.

Loading a bicycle for a camping trip was not simply a remarkable feat
of engineering, it was a blatant defiance of all the laws of physics.

First of all, there may have been ultralight camping gear in those
days, but we didn't own any of it.  Our skillet alone weighed more than
one of today's touring bikes, and a bedroll in cold weather, even
without the feather bed, was the weight and size of a bale of straw.

The tent was a tarp that worked winters as a haystack cover.  A good
portion of our food was carried in the quart jars our mothers had
canned it in.  Then there were all the axes, hatchets, saws, machetes,
and World War II surplus bayonets without which no camping trip was
complete.  And, of course, I could never leave behind my jungle
hammock, the pride of my life, just in case I happened to come across a
jungle.

The standard packing procedure was to dump most of your stuff into the
center of the tarp, roll the tarp up into a bundle, tie it together
with half a mile of rope, and then find nine boys and a man to lift it
to the back fender of the Bike.  Anything left over was rolled up in
the jungle hammock and tied to the diminutive handlebars.  The hardware
was distributed evenly around the outside of the two massive bundles,
just in case you had sudden need for an ax or a bayonet.

Then you sprang onto the saddle and pedaled with all the fury you could
generate from ninety-eight pounds of bone and muscle.  The Bike would
howl in rage, the twin humps of camp gear would shudder and sway like a
sick camel, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the whole catastrophe
would move out of the yard and wobble off down the road on some
incredible journey.

Sometimes during the winter now, when the cold awakens in my bones and
flesh the ache of a thousand old injuries, I suddenly will recall in
vivid detail the last few terrifying moments of the Bike's existence as
a recognizable entity.

A ragged gypsy band of us had just begun another trip into the
mountains on our camel-humped ATVS.  As usual, I was far out in the
lead, the hatchet-head bicycle seat urging me on.

There was a hill about three miles from my home called Sand Creek Hill,
a name deceptive in its lack of color and description.  By rights the
hill should have been called Deadman's Drop or Say Goodby Hill.

Loggers drove their trucks down it with one foot on the running board
and one hand clutching a rosary--even the atheists.

just as I crested the hill and started my descent, whom should I notice
coming up it but one of our neighbors' wolves, apparently returning
home after a hard night of killing elk in the mountains.  From fifty
yards away I could see his face brighten when he caught sight of me
hurtling toward him like doom on two wheels.  He crouched expectantly,
his eyes happily agleam.

The chain, not to be outdone, chose that moment to eat my pant leg half
way up to the knee.  I expected to be abandoned by the front wheel any
second.

The washboard road rattled my bones; axes, saws, and bayonets filled
the air on all sides; and the great straining mass of the rear pack
threatened to collapse on me.  With one last great effort, I aimed a
quick kick at the wolf, ripped the pant leg free and threw myself into
space.  I bounced four times to distribute the injuries evenly about my
body, and finally, using my nose for a brake, slid to a stop.

The Bike apparently self-destructed shortly after my departure.

Probably the front wheel came off, and the two packs took it from
there, ripping and tearing, mashing and grinding until there was
nothing left but a streak of assorted rubble stretching off down the
hill.

Even the wolf was somewhat shaken by the impact of the crash.  He
stared at the wreckage in silent awe, almost forgetting my one good leg
he held in his slack jaws.

When I was up and around once more, my mother bought me a car, my
second ATV.  She got it from a local fiend, who had built it with his
own three hands, but that's another story.

The Backyard Safari City planners have shown beyond doubt that old
orchards, meadows, and pine woods, which once threatened the outskirts
of many of our towns and cities, can be successfully eradicated by
constructing a housing development on top of them.  To my knowledge
there has not been a single recurrence of an old orchard, meadow, or
pine woods after one application of a housing development.

Housing developments are a great boon to camping, since they make such
fine places to get away from.  At the same time, however, many of them
are so designed that they are destroying one of the most exotic forms
of camping known to man--the backyard safari.

The requirements for a backyard safari are few: a kid, a sleeping bag,
and a backyard.  The backyard is essential to the sport, and it saddens
me that some developers have seen fit to phase it out.

I personally don't sleep out in the backyard much anymore.  Oh,
occasionally my wife will forget that I'm spending an evening out with
the boys and, through some gross oversight, will remove the secret
outside key from the geranium pot.  An intimate association with slugs,
night crawlers, and wandering dogs with terminal halitosis no longer
holds the fascination for me it once did, and the ground has become
much harder in recent years.

Nevertheless there are those persons, mostly under the age of ten, for
whom the backyard at night is still wilderness--a Mt.  Everest, North
Pole, and Amazon all rolled up in a seventy-five-foot-square patch of
lilacs and crabgrass.

There are two distinct forms of Sleeping Out: With (Fred, John, etc.)
and Alone.  Both consist mainly of lying awake all night in the
backyard.

Otherwise they resemble each other about as much as hunting quail with
a 12-gauge does shooting tigers with a blowgun.

At about age seven I gained easy mastery over Sleeping Out With, even
though my first attempt was marred by a monumental miscalculation.  We
decided to sleep out in his backyard rather than mine.  By daylight,
the two backyards were separated by about a quarter mile of countryside
laced with barbed-wire fences.  At night, the distance was upwards of
ten miles, laced with barbed-wire fences and populated by scores of
creatures not yet known to science.  It should be noted that in the
aftermath of the harrowing experience of that first night I could
remember distinctly the features of several weird, hairy creatures that
flitted past but could not recollect having passed through, over, or
under a single barbed-wire fence.

Vern, my camping buddy, and I had snuggled down into our foot-high pile
of quilts, comic books, and assorted edibles and were well on our way
to spending a pleasantly adventurous night under the stars.  Then it
got dark.

Sometime between 9 P.M. and midnight, I became convinced that the
forces of darkness were conspiring to terminate my existence.  I
emerged from beneath the quilts and prepared to hurl my body out into
the abyss of night, informing Vern that I had suddenly recalled some
urgent business at home that cried out for my immediate attention.  He
took the news badly, since he had no experience in Sleeping Out Alone
and had no intention of gaining any until he was about forty-seven.

His argument for my staying was fierce and brilliant, but it couldn't
hold a candle to the pure, hard logic of a wavering screech which at
that moment drifted out of the nearby woods.  Neighbors said later that
they noticed a terrible smell of burned rubber hanging on the air next
day, but I think they were exaggerating.  Melting the soles off a pair
of tennis shoes just doesn't smell that bad.

Sleeping Out With allows for a certain degree of sloppiness and
haphazard good fellowship, but Alone is all serious business, fraught
with craft, skill, and ritual.  Some great writers have suggested that
initiation into manhood has something to do with getting your first
gun, deer, bear, drink of whiskey, or some other such first, but they
are wrong.  The true initiation into manhood consists of Sleeping Out
Alone in your backyard for the very first time.  You can almost always
recognize a kid who has just completed this ritual.  There will be a
slight swagger to his gait, and a new firmness to his jaw and he will
be old and wrinkled and have white hair.

The first step in Sleeping Out Alone is to select just the right spot
on which to spend the night.  If it is too close to the house you will
draw such taunts as, "Albert is spending the night on the back
stoop."

On the other hand, the sleeping spot should not be so far from the
house that the distance cannot be covered in less than two seconds
starting from a prone position.

An imaginary straight line extends from the sleeping spot to the back
door of the house.  This line should be cleared of all obstacles:
hoses, lawn chairs, tall blades of grass.  If one has a dog, he should
be tied or locked up well before night in order to prevent his slipping
in under cover of darkness and surreptitiously depositing a new
obstacle on the escape route.

Dogs have also been known to fall asleep directly on the beeline, as it
is sometimes called.  Once while traveling at a high rate of speed, I
collided with my old dog, Strange, under just such circumstances.  The
result was multiple bites on the legs, neck, head, and hindquarters,
but after a good deal of rest and medication he managed to pull
through.

Choice of sleeping gear is largely a matter of preference.  Most
youngsters prefer to sleep with all their clothes on, although some
find it more comfortable to wear only their underwear and shoes.

Blankets on an old mattress have the advantage over sleeping bags of
being easier to eject from in an emergency.  Mummy-type sleeping bags
should be avoided, since a stuck zipper may force one to run completely
encased in the bag.  While by no means impossible, running under such a
handicap will cut one's speed nearly in half.

Another hazard is that mothers have been known to faint and fathers to
screech out strange obscenities at the sight of a mummy bag suddenly
bounding into the house.

On a youngster's first attempt at Sleeping Out Alone, the considerate
family usually waits up and throws him a little welcoming party shortly
before midnight.  If the sleeper-out is unprepared for such a
reception, he will probably enter the kitchen fully accelerated and
wearing the expression of a person possessed of the knowledge that he
is being closely pursued by something large and hairy.  Under these
circumstances it is best if the parents avoid leaping out of hiding
places and yelling "Surprise!"  The youngster will probably recover
from the shock but the kitchen may not.  In any case the parents will
be creating some distasteful and unnecessary work for themselves.

The eight-year-old who takes it upon himself to sleep alone in the
backyard, nine times out of ten, harbors in his heart some hope of one
day becoming a mountain man or maybe a cowboy.  Everyone knows that the
ability to sleep outside alone is a prerequisite for both
professions.

Also one may wish to squelch once and for all the suspicion among his
peers and siblings that he is "chicken."  There is nothing that so
assaults a man's self-respect as to have an older sister spread the
rumor around the neighborhood that her little brother has a gizzard.

Thus the sleeper-out who suddenly decides that the better part of valor
is to get the hell inside the house as quickly as possible may want to
assume some sort of protective coloration, if for no other reason than
to hide his ruffled feathers.

The wise youngster, therefore, will decelerate abruptly at the back
door, compose himself, and enter his abode with a bearing that exudes
dignity, calmness, and self-assurance.  He must then be prepared to
undergo a certain amount of friendly but mischievous interrogation
concerning the reasons for his premature return .  Should he be so
unsophisticated as to give his actual reasons, he is likely to receive
some such response as, "Well, that's strange.

I don't recall ever seeing a grizzly bear in the backyard before--a few
mountain lion tracks among the azaleas maybe, but no grizzly bear."

Consequently, it is best to have a few plausible answers worked out
well in advance, such as, "I thought I smelled smoke and rushed in to
wake the family," or, "I nearly forgot, but I'm expecting an important
phone call this evening."

The night that I Slept Out Alone successfully for the first time was
probably typical for such undertakings, except it was rather
long--about equal in length to the time required for the rise and fall
of the Roman Empire.  The only part of me that slept at all that night
was my right hand, and that only because it was wrapped so tightly
around a baseball bat.  Several times, off in the distance, an ant
coughed.  The night dragged on.  A pack of wolves circled my camp.

Darkness embraced the earth.  An ax murderer passed through the yard on
his way to work.  Where is the sun?  I thought.  It must be nearly
dawn.  A siren sounded faintly in a distant town.  The ten o'clock
curfew.  I had been Sleeping Out Alone for forty-five minutes.  I
sniffed the air for smoke, hoping that the house might be burning down,
and I could rush in and save the family.  I was expecting an important
telephone call, but we had no phone.  Inside the house, I knew my
sister, The Troll, lay awake, listening for the thunder of my footsteps
on the porch.  She was sorting and polishing her hoard of "chicken"
phrases.  I slouched back down into the saddle of my self and grimly
rode against the night.

Shooting the Chick-a-nout Narrows My love of rafting started in grade
school and lasted up until I was thirty years old, or, to be more
exact, until about fifteen seconds before my buddy Retch and I became
the first persons to shoot the Chick-a-nout Narrows and live.

A teacher by the name of Miss Goosehart got me started on rafting.  I
was about ten at the time with an academic record that would make a
turnip look like an overachiever.  One day Miss Goosehart kept me after
school and told me she was going to make me literate if it killed
her.

I said all right I'd do it if she promised not to tell my mother.  What
she wanted me to litter I had no idea, but I was too smart to let on.

Miss Goosehart, her eyes filling with tears, apparently gave up on the
idea of forcing me into a life of crime, and instead thrust a book into
my hands.  "Here," she said.  "Read this as soon as you learn how."

The book had pictures in it of this kid and a man floating a raft down
a river.  They had a little tent pitched on the raft, and a fishing
line trailing behind in the water.  You could tell from looking at
their faces that the two of them were having themselves a fine time.  I
sounded out their names.  H-u-c-k and J-i-m.  Pretty soon I was
overwhelmed by curiosity and started sounding out the first sentence in
the book.  I sounded faster and faster.  By the time I had sounded out
the first chapter I knew how to read.

Miss Goosehart had hooked me on reading.  It was a terrible thing to do
to an innocent kid who wanted nothing more out of life than to fish and
hunt and maybe run a trapline in the off season.

By the time I had finished reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
I already had a raft of my own built.  A kid by the name of Harold
helped me build it, but I was the brains behind the project.  Since
there weren't many logs to be found lying along the banks of Sand
Creek, we used old cedar fenceposts.  We tied the fenceposts into
bundles with rope and baling wire, and then lashed the bundles of
fenceposts to a couple of rotten planks.  The raft was by no means as
attractive as it might appear from this description, but I had little
doubt that it would serve the purpose.  The little doubt I did have
moved me to offer some words of advice to Harold, particularly since
Sand Creek was at flood stage and doing its best to wash out roads,
bridges, pumphouses, and anything else that might offer it some
amusement.

"I bet this raft would hold ten people," I told Harold proudly.

"I bet it would hold twenty people," Harold said.

"You're probably right," I said.  "But when we test it, I think only
one of us should be on it."

"Good idea," Harold said.

"And," I said, "I think it would be best if you stand right in the
center of the raft so you don't fall overboard when I shove it out into
the current."

"I bet it might not even hold one person," Harold said.  "And I'm
wearing my good pants.  You go."  Harold may not have been a great
naval architect, but he wasn't dumb.  Why hadn't I thought to wear my
good pair of pants!  There was nothing to do but make the test float
myself.  Gingerly I climbed aboard, making a mental note that the raft
bobbed about a good deal and that the posts seemed to be spreading
apart under my weight.  These were not good signs, particularly since
the raft was not yet in the water.

Nevertheless, I decided to have a short float.  Harold and I first
tried christening the raft with a bottle of orange pop, but the bottle
refused to break.  Since there was every indication we might pound the
raft apart before it did so, we drank the pop instead.  Then I hopped
aboard.  Harold pushed the raft out into mid-current and I was on my
way.  From that moment on, Harold did not refer to his pants as his
good pants.  He called them his lucky pants.

"How far you going?"  Harold shouted.

"Not far," I yelled back.  "Just a mile or two."

I must say that I have enjoyed few things in life as much as I did the
first ten seconds of my ride on that raft.  Then I perceived that the
fenceposts were sinking under my feet.  Not sinking fast, mind you, but
rapidly enough to hold my interest.  By the time I rounded the first
bend, the raft was completely beneath the surface and the water was
lapping at my ankles.  Fortunately the raft stabilized at that point,
and I continued drifting precariously along, my attention more or less
equally divided between retaining some degree of dignity and looking
for the first opportunity to disembark.

The spectacle of my apparently standing on the surface of Sand Creek
was not without its rewards.  It stimulated a herd of milk cows to race
wildly about their pasture in an amusing fashion, sent several dogs
slinking for home with their tails between their legs, and brought the
Petersons' hired hand to his knees, whether out of laughter, shock, or
just reverence I never found out.

Gossips later reported to my mother that I had been seen walking on
water and, from observations of the final stage of my journey, floating
down Sand Creek with a bundle of fenceposts under each arm.  Mom was
furious.  She told the gossips I got in enough trouble without folks
making up lies about me.

Over the years I built up a couple dozen rafts, all of them vastly
superior to that initial effort.  My first rafting experience, however,
taught me numerous lessons about naval architecture, the most important
of which is that when the time comes for the test float to make sure
that you are the only one of the crew wearing his good pants.  In fact,
I have noticed that even when a cost-plus aircraft carrier is launched
the people responsible for it are standing around in the best clothes
money can buy, and the reason is they started out their careers
building fencepost rafts.

Eventually I grew up, a fact that surprised many of our neighbors, some
of whom lost good money betting against that likelihood.  One of the
problems of being a grownup was that I no longer had the time to build
log rafts.  It occurred to me one day that the next best thing would be
a rubber raft.  My search for such a raft led me ultimately back to my
hometown and to an establishment I had frequented much as a
kid-Grogan's War Surplus.

When I emerged from the tunnel of jerry cans, ammo boxes, and landing
nets that formed the entrance to the store, Henry P. Grogan, the
proprietor, was hunched over a counter pasting little paper swastikas
on some battered GI mess kits.  I was glad to se he hadn't changed over
the years, and was reminded of the longstanding business arrangement we
had worked out between ourselves when I had frequented his store as a
kid: Grogan would try to sell me every worthless, rotten, rusty piece
of junk he couldn't peddle to anyone else.  I would buy it.  The
arrangement seemed equitable enough at the time, and both of us were
satisfied with it.  Now, of course, I was no longer a kid still wet
behind the ears.  I chuckled to myself at the thought the old codger
might even now try to pull a fast one on me.

When he saw his former associate, Grogan's face erupted into a
snaggletoothed grin.  He swooped down upon me like a chicken hawk on a
Rhode Island red.

"How's business, Mr. Grogan?"  I asked after he had extracted from me
the history of my life since leaving home.

"Not so good," he said, shaking his head.  "it dropped off sharply
about the time you went to college.  Which reminds me, I'm running a
special on some fine parachute harnesses if you're interested."

"Afraid not," I said.

"How about a gen-u-wine antique Nazi mess kit, then?  just happened to
come across one in the cellar."

"No," I said.  "I still have a dozen left over from the old days.  What
I am looking for is a surplus seven-man rubber life raft."

Grogan's face clouded over.  "Hell, boy, I ain't had one of them in a
couple of years."

"What!"  I shouted in dismay.  "You don't have one?"  It was as if a
door had slammed shut on an era, and I hadn't heard it.  Never in my
life had I gone to Grogan with money in my pocket that he didn't have
what I wanted.

"I don't rightly know where you could find one of them rafts anymore,"
Grogan said, scratching his head as though he too was confused by it
all.

"Maybe you could find a brand-new raft in one of the sporting goods
stores."

"No," I said.  "I've priced them and they are too expensive.  All I've
managed to save up for a raft is fifty dollars.  Well, it sure has been
good talking to you again anyway, Mr.  Grogan."

"Fif ... fif ..."  Grogan said, as if about to sneeze.  "Ah, hold on
there a minute, son, let me ponder this a spell."  Then his face split
into that old ambergris grin that once had shown down regularly upon my
head like the sun at high noon.  He scurried out a back door and
shortly returned, dragging behind him a greasy yellow amorphous mass.

"What's that?"  I asked.

Grogan wiped his hands on his shirt.  "This, my boy, is a gen-u-wine
seven-man war-surplus rubber life raft I'd forgot.  I spread it out
over some old jeep transmissions in the yard a while back to weather a
bit.  Rubber life rafts like lots of sun and water, ya know.  Don't
know what suddenly made me remember it."

"That doesn't look to me like it would hold seven men," I said.

"The way the War Department figured these things," Grogan said, "was
two men in the raft rowing and five men in the water holdin' on for
dear life.

That's why they calls it a life raft."

Well, I was absolutely delighted.  "How much?"

"Fifty dollars."

I was so elated at having found a raft that I had it home and half
inflated before it occurred to me to feel behind my ears.  Sure enough,
definite signs of moisture.

What Grogan had sold me was not your ordinary seven-man rubber life
raft.

No.  Although I couldn't be certain I was reasonably sure this was the
very same raft I had once seen in one of those World War II movies set
in the South Pacific.  It was the one where the bomber crew has had to
ditch in the ocean, and the pilot suddenly yells, "Dang it all to heck,
men, the last burst from that Zero riddled our life raft!"

I yelled, too, all the time I was patching up the raft, a task just
slightly more complicated than performing abdominal surgery on a
hippopotamus.

My yells, however, registered a good deal higher than the pilot's on
the scale of profanity, and called into question the ancestry of the
raft, the War Department, the Zero, and last but not least, Henry P.

Grogan.

By the time the raft was finally repaired it looked like some creature
from the lower depths that had died of yellow jaundice, bloated and
popped to the surface where it had advanced into one of the later
stages of decay.  Like my first raft, it was not an attractive
vessel.

My friend Retch and I would inflate the raft at home with the blower on
my wife's vacuum cleaner and then tie it to the top of Retch's small
foreign car to haul to a river.  Once we were stopped by two highway
patrolmen.  One of them said he had thought the reason Retch was
exceeding the speed limit in a restricted zone was that we were trying
to get away from a giant slug that had grabbed our car.  I must say it
gives the police a bad image when two officers giggle hysterically
while one of them is writing you out a ticket.

The raft rekindled in me my old addiction for floating down creeks and
rivers.  Every spare minute that we could get away from our jobs, Retch
and I were either floating down a river or poring over maps to find a
good river to float down.  We floated streams just deep enough to call
damp.  On the other extreme, we floated the Snake and Columbia, both of
which had stretches of water that could make a man drunk with fear just
looking at photographs of them.  Retch and I shot rapids that made our
hair stand on end so hard the follicles turned inside out.  Sometimes
we had to bail the cold sweat out of the raft to keep from swamping.

And we called it a whole lot of fun.

"M-m-man," we would say to each other, "that was f-f-fun!"

As we grew olden-sometimes on the raft we would age a couple of years
in just five seconds--we began to prefer relaxing floats down gentle
rivers, maybe catching a few fish or spending a couple of days hunting
in a remote area.  Once in a while we would be surprised to find
ourselves bouncing along over what we called "interesting water," but
for the most part these floats were without excitement.

One hunting season Retch and I were going over our maps when we found
this river that wound through a thirty-mile stretch of uninhabited
country.

it looked like just the place for a combined float and deer-hunting
trip.  On the map the river appeared calm enough, but we decided to ask
around and see if we could find someone who had floated it.  We talked
to several people who had been down the river and they told us about
the only thing we had to worry about was that the river would be deep
enough to float the raft.  "But watch out for the Narrows," they all
said, almost as an afterthought.  Then they would describe the horrors
of the Narrows how the river squeezed between these two rock walls, at
the same time dropping over a series of waterfalls and making several
right angle turns, boiling over rocks the size of houses standing on
end, and ...

"Enough!"  we said.  "Just tell us where the Narrows are located."

No one seemed exactly sure about their location.  "You can't miss 'em,
though," one fellow said.  "You'll know em when you see 'em."

That was what threw us off.

On the first day of the float, Retch and I left our car at the lower
end of the river and hired a local rancher to haul us, Retch's dog
Smarts, and our raft and gear up to the jumping-off place.  You would
have thought the rancher had never been confined in a pickup with two
madmen before, he was so nervous.

"What for you fellas wanta float that doughnut down the river?"  he
asked.

"Wanta do some deer hunting," I said.

"Hell," he said.  "You could hunt deer on my ranch.  Be glad to get rid
of a couple of them.  Critters are eatin' me right into the poor
house."

"Naw," Retch said, "Hunting' that way is too easy.  We like to make it
as hard as possible."

The rancher didn't say much after that, no doubt fearing for his ife.

Anyone crazy enough to float a doughnut down a river just to make deer
hunting hard might grab you by the throat if you happened to say the
wrong thing.

After we had unloaded on the bank of the river, he rolled his window
down just enough so that a madman couldn't lunge through and grab a
person by the throat.  "Watch out for the Narrows," he yelled, and then
tore off up the road.

Our first day on the river was pleasant enough, almost without
incident.

Then toward evening Smarts, who had been asleep on the pile of
rubberized duffle bags, leaped to his feet and sounded a warning.

Shortly, we too could hear the ominous roar of water off in the
distance.

"The Narrows!"  I said.  "We'd better go ashore and have a look at
them."

Well, we had to laugh at the way folks tend to exaggerate.  The river
did squeeze into a narrow channel between these two big rocks all
right, then tummble down a modest stair-step fall and finally break
into a rapid.  "Har, liar, liar!"  we laughed.  "So that's the infamous
Narrows!  Har, liar, liar!"  The only water we took in the raft was
tears from laughing so hard.

"Imagine" Retch said, wiping his eyes.  "Grown men chickening out from
shooting the Narrows!"

"I hereby name them the Chick-a-nout Narrows!"  I yelled, waving my
paddle over the river like a scepter.  "The Chick-a-nout Narrows!"

From then on we relaxed and just enjoyed ourselves, our former anxiety
over the Chick-a-nout Narrows now merely a source of amusement.  We
laughed every time one of us mentioned them.  "Har, liar, liar!"

We spent the next day hunting, without success.  we started out with
the idea of shooting a couple of trophy bucks and finally settled for
the possibility of bagging a couple of hamburgers at a drive-in on our
way home.

When we staggered exhausted into camp that evening, Retch said, "Hey,
what's say we throw our gear on the raft and float out of here
tonight?

After all we don't have to worry about the Chick-a-nout Narrows
anymore.  Har, liar, liar!"

"Good idea," I said.  "Har, liar, liar!"

As the raft bobbed gently along on the moonlit river, we would take
turns dozing.  Sometimes we would forget who was supposed to be dozing
and we would both doze.

On one of these occasions, I awoke with a start and noticed that the
momentum of the river had picked up considerably.  Also the river was
deeper.

The reason the river was deeper was that it was flowing through a
channel between two sheer rock walls, and the channel was getting--I
hate to think of the word--narrow!

"Hey, the river is getting narrow!"  I yelled.

"Har ...?"  Retch said, popping up in the raft.

Smarts whimpered.  His hair stood out like the quills of a porcupine
under attack.

Up ahead the rock walls came together to form a narrow black crack.

Occasionally a big glob of foam would spout up into the crack, sparkle
for a moment in the moonlight, then drop back into the darkness.  Retch
and the dog and I all shouted directions to each other but all we could
hear was the sound of thunder emanating from the black crack.  The
three of us churned the river into a froth trying to paddle back
upstream.  And then the current sucked us into the Narrows.

I will not attempt to tell what shooting the Narrows in the middle of
the night was like--about the paddles snapping in our hands like match
sticks, about the river wrapping the raft around us like dough around
three frightened wieners, the drop-offs, the drop-ups, the part where
we were walking horizontally around the walls carrying the raft, the
part where the raft was on top of us and the river was on top of the
raft, and certainly not about the parts where it got bad.  It will
suffice to say that when we finally emerged from the Narrows, I was
paddling with a bolt-action .30-06, Retch was paddling with the dog,
and there was no sign to be found of the raft.

Only in recent years has some of the old yearning for rafting returned,
but I have no trouble fighting it off.  Retch doesn't care much for
rafting anymore either, but he has at last reached the point where he
can joke about the Chick-a-nout Narrows.  He lets on as if he still
can't stand the sound of rushing water.  If someone turns on a faucet
too near him, he pretends to go all white in the face and starts
shouting, "Watch out for the Narrows!  Watch out for the Narrows!"

The Miracle of the Fish Plate When I was a kid, my family belonged to
the landed aristocracy of northern Idaho: we owned the wall we had our
backs to.  We were forced to the wall so often that my mother decided
she might-as-well buy the thing to have it handy and not always have to
be borrowing one.

Part of our standard fare in those days was something my grandmother
called gruel, as in "Shut up and eat your gruel!"  My theory is that if
you called filet mignon "gruel" you couldn't get most people to touch
it with a ten-foot pole.  They would rather eat the pole.  But when you
call gruel "gruel," you have a dish that makes starvation look like the
easy way out.

My mother shared this opinion.  She preferred to call gruel "baked ham"
or "roast beef" or "waffles," as in "Shut up and eat your waffles."

One Christmas when we were hunched against the wall, she had the idea
of thickening the gruel, carving it, and calling it "turkey."  We were
saved from this culinary aberration by a pheasant that blithely crashed
through one of our windows to provide us with one of the finest
Christmas dinners it has ever been my pleasure to partake of--pheasant
et gruel.  Mom said that God had sent us the pheasant.  I figured that
if He hadn't actually sent it, He had at least done His best by cursing
the pheasant with poor eyesight and a bad sense of direction.

In that time and place, wild game was often looked upon as a sort of
divine gift, not just by us but by many of the poor people, too.

Hunting and fishing were a happy blend of sport, religion, and
economics, and as a result, game was treated with both respect and
reverence.  In recent years, my affluence has increased to the point
where I can dine out at Taco Tim's or Burger Betty's just about anytime
I please, so I must admit that hunting and fishing are no longer
economic necessities to me.  To the contrary, they are largely the
reasons I can't afford to dine out at better places, Smilin' John's
Smorgasbord, for example.  I still regard the pursuit of game as
primarily a mystical, even religious quest.  To tie into a lunker trout
is to enter into communion with a different dimension, a spiritual
realm, something wild and unknown and mysterious.  This theory of mine
was confirmed by no less an authority than a Catholic priest with whom
I occasionally share fishing water.

"Me lad," he said, "whenever yourself catches any fish a-tall 'tis a
miracle."

I personally would not go so far as to say that my catching a fish
would fall into the category of miracles--except ... well, yes, there
was one time.

You might call it The Miracle of the Fish Plate.

When I was nine years old and the only angler in our family, my
catching a fish was a matter of considerable rejoicing on the part of
not only myself but my mother, sister, and grandmother as well.  There
was none of that false praise one occasionally sees heaped upon a kid
nowadays--"Oh, my goodness, look at the great big fish Johnny caught!

Aren't you just a little man!"  No, there was none of that nonsense.

"Hey," my sister, The Troll, would yell.  "P.  F. Worthless caught a
fish!"

"Looks like it's worth about three bites," my grandmother would say by
way of appraisal.  "But it's a dang sight better than nothin'."

"Put it on the fish plate," my mother would order.  "Maybe by Sunday he
will have caught enough so we can have fish instead of 'baked ham' for
dinner."

The concept of the fish plate may require some explanation.  My fishing
was confined to a small creek that ran through the back of our place.

In those far-off times, the legal limit was twenty-one trout.  Although
I had heard people speak of "limiting out," I never really believed
them.  It was an achievement beyond comprehension, like somebody
running a four-minute mile, or walking on the moon.  No one had ever
fished with greater persistence and dedication than I, day in and day
out, and I knew that it was not humanly possible to catch a limit of
twenty-one fish.  Six or seven maybe, but certainly not twenty-one!

Days would go by when I would not get even a single tiny nibble.  I
would send a hundred worms into watery oblivion for every solid bite.

But every so often, suddenly, flashing in a silvery arc above my head,
would be a caught trout, usually coming to rest suspended by line from
a tree branch or flopping forty feet behind me in the brush.  The
notion of "playing" a fish seemed nearly as ridiculous to me as
"limiting out."

Thus, one by one and two by two I would accumulate little six-,
sevenand eight-inch trout over a period of several days (reluctantly
releasing all fish less than six inches) until there were enough for a
fish dinner.  The collection place for these fish was a plate we kept
for that purpose on the block of ice in the icebox.

It was known as the fish plate.

I can say without any exaggeration whatsoever that our family watched
the fish plate as intently as any investor ever watched a stock market
ticker tape.

The summer of The Miracle of the Fish Plate was rather typical: we were
living- on gruel and greens; the garden was drying up for lack of rain;
my mother was out of work; the wall had been mortgaged and the bank was
threatening to foreclose.  But good fortune can't last forever and we
soon fell on hard times.  It was then that we received a letter from a
wealthy relative by the name of Cousin Edna, informing us that she
would be traveling in our part of the country and planned to spend a
day visiting with us.  That letter struck like a bolt of lightning.

The big question was, "What shall we feed Cousin Edna?"  Cousin Edna
was a cultured person, a lady who in her whole life had never once sat
vis-a-vis a bowl of gruel.  Certainly, we would not want her to get the
impression we were impoverished.  After all, we had a reputation to
maintain befitting the landed aristocracy of northern Idaho.  After
long deliberation, my mother fastened a hard cold eye on me, which I
can tell you is just about as disgusting as it sounds.  "All we can do
is have fish for dinner," she said.  "How's the fish plate?"

"It's got two six-inchers on it," I said.

"Pooh!"  my grandmother said.  "There's no way he's gonna catch enough
trout before Cousin Edna gets here.  The boy he's just slow.  And he's
got no patience and is just too damn noisy to catch fish.  Why his
grandfather used to go to the crick and be back in an hour with a
bucketful of the nicest trout you could have ever laid eyes on."  As
you may have guessed, my grandfather was not one of the country's great
conservationists.  Although he died before my time, his ghost hovered
about, needling me about my angling skills.  My grandmother attributed
his great fishing success to his patience and silence.

Personally, I figured he probably used half a stick of dynamite as a
lure.

"Don't tell me we have to depend on P. F. Worthless!"  my sister
wailed.

"We'll be humiliated!"

"I'll catch all the fish we need," I yelled.  "Shut up," Mom said,
soothingly.  "If worse comes to worse, we'll let Cousin Edna eat the
two fish we have and the rest of us will pretend we prefer 'baked
ham."" "It ain't gonna wash," Gram said.  "The best we can hope for is
another deranged pheasant."

The gauntlet had been hurled in my face.  It was up to me to save the
family pride, or die trying.  I dug my worms with special care,
selecting only those that showed qualities of endurance, courage, and a
willingness to sacrifice themselves to a great cause.  By that time of
year, I had fished the creek so thoroughly that I had cataloged almost
every fish in it, knew them all on a first name basis, and was familiar
with their every whim and preference.  They, on the other hand, knew
all my tricks.  It would not be easy enticing them to take a hook but I
was determined to do it.

And it was not easy.  I knew where a nice eight-inch brookie was holed
up under a sunken stump.  In the grim cold light of first dawn, when he
would not be expecting me, I crawled through the wet brush and stinging
nettles just above his hideout.  I waited, soaked, teeth chattering
quietly, passing the time by studying the waves of goosebumps rippling
up and down my arms.  As the first rays of morning sun began to descend
through the pine trees, I lowered a superb worm, one blessed not only
with dauntless courage but intellect as well, into the sluggish current
that slid beneath the tangle of naked stump roots.  I knew that I could
not retrieve the hook without snagging it unless the point was covered
by the mouth of a trout.  Never was a finer bait presented so
naturally, with such finesse.  The line slackened, the hook drifting
with the currents in the labyrinth of roots.  A slight tremor came up
the line.  I whipped the rod back and the fat little eight-incher came
flashing out from under the stump.  He threw the hook and landed on the
bank ten feet from me.  I lunged for him, had him in my grasp.  He
slipped loose and landed in the water, where he circled frantically in
an effort to get his bearings.  I plunged in after him hoping to
capitalize on his momentary confusion.  Unfortunately, the water was
much deeper than I expected and closed over my head like the clap of
doom.  As I dog-paddled my way into the shallows, I realized that
filling the fish plate might be even more difficult than I had
anticipated the chore would be.

Over the next two days I went up and down the creek like a purse
seiner.

My total take was two small fish, and Cousin Edna was arriving on the
following day.  I had become a nine-year-old existentialist, abandoning
all faith and hope, driving myself on armed only with simple defiance
of despair.

First the fish had abandoned me, then God, and now, on the final day,
even the sun had slipped behind the mountains, no doubt sniggering to
itself.

Before me lay the bleakest, shallowest, most sterile part of the
creek.

Never in my whole life had I caught a fish there, mostly because it
would have been pointless to even try.  The water rippled over a bed of
white gravel without a single place of concealment for even the
smallest trout.  Well, possibly there was one place.  A small log was
buried in the gravel diagonally to the current, and I noticed that at
the downstream tip of the log there appeared to be a slight pooling of
water.  I eased into the stream and crept up to the butt end of the
log, whereupon I perceived that the gravel had been washed from under
it to form a narrow trough of dark, still water.  I lowered my last
worm, a pale, haggard, well-traveled fellow, into this trough and let
it drift along the log, bumping over gravel, into limbs and knots,
until it stopped.

"Snagged!"  I thought.  Furious, I hauled back.  My rod doubled over
but the hook didn't come loose.  Instead, the line began to cut a slow
arc through the water, picked up speed, and then, exploding out onto
the gravel bar, came what seemed to be a monstrous brook trout.

I cannot tell you how long the ensuing battle lasted because at my
first glimpse of the fish, time ceased to exist, and the trout and I
became a single pulsating spirit suspended in infinity.  When at last
we emerged into our separate identities, it was as victor and
vanquished.  In the dying light, the trout lay clamped between my
aching knees on a white gravel beach, and I killed him with a sharp
blow of a rock to the back of the head.

As he quivered into stillness, I was filled with unknown joy,
unfamiliar sorrow.  And I knew.  I knew.  Without the slightest doubt,
I knew that under that same log, waiting in that watery darkness, was
is twin.

Gently, I removed the hook from those great jaws, repairing the tatters
of the heroic worm, threading them as best I could onto the hook, and
made my way back to the log for a repeat performance.  When you have a
miracle going for you, you never want to waste any of it.

The dinner for Cousin Edna was a great success.  When it was over and
everyone had had his fill, there were still large sections of fried
trout on the platter, which I suppose I need not tell you, was the
humble fish plate.

"My heavens!"  exclaimed Cousin Edna.  "I just don't know when I've had
a finer meal!"

"It's not over yet," said Gram.  And then she served Cousin Edna a
heaping bowl of wild strawberries that my sister had picked with her
own little troll fingers.

The wild strawberries made Cousin Edna's eyes roll back in her head,
they were so good.  "Why, I hope you're not giving me all the
strawberries," she said suddenly, noting our attentiveness.

"Land sakes," Gram said, "we have them so often we're tired of the
little beggars."  I looked at Gram in disbelief.  It was the first time
I'd ever heard her lie.

"We thought we would have some nice pudding instead," my mother said,
passing around some bowls.  I looked into mine.

"Hey," I said.  "This looks like this smells like ..."

"Hush, dear," my mother said, her voice edged with granite.  "And eat
your pudding."

The Backpacker Strange, the things that suddenly become fashionable. 
Take backpacking for instance.

I know people who five years ago had never climbed anything higher than
a tall barstool.  Now you can scarcely name a mountain within three
hundred miles they haven't hoofed up in their Swiss-made
waffle-stompers.

They used to complain about the hie price of sirloin steak.  Now they
complain about the price of beef jerky (which is about three times that
of Maine lobster in Idaho).

Their backpacking is a refined sport, noted for lightness.  The gear
consists of such things as Silk packs, magnesium frames, dainty camp
stoves.

Their sleeping bags are filled with the down Of unborn goose, their
tents made of waterproof smoke.  They carry two little packets from
which they can spread out a nine course meal.  One packet contains the
food and the other a freeze-dried French chef.

Well, it wasn't like that back in the old days, before backpacking
became fashionable.  These late-corners don't know what real
backpacking was like.

The rule of thumb for the old backpacking was that the weight of your
pack should equal the weight of yourself and the kitchen range
combined.  just a casual glance at a full pack sitting on the floor
could give you a double hernia and fuse four vertebrae.  After carrying
the pack all day, you had to remember to tie one leg to a tree before
you dropped it.  Otherwise, you would float off into space.  The pack
eliminated the need for any special kind of ground-gripping shoes,
because your feet would sink a foot and a half into hard-packed earth,
two inches into solid rock.  Some of the new breed of backpackers
occasionally wonder what caused a swath of fallen trees on the side of
a mountain.  That is where one of the old backpackers slipped off a
trail with a full pack.

My packboard alone met the minimum weight requirement.  It was a canvas
and plywood model, surplus from the Second World War.  These packboards
apparently were designed with the idea that a number of them could be
hooked together to make an emergency bridge for Sherman tanks.  The
first time you picked one up you thought maybe someone had forgotten to
re move his tank.

My sleeping bag looked like a rolled-up mattress salvaged from a fire
in a skid row hotel.  Its filling was sawdust, horsehair, and No.  6
bird shot.

Some of today's backpackers tell me their sleeping bags are so light
they scarcely know they're there.  The only time I scarcely knew my
sleeping bag was there was when I was in it at 2 A.m. on a cold
night.

It was freckled from one end to the other with spark holes, a result of
my efforts to stay close enough to the fire to keep warm.  The only
time I was halfway comfortable was when it was ablaze.  It was the only
sleeping bag I ever heard of which you could climb into in the evening
with scarcely a mark on you and wake up in the morning bruised from
head to toe.  That was because two or three times a night my companions
would take it upon themselves to jump up and stomp out my sleeping-bag
fires-in their haste neglecting to first evacuate the occupant.  Since
I was the camp cook, I never knew whether they were attempting to save
me from immolation or getting in a few last licks for what they thought
might be terminal indigestion.

Our provisions were not distinguished by variety.  Dehydrated foods
were considered effeminate.  A man could ruin his reputation for life
by getting caught on a pack trip with a dried apple.  if you wanted
apples, brother, you carried them with the water still in them.  No one
could afford such delicacies as commercial beef jerky.  What you
carried was a huge slab of bacon.  It was so big that if the butcher
had left on the legs, it could have walked behind you on a leash.

A typical meal consisted of fried bacon, potatoes and onions fried in
bacon grease, a pan of beans heated in bacon grease, bacon grease
gravy, some bread fried in bacon grease, and cowboy coffee (made by
boiling an old cowboy in bacon grease).  After meals, indigestion went
through our camp like a sow grizzly with a toothache.  During the night
coyotes sat in nervous silence on surrounding hills and listened to the
mournful wailing from our camp.

There were a few bad things, too, about backpacking in the old style,
but I loved all of it.  I probably would never have thought of quitting
if it hadn't been for all those geophysical changes that took place in
the Western Hemisphere a few years ago.

The first thing I noticed was a distinct hardening of the earth.  This
occurred wherever I happened to spread out my sleeping bag so I knew
that the condition was widespread.  (Interestinglly enough, my
children, lacking their father's scientific training, were unable to
detect the phenomenon.) A short while later it became apparent to me
that the nights in the mountains had become much colder than any I
could remember in the past.

The chill would sink its fangs into my bones in the pre-dawn hours and
hang on like a terrier until the sun was high.  I thought possibly that
the drop in temperature was heralding a new ice age.

Well, I could put up with the hard and the cold but then the air
started getting thinner.  The only way you could get sufficient oxygen
to lift a pack the size of an adolescent pachyderm was by gasping and
wheezing.  (Some of my wheezes were sufficient to strip small pine
trees bare of their needles.) My trail speed became so slow it posed a
dangerous threat to my person.  If we were in fact at the onset of a
new ice age, there was a good chance I might be overtaken and crushed
by a glacier.

The final straw was the discovery that a trail I had traveled easily
and often in my youth had undergone a remarkable transformation.  In
the intervening years since I had last hiked it, the damn thing had
nearly doubled in length.  I must admit that I was puzzled, since I
didn't know that trails could stretch or grow.  The fact that it now
took me twice as long to hike it, however, simply did not allow for any
other explanation.  I asked a couple of older friends about it, and
they said that they had seen the same thing happen.  They said probably
the earth shifted on its axis every once in a while and caused trails
to stretch.  I suggested that maybe that was also the cause for the
ground getting harder, the nights colder, and the air thinner.

They said that sounded like a plausible theory to them.  (My wife had
another theory, but it was so wild and farfetched that I won't
embarrass her by mentioning it here.) Anyway, one day last fall while I
was sitting at home fretting about the environment, a couple of friends
telephoned and invited me along on a pack trip they were taking into
the Cascades.  Both of them are of the new school of backpacking, and I
thought I owed it to them to go along.  They could profit considerably
by watching an old trail hand in action.

When I saw the packs R. B. and Charley showed up with I almost had to
laugh.  Neither pack was large enough to carry much more than a cheese
sandwich.  I carried more bicarbonate of soda than they had food.  I
didn't know what they planned to sleep in, but it certainly couldn't be
in those tidy little tote bags they had perched on top of their
packs.

Anyway, I didn't say anything.  I just smiled and got out my winch and
they each got a pry pole and before you knew it we had my pack out of
the car and on my shoulders.  As we headed up the trail I knew it was
going to be a rough trip.  Already a few flakes of snow had fallen on
my eyeballs.

The environment on that trip was even harsher than I had remembered.

The trails were steeper, the air thinner, the ground harder, the nights
colder.

Even my trail speed was slower.  Several porcupines shot past me like I
was standing still.

R. B. and Charley showed obvious signs of relief when I made it into
camp that first night.

"You probably thought I wouldn't make it with all the food," I chided
them.

"No," R. B. said.  "It was just that for a moment there we didn't
recognize you.  We thought we were being attacked by a giant snail."

I explained to them that we old-time backpackers made a practice of
traveling the last mile or so on our hands and knees in order to give
our feet a rest.

It was disgusting to see them sitting there so relaxed and cheerful
after a hard day's hike.  They didn't seem to have any notion at all
what backpacking was about.  I could hardly stand it when they whipped
out a little stove and boiled up some dried chunks of leather and
sponge for supper.  It probably would have hurt their feelings if I had
got out the slab of bacon, so I didn't mention it.  I just smiled and
ate their food--four helpings in fact--just to make my act
convincing.

I never told them, but the Roast Baron of Beef was not quite rare
enough for my taste and they had forgotten the cream sauce for the
asparagus tips.  And I have certainly tasted better Baked Alaska in my
day, too.

Well, they can have their fashionable new-school backpacking if they
want it.  I'm sticking with the old way.  Oh, I'm making a few
concessions to a harsher environment, but that's all.  When I got back
from that trip, I did order a new pack frame.  It was designed by nine
aeronautical engineers, three metallurgists, and a witch doctor, and
weighs slightly less than the down of a small thistle.  My new sleeping
bag weighs nine ounces, including the thermostatic controls.  If I want
to sleep in, my new cook kit gets up and puts on the coffee.  Then I
bought a few boxes of that dried leather and sponge.  But that's all.

I'm certainly not going to be swept along on the tides of fashion.

Great Outdoor Gadgets Nobody Ever Invented Thousands of anglers no
doubt consider the electronic fish-finder one of the top five
achievements of the twentieth century, probably just behind the
spinning reel and Einstein's theory of relativity.

Personally, I feel the fish-finder is a nice enough gadget, but it is
not high on my list of priorities for inventions needed to ease the lot
of outdoorspersons.  For some unknown reason, inventors specializing in
hunting and fishing gadgets have never unleashed their ingenuity on the
really tough problems plaguing men, women, and children who participate
in outdoor sports.

After some thirty years of research on the subject, I now offer up to
the inventors, without any hope or desire for recompense, my own list
of inventions that nobody has yet invented.

There are any number of finders much more important than fish-finders,
but I will mention only a couple of the more significant ones here.

Take the hunting-partner-finder, for instance.  This would be used in
situations where you have told your hunting partner, "I'll meet you at
the top of that draw in an hour," and with malice aforethought, he
immediately contrives to vanish from the face of the earth for the rest
of the day.  I have two ideas for this invention.  One is simply a red
balloon, attached to a quarter-mile length of string, that floats along
above him.  The other is a peanut-butter-seeking mechanical dog that
will track him down and clamp a set of iron jaws on that portion of his
anatomy adjacent to and slightly below the sack lunch he is carrying in
his game pocket.  Because you would merely have to stroll leisurely in
the direction of the sound emanating from your hunting partner, this
finder probably could be considered a sonar device.

Right at the top of my list of invention priorities is the
mean-cow-finder.  It would be used in this way.  Say you want to fish a
stream that winds through a cow pasture, which, as almost everyone
knows, is the natural habitat of cows.  A herd of the beasts will have
taken up a good tactical position in the center of the pasture,
enabling them to control all access routes to the stream and, more
important, shut off the avenues of escape.

Now your average cow is a decent sort of animal, and I can put up with
their mooing advice over my shoulder on how to improve my casting
technique and choice of fly.  I can even ignore their rather casual
habits of personal hygiene, at least as long as they conduct their
various indiscretions at a reasonable distance from where I am
fishing.

The problem is that it is almost impossible to distinguish a
peace-loving cow from a mean cow, the kind who would swim Lake Erie to
get a shot at you.  What I have in mind is a simple little electronic
gadget that would beep or flash a red light if a herd contained a mean
cow.  The more elaborate models might have a needle that would point
out the malicious beast and maybe even indicate her aggression quotient
and rate of acceleration from a standing start.  I and a thousand
anglers like me would trade in our fish-finders for a mean-cow-finder
in a second, or sooner, I bet.

There are numerous gadgets and concoctions on the market for attracting
game.  What I need is something to repel game.  just last summer, for
example, I could have made good use of a bear repellent.  My wife and I
were asleep in our tent in a remote area of Idaho when suddenly I awoke
to the sound of the lid being ripped off our aluminum camp cooler.

"I think a bear just ripped the lid off our camp cooler," I hissed to
my wife.

"I heard that," she replied sleepily.  "I thought it was you in a hurry
to find your pain-killer."

"Very funny," I said, hopping around in the dark in an effort to get my
pants on.  "Hand me the flashlight.  I'm going out there and run the
beggar off."

I unzipped the tent flap and switched on the flashlight.  There in the
beam stood a bear approximately the size of a boxcar; he was making a
sandwich out of the camp cooler and appeared somewhat displeased at the
interruption.

"HAAAAAYAAAAA!"  I yelled.  "GET OUTA THERE!"

"Did you run the beggar off?"  my wife asked.

"I'M YELLING AT YOU!  GET OUT OF THE TENT AND INTO THE CAR!  I THINK
WE'RE NEXT ON THE MENU!"

Not only would a little bear repellent have saved our camp cooler, it
would have saved me the repeated tedium of having to listen to my wife
regale my so-called friends with an account, including excessively
exaggerated pantomime, of my reaction to the bear.

Inventors have made great strides on the problem of reducing the weight
and bulk of backpacking equipment, but they haven't gone far enough.

What I would like to see them come up with is a fully loaded backpack
that is freeze-dried.  When you had hiked into your campsite in the
mountains you would merely have to take your backpack out of your
pocket, soak it in a little water and, presto, you would have a
reconstituted sleeping bag, tent, trail ax, cook kit and, of course,
all your food.

When I told a backpacking friend about this idea, he scoffed at it.

"Why not a freeze-dried log cabin with a flagstone fireplace?"  he
suggested, expanding on my concept.

"That's not bad," I told him.

"Hell," he said, "you'd be the first one to complain about missing the
weight of a good pack tugging at your shoulders, the soothing,
rhythmical squeak-squeak of the frame and harness."

"For the past five years," I told him, "the rhythmical squeak-squeak of
the frame and harness has been drowned out by the rhythmical
squeak-squeak of my back."

I also have several suggestions for new sleeping bag designs.  One is
primarily for use in small two-man tents.  This consists primarily of a
time-lock on the zipper so that once your tent partner is in his bag he
can't get out of it until morning.  My friend Retch spends most of the
night crawling around, looking for one thing or another.  This does not
include his answers to nature's call.  (On an average night Retch and
nature conduct a regular litany between themselves.) Here is a typical
verbal exchange he and I had in a tent recently: "Watch out," I yelled
at him.  "You're kneeling on my glasses!"

"Sorry," he said.  "I thought you still had them on."

"I do, you idiot!"

Another of my sleeping-bag inventions would be primarily for kids who
are practicing "sleeping out" in the backyard.  The bags would contain
leg holes for running.  This would save the kid the time required to
strip off his sleeping bag in order to sprint for the house.  These
would be valuable seconds saved.

Speaking of children, I would like to see someone invent a small
portable lie detector for use on kids while camping in remote
wilderness campgrounds where the sole sanitary facility is a privy
located at the far end of a quarter-mile trail intersected by logs,
several small streams, and a skunk crossing, and frequently occupied
with strange creatures that screech murderously at you in the dark.

(Usually, these creatures are simply other parents you surprise hauling
their tykes down the trail, but you never know.) The lie detector would
work like this: just before their bedtime I would line the little ones
up outside the tent and, one by one, attach them to the anti-fib
device.

"Is your name Erin McManus?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a dog named Fergus?"

"Yes."

"Have you gone to the bathroom within the last fifteen minutes?"

"Yes."

"Hit the trail to the old privy, kiddo!"

Some kind of detector should be developed for the purpose of
determining whether camp cooking is fatally poisonous.  My own system,
far from reliable, is to observe whether the plat du jour is killing
flies and mosquitoes beyond a fifteen-foot radius.  Some kind of
chemically treated paper, on the order of litmus, would be perfect and
a lot less expensive than seeing if the concoction will dissolve a
spoon.  I certainly could have used some of this poison detector a
while back when Retch whipped up his infamous stew consisting of canned
pork and beans, cabbage, beef jerky, and the miscellaneous leavings of
a five-day hunting trip.  Crammed into a tent with Retch and two other
guys, I spent the night moaning in agony and praying for a quick end to
it all.  I don't know what would have happened to my present or future
if I'd been dumb enough to eat any of the stew myself.

There are a number of life preservers for use by stream fishermen on
the market now, but like so many other inventions designed for the
outdoorsperson, their creators have stopped short of the mark.  The
basic idea of these life preservers is that if you fall in the water
they can be inflated by blowing into a tube.  With the kind of water I
generally fall into, I don't want to waste any time blowing on some
dumb tube.  On some of the falls I've taken, I probably could have
blown up a seven-man life raft before I hit the water if mere floating
had been my chief concern.  To hell with floating--what I need in the
way of a life preserver is something that really preserves my life.  As
I see it, this would be a recording device installed in fishing
vests.

While I was contemplating whether to cross a peeled sapling over a
sixty-foot-deep river gorge or possibly to make a running leap to land
on a moss-covered rock in the middle of some rapids, the life preserver
would activate automatically and shout through two stereo loudspeakers
set at full volume, "DON'T TRY IT, YOU FOOL, DON'T TRY IT!"

The Purist Twelve-year-olds are different from you and me, particularly
when it comes to fishing, and most of all when it comes to fishing on
Opening Day of Trout Season.

The twelve-year-old is probably the purest form of sports fisherman
known to man.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it is because his passion for
fishing is at that age undiluted by the multitude of other passions
that accumulate over a greater number of years.  Say thirteen.

Now I am reasonably sure that I can catch a limit of trout faster on
Opening Day than the average twelve-year-old, but any angler knows that
speed and quantity are not true measures of quality when it comes to
fishing.  It's a matter of style, and here the twelve-year-old beats me
hands down.  You just can't touch a twelve-year-old when it comes to
style.

Preparation is the big part of his secret.  If Opening Day of Trout
Season is June 5, the twelve-year-old starts his preparation about the
middle of March.  He knows he should have started earlier, but at that
age he likes to put things off.  With such a late start, he will be
hard pressed to be ready in time.

The first thing he does is to get his tackle out and look at it.  He
removes from one of his shoe boxes a large snarly ball of lines, hooks,
leaders, spinners, flies, plugs, weeds, tree branches, and a petrified
frog.

He shakes the whole mass a couple of times and nothing comes loose.

Pleased that everything is still in good order he stuffs it all back
into his shoe box.  The next time he will look at it will be on Opening
Day Eve, fifteen minutes before he is supposed to go to bed.  The
tackle snarl will then provide the proper degree of wild, sweaty panic
that is so much a part of the twelve-year-old's style.

The next order of business is to check his bait supplies.  The best
time to do this is in the middle of a blizzard, when it's too cold to
be outside without a coat on or to have all the windows in the house
open.  The large jar of salmon eggs he has stored next to the hot-water
pipes that run through his closet seems to look all right, but just to
be sure he takes the lid off.  He drops the lid on the floor and it
rolls under something too large to move.

Something must be done immediately, he knows, because uneasy murmurs
are rising in distant parts of the house, and besides he won't be able
to hold his breath forever.  The best course of action seems to be to
run the jar through every room in the building, leaving in his wake
mass hysteria and the sound of windows being thrown open.  Later,
standing coatless with the rest of the family in the front yard while a
chill north wind freshens up the house, he offers the opinion that he
may need a new bottle of salmon eggs for Opening Day.

Occasionally the young angler will do some work on his hooks.  There
is, however, some diversity of opinion among twelve-year-olds whether
it is better to crack off the crust of last year's worms from the hooks
or to leave it on as a little added attraction for the fish.  The wise
father usually withholds any advice on the subject but does suggest
that if his offspring decides to sharpen his hooks on the elder's
whetstone, the worm crusts be removed before-hand.  Nothing gums up a
whetstone worse than oiled worm dust.

The twelve-year-old takes extra-special pains in the preparation of his
fly rod.  He gets it out, looks at it, sights down it, rubs it with a
cloth, sights down it again, rubs it some more, and finally puts it
away with an air of utter frustration.  There is, after all, not much
that you can do to a glass rod.

The reel is something else again.  A thousand different things can be
done to a reel, all of which can be grouped under the general term
"taking it apart."  The main reason a kid takes his reel apart is to
take it apart.  But most adults can't understand this kind of
reasoning, so the kid has to come up with some other excuse.  He says
he is taking his reel apart to clean it.  No one can deny that the reel
needs cleaning.  It has enough sand and gravel in it to ballast a
balloon.  During most of the season it sounds like a miniature rock
crusher and can fray the nerves of an adult fisherman at a hundred
yards.

For Opening Day, however, the reel must be clean.

There are three basic steps used by the twelve-year-old in cleaning a
reel.  First it is reduced to the largest possible number of parts.

These are all carefully placed on a cookie sheet in the sequence of
removal.  The cookie sheet is then dropped on the floor.  The rest of
the time between March and the Opening Day of Trout Season is spent
looking for these parts.  The last one is found fifteen minutes before
bedtime on Opening Day Eve.

Some twelve-year-olds like to test their leaders before risking them on
actual fish.  Nothing is more frustrating to a kid than having a leader
snap just as he is heaving a nice fat trout back over his head.

Consequently, he is concerned that any weakness in a leader be detected
beforehand.  There are many methods of doing this, but one of the best
is to tie one end of the leader to a rafter in the garage and the other
end to a concrete block.  The concrete block is then dropped from the
top of a stepladder.  The chief drawback of this method is the cost
involved in replacing cracked rafters.

Eventually the big night comes--Opening Day Eve.

The day is spent digging worms.  Early in the season there is a surplus
of worms and the young angler can be choosy.  The process of worm
selection is similar to that used in Spain for the selection of
fighting bulls.  Each worm is chosen for his size, courage, and
fighting ability.  One reason kids frequently have poor luck on Opening
Day is that their worms can lick the average fish in a fair fight.

Approximately four hundred worms are considered an adequate number.

These are placed in a container and covered with moist dirt.  The
container is then sealed and placed carefully back in the closet by the
hot-water pipes, where it is next found during a blizzard the following
March.

The twelve-year-old angler really peaks out, however, during that
fifteen minutes before bedtime.  He discovers that his tackle has
become horribly snarled in his tackle box.  No one knows how, unless
perhaps the house has been invaded by poltergeists.  The reel is thrown
together with an expertise born of hysteria and panic.  Four cogs, six
screws, and a worm gear are left over, but the thing works.  And it no
longer makes that funny little clicking sound!  Finally, all is in
readiness and the boy is congratulating himself on having had the good
sense to start his preparation three months earlier.  As it was, he
went right down to the last minutes.  Only one major task remains: the
setting of the alarm clock.

Naturally, he wants to be standing ready beside his favorite fishing
hole at the crack of dawn.  The only trouble is he doesn't know just
exactly when dawn cracks.  He surmises about four o'clock.  If it takes
him an hour to hike down to the fishing hole, that means he should set
the alarm for about three.

On the other hand, it may take longer in the dark, so he settles on
2:30.  He doesn't have to allow any time for getting dressed since he
will sleep with his clothes on.

Once in bed he begins to worry.  What if the alarm fails to go off?  He
decides to test it.  The alarm makes a fine, loud clanging sound.

After all the shouting dies down and his folks are back in bed, he
winds up the alarm again.  As a precautionary measure, he decides to
set the alarm for two, thus giving himself a half-hour safety margin.

He then stares at the ceiling for an hour, visions of five-pound trout
dancing in his head.  He shakes with anticipation.  He worries.  What
if the alarm fails to awaken him?  What if he shuts it off and goes
back to sleep?  The horror of it is too much to stand.

Midnight.  He gets up, puts on his boots, grabs his rod and lunch and
brand-new bottle of salmon eggs, and heads out the door.

It's Opening Day of Trout Season, and there's not a minute to spare.

The Outfit Years ago the Old Wilderness Outfitter started sending me
his catalog of surplus outdoor gear: slightly battered canoes, scruffy
rucksacks, dulled trail axes, tarnished cook kits, saggy tents, limp
snowshoes, and the like.  I spent many a fine winter hour thumbing
through his catalog.  Indeed, such was my enjoyment that occasionally I
would lose control of my faculties and actually order some of the
stuff.  One surplus wilderness tent arrived with authentic wilderness
dirt still on the floor, not to mention a few pine needles, a fir cone,
a sprinkling of fish scales, and a really nice selection of squashed
insects.  The Old Wilderness Outfitter never charged for any of these
extras, and in numerous other ways revealed himself to be a man of
generosity and all-round good character--He put out a fine catalog,
too.

The catalog arrived each winter with the same regularity as the snow,
and at about the same time.  Then it stopped coming.  I thought maybe
the Old Wilderness Outfitter had died, or was peeved at me because I
had sent a letter telling him I would just as soon furnish my own fish
scales and squashed insects, and there was no need to include any with
my orders.  I hadn't intended to offend him though, and if sending the
extras meant that much to him it was all right with me.

A few days ago, I was surprised to find in the mail a new catalog from
the Old Wilderness Outfitter.  Happily, I licked my thumb and started
flipping through the pages.  I was flabbergasted.  There wasn't a
single scruffy rucksack in the thing, let alone a slightly battered
canoe.  The Old Wilderness Outfitter had filled up his catalog with
glossy, color pictures of beautiful people.

Glancing at the prices, I thought at first the beautiful people
themselves must be for sale.  There was one blonde lady who looked well
worth the seventy-five dollars asked, and I would have been interested,
too, if I didn't already have one of my own worth almost twice that
amount.

Then I determined the prices were for the clothes the beautiful people
were wearing.  The seventy-five dollars wasn't the price of the blonde
lady but what she had on, something described as "a shooting outfit."

(I can tell you with absolute certainty that if that lady ever shot
anything in her life it was a sultry look across a crowded room.) The
men were almost as beautiful as the women, and dressed in a month's
wages plus over time.  Their haircuts alone probably cost more than my
shooting outfit, if you don't count my lucky sweatshirt with the faded
Snoopy on it.

Most of the clothes were trimmed in leather made from the hides of
Spanish cows, which was appropriate, I thought, because most of the
catalog copy was American bull.

After about ten minutes of studying the catalog I could see what had
happened.  Some unemployed high-fashion clothes designers had got to
the Old Wilderness Outfitter and persuaded him to chuck his rucksacks
and the like and replace them with fancy clothes.  The old codger
should have known better.  if American outdoorspersons were interested
in fancy clothes, outdoor magazines would be written like this: " Doc
stood up in the blind and squinted his eyes at the jagged rip of first
light beyond the marsh.  His closely woven virgin-wool shirt with the
full sleeves and deep cape was beaded with rain.

"Hey, Mac," he said, "it's starting to rain.  Better hand me my
sage-green parka of water-repellent, supertough eight-ounce cotton
canvas duck with the handstitched leather flaps."

"Right," I said.  "But first I'm going to drop that lone honker, which
you'll notice is attractively attired in 100 percent goose down."

The truth is we outdoorspersons just aren't that interested in high
fashion.  Our preference runs more to low fashion.  I myself have
turned out a number of outstanding low-fashion designs.  There was, for
example, my free-form stain made by dropping an open bottle of dry-fly
dressing in a shirt pocket.  This design should not be confused with
the one originating from a leaky peanut butter sandwich.  My own
favorite is the ripped pant leg laced shut with twenty-pound
monofilament line, split-shot sinkers still attached.

Striking as these designs may be, I am just too old to design really
first-rate low fashions.  I no longer have the time, patience, nerves,
or stomach for it.  As a matter of fact, low-fashion designers usually
reach their peak about age fourteen.  From then on they undergo a
gradual decline until their last shred of self-respect is gone and they
will think nothing of going out wearing, say (shudder) a
brand-spanking-new red felt hat.

You'd never catch a fourteen-year-old wearing such a monstrosity as a
new red felt hat.  No sir.  The first thing a fourteen-year-old does
with a new hunting or fishing hat is to redesign it.  Immediately upon
returning home from the store, he turns the hat over to his dog.  After
the dog has exhausted his imagination and ingenuity on the hat, it is
retrieved by the kid and pounded full of holes with a large spike and
hammer.  The edges of the holes are burnt with a match.  This simulates
the effect of the kid's having been fired upon at close range with an
elephant gun.  (Nobody knows why this is important to a kid, but it
is.) A band of squirrel, skunk, or muskrat hide, more or less tanned by
the kid himself, is fastened to the crown.  Next the brim is folded up
on three sides and pinned with the thigh bones of a fried chicken or
other equally attractive fasteners.  And finally, several tail feathers
from a pheasant are artfully arranged about the crown.  The hat now
resembles the year-old remains of a high-speed collision between a
large bird and a small mammal.

Not all youngsters, by the way, are born with this talent for low
fashion.  Some have to learn it.  I recall an incident back in my
junior high school days when my friends Retch and Peewee and I gave
Hair Forsyth his first lesson in low fashion.  (The nickname "Hair," by
the way, derived from an observation by Retch, one of the more
scholarly of my companions, that rich kids who stand to inherit the
family fortune are known as "hairs.") Hair had taken to hanging out
with us at school, and when it came time for the annual early spring
camping trip, we thought we should invite him along.  Several bare
patches of earth had been reported to us, and we decided this was
sufficient evidence that winter was over and camping weather had
begun.

There was still a bit of a chill in the air, not to mention several
inches of snow on the ground, and we thought it likely that Hair would
find these sufficient reasons for refusing our invitation.  But he said
he thought it was a great idea.

Since I lived out in the country at the edge of the Wilderness
(sometimes referred to locally as Fergussen's woodlot and north
pasture), our farm was selected as the jumping-off place for the
weekend expedition.  When Hair climbed out of his father's car that
day, we regular low-fashion campers nearly burst trying to keep from
laughing.  Hair was dressed up just like a dude.  He had on these
insulated leather boots, special safari pants, a heavy wool shirt, a
down jacket, a hat with fur earflaps, and so on.  Naturally, we didn't
want to hurt his feelings by pointing out how ridiculous he looked.

Nevertheless, we thought we should instruct him on the proper attire
for a spring camping trip.

"I hate to say this," Retch told Hair, "but you're absolutely gonna
roast in all those clothes."

"Yeah," Peewee put in, "and those boots are gonna be awfully heavy for
walking.  Too bad you don't have tennis shoes like we're wearing."

"Right," I said.  "Next time, Hair, why don't you see if you can get
some tennis shoes like these, with holes in the canvas so the sweat can
drain out."

Hair thanked us for straightening him out and said the next time he
would have a better idea how to put together a suitable outfit.

After getting Hair squared away, we loaded up and headed out into the
Wilderness.  The snow out in the Wilderness was much deeper than any of
us had expected.  Bit by bit the depth of the snow increased until it
was about halfway up to our knees.  From time to time we would have to
stop and chip the compacted snow off our tennis shoes and try to unplug
the drain holes.  These stops were occasion for much clowning around by
us regulars for the benefit of Hair.  Retch and Peewee would pound
their feet against trees and make moaning and howling sounds, while I
would tear off my tennis shoes and socks and blow on my blue feet in a
comical manner.  Hair laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks.

Indeed, we all had tears streaming down our cheeks.

The wind came up shortly after it started to snow, and pretty soon we
were slogging along through what we would have called a blizzard except
that this was spring and the first of the good camping weather.  Retch
came up with the idea that maybe we should try to make it to an old
abandoned trapper's cabin a couple of miles away and spend the night
there.

"Otherwise, we might freeze to death," Retch joked.

"Heh," Peewee and I laughed.

"Freeze!"  Hair cried.  "You must be joking.  I'm burnin- up inside of
this darn coat.  Dang, I hate to ask but, Peewee, could I get you to
trade me your shirt for this coat?  What do you call that kind of shirt
anyway?"

"A t-t-t-t-t-t-tee shirt," Peewee said, thrusting it into Hair's
hand.

"Well, I guess I'll just have to leave this wool shirt of mine behind
unless I can get one of you fellas to wear it for me," Hair said,
taking it off and putting on Peewee's T-shirt over his thick, creamy
wool underwear.

I said, "Dang I'll wear it rather than have you leave it behind."

"That underwear's not too hot for you, is it?"  asked Retch.

Hair said it wasn't, but that he sure wouldn't mind slipping his
boiling feet into a nice cool pair of tennis shoes.  So Retch says he
has about the coolest pair of tennis shoes a person is likely to find,
and he swaps shoes with Hair.

By dark we had made it to the trapper's cabin and had a roaring fire
going in the barrel stove and were sitting around roasting ourselves a
few marshmallows and listening to the wind howl outside.  From then on,
Hair was one of the regulars and, as far as I know, nobody ever again
mentioned the ridiculous outfit he wore on that first camping trip with
us.  It was obvious to everyone that he had learned his lesson, and
there was no point in hurting his feelings any more than was
necessary.

The ultimate in low fashion, at least that I ever saw, was created
spontaneously on one of our camping trips by Harold Monster, a tall,
gangling, wild-haired youth whose chief claim to fame was an uncanny
ability for taking a bad situation and making it worse.  Sometimes you
would be absolutely certain that a situation couldn't be any worse and
then Monster would show up and make it nine times as bad as before.

Back in those days, our camping clothes were referred to by our mothers
as "your OLD clothes."  A mother would stick her head out the back door
and yell at her kids, "Wear your OLD clothes, you hear!"  Since all our
clothes were old--most of them had been in our families longer than we
had--OLD designated the oldest grade.  OLD clothes were never
discarded, they just faded away.  Sometimes they faded away while you
were wearing them, and that is what led to Harold Munster's creation of
the ultimate in low fashion.

Retch, Peewee, Monster, and I had been backpacking for nearly a week
and now were attempting to extricate ourselves from the mountains as
expeditiously as possible.  In part, this consisted in wild,
free-for-all gallops down steep trails, with packs, axes, and iron
skillets flailing about on all sides.  It was during one of these
maniacal charges downhill that Monster, hurtling a windfall, caught his
OLD pants on a limb.  The pants exploded in midair.

Monster landed half naked in a shower of tiny bits of cloth, old
patches, buttons, belt loops, and a broken zipper still held shut with
a safety pin.

Well, we were all startled, a little embarrassed, and, of course,
worried, because here was a bad situation.  Nobody knew in what manner
Monster would strive to make it worse and which of us might be swept
into the vortex of whatever catastrophe he came up with.

The mosquitoes in that area were about the size of piranhas and twice
as voracious.  As Heminway might have put it, Monster had been turned
into a moveable feast.  His expanse of bare skin drew the mosquitoes
off the rest of us like a magnet, and, though appreciative of the
respite, we became concerned that our unfortunate companion might be
eaten alive or, even more likely, slap himself to death.

A small spring issued from the edge of the trail at that point,
creating a large muddy bog on the downhill side of the trail.  Before
we knew what was happening, Monster had leaped into this bog and began
smearing his lower half with great globs of mud.

"Hey," he yelled up at us.  "This really feels great!"

We stared down at him with a mounting sense of foreboding, knowing from
past experience that this was the beginning of something that would
lead to dire consequences.

Not satisfied with coating his lower half with mud, Monster peeled off
his OLD shirt and coated his upper half as well.  Then he took handfuls
of goop and rubbed it in his hair and on his face, all the while oohing
and ahhing with relief and saying, "This will take care of those
blinkety-blank mosquitoes for a while."

The rest of us divided Munster's load up among ourselves so that his
mud coating would not be rubbed off by his pack.  Thus unburdened, he
took the lead and strolled along light of heart and mosquito-free,
occasionally whistling a few bars or counting cadence for the rest of
us.  As we plodded along and the day grew hotter, we noticed that
Munster's mud coating was beginning to bake into a hard, whitish shell,
with webs of tiny cracks spreading out from his joints and seams.

Grass, moss, sticks, and small stones protruded from the shell in a
rather ghastly manner.  Monster began complaining about what he
described as a blinkety-blank unbearable itch, and occasionally would
stop wild-eyed and claw furiously at his mud cast.  His claw marks
served only to make his overall appearance even more grisly.

Our plan was to intersect a logging road and then try to catch a ride
out of the mountains with some gyppo loggers who were working in the
area.  We en countered the loggers much sooner than expected.  Three of
them had hiked back in from the end of the road to eat their lunch by
the edge of a small stream.

They were now sprawled out resting, smoking, and digging the dirt out
from among the calks on their boots.  The trail we were on wound around
the mountain about a hundred feet above them.

Retch, Peewee, and I had fallen some distance behind Monster, partly
because of fatigue and partly because we could no longer endure the
sight of him.  As we rounded a bend in the trail, we caught sight of
the three unsuspecting loggers, languid pools of tobacco smoke hanging
in the still air about them.  Poised like a silent gargoyle on the lip
of the trail directly above this peaceful scene, was Monster, staring
down at the loggers.

We tried to shout but our tongues were momentarily paralyzed from the
sheer horror of the scene before us.  And then Peewee found his
voice.

"MONSTER!"  he shrieked.

The startled loggers looked up.  I could see the lips of one of them,
puzzled, silently form the word "monster?"

Then Monster bounded down the hill toward the loggers, waving his arms
ecstatically and croaking out his relief at being saved from having to
walk the last ten miles home.

Walking the last ten miles home, we attempted to reconstruct the events
of the ten seconds following Monster's lunge over the brink of the
trail.  It was agreed that we had all witnessed superb performances by
three of the world's fastest gyppo loggers.  Of particular interest was
the fact that calked boots traveling at a high rate of speed throw up a
fine spray of earth not unlike the plumes of water behind
hydroplanes.

Harold Monster and his family moved away from town shortly after the
last of his outfit wore off and I haven't seen him since, nor have I
seen anything to match his masterpiece of low-fashion design.  But if
the Old Wilderness Outfitter had a lick of sense left, he would leave
no stone unturned in his search for him.

Kid Camping Kids still do go camping by themselves, I don't deny that. 
They just don't go kid camping.

A lot of people think that any camping kids do is kid camping just
because kids are doing it.  Well that's circular reasoning if I ever
heard any.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The kind of
camping kids do nowadays is just plain adult camping--sans adults.

The kids use the same camp gear and provisions as their parents:
featherweight sleeping bags, aluminum cook kits, nylon tents,
dehydrated and vacuum-frozen foods, and even little plastic tubes to
put their peanut butter and jelly in.  The only exception is the family
car, and it is used to haul the kids to the point of departure.  They
just don't get to drive.

Why it's enough to make an old-time kid camper roll over in his
spaghetti-and-oatmeal omelet!

Properly executed, kid camping was like no other kind of camping known
to man.  I say "properly executed" because there was a code that
governed every move.  Any kid camper worth his can of pork 'n' beans
knew the code by heart.

The code was not something that you learned, it was something you just
knew--something you either had or you didn't have.  And you never ever
went against this thing that you knew.  If you did, your camping was no
longer kid camping but some other kind, and was divested of some
peculiar aura of mystery and adventure.

Kid camping was a thing fairly choked in mystery.  Part of the mystery
was how a ninety-eight-pound boy who contracted an acute case of
exhaustion carrying the dinner scraps out to the garbage pail could lug
a four-hundred-pound pack three miles up a mountain trail laced with
logs the size of railroad tank cars, and not even be winded.  There was
also the mystery of how three or four boys could consume every last
moldering morsel of a food supply roughly estimated at a quarter ton
and return home half starved.

One of the unspoken rules of the code (they were all unspoken) was that
preparation for a camping trip should involve absolutely no planning.

This, combined with an equal amount of organization, never failed to
invest a trip with the proper mood--a deep and abiding sense of
insecurity.  There was a monumental apprehension that the food would
give out an hour before the expedition arrived home and the whole
party, fleeing back across the wasteland of the Crabtrees' stump
pasture, would perish of starvation.

The only way of combatting this dread of starvation was simply to carry
enough food to feed Attila and his Huns adequately on an extended foray
across Europe.  It was assumed that each of the other guys would bring
an equal amount.

The code allowed for only one store-bought item, the indispensable pork
'n' beans, which was the basic ingredient for all meals and most of the
bad jokes.  Wieners and marshmallows could also be purchased if the
expedition was to be particularly arduous.  These were generally
regarded as condiments bearing the taint of Girl Scoutism, since it was
known that no true mountain man would have been caught dead rotating a
marshmallow over his blazing buffalo chips.  The prospect of severe
hardship, however, usually provided for a relaxation of the rules and
the inclusion of a little morale-booster (the roasted marshmallow is
the kid camper's peach brandy).  Severe hardship was almost always
prospected.

All other provisions had to be culled from the home pantry, cupboards,
or refrigerator.  This was known as "living off the land."  The night
before the expedition got underway, the young camper would enter the
kitchen, gather his provisions, and depart, skillfully parrying the
thrusts of his mother's broom handle with a leg of lamb.  He would have
tidied up the place to the point where it resembled a delicatessen
looted by a Viking raiding party, and it is understandable that he
would be surprised to discover that an irate troll had donned ol' Mom's
clothes and was attempting to terminate his existence.

Provisioning a kid camping trip was very educational for a youngster.

For one thing, it taught him the rudiments of lying.  Take a typical
situation.  The kid would randomly select six or seven eggs from a
dozen, boil them for exactly 135 minutes, and replace them randomly in
the carton.

"Are you sure you'll be able to tell the boiled from the raw eggs?"

his mother would ask.

"Of course," the kid would answer.  Now that would be a blatant lie.

He wouldn't have the slightest notion how to tell the boiled from the
unboiled eggs.

Fortunately, this problem of the eggs always resolved itself.  By the
time the camper had hauled them over a mountain or two, he could safely
assume that all eggs that had not oozed out of the pack and down his
backside and legs were the cooked ones.

Kid camping allowed for no such effeminate things as dehydrated or
vacuum-frozen foods.  It was proof of one's manhood that he carried his
food with all the water still in it.

After an hour or so of scrounging about (or "sacking," as some
ill-tempered mothers called it) the kitchen, the young camper would
have accumulated approximately the following provisions: a loaf of
bread, a leg of lamb, a can of condensed cream, nine slices of bacon, a
head of lettuce, a dozen eggs, a pint of salad dressing (for the
lettuce), a quart jar of cherries, a pint of strawberry jam, three
pieces of fried chicken, half a box of corn flakes, five pounds of
sugar, ten pounds of flour, seven mealy apples, spaghetti, oatmeal,
thirty-seven grapes, a plate of fudge, a jar of peanut butter, thirteen
potatoes, a bottle of root beer, and a quart of milk (for the corn
flakes).

Once assembled, all the provisions were carefully loaded into a
packsack which acquired roughly the size, shape, and weight of an
adolescent pachyderm.

Then came the moment of truth.  The young camper's jeering family would
gather around to witness his attempt at raising the pack clear of the
sagging floor, a feat that he accomplished with a prolonged grunt which
could scarcely be heard by the neighbors three houses away.  He would
stand there--legs spraddled and beginning to cave, shoulders slowly
collapsing into the shape of a folded taco shell--and drill the
disbelievers with a disdainful look from his hard, squinty eyes.  And
it's damned hard to make your eyes squinty when they're bugged way out
like that!

Most of the adventure in kid camping came from the cooking of exotic
and original dishes.  Eating them was even more adventurous.  Some of
the dishes were undoubtedly fit for human consumption, although the
sight and aroma were generally enough to give a starving and unusually
indiscriminate hyena a fit of the dry heaves.

There was, of course, that old favorite: fried pork 'n' beans accented
with charred potato scraps dislodged from the bottom of the serve-all
skillet.

This was frequently accompanied by a side order of bacon, either still
flaming or recently soused with a bucket of water.

There was the aforementioned spaghetti-and-oatmeal omelet, which made
an excellent dessert when topped with catsup.  It is true that most of
the raw eggs would have leaked away before arrival at the campsite, but
usually the bottom of the pack would retain a sizable puddle, which
could be augmented by the egg squeezings from the change of underwear
and the extra pair of socks.

These eggs had the advantage of being prebeaten, something that cannot
be said for the dehydrated kind.

It goes without saying that all dishes were spiced with various
curious, careless, and low-flying species of insects.

There was one rule of the code that no one ever mentioned but everyone
adhered to, and that was that there was to be absolutely no praying on
the camping trip.  One time my regular fellow kid campers and I invited
along a boy who lied and swore and smoked discarded cigarette butts and
generally appeared to be a normal and respectable fellow.  We were
unutterably embarrassed by his crass display of character when, in the
flicker of our dying campfire and the mirthful glow of the last bawdy
joke, he knelt down by his sleeping bag, folded his hands, and said his
prayers.  In one fell swoop, he dealt a death blow to what otherwise
showed promise of being a robust and pleasantly vulgar camping trip.

In all honesty, I must confess that I, too, once violated this
particular tenet of kid camping.  But I at least had the decency to do
it discreetly and not in such a way as to unnerve my companions.  As it
happened, they were already unnerved enough.

In the middle of the night it suddenly came to our attention that a
large and obviously famished bear had entered camp under the cover of
darkness.  He was making a terrible racket, whetting his appetite on
our vast store of provisions, prior to getting on to the main course,
which lay paralyzed in its sleeping bags and had all but ceased to
breathe.  The time had come, I realized, to invoke the aid of the
Almighty, and immediately set about invoking.  The next morning the
other guys wrote the whole terrible affair off as a case of mistaken
identity.  Little did they know that it was due to my inspired efforts
in our common behalf that the bear had been changed into a huge black
cedar stump.  The racket, they supposed, had been caused by a chipmunk
assaulting a bag of potato chips.  I never bothered to set them
right.

Experiences like this provided the educational element in kid
camping.

For example, we learned that it is merely an old wives' tale that
extreme fear will turn your hair snow white all over.  Our hair was
only a little gray about the temples, and that returned to its normal
color four days later.  I distinctly remember, because it was a short
while after I got my voice back and just before the shaking died down
to where it couldn't even be noticed from more than ten feet away.

Kid camping undoubtedly is a thing of the past, but perhaps somewhere
back in the hinterlands there are a few rugged lads who practice the
sport in its pure form.  If there are, I must say they're mighty
lucky--mighty lucky if they avoid ptomaine poisoning, permanent
curvature of the spine, or growing into adults who break out in a
purple rash and hysteria at the mere glimpse of a can of pork 'n'
beans.

How to Fish a Crick There is much confusion in the world today
concerning creeks and cricks.

Many otherwise well-informed people live out their lives under the
impression that a crick is a creek mispronounced.  Nothing could be
farther from the truth.  A crick is a distinctly separate entity from a
creek, and it should be recognized as such.  After all, a creek is
merely a creek, but a crick is a crick.

The extent of this confusion over cricks and creeks becomes apparent
from a glance at almost any map, where you will find that all streams
except rivers are labeled as creeks.  There are several reasons for
this injustice.  First, your average run-of-the-mill cartographer
doesn't know his crick from his creek.  The rare cartographer who does
know refuses to recognize cricks in their own right for fear that he
will be chastised by one of the self-appointed chaperons of the
American language, who, like all other chaperons, are big on purity.  A
case in point: One of the maps I possess of the State of Washington
labels a small stream as S. Creek.  Now I don't know for certain but am
reasonably sure that the actual name of this stream is not S. No.  just
by looking at the map one can tell that it is not shaped like an S, the
only reason I can think of for giving it such a name.  S therefore,
must not be the full name but an abbreviation.  Why was the name
abbreviated?

Was it too long or perhaps too difficult to pronounce?  Since the map
also contains such stream names as Similkameen and Humptulips and
Puyallup, all unabbreviated, one would guess not.  This leaves only one
other possibility.

The cartographers felt that the actual name of the stream was
obscene.

They did not want it said of them that they had turned out an obscene
map, the kind of map sinister characters might try to peddle to
innocent school children, hissing at them from an alleyway, "Hey,
kid!

Wanna buy a dirty map?"

Well, I can certainly sympathize with the cartographers' reluctance to
author a dirty map.  What irks me is that they use the name S. Creek.

One does not have to be a mentalist to know that the fellow who named
the stream S. did not use the word creek.  He used crick.  He probably
saw right off that this stream he was up was a crick and immediately
started casting about for a suitable name.  Then he discovered he
didn't have a paddle with him.  Aha!  He would name this crick after
the most famous of all cricks, thereby not only symbolizing his
predicament but also capturing in a word something of the crick's
essential character.

The cartographers in any case chose to ignore this rather obvious
origin of the name and its connotations in favor of a discreet S. and
an effete Creek.  If they didn't want to come right out and say crick,
why couldn't they have had the decency just to abbreviate it with a
C.

and let it go at that.

Maybe I can, once and for all, clear up this confusion over cricks and
creeks.

First of all a creek has none of the raucous, vulgar, freewheeling
character of a crick.  If they were people, creeks would wear tuxedos
and amuse themselves with the ballet, opera, and witty conversation;
cricks would go around in their undershirts and amuse themselves with
the Saturday-night fights, taverns, and humorous belching.  Creeks
would perspire and cricks, sweat.  Creeks would smoke pipes; cricks,
chew and spit.

Creeks tend to be pristine.  They meander regally through high mountain
meadows, cascade down dainty waterfalls, pause in placid pools, ripple
over beds of gleaming, gravel and polished rock.  They sparkle in the
sunlight.

Deer and poets sip from creeks, and images of eagles wheel upon the
surface of their mirrored depths.

Cricks, on the other hand, shuffle through cow pastures, slog through
beaver dams, gurgle through culverts, ooze through barnyards, sprawl
under sagging bridges, and when not otherwise occupied, thrash fitfully
on their beds of quicksand and clay.  Cows should perhaps be credited
with giving cricks their most pronounced characteristic.  In deference
to the young and the few ladies left in the world whose sensitivities
might be offended, I forgo a detailed description of this
characteristic.  Let me say only that to a cow the whole universe is a
bathroom, and it makes no exception of cricks.

A single cow equipped only with determination and fairly good aim can,
in a matter of hours, transform a perfectly good creek into a crick.

Now that some of the basic differences between creeks and cricks have
been cleared up, I will get down to the business at hand, namely how to
fish a crick.

Every angler knows how to fish a creek.  He uses relatively light
tackle and flies, and his attire consists of waders or hip boots, a
fishing vest, creel, lightweight slacks, and a shirt in a tasteful
check.  The creek is worked artfully, with the fly drifting down like
the first flake of winter snow.  Everybody knows that's how you fish a
creek.

But the crick, as I've pointed out, is an altogether different species
of water and demands its own particular approach.

No fancy tackle of any kind is ever used to fish a crick.  Since
fiberglass rods came on the market, it is difficult to find a good
crick pole.

The old steel telescope rods were fairly good, but the best crick pole
I've ever seen was one I owned as a kid.  It consisted of a six-foot
section of stiff pipe, with a piece of wire that pulled out from the
tip to provide the action.  Stores sold it as a fishing pole, but it
could also serve fairly well as a lightning rod, fencepost, or a lever
for prying a car out of the mud.

Rod action, it should be noted, is of little importance in crick
fishing, since the crick itself usually provides about all the action
one can stand.

Hook size should never be less than NO.  4, and leaders, if they are
used at all, should be short and test about the same as baling wire.

This saves a good deal of time, since if you hook up on an old log,
tractor tire, or Model T submerged in the crick, as happens every third
cast, you can simply haul it out and not have to bother replacing
leader and hook.  Sinkers must be large and fat in order not to
frighten off the fish.  If the splash is large enough, they think it's
just another old log, tractor tire, or Model T being dumped in the
crick.  The reel should be an old bait-caster with the worm gear busted
and the handle off.  A crick reel, if you don't happen to own one, can
be improvised by loaning a perfectly good creek reel to one of your
kids for a period of one to five minutes.

The experienced crick fisher never wears hip boots or waders on a
crick.

Old oxfords with floppy tongues are all right, but tennis shoes in the
final stages of decay are the first choice of crick fishers
everywhere.

Whatever shoes you select, they should have sizable holes both fore and
aft.  The holes allow for good circulation of the crick water through
the shoe and help to cut down on the risk of fermentation of the
feet.

Another advantage is that the crick fisher can thrust his toes out
through the holes and get a good grip on banks of submerged clay,
rotting logs, old tractor tires, and Model Ts.

The creel is shunned in crick fishing.  All fish are carried on a
forked stick, which adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of the sport.

Most of this enjoyment comes from laying the forked stick down,
forgetting it, and then spending several happy hours looking for it.

Once the crick fisher tires of this pastime he usually vows to keep the
stick in hand at all times.  This brings into play the ultimate in
crick-fishing skill, since the angler must now land his fish by taking
up his slack line with his teeth and one ear, accomplished by a quick,
dipping, circular motion of the head.

Flies, of course, are never used on a crick.  The crick fish just
gaffaw at them.  They want real meat--fat, wiggling worms, grasshoppers
on the hoof, and, occasionally, toes.

That pretty much covers the technique of crick fishing.  Naturally one
cannot expect to master it so quickly as creek fishing, unless, of
course, he happens to be under the age of fourteen.  Eight-year-olds
are naturals at crick fishing, and if you have one handy you might take
him out to a crick and observe him in action.  Despite the opinion of
all parents and most behavioral Psychologists, eight-year-olds are good
for something, and teaching the art of crick fishing is it.

At least once a year I try to fish Sand Crick, the crick of my youth.

Admittedly, I have lost a good deal of my technique and most of my
stamina but I still manage to have a good time.  Usually I come back
with a few fish, some good laughs, and a charley horse that extends
from my trapezius to my peroneus longus.

Last summer my cousin Buck accompanied me, and I got one of those
terrible scares that only crick fishing can give you.  We had no more
than started when Buck stepped into quicksand.  It startled him so
badly that he could only manage to get off three or four casts before
total panic set in.

The quicksand by then was halfway up to his knees.

"Hey," Buck said.  "I don't think I'll be able to get out."

A cold chill shot through me.  Not only was a lifelong friend and
relative in peril but he was carrying the communal worm can.

"Quick," I yelled.  "Toss me the worm can!"

"Nothing doing," Buck said.  "Not till you drag me out of here."

I wasted a good ten minutes of fishing time getting him out of that
quicksand.  On the other hand, I probably would have used up more time
than that digging a new batch of worms besides having to knock off a
little early to tell his wife there was no point in waiting supper on
him.

Incidentally, in order to prevent a similar emergency from occurring, I
took the precaution of putting a handful of worms in my shirt pocket,
where they were eventually discovered by my wife on washday.  It is
interesting to note that dehydrated worms cannot be reconstituted by
even three cycles in an automatic washer.  Also of interest is the fact
that it is almost as difficult to reconstitute the wife who conducts
the experiment.  After such an occurrence, the wise though absentminded
crick fisher should take care to eat all his meals out for several
days, and in the unlikely event that the wife does offer him something
to eat, he should first give a bite to the dog and observe the animal
carefully for a couple of hours afterwards.

Buck and I fished a couple of miles of Sand Crick together that day,
reminiscing every step of the way over our adventures as kids along
this same crick.  We came upon a half-submerged car, a 1937 Packard
that someone had dumped in the crick under the pretext of preventing
bank erosion but actually to be rid of a 1937 Packard.  Buck drifted
his line in through the gaping holes of the front windshield and hooked
a fine Eastern brook out of the back seat.

"First time I ever caught anything in the back seat of a 1937 Packard,"
he said.

"I've never been that lucky," I said enviously, "but I came pretty
close once in a '48 Hudson."

The last hole of the day was one known affectionately as The Dead Cow
Hole.  The particular cow that the hole was named after was one of the
most malicious beasts ever to deface the banks of a crick.  I don't
know what the farmer called his cow but I know some of the names
fishermen called her, always preceded by the same presumably accurate
adjective.  You always knew when a fellow planned on fishing the
stretch of crick presided over by the cow, because he carried his
fishing pole in one hand and an ax handle in the other.  (Usually you
could get in at least one good blow each time the cow galloped over the
top of you.) Then one day the cow took ill and died, thus, or so I
thought, effectively removing herself from action.  The news reached me
on a sweltering summer day, but nevertheless I made ready immediately
to take advantage of the cow's misfortune.  I scarcely touched the tops
of the withered grass in my rush to get a line in the water.

As I neared the crick, however, I noticed a flock of magpies flying
hurriedly in the opposite direction, and several of them, I observed,
showed definite signs of nausea.  At about the same time a hot, dry
gust of wind criminally assaulted my olfactory nerves with such
violence as to bring tears to my eyes.

"No!"  I thought.  "Could it be?  Could she actually have been that
fiendish?"  The question was shortly answered in the affirmative.  On
peering down from the top of the hill above the crick, I could see her
carcass ripening in the summer heat not ten yards from the fishing
hole!  Evidently she had seen the end coming and rather than spend her
last moments repenting her sins she had, with malice aforethought, used
them to drag herself into a strategic position so that, even in death,
she would dominate not only the immediate area of the fishing hole but
four-hundred yards on all sides.

Several times I took a deep breath and tried to rush the hole but my
wind always gave out before I could cover the distance.  It was
hopeless, at least for me.  Cousin Buck did manage to fish Dead Cow
Hole that same summer, and with considerable success apparently.  He
told me about it a week later and I believe he said he caught a couple
of good fish.  I couldn't be sure because he was still gagging so hard
it was difficult to understand him.

That's the nature of crick fishing, though.  Some people may not have
the heart for it, or even the stomach, but for those who do, it has its
rewards.

They escape me at the moment, however.

Further Teachings Of Rancid Crabtree Gram sliced off four great slabs
from a loaf of her homemade bread.

She spread them with butter, piled on a couple pounds of ham, slices of
onions, pickles, cheese, and the leftovers from the previous night's
supper.  Then she stuffed the sandwiches in a paper bag and thrust them
into my hands.

"But I tell you I don't need food," I protested.  "Rancid is going to
teach me how to live off the land."

"Shoot," my grandmother said, waving a butcher knife at me.  "That old
fool don't know any more about livin' off the land than he does about
workin'.

Now take those sandwiches and don't give me any sass."

On my way over to Rancid's cabin, I stuffed the sandwiches down the
front of my shirt, hoping he wouldn't notice I was carrying
contraband.

"What you hidin' thar?"  the old mountain man said the instant he
caught sight of me.  "You got a watermelon under yer shart?"

"Naw," I answered, embarrassed.  "Gram made me bring along a couple of
sandwiches in case I got hungry."

Rancid hooted.  "Thet ol' widder woman, when she gonna cut you loose
from her apron strings and let you be a man?"

"I don't know," I said.  "I told her you were going to teach me how to
live off the land, but she pulled a knife and made me take the
sandwiches anyway."

"Yup, she's a mean one, all right," Rancid said.  "Wall, them samwiches
won't hurt nothin, and might come in handy in case we has an
emargency."

I should explain that Gram and Rancid were natural enemies.  Gram
possessed all the qualities Rancid despised in a person.  She was
practical, hardworking, neat, clean, methodical, and never smoked,
drank, or told lies.

"She ain't hoomin," Rancid often complained.  Gram claimed Rancid was
the only person she had ever known who was totally lacking in
character.  By "character" she meant a tendency toward work.  A man
could rustle cows, steal chickens, and rob banks in his spare time, and
Gram would say of him, "Rufus may have some bad ways, but I'll tell you
this, he's a good worker.  He ain't totally no good like some folks by
the name of Rancid Crabtree I could mention, but I won't."

To Gram, being a good worker excused a lot of shortcomings, but it
wasn't the sort of lifestyle that appealed to me at the age of
twelve.

Since Rancid was the only person I'd ever known who hadn't once been
caught red-handed in an act of holding a job, I figured he must have
some secret, and I studied him the way other kids in school studied
their arithmetic.  Because he didn't work, Rancid always had time to
give you, not just little pinched-off minutes but hours and days and
even whole weeks.  He was a fine example for a kid to pattern himself
after.

On this particular day, Rancid and I were going to hike back in the
mountains and spend the night in a lean-to we would build ourselves.

All we would take with us were some fishline and hooks, some twine and
our knives, and, as it turned out, the two four-pound sandwiches.  The
morning was one of those impeccable specimens found only in early July
in the Rocky Mountains, particularly when it is only the twelfth July
you have known in your life.

That was back in the old days before environment had been discovered,
and there were only trees and blue sky and water moving swift and
clear.  Hiking along behind the lean old woodsman, I listened to the
soft humming of summer and paid attention to keeping my toes pointed
Indian fashion as I splashed through the shallow pools of sunlight on
the trail.  It was a very pleasant day to start learning how to live
off the land so I would never have to work.

We hiked hard for the first hour to shake off the last lingering shards
of civilization, and then slowed our paces as the trail began winding
up into the mountains.  Far down below in the patchwork of fields, we
could see the farmers wrestling with their hay crops.  We laughed.

After a while, Rancid started giving me living-off-the-land lessons.

The first thing he had me do was to smear my face with mud.

"This hyar mud will keep off the moss-kee-toos," Rancid explained.

I smeared on a copious quantity of mud, because if there was one thing
in the world I was interested in keeping off, it was moss-kee-toos.  I
had heard plenty about moss-kee-toos from Rancid before.  They were
vicious flying creatures that sometimes would swarm out of the woods
and suck the blood from your body.  Since I had spent a good deal of
time in the woods and never seen a moss-kee-too, I hoped they were
merely a figment of Rancid's imagination.

(His imagination was crammed with all sorts of weird and interesting
figments.) If moss-kee-toos did exist, the mud did a good job of
keeping them off.  It even worked pretty well on the mosquitoes.

Another rare creature apparently known only to Rancid was the iggle.

He pointed to a large bird circling high above the mountain peak.

"Look thar, boy!  Thas a iggle."  The bird was too high for me to make
out any of its features, but in the years since, I have frequently seen
high-flying birds that I assumed to be iggles, so I'm pretty sure they
exist.  Rancid told me that iggles were so big they often carried off
half-grown cows in their claws, and as a result were not much loved by
ranchers.  "But hell," he said, "iggles got a right to a livin' too."

Rancid had his own system of ornithological classification.  There were
three basic groups of birds: little birds, medium-sized birds, and big
birds.

A few birds were referred to by their common names: ducks, doves,
grouse, pheasants, and iggles.  Rancid's system of ornithology worked
just as well on identifying rarer birds.

"What's that bird?"  I would ask Rancid.

"Thet thar is what ya calls yer little black-and-white bird with a red
head," he would tell me authoritatively.  I never ceased to marvel at
how Rancid knew all the different kinds of birds.  just by looking at
them you could tell he knew what he was talking about.

Along about noon I began to feel the first pangs of hunger.  I
suggested to Rancid that maybe the time had come for us to knock off
the nature study and start living off the land and if it wasn't too
much trouble I'd like to take a look at the lunch menu.  Rancid looked
around the land.

"Ah figured we'd have huckleburries fer lunch, but they's still
green.

The wild razzburries should be ripe up in the meadows, though.  Fer the
time bein', whyn't you give me one of them samwiches yer granny
packed?"

"Who do you take me for, Mother Nature?"  I said angrily.  "You're
supposed to teach me how to live off the land."

"Don't gitcher tail in a knot," Rancid said.  "Livin' off the land
takes a powerful lot of thinkin', and ah thinks better if ahim chompin'
on a samwich.  Now what did thet ol' widder woman fix us?"

We split one of the sandwiches, and sure enough, Rancid started
thinking better.  "As soon as we gets done with lunch, we better find
us some mushrooms to cook with our game for supper.  Thar's a burn up
ahead and we kin probably find some mushrooms thar."

I was a bit worried about the mushrooms, since my grandmother had told
me Rancid didn't know his fungi from a hole in the ground.

"Gram says one good way to tell if a mushroom ain't poisonous is to see
if the deer have been eating them," I offered.

"Thet's the dumbest thing ah ever heard tell of," Rancid said with
disgust.  "Deer don't know much more than yer granny does.  Mushrooms
is little wrinkled pointy things, and toadstools is all the rest.  Deer
eat toadstools all the time and it don't bother 'em none.  A hoomin
bean eat a toadstool, the Just thang he knows he's knockin' on the
Parly Gate with one hand and still pickin' his teeth with t' other."

Fortunately, we were unable to find any mushrooms in the burn, although
I did happen to come across a patch of little wrinkled pointy things
not worth the trouble of calling to Rancid's attention.

The raspberries in the high mountain meadow were ripe, as Rancid had
predicted, but not especially plentiful.  Nevertheless, I got a keen
sense of living off the land from eating them.  Rancid explained at
considerable length how to pick and eat wild raspberries, and seemed
very pleased with himself.

"Lots of folks don't know wild razzburries is good to eat," he said.  I
personally had never encountered anyone who didn't know they were good
to eat, but I didn't say anything.

"Gram says even cattails are good to eat," I offered.

"Ha!"  Rancid laughed.  "Thet silly ol' woman, it's a wonder she's
lived to be a hunnert and five, what with all her notions about eatin'
pisonous plants."

"I don't think she's that old," I said.

"Thet just goes to show you," Rancid said.  "Now don't let me hear no
more of thet talk about eatin' cattails."

Next Rancid showed me how to set snares for rabbits, an absolute
essential for anyone intending to live off the land.  Although I knew
the basic principle and technology of snares, I never quite understood
how you induced the game to stick his head into the loop and trigger
the contraption.

"How do you know the rabbit is going to run into the snare?"  I asked,
peering intently over Rancid's shoulder as he worked.  "He's got a
million other places to run."

"Wall, Just of all, you have to be smarter than the rabbit," he said
with a chuckle.  "You got to be smarter than the rabbit.  Now hep me
move these logs and rocks.  What we is gonna do is funnel thet ol'
rabbit right into our snare, see?"

We dragged rocks and logs and tree limbs and brush and piled them up in
a giant open-ended V that pointed right at the snare.  By the time the
V was finished, both of us were so hot and tired we were staggering,
but I didn't complain because I was learning how to live off the land
so I would never ever have to work.

After we had rested a while, Rancid said, "Now hyar's what you do.  You
climb down behind thet thicket over thar and make a racket so that you
drive the rabbits into the funnel."

"How come we both don't climb down and make a racket?"  I asked.

"'Cause ah have to sit on thet log up thar and shoosh any rabbits thet
come thet way back into the snare."

"Why can't I do that and you drive the rabbits out?"

Rancid thought a moment, mopping the sweat off his face with his shirt
sleeve.  "You had any experience shooshing wild rabbits?"

"No."

"Wall, thar you are!  Now git yerself down in the thicket and start
making a racket."

A half-hour later I emerged from the thicket.  Rancid was sitting on
the log, his elbows resting on his knees, staring vacantly down at the
snare.

"How ... pant ... big a one ... pant pant ... did we catch?"  I asked,
sinking to the ground.

Rancid rolled a chaw of tobacco around in his cheek.  "Wall, ah kin say
one thang about these blankety-blank rabbits.  They is powerful
smart!"

"You mean to say we didn't catch any?"

"What would you think about chompin' down some nice tender trout
roasted over a fahr?"  Rancid said brightly.  "Don't thet sound
good!"

Early in the afternoon we arrived at a little lake tucked away between
two mountain peaks.  Rancid cut two willow poles and tied fishline to
them.

Then we started looking around for grubs to bait the hooks with.  As
Rancid said, you can never find a grub when you really need one.

Savagely, we tore apart rotted logs looking for grubs, the essential
link between us and a fish supper.  I was beginning to think working
might be easier than living off the land.

At last we found a small deposit of grubs, tossed them into Rancid's
hat and hurried back down to the lake.  By the time we got there, the
grubs were choking and gagging but otherwise in good shape.  The trout
brazenly committed grand larceny on most of our bait supply but we
managed to land a couple of eight-inchers.

"Now ahim gonna show you how to build a fahr without matches," Rancid
said.  He made a little bow-and-stick contraption of the sort I had
seen in my Boy Scout handbook.  The handbook, however, had not
indicated all the good words you were supposed to say in order to get a
fire going.  Rancid sawed the little bow furiously back and forth on
the stick, the spinning of which was supposed to ignite a little pile
of shavings.  It was all very complicated, and Rancid sweated and
panted and swore until his eyes bugged out even more than usual.  At
last a little curl of smoke drifted up from the shavings.

Rancid threw down the bow, dropped on his belly and started blowing on
the shavings, whereupon the curl of smoke instantly vanished.  He
rolled over on his back and crumpled the bow and stick in his hands.

"Let this be a lesson to you, boy.  Don't never go out in the woods
without a fistful of matches."

"That's what Gram told me," I said.  "She made me bring a bunch of
matches even though I told her we wouldn't be needing them."

"Gol-dang know-it-all ol' woman!  Gimmie one of them matches!"

In a second Rancid had a fire going.  His hands were shaking from
exhaustion and rage as he built a little willow grill to cook our fish
on.  As the flames licked around the two little trout, Rancid stared
moodily into the fire.

"When we gonna build the lean-to?"  I asked.

"Don't bother me about no lean-to," he growled.  He seemed a bit surly,
so I decided not to pursue the subject.

Then the two fish slipped through the grill into the fire.  I stepped
back, sneaking a glance at Rancid's face.  His eyes, widening slightly,
stared at the bits of blackened skin on the willow grill.  A tiny
quiver ran the length of his lower lip.

After a long moment of silence, Rancid said, "We best eat thet last
samwich, 'cause we is gonna need lots of energy."

"To build the lean-to?"  I asked.

"No," he said.  "So we kin walk real fast.  Ah figures if we leave now
we kin get back to yer house in time for supper."

"Gram said she'd set a couple places for us," I said, "even though I
tried to tell her we'd be gone all night."

"Thet ol' know-it-all," Rancid said.  "Ah wonder what she's fixin' fer
supper anyhow.  Ah shore hope it ain't gonna be a mess of pisonous
cattails!"

The Great cow Plot When I came in from fishing the other day, my wife
asked, "Have any luck?"

"Great," I said.  "I saw only two cows and got away from both of
them."

I hadn't caught any fish, but that was beside the point.  The success
or failure of my fishing trips depends not upon the size of the catch
but the number of cows encountered.

Some people do most of their fishing on lakes or the ocean, where cows
are seldom if ever encountered.  Most of my fishing is done in cow
pastures, the natural habitat of cows.

Even when I plan a fishing trip forty miles back into the wilderness a
herd of cows will usually get wind of it and go on a forced march to
get there before I do and turn the place into a cow pasture.  Sometimes
the cows get the word a little late, and I'll pass them on the way.

Invariably a few of the poor losers will gallop along in front of the
car, still trying to get there ahead of me and do what they can on
short notice and empty stomachs.

"I've given up hope of finding any place to fish where a cow won't
manage to show up and put in her oar.  If I was in the pet shop on the
nineteenth floor of a department store and stopped to net a guppy out
of an aquarium, a cow would get off the elevator and rush over to offer
advice.

My wife insists that I've become paranoiac from over-exposure to
cows.

She tries to tell me that the intricate and near-impenetrable patterns
of cow spoor laid down around my favorite fishing holes are a result of
nothing more than random chance.  Even granting high probability from
the number of placements per square yard, which is altogether ample, I
remain unconvinced that these bovine mine fields are not the product of
conspiracy and cunning.

There's probably a small island in the Caribbean where cows are given a
six-week course in the design and manufacture of mine fields before
being turned out to pasture alongside fine trout streams.  The whole
thing is a plot by Castro to lower our national morale.

All cows are fishing enthusiasts, although their idea of fishing might
better be described as "Chase the Fisherman."  The object of the sport
is to see how many times the fisherman can be made to cross the
creek.

Five points are earned if he wades across, ten points if he splashes
only once, and twenty-five if he hurls himself across without touching
the water.  The last is achieved by first running him twice around the
pasture to pick up momentum and then making a straight shot for the
creek.  This maneuver is usually good for a score, provided the
fisherman can be driven past the other team's goalie.

As fishing enthusiasts, cows can be divided roughly into two groups:
participants and aficionados.  Another grouping I find useful is simply
Fast Mean Cows (FMC) and Slow Mean Cows (SMC).  The SMC, mediocre
athletes at best, are usually content to watch the main events between
the FMC and fishermen (thus the expression "contented cows").  They
participate only to the extent of doing everything in their power to
ruin an otherwise good running turf, apparently in the belief that a
slow field improves the spectator sport.  The FMC are frequently
referred to as "bulls."  The term is usually preceded by harsh but
accurately descriptive adjectives.  It is sometimes argued that "bulls"
is not an appropriate term for FMC since some of them are known to give
milk.  I disagree.  Upon hearing the shout "Here comes a bull!"  I have
yet to see any of my companions wait around to argue over the sex of
the beast.

No effective cow repellent has ever been developed for the comfort of
fishermen.  Simply from the standpoint of size alone, one would think
that cow repellent would have priority over mosquito repellent.  I
don't know if it would work, but someone with a knack for chemistry
might try distilling and bottling the aroma of a well-done sirloin.

The only thing that bulls have any respect for at all is the stick, and
many knowledgeable cow-pasture fishermen carry one slipped under their
belt for easy access in an emergency.  This is known as the "bull
stick" or sometimes simply "BS."  When the bull approaches, the BS is
first waved threateningly in the air and then thrown.  (This is not to
be confused with the BS thrown by hunters.) A couple of fishermen I
know like to brag about their narrow escape from a grizzly bear, Ursus
horribilis, but I'm not impressed.  A man just hasn't done any real
escaping until he has escaped from a grizzly cow, Bovinus horribilis. 
I am probably the world's leading authority on the subject, having
studied it since my childhood days.

In my mind's eyes, now somewhat astigmatic but Wide Screen and
Tru-Color, I see myself as a young boy, fishing pole in one hand, worm
can in the other, making my way down to the creek.  My phlegmatic and
flatulent old dog, Stranger, is close upon my bare heels and close upon
his heels is our neighbor's bull, known in those parts as The Bull, and
we are all running to beat hell.  Strange, his jaws set in a grim
smile, runs between me and The Bull not out of any sense of loyalty or
protection but because of old age and a shortness of breath.  Arriving
at the fence the dog and I hurl ourselves into the sanctuary beyond and
The Bull screeches to a stop in a cloud of dust and slobber just short
of the wire.  Stranger, sweat streaming down his face, pulls himself
together long enough to take credit for once again having saved my
life--"Well, bailed you out of another bad spot didn't I?"--and then he
and The Bull stand on opposite sides of the fence and say cruel and
obscene things to each other while I ignore them and get on with the
day's fishing.

Why did I risk frequent confrontations with such a malevolent creature
as The Bull?  The reason is one that perhaps only a trout fisherman
would understand.  Little Sand Creek was a great trout stream, probably
one of the finest in the nation at that time, but with the humility of
all the truly great it meandered its regal course through a series of
humble and unpretentious--not to say miserable--farms, one of which was
ours.  The stream was fished with such ardor and love and perseverance
by so many anglers that by mid-season any worthwhile trout who had
survived the onslaught would strike at nothing that did not show
obvious signs of life and then only after taking its pulse.  That
section of the stream which ran through the farm owned and operated by
The Bull, however, remained virtually untouched--except, of course, by
me, known affectionately throughout the region as "That Fool Kid."

These sorties across the pasture were not nearly so hazardous as the
chance observer might suppose.  The Bull's top speed was a good deal
faster than mine, no doubt because he didn't have to carry a fishing
rod and a can of worms or worry about his dog's heart.  But we had the
element of surprise on our side, and by the time The Bull caught sight
of us we already would be well accelerated.  If The Bull closed the gap
too quickly, I would jettison rod and worms, and Stranger would
jettison everything he could, and we would give it our all, every man
for himself, right up to the fence, and hurl ourselves over, under or
through the barbed wires.  Such instances were rare, however, and most
of the time we could get through the fence in a manner that was more
dignified and much less painful.

I learned a great deal about plane geometry from these exercises with
The Bull.  I discovered that the shortest distance between two points
is a straight line, an idea that The Bull either could not fathom or he
was reading Einsteinian theory in his spare time.  At any rate, he
almost always ran in a long, arching, curve.  This resulted from his
knowing nothing about leading a moving target; he always held dead
on.

Consequently, a diagram of our converging lines of motion would show
his course as a long curved line intersecting and merging with my short
straight line.  Successful evasion thus was largely a matter of
predicting given the proper angles, distances, relative speeds, and
variable handicaps, the point at which our two converging lines of
motion would intersect.  As I say, I was a master of such
calculations.

My talent went wholly unrecognized, however, and people continued to
refer to me as "That Fool Kid."

It came to pass that my widowed mother took up with a man and married
him, offering the feeble excuse that "the boy needed a father."  Both
she and I knew that was an out-and-out lie.  She had pulled off a
clever coup d'etat, designed to deprive me of my place of power and
authority over the family, which I had been ruling with a firm but just
hand since the age of eight.  The mercenary imported to depose me
proved to be a tough customer, and I saw that I would have to play it
cool and watch for the main chance.  It came sooner than I expected.

Hank, as he was called, one morning sent a peace feeler in my
direction: "Don't know of a spot where we could catch some fish, do
you?"  he asked.

Well, it seemed like no time at all before the mercenary and I were
standing at the fence to The Bull's pasture.  I thought it best to warn
him.

"That ol' cow out there seems to be lookin' our way," I said.

"That ain't no cow," the mercenary said.  "That's a bull.  But land,
boy, you don't have to be afraid of a bull.  All you gotta do is show
'im who's boss."

It seemed a comfort to him to see me smile, the first time since being
deposed.  What he didn't notice was that Strange and The Bull were
smiling too.  It became kind of an "in" joke, afterwards.  That is,
after the mercenary had climbed through the fence and demonstrated to
all of us just who was boss.  It turned out that the boss was just
exactly who I and Strange and The Bull had known all along was boss.

The mercenary, we smugly observed, wasn't much of a hand at fighting
bulls.  On the other hand, he proved to be the best broken-field runner
ever to hit our county.  To this day I have never seen a grown man who
could run so fast, even one who wasn't carrying a fishing rod and
creel, and wearing hipboots.  A kid just had to admire a man who could
run like that.

From then on Hank and I and Stranger ran from The Bull together, and we
went far afield and ran from other bulls and sometimes cows and even
whole herds of cows, and we forgot all about power and authority and
the like.  We were willing to risk the wrath of any cow who stood guard
over a stretch of good fishing water, and it wasn't long before we were
being referred to as "That Fool Kid and That Fool Man."  But we paid
her no mind; she had her hands full, what with being the head of the
family and all.

The Mountain Man My chief career ambition as a youngster was to bE a
mountain man, but somehow it never worked out.  I'm not sure why.

One problem was my family.  They were dead set against the idea of my
going into the fur trade, and never passed up an opportunity to point
out the drawbacks of the profession.

My grandmother had actually known some real mountain men back in the
old days, but she had never taken a liking to them.  She said they
drank and swore and spit tobacco and never took baths and fought and
bragged and lied all the time.  I don't recall, however, that she ever
mentioned what was bad about them.

"There ain't no money in bein' a mountain man," Gram would tell me.

She was fond of pointing out that she had never known a mountain man
who was the proprietor of the basest vessel of domesticity and personal
hygiene.  Her exact words escape me at the moment.

I was all for leaving school and getting started in the fur trade as
soon as possible, but my mother wouldn't hear of it.  She said I would
have to wait until I was through the third grade or reached the age of
eighteen, whichever came first.  "It's the law," she would say.  The
suggestion was put forth that we might find a loophole in the law if we
looked hard enough, but Mom said she didn't think it was proper for a
third-grade teacher to be putting forth suggestions like that.

My older sister, who liked to boast that she knew how to turn small
boys into frogs and offered me as evidence, was always there to put in
her oar and rile the waters of argument.

"You can't be a mountain man," she would say.  "You're afraid of the
dark."

Well, I certainly didn't see how she knew so much about what mountain
men were afraid of and what they weren't.  There were probably plenty
of mountain men who were afraid of the dark, even though the length of
their expeditions into the wilderness may have been somewhat limited by
the handicap.  One could easily imagine a grizzled old trapper asking,
"Any sign of beaver a half-day's ride from the fort?"

In spite of these difficulties, I persisted in preparing myself for a
career in the mountain man profession.  Every spare moment was spent
either in the library extracting the theory from books or out in the
woods conducting laboratory experiments.

One thing I learned from the books was that a mountain man had to
master three basic skills if he wanted to survive in the wilds.  He had
to know how to squint his eyes just right, spit through his teeth, and
say dry, humorous things anytime he was in pain or danger.  (You'd be
surprised how difficult it is to think of something dry and humorous to
say when, for example, a big furry beast is eating one of your legs.)
Much time was spent perfecting squinting and spitting, and I learned
that it's easy to say dry if not humorous things after one has spent
the day spitting through his teeth.

I had at my disposal about forty-seven rusty traps, which I kept in a
neat snarl in our woodshed.  From time to time, I would go out and
practice setting these traps.  It almost never failed that the practice
session would end with a trap snapping shut on one portion or another
of my anatomy.  Now it was part of the mountain man code that you could
never cry when caught by one of your own traps, but there was no rule
against doing as much loud yelling as you wanted, particularly if you
were a mountain man who didn't know how to swear well enough to do a
trapped finger much good.  Quite often I would become confused on these
occasions and go about for some time afterwards squinting my teeth and
spitting through my eyes.  I could always think of something dry and
humorous to say, but it was usually about three days later, and I
wasn't sure if that counted.

Besides the traps, I practiced a lot with snares.  Since beavers seldom
if ever passed through our yard, I impressed my crotchety old dog,
Stranger, into service.  I would rig up a snare outside his house,
where he would be sleeping off a night of drunken debauchery.  Then I
would raise some kind of racket until he staggered out asking for
tomato juice and a little peace and quiet, and the snare would close
limply around his neck.  He would curse me roundly and go back into his
den of iniquity, dragging the snare with him to be chewed up at his
leisure and when his stomach felt better.

The only deadfall I ever constructed utilized an old railroad tie and
almost ended the promising career of one of my mother's laying hens.

The hen survived the ordeal, but for some time we had the distinction
of owning the only flat chicken in the neighborhood.  I exhausted my
entire supply of ingenuity proposing theories about how a four-pound
chicken could manage to crawl under a hundred-pound railroad tie.  To
this day I'm not sure how she could have triggered the contraption,
unless perhaps she was standing under it running tests on the
engineering.

One area of information about mountain men that caused me a good deal
of confusion was buffalo chips.  From my extensive reading on the
subject, I knew that mountain men preferred this fuel above all
others.

The books never came right out and said what buffalo chips were, nor
did they give any recommendations about the proper procedure for
chipping a buffalo.  One thing for certain, it would be dang hard work
chipping one of the ornery critters.

It was no wonder to me that buffalo were all the time stampeding the
way they did, what with mountain men constantly hacking their fuel
supply off of them.

When I eventually learned the true nature of buffalo chips, I could
scarcely believe it.  I had known all along that mountain men were
tough but not just how tough.

Most mountain men died off back in the nineteenth century, once again
displaying their uncommon good sense but also depriving students of the
profession, such as myself, of live models to pattern themselves
after.

From time to time, someone would attempt to pass himself off to me as a
mountain man, but I always found him out.  One of these impostors was
my older cousin Buck, who was big and husky and had perfected all the
mannerisms of the mountain man.  He was a good squinter and spitter and
spoke mountain man passingly well.  He liked to say things like, "Fetch
us some water, ol' hoss, and ah'Il build us a fahr and bile up some
coffee."

For a long time, Buck had me fooled.  Then one day we went fishing up
Hoodoo Canyon, a place that is spooky even in daylight.  We fooled
around most of the day, catching a few trout, poking at tracks,
studying bent blades of grass, squinting and spitting, saying dry,
humorous things, and the like, and before I knew it, I had broken a
long-standing promise to myself, which was never to get caught up in
Hoodoo Canyon after dark.  I comforted myself with the thought that I
was in the company of a trained and knowledgeable mountain man.  Then I
glimpsed Buck's face.  I knew without having to ask that he had just
broken a long-standing promise to himself.

We started picking our way down the overgrown trail at a pace Buck
referred to as a dogtrot, even though I personally have never been
acquainted with a dog that could trot that fast.  As we dogtrotted
along, leaping logs four feet in the air without having to speed up, I
began to get the impression we were being followed.  Buck received the
report of this news with no great enthusiasm, but he stopped to size up
the situation.  After all, if you are being tracked by something large
and hairy, it's a good idea to know how large and how hairy.  Every
true mountain man knows that the worst thing you can do is let your
imagination drive you into a panic.  You want to look at your situation
coldly and realistically, and that's exactly what Buck and I were doing
when a long, cold and very realistic scream drifted down off the
mountain above us.  As sounds go, it registered right up near the top
of the hideous scale.  (The only time I had heard anything like it was
when a small, harmless snake managed to sneak into our house and hide
in the drawer where my sister kept her underwear.) "Whazzat?"  I asked,
attempting to feign idle curiosity.

Buck was silent.  Then, drawing upon his vast knowledge, he identified
the sound.

"That was a blinkety-blank scream!"  he said, thereby confirming my
worst suspicions.

No more had this been said than there was the sound of a large animal
bolting off down the canyon, snapping off young lodgepole pine like
they were matchsticks, bounding over huge logs, smashing its way
blindly through thickets, snorting, grunting, and wheezing for all it
was worth.  It took several seconds before I realized the large animal
was Buck.

Although I was fully sympathetic with his motives, I simply could not
accept Buck's undignified departure from Hoodoo Canyon as being
consistent with the calm, cool manner of a mountain man.  His
abandoning of his loyal partner in a time of danger was also a serious
infraction of the rules.  That the loyal partner, despite a late start
and short legs, managed to beat him out of the mouth of the canyon by a
good forty yards in no way mitigated the offense, at least in my
judgment.

My early training as a mountain man has stood me in good stead over all
the years I've spent prowling about the wilds on one pretext or
another.  But in the end, I failed to become a full-time, card-carrying
mountain man.  The obstacles seemed to increase as the years went by,
and there's no question that a mountain man today would have a hard
time of it.  First of all, he would have difficulty finding a mountain
unadorned with ski lodges, condominiums, television towers, and the
like.  Then he would have to carry a briefcase for all his licenses,
registrations, permits, draft and social security cards, health
insurances and so on, and that would take a lot of the fun out of it.

There would be all the hassles with the fish and game departments, and
the Forest Service would be forever flying over and spraying him with
one kind of pesticide or another.  The USFS recreation officers would
probably hound him to use the prepared campsites for his own safety (he
might get himself clearcut up on the mountains), and providing he could
even find a few buffalo chips to ignite, he would have to run the risk
of getting doused with a bomber load of fire retardant.

It's probably just as well that I never became a mountain man.  Still,
some days on the streets of the city, dodging stampedes of taxis and
herds of muggers, squinting my eyes just right against the smog,
sidestepping dog chips, and all the time trying to think of something
dry and humorous to say, I frequently wonder where I went wrong.

The Rescue There are people who constantly look as if they are in dire
need of help.

I am one of them.

Men, women and children, and even scraggly dogs are forever coming up
to me to ask if they might be of some assistance.  I don't mind if I'm
in some sort of real trouble.  Usually, though, my predicament is
nothing more serious than waiting on a street corner for the light to
change, or perhaps trying to look disinterested while the service
station attendant tries to remember what he did with the key.

Once I was standing in front of a candy-vending machine, trying to
decide between a Nut Crunchy and a Whang-o Bar.  A pert young lady came
up and asked if she might be of service.  I said no, that I had already
decided on a Whang-o.  You could tell from the look on her face that
she was disappointed at having arrived too late to help with the
decision.  If I'm not mistaken, she went off in a bit of a huff.

Even when I'm at home people are constantly offering me aid and
comfort.

The other morning I was staring vacantly out the window, a hobby I
personally find more entertaining than, say, stamp collecting or
golf.

"What's the matter?"  my wife asked.  "Nothing," I said.  "Why?"

"You're staring vacantly out the window."  Her tone suggested that this
is an activity engaged in only by persons on the verge of leaping feet
first into the garbage disposal.  "What's the matter?"

In order to bring a brief but merciful end to the discussion, I made up
a mildly risque cock-and-bull story about a premonition, the villain of
which was a sadistic crocodile.

"But why do you keep staring out the window like that?"  she
persisted.

"I'm watching for the SOB!"  I told her.

Not only am I not free to stare vacantly out one of my own windows, I'm
afraid even to go outside and lie down on my own grass.  If I did, one
of the neighbors would call an ambulance for me or, worse yet (with a
couple of notable exceptions), rush over and try to give me
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Now that's the sort of thing that happens to me around my own home, on
city streets, and in office buildings.  If I wander anywhere off the
beaten paths, my would-be rescuers become so numerous they have to
circle me in holding patterns in order to await their turns.

When a hunter meets another hunter in the woods, he will usually greet
him with some inoffensive remark like, "Any luck?"  or "How ya
doin'?"

and let it go at that.  With me, other hunters instantly assume I am
lost, injured, or being sought by the Mafia.  They launch into
intricate directions on how I can make my way to the nearest road,
hospital, or hiding place.  If I didn't deal somewhat firmly with them,
they would boil me a pot of soup, set my leg in a splint, and carry me
piggyback to my car.

Even my hunting partners of long years standing are quick to assume
that if I'm out of sight, I'm lost.  Such an assumption is entirely
unfounded.

Occasionally I will discover that a road or trail or mountain is not
where I last left it, but that is not my fault.  If a mountain wishes
to change its location, there is nothing I can do to prevent it.

On a hunting trip a few years ago I spent most of the day looking for a
road that had mysteriously moved.  Upon finding another road, I made my
way down to the highway and walked to the nearest diner, where I
ordered myself a steak dinner.  No sooner had I been served than one of
my hunting partners burst into the diner and shouted that he needed
some men for a search party to look for some poor devil who was lost in
the mountains.  I immediately made my steak into a sandwich and stood
up to offer my services.  It turned out I was the fellow I was supposed
to search for.  Such incidents are embarrassing.

I should like to make clear here that I am no more incompetent or
susceptible to trouble than the average person, no matter what my
friends might say.  I have managed pretty much on my own to survive a
big-league depression, numerous recessions, creeping inflations, and
even a couple of phases.  I have never been tested in military combat,
but I did spend several years teaching English composition to college
freshmen.  As a police reporter, I had experiences that would give a
grave robber goose bumps and a hungry hyena a fit of the dry heaves.  I
offer this bit of personal history as evidence that I am not totally
helpless and inexperienced; I just look that way.

From years of almost constant rescuing I have arrived at the firm
conviction that if one can possibly avoid being rescued he should by
all means do so.  As a rule, suffering the consequences of one's
predicament is preferable to the risks of being rescued.

One day last summer I had fished a couple of miles of mountain stream
and was just starting to hoof it back up the road to my car when a
pickup truck pulled up alongside and stopped.  Two men and a woman were
in the front seat.

A load of firewood was stacked high in the back of the truck.

"You look plumb wore out," one of them said despite the fact that I
felt quite fresh and vigorous, and was enjoying the little hike.  "Hop
onto the wood back there and we'll give you a lift."

The speaker was one of those burly, broad-shouldered types--unshaven,
voice like a bass drum, and hard, squinty eyes.  The two men weren't
exactly cream-puffs either.  I knew they would brook no nonsense about
my declining to be rescued, so I climbed up on top of the firewood.

The wood was split into large chunks, each of which was equipped with
an abundance of edges approximately as sharp as the blade of a skinning
knife.  I eased myself down on the fewest number possible, attempting
through an act of will to keep most of my weight suspended in air.

Now almost everyone knows that it is impossible to drive a pickup load
of firewood sixty miles an hour over a washboard road.  The driver of
the truck proved to be one of the few persons in the world not in
possession of this knowledge.  The blocks of wood began to dance around
and I began to dance around with them and sometimes the wood was on top
and sometimes I was.  One hefty chunk did a nifty little foxtrot along
the left side of my rib cage while another practiced the tango with my
hip bone.  A clownish piece of tamarack went past wearing my hat, and
six or seven other chunks were attempting to perform the same trick
with my waders and fishing vest.  Still, I didn't want to yell out any
of the choice phrases blossoming in my head for fear of offending my
rescuers.  (There is nothing worse than an offended rescuer.) By the
time we reached a car "This is it!"  I yelled out.), I felt as though I
had spent the day participating in an avalanche.

Some of the minor rescues are only slightly less disastrous.  I am
perfectly capable of negotiating barbwire fences on my own, and on
occasions--particularly in pastures with resident bulls--have done so
with considerable speed.  Nevertheless it frequently happens that a
complete stranger will be standing next to a fence which I must climb
through, and he will insist upon holding up the wire for me.  It almost
never fails that this kindly chap immediately reveals himself to have
either exceptionally bad timing, a perverted sense of humor, or a
handgrip slightly weaker than that of a deep-fried prawn.

Then there are the direction-givers.  I am convinced that there are
people who, upon hearing that I am trying to find out how to get to
Lost Lake, would climb out of an oxygen tent and run barefooted three
miles through the snow for the opportunity of giving me directions to
it.  Now I would appreciate this sacrifice on their part except for one
thing: not only have they never been to Lost Lake in their lives' they
didn't even know it existed until they heard I wanted to go there.  But
I shouldn't be too harsh on these people.  Even though I don't find
Lost Lake by following their directions I do discover some truly great
swamps, vast stretches of country distinguished by a total absence of
water, campsites with rock-to-rock rattlesnakes, and sometimes a little
mountain valley inhabited only by a family of giant bears, all of whom
are suffering from acute irritability.

There are times, of course, when I actually have need of rescue.  One
of these times occurred last fall on Lake Pend Oreille.  Mort Haggard
and I had stalled our outboard in the middle of the lake just as we
noticed the thin black line of a storm edging toward us.  There is only
one sensible way to ride out a storm on Lake Pend Oreille and that is
astride a barstool in the nearest resort.  With this object in mind, we
were taking turns flailing away on the pull cord when the damn thing
broke.  The storm was just about upon us and I got out a can and
started bailing as fast as I could.  We weren't taking any water over
the sides yet, but the bottom of the boat was awash in cold sweat.

There was only one other boat in sight and we hailed it by gesturing
with our arms in a fashion that the casual observer might have supposed
to be frantic.  We also loudly repeated the word "help" at regular
intervals of a half second and in a somewhat shrill pitch so as to be
heard above the wind.

The two occupants of the other boat responded promptly to these
signals, and soon had pulled their rather sleek craft up alongside our
rather dumpy one.  They were husband and wife, both up in their
seventies, lean as lances and deeply tanned.  The man was
conservatively dressed in bib overalls and his wife wore a long flowery
dress.  Both of them looked safe enough.

Mort and I immediately made the mistake common to persons being
rescued, which is to defer in all matters of logic and common sense to
the rescuers, the assumption being that because a person is at this
moment displaying a keen sense of goodwill, he is therefore not (a) a
madman, (b) an imbecile, or (c) a mugger on vacation.  Our rescuers, it
turned out, were none of these three.

They were something else.

"Can you give us a tow to shore?"  I shouted at them.

"Oh not too good," the old man said.  "We caught two or three earlier,
but they was pretty small."

Mort and I grinned uncomfortably and shot nervous glances at each other
and the storm.

"Clifford's a mite hard of hearing," said the woman, whose name, we
learned, was Alma.  "THEY WANT A TOW TO SHORE!"  Alma said to
Clifford.

"Fine, fine," Clifford said.  "You fellas just grab ahold on the side
of our boat and we'll tow you in."

This suggestion did not seem to be one of the ten best ideas I had ever
heard.

"Don't you think it would be better to rig up a tow line?"  I asked.

"They was all silvers," Clifford said.  "But they was small."

Mort and I took another look at the storm and grabbed the side of their
boat.

Clifford eased out on the throttle and the two boats began to move.

There was a good chop on the water now, and the sky was black.  Mort
and I clung to the side of the other boat as if it were the brink of an
eighty-foot cliff.

Clifford let out on the throttle a bit more, pulling Mort and me over
on our sides.  We wrapped our legs around the seats and locked our
ankles together.  Our rib cages began to simulate the action of an
accordion in a rock band.  Charley horses began to gallop up and down
my arms.

Clifford eased out on the throttle a bit more, and Mort began to emit a
low, continuous moan, which he politely attempted to disguise as
humming.

"Hummghh, hummghh," he went.

Clifford eased out on the throttle still a bit more, and the bows of
both boats were out of the water.  Our fishing lines snapped into the
air and trailed out behind us like silver streamers in the wind.

"Hey, Cliff," I yelled through the plume of spray.  "How about slowing
it down some?"

He smiled down at me.  "Yup," he said.  "They was all small."

Alma meanwhile had taken a liking to Mort and was attempting to engage
him in conversation.  She had moved over next to him and was shouting
down into his free ear, the one not scrunched into an oarlock.

"Bet you can't guess how long we've lived in these parts, can you,
young man?"  she asked.

"Yes ma'm," said Mort, always the gentleman.  "Hummmgh, hummmgh!"

"You can?  How long then?"

"Yes ma'm," Mort said.  "Hummmmgh, hummmmgh!"

"We've lived here seventy-odd years now, and let me tell you, we've
seen some powerful hard times," Alma said, apparently not realizing
that she was seeing one of them right then.

"Yes ma'm," Mort said.  "Hummmgh, In hummmgh."

We smacked into a huge wave.  One moment the other boat was above us,
Mort and I holding up there, and the next it was down below, dangling
from our aching arms, and all of us still going like sixty.  Then the
two boats began to go their separate ways.  Mort and I wrenched them
back together, shouting out a rousing chorus from an old sea chanty
frequently sung by sailors as they were being keel-hauled.

"Thought we was going to lose you for a minute there," Clifford yelled
over at us with a grin.

"Yes ma'm," Mort said.  "Hummmmgh, hummmmgh!"

When we were once again standing safely on the dock, which didn't seem
like a day over three weeks, Mort turned philosophical about the whole
adventure.  "Look at it this way," he said.  "First of all, we probably
never would have survived that storm if we hadn't been rescued.

Second, we're standing here on the dock soaking our hands in the lake,
and we don't even have to bother to bend down."

"Hummgh, hummgh," I said.

"I'll Never Forget Old 5789-A" Let me admit it right off.  There was a
time not too long ago when I liked my wildlife unadorned.  What I mean
is, I liked it in the naked.

Stark raving raw.  In its birthday suit.  Nude.  Stripped.  Bare.  Some
fur or hair and maybe a set of horns, but otherwise unadorned with so
much as an aluminum fig leaf.

The wildlife situation, as I saw it, was becoming grim--science-wise.

The scientists were running all over the place decorating my wild
animals with vinyl tags, collars, streamers, flags, patches and
jackets.  They were putting radio transmitters on grizzly bears and
sage grouse and sea turtles.  Deer in Idaho were running around in
blinking lights, and some falcons of my acquaintance carried so much
electronic equipment they had to taxi for a take off.  So help me, I
even knew a mountain goat that ran around for a year with a piece of
garden hose on his horns!

And that's not all.  Plans were under way, the wildlife scientists told
me, to start using telemetry, the system used by NASA doctors to keep
tabs on the physiology of astronauts orbiting the globe.  That way the
zoologists and wildlife managers would know not only the location of a
particular animal day and night but his temperature, rate of
respiration, heart beat, and no doubt his politics.

All this I found depressing.  Whoever expected wildlife managers to
actually start managing the wildlife?  I personally did not like
scientists and the like fooling around with the fauna.

Then one day I said to myself, "You're a modern American male, aren't
you?  Yes.  Therefore you are regimented, inoculated, tranquilized,
numbered, recorded, transported, transplanted, poked, probed, polled,
conditioned, and computerized, aren't you?  Yes.  Then," I said to
myself, "why should a bunch of damn animals be better off than you
are?"

After that I decided to get into the spirit of the thing.  The time
would come, I saw, when people would think that anyone showing a
preference for naked animals must be some kind of pervert.  Mothers
would call their children off the streets whenever "Fruity Fred" walked
by.  Toughs would beat him up in bars, and he would have to move to a
city where the police protected people like him.  He would have to get
his kicks by watching clandestine showings of old Disney nature films
in motel rooms and maybe even by exchanging pictures of naked deer and
bear with persons of similar inclinations.  Maybe he would be forced to
make his living by peddling picture postcards from an alley: "Wanta buy
a dirty picture of a moose?"

None of that was for me.  I got scared and started thinking of all the
advantages this new scientific approach to game management would bring
about.

It took a while, but I finally thought of some.

For example, I wouldn't have to slog around in the woods anymore
hunting aimlessly for a deer.  I would just stop by the local
Electronic Game Control Center.

"What do you have in the way of a nice 125-pound whitetail buck at
about 4:15 P.m. in the Haversteads' meadow?"  I would ask the
technologist in charge.

"One moment, please."  She would put the last touch to a phony eyelash
and then program a card and run it through the computer.  Blink.

Buzz.

Hummm.  Clink!  "You're in luck," she would say, looking at a piece of
computer tape.  "Buck Deer No.  5789-A will be crossing the
Haversteads' meadow at exactly 4:32 P.M. He will be traveling due north
at a speed of six miles per hour.  His present weight is 135 pounds;
pulse rate, 78; and temperature, 98.1. He has had all of his shots."

"Just what I'm looking for," I say, and rush out the door, heading for
the Haversteads' meadow.

At precisely 4:32 P.m. Buck Deer NO.  5789-A steps into the clearing,
heading due north at a speed of six miles per hour.  He is wearing a
bright red vinyl jacket set off by blue ear streamers and a collar of
blinking lights.  I bust him with a .30-30 slug, which enters just
slightly above his portable power pack and emerges to the left of his
transistorized radio unit.

As I rush up to the fallen NO.  5789-A, a feminine voice squawks from
his radio pack, "Nice shot!"  The voice belongs to the lady
technologist at the Electronic Game Control Center.

"Thanks," I say.

"I will now put on a recording of the proper method for dressing a
big-game animal," she says.  Another female voice comes on: "You have
just shot what is known as your big-game animal.  Here are the
directions for dressing your big-game animal.  First carefully remove
from the big-game animal all electronic devices, its vinyl jacket and
ribbons, and the collar of blinking lights.  If this is not done
immediately, the meat may have a strong flavor.  Step Number Two ..."

You can see the advantages.

The drawbacks, of course, would be minor.  For one thing, we would have
to add some new terminology.  Hunting conversations then might go
something like this: "Heard you gotcher deer."

"Yeah, I busted old 5789-A."

"No kidding!  How many transistors did the old boy have?"

"Four.  And big!  Why that devil was wearing a thirty-eight-inch
collar, a size sixty-four jacket, and the biggest whip antenna I ever
saw."

There might also be a few additional difficulties in the eating of
game.

Your wife might have to warn the children, "Be careful you don't crack
your teeth on a piece of Daddy's buckshot and watch out for the little
wires and electrodes; they might catch in your throat and choke you."

Nevertheless, any extra dental and doctor bills would be more than made
up for by your savings on hunting clothes.  Since all the animals will
be wearing red, the hunters can wear any old thing they want--as long
as it isn't red.  Wearing red, in fact, might be disastrous.  Hunters
who mistake people for potential venison will plead, "I saw this flash
of red and thought sure it was a deer.  ..."

Now I'm not one to swim upstream in the river of progress.  The old
days are gone.  But I know that sooner or later I'll have a relapse and
be carted off to a psychiatrist to be set right.

"What seems to be your problem?"  the psychiatrist will ask.

"Well, Doc," I'll say, "I keep thinking about these naked animals."

"Yes," he'll say, "that is rather serious.  Such tendencies are
doubtlessly the manifestation of some childhood experience."

And you know, he'll be right.

The B'ar Rancid Crabtree was ranting and raving when I charged into our
kitchen.

"Thar's a gol-dang b'ar in maw brush pile," he said.

My grandmother's nose quivered.  "Open the window, child," she said to
me.  Personally, I thought Rancid had a rather interesting smell, kind
of tangy, like game hung a bit too long in warm weather.

"What's this about a bear?"  Gram asked, shoving a couple of
fresh-baked cinnamon rolls in front of Rancid and pouring him a cup of
coffee.

"Thar's a b'ar in maw brush pile," Rancid repeated.  "Ah thank the
critter plans on passin' the winter thar."

"Well, what's that hurt?"  Gram said.

Rancid looked at her in disgust.  "You can't never tell whan ah might
need thet brush pile fer something'," he said.  "What right's thet b'ar
got movin' in like he owned the place?  Any number of nice caves around
but he's got to hole up in maw brush pile.  Wall, ah ain't gonna stand
fer it.

B'sides, ah've been hungerin' fer some b'ar steak, anyway."

"Then just shoot him and be done with it," Gram said.

"That's what ah needs the boy fer."

"What?"  Gram said.

"What?"  I said.

"Ah needs him to stand on top the brush pile and poke a pole down into
it and drive the b'ar out so ah kin get a shot.  Won't be nothin' to
it."

"There won't be nothin' to it, all right," Gram said, "because I ain't
lettin' him do a fool dangerous thing like that."

Gram and I agreed on few things, but this happened to be one of them.

just to make it look good though, I threw out a half-hearted beg.

"Aw c'mon, Gram, let me do it," I said.

"Nope!"

"All right."  There was no point in pushing her too hard.

"What's the matter?"  Rancid said, giving me his mean look.  "Yer
begger broke?"

I could see he was disappointed.

"Hey," I said.  "How about Ginger Ann?  I bet she'd do it."

Ginger Ann was a woman who lived alone back in the hills on a little
ranch she had inherited from her father.  I'd heard it said of her that
she could out-work, out-fight, and out-swear any man in the county.

Once I'd seen her ornery old cow horse throw her flat on her back, for
no reason that I could see except he thought it might be a good joke.

She was up in a flash, fists doubled and biceps knotted up to the size
of grapefruit.  She delivered the beast such a blow to the ribs he
would have fallen over sideways except for a nearby tree.  While he was
still dazed she stepped back into the saddle and said to me, "Don't
mind us, boy We do this all the time."

That was one of the reasons I thought Ginger Ann might be just the
person to drive a bear out of a brush pile.

"Gol-dang," Rancid said, "ah never thought of Ginger Ann.  Ah bet she
would do it."

"I wouldn't mind going along to watch," I said.

"Suit yerself," Rancid said.

"You just take care you don't get hurt," Gram warned.

"Shucks, thet b'ar ain't gonna hurt nobody," Rancid said.

"It ain't the bear I'm worried about," Gram said.

We got into Rancid's old truck and rattled over to Ginger Ann's place,
an ancient log house slouched among a scattering of pine trees and the
assorted remains of hay wagons, cars, trucks, tractors, and
contraptions that defied identification.  She seemed delighted to see
us.

"Ah was wonderin' if you would help me to shoot a b'ar," Rancid said to
her.

"You bet," Ginger Ann said, taking her .30-30 off the wall.  "Let's
go.

"Hold on a minute," Rancid said.  "You won't be needin' thet thang,
because ahim gonna do the shootin' mawsef.  All ah needs you fer is to
drive the b'ar out of maw brush pile."

Ginger Ann shoved a box of shells in her jacket pocket.  "Why can't you
drive the bear out and let me shoot it?"

"Ha!"  Rancid said.  "'Cause yer jist a woman, thet's why.  Ah never
know'd a woman yet could shoot worth a dang."

Ginger Ann stepped out on the porch and pointed to an old car door
leaning against a tree thirty yards away.  "You see that itty-bitty
patch of rust just to the left of the top hinge?"  She jacked a shell
into the chamber, put the rifle to her shoulder and fired.  The door
jumped.  (There was some question later about whether the door actually
jumped, but I saw it.) We walked over, and there was a single bullet
hole in the door, drilled neatly through the rust patch.

"Wall anyway," Rancid said, "a car door ain't no b'ar, and ah git to do
the shootin' and thet's all thar is to it."

"I'll arm wrestle you then," Ginger Ann said.  "Winner shoots the
bear."

Rancid sneaked a glance at her right arm.  "Ah ain't arm wrastlin' no
woman."

They argued and yelled at each other all the time we were driving back
to Rancid's place, but finally Ginger gave in and said, yes, she'd
drive the bear out of the brush pile.

"All this fightin' has set me on edge," Rancid said.  "Let's go in maw
cabin and ah'll bile us up a pot of coffee.  Than we'll go git the
b'ar."

Ginger Ann looked around the cabin while Rancid was blowing dust out of
a couple of extra cups and putting the coffee on.  "Why don't you ever
clean this place up?"  she said.

"Gol-dang, what are you talkin' about, woman!"  Rancid said, his
feelings obviously hurt.  "Ah jist cleaned it up!"

"When?"

"Wall, let's see, what month is it now?  Anyway, not too long ago."

While we were drinking our coffee Rancid laid out his plan for us.  He
drew a circle with his finger in the dust on the table.  Inside the
circle he put a dot.  "This hyar's the brush pile," he said, indicating
the circle.

"And this is the bear, I suppose," Ginger Ann said, pointing to the
dot.

"Nope," Rancid said.  "Thet's you, standing on top the brush pile.

Directly underneath you is the b'ar."

"Oh," Ginger Ann said.

Rancid drew a little X six inches out from the circle.  "This hyar is
me."  Then he made a dotted line from the dot in the circle halfway out
to the X. "This is the b'ar comin' out of the brush pile.  Ah'll shoot
it right thar."

Ginger Ann reached forward with her finger and very quickly extended
the dotted line out to the X and made a violent swirling motion that
sent a little puff of dust into the air.

"What you go an' do thet fer?"  Rancid said.

"That's what will happen if you miss the bear," Ginger Ann said with a
laugh that rattled the stovepipe.

"Ha!"  Rancid said.  "Ah don't miss!"  He looked down at the spot where
the little X had been erased.  "On t'other hand, ah can probably git a
better shot if ah stand over hyar."  And he drew another X some
distance off to one side.

"Where's Pat going to stand" Ginger Ann asked.

"There ain't enough room on the table to show that," I said.

When we had finished the coffee, Rancid put on his dirty red hunting
shirt ("maw lucky shart"), picked up his ancient .30-30, and we headed
out to the brush pile.  Ginger Ann carried the pole over her
shoulder.

The brush pile was in the middle of a small clearing Rancid had cut in
the woods when he was a young man and thinking of becoming a farmer.

This evidence of ambition embarrassed him considerably, and he
explained it away by saying, "Aw was insane at the time."

"Smell thet b'ar smell?"  Rancid whispered when we got to the
clearing.

"No," Ginger Ann whispered.  "All I can smell is ... When was the last
time you took a bath, anyway, Rancid?"

"What Y'ar is it now?"  Rancid said.

The brush pile was about eight feet high and laced with small logs
sticking out at every angle.  On one side of it was what appeared to be
an opening--the place where Rancid had indicated the bear would exit.

After sizing up the situation and making a number of calculations based
upon previous experiences I'd had with Rancid, I selected a moderately
tall tamarack tree and climbed about halfway up it.  My perch on a
stout limb gave me a good view of the scene.

Rancid took up his position off to one side of what he had determined
to be the bear's path of escape.  He seemed a bit nervous.  I could see
him rummaging around in his pockets, looking for something.  Then he
took out a plug of tobacco and took a great chaw out of it.  He
limbered up his arms, and threw the rifle up onto his shoulder a couple
of times for practice.  All this time Ginger Ann stood leaning on the
pole, watching him and shaking her head as if she couldn't believe it
all.  Finally, Rancid motioned her to climb up on top of the brush
pile, and he went into a half crouch, rifle at the ready.

Ginger Ann made such a commotion climbing up the brush pile that I
decided there wasn't a bear in there anyway, either that or he was dead
or stone deaf.  When she was at last on top of the brush pile, she
poked several times down into it with the pole.  Nothing happened.  I
could see that Rancid was getting exasperated.

"Gol-dang it, woman," he finally shouted, "jam thet pole down hard!"

"If you know so much about it, you knot-headed ignoramus, why don't you
come do it yourself," Ginger Ann shouted back.

"Ah shoulda know'd better'n to brang a woman to do a boy's job," Rancid
said.  "Let me show you how to do it."  He leaned his rifle against a
tree and started for the brush pile.

By now Ginger Ann's face was red from rage.  She lifted the pole above
her head and drove it with all her might into the brush.

I didn't see all that happened next because I blinked.  The bear didn't
bother using the door to the brush pile but just crashed out through
the side of it--the side toward Rancid.  The brush pile seemed to
explode, and Ginger Ann toppled over backwards, screaming, "Shoot,
Rancid, shoot--before it's too late!"

Well, it was about the most exciting and interesting spectacle I've
ever had the good fortune to witness for free.  I saw Rancid turn and
run, and I thought he was going for the rifle, but he went right past
without even giving it a glance.  Right then was when I blinked.  When
the blink was over, the bear was just a black streak twenty yards
away.

A few feet ahead of the black streak was a dirty red streak.  Rancid's
hat was still suspended in the air where he had been Standing when the
bear first came out of the brush pile.

Ginger Ann finally hit the ground screaming, "Shoot!  Shoot!"  Off in
the distance I could see the black streak and the red streak going up a
hill.

About halfway up the hill, the black streak passed the red streak, but
Rancid was apparently so intent on making a good showing, he didn't
even notice.  Or maybe he was running with his eyes shut.  In any case,
when they went over the hill, Rancid was still running hard and looked
as if he might be gaining on the bear.

I slid down out of the tree, and Ginger Ann ran around the brush pile
and grabbed Rancid's rifle.  "Are you going after them?"  I asked.

"No," she said.  "If they run by here again, maybe I'll shoot the bear
for Rancid.  Then again, maybe I won't."

After about twenty minutes, a bedraggled Rancid came shuffling back to
the clearing.  Without saying a word, he took his rifle out of Ginger
Ann's hand and headed for the cabin.  Ginger Ann and I trailed along
behind.

"No point in feeling bad about it," Ginger Ann said after a bit.  "It
could have happened to anybody."

"Ah had maw mouth all set fer some b'ar steak," Rancid said, glumly.

"Ah guess ah should have let you do the shootin'."

"Shucks," Ginger Ann said.  "I couldn't even hit an old car door.  You
know that bullet hole in the rust spot?  Why, that's been in there ever
since my daddy shot it in there years ago."

"Ha!"  Rancid said, brightening up.  "Ah know'd thet."

"But ..."  I said.

"C'mon in the cabin," Rancid said to Ginger Ann, "and I'll bile us up
another pot of coffee."

"Don't mind if I do," she said.

"But, Rancid" I said.

"See you later," Ginger Ann said to me.  She shoved Rancid into the
cabin and shut the door before I could warn him.

I couldn't understand it.  Here Ginger Ann had made one of the finest
shots I had ever seen, and then she turned right around and lied about
it.

She had to be up to something, but I didn't know what, and it worried
me.

Before going home, I yelled at the top of my voice, "I saw the car door
jump when she shot, Rancid!  I saw it jump!"

He didn't seem to hear me.

The Rendezvous Every hunter knows what a rendezvous is.  That's where
one hunter says to another, "Al, you take that side of the draw and
I'll take this one and we'll meet in twenty minutes at the top of the
hill."  The next time they see each other is at a PTA meeting five
years later in Pocatello.  That's a rendezvous.

It is simply against the basic nature of hunters to arrive at a
designated point at a designated time.  If one of my hunting pals said,
"I'll meet you on the other side of this tree in ten seconds," one of
us would be an hour late.  And have the wrong tree besides.

We work out complicated whistling codes as a means of staying in
touch.

"One long and two shorts means I've found some fresh sign and for the
other guy to come on over.  Two shorts and one long means ..."  etc. I
go no more than fifteen feet and stumble onto the tracks of a herd of
mule deer.  They are so fresh the earth is still crumbling from the
edges.  I whistle the code, low and soft.  No answer.  I try again,
louder.  No answer.  Then I cut loose with a real blast.  Still no
answer.  By now I've forgotten all about the deer, and whistle so loud
the crew at a sawmill three miles away go off shift an hour early.  My
upper lip has a charley horse and I think I have a slight hernia.  The
only way he could have gotten out of hearing so fast was if he had a
motorcycle hidden behind a bush.

Some hunters have even resorted to two-way radios, but to little
avail.

"Charley One, this is Hank Four.  Come in Charley One."  Charley One
doesn't come in.  All you can get is some guy in Australia.  He is
saying, "Roger, I'm onto the bloody biggest tracks you ever saw.

Roger?  Where the 'ell are you, Roger?"

Why is it so difficult to keep a rendezvous?  Usually it is because
both hunters are not familiar with the terrain being hunted.  But one
thinks he is.

He is the one who lays out the strategy.

A couple of years ago a friend and I were hunting near the
Washington-Canadian border in country so rough it looks like it was
whipped up in the lava stage by a giant egg beater and left to dry.

The mountains do not have ranges like decent mountains: they have
convulsions.

"You cut down over the side of the mountain," my friend said casually,
"and I'll swing around with the car and pick you up on the road."

"You sure there's a road down there?"  I asked.

"Of course," he said.  "You'll come to a little stream and the road is
just on the other side of it.  there's no way in the world you can miss
it."

True to the nature of rendezvous, there was at least one way in the
world to miss it.  Six hours later, after having scaled down cliffs
that would have made a mockery of the precipices in alpine movies, I
came to a stream.  By my reckoning, it should have been running from my
right to left; instead it was running from left to right.  There was no
sign of a road on the other side.  I sat down calmly to take stock of
the situation.  When that proved too frightening, I leaped up, plunged
into the stream, and started climbing the nearest mountain.

The thought that I might starve to death before getting out of that
wilderness occurred to me, and I promptly shot the head off a grouse at
about forty yards (a feat that prior to and after that moment has
always eluded me), plucked it, dressed it, and stowed it away in the
game pocket of my hunting jacket.  Squads of deer, like characters out
of some Disney film, gazed upon me from all sides, no doubt wondering
what kind of strange creature this was crashing frantically through
their forest primeval.  They went ignored, except when I had to drive
them out of my way with shrill and vulgar shouts.

Eventually I came to a road and flagged down a car by lying down in
front of it.  I was relieved to discover that the hunters in it spoke
English and that I was still on American soil.  An hour later I was
seated at a roadhouse downing the first course of what I intended to be
a ten-course meal, when my hunting partner burst through the door and
started calling for volunteers for a search party.  "Who's lost?"  I
asked.

"You!"  he cried.  And then he uttered those words invariably uttered
at the resolution of ill-fated rendezvous: "What happened to you?"

Such was the traumatic nature of my ordeal that I forgot all about the
grouse I had shot.  Late that night my wife was cleaning out my hunting
jacket and thrust her hand into the game pocket to find out what that
peculiar bulge was.  The resulting scream sent half the people on our
block into the street.

"What," my shaking spouse asked me as I came back in from the street,
"is that bird doing in there?"

"That," I growled, "was provisions, in case I had to spend the winter
in those mountains."

One of the axioms of hunting is that more time is spent hunting for
hunting companions than for deer.  I always feel that a hunt is
successful if just one rendezvous is completed.  Whether or not we get
any deer is incidental: "How was your hunting trip?"

"Wonderful!  We met where and when we were supposed to one out of nine
times."

"Get any deer?"

"Didn't see a thing."

When I was a high school kid I used to hunt with an old man who had
truly mastered the art of the rendezvous.  He always directed the hunt,
which may have been part of his secret.

"You cut down through that brush there, work your way around the side
of the mountain, climb up to the ridge, and circle back to the truck.

I'll do likewise on the other side, and we'll meet back here in an
hour."

"That's impossible," I would say.

"Listen, if an old man like me can do it, you can."

Two hours later I would stagger in, scratched, bruised and torn, and
there the Old Man would be, fresh as a daisy, sitting on the tailgate
of the truck drinking coffee out of my thermos.  More often than not he
would have a deer.

"What took you so long?"  he would say.

The uncanny thing about the Old Man was that no matter when you got
back to the truck, even if it was just fifteen minutes after leaving,
he would somehow sense your return and with some superhuman effort
manage to get back and be waiting for you.  But he was always modest
about his talent, this sixth sense for keeping a rendezvous.

"It's nothing, boy," he would say.  "It's just a little something' that
comes to you with old age."

Cigars, Logging Trucks, And Know-it-alls Awhile back I was asked what I
thought were the three greatest threats to a fisherman's wellbeing. 
Although this is not a question one hears every day, I have over the
years given the subject much thought and was able to answer
immediately: "Cigars, logging trucks, and know-it-alls."

My interrogator was somewhat taken aback by this reply, obviously
having expected a listing of such standard dangers as bears, bulls,
rattlesnakes, rapids, quicksand, dropoffs, etc. Although these are all
very real dangers and may frequently threaten premature termination of
one's existence, the whole bunch of them together does not equal the
potential for destruction compressed into a single small cigar, let
alone a logging truck or a know-it-all.

Twice in the past year alone I have been witness to two unwarranted and
unprovoked attacks by a cigar upon innocent anglers.  In the first
instance the cigar, a small sporty El Puffo, nearly wiped out three
fishermen, a dog, and a 1958 pickup truck.  It happened like this: My
friends Herb and Retch and I and Herb's dog, Rupert, had spent the day
fishing a high mountain lake and were headed home, the four of us
crowded in the cab, by way of a road that traverses the edge of a
one-thousand-foot-deep gorge named, appropriately, Deadman's.  Herb
usually smokes a pipe, but since he had run out of tobacco Retch had
offered him a plastic-tipped cigar.

Chewing nervously on the cigar, Herb pampered the pickup along the
road, the outer wheels nudging rocks into thin air.  The silence was
broken only by the sound of dripping sweat, an occasional inhalation or
exhalation, and the dog Rupert popping his knuckles.  Then it
happened.

Forgetting he was smoking a cigar, Herb reached up in the manner of
removing a pipe from his mouth and closed his hand over the glowing tip
of the El Puffo.

"Ahhhhaaaiiiigh!"  Herb said, grinding his foot down on the gas
pedal.

"Ahhhhaaaiiiigh!"  the rest of us said.  In an instant six hands and
two paws were clamped on the steering wheel.  Retch claimed later that
he jumped out twice but both times the pickup was so far out in space
he had to jump back in.  In any case there was about as much activity
in that pickup cab as I have ever witnessed before in such cramped
quarters.  When it was all over and we were safe again, I was driving,
Herb and Retch were crouched on the floor, and the dog was smoking the
cigar.

Then there was the time down on the Grande Ronde River when Retch was
so startled by a nine-pound steelhead hitting his lure that a lighted
cigar stub popped out of his mouth and dropped inside the open top of
his waders.

Naturally a man doesn't turn loose of a nine-pound steelhead just
because he has a lighted cigar roaming around inside his waders.  He
just makes every effort to keep the cigar in constant motion and, if
possible, away from any areas particularly susceptible to
fire-and-smoke damage.

Retch knew all this, of course, and managed to land the steelhead in
record time.  Although his injuries from the cigar were only minor I
thought possibly some of the other fishermen nearby might bring charges
against him.

First, there was his use of vile language, but since it was screeched
at such a high pitch as to be understood only by members of the canine
family and lip-readers who had served at least one hitch in the Marine
Corps, I thought it unlikely that much of a case could be made on that
count.  On the other hand, there was a good chance he might have been
convicted of obscene dancing on a trout stream.  And finally there was
the felonious act of attempting to induce innocent bystanders to laugh
themselves to death.

Cigars are dangerous enough, but logging trucks are a good deal
worse.

Some younger readers, particularly those living in the plains states,
may not be familiar with logging trucks, so here is a brief
description: the natural habitat of logging trucks is steep, winding,
narrow roads situated between high mountain trout streams and the state
highway.  Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, they are a protected
species.  They weigh several tons and are in the habit of hauling
sections of large trees around on their backs.  No one knows why,
unless they eat them.  The term "logging trucks" is their scientific
name; fishermen, however, commonly refer to them as
blankety-blank-of-a-blank, as in "Great gosh-a-mighty, Harry, here
comes a blankety-blank-of-a-blank!"

Logging trucks are almost always encountered at the end of a steep,
winding stretch of narrow road where the only turnouts are three miles
behind your vehicle and ten feet behind the logging truck.  To those
inexperienced in such matters, the fair and reasonable course of action
might seem to be that the logging truck would back up the ten feet to
the turnout and let you pass, but that is not the way it works.  The
rules are that you must back up the three miles, usually at speeds in
excess Of 30 mph, while your passengers shout such words of
encouragement as, "Watch that washout!"  and "Faster!  The
blankety-blank-of-a-blank is gaining on us!"

Several years ago I made it to the turnout at the top of a mountain
road just as a logging truck, its timing slightly off, was pulling up
for its winding descent of the mountain road, no doubt intending to
drive before it a car full of hapless, shouting, fist-shaking
fishermen.  The logging truck pulled abreast of my car, spat a chaw of
tobacco out the window and said, "Shucks, that don't happen very
often."  I could see the logging truck was disappointed at not catching
me ten feet short of the turnout but that was its tough luck.

Most of my friends and I have become excellent logging truck trackers
over the years.  You track a logging truck about the same way you track
a deer.  You get out and look for signs.  The droppings from a logging
truck consist of branches and twigs from its load of logs and
occasionally the front bumper from a late model sedan.  Any road with
such signs scattered along it may be regarded as a game trail for
logging trucks.

Occasionally there are other signs to be read.

They say, DANGER--LOGGING TRUCKS.  These signs are usually put up by
other fishermen in the hope of keeping a good piece of fishing water to
themselves.  This is a despicable trick, since an angler can ignore
such signs only at his peril.  As with any other dedicated angler, I am
not above putting fresh grizzly claw marks nine feet high on a pine
tree alongside a trail to a good mountain lake.  But I would never
stoop to putting up a logging truck warning sign.  That's going a
little bit too far.

Know-it-alls are by far the greatest threat to the well-being of the
angler.  Your average run-of-the-mill know-it-all can reduce a
fisherman to a quivering, babbling wreck with nothing more than a few
well-chosen pieces of advice.

Know-it-alls are sometimes difficult to spot since they come in all
sizes, shapes, and sexes.  They are all equally dangerous.  A trembling
little old lady know-it-all can be as lethal as a three-hundred-pound
madman with an ax in either hand.  Their one distinguishing
characteristic is a self-confidence as total as it is sublime.

Know-it-alls have probably gotten me in more trouble than all the other
dangers put together.  I recall one time a know-it-all and I were out
fishing and decided to hunt for wild mushrooms.  We drove up to a
grassy meadow and I suggested that we leave the pickup on high ground
and walk across the meadow because it looked wet to me.

"Naw, it ain't wet," the know-it-all said.  "You can drive across."

So I steered the pickup down into the high grass of the meadow.  After
a bit the wheels started to slip in mud.

"Hey, it's getting wet," I said.  "We better turn back."

"Naw.  It's just a little damp here.  You can make it across."

Then plumes of water started spraying out on both sides of the car.

"You better speed up a bit going through this puddle," the know-it-all
said.

I speeded up.  Pretty soon we were plowing up a sizable wake.

"Pour on the gas!"  shouted the know-it-all.  "We're nearly to the
other side of the puddle."

By now I was in a cold sweat.  The pickup was bouncing, sliding, and
twisting through the high grass and waves of water were crashing across
the windshield.  Suddenly, the grass parted ahead of us and we shot out
into a bright clear expanse of open water.

Later, dripping with mud and wrath, I paid off the tow truck man back
at his gas station.

One of the hangers-on at the station finally put down his bottle of pop
and asked, "How come y'all got so muddy?"

"Drove his pickup out into the middle of Grass Lake," the tow truck man
said.

"Oh," the other man said.

Here are some statements that immediately identify the know-it-all:
"Hell, that ain't no bull, Charley, and anyway you could outrun it,
even if your waders are half full of water."

"Quicksand?  That ain't quicksand!  You think I don't know my
quicksand?

Now git on in there and wade across."

"Course it feels hot.  That's a sign they're beginning to dry.  See how
the steam is risin' off 'em?  Now you just keep holding your feet over
the fire like that till your boots are good and dry."

"Ain't no rattlesnakes in these parts."

"Ain't no logging trucks in these parts."

"You ever eat any of these little white berries?  Taste just like wild
hickory nuts."

"With thin ice what you have to do is just walk real fast so it don't
have time to break under you.  Now git on out there and let's see how
fast you can walk.  Faster!  Faster!  Dang it, didn't I tell you to
walk fast?"

Because of such advice, the know-it-all is now listed as a threatened
species.  I myself have threatened a large number of them and, on
occasion, have even endangered a few.

But Where's The Park, Papa?

On one of the doggier of last summer's dog days, my family and I
simmered grimly in our own juices as we toiled along--a bit of the
flotsam in a sluggish river of traffic.  Our rate of speed was
somewhere between a creep and an ooze.  Heat waves pulsed in a blue sea
of exhaust fumes.  Blood boiled and nerves twitched.  Red-faced,
sweating policemen would occasionally appear and gesture angrily at the
drivers to speed it up or slow it down.  At least one of the drivers
felt like gesturing back.

We were on one of those self-imposed exiles from the amenities of
civilized life popularly referred to as vacations.  I was in my usual
vacation mood, which is something less than festive.  My kids were
diligently attempting to perfect the art of whining, while my mother
expressed her growing concern and disbelief at the sparcity of
restrooms along this particular stretch of highway.  Whenever the speed
of the traffic slowed to the ooze stage, my wife took the opportunity
to spoon tranquilizers into my mouth from a cereal bowl, all the while
urging me not to enlarge the children's vocabulary too far beyond their
years.  Mother, in her increasing anxiety, already had them up to about
age forty-seven.

"Hey," one of the kids paused in mid-whine to complain.  "You said you
was gonna take us to a national park!"

"Clam up!"  I counseled him, drawing upon my vast store of child
psychology.  "This is a national park!"

To keep the children amused until we found a park campsite, my wife
invented one of those games which start with the idea of increasing the
youngsters' awareness of their environment and end with them beating
each other with tire irons in the back seat.  As I recall, this
particular game resulted in a final score of three, six, and eight
points.  Each kid got one point for every square foot of ground he
spotted first that didn't have any litter on it.

I can recall a time when tourists visiting national parks appeared to
be folks indulging themselves in a bit of wholesome outdoor
enjoyment.

Now they seem to have a sense of desperation about them, like people
who have fled their homes nine minutes before the arrival of Genghis
Khan.  Most of them no longer have any hope of seeing unspoiled
wilderness, but they have heard rumors that the parks are places where
the ground is still unpaved.  Of course, if they want to see this
ground they have to ask the crowd of people standing on it to jump into
the air in unison.

The individuals I really feel sorry for are the serious practitioners
of littering.  Some of these poor souls have hauled their litter a
thousand miles or more under the impression they would have the
opportunity of tossing it out into a pristine wilderness, only to
discover that they have been preceded by a vast multitude of casual
wrapper-droppers.  (The Park Service does make a heroic effort to keep
the litter cleared from along the highways but is handicapped because
its rotary plows don't work well on paper and beverage bottles.) Since
there are many people who get the bends and have to be put into
decompression chambers if they get more than thirty minutes from a
shopping center, the parks, at least the one we were in, provide the
usual cluster of supermarkets and variety stores.  Here it was possible
to buy plastic animals at a price that suggested they were driven on
the hoof all the way from Hong Kong.  I refused to buy my youngsters
any of these souvenirs.  I told them they should find something that
was truly representative of the park, and they did.  Each of them
picked up and brought home a really nice piece of litter.

I find the rangers to be about the most enjoyable thing in national
parks anymore.  I always make a point to take my children by the ranger
station to watch the rangers climb the walls.  In recent years the
rangers have been going on R-and-R in such places as New York and Los
Angeles in order to get away from the crowds and noise and to get a
breath of fresh air.  By the end of the peak season they have facial
twitches so bad they have to wear neck braces to guard against
whiplash.

The park bears aren't what they used to be either.  Most of the bears
you see along the roads look as if they've spent the past five years
squatted in a chair before a television set drinking beer and eating
corn chips.  Half of them should be in intensive care units.  They have
forgotten what it is that a bear is supposed to do.  If panhandling
along the roads were outlawed, they would probably hustle pool for a
living.  A dose of pure air would drop them like a shot through the
heart from a .44 Magnum.  Any bear that wanders more than a mile from
the road has to carry a scuba tank on his back filled with carbon
monoxide.  As far as spectacle goes, the bears just don't have it
anymore.  I'd rather drive my kids across town to watch their uncle
Harry nurse a hangover.  Now there's a spectacle!

Camping in a national park is an invigorating experience.  My
seventy-year-old mother went off looking for a restroom among the sea
of tents, cabins, and campers.  After about an hour of unsuccessful
searching, she was loping along looking for a path that led off into
the wilderness and came upon a wild-eyed man loping in the opposite
direction.

"Sir," she said as they passed, "could you tell me where I can find a
restroom?"

"I don't know, lady," he shouted over his shoulder.  "I've been here
for three days and haven't found one yet!"

Some parks still have excellent fishing in them if you can find it, but
on the easily accessible streams you would have better luck digging for
clams in Montana.  There are of course the tame fish planted by the
park service, and these can be caught with a bent pin on the end of a
clothesline with bubble gum for bait.  The sight of a live insect or
even a dry fly makes them nauseous.  Catching one of them is almost as
exciting as changing the water in the goldfish bowl.  After being
dumped into one of the park streams the fish quickly adjust to their
new environment, however, and within a week or two are consuming vast
quantities of soggy hot dog buns and cigarette butts.

(Scientists estimate that eating one of these fish is equivalent to
eating two loaves of bread and four packs of cigarettes.) If
antilittering eventually catches on, a lot of fish will be alongside
the highways with the bears.

They'll be begging smokes from tourists.

Many people are under the mistaken impression that transistor radios
come from japan, but that is not the case.  Transistor radios breed in
national parks and from there move out to infest the rest of the
country.  Their mating cries at night are among the most hideous sounds
on earth, approximately on the order of those of catamounts with
arthritis.  The offspring are prodigious in number.  During the day you
can see hundreds of youngsters carrying the baby transistor radios
around the park.  I proposed to a park ranger that a season be opened
on the adults of the species with an eye to limiting the population
growth.  He said he himself was all for it but that park regulations
forbid hunting of any kind.

The site on which we finally pitched our tent was in the middle of a
vast caldron of writhing humanity.  This made it easy to meet
interesting people.

Several times I chatted with the fellow next door about his hobby of
pumping the exhaust from his car into our tent.  The fellows on the
other side of us were members of a rock band.  For a long time I
thought they were just pounding dents out of their bus, but it turned
out they were practicing.

Their rendition of "A Truck Full of Empty Milk Cans Crashing into a
Burglar Alarm Factory" was kind of catchy, but the rest of their stuff
was much too loud for my taste.  People would also drop into our tent
at all hours.  They would look about for a second or two, a puzzled
expression on their faces, then leave.  Then we discovered that the
trail to the restroom passed under our tent.  This discovery made
Mother noticeably happy and she vanished like a shot up the trail.

I decided that the best thing to do was to give up on tenting and try
to get into one of the park tourist cabins.  After mortgaging our home
and indenturing two of the children for fourteen years, we managed to
scrape together sufficient rent for two nights.  The architecture of
the cabin was about halfway between Neoshack and Neolithic.  Frank
Lloyd Wright would have loved it because it blended so naturally into
its surroundings--a superb replica of a hobo jungle.

The only good thing about the cabin was that the roof didn't leak all
the time we were there.  Of course if it had rained, there's no telling
what might have happened.  It is doubtful that the seine net used for
roofing would have kept us dry, but I figured we could always set up
the tent inside the cabin.

Our days at the park were filled with the delights of viewing the
marvelous phenomena.  There was the spring hot enough to boil an egg
in, and someone was running a scientific experiment to see if it would
do the same thing for an old newspaper and a half-eaten hamburger.

Reflection Lake was truly beautiful, with the scraggly spruce trees
around its edges so sharply defined in the glass on the lake bottom
that you could make out the hatchet marks on them.  The Painted Rocks
were interesting in their own way, especially where park employees had
managed to remove some of the paint.  The kids seemed to enjoy the
ancient hieroglyphics to be found everywhere: "Fred and Edith Tones,
Peanut Grove, Calif.--1968," etc. Then there were the antics of the
wildlife.  Once we were fortunate enough to observe two mature male
Homo sapiens locking horns in a territorial dispute over a parking
spot.

just when I finally found a way to amuse myself in the park, my wife
insisted that we leave.  She was afraid I would get arrested for trying
to poach transistor radios with rocks.  Also, while attempting to
photograph a bald woodpecker, she flushed a covey of young people
deeply engrossed in their own particular study of nature.  (If the
truth were known, she was probably more flushed than they.) Anyway, she
said the only vistas she wanted to see for some time to come were the
insides of the four walls of our mortgaged house.  We hit the road for
home the next day.

Next summer I think I'll skip the national parks and take my family to
a place I know up in the Rockies.  It doesn't have all the conveniences
and accommodations of a national park, of course.  The bears aren't
especially friendly (but if you do see one, he doesn't look as if he
recently escaped from an iron lung).  If you have the sudden urge to
buy a plastic animal, you just have to grit your teeth and bear it.

The scenery isn't all that spectacular, unless you get a little excited
over invisible air.  The place doesn't have even a geyser, but when I
get there it will at least have an old geaser.  Some people like to
watch him sit on a log and smoke his pipe, in particular a certain
middle-aged woman and four ignorant kids.  If you need more spectacle
than that, you can always go to a national park.

A Yup of a Different Color About three weeks before the opening of the
first deer season in which I had been guaranteed permission to be an
active participant, our resident deer vanished.  All that remained of
them was some sign sprinkled arrogantly among the plundered rows of our
garden.  (Since I was only fourteen at the time and not much good at
reading deer signs, I could only guess that the message was some
complaint about the quality of our cabbage.) Among the rules that had
been laid down by my mother in allowing me to go in armed pursuit of
that mythical creature, My First Deer, was one that stated in no
uncertain terms that I would have to confine my hunting to our own
farm.

Somehow the deer had gotten word of this fine print in the contract and
immediately (no doubt snickering among themselves) split for the next
county.

When I reported this act of treachery to my friend and mentor Rancid
Crabtree, the old mountain man offered scant sympathy.

"Why hell, boy, they wouldn't call it deer hunting' if you didn't have
to hunt fer the critters," he said.  "Shootin' a deer in yer own pea
patch ain't hunting', it's revenge."

I explained to Rancid that if a grown, mature man of unsurpassed
excellence in the art and science of hunting were to speak firmly to my
mother about the importance of shooting one's first deer and to
forthwith offer his services as a guide and overseer of such an
endeavor, my mother probably would withdraw the stipulation that I hunt
exclusively within the boundaries of the farm.  Rancid replied that he
had a bad headache, his old war wounds were acting up, and he thought
he was going blind in one eye, but if he managed to live for a few days
longer and just happened to run across such a man he would convey my
message to him.  We spent the better part of an afternoon sparring
about like that until Rancid could stand it no more and finally broke
down and invited me to go hunting with him and Mr. Hooker, a tall,
stringy old woodsman who lived a mile up the road from our place.

"I don't know what ol' Hook is gonna think about this," Rancid said
somewhat morosely.  "Me and him ain't never took no kid with us
before."

"Well for gosh sakes don't take one along this time," I told him
severely.  "Just you and me and Mr.  Hooker."

"I reckon that'll be more'n enough," Rancid agreed.

I should mention that both my mother and grandmother were harshly
critical of Rancid's lifestyle.  One time I asked Gram exactly what it
was that Rancid Crabtree did for a living.  "He's an idler," she said
without hesitation.

I decided right then and there that I wanted to be an idler too,
because it gave you so much time off from the job, and I intended at
first opportunity to have Rancid teach me the trade.  It wasn't until I
was thirty years old that I realized he had succeeded at that task.

Although both Mom and Gram disapproved of Rancid's artful striving for
an uninterrupted state of leisure, they were secretly fond of the man
and even on occasion spoke begrudgingly of his skills as an
outdoorsman.  As a result, Rancid's halfhearted suggestion that I
accompany him and Mr. Hooker on a hunting trip won immediate approval
from the family.

The great hunting expedition was set for the middle of the season so I
still had plenty of time to sharpen my eye, on pheasants, grouse, and
ducks and to put in an occasional appearance at school lest the
teachers completely forget my name and face.

One of the interesting things about your first deer is that it has a
habit of showing up where least expected, even in school.  Toward the
end of geometry class my deer would occasionally drift in to browse on
the isosceles triangles and parallelograms, and once it bounded right
through the middle of sophomore English, not only startling me but
scaring hell out of Julius Caesar and Brutus.

"Caesar, that deer almost ran you down!"  cried Brutus.

"Et tu, Brute?"  exclaimed Caesar.

"Whatchername there in the back row," shouted Miss Fitz, the English
teacher.  "Stop the dreaming and get on with your work!"

It should not be assumed that my days at school were devoid of serious
scholarship.  Indeed, every morning before classes started I and my
cronies would gather in the gymnasium to exchange learned lectures on
that aspect of alchemy devoted to turning a set of deer tracks into
venison.

These morning gatherings presented an interesting study of the caste
system prevalent among young deer hunters.  One was either a Yup or a
Nope, depending upon his answer to that age-old question, "Gotcher deer
yet?"

I, of course, was still a Nope.

Although Yups and Nopes looked pretty much alike they were as different
as mallards from mongooses.  For one thing, a Yup would preface all his
lectures with the statement, "I recollect the time I shot my first
deer."  Now the reason he recollected this historic event so well was
that it had probably occurred no further in the past than the previous
weekend.  The use of the word "first" of course implied that he had
downed a good many deer since.

Those little nuances in the use of language were the privileges of Yup
rank, and none of us Nopes challenged or even begrudged them.  We
aspired to be Yups someday ourselves.  In fact, I wanted to be a Yup so
badly I could taste it.

And the taste was very sweet indeed.

This caste system was an efficient and humane way of determining the
proper social level of a new kid in school.  While we were standing in
the gym sizing him up on his first morning, somebody would ask,
"Gotcher deer yet?"

Depending upon his answer, he would be accepted immediately as a
mature, respected member into the community of Yups or relegated to the
humble ranks of us unsuccessful Nopes.  If the new kid said "Yup" to
the question, his tone would be so modest and matter-of-fact the
uninitiated might assume that he was dismissing the topic as unworthy
of further consideration.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  If he was a bona fide Yup,
the entire defensive line of the LoS Angeles Rams could not have
dissuaded him from relating every last detail of that momentous
occasion.  He would start off with what he had for breakfast on the
morning in question, whether he ate one slice of toast or two, whether
the toast was burnt, on which side it was burnt, and the degree of the
burns.  It might be assumed that this toast would eventually play some
crucial part in the shooting of the deer, but its only significance was
that it was eaten on the morning of that great day.  This known power
of one's first deer to transform minor details into events of lasting
historic significance was the chief test we used to determine the
authenticity of Yups.

Announcing the news that you had just changed your status from Nope to
Yup was a problem almost as great as getting the first deer.

Obviously, you could not rush up to the guys shouting some fool thing
like, "I got my first deer!  I got my first deer!"

The announcement had to be made with oblique casualness, in an offhand
manner.  The subtle maneuvers employed toward this end included the old
standby of wrapping an empty rifle shell in a handkerchief.  (Any old
empty would do.) When the handkerchief was pulled out, the shell fell
to the floor in front of the assembled Yups and Nopes.  "Dang, I
dropped my lucky shell," the new Yup would say.  "Careful you don't
step on my lucky shell there, I sure wouldn't want to lose my lucky
shell."  Only a person with uncommon restraint could keep from asking,
"What's so lucky about that shell?"  Most of us Nopes, it should be
noted, were possessed of uncommon restraint.

Another trick was to wear deer hair on your pants until someone
noticed.

Occasionally, you would pick a deer hair off and fling it to the floor,
saying loudly, "Dang, I got deer hair all over my pants!"  A skilled
practitioner of this art could make a handful of hair last most of a
week or until everyone within a ten-mile radius had been made aware of
his new status as a Yup.

Naturally, if during this period his parents or possibly school
officials required that he change his pants there was the tedious job
of transferring the deer hairs to the new pair.

My hunting trip with Rancid and Mr. Hooker approached with all the
speed of a glacier, but I put the time to good use in making
preparation.  I studied every book and magazine article on hunting in
the local library.  I even took notes, which I carefully recorded in a
loose-leaf notebook.  A typical note went something like this: "Deer
Horns--Banging two deer horns together is a good way to get deer to
come within shooting range.  A hunter should always have a couple of
deer horns handy."  The notebook contained about four thousand such
tips, most of which I forgot immediately upon reading them.  For a
while I considered carrying this vast reservoir of knowledge along with
me for quick reference just in case I should run into my deer up in the
mountains and forget what to do.

At long last the great day arrived.  Rancid picked me up in his old
truck at four in the morning and then we rattled over to Mr. Hooker's
place.  Mr. Hooker was a fine, hard old gentleman with a temper
slightly shorter than a snake's hind legs.  I seemed to have a knack
for setting off this temper.  Mr. Hooker had no more than settled
himself on the seat alongside me than he instantly shot up and banged
his head on the roof.  The string of oaths thus ignited sizzled,
popped, and banged for upwards of five minutes.

"What in gosh almighty tarnation dingbat dang is that on the seat?"  he
roared at me.  "It liked to stab me half to death!"

"Just my deer horns," I told him indignantly.  "But they seem to be all
right.  I don't think you hurt them none."

Mr.  Hooker said he was mighty relieved to hear that.

Going up into the mountains, everyone's mood improved considerably.

Rancid and Mr. Hooker told all the old stories again, starting each
one off with "I ever tell you the time ...?"  And we drank scalding
black coffee and ate the fat homemade doughnuts Gram had sent along,
and the two men puffed their pipes and threw back their heads and
roared with laughter at their own stories, and it was all a fine thing
to be doing, going up into the dark, frozen mountains early in the
morning with those two old hunters, and I knew that I wanted to do this
very same thing forever.

I didn't get my first deer that day or even that first season, but that
was all right.  Up until then I thought the only reason people went
deer hunting was to hunt deer.  We were after bigger game than that, I
found--game rarer than a four-point unicorn.  And bouncing along in
Rancid's old truck, squeezed in between those two rough,
exotic-smelling, cantankerous old woodsmen, I became a Yup without ever
having fired a shot, a kind of Yup that I hadn't even known existed.

It never bothered me too much that nobody ever asked that particular
question.

Besides, I'd had other kinds of hunting success, and when a new kid
arrived in school and I wanted to size him up, I could always ask,
"Gotcha duck yet?"

Mountain Goats Never Say "Cheese!"

Somewhere up ahead, beyond the green cleavage of a mountain pass, a
Fish and Game helicopter was waiting for me on a wilderness landing
strip.  I was several hours late for the rendezvous, having been nearly
swept into oblivion while fording the river.  Then there had been the
long climb up to where I now found myself, inching along a game trail
that ran perilously close to the edge of the gorge.  Far down below,
through the lingering tatters of morning fog, I could see water
churning among giant boulders.  Every few feet I had to stop to catch
my breath and wipe the perspiration from my eyes.  It wouldn't have
been so bad if I had been equipped with decent mountain-climbing
gear-rope, ice ax, thick-soled boots--but I was driving my car.

Little would the casual observer of that strange scene have realized
that here was a man at the apex of his career as a great outdoor
photographer.  I didn't realize it myself.  Here I thought I was just
getting started in the trade but already I was at my apex.  Ahead lay
defeat, humiliation, poverty.

Sadly enough, that was also what lay behind.  I have never ceased to
marvel at how low some apexes can be.

One of my numerous ambitions as a youngster had been to become a great
outdoor photographer.  No sooner had a small box camera come into my
possession than I was out taking pictures of the outdoors.  I remember
hauling my first roll of exposed film down to Farley's drugstore to get
it developed.

I supposed that Mr. Farley did the work himself in the backroom but he
said, no, he "farmed it out" to a laboratory in a distant city.  The
film was gone so long I began to think the distant city must be Nome,
the delivery service a lame sloth traveling by snowshoes.

I hounded Mr. Farley daily about the pictures.  "Any word from
Nome?"

I would say.  "Any sign of the lame sloth?"

"Patience, my boy, patience," he would reply.  Still, I began to sense
that he too was awaiting the photos with an expectancy only slightly
less urgent than my own.

Finally, a little yellow-and-black envelope with my name on it arrived,
and as I pried up the flap with trembling fingers, Mr. Farley leaned
forward and peered breathlessly over my shoulder, which was a good way
to have Mr. Farley peer over your shoulder; his breath could drive
ticks off a badger.  I pulled out a perforated string of glossy
black-and-white prints and Mr. Farley let out a long sigh of
appreciation, scarcely buckling my knees in the excitement of the
moment.

"Wowl Look at this!"  I said to him.

"Yes, indeed," Mr.  Farley said.  "Uh what is it?"

"The outdoors," I told him, trying to conceal my contempt for his lack
of perception.  "That's what us outdoor photographers take pictures
of--the outdoors."

"Oh, yes, I see that now.  Some nice gray dirt and gray sky and some
nice gray rocks and gray brush.  Very nice, particularly if you like
gray as much as I do."

We looked at another print.

"That's one of the finest shots of a flyspeck I've ever seen," Mr.
Farley said.

I stared at him in disbelief.  "That's a chicken hawk!"

"Of course it is.  I was jist joshin' ya.  Over here is the chicken,
right?"

"That," I said with controlled rage, "is a flyspeck!"

After Mr. Farley mistook four ants on a paper plate for a herd of deer
in a snowstorm, I folded up my pictures and went home.  Although
outdoor photographers are noted for their patience, they can stand only
so much.

From then on I spent endless hours out in the woods photographing
wildlife.  Most of the shots were just your routine beautiful wildlife
pictures, but every so often I would get an exceptionally fine
photograph which I would honor with a title.  There was, for example,
"Log Leaped Over by Startled Four-Point Buck One Half-Second Before
Shutter Was Snapped."  Many people told me the picture was so vivid
they could almost see the buck.

Another really great shot was "Tip of Tail Feather of Pheasant in
Flight."  My favorite was "Rings on Water After Trout jumped."

I took these photographs and others into the editor of our weekly
newspaper in the hope he would have the good sense to buy them.  He
told me he thought I had the instincts of a great outdoor photographer
but possibly my reflexes were a bit slow.

Three years slipped by almost without my noticing, and one morning I
awoke @o discover I had a wife and three kids.  It was a surprise I can
tell you.  Nobody seemed to know where they had come from.  I also had
a job, which was an even bigger surprise.  One day I said to the wife,
"How will I ever fulfill my lifelong ambition of becoming a great
outdoor photographer if I have to work at that job all the time to
support you and our three kids?"

"Four kids," she said.  "Last year it was three, this year it's
four."

I could feel Old Man Time breathing down the back of my neck.  At first
I thought he was Mr. Farley, but then I discovered it was actually our
kindly old landlord who was fond of giving me bits of advice--"Pay da
rent, fella, or else..."

It was at this juncture that I decided to quit my job and become a
free-lance writer and photographer, specializing in the Great
Outdoors.

"I feel so free," I shouted, after severing relations with my
employer.

"No more commuting, no more kowtowing to bosses, no more compromising
my principles!"

"No more eating!"  my wife shouted.  A comical soul, she would do just
about anything for a laugh, but I thought rending her garment while
pouring ashes on her head was going a bit far.

The only things a great outdoor photographer needs to set up in
business are some film and a good camera outfit.  Film is about $1.50 a
roll, and you can pick up a good camera and accessories for not much
more than you would pay for an albino elephant that can tap dance and
sing in three languages.  Since I blew my life savings on the roll of
film, I had to borrow the money for the camera and accessories.

Fortunately I had learned of a loan company run by about the nicest
people you could ever expect to do business with, even though they had
to operate out of the back seat of a car while their new building was
under construction.

After we had shaken hands on the deal, I told the loan officer, Louie,
that it was none of my business but I thought they could get a better
return on their money than 10 percent a year.

"A year?  What year?"  Louie said.  He quickly explained that the
interest was by the week, compounded hourly and that the only
collateral was a pound of my flesh to be selected at random fifteen
seconds after I missed the first payment.  I exaggerate, of course.  It
wasn't fifteen seconds but nearly a day after I missed the first
payment that my wife reported to me that two bulky hominoids had
stopped by to inquire of my whereabouts.  "I think they were carrying
arms," she said nervously.

"You must have been mistaken," I said.  "Maybe a few fingers or toes
but not arms!"  What kind of monsters did she think I would borrow
money from, anyway?

Such was the incentive instilled in me by this visit that within a
month I had the loan paid off.  Editors couldn't resist my
photographs.

"Terrific!"  one of them said to me.  "This is a fantastic shot of a
woman and children in rags, a real tear-jerker.  What's she got on her
head, anyhow?"

"Ashes," I said, "but that's a portrait of my family and not for
sale.

How about this great shot of the hind foot of a bear that's just walked
behind a tree?"

"I'll take it, I'll take it!"  the editor said.

As time went along both my photographic skills and my reflexes improved
to the point where I was shooting pictures of whole animals.  I still
had trouble getting good shots of leaping fish, but I produced many a
fine picture wherein my catch of trout dwarfed the creel and flyrod I
used for props.  The fish were only eight inches long, but the creel
and flyrod belonged to a dwarf.

Steadily my career progressed upward until that moment I found myself
steering my car down a game trail toward an appointment with a
helicopter.

When I at last came ploughing out of the forest and onto the landing
strip, the helicopter was still there but the pilot was nowhere to be
seen.  The only person around was a grizzled old packer, sitting on a
log and staring at the helicopter.

"Dang things weren't meant to fly," he said to me, nodding at the
chopper.  "Man has to be a crazy fool to fly around these mountains in
one of them eggbeaters.  Give me a good mule any day."

"Don't say things like that," I told him, "because I got to go fly in
that eggbeater."

"So you're the feller," he said.  "Well, let's git on with it then,
'cause I'm the pilot."

The pilot's name was Lefty, and he was a pleasant but rather serious
chap.  "Let me explain just what we're going to do," he said, after we
had climbed into the cockpit.  "if you understand what's happening, you
won't worry so much about us crackin' up.  I always like my passengers
to just relax and enjoy the ride.  Hell, there's no sense in both of us
being terrified."

As we lifted off and made a quick clean sweeping turn up over a wall of
pine trees, I concealed my modest anxiety under an expression of
disinterest and a hint of boredom.

"Nervous?"  Lefty shouted at me.

"Not at all," I shouted back.

"Good," he said.  "Then maybe you'll let go of my leg.  You're cutting
off the circulation."

Once we were on our way, the pilot reached forward and patted a little
statue of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, mounted on
the instrument panel.

"Catholic?"  I asked.

"No," he said.  "Cautious."

Lefty was a good tour guide.  He pointed out miniature deer far below
and a herd of elk galloping along like tall ants.

"There goes a bear!"  he shouted.  "Look at that rascal run!  Must
think we're a bear hawk!"

As we pounded up over a steep, thickly forested hillside, he indicated
a tiny clearing.  "Last year about this time I had to put the chopper
down right there."

"Gosh," I said.  "That clearing doesn't look big enough to land a
helicopter in."

"Shoot," he replied, "until we landed, there wasn't a clearing there at
all.  We mowed down trees like tall grass.  Flipped plumb upside down
and spun like a top.  Really held our attention for a few moments.  Now
there you go, cutting' off the circulation in my leg again!"

"Sorry," I said.  "I just became engrossed in your story."

A sheer rock cliff that seemed a mile high loomed directly in front of
us, and Lefty showed every intention of flying us smack into it.

"I got to cut out the chatter now 'cause we're coming to the scary
part," he said.

"The scary part?"

"Yup, we got to catch the elevator."

"Elevator?"

He quickly explained that because of the altitude and the limited power
of the helicopter, he had to put the chopper right in close to the
cliff so we could ride up on the strong updraft.  "St. Christopher,
don't fail me now!"  he said.

The elevator ride was indeed an exhilarating experience.  I broke the
world's record for longest sustained inhale while the pilot kept
mumbling something about a valley of death.  In a second we came
zooming up over the top of the cliff, where Lefty cut a sporty little
figure eight and set us down on the mountain peak.

He wet his finger and marked up an invisible score in the air.  "St.
Christopher 685, Death 0."

What, you have probably asked, could have prompted me to risk life,
limb, and my meager breakfast to soar up to this barren windblown
pinnacle of rock?

The answer is that I was there to photograph a mountain-goat-trapping
expedition.  The Idaho Fish and Game department was capturing goats,
ferrying them off the mountain via helicopter, and transplanting them
in a goatless area of the state.  The action went like this: a goat
would be lured into a net trap, then two Fish and Game men would jump
on him, wrestle him to the ground, and give him a shot of tranquilizer
to calm him down.  The goat, for his part, would try to tap dance on
the heads of his molesters while simultaneously trying to spindle them
on his horns.  There would be this ball of furious activity, consisting
of legs, arms, eyes, hooves, horns, bleats, bellows, grunts and curses,
until one of the F and G men would shout, "Quick, the tranquilizer!"

A hypodermic needle would flash amid the tangle of goat and men "Got
it!

How's that?"

"Great," the other man would say.  "Now let's see if you can get the
next one in the goat."

It was all very amusing and provided me with some fine action shots.

The one problem, as I saw it, was that the trappers tended to favor the
smaller goat.

What I wanted was some photos of them tangling with a really big billy,
right up on the edge of the cliff where it would be exciting, but they
chose to ignore my suggestions, claiming that the small goats more than
satisfied their thirst for excitement.

At last I persuaded jack McNeel, a tall, lean conservation officer, to
have a go at one of the big goats.  I situated myself on an outcropping
of rock close to the net at the edge of the cliff, camera at the
ready.

Presently, the King Kong of mountain goats came sauntering up the hill
and strolled into the trap for a lick of the salt block used for
bait.

When the trap closed on him, that goat went absolutely bananas.  Rock,
hair, and pieces of goat trap flew in all directions.  As jack and
another F and G man came racing toward the raging animal, I knew I was
about to get the greatest action shots in the history of outdoor
photography.  But just as jack was about to close in, the goat got a
horn under the bottom edge of the trap and sent the contraption flying
ten feet in the air.  Caught up in the excitement of the chase and
without thinking, McNeel made a lunge and grabbed the billy by a
horn.

What happened next was more than I had ever even dreamed of in my
career as a wildlife photographer.  I was absolutely awestruck by the
sheer power of the spectacle.  Perhaps you've never seen a mountain
goat twirl a six-foot-four man over his head like a baton, but if you
ever get the chance it's well worth the price of admission.  That nifty
little performance, however, was just the warm up for the grand
finale.

The grand finale was where the goat made a great running leap out over
the edge of the cliff, jack still clinging desperately to his horn.

I have not the slightest doubt that the conservation officer saved that
goat's life, not to mention his own.  As he hurtled out into space,
McNeel reached down and grabbed a branch of a stunted little tree
growing on the edge of the cliff.  For an instant they dangled there,
jack clinging to the branch with one hand and to the goat with the
other.  Then he dropped the billy, who landed on an inch-wide ledge
twenty feet below and galloped off.  It was all absolutely stunning.

jack crawled back up over the edge of the cliff and lay on the rock,
panting.  "I guess that must have made some picture, hunh?"  he said.

"Picture?"  I said.  "What picture?"  For the first time since the
action started, I stared down at the camera clenched in my sweating
hands.

I HAD FORGOTTEN TO TAKE THE PICTURE!  Like the great fish that got away
and the great trophy buck that was missed, the great outdoor photograph
that wasn't taken leaves no proof of its existence.  But jack McNeel of
the Idaho Fish and Game department will swear to the absolute truth of
what I have reported here.  At least the last time I saw him, he was
still swearing about it.

My spirit had been broken, and then and there on that windswept
mile-high slab of granite I gave up my career as a great outdoor
photographer.  I packed my gear, shuffled up to the peak, and climbed
aboard the waiting helicopter.

"Now comes the bad part," the pilot said.  "Just sit back and relax."

REAL PONIES DON'T GO OINK!

By Patrick F. McManus Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc.  115

West 18th Street New York, New York 10011

Copyright (C) 1974, 1981, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1991 by Patrick F.

McManus All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form.

Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited 195 Aristate
Parkway Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McManus, Patrick
F.

Real ponies don't go oink!/Patrick F. McManus.--fst ed.

ISBN 0-8050-1651-1

Henry Holt books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases
for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use.

Special editions or book excerpts can also be created to
specification.

For details contact: Special Sales Director, Henry Holt and Company,
Inc.  115 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011.

FIRST EDITION Most of the previously published stories in this book
originally appeared in Outdoor Life in slightly different form, with
the exception of "Pouring My Own," which was first published in Spokane
Magazine, and "The Late Great Fourth," which was first published in
True Magazine.

Designed by Claire Vaccaro Printed in the United States of America
Recognizing the importance of preserving the written word, Henry Holt
and Company, Inc by policy, prints all of its first editions on
acid-free paper.Contents Also by Patrick F. McManus Kid Camping from
Aaaaiiiiii!  to Zip A Fine and Pleasant Misery They Shoot Canoes, Don't
They?

Never Sniff a Gift Fish The Grasshopper TraP Rubber Legs and White
Tail-Hairs The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw Watchagot Stew (with Patricia
"The Troll" McManus Gass) Contents Controlling My
Life..........................................................1

Strange Meets Matilda
jean...................................................7

Tough Guys Don't
Bird.......................................................13

A Good Deed Goes
Wrong......................................................19

The Fishing
Box.............................................................29

Social
Skills...............................................................37


The
Clown..................................................................


47

A Good Night's
Sleep........................................................55

A Brief History of Giving
(1942-89).........................................67

Pouring My
Own..............................................................73

Teenagers From
Hell.........................................................79

Secret
Places...............................................................87


Puttering..............................................................


....95

Search
and-Uh-Rescue........................................................99


The
Bust...................................................................


09

Real Ponies Don't Go
Oink!................................................."5

Blood
Sausage..............................................................12


Crash
Dive!................................................................13


My Abduction by Creatures From Space, for What It's
Worth..................139

Phantom of the
Woods.......................................................145

The Piano
Lesson...........................................................153

Zumbo and the Misty Mountain
Ghosts........................................159

The Road
Hunter............................................................167

Why Is
It?.................................................................175


The Late Great
Fourth......................................................181

Camping
In.................................................................193


Controlling My Life I just read a book on how to get control of my time
and therefore of my life.  My time has always had a tendency to slip
away from me and do as it pleases.  My life follows it, like a puppy
after an untrained bird dog.  Come night, my life shows up, usually
covered with mud and full of stickers, exhausted but grinning happily. 
My time never returns.

That is why I read this book on how to get control of my time and my
life.

The book claimed that the key to controlling your time and life is to
make a list of all the things you want to accomplish during the day,
the week, and the year.  Things you wish to accomplish are listed
according to their level of importance in categories labeled A, B, and
C. Under A, you place the things that have top priority for the day,
under B, the things you really should take care of that day or in the
immediate future, and under C, the things that you might do sometime
next century.

The system sounded wonderful.  Finally, I had a way to actually control
those two rascals, my time and my life.  Time would no longer merely
slip away.  I'd grab it by the neck, squeeze every second out of it,
and toss the empty skin over my shoulder.  My life would become a thing
of discipline, methodically achieving great accomplishment after great
accomplishment.  I sat down to start my list.

Right off I was stumped.  I needed to think of a great accomplishment
to list first under A. Writing the Great American Novel would be a good
one, I thought.  But it would probably take too long.  It took me two
months to read Moby-Dick.  How long would it take me to write it?

Scratch that idea.

My wife, Bun, walked in.  "Why are you sitting there staring out the
window?"

"I'm trying to control my life," I said.

"Oh good," she said.

"Can you think of something great for me to accomplish?"

"How about putting up the shelf in the pantry like I asked you?"

"No good.  Too trivial.  It's low C at best, if it even makes the
list.

Speaking of lists, where's a pencil?"

"Go look in the junk drawer."

I looked in the junk drawer, but all I could find was the stub of a
pencil, with the eraser worn down flat.  Not only do you need a good
pencil to get your life under control, you need a good eraser.

"I'm going down to the store and buy a new pencil," I told Bun.

"I hope getting your life under control isn't going to run into a lot
of expense," she said.

On the way to the store, I bumped into my friend Retch Sweeney.  "Where
you going?"  he asked.

"Down to the store to buy a pencil," I said.  "I'm getting my life
under control."

"What's it been doing?"  he asked.

"Just the usual," I said.  "As a result, I never get anything
accomplished."

"I never accomplish anything either," he said.  "Why don't we stop by
Kelly's for a beer, and you can tell me how to get my life under
control, too."

"Okay."

We went into Kelly's Bar & Grill.  Kelly himself was working the bar.

Tiffany, the waitress, was arm wrestling Milt Logan for double her tip
or nothing.  Two candles were situated so that the loser got his hand
forced down onto one of them.  Tiffany was winning.  "Stop!  Stop!"

screamed Milt.  "I give up!"

Kelly chuckled.  "Good thing I don't let Tiffany light the candles," he
said.  "Otherwise, every one of you bums would have the hair burnt off
the back of your hands."

"Oh, yeah?"  Retch said to Kelly.  "Well, me and Pat can beat the socks
off you and Tiffany at pool."

"You think so, do you?"  Kelly said, vaulting over the bar.  "Rack 'em
up, Tiff.  How much per game?"

By the end of a few games of pool, getting my life under control had
already cost me twelve dollars.  Then Old Crabby Walters came over and
asked if Retch and I wanted to see his new boat.  "Sure," I said.  "I
love to look at boats.  But we better hurry.  It's starting to get
dark."

We went down to the marina to look at Crabby's boat.  I would have
guessed its vintage at early seventeenth century, except it was made
out of aluminum.  The motor looked prehistoric.

"You fix this up, Crabby, it'll be a pretty fair boat," Retch said.

"Jumpin' jehoshaphat!"  cried Crabby.  "It's already fixed up!"

"Oh," Retch said.  "And a mighty nice job of it, too."

"Thanks," Crabby said.  "You boys hop in and I'll take you for a little
spin."

"Gee, it's pretty darn cold out and it's almost dark," I said.  "And
the wind is coming up."

"Jumpin' jehoshaphat!"  cried Crabby.  "What kind of wimps are you
two?

Hop in!"

Retch and I hopped in, trying to avoid the rusty gas tanks.  The whole
boat smelled of gas.  Crabby jerked on the starter cord no more than
fifty times before the motor roared to life somewhere beneath a cloud
of smoke.  I wasn't sure whether the motor was running or on fire, but
Crabby soon emerged from the cloud, a big grin on his face.  "Purrs
like a kitten, don't it?"

We bolted out onto the lake, the motor coughing and spitting and
occasionally screaming in agony.  A couple hundred yards from shore it
died.

"Just have to adjust the throttle a little," Crabby said calmly,
removing the motor cover and tossing it with a clatter into the bottom
of the boat.

The wind had picked up.  Icy waves began to toss the boat this way and
that, mostly that, which was away from land.  Darkness had clamped a
lid on the lake.

"One of you boys got a flashlight on you?"  Crabby asked.

can't see a dad-blamed thing."

"Not me," Retch said, staring at the waves.

"Me nether," I said.  "I just went out to buy a pencil."  The situation
was getting on my nerves.

"Well, no matter," Crabby said.  "I got an old gas lantern in here
somewheres.  Ah, there it is.  I'll get us some light in here in a
sec."

"Walt!"  I said.  "Do you think it's such a good idea to light a
lantern with all this gas in here?"

Retch inched his way toward the bow of the boat.  I inched after him.

"No problem," Crabby said.  He touched a match to the lantern.  Flames
shot up six feet.  Retch and I stared in horror at the rusty gas tanks,
now brightly illuminated so we could study in detail the full extent of
their deterioration.

"JUMP-!"  cried Crabby.

Retch and I jumped for our lives, leaving poor Crabby to fend for
himself.  He never even heard the splashes or the muffled shrieks so
closely associated with plunges into ice water.  I surfaced right next
to the boat, expecting to see Crabby doing an imitation of a Roman
candle.  But he was just standing there with the lantern turned down to
a modest glow.

"In' jehoshaphat!"  he muttered, completing his favorite oath.  "One of
these days I'm going to buy me a new lantern.  Now if one of you boys
would ... where'd you go?"

Crabby eventually got the motor going, and towed Retch and me back to
the dock.  Then he drove us to Kelly's to thaw out.  Naturally, the
boys wanted to hear about our adventure.  Crabby told a long, involved
story about how he had saved our lives, starting with when he was five
years old.  Then Retch had to arm wrestle Tiffany for double the tip or
nothing, but, with Kelly gone, this time with the candles lighted.

Finally, he drove me home.

"How long do you suppose before the hair grows in again?"  he asked,
blowing on the back of his hand.

"Probably a couple of months," I said.  "Who cares?  I lost five bucks
betting you could take Tiffany."  Getting my life under control had
already cost me seventeen dollars, and I was barely started.

When I got home, Bun was already in bed.  Where does the time go?

Next morning I got up bright and early and sat down to do some serious
work on controlling my life.

"Where's a pencil?"  I asked Bun.

Strange Meets Matilda Jean I had always wanted to have a dog I could be
proud of, but instead I had Strange.  All my friends were proud of
their dogs.  They bragged constantly about how Sport or Biff or Rags or
Pal had run off a burglar, saved a little girl from drowning, brought
in their father's newspaper, warned the family just in time that the
house was on fire, rounded up cows, pointed pheasants, retrieved ducks,
and performed such amazing and entertaining tricks that I had a hard
time believing the dog didn't have a movie contract.

Strange, on the other hand, would have welcomed burglars with open
paws, and stood watch while they looted the house.  He never saved
anybody from anything.  He enjoyed chasing cows, but merely for the
sport.  He considered pointing impolite.  If he retrieved a duck, it
was for his own use.  Any tricks he knew he kept to himself.

He was a connoisseur of the disgusting.  He turned up his nose at my
grandmother's cooking, then dined happily on cow chips, year-old
roadkill, and the awful offal of neighborhood butcherings.

Occasionally, he scrawled his territorial signature on the leg of a
complete stranger, as though it were a mobile fireplug.  ("Bad dog!

Sorry about your Pant leg, mister.  Now, as I was saying, would it be
all right if I fish the crick behind your place?  I'll close the
gates.") Strange was also an enthusiastic crotch-sniffer, causing
visitors to gyrate like belly dancers in their efforts to escape his
probing nose, all the while trying to carry on a normal conversation,
as if nothing embarrassing were happening down below.

Concern for the sensibilities of the reader prevents me from mentioning
some of my dog's more disgusting hobbies, except to say they involved
highly noxious fumes, chickens, human legs, embarrassing itch, and
various slurpy aspects of what passes for dog hygiene.  Strange
apparently held the view that his hobbies were vastly entertaining to
the public at large.  Whenever we had dinner guests he would run
through his repertoire of the disgusting in front of the dining-room
indow.

"How did you like that one?"  he would ask, smiling in at us, as though
expecting a standing ovation.

"No dessert for me, thanks," our guests would respond.  Strange was a
ajor social liability.

"There's nothing worse," my grandmother once commented, "than an
egg-sucking dog."

"Strange don't suck eggs," I said proudly, desperate to find something
favorable about my dog.

"I stand corrected," Gram said.  "There is something worse."  She and
Strange didn't relate well.

We never thought of Strange as our dog.  He was his own dog.  What I
disliked most about him was his arrogance.  If I threw a stick and told
him "Fetch," he would give me this insolent stare, which said, "Fetch
it yourself, dumbo.  You threw it."  Then he would flip a cigarette
butt at me, blow out a stream of smoke, and slouch back into his
doghouse.  (Well no, of course, he didn't really smoke cigarettes, but
that was the essence of his attitude, as though he had watched too many
movies about hard-boiled detectives.) Strange clearly thought of
himself as a big tough canine, even though he was probably the smallest
dog in our neighborhood.  He was rather sickly looking, too, with
chronically bloodshot eyes and a loose, leering mouth.  Eating year-old
roadkill probably does that to you.  I can't imagine what a vet would
have recommended for a dog like Strange.  Probably a parole officer.

Strange swaggered about our place as though he owned it.  You could
almost see him thinking, "I won this house in a crap game, and there
ain't nobody telling me what to do on my own property."  After one of
his particularly obnoxious offenses, often involving deadly toxic
fumes, my grandmother would grab him by two handfuls of hide and send
him flying outside, whereupon Strange would turn and snarl at her, "Try
that again, old woman, and you'll hear from my lawyer."  Then he would
take out his vengeance on a chicken or squirrel or anything he could
find that was smaller than himself.  He reigned supreme in the confines
of our yard.

Then one day my sister, Troll, brought home a huge yellow tomcat.  The
cat was half as big as she was.  It was the cat version of an offensive
all-pro tackle, and looked as if it ate scrap iron for breakfast.  Its
purr rattled dishes in the cupboard.  Sex education not yet having been
introduced in our schools, my sister named the burly yellow beast
Matilda Jean.  I was so disgusted with the name I almost gagged, but
she said it was her cat, she'd name it anything she pleased.

"How do you know it's a tomcat, anyway?"  she sniffed at me.

Troll had me there.  We went to the same school.  It just looked like a
torn.

Although Matilda jean was thoroughly gentle and affectionate with
members of the family, he obviously was a fighter.  One ear had been
gnawed half off, patches of fur were missing, and numerous scars
recorded the history of a violent, brawling past.  Matilda jean lounged
around the house all the first day at his new home, but that evening he
got up, stretched, rippled his shoulder and neck muscles like yellow
waves on a pond, strode to the door, and asked to be let out.

Later that night, as we were preparing for bed, a terrible cat fight
broke out on the roof of our house.  It raged back and forth over the
roof, up one side and down the other.  We rushed out to save poor
Matilda Jean and chase off the intruder.  We needn't have bothered.

Suddenly, a tangled, writhing, screeching knot of cats toppled off the
roof and thumped to the ground.  Matilda jean landed on his back at the
bottom and for a moment was stunned.  The intruder, a big
black-and-white model owned by our neighbors, saw its chance.  It
pulled itself together, a fairly complicated task, matching up the
various parts, and streaked off into the night.  Matilda Jean got up,
rippled his muscles, and climbed back to the roof, apparently taking
upon himself the responsibility of protecting us from any shifty-eyed
scoundrels who might happen by.

Strange had been away from home for two days.  We thought nothing of
it, since he regularly went off carousing with his cronies.  When he
didn't show up the day after the cat fight, however, I began to
worry.

He wasn't much of a dog, but he was all the dog I had.  "Maybe
something happened to him," I said to Gram.

"There you go again," she said," getting my hopes up."

I went out to see if Strange had slipped in unnoticed and was sacked
out in his doghouse sleeping off a hangover.  The doghouse was empty.

Then I saw him, sauntering down the road, occasionally glancing over
his shoulder to check whether he was being tailed, possibly by the vice
squad.  He stopped at the gate and scanned the yard in search of a
chicken or squirrel available for assault and battery.  The yard was
empty.

Matilda Jean peered intently down from the roof, on the lookout for
shifty-eyed scoundrels.  Strange, of course, fit the description.  The
cat dropped to the ground a few feet from the startled dog.

It is difficult to know what goes through a dog's mind, but I suspect
the few cognitive processes available to Strange were assessing the
situation something like this: A cat!  What's afool cat doing on my
property?  Dogs chase cats.  I'm a dog.  Therefore, I will chase this
cat and teach it a good lesson.  The cat will start running any
second.

Get ready!

Matilda jean didn't start running.  His back arched, his hair bristled,
his tail lashed back and forth like a ragged yellow whip.

Strange eyed the cat calmly.  So, it's a fight the pussycat wants.

Well, he's come to the right place!  He clamped a cigar in his teeth,
struck a match on the seat of his pants, lit the cigar, and flicked the
match away.  Eyes squinted, he smiled grimly around the cigar as he
loosened the guns in his holsters.  Draw, cat!

"Woof!"  he said.

"KILLLLLLLLLLLLL!"  Matilda jean screamed.

Finally, my dog did something I could brag about.  The next day at
school I casually mentioned that my dog was really something.  "You
won't believe what he did last night."

My friends stared at me in astonishment.  "You don't mean Strange, do
you?"  one of them said.  "You got another dog?"

"Nope!"  I said.  "It was Strange.  What happened, Troll brought home
this big old tomcat, and Strange and it got in a heck of a fight.  And
you won't believe this, but right in the middle of the fight, the cat
and Strange went right up that tamarack tree in our yard.  Strange
raced up it Just like a squirrel.  Man, it was something to see!  That
ol' cat was so surprised it almost fell out of the tree!"

"Wow!"  somebody said.  "No kidding, you mean Strange actually chased a
cat up a tree and climbed up after it?"

People always get so distracted by petty details.  What did it matter,
who chased whom?  The important thing was, MY dog climbed a tree.

Tough Guys Don't Bird You've heard the expression "Tough guys don't
bird."  You haven't?

Well, forget I mentioned it.  The point is I'm a pretty tough guy, and
I bird.  I'm a birder, a bird watcher.  I watch birds.  So there.  I
said it and I'm glad.

All my life I've been interested In birds.  A person can learn a lot
from watching birds, especially if you're into sitting on power-line
wires or snatching insects out of the air with your beak.  Only kidding
about that.

The truth is I've never watched a bird do anything that I've personally
found useful.  I really don't know why I watch birds.  It's kind of
stupid, if you think about it.

Birding doesn't even make good conversation.  I went down for lunch
with the guys at Kelly's Bar & Grill, and casually mentioned that I
spotted a red-shafted flicker in my backyard.  "Cripes!"  Ed Riley
said.  "Not while I'm eating!"

"Boy, I hope you stomped that sucker," Bart Slade growled.  "Traipsing
right through your backyard, was he?  Probably one of them dopers.

Dang dopers and preverts are takin' over the world!  What did this
fella look like--short, tall, what, in case I catch him hanging around
my place?"

"Short," I said.  "Real short.  With a pointy nose."

Actually, I'd just as soon the guys at Kelly's didn't know I'm a
birder.

Even when I was a child my interest in birds didn't receive much
encouragement.  "Hey, Ma, guess what!"  I'd shout, running into the
house.

"The baby robins are starting to fly from their nest!"

"So?  You expected they'd shinny down the tree trunk?  Now go wash for
supper."

The first actual encouragement my birding ever received was from my
wife, Bun.  One birthday she gave me a book titled Field Guide to the
Birds of North America.  I rushed out with my field guide and tried to
identify the first bird I saw, a little brown-and-gray chap.  "Hey, no
problem," I said to myself.  "I'll just thumb through the book until I
find a little brown-and-gray bird."  The book was half filled with
little brown-and-gray kinds of birds, dozens and dozens of them, each
differing from its fellows only by a speck of black, yellow, or white,
a fat beak or a thin beak, a perky tail or a droopy tail.  I
immediately classified all these species as Drab Little Birds, and
closed the book on them.

Excluding Drab Little Birds, I eventually got to know most of the
species in our region of the country.  Oh, occasionally I make an
erroneous identification.  Once, hiking with Bun along the river, I
mistook an immature bald eagle for a spruce grouse.  It was
embarrassing.  Who even expects a bald eagle to be immature?  Anyway, I
spotted this bird high up in a tree and made a snap identification of
it for Bun, just to impress her.

"Spruce grouse," I said, pointing.

At that moment the bird had the unmitigated gall to glide down over the
river and snatch up a snack for lunch.

"I didn't know grouse caught fish," Bun said.

"Sometimes they do," I explained.  "It's rare, though.  Few people ever
witness a grouse catching a fish with its talons.  This is really a
special experience, something I think we should share just between the
two of us and never tell anyone else about."

"I think I'll tell."

I try not to get personally involved with the birds I watch.  Who wants
a meaningful relationship with a bird, anyway?  What can it lead to?

Trouble, that's what.

One summer a Drab Little Bird almost drove me crazy.  While the river
was down during the winter, I had buried concrete blocks in the sand
with chains attached to them.  I then hooked the chains to two-by-four
boards so that when the water came back up the free ends of the chains
would float to the surface.

I planned to use the chains to anchor a classy new dock I intended to
build.

The river rose in the spring, the boards floated the chains up with the
rising water, and everything was ready for me to carefully craft a fine
new dock.  First, however, I had to take care of some complicated
wiring problems in the innards of my boat.

One morning I looked out the window and saw a Drab Little Bird bobbing
about on one of my chain boards.  He bobbed his tail up and down about
twice a second, and with each bob he emitted a shrill sound, something
like "Jeeet!"

Although I had long before given up trying to identify Drab Little
Birds, I guessed this fellow was a member of the dipper crowd, so named
because of the constant dipping of the tail.

"Oh, he's so cute," Bun chirped.  "Look at the way he dips up and
down.

It looks like he's doing deep knee bends."

I went out to undertake the nerve-fraying task of rewiring my boat,
parked a short distance from the dipper's board.  "Jeeet jeeet jeeet
jeeet," went the little dipper.  "Jeeet jeeet jeeet jeeet."  It is
surprising how quickly continuous jeeet-jeeet-jeeeting can erode one's
sanity.  When I could stand it no longer, I climbed out of the boat,
selected a good throwing stone, and hurled it in the general direction
of the dipper.  He flew off to a rocky point and waited until I climbed
back into the boat and immersed myself in its innards.  Then he flew
back to his board: jeeet jeeet jeeet jeeet jeeet ...

Every morning the dipper would arrive at the board, no doubt carrying a
sack lunch, and begin his endless exercising and
jeeet-jeeet-jeeeting.

This bird was making a career out of driving me crazy.  I started
having nightmares in which he starred.

"I can't stand that dip any longer," I growled at Bun one morning.  "I
have yelled at him, put curses on him, and thrown rocks at him, and he
still insists on driving me crazy.  Now I'm going to take drastic
measures."

"You don't mean ...!"

"That's exactly what I do mean.  I'm going to build the dock!  Then he
won't have his board to stand on anymore."

I threw the dock together in two days, working with the furious energy
that comes only from near-madness.  The results weren't pretty.

Visitors who saw the finished dock often mistook it for a bridge that
had been washed out in a flood, but they knew nothing about docks, or
dippers either for that matter.

The dipper's board was now gone, and he with it.  Glorious silence
filled the land.  I had worried that the dipper might turn the dock
into his own private gym, but the deck was apparently too high off the
water to suit him, or perhaps he was afraid of the structure, as even
some humans were.

"I miss that little bird," Bun said one morning after the dock was
completed.

"Me too," I said.  "Henh henh."

"I really enjoyed watching him.  He always seemed so cheerful, he made
me happy, too."

"Yeah yeah," I said.  "What's for breakfast?"

"Before we discuss the topic of 'what's for breakfast,'" Bun replied,
"I want you to promise you'll do something for me."

Old Harold Wizzel stopped by later in the morning and found me standing
out in the river.

"Whatcha building?"  Harold asked.

"A dipper board," I said crankily.  "What does it look like?"

"How come you building a dipper board?"

"Well, if you must know, Harold, it was either this or learn how to
cook."

"What's a dipper, anyway?"

The dipper never returned to use his new board.  "I think you must have
offended him," Bun said.

"Maybe," I said.  "I certainly hope so."

My latest run-in with a bird occurred last winter.  It was one of those
nasty days full of wet and wind, and overcast with gloom.  As I waited
sullenly at my fourth stoplight in as many intersections, the faint
notes of bird song penetrated my consciousness.  I glared in the
direction of the disturbance.

There in a stubby tree planted by the street department in its
continuing effort to obstruct the view of converging drivers, a Drab
Little Bird clung precariously to a wind-whipped branch, singing its
heart out!  I could not help but be moved by the sight.  That little
bird, wet, cold, and obviously miserable, had absolutely nothing to
sing about, but still it sang.  "Surely there is some lesson to be
learned from this," I said to myself, "other than the fact that this
bird is either a fool or a lunatic."

Alas, I was distracted from my reverie when the trucker behind me
attempted to implode my eardrums with a blast from his air horn.  In
response, I thrashed wildly about the interior of my small sedan,
almost impaling myself on the stick shift, for I know the keen
disappointment truckers feel if the blast from their air horns doesn't
prompt some such energetic display from a victim.  Retrieving my
composure, along with my spectacles, which had handily hung up on the
rear-view mirror, I deduced the reason for the trucker's impatience
with me: the signal light had switched from red to green during my
pondering of the lunatic bird.

Not to be outdone, the engine of my car decided to contribute to the
occasion by expiring with a cough and a jerk, and then stubbornly
refusing to be revived.  The burly trucker, as seen through my
rear-view mirror, appeared on the verge of a meltdown, or so I judged
from the steam issuing from around the band of his size-eight cowboy
hat.  Obviously, he assumed my continued delay at the green light was
for the sole purpose of irritating him or even--heaven
forbid!--teaching him some manners.  It is this sort of innocent
misunderstanding that can lead to the inconvenience of taking your
nutrients through a tube in your arm.  I wondered if it would help
matters if I walked back and told the trucker about how I had been
distracted by the little bird's singing in the rain.  He might get a
kick out of it.  Then again, maybe not.

Luckily, at that moment my engine ignited, and I spurted to safety
beneath the amber glow of the caution light.  While he waited for the
next green light, perhaps the trucker, too, would hear the brave little
nutty bird and thereby have his mood transformed to the wonderful
serenity of being one with nature.

But I wouldn't bet on it.

A Good Deed Goes Wrong Some people thought Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I
were to blame for breaking Rancid Crabtree's leg.  Oddly, the odorous
and crotchety old woodsman himself was one of the people who thought
this.  He said as soon as he got off his crutches he intended to run
Eddie and me down and whale the tar out of us.  We weren't too worried.
 We figured by the time Rancid got out of the cast he would have cooled
off enough to see that the accident was really his own doing and no
fault of ours.

But before he got off his crutches, the little incident with the bobcat
occurred, generally confusing matters even more.  As Crazy Eddie
observed at the time, you try to do a kind deed for a person, and it
just gets you into more trouble.  Anyway, here are the true facts about
the entire mess.

During our Christmas vacation from third grade, Eddie and I built a
toboggan run up on the mountain behind Rancid's shack.  The design of
our run was based on one we had seen in newsreels at the Pandora
Theater the Saturday before.  The two runs were almost identical,
except ours was steeper and faster than the one in the newsreel, and
went over and under logs and had brush on both sides of it, and at
least one of the turns was much sharper, and if you didn't make that
turn you would be shot off into space and sail for some time over the
valley looking down at the tiny cows and cars beneath you, and this in
turn might elevate your anxiety to a dangerous level.  So you wanted to
be sure to make that sharp curve.

We built the first part of the run on an old logging road that
zigzagged down the mountain.  We tramped up and down the road the
distance of two switchbacks, packing down the snow into a track
slightly wider than the width of our sled.  The grade on the
switchbacks was modest, but sufficient to build up a fair head of speed
in a sled by the time it and its driver reached the curve at the end of
the second switchback.  Then came the good part.  Instead of curving
the track onto the next switchback, we funneled it over the edge of the
road into an old skid trail.

The skid trail had been gouged into the mountains by old-time loggers
dragging logs down it.  In fact, it was so steep they probably didn't
have to drag the logs but merely had to roll them into it and let them
shoot to the bottom of the mountain.  Erosion had cut the trail down to
bare rock, which was now coated with ice, making it even better for a
toboggan run.  When we were building up our curved bank to funnel the
track into the skid trail, Eddie slipped and nearly shot down the run
with nothing but his body, and would have if he hadn't managed to grab
a small tree and pull himself back up.

"Wow!"  he said.  "This is going to be good!"

At the bottom end, the skid trail intersected with the next switchback
of the road.  This was where the toboggan driver would shoot off into
space if he failed to make the turn onto the switchback.  Fortunately,
there was a high bank on the downhill side of the road, only slightly
offset from the track.

The driver would have to be alert enough to steer toward the high bank,
which would sweep the sled up and around and then redirect it back down
onto the switchback.  This was the last switchback and it provided a
straightaway that, at the bottom, merged with the Sand Creek road.  The
straightaway was quite steep, so the toboggan driver wouldn't have to
worry about his speed diminishing any when he hit this last stretch.

He could then glide to a gradual stop on the Sand Creek road, which was
seldom traveled during winter, and even then only by old Mrs. Swisher,
who drove to church on it each Sunday.

We completed the track on a Friday, and planned to make our first test
run on Saturday.

The next morning, Crazy Eddie and I were dragging my sled past Rancid's
shack on our way up to test our toboggan run and were arguing about who
got to go down it first.

"Listen, Eddie, it's my sled!"  I said.

"Yeah, that's right," he replied.  "That's why you should get to be
first to test the run."

"No sirree," I said.  "I should be the one who gets to choose who goes
first, and I choose you."

About then Rancid stuck his head out the door of his shack.  "What you
boys up to now?"  he hollered at us.  "Some kinder monkey bidness, no
doubt.

Ah ain't never seen no younguns what could get into more trouble than
you two."

"We built a toboggan run up on the mountain, just like in the newsreel,
Rancid.  It's fast, too."

"Hold up a sec," he said, putting on his coat.  "Ah better go check
this out.  You fool half-pints probably invented some new way to kill
yersevs."

Half an hour later, we stood at the start of the toboggan run, all of
us still puffing great clouds of vapor from the climb up the trail.

Rancid stared at the little track going down the first switchback.  It
didn't look nearly so impressive this morning.  "Shoot," he said,
chuckling.

"You call this a toboggan run?  Ah cain't believe Ah clumb all the way
up hyar to see this piddlin' little trail in the snow.  Ah must hev
been outta maw mind.  Gimme thet sled.  The least you can do is let me
ride back to the bottom of the mountain on it."

I handed over the sled.  Rancid plopped down on it, sitting upright
with his long legs sticking way out in front, his coat completely
concealing the sled beneath him.  "It might be dangerous, Mr.
Crabtree," Eddie warned.

"Dangerous!"  Rancid said.  "Eddie, Ah 'spect Ah never told you, but Ah
used to be a professional bobsledder, jist like you see in the
movies.

Racin' Rancid they use to call me."

"Gee," I said.  "I didn't know that."  I figured that he must have been
a professional bobsledder right after being a fighter pilot and before
he became a big-game hunter in Africa or about the same time he was a
champion prize fighter.

"Yep," Rancid said, poking a wad of chewing tobacco into his cheek.

"Now gimme a shove off."

He glided slowly away toward the first curve, gradually picking up
speed.

He called back to us as he went around the curve.  "Ah hate to tell you
this, boys, but your bob sled track ain't steep enough even to give a
feller a decent ride."

We were disappointed in the professional bobsledder's assessment of our
run but thought his opinion of it might improve later on.  Sure enough,
the next time we heard him yell was about when we thought he should hit
the funnel into the skid trail:
"GOL-DAAAAAAA-A-A-A-a-a-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g!"

"I think he liked the skid-trail section," Eddie said.

"Yeah," I said.  "He sounded excited.

So that's how Rancid broke his leg.  He said later he didn't know when,
where, or how he broke his leg, or even that he had, because his mind
was so occupied with other matters among which was whaling the tar out
of Eddie and me at the first opportunity.

The only eyewitness other than Rancid was old Mrs. Swisher, who was a
little daft anyway and really couldn't be relied on for an accurate
observation.  "I got a little mixed up," she related, "and thinking it
was Sunday instead of Saturday, I started driving to town to go to
church.  As always, I was especially nervous going by that dreadful
Rancid Crabtree's shack, because he's in cahoots with the devil.  Well,
I'm driving along real careful, minding my own business, when all of a
sudden that fool Crabtree zooms right by me, just flying he was, about
a foot in the air, gong like the wind.  I Just caught a glimpse of his
face, he was going so fast, and I'm sorry I did, because it had such a
hideous expression on it you can't even imagine!  The thought of it has
kept me awake nights ever since.  And he's holding this little green
tree in one hand, torn right out by the roots it was.  I bet the tree
had something to do with one of those devilish rites of his.  Well, he
shot off down Sand Creek Hill, and I thought he might be laying in
ambush for me up ahead, so I turned right around and went home, and it
was a good thing I did, too, because then I remembered it was Saturday
instead of Sunday."

Naturally, nobody took daft old Mrs. Swisher's account seriously,
although Eddie and I did recover my sled at the bottom of Sand Creek
Hill, where it had shot off over the bank and landed on the frozen
creek.  Sprayed out in front of it was what we first thought to be
blood but then discovered was nothing more interesting than tobacco
juice.

A couple of Saturdays later, Eddie and I were walking along the highway
pulling my sled, the runners of which were somewhat splayed out but
still worked.  We had been trying to come up with an idea for making
amends with Rancid, when we saw a furry shape lying on the highway.

Both of us had fine roadkill collections and this specimen looked
exceptional.

"It's mine," I said as we rushed forward.  "You got the last one."

"No sirree," Eddie said.  "I remember.  You got that nice flattened
toad last fall and ... Hey, what is this, anyway?"

"My gosh, it's a bobcat.  Feel it.  It must have just been i killed.

It's still warm.  Look, it's got a bit of blood on its head where the
car hit it, but otherwise it's in great shape.  Well, I'd better take
my bobcat home.

Maybe I'll stuff it."

"No you won't," Eddie said.  "I'm gonna take it home and stuff it."

"Hey, wait a minute," I said.  "I know what.  We'll give it to
Rancid.

He can skin it and sell the hide.  Then he won't be mad at us
anymore.

What do you say, Eddie?"

Eddie reluctantly agreed.  We loaded the bobcat on my sled and hauled
it over to Rancid's shack.  I pushed the door gently open and peeked
inside, to make sure Rancid wasn't close enough to swat me before he
saw we had brought him a gift.  The old woodsman was still in bed,
snoring loudly, his casted foot sticking out from under the covers and
resting on a block of firewood.

He had pulled a red wool stocking cap over his bare foot where it stuck
out of the cast.

"Rancid's still asleep," I whispered to Eddie.  "Should we wake him
up?"

Crazy Eddie grinned.  "Naw, he's probably all pooped out from dragging
that cast around with him.  Let's just carry the bobcat in and put it
on the table next to his bed, so he can see it when he first wakes
up.

it'll be a nice surprise for him."

Eddie was very good at thinking up nice surprises for people.  We
carried the bobcat in and laid it down on the table next to the snoring
Rancid.  Eddie studied the arrangement.

"No good," he whispered.  "It looks too dead."  He looked around and
found a box of kitchen matches.  Then he took out two of the matches
and used them to prop apart the big cat's lips in a pretty fair
imitation of a snarl.

Then he stuck the matchbox under the animal's chin so it looked as if
the bobcat were holding its head up, ready to spring.  Then we tiptoed
out and hunkered alongside the door to await the old woodsman's
awakening.

"I think he's gonna be real surprised," Eddie said.

"Yeah, me too."

Presently, Rancid stopped snoring.  He muttered something in his
sleep.

Then he apparently banged the table with his arm, because we heard a
bump and then the sound of the matchbox hitting the floor.

"Darn," Eddie whispered, "The matchbox fell out from under the bobcat's
chin.  The surprise is ruined now."

"Whazzat?"  Rancid mumbled.  "What in tarnation ...?  GOL-DANG!  GIT!

GIT AWAY FROM MEEEE!"

Eddie and I chuckled.

The table crashed to the floor.  A chair was flung against the wall and
a block of firewood sailed out the door.  All of this was accompanied
by a terrible roaring and snarling and the wildest cussing I had ever
heard.

"GIT BACK!  GIT BACK!"  Rancid yelled amid all the bangs and crashes
and thumps.

Eddie looked at me.  "I didn't think he'd be this surprised."

"No fooling," I said nervously.  "Maybe we'd better leave right now.

We can tell him later about our present for him, when he isn't so
surprised."

At that moment there was a furious rattling of crutches and Rancid
burst out of the cabin, shot across the yard and into his privy,
slamming the door shut behind him.

Eddie and I were so startled we couldn't move.  Then the bobcat walked
out the door, chewing on a matchstick.  It gave us a contemptuous
glance and went off up the mountain shaking its head, either because it
had a headache or because it couldn't believe what it had just
witnessed.

Rancid opened the privy door a crack and watched the bobcat until it
disappeared in the woods.  Then he saw us.  Crazy Eddie and I started
toward home.

"You ever seen Rancid move that fast before?"  Eddie asked.

"Nope," I said, glancing back over my shoulder.  "'Specially not on
crutches."

"Didn't even use his legs," Eddie said, with a touch of awe.  "Had
those ol' crutches whippin' around like spokes on a wheel.  Do you
think he was ever an acrobat in a circus?"

"Probably."

"I see he don't sleep in pajamas neither," Eddie said, puffing clouds
of vapor into the icy air.

"Yeah," I said, panting my own clouds of vapor.  "He probably will
after this, though."

We passed daft old Mrs. Swisher's car askew on the road below Rancid's
shack.  She was staring vacantly at us, her mouth hanging open.

"It's Saturday, Mrs. Swisher," Eddie yelled as we sped past.  "Sunday
ain't till tomorrow."

She didn't reply.  But I could tell she was going to have trouble
getting to sleep again that night.  It isn't often you see a naked man
on crutches with a red stocking cap on his foot chase two boys through
the snow on a cold winter morning.  What was even stranger, the
crippled old woodsman kept gaining on us.

The Fishing Box A fishing box, I should explain right off, is not the
same as a tackle box.  Unfishing spouses often confuse the two, as in
"How many fishing boxes do you need, anyway?"  (You need an infinite
number of tackle boxes, but that's beside the point.) A fishing box,
then, is simply a container, usually of cardboard, into which you dump
odd fishing stuff that doesn't qualify for space in your tackle boxes. 
It serves as a repository for things you might find a use for someday,
although probably not in this century.  It also serves to tidy up the
space you use for storing and working on your tackle, whether den,
shop, garage, living room, or bedroom.  Some fishermen prefer simply to
use the floor instead of a fishing box.  That is fine, too, but the
tackle should be kicked into neat little piles, with walking space
between them.

This bit of tidiness takes some extra effort, but your thoughtfulness
will be much appreciated by your spouse, at least for the brief period
she remains in residence.

What size fishing box do you need?  They come in all sizes, ranging
from empty cigar boxes to major-household appliance boxes.  If you are
eight years old and just getting started with your collection of
fishing tackle, there is no point in rushing out and buying a major
household appliance just to start big, so I recommend to youngsters
that they start small, with a cigar box, and, when it is full, move up
to a shoe box.  Warning: do not store leftover worms in these boxes.

They will spoil quickly and attract flies, ants, and, much more
threatening, mothers.  At this point in your young life, you may regard
the contents of the box as treasures rather than junk, and therefore
may be horrified to discover your fishing box missing.  You will
naturally assume it has been stolen, but chances are it has merely been
misplaced.  Tip: check the garbage can first.  This problem can be
avoided by not placing leftover worms in the box; instead, store them
where they belong--in the refrigerator.  Empty cottage-cheese
containers are excellent for this purpose, and often result in a few
good laughs, although probably not in the near future.  Once you reach
adulthood, or about the time your mother laughs about the
cottage-cheese container for the first time, you will no longer regard
the contents of your fishing box as precious treasures, but will come
to consider most items as the oddball junk they really are.  Later in
this article, I will set forth the proper procedure for cleaning out
the fishing box and selecting only those few objects worth keeping.

Those old reels gunked up with sand and rust, for example, may someday
be worth a lot of money as antiques.  (Then again, they may only be old
reels gunked up with sand and rust.  But who knows?) For the adult
angler, any cardboard container with six or eight cubic feet of space
will serve nicely for a fishing box, as long as the opening on top is
at least the size of a regulation basketball hoop.

When one fishing box is full, simply start another one.  Add boxes as
you need them, until you are ready for a new major household
appliance.

What kinds of things are typically dumped in the fishing box?  Old
"hot" lures are COMmonly assigned to it.  By "old" I mean those
five-dollar lures you bought last year, because they were the hot lures
then.  The fish, of course, aren't taking those hot lures now.  No
creature is more fickle or fashion conscious than a fish: each year it
requires a new look in lures.

Fish who bite on last year's hot lures become the target of ridicule in
their schools, often being called names like "nerd" or, much harsher,
"fish stick."

I suggest consigning all of last year's hot lures to the fishing box,
preferably with jump hook shots from across the room, a common method
employed by experienced anglers.

Another item relegated to the fishing box is the single stray of almost
anything, such as the one hook or plastic worm that shows up on your
workbench after you've put everything else away.  You're ready to head
in and watch your favorite TV show when you hear a small voice from the
top of the workbench: "What about me?"  You look down and there is one
stray purple plastic worm.

Are you going to sort through your tackle boxes looking for the one
with the purple plastic worm compartment?  Of course not.  What you do
is grasp the worm by the tail, leap straight up, and whip it over your
head in a high, arcing hook shot toward the fishing box.  Two points!

You smile and go watch your show.

Objects consigned to the fishing box include, among other things,
jelled masses of stuff, which happen to contain good hooks, spinners,
sinkers, and other items you can't quite bring yourself to discard with
the glob.  I do not know much about these globs, except that they
appear from time to time in my tackle boxes, particularly those
containing tubes and packages of synthetic bait, which may explain the
pungent odor.  (Check garbage can for missing tackle boxes again.)
Sometimes the globs consist of half-melted plastic worms, which can be
pretty darn gross, especially with those wiggly tails extruding
lifelike from the solidified goo.  By the way, never leave these
half-melted plastic-worm globs where your wife might come across them
unexpectedly, such as in the bottom of her purse.  This happened once
at our house, while my wife was groping in her purse for car keys just
prior to rushing off late for a hair appointment.  Took all the curl
out of her hair and cost me fifty bucks for a new permanent, when I
could have gotten by with a mere trim.  Took some of the curl out of my
hair, too, particularly when our mailman threatened to sue me, as
though it were my fault he scattered letters halfway down the block.

It is best simply to gouge the globs out of the tackle box with a putty
knife, flick them at the fishing box, and be done with them.

Also destined for the fishing box are terminally tangled clusters of
lures, in which each barb of each treble hook has mysteriously inserted
itself through the eye or tiny split ring of another treble hook, but
in such a way that each lure is attached to twelve other lures.  The
mystery resides in the fact that if you were to take two lures and
deliberately jiggle them about for a week you would never be able to
get one barb to slip through a single eye or split ring on the other
lure.  But topple a tackle box off a boat seat just once and all those
little barbs and tiny hook eyes converge on one another.

Some of them have to wait in line while others go through the
complicated gyrations required to get properly connected.  The
latecomer barbs sometimes find all the eyes and Split rings taken, so
they have to crowd in with other barbs.  One big hook is probably in
charge of the activities, yelling out in a wiry voice, "I have room for
one more barb in a treble-hook eye over here!

Two more barbs can crowd into that split ring over there!  Snap it up,
folks, because old Joe is going to open this tackle box any second
now.

Everybody get ready to yell 'Surprise!'" All the fantastic bargains in
tackle you picked out of the discount basket at the sporting-goods
store because the price was just too good to resist are also
fishing-box bound.  Some anglers actually go to the trouble of removing
the individual items from the plastic-bubble packages before chucking
the bargains into the fishing box.  I personally find it more efficient
to hook-shot them in as a group, while they are still in the sack from
the store.

Unbelievable as it may seem, I once knew a man who claimed actually to
have caught a fish on one of these bargains from the discount basket,
but he was an expert fisherman who knew how to select just the right
lure for the right occasion, how to cast it into the perfect spot, how
to retrieve it at just the proper speed and depth, and how to lie with
a straight face.

All fishing gifts given to you by friends and relatives who regard
themselves as having a wonderful sense of humor qualify as prime
candidates for the fishing box.  It is only polite to open these gifts
and respond good-naturedly to the little joke: "Oh, Aunt Jane, you are
such a comic!

Where did you ever find a fish tie?  A rainbow trout, isn't it?  This
is wonderful!  Please excuse me while I go put this away before it gets
smudged or wrinkled."  Two points!

Many newfangled inventions end up in the fishing box, such as the power
fish-scaler that went berserk and scaled half a bass, three of your
fingers, a patch of lawn, and the neighbors' cat.  Then there are
several latest models of electronic fish-finders that are no longer the
latest models.  These include the ultimate fish-finder, which was
ultimate for only three months.

My fishing box contains several dozen survey forms folded into paper
airplanes--asking four hundred questions ranging from how, where, and
why I bought a product to how much money I earn, as though it's any of
their business.  (You'd think they'd be satisfied simply with my having
bought their product, but no, they have to pry into my personal life as
well.  If I ever filled out and mailed one of these forms, the company
officers would probably sit around joking and laughing about how much
money I earn.) To-do lists--folded into paper airplanes--intended to
bring some order to your fishing tackle are common fishing box
residents.  Item number eighty-seven on a list is "Clean out fishing
box and discard all useless items."  This is a chore that really should
be attended to, at least once every four or five years.  It is through
the process of "cleaning out" that the true function of the fishing box
becomes evident, namely the careful selection of the few items that
seem to have intrinsic value and the trash-canning of the obvious
junk.

The procedure for cleaning out the fishing box, as practiced by the
mature fisherman, is simply to turn the box upside down and dump the
contents on the floor.  He carefully sorts through the items by nudging
them about with the toe of his shoe.  He stares contemplatively at the
stuff.  He strolls down memory lane over the sight of his old
slick-soled wading shoes that teamed up with a rock to give him a
memorable compound fracture of the rear end.  And there are the tatters
of the landing net with which he landed his first respectable fish,
something over nine inches as he recalls.  And by golly if that isn't
the old wicker creel with the overlooked perch permanently blended into
the wicker.  Why, he thinks, this is a regular hoard of ... of ...

treasure!  It's all treasure!  So he shovels it all back into the
fishing box.

When he's finished "cleaning out," he heads in to watch his favorite TV
program.  But then softly, almost imperceptibly, he hears a tiny voice
from the floor: "What about me?"  Well, here's about you.  Leap.  Hook
shot.  Two points!

Social Skills One thing I can't abide in an outdoorsman is whining. 
That's why my persnickety next-door neighbor Al Finley, the city
councilperson, gets on my nerves so much.  Some little thing will go
wrong, and Al has to whine about it.  For several years now, Retch
Sweeney and I have been trying to teach hunting to Finley.  Last week,
on a pheasant hunt, we concentrated on social skills.  Al whined all
day long.

"How come I always have to be the one to go up to the farmhouse and ask
the farmer permission to hunt on his land?"  Finley whined.

"Because you need the practice, that's why," Retch snapped.

"That's absolutely right," I said.  "And if you had paid attention to
our instructions on how to make friends with farmers' dogs, this never
would have happened.  Now you take this little mutt here--pay
attention, Al!  Notice how he is growling at me.  First, I start by
smiling at him and speaking softly.

Easy, little fella, don't be afraid.  Nice doggie.  Okay, now I reach
out very carefully and scratch him behind the ears.  Hey, you like
that, don't you, pooch?  See, he's starting to wag his tail, always a
good sign.  He's rolling his big brown eyes up at me, just like I'm his
long-lost friend.  Now he's relaxing his jaws, and there we go, I have
him unclamped from your rear end, Finley."

"About time, too," Finley whined.  "You should have let me slam the
little beast's head in the car door the way I wanted to."

"Cripes!"  Retch said.  "That's why we're trying to teach you some
social skills, Finley.  Farmers never let you hunt after you've slammed
their dog's head in a car door."

"Why, you silly elbow ..."  Finley muttered.

"Okay, calm down, you two," I said.  "Let's analyze what happened
here.

First of all, Al, you were told not to run if a dog threatened you.

And you ran.  That's the worst thing you can do.  It merely excites the
dog to attack.

This little fella got so excited he leaped up and snapped on to your
rear.

Okay, I'll admit that Retch and I shouldn't have laughed, but when you
cleared the picket fence with that little dog flapping behind you
..."

Here I tried unsuccessfully to suppress an outburst of mirth.

"Yeah, yeah," Finley said.  "Very funny!  Well, at the next farm one of
you elbows can go up to the farmhouse and ask permission and show me
how it's done."

The next farm looked like an excellent prospect for hunting,
particularly since we had to stop the car while a huge herd of
pheasants crossed the road and disappeared into one of the overgrown
fields.  The farm was not typical of the area, where most of the places
were kept in tip-top condition.  Here the fields were full of weeds,
the fence posts askew or rotted off, the buildings in need of paint.

Pieces of farm machinery and old cars were scattered about in various
stages of disintegration.  The farmhouse itself had a brooding,
threatening aspect to it, with the paint peeling from the warped
siding, withered brown vines slithering up over the front porch, and
here and there a broken window patched with a piece of cardboard.

Retch stopped the car well back on the driveway and the three of us
stared silently at the house for a few minutes.  "Well," I said to
Finley, "here is where you pass or fail the final exam on hunting
social skills.  Walk on up there and get us permission to hunt."

"Are you out of your mind?"  Finley yelped.  "Didn't you see that sign
back there, 'Trespassers will be shot, ground up, and fed to the
hogs'?"

"That Just goes to show the farmer has a sense of humor," Retch said.

"Now get a move on."

"No!"

"Want to walk home?"

"Stop it, you two," I said.  "I'll tell you what, Al.  I'll walk up to
the house with you.  But you have to knock on the door and do all the
talking."

Finley reluctantly agreed.  As we were getting out of the car, Retch
glanced nervously around and said, "Say, I'll tell you what.  While you
fellas are getting permission, I'll zip back to that little town and
get us some stuff for lunch.  How does that sound?"

Before I could tell him how that sounded, he had put the car in reverse
and shot back up the driveway.

"Great!"  Finley whined.  "Just great!  Now if a dog takes after us,
we'll have to run all the way back to town to slam its head in a car
door!"

"For gosh sakes," I said.  "How many times do I have to tell you?

Never run from a dog!"

As we walked up the driveway toward the house, Finley said, "Speaking
of d-dogs, look at the size of that doghouse over there."

"Don't be silly," I said.  "That's not a doghouse.  It's way too
big."

"Then why is the name 'Fido' painted over the door?"

"I don't know.  Maybe they have a Shetland pony they call Fido, who
knows?  But just look at the size of the chain hooked to the house.

Obviously, a dog would have to be the size of a horse to need a chain
like that.  There doesn't seem to be a dog of any kind around here,
anyway.

Otherwise, it would be out here barking at us by now."

"Maybe it's setting a trap for us," Finley said.  "Luring us in close
so he can jump us."

Finley was starting to make me nervous with his whining about dogs.

"Would you stop it?"  I said, glancing about.

I sized up the situation.  The back door looked like the best bet to
knock on.  The entryway was off an enclosed carport, which,
unfortunately, did not contain a vehicle.  That's usually a bad sign,
an indication that no one is home.  I told Finley to knock on the door
anyway, which he did.  No one was home.  Disappointed, we turned to
leave, but stopped so abruptly our shoes made little squeaking sounds
on the concrete floor.  Then Finley and I made little squeaking sounds
with our mouths.  A massive black beast with dog-like features was
slowly advancing toward the entrance of the carport.  Its lips were
curled back over fangs the size of railroad spikes.  Great rumbling
growls emerged from its dark interior, serious, no-nonsense growls, the
self-righteous growls of a dog that knows it has caught two burglars on
the property and is now going to redeem itself with its master for all
its past mischief by tearing the intruders to shreds.  From the size
and wrath of the beast, I doubted there would be enough left of us even
to serve to the hogs as an appetizer.

I realized instantly the futility of trying to reason with the enraged
creature.  What I needed was a diversion.  Suddenly, one leaped to
mind.

"Run, Finley, run!"  I whispered to him.  "It's your only chance."

Finley, still making the little squeaking sounds, shook his head.  Why
he picked this moment to start following my previous instructions about
dogs I don't know, but I was a good deal peeved at him.  The black
monster backed us slowly toward the rear of the carport, trying to herd
us both into a single corner, possibly with the intention of
dispatching the two of us more efficiently.  As I eased backward,
trying as best I could to shield myself with what was at hand, namely
Finley, I reached out and tried the doorknob of the house.  Unlocked!

I opened the door, leaped inside, and started to gesture for Finley to
follow, but he was already standing in the middle of the kitchen, thus
explaining the blur that had passed me a second before.  I slammed the
door, just as the dog sprang at it.  The force of the impact loosened
the screws in the hinges, but the door held, now bent slightly
inward.

The dog, obviously disappointed, set himself the task of gnawing his
way through the door.

While Finley stood in the middle of the kitchen and shook, I strode
calmly back and forth trying to figure a way out of our predicament.

Then I noticed I was eating a peach.  I hadn't been eating a peach when
we entered the house, and now I was eating a peach.  How odd.  I
glanced at the kitchen table and there were four peaches in a bowl.  I
had absentmindedly snatched up a peach and started eating it, such was
my power of concentration at that moment.  With some amusement, I
started to call Finley's attention to this, only to discover that he
was staring at me in gaping horror.

"You're eating a peach!"  he cried, stating the obvious.  "Not only do
you break and enter, you eat the farmer's food besides!  We're going to
do time for this!"

"Would you stop the whining, Finley?"  I said.  "It's getting on my
nerves.  If the farmer comes home before we get out of here, we'll just
explain the situation to him.  I'm sure he'll understand."  I sucked
the peach pit clean and stuck it in my pocket.  No point in leaving
evidence lying about, just in case the police should become involved.

"Understand!"  Finley said.  "You think when that farmer steps through
the door of this house and sees two complete strangers standing in his
kitchen, he's going to give you time for an explanation?"

"I suppose you have a better idea."

"We'll hide!"

"Nonsense," I replied.  "I'm sure the farmer will respond with good
humor to my explanation of the incident.  Indeed, I wouldn't be a bit
surprised if it doesn't give him a good chuckle."

At that moment we heard a car coming up the driveway.  I peeked through
the curtain.  A sedan was pulling into the carport.  It contained a
beefish man, a hulking teenage boy, and a large, husky woman.  All were
scowling and yelling back and forth at each other.  They got out of the
car.  I rehearsed my little speech explaining the oddity that Finley
and I happened to be standing in their kitchen.

"What's that crazy dog doing?"  the man roared.  "Stop that, Fido!

Luther, grab that fool dog and go chain him up.  First I get two flat
tires and run out of gas, and then I come home and find my dog eating
my house!

What next!  One more thing goes wrong today I'm gonna fly off the
handle!"

I grabbed Finley by the arm and thrust him toward the living room.

just came up with a better idea, Al.  Hide!"

We rushed into the living room and up a flight of stairs.  Finley, his
knees buckling from fright, dodged through a door that turned out to be
a bathroom.  I tried to tell him that a bathroom was a terrible place
to hide from a family that had just returned from a trip to town, but
it was too late.

Someone was tromping angrily up the stairs.  I ducked into a hall
closet, leaving the door open a crack so I could peek out.  The
farmer's husky wife came striding down the hall.  She opened the
bathroom door, went in, and closed the door behind her.  I braced
myself for the scream.  I thought it possible the farmer's wife might
scream, too, but it seemed unlikely.

Probably she would just hurl Finley through the closed door and then
come out and stomp him.  Perhaps while she was stomping him, I could
make a break for it.  Finley might yet serve as a diversion.

Presently, however, the woman came out of the bathroom and went off
downstairs.  A few seconds later, Finley stuck his head out the door
and looked up and down the hall.  He had a crazed look on his face.

While the coast was clear, I jumped out of the closet and rushed over
to Finley.

"How ...?"  I started to ask.

"Hid in the shower," he said, his hushed voice shrill from the stress
of the past few moments.  "Now I'm sure we're going to do time!"

Finley sank into what appeared to be near paralysis, drool dribbling
disgustingly from the corner of his quivering lips.  I grabbed him by
the shirt-front and dragged him after me into a bedroom, where I opened
a window and pushed him out.  Finley bounced onto the slanted carport
roof, slid down to the edge, and dropped unharmed to the ground.  I
made a mental note to chastise him later for dragging his fingernails
on the metal roof, which had produced a hideous screeching similar to
the nerve-fraying sound we boys once scratched out on schoolroom
chalkboards.  Why Finley would choose a time like that for such
juvenile behavior, I can't say, but I found it not the least bit
amusing.  Having ascertained that the escape route was safe enough and
not likely to cause serious injury, I followed Finley to the ground.

He was sitting there in a befuddled state, which was a good deal more
pleasant to me than his constant whining.  I pulled him to his feet,
dusted him off, and dragged him after me toward the driveway.  As soon
as we stepped around the corner, however, Fido set up a maniacal
barking.  A few seconds later, the farmer bounded out of the house.

"What the ...?"  he said, even as his biceps bulged menacingly, by
which I mean stretching his shirt cuffs half way up to his elbows.

"Good day, sir," I said.  "Fine place you have here.  And an excellent
watchdog, too, I might add.  Big fellow, isn't he?  Probably good with
children, if I don't miss my guess.  But to the point, sir.  I was
wondering if you might be so kind as to let us hunt on your
property."

"Shucks, mister, I don't mind at all," he replied, smiling.  "Just shut
the gates after yourselves.  Good luck.  Stop by on your way out.  The
wife's gonna bake a peach pie.  Be pleased if you stopped in for some
pie and a cup of coffee."

"We'd be delighted," I said.

At that moment, the farmer's wife screamed from the kitchen.  "Luther,
you rotten kid, you ate one of the peaches I was saving for a pie!"

"Did not, Ma!"  the boy's voice shouted back.

"Luther, don't lie to your ma!"  the farmer bellowed toward the
house.

He grinned at Finley and me.  "Ain't safe to leave food around that
kid.  Sucks up grub like a gol-durn vacuum cleaner."

I grinned back.  "Boys will be boys, I guess."

Retch arrived back just then.  I thanked the farmer for his generosity
and walked over to the car, dragging Finley along by his shirt-front.

"How'd it go?"  Retch asked.

"Fine," I said.  "We can hunt."

"Great," Retch said.  "What's wrong with Finley?"

"Nothing that a little more practice in the social skills of hunting
won't cure," I said.

"But he's so pale and shaky," Retch said.  "He ain't even whining."

"Don't worry," I said.  "He'll get around to it."

The Clown I admit it: my sense of humor is a bit weird.  It's caused me
some trouble over the years.  For example, the only time I ever got
sent to the principal's office at Delmore Blightjunior High was because
I laughed in the wrong place at the wrong time--Miss Bindle's math
class.

They don't make teachers like Miss Bindle anymore.  At least, I hope
they don't.  She was tiny, scrawny, and fierce, with an eighty-year-old
face and twenty-year-old red hair.  Her wrinkles were permanently fused
into a frown beneath the glowing halo of frizzy hair.  Miss Bindle was
the Jesse James of sarcasm: she could quick-draw a sarcastic remark and
drill you between the eyes with it at thirty paces.  She once hit Mort
Simmons with a slug of sarcasm that spun him around half out of his
desk.  Then she walked over and coolly finished him off with two shots
to the head.  Mort recovered, but he was never the same afterward.  His
was a sad case.

Mort had always been dumb.  The reason Miss Bindle drilled him was that
he had been sneaking a look at one of my answers during a test, that's
how dumb he was, or so Miss Bindle remarked, catching me with a
ricochet from her shot at Mort.  She never coddled us dumb kids, as did
some of the kinder, more merciful teachers.  She made us learn the same
stuff as the smart kids.  A few teachers took pity on us and let us
relax in the cozy vacuum of our dumbness, but Miss Bindle forced us to
learn everything the smart kids did, even though it took us three times
as long.  Everybody hated her for it, even the smart kids, who were
cheated out of the satisfaction of knowing more than the dumb ones.

Anybody could see that wasn't fair.

But I started to tell about Mort.  He couldn't do arithmetic without
counting on his fingers.  Miss Bindle said she didn't care what parts
of his anatomy he had to count on, he was going to learn just as much
math as anybody else.  Mort did, too, but it was a terrible strain on
him, dumb as he was.

When we got to multiplying and dividing fractions his fingers moved so
fast he had to keep a glass of ice water on his desk to cool them
off.

It was a good thing we didn't do algebra in seventh grade, because
somebody would have had to stand next to Mort with a fire
extinguisher.

It is my understanding that modern educational theory dismisses the use
of fear as a means of inducing learning in adolescents.  Educators now
take a more civilized approach and try to make learning an enjoyable
experience.  I agree with that.  I know that all my children enjoyed
school much more than I did.  On the other hand, none of them knows how
to multiply and divide fractions.  I suppose that's part of the
trade-off.

Fear was Miss Bindle's one and only motivator.  It was as though she
had done her teacher training at Marine boot camp.  She would stick her
face an inch from yours and, snarling and snapping, rearrange the
molecules of your brain to suit her fancy.  It was clearly evident to
the person whose brain molecules were being rearranged that breath
mints either hadn't been invented or hadn't come in a flavor pleasing
to Miss Bindle.  The oral hygiene of an executioner, however, is
scarcely a matter of great concern to the potential victim.

Miss Bindle preferred Psychological violence--whipping your psyche into
a pink froth--to physical violence.  Physical violence was direct and
straightforward, something all of us youngsters thoroughly
understood.

There was no mystery to it.  Given a choice, we would have taken the
teacher's physical violence, which consisted of snatching the culprit
by the hair and dragging him off to the principal's office.  As I say,
Miss Bindle was extremely short, only about half the size of some of
the larger boys.  When Miss Bindle grabbed them by the hair and took
off for the office, they had to trail along behind her in a bent-over
posture, which didn't do a lot for the macho image of some of the guys,
particularly if they were saying, "Ow ow ow," as they went out the
door.  On the other hand, if they had stood erect, in order to depart
from the room in a dignified fashion, Miss Bindle would have dangled
from their hair, her feet swinging a good six inches off the floor.

It was a no-win situation, and wisdom dictated the less painful of the
two modes of being escorted to the office.  In contrast to Miss Bindle,
other teachers merely pointed toward the door and ordered, "Go to the
office!"  This method allowed the typical louts, some of whom were near
voting age, to leave the room swaggering and sneering.  No lout ever
left Miss Bindle's room swaggering and sneering.

I was a fairly timid fellow, and took great care never to attract the
wrath of Miss Bindle.  I studied ways to make myself invisible in her
class, with such success that a couple of times she marked me absent
when I was there.  Pitiful victims were snatched from their desks on
all sides of me, but month after month I escaped unsnatched, making
myself increasingly invisible, until finally there were only a few
weeks left of my seventh-grade sentence.

I thought I was going to make it safely through to the end of the
school year, but I hadn't taken into account my weird sense of humor or
my friend Slick.

Clifford Slick was the class clown.  Slick felt his purpose in life was
to make people laugh, and he was pretty good at it.  Everybody liked
Slick.

We would gather around him during lunch hour to watch his routines and
laugh ourselves sick.  He did a wonderful impression of Miss Bindle
snatching a kid by the hair and dragging him off.  He did both parts
alternately, the kid and Miss Bindle, and it was hilarious.  One of the
reasons Slick got the routine down so well was that he got snatched
about once a week.  It was as though he had researched the act.  He
knew every little nuance of a snatching, and how to exaggerate it just
enough to turn the horror into humor.  It was a gift.

One day before school, I made the mistake of bragging to Slick that I
was going to make it all the way through the year without getting
snatched by Miss Bindle.  Slick was concentrating on combing his hair
into a weird shape.  His father had shot a bear, and Slick had come
into a quantity of bear grease.  He slathered a copious amount of bear
grease on his hair, and was delighted to see that he could now comb it
into any shape he wanted.  He combed it flat down against his skull, so
that it looked as though he were wearing a shiny, tight leather
helmet.

"How's that look?"  he asked me.  "Funny?"

I grinned.  "Yeah, pretty funny, Cliff.  I like the one best, though,
where you comb it straight out from your forehead.  It looks like a
duck bill.

Ha!"

"Okay, good," he said.  "I'll go with that.  Should get some laughs.

Now what was that you were saying?"

"I said I've never been snatched by Miss Bindle.  I'm going to make it
all the way through the year without getting snatched."

Slick turned a malevolent smile on me.  "No you ain't.  Today you're
going to bust out laughing right in old Bindle's class!"

"Not a chance!"  The mere thought of bursting out laughing in Miss
Bindle's class would totally paralyze my entire laughing apparatus.  It
was like having a fail-safe mechanism.

"You'll laugh," Slick said.  "I'll make you laugh."

I shook my head.  "No way."

In the whole hundred or so years that Miss Bindle had taught, I was
reasonably sure that not so much as a snicker had ever been heard in
her class, let alone a laugh.  It was absolutely insane for Slick to
think that I, a profoundly fearful and insecure person, would achieve
fame as the one kid ever to burst out laughing within snatching range
of Miss Bindle.

As soon as Miss Bindle's back was turned to scratch some fractions on
the blackboard, Slick went into his routine.  He took a dainty sip from
his ink bottle, and then made a terrible face.  His greasy duck-bill
hair contributed considerably to the comedy.  I felt a laugh coming on,
but easily strangled it.  Slick looked disappointed.  Then he stuck two
yellow pencils up his nose, his impression of a walrus.  I felt a major
laugh inflating inside me.  Slick next imitated a walrus taking a
dainty sip of tea.  That almost got me, but the laugh exploded deep in
my interior with a muffled whump!  Suspicious, Olga Bonemarrow, in the
next row, glared at me.  Feeling as though I had suffered major
internal injuries, I wiped some tears from my eyes.  Slick took this as
an encouraging sign and pulled out all the stops.  He was doing his
duck-bill walrus daintily sipping tea while wiggling its ears when Miss
Bindle turned to face the class.

"Clifford!"  she roared, hurtling down the aisle like a tiny, ancient,
redheaded dreadnought.  Slick's ears ceased to wiggle; the pencils in
his nose quivered; a bit of inky drool dribbled from his gaping
mouth.

He clenched his eyes in preparation for a major-league snatching.  Miss
Bindle grabbed at his hair and headed off down the aisle, obviously
expecting Slick to be firmly in tow.  But Slick was still seated at his
desk, eyes clenched, pencils up nose.

Miss Bindle rushed back and made another pass at his hair, but again
her hand slipped off.  She snatched again and again, with even less
effect.

Apparently, it was the first time she had ever encountered bear-greased
hair on one of her snatchees.

All the while, Slick sat there numbly, the yellow pencils poking out of
his nose and a terrible expression on his face.  Maybe it was Slick's
expression that got to me, or maybe it was the way the teacher stared
down at her greasy palms, her eyes full of rage and disgust and
incomprehension.

Whatever the trigger, it bypassed the fail-safe mechanism.  My loud,
booming laugh detonated like a bomb in the frozen silence of the
room.

I could scarcely believe it was my own laugh.  I hoped it might be
Mort's: only he might possibly be stupid enough to laugh in Miss
Bindle's math class.  But no, the laugh, now diminishing from a roar
into a sort of breathless squealing, was none other than my own.  I had
been betrayed by my weird sense of humor!

By Clifford Slick and his bear grease!  And yes, even by Miss Bindle!

As I writhed in an agony of mirth, half hilarity and half terror, I
could feel Miss Bindle's stiletto eyes piercing my living--for the
moment--flesh.  My stunned classmates failed to find my laughter
infectious.  He who laughed in Miss Bindle's class laughed alone.

And then it happened.  "Clifford!  Pat!"  snarled Miss Bindle.  "Go to
the office!"  She pointed the way with a finger shiny with bear
grease.

I left the classroom erect and dignified.  Cliff went out the door
sideways, doing his comical little vaudeville dance.  It didn't get a
laugh.

After the principal, Mr. Wiggens, gave us his bored lecture on the
importance of discipline in a learning environment, he ordered us back
to class.  As I was passing the entrance of the cloakroom, I heard
strange sounds emanating from the far end.  A quick glance revealed
that it was Miss Bindle.

At first I thought she was crying, possibly over the disappointment of
failing to snatch Cliff's and my hair.  But no!  She was laughing!

Cackling, actually, quietly and to herself.  It struck me that Miss
Bindle had a weird sense of humor, too.

A Good Night's Sleep Hunters and anglers naturally prefer to carry
their own sleeping accommodations right along with them in the form of
sleeping bags and tents, campers, or trailers.  Sometimes, however, it
becomes necessary to seek out commercial lodging, a circumstance that
almost always proves to be traumatic.

My experience, though, has been that hotel and motel managers greatly
exaggerate their traumas.  I can accept the screaming and swearing, but
the weeping is a bit much.

I recall the time Retch Sweeney, Clifford Gritts, and I flipped our
raft while steelheading on the Tushwallop River.  We made it to shore
with most of our gear, but the raft floated off down the river and we
had to pursue it for nearly an hour before we caught up with it.

Laughing as we leaped logs and plowed through brush, we had a great
time, even though Clifford did get a nasty gash over one eye when a
branch hit him.  He tied a grungy old bandanna around his head to sop
up the blood and keep it from getting in his eye.  One of my pant legs
hooked on a knot and tore so badly above the knee that I just ripped it
the rest of the way off.  Retch Sweeney did a nose dive into the middle
of what appeared to be a hog wallow, although there were no pigs
about.

The mosquitoes and gnats had probably carried them off.  Our faces were
smeared with the remains of various bloodsucking insects we had slapped
to death.  Obviously shaken by the viciousness of our assault on their
legiens, some of the smarter insects took cover in our beards and hair,
from which they fought a guerrilla war.  Finally, we caught up with the
raft, hauled it to shore, and floated the reSt of the way down to where
we had parked the car.

"Whew!"  Retch gasped as we tied the raft onto the top of the car.  "I
must be getting' old.  These little fishing trips are startin' to wear
me out."

"Gee," Clifford said.  "Maybe you better see a doctor.

A little fishin' shouldn't tire a man."

"Yeah," I put in.  "If something out of the ordinary had happened and
we'd had some strenuous exercise, why, I could understand your being a
bit tired.  But, my gosh, Retch, a simple little float trip down the
river!

Clifford's right.  You'd better see a doctor."

"Maybe I will," Retch said.  "Maybe I will."

"And another thing," I said, "we're not gonna spend the night out in
this rain, not with you dying and all.  We'll get a room at that resort
hotel down the road--what was it called?"

"The Cutie Pooh Resort," Clifford said, trying to squeeze some
guerrillas out of his beard.  Retch didn't object, so we got in the car
and drove back to the highway without experiencing difficulty, except
for getting stuck in a muddy creek bed.  Retch barely had enough
strength left to lift the rear end of the car while Clifford stuck some
rocks and logs under the tires.  The only mishap occurred when the
bumper slipped out of Retch's hands and somehow popped all the buttons
of his shirt, exposing the rather vulgar tattoo that had mysteriously
appeared on his chest during a delightful evening we had spent in a
South American seaport with a group of local literaries, discussing the
cultural influences on the literary works of Gabriel Garcfa Marquez.

Luckily, the inscription on the tattoo was in Spanish and could be
understood only by persons fluent in that language.  The one
explanation we ever came up with for the appearance of the tattoo was
that it resulted from the curse of a man who may have been an Indian
witch doctor disguised as a German tourist.

Retch might unintentionally have offended the witch doctor by using him
as a shield while we fought our way to the exit, the locals having
taken exception to some of our critical assessments.  Retch's wife said
she had some trouble swallowing that theory, but then she's had no
experience with witch doctors.

"That does it," I said to Retch when we got to the highway.  "You're
going to get a physical checkup first thing after this fishing trip.  I
can understand your letting a car slip out of your hands and dropping
it, but not a compact, for gosh sakes."

"I know, I know!"  Retch moaned.  "I feel weak as a baby."

We headed down the road toward the resort, but before we had gone far,
we passed the Old Country Village Antique Shop.

"StoP the car!"  shouted Clifford.  "Did you see what I just saw?  That
antique store had a moose-head mount in the window.  I've got to have
it for my den wall."  He rushed in and bought the ratty old thing and
stuffed it into the backseat with the dying Retch and the rest of our
gear.

As the three of us trooped into the lobby of the Cutie Pooh Resort, I
was struck by the somber quiet and sterile atmosphere of the place.  It
seemed more like a rest home than a resort hotel, as it proclaimed
itself to be.  I might have been mistaken, but my impression was that
the guests in the lobby looked upon us with a good deal of interest,
peering up from their bridge games and dominoes.  I guess that is what
is meant by resort hotel--you have to resort to inane activities to
stave off the boredom.

The reception desk was unattended.  Clifford pounded the bell a few
times.  When that effort failed to produce a clerk, I shouted, "Anybody
home here?"  Still no response.  At that moment Retch noticed the shiny
black tips of two shoes protruding from a shallow inset in a side wall,
the wearer of the shoes apparently having flattened himself into the
depression in an unsuccessful effort to conceal himself, for what
purpose I could not imagine.

"Hey, you with the shiny shoes," Retch yelled.  "How about a little
service here?"

The desk clerk then emerged and confronted us with a shaky grin that
scarcely made an indent on his overall expression of disdain.

"Yessss?"  he said, peering at us over the top of his spectacles.

"We'd like a room," I said, wincing as I leaned down for some frenzied
scratching of a few hundred mosquito bites on the extremity from which
half my pant leg had been torn.

"Sorry, we're all filled up."

"Don't give us that!"  Clifford said, tweaking him on his carnation.

"We have a dying man here and ..."

At that moment Clifford began to emit absolutely horrible sounds,
finally communicating through wild gestures that one of the guerrillas
in his mustache had charged up a nostril with bayonet fixed.

"Quick!"  I ordered Retch.  "Slap him on the back of the head!"

Retch immediately obeyed and gave Clifford a clout that buckled his
knees and sent the guerrilla hurtling out into space toward the
startled clerk.

"Not with the steelhead!"  I shouted at Retch, who was holding the
twelve-pounder by the tail in preparation for giving Clifford's head
another whack.  "You'll bruise its flesh!"

"I'd bruise Retch's flesh if he wasn't already terminally ill!"  roared
Clifford.  They got into a little shoving match.

By now the other guests in the lobby had clustered together and
retreated to a far corner.  They seemed rather a pitiful lot, and I
wondered vaguely if they hadn't possibly come to the resort for
treatment of a nervous condition.

"Please!  Please, gentlemen!"  pleaded the desk clerk, who seemed to
have the same nervous affliction as his guests.  "We don't allow rowdy
behavior!"

"That's good," I replied, "because we have a seriously ill man here and
he needs a good night's rest and some peace and quiet.  If you have any
rowdies show up, just give us a call and we'll deal with them in short
order.

Speaking of short order, we'd like a little grub sent up to our
room."

"I told you, there is no ... Oh, all right, we do have a room."  He
scribbled the room rate on a card for me to sign.  I stared at the rate
card in amazement.  Then I realized the rate indicated was merely the
clerk's little joke, a bit of absurdity to put us at ease.

"Hey, you're not so bad after all," I told him.  "That's the funniest
thing I've seen all day, you pretending that we want to buy the whole
establishment instead of just renting a room for the night."

The clerk focused his attention on Retch, as though becoming aware of
him for the first time.  "What on earth is that?"  he asked, wrinkling
up his nose, an expression that caused me to mistake the intent of his
question.

"We think it's pig," I replied.  "It might possibly have been a bear
wallow he fell into, but my general impression after spending an hour
with him in a warm car is that it's pig.  What's your guess?"

The clerk shuddered visibly.  "I was referring not to the odor but to
that rather ghastly tattoo on his chest."

"Oh," I said.  "That's a real dilly of a tattoo, isn't it?  My sick
friend here is the only person I know with an X-rated chest.  You don't
read Spanish, I take it."

"No."

"Good."

After handing the steelhead to the clerk and giving him instructions
for its proper care as well as a few tips on how to remove fish scales
from a dark suit, we hauled some of our gear in from the car and packed
it into the elevator.  One of the other passengers in the elevator
seemed a bit crabby and expressed his dissatisfaction with having to
share an elevator with us and our gear.  I apologized for the slight
inconvenience and discomfort we might be causing him.

"The problem is," I explained, "that if we let all the air out of it
tonight, we waste a lot of good fishing time pumping the raft back up
again in the morning."

"Bamf Phoof!"  the man replied, apparently not satisfied with my
explanation.

"Be careful with that moose head," I warned Clifford.  "The horns are
messing up the lady's hairdo."

"Sorry, ma'am," Clifford said.  "This is the first moose I ever shot,
and I like to take it with me wherever I go.  Guess I'm just
sentimental."

"We'd have left the raft and moose head at the car, but we didn't want
them to get stolen," I explained.  "You can't tell what kind of people
you'll find in one of these hotels."

The man squeezed his head out from behind the raft.  "I can't disagree
with that," he snapped.  From his tone, I judged that he himself had
suffered at the hands of some disreputable types in hotels, but as he
seemed on the verge of rupturing an important artery, I chose not to
pursue the subject with him.

The rest of the evening passed without incident, I'm happy to report.

Oh, there was that business with the sheriff and his deputy, but it
didn't amount to much.

First of all, Clifford headed back to the car to bring in the rest of
our gear.  As I've often told him, he should pay more attention to
where he is going.  Clutching an armful of gear on his return, he
glanced over his shoulder as he walked down the hall behind a lady
guest.  He later said he thought he had heard a noise behind him and
expected Retch to be sneaking up to pull some stunt on him with the
moose head, because that's the sort of thing Retch thinks is amusing.

As far as I know, the lady in the tight evening gown never gave a
satisfactory explanation as to why she suddenly stopped and bent over,
but I gathered from later testimony that it had something to do with
smoothing a wrinkle in her nylons.  Now, I have been prodded with the
butt end of a fishing rod on occasion and don't think it anything to
raise a great fuss over.  The lady, however, apparently found the
experience new and exhilarating, because she emitted a shrill yelp and
bounded into the air as though from a trampoline.  Clifford, looking
back over his shoulder at the time, had no idea he was even involved in
the incident, much less the culprit.  His first impression was that he
was being set upon by a crazy woman intent on flailing him to death
with her purse.  It is quite understandable, then, that he should
attempt to hold her at bay, fencing style, with a section of fly rod.

Later that evening, Clifford and I were returning from reviving
ourselves in the hotel bar when another minor incident occurred.  We
had just stepped out of the elevator when Clifford suddenly got the
punchline of a joke I'd told him an hour before and burst out in a loud
and unexpected guffaw.  The couple ahead of us, dressed to the hilt in
evening attire, didn't even look back, but picked up their pace
considerably.  just as they were passing a linen closet, a moose stuck
its head out and said, "Pardon me, but can you direct me to the nearest
restroom?"

"Gee, I thought it was you guys," Retch explained.  "I heard Clifford
laugh."

"It was a dumb stunt," I scolded.  "That scream almost deafened me."

"The lady took it pretty well, though," Retch said.  "She probably has
a sense of humor, which is more than I can say for her hubby."

Naturally, both of these incidents were reported to the hotel
manager.

The clerk came and told us that we would have to leave the premises
immediately, but we refused on the grounds that we couldn't possibly
take a dying man out into the rain.

Retch was contemplating whether he needed a shower, having had one the
previous week, when the sheriff and his deputy arrived.  They turned
out to be good fellows, readily accepted our explanations of the two
unfortunate incidents, and then joined us in our room to finish off a
fifth of Old Thumsucker and exchange a few fishing yarns, both of them
now being off duty.

The sheriff had a laugh like a bull, and I expected the clerk to come
pounding on the door at any instant to hush the lawman up, but not a
peep was heard from that strange fellow the rest of the night.  An
ensuing poker game lasted until three in the morning, at which point
the sheriff and his deputy had cleaned us out.  Every time the sheriff
won a hand, which was on the rare occasions his deputy didn't, he let
go with a roar that must have caused the other hotel guests to levitate
a foot out of their beds.  We tried to get the deputy to wrestle Retch
for his share of the winnings against our raft, but the deputy said he
didn't even want to touch, let alone wrestle, a man who had a tattoo
like Retch's on his chest.  The sheriff said he didn't blame the deputy
one bit, and furthermore, if Retch didn't get some buttons on his shirt
he'd have to arrest him for indecent exposure.

"What is that, anyway?"  the sheriff asked, wrinkling up his face.

"Just a little Spanish epigram," I said.

"Huh," the sheriff said.  "I coulda swore it was pig."

When we awoke at six, Retch Sweeney seemed like his old self once
again, and demonstrated his fitness for us by doing a hundred
pushups.

"You wanta see me do a hundred with my other arm?"  he asked, but
Clifford and I were convinced that our friend had recovered from his
infirmity, both of us remarking with some amazement upon the healing
effects of a night of undisturbed sleep in tranquil surroundings.

The manager and the clerk were at the checkout desk as we prepared to
depart the premises.  They were unshaven and rumpled and appeared to
have put in a miserable night, although neither of them volunteered to
inform us about the harrowing experience that had reduced them to this
pitiful state.  Both of them wore terrible smiles, made all the more
awful by the uncontrolled quivering of their lips.

"It's none of our business," I told them, "but if you fellows are in
any sort of trouble we might be able to help you out.  If somebody's
giving you a rough time ..."

"No!  No!"  squeaked the manager.  "Everything is fine.  just check out
and be on your way.  Very nice having you gentlemen as guests."

"Well, I'll tell you," I said, "we've a bit of a problem.  You see we
got in a poker game with the sheriff and his deputy and they won all
our money.

About all we can do is give you our raft here and this fine moose head
to boot.  They're worth a few hundred bucks."

"I couldn't think of taking your raft," the manager said, nor your
moose either.  We'll just forget the bill.  Your visit is on the house,
what's left of it."

"That's mighty decent of you," Clifford said.  "But we still got a
problem.  We're gonna be down here fishin' for a couple more days.  We
got a tent to sleep in, but do you suppose you could loan us a twenty
for eatin' money?"

"Gentlemen," said the manager, "we'd be delighted to loan you a twenty
for eating money, if it will hasten you on your way."

Well, as I like to say, you can't judge a book by its cover and the
same goes for hotels.  That manager and his clerk revealed themselves
to be real folks after all.  And I told them so.  I said if any of the
three of us was ever in the area on vacation we'd make a point of
staying at their hotel.  The manager was so taken aback by this sincere
expression of appreciation and sentiment that he appeared on the verge
of dropping into a dead faint.

As we were walking to our car, a busload of new guests arrived.  Retch
gave the passengers a friendly wave, causing his buttonless shirt to
flare open.  It created quite an uproar on the bus, many of the
passengers shouting vehemently at the driver.  The bus screeched out of
the parking lot and headed back down the highway, leaving us standing
in a cloud of diesel fumes.  While I was scratching my head and trying
to guess the reason for such peculiar conduct, I happened to notice a
banner strung across the portal of the hotel.

It said: CUTIE POOH RESORT WELCOMES THE STATE'S HIGH SCHOOL SPANISH
TEACHERS."

A Brief History of Giving, (1942-89) Age eight: I have yet in my life
to give anybody a gift.  I have not even thought about giving anybody a
gift.  By some happy stroke of fate, I have been exclusively on the
receiving end of gifts.  I am happy with this arrangement and see no
reason to change it.

Age nine: Mother tells me the time has come when I should start giving
Christmas presents to other members of the immediate family.  We
argue.

She wins.

Mother gives me three dollars to buy presents for my sister,
grandmother, and herself.  The Saturday before Christmas I go to town
to shop for gifts.  I am tense, confused.  Then I find the perfect gift
for my sister.  Christmas money now reduced to $2.95.

Stress of shopping makes me hungry.  Contemplate eating half of
sister's gift, but resist temptation.  Drop into Niman's Soda Fountain
and calm my nerves with banana split.  Christmas funds now reduced to
$2.70 but nerves calm.

Return to shopping in decisive mood.  Buy grandmother five skeins of
embroidery thread--my first thoughtful gift.  ("Oh, how thoughtful!")
Buy Mother exquisite little red glass cup--my first expensive gift.

("Oh, you shouldn't have!") Relax with hot dog and Coke.  Both I and
Christmas funds exhausted.

Age ten: My previous Christmas gifts a big hit.  So buy sister another
candy bar, grandmother five skeins of embroidery thread, and Mother
exquisite little red glass cup.  ("Well, it's the thought that
counts.") Starting to get the hang of Christmas shopping.

Age eleven: Acquire girlfriend--first serious relationship with
opposite sex.  Become aware of relationship when Betty Swartz whispers
to me that Ruthie likes me.  I smile nonchalantly and break out in cold
sweat.  No girl has ever liked me before.  This is heady stuff.  Word
spreads fast that Ruthie and I like each other.  I can think of little
else.

Ruthie is one of the most beautiful girls in the sixth grade.  I'm the
envy of all the guys to whom I've spread the word that Ruthie likes
me.

I wonder if I should consummate the relationship by actually speaking
to Ruthie.

Decide to wait; no sense crowding her at this fragile stage.

Hear rumor that Ruthie plans to give me present for Christmas.

Cripes!

Lie awake nights worrying about whether I should give Ruthie a
present.

What if it's all a big joke?  Maybe Ruthie doesn't intend to give me a
present at all.  Maybe she doesn't even like me.  Cripes!  But what if
Ruthie gives me a present and I don't give her one?  Cripes!  I'd
better give her a present, but what?  I have no idea what girls like.

Ask Mother.  She says all girls like nice soap, that I can't miss with
nice soap.  I don't know much more about soap than I do about girls,
but buy Ruthie the nicest soap I can find and gift wrap it, with a
little pink bow on top.

At recess the last day before Christmas vacation, Ruthie and I exchange
presents.  I smile nonchalantly, Ruthie giggles.  I sense that soon we
will actually talk.  Ruthie's present to me turns out to be a Big
Little Book, a genre I gave up some years before, but it's the thought
that counts.  By the end of the day, word comes to me that Ruthie has
broken off our relationship.

She doesn't like me anymore.

I report the failed romance to Mother.  "You gave her what?  Three bars
of Lifebuoy!"  Mother walks away shaking her head.  just my luck to
have my first affair with the one girl in the world who doesn't like
soap.

Age twelve: Christmas shopping for the family is no easier; more
complicated if anything.  Sister's allergy has cleared up, and she is
now allowed to eat candy.  Mother informs me she herself has an
adequate, perhaps even excessive, supply of exquisite little red glass
cups.  On the plus side, grandmother says she may soon take up
embroidery as a hobby.

Age thirty: Have gradually begun to master the two basic types of
gifts: the thoughtful and the expensive, and their respective
difficulties.  Realize that nothing is gained by combining the two.

Each stands on its own merits.

To pour both thought and expense into a single gift is to waste either
thinking or money.  You don't have to expend any thought on a diamond
bracelet for a wife or girlfriend, or on a sports car for your kid.

They will be happy with an expensive gift even if it is totally
thoughtless.  (I suppose there are families of sufficient wealth where
a wife might say, "A sable stole!  How thoughtful of you, Fred!"  or
the kid might say, "Gee, Dad, how thoughtful--a Ferrari.") The expense
of the expensive gift, of course, must be apparent.  It is unwise, I
learn, to pay big bucks for an antique pine chest that may turn out to
be identical to one the recipient's grandparents are currently using
for a cat box.  If I pay four hundred dollars for a gift, it better
shout out "Four hundred dollars!"  loud and clear.

Otherwise, I might as well go with a thoughtful gift.

Being of modest means in this period of my life, I am limited to giving
thoughtful (cheap) gifts.  The thoughtful gift, alas, involves the
tedium of actually thinking about the recipient at some length, in
order to match the gift to his or her life-style, hobby, occupation, or
emotional state of the moment.  As I now know, one must be particularly
wary Of thoughtful gifts that may imply unintended statements about the
recipient's character or, worse yet, make rude remarks about his or her
habits of personal hygiene.  That is why gifts of soap, or
handkerchiefs for that matter, should be avoided.  ("A box of
handkerchiefs?  Is he trying to tell me ...?") Indeed, gifts that make
statements of any kind are fraught with risk.  My policy now is to
select only those gifts that know how to keep their mouths shut.

Age forty: Begin teaching the art of giving.  Wife buys expensive wood
bowl for friend, Frieda, who's done her a special favor.  Bowl is
hand-carved out of wood so rare only five other pieces exist in the
world, four under lock and key in the Vatican.  Carving personally
signed by dead artist, Leonardo da Vinci Perkins, whose name is spoken
in hushed reverence by aficionados of wood-bowl carving.

Wife begins wrapping gift.  Using Socratic method, I attempt to
instruct her on the art of expensive giving.

"Am I correct in assuming Frieda knows her woods pretty well?"  I ask
gently.

"Frieda couldn't tell a two-by-four from a sheet of plywood."

"I see.  Wouldn't she have perhaps developed an interest in rare woods
while studying the works of Leonardo da Vinci Perkins?"

"Frieda?  She's never even heard of Perkins."

"Hmmmm.  Do you think it might be a good idea to insert the receipt for
the bowl somewhere in the wrapping as though it had slipped in there by
accident?"

"That's so crude and disgusting only you would think of it!"

"True.  But do you perhaps see any resemblance between this work of art
and the bowl our daughter Erin turned out in high school shop class
when she was a sophomore?  Is it at all possible that Frieda might
think this a thoughtful gift related to her gardening, drill a drain
hole in the bottom, and plant petunias in it?"

"Well, don't just stand there yacking.  Go get the receipt out of my
purse while I undo an edge of the wrapping."

Age fifty-one: There are now eighty-seven different occasions and
several hundred people for whom I must buy gifts throughout the course
of each year.

If I go on a trip with my wife, I am for some unknown reason expected
to buy gifts for all the relatives, friends, and casual acquaintances
who didn't get to go on the trip with us.  That is what my wife tells
me.  Our neighbors move to the next town to buy a new house.  We get
them a going-away present and then a housewarming present.  We buy
presents for people who are going to get married and again when they
get married, for people who are going to have a baby and again when
they have the baby.  It seems endless.  Half my waking hours would be
spent shopping for gifts if I hadn't reduced the process to a science:
I let my wife buy all the presents.  Occasionally, though, I go gift
shopping with her to offer my services as a consultant.

"How do you think your sister would like this blouse?"  she asks.  "Is
it her?  Or do you think it's a bit too frilly?  Perhaps if we found
something in a pink ..."

"it's her," I advise, rearranging my hairline in a mirror.  "Buy it."

Gift shopping has become incredibly easy in recent years, even when I
must go alone in search of a present for my wife.  Fortunately, she has
a fondness for exquisite little red glass cups.  As she likes to say,
it's the thought that counts.

Pouring My Own Some years ago, I bought a little house in the country,
because my wife said it was "perfect."  An hour after closing the deal,
Bun said there was only one small problem with the house.

"I thought it was perfect," I said.

"It is," she replied.  "But I don't like the little dirt path that
leads to the back door."

"I like it," I said.  "It says 'country' to me."

"It says 'dirt' to me.  Put in a concrete walk."

I called a contractor who specialized in concrete work.

The man turned out to be an amateur comic.  He would not be serious.

The price he gave me for a thirty-foot walk obviously was intended to
get a laugh.

I refused him even a chuckle in response, hoping to discourage any
further attempts at humor.  "Seriously, though, how much would you
charge?"  I asked.

He quoted the same absurd price.  The man would not let go of what he
obviously thought a wonderful gag.  So I gave up on him.

"I'll pour the walk myself," I told Bun.  "It can't be that
difficult.

I'll slap together a form out of some two-by-fours, dump in some premix
concrete, smooth it all up, and presto!--a concrete walk!"

"And--presto!--a disaster!"  she snapped.  "Pay the man what he
asks!"

"No, I will not," I said.  "After all, it isn't as though I haven't had
experience pouring concrete.  I poured the patio at our last house and
it didn't turn out too badly."

"Yeah, as a poor imitation of a Henry Moore reclining sculpture!"

"So, you can't have everything.  Besides, I ran into some unforeseen
problems."

There are many unforeseen problems working with concrete.  The
wonderful thing about it is that you know whatever you make may last a
thousand years.

That, of course, can also be one of its major disadvantages.  The
recipe for concrete consists of mixing unknown quantities of water with
one part cement, three parts sand, five parts gravel, and ten parts
cold sweat.  The cold sweat results from the fact that wet concrete
contains its own ticking version of a time bomb.  When the clock runs
out, the concrete hardens into permanence, without regard for your
desires or feelings.  It has no mercy.  It doesn't say, "Oh, I see, you
wanted a nice flat smooth concrete floor, and I'm still in the shape of
surf.  I'll just hold off hardening for another hour."  No, concrete
doesn't say that.  If the clock runs out while the concrete is in the
shape of surf, you get surf--surf that will last a thousand years!

Back when I was a teenager, a carpenter hired me to help him pour a
concrete floor in a dairy barn.  The premix trucks brought too much
concrete too soon too fast, which is their standard practice.  Here I
must say a word about the drivers of concrete trucks.  Before being
hired, they are required to sit through all the Marx Brothers movies.

If they crack so much as a smile at the wild antics on the screen, they
are immediately disqualified for employment.  The reason for this is
that the owners of concrete companies believe it is bad for business to
have their drivers writhing on the ground in paroxysms of mirth by the
frenzied antics of the recipients of too much concrete too soon too
fast.

Because they had other orders to fill, the drivers dumped the concrete
in great gray oozing heaps at one end of the dairy barn.  The carpenter
released a strangled cry of horror, grabbed a shovel and wheelbarrow,
and turned into a streaking blur of motion, depositing dabs of concrete
here and there about the form but without reducing the gray heaps
noticeably.  Despite their training, a couple of the drivers broke into
smiles, and one had to bite his lip to keep from laughing outright.

Knowing nothing about the nature of concrete, I stood gawking at the
carpenter's amazing performance, unsure of whether I was expected to
applaud.  Suddenly the blur halted a few inches from my face, and a
crazed wild creature emerged, sweat streaming down over its bulging red
eyes and dribbling off its quivering jowls.  it barked sharply at me.

Supposing that my life was in danger, I too grabbed a shovel and
wheelbarrow and began moving concrete, although not with the same
enthusiasm as the creature.  By midnight, the floor was done.  t was
not unattractive.  The gray waves undulated rhythmically from one end
of the barn to the other, here and there crashing against a wall or
storage bin, and at other places settling into hard rippling pools,
havens of calm on the edge of a receding storm.  The farmer who owned
the barn, however, was a practical man, and not much given to aesthetic
appreciation.  He expressed the opinion, rather sullenly I thought,
that his cows would churn their own butter just walking to their
stanchions.

Hoping to introduce a bit of levity into a tense situation, I told him
he might like the floor better if he painted it blue, possibly with
blotches of white scattered about to suggest foam.  He responded only
by glaring at me and grinding his teeth.  I judged from his expression
that he didn't think highly of our work, although that is only
conjecture.  Personally, I thought the floor turned out pretty well,
particularly considering that it was the work of an inexperienced
teenage boy and a crazed wild creature.

One of the reasons I'd run into unforeseen problems pouring the patio
was that I'd read this how-to pamphlet on pouring concrete.  The
author, who's apparently still on the loose (stop him before he writes
again!), made pouring concrete sound about as complicated as making mud
pies.  It is, in fact, serious work.  It takes careful preparation and
planning, the neglect of which had caused most of my troubles with the
patio.  I would not make the same mistake pouring the walk.  Every
single little step and calculation would be worked out to the nth
degree.

"Here's the plan," I told Bun.  "I'll eliminate the middle man.  I'll
go down to the tool-rental company and rent a special trailer for
hauling premix concrete.  The company will place just enough concrete
in the trailer for my walk, for which I have worked out the exact
specifications.  I tow the trailer home, run my wheelbarrow up under
the spout, open the gate, the concrete flows smoothly into my
wheelbarrow, and I then wheel the wheelbarrow over to my forms and dump
it.  When the forms are full, I level off the concrete and smooth it
up.  Presto!  A concrete walk!  Simple as making mud pies."

"Where have I heard that before?"  she asked.

I nipped off to the tool rental place and soon returned with a trailer
full of concrete.  A crowd of spectators had gathered to watch the
pouring of the walk, mostly neighborhood children but also a few
mothers, who had tagged a long "just for the laughs," as one of them
joshingly put it.  Why my efforts at serious work should be regarded as
a source of comedy in the neighborhood, I don't know.  Not wishing to
disappoint the entertainment-starved wretches, however, I grabbed my
wheelbarrow with a theatrical flourish and attempted to run it up under
the trailer's spout.  But the spout was six inches too low for my
wheelbarrow!  Already I could hear the tick-tick-tick of the concrete
hardening inside the trailer.  Refusing to panic, I ripped a few boards
off the side of my garage and built a six-inch high ramp to back the
trailer onto.

The trailer crushed the ramp like a house of toothpicks, provoking the
Spectators to laughter and applause.

"Do it again!"  one little bugger chirped.  "Do it again!"

Panic now seeming the proper response to the situation, I snatched up a
shovel and dug a slanted trench beneath the spout, spewing dirt over
the spectators and half the yard.  Mothers clamped hands over the ears
of children.  "What's he saying, Momma?"  a nipper cried.  "What kind
of concrete did he say it was?"

With suspense building, primarily in me, I grabbed the wheelbarrow, ran
it down the trench, and opened the gate to the spout.  Not a drop of
concrete flowed forth.

The audience dispersed.  That they fled for their lives is part of the
myth of the neighborhood, with no more basis in fact than the
imaginative reports that I turned into a crazed wild creature.  My own
recollection is that I greeted the predicament with icy calm.  In fact,
I clearly recall staring at the sign on the trailer that warned of a
twenty-five dollar fee if the trailer was returned "unclean."  I
wondered if a solid cubic yard of concrete inside the trailer qualified
as unclean.

Fortunately, only the outer layer of concrete had solidified to the
point where it refused to flow.  By gouging at this outer crust with my
shovel (I would by no means describe this effort as "frenzied," a word
often misused by Bun), I was able to release a sluggish stream of
concrete into my wheelbarrow.

I realized, of course, that the ticking time bomb of the concrete was
ticking its last ticks.  Haste was called for.  Haste came.

And presto!--a concrete walk!  The casual observer of the walk,
however, might have assumed it was something else, possibly a free-form
imaginative work, with textures varying from near smooth to rough to
lumpy.  Here and there twigs protruded from the concrete, which also
entombed partially or wholly one child's sneaker, one work glove, a
Timer with a broken strap, countless leaves, several thousand insects
(small squiggles in the concrete attested to their last desperate
struggles), and possibly a cat, whose mysterious disappearance
coincided with the pouring of the walk.  Once again, a courageous
do-it-yourselfer had gone forth to slay the dragon of concrete and
returned burnt to a crisp.

But Bun said she thought the walk would work just fine for as long as
it lasted.

"Yeah," I said.  "It's really not too bad.  Heck, that walk could last
a thousand years!"

"Three days," Bun said.  "That's the soonest the demolition men can
come."

Teenagers From Hell It is a terrible thing to be a teenager, without
resources of your own.

The world is your oyster, but you can't pry it out of its shell.  All
those wonderful Firsts of life you hunger to experience gleam like gold
scarcely a stone's throw away, but between you and those treasures
stand fire-breathing creatures known as parents.  "NO!"  the creatures
roar.  "NO!  NO!  NO!"

"NO!"  roared Mr.  Sweeney.  "NO!  NO!"

His son, Retch, and I stepped back away from him to prevent our
eyebrows getting singed.  Upon his arriving home tired and sweaty from
work, some vague activity Mr. Sweeney engaged in because "money don't
grow on trees," Retch and I had presented him with a wonderful plan.

We would take his fishing car and drive it up to his little lake cabin,
where we would take the cedar-strip boat he had built himself and his
new five-horse outboard motor, and go fishing with his good fishing
tackle, just the two of us, alone for the first time, without Mr.
Sweeney hovering over us and shouting out "NO!  NO!"  at regular
intervals.

"C'mon, Popper, just this once," Retch pleaded.  "We won't hurt
nothin'."

"Absolutely not!"  shouted Mr. Sweeney.  "There's no way I'm going to
let you two loons destroy my car, my cabin, my boat and my new motor,
and my good fishing tackle.  I'll tell you what," he said, turning down
the volume a few notches.  "You wait until next weekend, and I'll take
the two of you up there fishing.  How does that sound?"

"But that's no fun, Popper.  We want to do it by ourselves.  How are we
ever going to learn if we don't do stuff by ourselves?"

Mr. Sweeney turned the volume back up, his response bringing Mrs.
Sweeney bounding out to the front porch.

"Herbert!  Hush!"  she ordered.  "What will the neighbors think!

Furthermore, I won't stand for you using those words around these
impressionable young boys!"

Retch and I tried to look as impressionable as possible, while Mr.
Sweeney rolled his eyes beseechingly toward heaven and emitted a
shuddering sigh.  "Sorry," he said.  "But those were the only words
that came near to fitting the scheme the loons have cooked up.  Know
what they have the audacity to ask?  They want to ..."

"Yes, I know, go up to your cabin for a little fishing.  I think it's a
perfectly reasonable request.  Wouldn't you rather have them up at the
cabin doing some wholesome fishing instead of hanging out down at the
pool hall with a bunch of wild girls?"

"No, I would not!  I hung out down at the pool hall when I was a kid,
and look at me.  I ain't turned out so bad.  Why, heck, speaking of
wild girls, look at "Herbert!  Hush!"

"I just don't see why I should have to loan them my fishing car, my
cabin, my boat, and my motor," Mr. Sweeney said to his wife.  "If
You're so dad-blamed set on them enjoying themselves, why don't you
loan them your ...

uh ... your ... uh ... your washing machine or your ... uh ... your
vacuum cleaner?"

Mrs. Sweeney smiled.  "Anytime, Herbert, anytime.  Now quit being a
stingy old grouch and help the boys get your fishing car loaded."

Mr. Sweeney wasn't much help getting his gear loaded into his fishing
car.  Mostly, he hovered about whispering vague threats to Retch and
me.  "You loons put one scratch on this car and, well, You just wait
and see.  Anything happens to my boat and motor ...!  You leave that
cabin a mess and ...!"  I guess Mr. Sweeney didn't want to tell us the
specific horrible consequences because of our being so
impressionable.

At last the car was packed, and we were ready to go.  Mrs. Sweeney
came out to see us off.  She stood there with her arm around her
husband, who was clenching and unclenching his fists as though each was
around a tiny neck.

They made a cute couple, Mr. and Mrs. Sweeney.  Old but cute.  Seeing
the two of them standing there together must have touched a soft spot
in Retch.

"So long, Mommer," he said.  "And we really appreciate your letting us
use all your stuff, Popper.  You're one nice father.  Me and you don't
always get along too good, I know, but there's something I need to tell
you."

Mrs. Sweeney smiled up at her husband, a tiny tear trembling in the
corner of her eye.

"Yeah?  What?"  Mr. Sweeney said, gruffly, sounding slightly
embarrassed.

"Only this, Popper.  The fishing car's almost out of gas.  How about
giving us a few bucks for gas money?"

Driving up to the fishing cabin, I said to Retch, "I noticed your
father used those words again.  Where did he learn words like that,
anyway?"

"Marine Corps," Retch said.  "They teach those words in boot camp.  Use
them to scare the enemy."

"They scared me," I said.

"Me too," Retch said.  "But they're supposed to.  We're the enemy."

Retch and I arrived at the lake cabin just before dark and went inside
and started a fire.  Luckily, we were able to smother it before it did
much damage.

"I don't know why Popper doesn't buy a new gas lantern," Retch said,
rubbing off his eyebrows.

"Well, he'll have to now," I said.  "The flames shot darn near to the
ceiling.  Good thing you had wits enough to throw your dad's fishing
vest on top of it before you booted it out the door.  Might have
touched off a forest fire otherwise."

"You didn't do too bad yourself, tossing that bucket of water on the
burning floorboards.  The whole cabin could have gone up like a
torch!"

The next morning we dragged the little cedar-strip boat down to the
lake and launched it.  It was one of the prettiest boats I'd ever seen,
about what you'd expect of something that had been lovingly crafted
with hand tools over a period of five years or so.  It rowed like a
dream.  But the five-horse motor sent it skimming up the lake like a
shaft of golden light playing on the waves.  The fishing was wonderful,
too.  By evening we had two heavy stringers of perch and crappy.  Night
was oozing in around us by the time we started back down the lake.

Retch was rowing.

"Bail a little faster," he said.  "We're taking on too much water."

"I'm bailing as fast as I can," I said.  "You wouldn't think a little
hole like that would let in so much water."

"Darn snag," Retch said.  "Not only does it get the boat, it nails the
motor, too.  I've been up here a dozen times with Popper, and he's
never once mentioned that snag.  You would think a person's father
would mention an obstacle like that.  No, all he does is shout.  'Not
so fast, not so fast!

You'll run into something!"  I tell you it makes me feel bad to see
that kind of negligence in a person's own parent.  Bail faster!"

"Row faster!"

We finally made it back to the cabin, with a good three or four inches
of the boat showing above water.  We tied up at the dock, threw what
was left of Mr. Sweeney's gear in the car, and headed home.  Now, I
certainly didn't recall seeing that big rock in the road on our way to
the cabin.  Retch said he was certain that it hadn't been there.  The
wrecker man said it had probably fallen down off the mountain after we
had gone past on our way to the cabin.  "Because," he said, "any fool
would have noticed a rock that size."

The rock had gone right under the car, ripping off assorted parts, some
of which were apparently fairly important, because the car refused to
run.

"Can you fix it?"  I asked the wrecker man.

"Fix it?"  he said.  "Only God could fix that car, and His bill would
be almost as much as mine.  You say a Mr. Herbert Sweeney will be
happy to pay for my services, right?  You boys just stand where I can
see you until this Mr.  Sweeney arrives, okay?"

"Okay," Retch said.  "But unless you have a strong stomach, I think it
would be better if he picked us up down the road a ways."

An hour after a collect phone call to the Sweeney residence, Mr.
Sweeney's other car came roaring into the gas station.  Mr. Sweeney
got out and stood there for a moment staring at us.  I wished he had
been a little more specific about the consequences of our destroying
his belongings.

hen he rushed at us.  "You're both still alive!"  he cried.  "No
missing limbs, no broken bones?"

"Naw, Popper, we're okay," Retch said, cringing.  "But we destroyed
your fishing car."

"That piece of junk!  Good riddance!"

"And we hit a snag and broke a hole in your boat and knocked out your
new motor.  The boat's mostly sunk but tied up at the dock."

"You managed to get it back to the dock?  That's wonderful!  I thought
I'd never see it or the motor again!"

"And we had a fire in the cabin, but we got it put out before it did
much damage."

"You mean you didn't burn the cabin to the ground?  I can't believe
it?

This is fantastic!  And you two loons are still alive to tell about
it!

I never thought it could happen!  Maybe you guys are actually ready to
go out on your own, without me tagging along all the time.  By gosh, I
can hardly believe you made it back alive.  What a relief!"

Driving back home with his father, Retch and I slowly recovered from
the shocks of the day.  indeed, the good cheer of Mr. Sweeney proved
infectious, and soon Retch and I were giving him a hilarious account of
our adventure, to which Mr.  Sweeney responded with great mirth.

"And then I kicked the lantern right out the door," Retch said, "and
busted it all to smithereens.  Har liar liar!"

"Kicked it out the door and busted it all to smithereens!"  shouted Mr.
Sweeney.  "Har liar liar!"

"But wait, there's more," Retch said, wiping tears from his eyes.  "We
put out the fire with your old fishing vest!  Burnt a big hole in it!

Heee heeee!"

"Burnt a hole in my old fishing vest?"  Mr. Sweeney said, not
laughing.

"Burnt a hole in my fishing vest!  Don't press your luck, Retch, don't
press your luck!"

As Retch said later, that was the problem with parents.  All they cared
about were their dumb old possessions.

Secret Places All my life I have had secret places.  I love secret
places.  They make me feel smug and superior, two of the really great
feelings.

"I've got this secret place," you tell a friend.  Right away he wants
to know where it is.  "I can't tell you," you say, smugly,
superiorly.

"It's a secret."

I also hate secret places--other people's.  Ross Russell has a secret
hunting place I've been trying to pry out of him for years.

"C'mon, Ross, you can tell me," I say.  "I won't ever sneak up there to
hunt without you.  We've been friends for forty years.  What are
friends for, if not to tell their secret hunting places?  just tell me,
okay?"

"Can't.  It's a secret."

"Tell me your secret hunting place if you want to live!"

I have about three dozen secret places scattered around the country.

Some are nothing more than small, gravelly beaches; others are entire
mountain valleys and even mountain ranges.  Often, I come across other
people in my secret places.  They, of course, have just as much right
to be there as I do.

It's very irritating.

I suppose it's all right to share your secret places with strangers, as
long as you don't have to share the secret.

When I was a boy, I loved secret places even more than I do now.

Within a three-mile radius of our farm, I had staked out hundreds of
secret places--fishing holes, hunting spots, caves, swamps, lookout
trees, old cabins, and even several culverts under the highway.  Some
of my secret spots were shared with particular friends.

"This will be our secret spot," I would say to my friend.  "Nobody else
will know about it."

"Okay," he would say.  Then we would take a spit oath.  If I had taken
a blood oath for every one of my secret spots I shared with someone, I
would have been a quart low most of the time.  Besides, spit oaths are
much less painful than blood oaths.  Occasionally, I would fall off a
cow or a pig or something and end up with a bloody nose.  That was the
only time I cared about taking a blood oath.

"Let's say this is our secret spot and take a blood oath on it," I'd
tell Crazy Eddie Muldoon as I tried to dam the flow of blood from a
nostril.

"In the middle of a cow pasture?"  he'd say.  "This isn't a good secret
place."

"It's good enough," I'd reply.  "I want to take a blood oath on it.  So
cut your finger."

"I don't want to cut my finger, not for a blood oath on a secret place
in the middle of a lousy cow pasture.  Why don't we both just use your
blood?"

"Okay."  Eddie had the right instincts.

Secret spots seldom had any special use other than to be secret.

Fishing holes made good secret spots and were useful, but mostly what
we did in secret spots was to sit around in them feeling smug and
superior.  It was quite evident to us that half the population of the
world was simply dying to know the location Of our secret spot, and
that was sufficient for us.

Crazy Eddie and I did find one secret spot that we put to excellent
use.

One day we crawled up to the naked joists in the Muldoon garage.  There
were a few boards scattered around on the joists to walk on, so we
walked on them, holding our arms out like tightrope walkers to maintain
our balance and keep from smashing our skulls on the concrete floor
below.  We came to a sheet of plywood laid over the joists like an
island in the air and stopped there to rest.  There were some boxes
stacked on the sheet of plywood and we sat down on them.

"Hey, you know what, Eddie," I said.  "This would make a great secret
place for us."

"Yeah," he said.  "Good idea.  We can come up here and ... and ...

well, we can come up here."

"Sure," I said.  "This would be perfect for that.  Hey, what's in the
boxes?"

Eddie lifted a lid.  "Just some empty canning jars."

"Maybe we can think of something to do with them.

Eddie smiled.  "I got an idea.  We could fill them.

"Fill them with what?"

Eddie explained what we could fill them with.

"Hey, that's good," I said.  "It will be kind of like scientific
research.  We can see how long it takes us to fill all these jars."

Eddie and I started our research immediately, and managed to fill one
of the jars about one-third full, which wasn't bad, considering we were
acting on short notice.

We screwed the lid back on the jar and set it neatly back in its box.

Scientific research was fun.

The project was started in late spring.  We worked on it well into the
hot days of summer.  Our dedication was enormous.  A group of us kids
would be fishing off the Sand Creek bridge, and Eddie would say, "Oh
oh, I've got to go to the bathroom."  Then he would leap on his bicycle
and ride madly off toward the secret place in his garage, where I knew
he would climb the ladder, balance his way across the boards on the
ceiling joists to the sheet of plywood, and make a contribution to the
scientific project.

The other kids would stare after Eddie as he pedaled frantically off up
Sand Creek Hill.  "How come Eddie rides his bike all the way home to go
to the bathroom?"  someone would ask me, this not being the standard
practice of the group.

"Can't tell you," I'd say.  "Eddie and I are conducting a secret
scientific experiment in our secret place."

"C'mon, tell us!"

" Nope.  Can't.  It's a secret."  I'd feel smug and superior all
over.

One sizzling hot July day, I asked Eddie what the count was now.

"Thirty-nine full and a good start on the fortieth.  But we're almost
out of jars."

"Maybe you could ask your mom for some more empty jars," I suggested.

"Maybe."

We headed for Eddie's house to ask his mom for some more empty jars.

As we were passing the open door of the Muldoon garage, we noticed Mr.
Muldoon's legs disappearing up a ladder in the direction of our secret
place.  Pretty soon we could hear him tramping across the narrow board
walkway on the ceiling joists.

"What are you doing up there, Pa?"  Eddie called out nervously.

Obviously, Mr.  Muldoon had no idea he was violating a secret place.

"Oh, I stored a couple of planks up here.  Stay where you are.  I may
need some help getting them down."  He stepped onto the plywood sheet
that formed the floor to our secret place.  "Now what's this.  Well,
I'll be dang.

Your ma's got some kind of canned goods stored up here.  Why would she
put it up here instead of in the cellar?  Looks like some kind of
juice.  I don't know what's got into that woman.  This stuff's Probably
spoiled, simmering up here in this heat.  I better open a jar and see
what it is."

Eddie and I looked at each other.  He could tell I was winding up my
mainspring that would shoot me off home.  "Pa," he said, "I don't think
you should ..."

We heard the tinny Plink of a lid popping off a canning jar, followed
by a strangled, choking shout from Mr. Muldoon.  We could hear him
staggering about, then crashing into the crate of jars.  The jars
tumbled down onto the concrete floor in a series of magnificent golden
explosions.  Powerful toxic fumes filled the garage, bringing tears to
our eyes.  "Aaaack!"  cried Mr. Muldoon, who apparently thought he,
too, was being destroyed.  We watched in horror as he leaped about in a
series of pirouettes on the naked joists above, until at last he
dropped into a space between them, luckily catching himself by the
armpits.  He then hung by his hands and dropped to the floor,
apparently spraining both ankles, or so I judged from the manner in
which he came hobbling out of the clouds of fumes, choking and
gasping.

"Pa!  Pa!"  shouted Eddie.  "You destroyed our experiment!  A whole
summer's work!"

A rare moment of insight into the Peculiar workings of Mr. Muldoon's
mind told me that the destruction of our summer's work was the least of
our concerns.  "Got to go home," I said to Eddie.

"Oh, okay," he said.  "See you later."

As I released my mainspring and shot by Mr. Muldoon, who was hunched
over choking and coughing and wiping his streaming nose and eyes, I
very much doubted whether Eddie had a later.

One of the best things you can do with a secret place is share it with
a special friend.  Sometimes, though, you don't even like the person
you choose to share a secret place with.  It is one of those strange
psychological aberrations beyond human comprehension.

My father died when I was six.  Five years later, my mother
remarried.

I did not much care for my new stepfather at first.  The only good
thing about Hank was that he liked to fish, even though he wasn't very
good at it.  From time to time, he would take me fishing and try to
make amends for rudely invading my domain, but I wasn't having any of
it.  We almost never caught any fish anyway.

Hank was so poor at fishing he was ecstatic whenever he caught so much
as a little seven-inch trout, and he would even tell the neighbors
about this fish he had caught.  It was embarrassing.  I hated to go
places with him, it was so embarrassing to hear him tell his fish
stories.  He didn't even know how to lie properly: he would go into all
the details about how he had baited his hook and dropped it into the
current just so and let it drift down behind a sunken stump, and then
describe the thrilling strike of the fish.

"Gosh, how big was that fish, Hank?"  the neighbor would ask.

Lie, Hank!  I'd plead silently.  Lie!

"Oh, a good seven inches," Hank would say truthfully.

"Umm," the neighbor would politely respond.

Stream fishing opened the first week of june.  Huge cutthroat trout
continued their spawning run up Sand Creek for exactly a week after the
opening.  One day the cutthroats would be there, and the next they
would be gone.  Hank knew nothing about the run of big trout.  When
opening day arrived, he was prepared to go out after another
seven-incher.  It was bad enough that I had to put up with a new
stepfather.  I simply couldn't stand the further embarrassment of
listening to him tell his small-fish stories, particularly to fishermen
who would have spent the day hauling out huge cutthroat.

Before first light on opening day, Hank and I headed down to Sand
Creek.

Practically the entire town had emptied out and now lined the banks of
the creek to have a go at the cutthroat.  Hank, of course, thought
everybody was after his seven-incher.

"Cripes," he said.  "I think I'll go back home.  We'd have to stand in
line to get a chance to cast into the crick."  Because Hank had never
seen anybody else fish Sand Creek, he probably had come to think of it
as his own secret place.  He seemed depressed.  Here he'd had his heart
set on catching his seven-incher on opening day and now it was ruined
for him.

"Good idea, Hank," I said.  "You better go home."

He turned and started to walk back to the house.

At that moment I was overcome by one of those weaknesses of character I
despise so much in myself.  "Wait," I said.  "Wait, Hank.  I'll take
you to my secret place."

"Secret place?"  he said.  "What secret place?"

There was a large bend in Sand Creek that no one ever fished because
the brush was so high and thick that it was assumed to be impassable.

It was further assumed that if a person managed to fight his way
through the brush, there would be no place to stand to fish the
creek.

But a couple of days before opening, I had found that I could crawl
through the brush on my hands and knees.  And on the other side of the
brush, I discovered a tiny gravel beach right upstream from a
magnificent fishing hole!  It was one of the finest secret places I've
ever come across.

Half an hour later, Hank and I were crawling through the brush on our
hands and knees.  I let Hank go first to break trail.  With typical
clumsiness, he let a branch snap back and hit me in the nose.  I could
feel the trickle of blood begin to flow.  The man was hopeless.

His first five casts, Hank caught five cutthroat all upward of two
pounds, one approaching five.  He was practically shedding his skin
from the pure joy of it.  "I can't believe it!"  he cried.  "This is
wonderful!  I never realized fish this big even existed!"  His eyes
were disgustingly moist.

Still dabbing at my bloody nose, I had not yet got a line in the
water.

Hank hadn't even waited for me to get ready, he was such a fish hog.

"You know what, Pat," he shouted at me.  "From now on, this will be our
secret place!  just yours and mine!"

"Oh yeah?"  I said.  "In that case, cut your finger."

"How come?"

"'Cause we have to take a blood oath on a secret place.  Don't you know
that?"

Hank stared at me, as his shaking hands unhooked a twenty-inch
cutthroat.

"Maybe we could both just use your blood," he said.  "How does that
sound?"

It sounded all right to me.  I figured Hank might not turn out too
badly after all, with the proper amount of training.  He seemed to have
the right instincts.

Puttering When I strolled into the kitchen the other day for a coffee
refill my wife, Bun, was on the phone, reaching out and touching her
friend Melba.

... "Well, I'd better go now," she said.  "Himselfjust walked in.

What?

Oh, he's been out puttering in his old workshop."

Puttering?  Puttering!  I certainly was not puttering in my workshop.

Crafting an exquisite coffee table is not puttering!  It's fine
woodworking.

Nothing annoys me more than Bun's misuse of the word "puttering" in
reference to my highly skilled use of tools in the creation of elegant
furniture pieces.

Actually, come to think of it, there are several things about Bun that
annoy me more, but her misuse of "puttering" is right up near the top
of the list.

Do all wives harbor this amused view of their husband's activities?

Does the surgeon's wife say: "Oh, Fred's puttering around in the
operating room.

Some brain thing."

Did Michelangelo's wife say: "Oh, Mike's puttering around over at the
Sistine Chapel."

Did Thomas Jefferson's wife say: "Oh, Tom's down in the living room
puttering with some old declaration of independence."

I think not.

I notice that when I'm putting up a shelf in the pantry, Bun doesn't
refer to that as puttering.  No, that's significant work, putting up a
plain old board shelf as any ten-year-old could.

"Maybe I should round off the edges with my new router," I say.

"The plain board's just fine," she says.  "An exquisitely crafted shelf
would be nice, but I need it now, not next year.  You're just looking
for an excuse to use that router of yours.

"Very funny," I respond.  That's another annoying thing about Bun.  She
has no appreciation of fine tools, no understanding of the importance
of having just the right tool for the particular job.  To her, a
perfectly balanced hammer is nothing more than a pounder; a pair of
first-rate lock-grip pliers, a squeezer.  I once heard her say,
"Woodworking is merely an excuse for buying tools."  Ha!  Can you
believe it?

My dictionary defines "putter" as "to occupy oneself aimlessly, to
putter around the kitchen."  The italics, by the way, aren't mine, but
those of some lexicographer puttering about with the language.  Okay,
I'll accept the fact that I occupy myself aimlessly in the kitchen,
such as vainly searching through the refrigerator for something that
isn't good for me.  Occasionally, I'll even think about taking up
gourmet cooking for a hobby, and free Bun from the monotonous chore of
endless meal preparation.

"I'm fixing dinner tonight," I tell her.  "You go take it easy."

"Great!"  she says.

"Where are the anchovies?"  I ask.  "Don't we have any anchovies?"

"No, we don't have anchovies.  Never had, never will."

"I guess I'll have to use sardines with the scrambled eggs, then.

Where are the taco shells?"

The phone rings.  Bun answers it.  "Hi, Dave ... Yeah, he's here ...

Just puttering about the kitchen."

I can accept that.  I readily admit that my activities in the kitchen
are rather aimless, mostly because I don't know where anything is, and
we don't have it anyway.  It's not as though I were building an
exquisite coffee table or something else of lasting value.

I putter in my workshop, too.  Sometimes my concentration's not quite
up to working with power tools that can gobble your fingers like corn
chips.  On those occasions, I'll start sorting screws and putting each
size and type into its own container.  Baby-food jars are perfect for
this.

"Do we have any empty baby-food jars?"  I ask Bun.

"Afraid not," she says.  "I tossed out the last one--twenty years
ago."

Just my luck.  While we still had baby-food jars, I couldn't afford
screws.  Now that I can afford screws, no baby-food jars.  How can I
sort screws properly if I don't have baby-food jars?  I wander
aimlessly about looking for other containers.

That's an example of puttering in the workshop.  I decided to
straighten Bun out on the proper use of the word "puttering."

"Let's have a little chat," I said.  "Grab a cup of coffee and bring it
over to the coffee table."

"Okay," she said.  "Which one?"

"The one with the checkerboard inlay," I said.  "I still have a little
touching-up work to do on those other two.  Watch the leg!  This one's
still a little tipsy."

"You seem to have a problem coping with legs."

"Yeah.  But I can't trim any more off these legs to even them up.  The
coffee table's only six inches high as it is.  At least it's better
than setting your coffee cup on the floor."

"On the advice of counsel, I must refuse to comment on that.  But the
inlay is nice."

"Thanks.  Incidentally, you'll be happy to know I just noticed this ad
for a leg-leveling device in Fine Woodworking.  That should solve the
problem, and it's such a clever little tool, too."

"That's wonderful.  I'm so happy you shared it with me."

"I thought you'd like it.  Now, about your use of the word
"puttering."

Search and-Uh-Rescue Looking through an old family scrapbook the other
day, I came across a yellowed piece of newsprint from my hometown
newspaper.  It's a photograph of my loutish cousin Buck and a gnomish
little man wearing a surplus army coat and a stocking cap.  They are
standing by a snowbank in front of the North Idaho Weekly Gazette
building, which is festooned with Christmas decorations.

Buck wears his Modest Hero expression, while the man beside him, Henry
P.

Grogan, the crafty proprietor of Grogan's War Surplus, glowers at the
camera.

The headline on the accompanying story reads: "LOCAL HERO SAVES CITY
BUSINESSMAN."

Well.

As an unheralded participant in what I came to think of as "Buck's Big
Bungle," I later managed to piece together what I believe to be the
germinal misunderstanding.  Grogan's wife, Vera, had been explaining to
her friend, Mrs. Thompson, how depressed Grogan was that his son,
junior P. Grogan, had gone off and joined the army.  junior, she said,
had always accompanied Grogan out to Big Sandy Mountain to cut the
family Christmas tree.  Indeed, she said, Grogan was at that very
minute up on Big Sandy, morosely looking for a Christmas tree all by
himself.  Then Mrs. Grogan added, "The poor man's lost," meaning, of
course, that Grogan was emotionally lost without his son to keep him
company.  All this might seem quite sad, unless you happened to have
known junior Grogan, whose induction into the army was cause for
rejoicing among most of the town's citizenry, Henry P. himself being no
exception.  If there had been a parade to celebrate the occasion,
Grogan would have led it.

Exactly what Mrs. Grogan told Mrs. Thompson remains a matter of
speculation.  The important thing is that Mrs. Thompson's
twelve-year-old son, Willy, heard only parts of the conversation, the
parts about Grogan being up on Big Sandy Mountain and being lost.

Willy then wandered outside and down the block, where I was helping
Buck work on his car in front of Aunt Sophie's house.  A major blizzard
gusted snow around us as we worked.

"Guess what?"  Willy said.  He was dressed in about fifty pounds of
clothes.  I thought mildly about rolling him down the street like a
bowling ball.

"Beat it, kid," Buck said, blowing on his hands.

"You know Henry P. Grogan?"

"I said, beat it."

"Well, ol' Grogan's lost up on Big Sandy Mountain."

"Tough," Buck said, tinkering with the engine.  "Now, try it," he said
to me.  The car gurgled and choked and then exploded into a violent but
sustained racket.

"Hey hey hey!"  Buck said.  "Do I or do I not have the old mechanical
knack!"

"Didn't you hear what Willy said?"  I asked him.  "About Grogan being
lost up on Big Sandy?"

"Yeah, so what?"  Buck slammed down the hood and ordered me out of the
driver's seat.  He was about twenty then, and I, sixteen, a
circumstance that gave him the privilege of bossing me around, that and
the fact that he owned a car for hunting and fishing.

"So maybe we should go up there and look for Grogan," I suggested.

"You must be nuts," Buck said.  "If that thieving old buzzard was dumb
enough to get himself lost, he can be dumb enough to get himself
found.

Besides, I have important business to take care of, like getting a date
with the new waitress down at the truck stop."

Willy hopped on the running board.  "You could be a hero, Buck.  You
could save Mr. Grogan and then you could go off without giving anybody
your name, and everybody would wonder who the mysterious hero had
been.

It'd be neat!"

Buck and I both stared at Willy.  I knew the kid wasn't bright, but I
hadn't realized the true depth of his dimness.  The suggestion that
Buck would perform a heroic act and then wander off without giving his
name was beyond comprehension.  It was a wonder that Willy's folks let
him out of the house unattended, he was such a sorry judge of
character.

Suddenly, Willy, clutching the glass on the window, looked in the
backseat.  "Wow!  What a neat twenty-two rifle!  Can I shoot it
sometime, Buck, can I?  Ow!  Ow!"

Buck rolled the window back down slightly to release Willy's fingers.

"No, you can't shoot it!  That gun's a classic.  And you keep your
grubby little grooved fingers off it!"

Buck said he would drop me at home, because he wanted to get over to
the truck stop and make a move on the cute new waitress.  I, on the
other hand, was in the mood for a little adventure.  "You got plenty of
time for that, Buck.  Why don't we just drive up Big Sandy and see if
we can find Grogan?"

"You're as loony as Willy," Buck said.  "Grogan can take care of
himself."

"Yeah, but I was just thinking, if we did find Grogan, we'd be heroes,
just like Willy said.  Girls go for heroes in a big way.  We might even
get our pictures in the paper.  Boy, would that ever impress that cute
little waitress!"

Buck skidded the car to a stop, whipped it around in a bootlegger's
turn, and, tires spinning on ice, headed back toward town.  "Did I say
we wasn't going to hunt for Grogan?  I did not!  A man can't let a lost
person freeze to death and not make an effort to find him, even if that
person is a sly old reprobate who would snooker the hide off you if you
gave him the chance.  You hear what I'm tellin' you?"

"Right, Buck."

On our way through town, Buck stopped by LeRoy's Truck Stop & Cafe to
pick up a container of hot soup from the new waitress and to generally
let it be known that he was on a heroic mission.  Buck was smart that
way.  He liked to lay a bit of groundwork for his enterprises.

"You seem to be in a gosh-a-mighty hurry, Buck," LeRoy said.

"Got a man lost up on Big Sandy," Buck said.  "Going' up there to find
him before he freezes to death."

"Good gosh," said the cute, dimply waitress.  A little tag on her
blouse identified her as Betty Lou.  "That sounds sooo dangerous, it
being a blizzard and all.  You be careful, hear!"

"Yeah, Betty Lou," Buck said, using his Humphrey Bogart voice.  "I'll
be real careful.  I ain't no stranger to danger, sweetheart."

Now, there are few things a bunch of men sitting around idle all day on
a Sunday love more than going out on a search for a lost person.

Pretty soon LeRoy's customers were leaping up and putting on mackinaws
and hats and buckling their pant legs into galoshes.  Excitement had
burst like a small bomb in the cafe, and everyone talked at once.

"What's going' on?"

"Man lost up on Big Sandy."

"Better find him before he freezes to death."

"I'll go get my snowshoes."

"We may need some chains and shovels, too."

"Who is it, anyway?"

"Henry P. Grogan," Buck said.

The men took off their coats and sat back down.  "More coffee over
here, Betty Lou."

I should explain here that Henry P. Grogan was the tightest, shrewdest,
connivingest old fraud of a businessman in our entire town, possibly
the state, and maybe the entire universe.  Stored in our basements,
attics, garages, and barns were enough rotten, rusty, mildewed, and
worn-out pieces of war surplus to outfit a small but unsuccessful
invasion.  No one had ever come out on the better end of a deal with
Grogan.

"So it's old Henry P. got himself lost," LeRoy said.  "Well, no
matter.

Here's the hot soup, Buck, just in case you find him.  No charge.

Don't let him drink too much of it right at first--might give him the
cramps."

Back in the car and headed up to Big Sandy, Buck said, "Pop the lid off
that soup and hand it to me."  He then slurped down all the soup,
thereby thoughtfully saving Grogan from any chance of getting the
cramps.  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.  "You see how that little
cutie looked at me when she found out I was going out in a blizzard to
search for a lost man?"

"Yeah.  And I noticed you used your Bogart voice on her.

"Clark Gable.  Worked like a charm, too."

Finding the lost man turned out to be a good deal easier than I
expected.

A couple of miles up Big Sandy, I spotted through the blizzard the dark
shape of a man sitting on a log a hundred or so feet off the road.  He
was smoking a cigar.  Buck and I jumped out and ran through the
swirling snow.  It was Grogan, all right.  He puffed on his cigar and
calmly watched us charging toward him.  His ax and a little spruce tree
leaned against the log beside him.

"Howdy, boys," Grogan said, beaming his snaggletoothed grin.  "You
fellows out looking for a Christmas tree, too?  Well now, I'm right
sorry, but I probably cut the last decent little tree on this side of
the mountain.

Probably take you hours to find another one.  But, what the heck, I
could probably make you a deal on this fine tree."

"Ain't no tree I'm lookin' for," Buck said.  "I'm lookin' for you,
Henry P.

"Looking' for me?  What'd I do?"

"You got lost, that's what you did.  And now I found you, so you ain't
lost no more."

"I ain't lost no more and never been, you nincompoop.  What ever gave
you the idea I was lost?  My car's just around the next bend in the
road."

Buck glanced at me.  "That's what they all say, lost people.  See, he's
already babbling out of his head from cold and hunger and hysterics.

You're the witness!"

"Gee, Buck," I said.  "I don't really think Mr. Grogan was ever really
lo ..."

"Shut up," Buck said, "and help me tote this here victim over to a warm
car so we can revive him."  He grabbed Grogan by the arm and began
dragging the enraged little man through the snow.

"Leggo, you durn fool!"  bellowed Grogan.  "I don't want to go home
yet!

This is kidnapping!"

"Ain't neither.  It's search and rescue.  You been searched for and
found, Henry P and now you're being rescued.  And you better come
peaceful, 'cause if there's one thing I can't stand, it's an ungrateful
victim.  Now I want you to quit horsin' around and calm down, 'cause as
soon as we get back to town we got to get our pitchers took for the
newspaper."

"Pitchers took for the newspaper?  How come?"

"Don't act dumb, Henry P. You know we're gonna get our pitchers took on
account you got lost and I found you."

"Ha!"  Grogan said.  "I ain't getting' my pitcher took!"

"Are so!"

"Ain't!"

"Listen, Henry P if you don't go quietly, and admit to everybody I
found you, then I'll never let you foist off on me any more of your
rotten old war surplus junk."  Buck had allowed a pleading tone to
sneak into his voice, a big mistake.  That was when the balance of
power shifted from beef to brains.  "Anyway, I already told all the
folks down at LeRoy's truck stop you were lost and I was going to find
you."

"Now I get it," Grogan said.  "You was down at the truck stop tryin' to
get something' going' with that cute little redheaded waitress.  And
usin' me for bait!  Playin' the part of the big hero, wasn't you?"

"Could have been something like that," Buck admitted.  "But it ain't
gonna hurt you none to go along with it."

"Oh, what the heck," Grogan said, smiling kindly.  "We can probably
work a deal."  He turned to me.  "Boy, fetch us that fine little
Crimmas tree over here.  Ain't that little tree about the purtiest one
you ever seen, Buck?  You understand, I can't really take money for
lettin' you save me.  Wouldn't be right.  Keep me awake nights,
frettin' over it.  So we'll just do a little deal on that there
tree."

I went to get the tree, and so never heard exactly what deal they
worked out.  All I know is that Buck did a lot of yelling and arm
waving.

After the picture-taking business at the newspaper, Buck and I drove
Grogan back up Big Sandy to pick up his car.  Then Buck took me home.

As I was getting out, I noticed the little Christmas tree on top of the
car.  It made me laugh.

"How much did Grogan soak you for that tree?"  I asked.

"Just shut up and mind your own business," Buck snarled.

"Bet it was a lot.  How much?  Five dollars?"  uck said a bad word and
drove off.

Everything worked out about the way Buck planned.  He and Grogan got
their picture in the paper, with a story, and the headline that said
LOCAL HERO SAVES CITY BUSINESSMAN.  Buck did become a local hero
briefly and got to date the cute little waitress, also briefly.  Even
with the brevity, I figured she was worth five dollars, particularly if
you considered that a fairly decent little Christmas tree was included
in the deal.

A short while later, I happened to stop by Grogan's War Surplus and
started sorting through his new used guns.  It was a hobby of mine.

Also, I figured if I made a reasonable purchase, I might wheedle out of
Henry P. the terms of his deal with Buck.  Information like that can
come in handy at times.

"Don't touch the guns, boy!"  Grogan shouted at me.  "How many times I
got to tell you?  Unless you got some hard cash on you, of course.  In
which case, son, it's a whole different matter."

"Well, I might have some hard cash," I said shrewdly.  "How much you
want for this beaten-up rifle?"

"Ha!  Ain't no way you got enough cash for that pump twenty-two," he
said.  "That's a classic!"

Well, I knew all along it was a classic.  It was just like my cousin
Buck's.

The Bust Name's Joe Kelly.  I'm a cop.  Work out of Birders
Enforcement, Seventh Precinct.  It's a Saturday, 9:46 A.M. I stake out
the house of a two-bit pickpocket and generic thief by the name of
Sammy "the Dip" Wakowski.  Miss my lunch break.  No sign of Sammy for
three hours.

He's starting to get me steamed.  I'm dining in my car on a cold burger
and a hot Coke when I spot Sammy slinking down the sidewalk toward his
house.  He's wearing a gray tweed sports jacket, a tattersall shirt,
and jeans.  A pair of binoculars dangles from his scrawny neck.  The
sneaky rat!  The binoculars probably don't even have lenses in them, if
I know Sammy.  And the guy calls himself a birder!

I get out and follow Sammy up his porch, shove him through the door.

"Ow, knock off the rough stuff, Kelly!"  he yelps, brushing splinters
off his shoulder.  "I shoulda knowed it was you.  Cripes, don't even
give a guy a chance to open his door.

"Up against the wall, creepo," I say.  "You know the posture."  I pat
him down.  Seven wallets, thirty-nine credit cards, and a .45 automatic
fall out of his coat.  "Okay, Sammy, where is it?"

"Hey, I'm clean!"

"You can't fool me, Wakowski.  Now trot it out before I forget my
manners."

"What, for gosh sake?"

"Don't give me that, vacuum bag!  You know darn good and well what I'm
talking about--your life list!"

"My life list?  How'd you know about my life list?"

"A little bird told me.  Now where is it?"

"All right, all right, hold your horses.  It's over on the bookshelf,
that little book between Do-It-Yourself Locksmithing and the Audubon
Field Guide.

I walk over and grab Sammy's life list.  It's a professional job, with
a spiral wire binding, four-color cover.  I flip through it.  The name
of each species is printed out, with spaces for the date and place of
the spotting and another space for field notes.  It's nice.  And they
say crime don't pay!  My own life list is on matchbook covers and the
backs of old envelopes and parking tickets.  just as I expected, nearly
every species is filled in with Sammy's childish scrawl.  This is a
bogus life list if I ever seen one.  Sure as God made pileated
woodpeckers, Sammy's committed a Birders 904.  I walk back and slam him
into a chair by a table.  I sit down and open the book.

Sammy takes the cigarette I offer him.  He lights up, inhales deeply,
nervously, blows a cloud of smoke at me.  I smile and put the
cigarettes back in my pocket.  If I don't get Sammy one way, I'll get
him another.

"Okay Sammy, let's get down to it.  How long you been keeping your life
list?"

"Gee, I don't know, six months maybe.  I picked the book up off a guy's
desk.  Didn't know what it was.  Brand-new, still had the price sticker
on it.

All I had to see by was my little penlight.  So I slipped the book in
my pocket, what the heck.  It's what you call compulsive stealing."

"Right," I say.  "Now you mean to tell me you spotted all these species
in six months?"

"Yeah.  Well, it coulda been eight months, I ain't exactly sure."

"And you're telling me all these species on your list are legit?"

"Sure.  I went out and personally watched every one of the feathered
little buggers, yer robin, yer iggle, all like that."

"Iggle?"

"Yeah, yer bald-headed iggle.  Big bird.  Real big.  Easy to spot."

"I see.  Well, let's take the robin, for instance.  Did you actually go
out and look at a robin before you added it to your life list?"

"Hey, man, you kidding me?  Of course not!  Everybody's seen a robin,
for cripes sake.  It was rainin' the day I started my list.  You think
I'm gonna go out in the rain Just to look for a lousy robin?  I seen a
million of 'em over the years.  So I just took one robin from my past
and wrote it in.  Big deal!"

"Big deal is right.  You violated six forty-seven of the Birders Code
when you wrote in the date of robin spotting when you actually didn't
spot a robin on that day nor had any intention of attempting to do
so.

I'm going to have to read you your rights."  I read him his rights.

"That's all the rights I got?"

"Yeah, they're cutting down on them.  Now let's see, you listed
spotting a robin at a specific time and place when you in fact had not
done so.  Is that correct?"

"I guess.  Listen, maybe I should call my lawyer.  Okay, I admit I cut
a few corners here and there on my life list.  Hey, I ain't no kid.  I
get this life-list book here, I'm forty-seven years old.  My life's
half over, maybe a whole lot more than that, if I don't get some loan
sharks paid off.  So here I am, forty-seven years old, looking down at
my life list, and all the spaces are blank.  After a while, it starts
to drive me crazy.  You hear what I'm telling you, Kelly?  I'm
forty-seven years old and I ain't listed a single bird yet.  My life
seems like a total zero.  I figure, what the hey, I deserve a
handicap.

I give myself fifty or so species, just to get started.  Evens me out
with the dude what started his life list when he was twelve years
old.

It's only fair.  I didn't take all rare birds neither.  just tossed one
in now and again.  That should count for something'."

I stare at him.  It makes me sick to my stomach, a guy pulling
something like that with his life list.  I flip through the book.

"You're pretty stupid, Sammy.  You indicate spotting all your phony
species on one day."

"That's what you think.  I wrote down different dates and places for
all the birds I took for a handicap, just in case some cop come nosin'
around.

All those other birds you're talkin' about I spotted in one day."

"In Spokane?  You're putting me on."

"Naw, really.  They're legit.  See, I'm visiting my sister in
Spokane.

They don't have much crime there, so I think maybe I'll import some.

I'm lookin' around town, checkin' things out, and I drifts into this
zoological museum place.

They got maybe a thousand birds in there.  I whip out a pen and paper
and start writing them down to add to my life list."

"What you're telling me, you included on your life list all these birds
fluttering around in a big cage?  That's a three seventy-nine, listing
caged birds.  And you claim you knew how to identify them all?  No way,
Sammy, no way!"

"It's true!  And they wasn't fluttering around.  They was all dead.

Hey, I see the way you're looking at me!  I didn't do it!  They was
dead when I got there, honest to God.  And each one had a little name
tag on it.  Helped out a whole lot with identification, I can tell you
that.  Boy, if there's one thing I hate, it's trying to find some jerky
little bird in a field guide while the little beast is hopping all over
the place and I got one eye in the binoculars and the other on the
field guide, which I'm flipping through like crazy!  And it's never
there!  I'll give you a tip, Kelly.  Dead birds is the only way to
fly."

"Get your coat, Sammy," I tell him.  "I'm taking you in."

"What's the charge?"

"Cheating on your life list."

"Okay, I'll go quietly.  But first, let me stash these wallets."

What a weirdo!  What's one guy need with seven wallets?

Real Ponies Don't Go Oink!

When we were kids Eddie Muldoon and I were gnawed by that terrible
hunger known to nearly every boy in that distant time, the hunger for
our very own pony to ride.  We dreamed the impossible dream: on our
next birthday, or surely the one after, we would awaken to hear our
beaming parents gush, "Guess what's tied up out behind the woodshed,
Son.  But before you rush off to see what it is, you'd better open this
present that's in the shape of a saddle."

Sure enough, the present would be a saddle!  Then you would tear out of
the house and there, hidden behind the woodshed, probably with a big
bow around its neck, would be your ... very ... own ... pony!  You
would saddle up your pony and gallop off toward the horizon, pausing
only long enough to wave at your generous and thoughtful and loving
parents, the very best parents in the whole world.

My family wasn't big on impossible dreams.  "Would you shut up about a
pony!"  my mother roared every time I brought up the topic.  "Ponies
cost money!  You think money grows on trees?"

Occasionally, I would ride one of our pigs by the kitchen window,
hoping to shame Mom into buying me a pony.  "There goes old
short-in-the-saddle," my sister, the Troll, would shout.  "Hopalong Hog
and Gene Oink, the smelly cowboy!"  Then she and Mom would have a good
laugh.  Their response didn't leave me much hope of ever getting my
very own pony by appealing to sympathy.

Crazy Eddie fared scarcely better.  "Would you shut up about a pony!"

Mr. Muldoon would roar.  "Ponies cost money!  You think money grows on
trees?"

Still, the Muldoons had an actual farm, with cows, sheep, pigs,
chickens, rabbits, and even a goat, which, by the way, wasn't a bad
ride.  A pony would have fit right in to the Muldoon menagerie.  If you
stared hard enough at their pasture, you could easily imagine a pony
out there.  You could almost see it in fact, and one morning I did see
it!  Galloping majestically across the pasture was--forget the dumb
pony--a beautiful, huge, glistening black horse!

Eddie was riding the horse.  It was almost too much for me to bear.

True, Eddie didn't exactly fit my idea of a cowboy.  The horse's back
was so broad that Eddie's stubby legs stuck straight out on either
side, as if he were doing an equestrian version of the splits.  Eddie
and the horse were totally out of aesthetic proportion to each other.

From a distance, the two of them looked like a mouse riding a tall dog,
although I knew the image would hurt Eddie's feelings.

"You look like a mouse riding a tall dog!"  I called out to him.

Eddie galloped over, reined in right next to me, and glared down.  He
had to lean out precariously in order to see over the curve of the
horse's barrel-shaped belly.  "You're just jealous," Eddie said.  "I
bet you want a ride."

"Naw," I said.  "I'm expecting my own pony any day now.  I'll wait and
ride it."

"If you climb up the barbwire and stand on top of that fence post, I'll
pull you up," Eddie said.

"Okay," I said.

I climbed the post and Eddie hauled me up behind him.  The view was
wonderful from up there.  You could see practically forever.  The two
of us rode off singing "Back in the Saddle Again," even though this was
only our first time in the saddle.  Our legs jutted straight out to the
side, so there was no reason to argue about who got to use the
stirrups.  Actually, doing the splits while trotting about on horseback
isn't nearly as painful as it sounds.

Excruciating, yes, but scarcely more uncomfortable than that.  Cowboys
are tough.

It turned out that Old Tom, the horse, had recently been destined for
another existence in the form of fox food.  One of the farmers up the
road raised foxes for their furs, and many a worn-out horse ended up
there as the luncheon special.  Apparently, the farmer had an excess of
fox food for the moment and asked Eddie's father if he had use for a
horse.  Mr. Muldoon said he could probably think of one, if he put his
mind to it.

Old Tom had already done a little time at the fox farm and, while
exhausting the appeals process, had got religion.

He had been a bad horse, even a wicked horse, and his former owner had
finally got fed up with his behavior and sent him up the road.  His
first week at the Muldoons, Tom was still figuratively wiping the sweat
from his brow over his narrow escape from a career as fox food.  You
couldn't have asked for a sweeter, gentler horse for two little boys.

After a week or two, however, Old Tom apparently forgot his last-minute
reprieve.  He got it into his head that he had always lived at the
Muldoon farm and, furthermore, probably owned it.  He soon relapsed to
his former nasty self.  Hardly a day went by that he didn't buck us
off.  While we tried to get his bridle on he would casually place a
hoof on one of my feet.  Then he would put all his weight on that one
hoof, balancing there, with daylight showing between the ground and his
other three hooves.  I would be yelling and thrashing about, and Tom
would nonchalantly turn his head and look back, as if wondering what
all the ruckus was about.  Eddie would be trying to get the bridle over
Tom's ears, and the horse would suddenly jerk his head up and send
Eddie flying.  Old Tom was wearing us out.  He finally became so
haughty he decided he didn't want to be ridden at all.  Practically
every day, carrying his bridle, we trailed Tom from one end of the farm
to the other and back again, but almost never caught him.  Then Eddie
came up with the idea of roping the horse when it came to get a drink
from the watering trough.  First, though, we needed to find a rope.

Eddie's father had been putting a new layer of shingles on the barn and
had bought a long rope that he tied to a big thick belt around his
waist.  He fastened the other end of the rope to a tractor, then
climbed up a ladder and worked his way up over the steep roof of the
barn to the far side, where the rope held him in place while he worked
on the shingles.  We found the rope neatly coiled by the tractor with
the belt resting on top of the coil.  Mr. Muldoon must have been
taking a coffee break in the house, because he was nowhere in sight.

Eddie looked this way and that, and then said he didn't think his pa
would mind our using the rope to lasso Old Tom.

"I wish Pa was a cowboy or rancher, instead of just a farmer," Eddie
said, grunting as he hoisted the big coil of rope and draped it over
his shoulder.  "Or a professional baseball player.  That would be
good.

But he's just so ordinary.  All he does is dumb things, like put new
shingles on the barn.  It's sort of embarrassing."

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound sympathetic, as though my family were
interesting.

I suggested to Eddie that we cut off a piece of rope long enough for a
lariat, but Eddie said no, it might make his pa mad.  He said it would
be better if we used the whole rope and just tied a loop in one end.

He hauled all the rope out to the watering trough, tied a loop, and
climbed up on the corral fence above the trough.  The excess rope was
scattered about the barnyard behind us in coils and assorted snarls.

Presently, Tom came moseying out of the pasture and headed for the
trough.  He stopped and eyed us suspiciously.  Satisfied that he could
handle anything we might have thought up for him, he plodded on in.

"What are you boys up to now?"  growled Mr. Muldoon, coming behind
us.

Startled, we both jumped.

"Nothin', Pa," Eddie said.  "Why?"

"Why!  Well, because you got my new safety rope snarled all over the
barnyard, that's why!"

"Sorry, Pa," Eddie said, turning his attention back to Tom.  The horse
was dipping its muzzle into the trough.  "We're just trying to catch
Old Tom."

"He's a lazy beast," Mr. Muldoon said.  Both Eddie and I were intently
watching Old Tom.  It was only much later that we learned Mr. Muldoon
had picked up his safety belt and strapped it on.  "I'd help you catch
him, Son, but I got to get this barn shingled before it starts to
rain."

"That's okay, Pa," Eddie said.  "I think we just about got him."

Mr. Muldoon started untangling the safety rope and forming it into a
coil on the ground.

Tom lifted his dripping muzzle from the trough and glared up at us, his
ears flattened back against his head.  Eddie tossed the lasso around
his neck and jerked it tight.

The horse reared up, pawed the air, and whinnied angrily.  Then it
bolted for the pasture.  The rope sizzled through Eddie's hands.

"Ow!"  he cried, jerking away.  "That burns!"

"Now what's got into Old Tom?"  Mr. Muldoon said, looking up from his
coil of rope.  "Stupid horse!"

I lassoed him," Eddie explained.

"You did?"  Mr.  Muldoon said.  "With wha ...?"

All the loops and turns and tangles of rope slithered this way and that
and then snapped straight out toward the pasture.  The coil at Mr.
Muldoon's feet disappeared like a giant strand of spaghetti slurped
from a plate.  At that instant Mr. Muldoon took the longest step I'd
ever seen anyone take in my life.  He must have stepped a good thirty
feet from takeoff to touchdown.

Both Eddie and I were impressed.

"Wow!"  Eddie cried.  "Did you see that!  Holy smokes!  And look at Pa
go now!  I never knew he could run so fast.  He must be trying to help
us catch old Tom!"

He sounded so pleased and proud that I couldn't help but envy him.

Eddie obviously had the fastest father in the county, maybe in the
whole country or even the world.

Old Tom must have been surprised, too, and even terrified, when he saw
Mr.  Muldoon racing after him at such amazing speed for a mere human.

Tom kicked up his heels, stretched out, and ran even harder, as if his
life depended on it, which, as we later learned, it did.

Eddie and I watched until his pa and Tom disappeared into the creek
bottom, both of them practically flying.  As far as we could judge,
though, Mr.  Muldoon wasn't gaining an inch on the horse.

"Shucks," Eddie said.  "Pa ain't ever gonna catch Tom just by chasing
him.  He should know better.  A horse can outrun a man every time, even
one as fast as Pa."

"Hard to say," I said.  "Your pa was really moving.  I bet if he wasn't
wearing his big ol' clodhopper boots he could."

"Maybe," Eddie said.  "But there's no point in us waiting around for
them to get back.  We might as well go do something else.  Got any
ideas?"

"We could go ride your pigs," I said.  "To tell you the truth, I'm
kinda sick of horses."

"Yeah, me too," Eddie said.  "So which pig you want to ride, Trigger or
Champ?"

Blood Sausage One crisp fall day, my stepfather, Hank, and Rancid
Crabtree butchered one of our hogs.  In those days, slaughtering and
butchering were skills considered essential to survival on a small
farm, and for that flimsy reason I had been ordered to participate in
the ceremonies.  It was common knowledge among my family and friends
that I had a weak stomach, a stomach that would do back flips at the
mere thought of butchering, let alone actually rummaging around inside
a dead hog.  On those grounds, I appealed to my kindly old grandmother
to be excused from the nasty task.

"Stop that whinin' and bellyachin'!"  Gram responded kindly.  "Now git
on out there and help with that butcherin'!"

"No!  It'll make me deathly ill, I tell you!  You can't force me to do
this!  Look, I'm already gagging.  Aaack!  Aaack!  You'll never forgive
yourself if you make me do this and I gag to death."

"Try me!  Listen, you keep begging your ma and me to let you go hunting
by yourself, right?  So assuming we were crazy enough to let a
twelve-year-old youngun without a bit of sense in his head wander off
into the woods with a loaded rifle and assuming this youngun actually
shot a deer, how is this youngun planning on dressing out this deer?

Bring it home for his poor old granny to perform the chore?"

"Yeah, that was my plan.  Why do you ask?  You thinking about letting
me go deer hunting?"

I always figured the reason God invented skin was so people like me
wouldn't have to look at innards.  Even though I carefully explained
this theological concept to Gram, I was forcefully propelled out to the
killing ground behind the barn to help with the butchering.  My dog
Strange, already in cheerful attendance, danced about shouting his
approval and applauding each grisly detail.  There were few things
Strange enjoyed more than a good butchering.  He was the sort of dog
that could be found munching popcorn in the front row at a public
hanging.

For me, the butchering was just as awful as I had expected.  Hank and
Rancid didn't help much, either.  Hank, a Frenchman, loved cooking
exotic dishes, some of which you could actually stand to eat with your
eyes open, as long as you didn't know the ingredients.  Rancid, on the
other hand, had the culinary aptitude of a coyote, and the table
manners, too, come to think of it.

"Look here, Pat," Hank said.  "A lot of folks don't think this thing
right here is good to eat."

"Aaaack!"  I said.  "A lot of folks are right, too!"

"Rancid, you eat this, don't you?"  Hank said.

"Shore, Hank, and it's right tasty, too, fried up with a little garlic
and b'ar grease."

"Now you take these little morsels here, they're dang good eatin',"
Hank said.

"Aaaack!"  I said.  "You're lying, Hank!  You Just say that to be
disgusting and try to make me sick!  Aaaack!"

"No, I ain't.  You like these little morsels, don't you, Rancid?"

"Shore!  They's might fine eatin', fried up with a little garlic and
b'ar grease."

"You guys are pulling my leg," I said.  "You're trying to make me
sicker to my stomach than I already am.  I suppose next thing you're
going to tell me is that you saved that dishpanful of blood over
there--aaaack!--because it's good to eat."

"Ah was wonderin' about thet mawsef, Hank," Rancid said.  "How come you
saved all thet blood?"

"To make blood sausage with, of course," Hank replied.  "Nothin' like
fried blood sausage with grosses crapes on a cold winter morning.

Mmmmm!

Makes my mouth water just thinking about it."

"A aaack!"

To the best of my recollection, that was the first and only time I ever
saw Rancid gag.  Even Strange looked a little queasy.

Blood sausage!  Surely, I thought, Hank jests.  But no, he fully
intended to make blood sausage.  Scarcely was the butchering finished
than all members of the family were enlisted in the gory undertaking.

I tried to make a break for it, but Gram snared me by an ear and
dragged me back.  My assignment was to stir the blood in a big pot on
the stove.

"They must have laws against forcing a kid to stir blood," I said.

"You probably could be arrested for this."

"You ain't no better than the rest of us," Gram growled.  "Now shut up
and stir that--aaaack!--blood!"

"I'll get you for this, Gram," I threatened.  "You just wait and see if
I don't!"

"You and who else?"  Gram said with a chuckle, good-naturedly tweaking
my ear into a figure eight.  Gram was one of the fastest ear tweakers
in the West, and not easily intimidated.  "Now," she growled, "stir
that pot of blood-aaaack!-like Hank told you to."

"Aaaack!"  I replied, and started stirring the blood.  Clearly, if I
didn't assert myself in some way, Gram would continue to dominate me.

I needed to show her that I couldn't be pushed around without
retaliating.  But what was her weak spot?  Maybe Gilbert.

Gilbert had been my grandmother's boyfriend for several years.  He was
a tall, thin man, almost as shy as he was bald.  He had an important
and highly technical job in town, single-handedly operating the film
projector at the Pandora, our only movie theater.  I thought it had to
be about the best job in the world, being a master movie
projectionist.

First of all, you got to see all the movies free and each one over and
over.  And then there was all the excitement and danger Gilbert told us
about.  Sometimes the film would break right at the climax of a movie,
and Gilbert would have to calmly splice the film while the audience
booed and hissed and some of the rowdier loggers threatened to
integrate the faulty projector with the brave projectionist.

"It takes nerves of steel" Gilbert told us one evening at dinner.

"Fascinating," Hank said.  "Please pass the gravy."

"By the way Hank, this dish is absolutely delicious" Gilbert said.

"I've never tasted anything quite like it.  What are these scrumptious
little morsels?"

"Hog lips," I said.  "Care for another helping, Gil?"

Gilbert's fork froze halfway to his mouth, but then Gram explained that
I had just been joshing, and as soon as she laid hands on me my ears
would be tweaked so hard I could use them for eye shades.  Had I been
so uncouth as to mention some of the actual ingredients in Hank's
creation, Gilbert's entire body would have seized up right there at the
dinner table.  We would have had to carry him home in his chair, the
fork still frozen halfway to his mouth.

Stirring the pot of blood on the stove, I recalled Gilbert's reaction
to my little joke that evening.  No doubt about it, Gilbert was the
soft underbelly of my grandmother's defenses.  That was where I would
strike, should the opportunity present itself.  As it happened, the
opportunity presented itself much sooner than I expected.

Each member of the family had been assigned a task in the making of the
blood sausage.  Gram worked grimly at the kitchen table with a big
butcher knife, chopping up garlic and onions and other ingredients.  My
sister, Troll, measured out the choppings and hauled them over to dump
them in the cauldron that I stirred.  Mom waited to begin her work of
assisting in filling the sausage casings.  Hank, as master chef,
directed the whole operation.

Everything went smoothly, or as smoothly as the making of blood sausage
can go.  In the next to final step, Mom stood on one chair holding an
empty sausage casing that dangled almost to the floor, and Hank stood
on another chair, filling the casing with the loathsome concoction.

The casing was tied off in sections to make links, which were then
boiled.  The boiled links actually looked pretty good, although no one
present, except Hank, had any intention whatsoever of even sampling the
blood sausage in his or her lifetime.  Perhaps, I thought, I could get
Gilbert to eat one of these sausages.  Then I would tell him the major
ingredient.  I could say the whole thing was Gram's idea.  Ha!

When we were almost finished, Gram, Troll, and I glumly watched Mom and
Hank, up on their chairs, filling the final six-foot sausage casing.

As the dark, disgusting liquid rose higher and higher, the casing
bulged and glistened grotesquely.  Then disaster struck.  The casing
burst!  KABLOOOOSH!

Blood flew in all directions, splashing to the floor and sweeping back
and forth in ever-diminishing tidal waves.  Soaked head-to-foot with
blood, we stared at each other in stunned silence.  Gram's face
contorted with fury.

She shook the big butcher knife at Hank and snarled, "Just look at the
mess you've made of my kitchen!  I knew something like this would
happen!"

Then came the sound of the back door opening and closing and timid
footsteps crossing the utility room to the kitchen.

"Hello," Gilbert called out.  "Anybody home?"  He stepped into the
kitchen, carrying a bouquet of wildflowers in a little vase.  "My
goodness!

What on earth?  Is that ...?"

We were naturally all embarrassed to be caught in such a mess.  It is
very difficult to explain to a visitor how your kitchen and yourselves
came to be covered with blood.  Suddenly, I realized fate had thrust
upon me the opportunity of a lifetime.

"Run for your life, Gil!"  I yelled, pointing at Gram.  "She's got a
knife!"  The vase of wildflowers smashed to the floor.  Ashen-faced,
mouth agape, Gilbert backed away on rubbery legs.

"Wait, Gilbert!"  Gram cried out.  "Don't go!"  She rushed toward him,
reaching out to grab the hands he was weakly slapping at her.  I
suspect Gram's approach might have had a greater calming effect if she
hadn't still been holding the big butcher knife.

We were all pretty startled by Gilbert's reaction.  Finally, Hank, who
had a great sense of humor, broke out in a chuckle.  "Well," he said,
"there goes old Nerves-of-Steel!"

Even Gram had to laugh, although not until the following week.

Troll said, "Wow!  Did you see that!  Wow!"

Mom said, "But what about my screen door?"

Hank said, "Oh, don't worry about that.  Gil probably dropped it in the
driveway."

Gram later tracked Gilbert down and explained the situation to him,
that we had been canning raspberries and a jar had burst.  Gil said he
knew it was a joke right from the beginning and had gone along with it
just for the fun.

He said he liked to play the clown on occasion.  "Sorry about the
screen door."

A few nights afterward he was at our house for dinner.

"What's wrong with your ear, Pat?"  he asked me.

"Oh, it's just recovering from a bad tweaking," I said.  "Nothing
serious.  When it grows back on, it'll be good as new."

"Have another sausage, Gil," Hank said.  "Made it myself."

"Don't mind if I do," Gilbert said.  "It's delicious!  Can I get the
recipe?"

"You bet," I said.  A tweaking should not go unavenged.

Crash Dive!

Let me see if I can still remember the proper sequence of events, which
in some small way may have contributed to Mr. Muldoon's peculiar
behavior that wonderful, glorious summer after third grade.  First, I
had narrowly escaped drowning in the diving bell Crazy Eddie Muldoon
and I had built out of an old milk pail, a hose, and a tire pump.  Some
kind of technical problem, as I recall.

Next, the bush plane we built on top of the Muldoon barn crashed on
takeoff.  Eddie was pilot and I, copilot.  Eddie claimed the crash was
a result of wind shear or some such thing.  I thought it was pilot
error, but never expressed my opinion to Eddie, nor to the board of
inquiry that investigated the crash.  ("What in the name of heaven were
you two ...!") Then we dug the pit trap for capturing wild animals in
the Muldoon pasture.  All we managed to capture, however, were a small
but nervous skunk and Mr. Muldoon, unfortunately both of them at the
same time.

We tried to explain to Eddie's father how lucky it was that he had
landed in the trap with a mere skunk rather than, say, a mountain lion,
which was what we had hoped to catch.  A mountain lion could have torn
him to bits, whereas the skunk smell wore off him in less than a
year.

It is difficult, however, to get a grown-up to pay attention to two
eight-year-old boys, no matter how sensible they may be, and Mr.
Muldoon was no exception.

It was during the course of the above-mentioned ventures that I
observed Mr. Muldoon's behavior becoming increasingly strange and
unpredictable.  For example, Eddie and I would be doing nothing more
than pulling a little wagonload of boards across the yard, when Mr.
Muldoon would pop out of the barn and yell something irrational at us,
like, "Stay out of my workshop!

Don't touch my tools!  Don't build nothin'!"

To me, he seemed to be getting weirder and weirder with each passing
day.

I didn't mention this to Eddie, however, because I didn't want to
distract him from our Top Secret project--the design and construction
of a submarine.

The work on the submarine was top secret, because, Eddie said, he
wanted to surprise his parents.  That was one of the nice things about
Eddie--he was always thinking up new ways to surprise his parents.

That may be why both his mother and father went about with constant
surprised looks.  It was sort of eerie, actually.  Eddie's parents were
beginning to make me uneasy, with all their twitches and jerks,
surprised looks and irrational shouting.

Eddie and I worked on the submarine every chance we got.  As soon as
his father had gone off on his tractor to plow a field or something, we
would rush into his workshop and grab armfuls of tools and haul them
off to the building site.  Eddie explained to me that when his father
said "Don't touch my tools!"  he didn't really mean "Don't touch my
tools!"  but something else.

"What else?"  I asked.

"I'm not sure," Eddie said, selecting a saw and testing it for
sharpness with his thumb.  "Just something else.  Why do you ask?"

"No reason.  You think we'll need the brace-n-bit today?"

"Yes.  And fill your pockets with those big nails.  We'll need lots of
nails."

Much of our time was spent scouring the countryside for
submarine-building materials, which were fairly scarce in North
Idaho.

Nevertheless, we salvaged numerous boards from an old shed Mr. Muldoon
probably was planning on tearing down anyway.  We also had the good
fortune to find an old wooden barrel, an abandoned hog trough, a
washtub, several lengths of stovepipe, some metal roofing, a hose, a
tire pump, a truck inner tube, and various other essentials of
submarine construction.

Slowly the sub took shape.  The long sleek hull contained hatches fore
and aft, for quick departures from the deck prior to crash dives.  A
four-inch swivel gun was mounted just ahead of the forward hatch.  The
conning tower jutted magnificently up from the deck, its side painted
with the name of our deadly underwater craft--Sea Wuff.  The very name
sent chills up and down our spines.

Eddie designed and manufactured the periscope himself.  In many ways it
was the most impressive part of the submarine.  Several small mirrors
of the kind mothers and sisters carry in their purses were cleverly
mounted inside a tube in such a way that it was possible to run the
periscope up from the conning tower, peer into the lower opening, and
see an eye staring back.

The first time I looked through the periscope I shouted "Eddie, Crash
dive!  Crash dive!  There's an eye bearing down on us at twenty
knots!"

Eddie was not amused, and I narrowly escaped courtmartial.

We made several trial runs with the sub and everything worked
perfectly.

It slithered silently as a shark's ghost beneath the unsuspecting
enemy, entered and left harbors of the world undetected, and scouted
the far reaches of the Pacific and Atlantic.  Satisfied with its
performance, Captain Crazy Eddie Muldoon decided that at last the time
had come to subject our submarine to the ultimate test--putting it in
actual water.

With the foresight of any good engineer, Eddie had built the submarine
on top of two round fence posts.  Eddie stationed himself in the
conning tower during the launch, so that he could direct the crew in
the proper method of pushing the submarine into water.  The crew put
its shoulder to the stern of the sub, pushed, and the vessel slid into
the waves to the resounding applause and cheers of the captain and
crew.  The crew then leaped aboard, almost ejecting the captain from
the conning tower and once again narrowly escaping a court-martial.

The sub soon righted itself.  Scarcely had it done so, however, than
the crew detected what it supposed to be a serious flaw in the craft.

"It's sinking!"  the crew yelled.  "It's sinking!"

"It's supposed to sink, you fool," the captain snarled at the crew.

"It's a submarine!"

Not being stupid, the crew chose that moment to mutiny and leaped back
toward shore, sinking over its sneakers into black muck.

The Sea Wuff drifted aimlessly about, its deck spouting fountains of
water from every orifice, of which there were a good many.  The
captain, however, showed no sign of abandoning the conning tower.

Indeed, his attitude reflected nothing less than sublime confidence.

He gripped the conning-tower rail and stared down at the deck of the
craft settling into the murky waves beneath him.

"Go get my folks," he ordered the crew presently.  "I want them to see
this.  It'll be a big surprise for them."

The crew, not at all sure the captain hadn't gone totally mad, raced
across a field, over a fence, through the barnyard, over the lawn, and
burst into the kitchen, where Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon were just sitting
down for an afternoon coffee break.

"Quick!"  the crew shouted.  "The sub's about to crash dive."

Mr. Muldoon had just taken a bite of cinnamon toast, a piece of which
protruded from his trembling lips.  The entire left side of his face
convulsed in a gigantic twitch.  As I say, the man was strange.

"S-sub?"  he said.  "What's a sub?"

"Crash dive?"  Mrs.  Muldoon said.  "What's a crash ...?

"SUBMARINE!"  roared Mr. Muldoon.  "SUBMARINE!"  He leaned forward,
grabbed the suspenders of the crew's overalls, and jerked them up to
within an inch of his face.  "WHERE?  WHERE?  THE CRICK?  THE LAKE?

WHERE?"

He scared the crew so badly for a moment it couldn't remember where the
submarine was crash diving.  Besides that, he had sprayed
cinnamon-toast crumbs in the crew's eyes.  Finally, the crew was able
to blurt out, "The d-d-d-d-d-duck pond!"

Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon fairly exploded out the door and raced each
other across the lawn, through the barnyard, over the fence, and across
the pasture.

"Cripes," the crew said to itself.  "You'd think they'd never seen a
submarine crash dive before."  Not wishing to be left out of the
surprise, however, the crew sped after the Muldoons and arrived at the
duck pond mere seconds behind them.  They slid to a stop and stood
wheezing and gasping at the pond's edge, staring out at what no doubt
to them appeared to be nothing more than an old wooden barrel
protruding from the water.  From the interior of the conning tower, for
that in fact was the true nature of the barrel, came an ominous
sound.

Wush-wush-wush-wush-wush-wush.

"Eddieeee!"  screamed Mrs.  Muldoon.

Crazy Eddie's head popped up out of the barrel.  "Hi, Ma.  Pa.  What do
you think of the submarine?"

Mr. Muldoon flopped down on his seat and stared out at his son, the
captain of the Sea Wuff.

"What in heck are you doing out there?"  he croaked, swabbing the sweat
from his face with a grungy old bandanna.

"Well, after my cowardly crew mutinied, I crash dived to the bottom.

Now I'm surfacing again."

"Surfacing," Mr. Muldoon said, studying the sleek hull beneath the
lapping waves.  "Good luck."

"Thank you, sir," the captain said, and disappeared back into the
barrel.

Wush-wush-wush-wush-wush-wush-wush-wush.

We then observed one of the great miracles of modern technology.

Slowly, wobbly but steadily, the submarine began to rise to the
surface.  Eddie's calculations had proved correct.  It was indeed
possible for him to inflate with a hand pump the truck inner tube
installed directly below the conning tower.

Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon were wonderfully surprised and cheered and
applauded this display of well-known American ingenuity.  As they
strolled limply back toward their house, Mr. Muldoon suddenly stopped,
appeared to think for a moment, then spun around.

"Tire pump!"  he shouted.  "What's my tire pump doing out in the middle
of a duck pond?  Where did you get the inner tube?  My tools!"

Later that summer, the Muldoons moved away and I never again saw Crazy
Eddie, the pal with whom I had first skinned my knees, blackened my
eyes, bloodied my nose, and broken my bones, the ties that truly
bind.

My mother, grandmother, and I went over to bid the Muldoons goodbye.

Crazy Eddie stood straight and fairly tall on the back of the old
flatbed truck that was loaded down with all the Muldoon furniture.  As
the truck pulled out of the yard, he threw me a jaunty salute, turned,
stared straight ahead, and never looked back.  I sadly watched my
friend vanish into a future we would not share, the heavy silence
broken only by the sounds of Mom and Gram leaping into the air and
clicking their heels.

My Abduction by Creatures From Space, for What It's Worth I just read a
nonfiction book by an author who was kidnapped by aliens from space and
taken aboard their flying saucer, where he was subjected to a variety
of experiments and then returned safely to his own bed, none the worse
for wear but with a bad case of the nerves and an idea for a
best-seller.

According to the book, such abductions by aliens are a fairly common
occurrence, something I hadn't realized.  Otherwise, I would have come
forward much sooner and reported my own kidnapping by aliens.  I had
assumed my experience was unique, and so bizarre that people would poke
fun at me or even suggest that the strange encounter was due to a bad
batch of my elderberry wine, which, to tell the truth, was what I first
suspected.  But the haunting question remains: What would elderberry
wine be doing with a spacecraft?

Although my abduction by aliens occurred on the night of October 3,
1978, the incident is still fresh in my mind today.  Indeed, it ranks
right up near the top of my memorable experiences.  I had gone up to my
cabin on the river for a few days of relaxation and a little fishing.

About nine o'clock, I set my North Idaho burglar alarm, which, when
tripped, plays a recording of a shell being jacked into the chamber of
a 12-gauge shotgun, a much more effective alarm than some silly beeping
or clanging.  I then enjoyed a glass of my latest batch of elderberry
wine, and, much relaxed, went off to bed.  About midnight, I suddenly
awoke in a cold sweat, sensing the presence of something in the room
with me.  I am a little vague about the exact time, because when I
sense an unknown presence in my room at night I tend to be somewhat lax
in accumulating data that might later be of interest to scientific
investigators.

Therefore, when I say "about midnight" I mean anywhere from eleven p.m.
Tuesday to four a.m. Friday.  I was at first particularly disturbed by
the extreme darkness of the room, which made it impossible to see
anything, even though my room is equipped with a night light for
medicinal purposes.  Then I realized that the darkness was the result
of my eyes being squeezed shut.

Against my better judgment, I opened them.

A creature no more than three feet tall was standing in the corner of
the room watching me.  It had a deathly pale face, an o-shaped mouth,
and two enormous eyes.  (Quite likely, the creature had the same
impression of me.) It was equipped with the normal number of arms and
legs--no great comfort.

Its body appeared to be covered with aluminum foil that gave off a mild
iridescent glow.  The creature moved toward me, its legs tight together
as though by invisible bonds.  Suddenly, although I heard nothing, a
raspy voice sounded inside my head.  "Quick, where's your bathroom?"

the voice said.

I pointed to the bathroom door.  The creature rushed inside with the
same jerky motion, and returned a few minutes later, walking
normally.

"Whewee!"  the voice said inside my head.  "Long way between rest stops
in this part of the galaxy.  So, Crawford, I imagine you're wondering
what I'm doing here in your bedroom at this hour of the night.  My
orders are to take you up to our spaceship, where a few minor
experiments will be run on you.

Afterward, we'll replace your skin and no one will ever guess you've
been out of it.  First of all, though, I'd better write 'front' and
'back' and 'this side up' on you, just as a precaution.  We're
advanced, but not all that advanced."

"Wait!  Wait!"  I shouted.  "You've got the wrong guy!  My name's not
Crawford!"

"That's what they all say."

The creature signaled toward the door, and in trooped a dozen tiny
beings dressed as stevedores and grumbling about working overtime on
regular pay.

They held their bony little hands over me and I floated up into the
air, a rather pleasant sensation, although I didn't fully appreciate it
at the time.

The next thing I knew I was hovering a few feet over a little clearing
in deep woods.  Creature voices crackled in my head: "Where's the
spaceship?"

"I told you this was the wrong direction, you idiot!"

"No, I'm right!  The sun rises in the north and sets in the south."

"But this is Earth!  Different sun!"

"Oh, I forgot.  Must be mag lag.  Takes me a day or two to get
oriented.

So, we're lost, guys.  Anybody know what side of the trees the moss
grows on?

Hey, nobody panic!  Maybe the human can help us find the ship.  Listen,
Crawford, don't just float there with that stupid look on your face.

Help us out.  We parked the ship next to a little pond in the woods
near your cabin."

"Why should I help you find your ship?"

"Ever read in the tabloids about a guy who woke up with his skin on
backward?"

"Just asking.  The pond's over there."

A few minutes later, we were beneath the spacecraft, which was shaped
like a saucer and about the size of Pittsburgh.  Either that or it was
shaped like Pittsburgh and about the size of a saucer.  I was getting
confused.

"What happens now?"  I asked.  "Are you going to beam us up?"

"No," the head creature replied.  "We're advanced, but we're not all
that advanced.  Hey, somebody up there send down the ladder!"

Upon arriving at the top of the ladder, I entered a large circular
room.

A number of creatures leaned against the wall, looking bored.  The
floor was cluttered with dirty clothes and old pizza boxes.  Loud,
raucous music pounded from overhead speakers.  I assumed this was the
area of the spacecraft inhabited by teenage creatures.

The head creature, whom I'll call Ralph, took my hand and led me into a
room I guessed was a nursery.  Large, cream-colored larvae of some sort
squirmed inside glass jars.  It was hideous.  I shuddered.

"What's wrong?"  Ralph said.  "You never seen fish bait before?  The
kids always bring their own grubs.  Works great on your largemouth
bass."

Ralph next led me into a room equipped with what looked like an
operating table.  He told me to climb up on the table.  I viewed this
as a bad omen, but my will to resist had been neutralized, either by
telepsychic manipulation or Ralph's breath.  I climbed up on the
table.

Presently, I was approached by an ancient creature that somehow gave me
the impression of a praying mantis moonlighting as a bag lady.

Whether the creature was male or female, I couldn't say, nor was it
something I considered worth dwelling on at the moment.  Maybe after a
few decades in space, yes, but not sooner.

"Ah, Crawford, the chosen one!"  the ancient thing growled inside my
head.  "It is you to whom we have brought the single greatest secret of
the universe.  You will go on what you call your television and make
this secret known to all humans, so that they will be raised to the
highest form of consciousness.  For this service, you will be rewarded
with wealth beyond even your imagination.  You will know unbelievable
luxury, Crawford, and Please, allow me to call you by your first
name.

What is it?  My memory is so bad!"

"Pat.  Pat Crawford.  So what's the single greatest secret of the
universe?"

"It is just this.  That the ... uh, the uh ... Let's see, how does that
go?  Darn this memory of mine!  I should have written it down.  It has
totally slipped my mind!  We're advanced ..."

"Yeah, I know, but not all that advanced."

"The single greatest secret of the universe is a rather good joke, too,
if I could just remember how it went.  I think you would have enjoyed
it.  Oh well, we might as well do the usual skin thing with you.  No
sense in wasting a good specimen."

"Wait!  Wait!"  I shouted.  "I'm not Crawford!"

All at once, I sat up.  I was back safe and sound in my own bed.  But
all I could see was darkness.  I thought My skin had been put on
backward!  Then I realized my eyes were still closed.

Questions remain.  Was I really dreaming?  Was I in a drunken stupor
from elderberry wine?  Had I momentarily gone insane?  If the creatures
had actually entered the house, why hadn't the burglar alarm gone
off?

Why why why?  I thought perhaps my friend Paul, the psychologist, could
put me into a deep hypnotic trance and extract the truth from my
subconscious.  Paul was more than willing to hypnotize me, but later
said there wasn't anything in my subconscious worth reporting on, and
much of it was in bad taste anyway.  The only odd thing about the
session was that upon coming out of the trance I was possessed by a
terrible compulsion to pay Paul the twenty bucks I owed him on a
fishing bet.  Was this some perverse trick of the creatures from
space?

Questions!  Questions!

Phantom of the Woods When I was a boy, I generally adhered like glue to
the laws of fishing and hunting.  This was due to my keen sense of
Truth, Honor, Duty, and Sneed.

Sneed was the local game warden, a person of mysterious powers that
enabled him to materialize any time of the day or night at the very
instant of a game violation.  True, some people did get away with
violating the fish and game laws, but Sneed prevented them from
enjoying the transgression.  They would scurry toward home with their
illegal catch, jumping at every snap of a twig, breaking into a cold
sweat at every rustle of grass, and swiveling their heads to catch
sight of any shadow that seemed ready to pounce on them.  In all
honesty, I must admit that had it not been for Sneed, my sense of
Truth, Honor, and Duty might have been a good deal less keen.

Sneed.  Even now the sound of that name sends chills rippling down the
highways and byways of my nervous system much as it did forty years
ago.

Once, Retch Sweeney and I, fourteen years old, were fishing a remote
section of Sand Creek so early that dawn was but a sliver of milde
darkness in the east.  No sane adult would be out and about at such an
hour, in such a place.

We were catching big fat red-bellied cutthroat as fast as we could bait
our hooks.  Gripped as we were by a catching frenzy, the trout limit
seemed a remote abstraction, a vague and boring notion we had once
heard mentioned in our presence but scarcely the sort of thing to
intrude upon the excitement of the moment.  In the darkness behind us,
unknown numbers of fish flopped happily about on the gravel.

"What's our limit?"  I asked Retch, chuckling.

"All we can catch plus one fish," Retch said.

I lobbed another worm-laden hook out into the watery darkness swirling
beyond the gravel bar, even as I detected a momentary chill in the air,
as though a ghost had floated by, close enough to awaken the hairs on
the back of my neck.  Retch, too, had noticed the chill.  We glanced
about, seeking shape and substance for the invisible horror.

"Sneed," Retch croaked.  "I know it's Sneed.  He's out there someplace,
watching.  I can feel his eyes burning into ..."  And then we saw
him--a shadow emerging from the mist, shaped like a man in a big hat
and a long coat, gliding over the gravel of the bar as silently as if
it were moss.  Sneed!

Cripes!

"Howdy, boys.  You up a mite early today.  Looks to me like you been
havin' some fine luck."

"Y-yes, sir," Retch said.  "Some good, some bad."

"Reckon I know what you mean," Sneed said.  "You boys know how many
fish you caught?"

"Not exactly," I said.  "I'd guess we're pretty close to the limit,
though."

"Right.  But which side?  The under side or the over side?"

He had me there.  I never was much good at puzzles, particularly while
quaking in my tennis shoes.

"Don't know, do you, boys?  Well, let me put it this way.  If each of
you had caught one more fish, I would've had to take you in."

Take us in?  The dreaded Sneed, take us in!  We would have vanished
from the face of the earth, never to be seen or heard of again.  Two
fairly innocent boys, sucked into oblivion.  And for what?  Two lousy
fish over the limit!

"Actually, I was a little surprised to run into you two out here this
hour of the morning," said the game warden.  "I was really hoping to
catch that rascal Rancid Crabtree.  If you happen to see him, you might
tell him that I'm checking these parts fairly often these days--and
nights.  Try to keep it in mind yourselves."

Then Sneed was gone in a swirl of mist, leaving a few boot prints on
the gravel, almost as if he were human.

Retch and I collected our fish.  Sneed had miscounted; we were each
still several fish shy of the limit.  "No point in being greedy," Retch
said loudly, smoothing down the hairs on the back of his neck.  "No
point in always trying to catch the limit, that's what I always say."

"Right," I shouted.  "That's what I always say, too."

On the way home, we stopped by Rancid Crabtree's shack, fired up his
barrel stove, and put a pot of coffee on to boil.  As always, the old
woodsman was delighted to see us.

"Golllll-dang!  What's the idear bargin' in here this hour the mornin',
distarbin' a man's sleep?"  Because Rancid's normal voice was a
high-pitched squeal accomplished with little or no movement of his
lips, someone meeting him for the first time might easily have jumped
to the conclusion the man was agitated.  Nothing could have been
further from the truth.  "Golllll-dang," he squealed between his teeth,
throwing off his blankets.  "You fellas eat a man out of house and home
fer he's even outta bed."

"We brought you some fish," I said, nibbling on a hard, cold biscuit.

"Ah got fish," he said, yawning, combing his hair back with his
fingers.

"I bet," I said.  "That's what brought us by here this morning.  Sneed
caught us down on the crick.  Scared the daylights out of us."

"You let ol' Sneed catch you?"  Rancid said, cackling.  "Thet's the
funniest thang Ah heard today."

"He let us go, though."

"Noooo.  Sneed let you go?"

"We were still a few fish short of our limit.  But he told us to warn
you."

"Warn me?"

"Yeah," Retch said, filling three grimy mugs with coffee.  "He said,
'Tell Crabtree I'm gonna be out and about these parts and on the
lookout for him and if I catch him violating any fish and game
regulations I'm gonna nail his hide to my barn wall and tan it."  Ain't
that about what he said, Pat?"

"Pretty near," I said.  "Sneed's out to get you, Rancid."

"Haaaaaaaw!  Sneed thanks he can nab me?  Wahl, he got another thank
comin'!  They don't call me Phantom of the Woods fer nothin'!"

"Yeah, I guess not," I said.  "Got any sugar for this coffee,
Phantom?"

The following winter, Rancid and I were ice fishing on Oreille Lake.

The game regulations, according to Earl Ilits, said we could catch
perch, kokanee, and whitefish through the ice, but we had to release
any trout.  We had already caught and released several smallish
rainbows.

A dozen or so other ice fishermen were scattered about the lake in our
vicinity, but otherwise the great expanse of ice was empty.  There was
absolutely no way the game warden could approach without one of the ice
fishermen spotting him and sounding the warning: "Sneed's coming.  Pass
it along.

The general concern about Sneed didn't mean that we were a bunch of
deliberate law breakers.  What it meant was, almost nobody ever sat
down and actually read the fish-and-game regulations.  It worked like
this.  You might ask Fred Jones what the limit on whitefish was.  Jones
might say, "Ain't none."  "How do you know, Fred?"  "Cause Pete Wilson
told me."  "How did Pete know?"  Sam Miller had told him.  And so on.

You assumed that somewhere back at the beginning of this chain of
information, there was someone who had actually read the regulations.

But you could never be sure.  You yourself didn't want to read the
regulations, because they gave you a headache.  That was why it was
necessary to keep a lookout for Sneed--headaches.

Rancid had considerable success that winter trapping skunks.  The
phrase "smell of success" was perhaps never more accurately descriptive
than when applied to Rancid, and this explained why no fishermen were
situated downwind of us.  These were the circumstances that played
right into Sneed's hands.

As we hunched over our little holes in the ice, with clouds of snow
whipping around us, Rancid suddenly shouted, "Gol-dang!  Ah got a
biggun on!"

After much thrashing and splashing, he hauled out a twenty-inch rainbow
trout.

He removed the hook and laid the trout on the ice.

"Wow, what a beauty!"  I said.  "That's the nicest fish I've seen all
year.  Too bad you have to throw it back, Rancid."

The old woodsman stared at me, then down at his fish.  He turned his
head about, checking this way and that, trying to peer through the
gusts of snow.

"I said, Rancid, too bad you have to throw it back!"

"Oh, Ah suppose so," he said.  He picked up the trout and held it out
toward the hole in the ice.  "C'mon, fish, leggo maw hand!  Ah said,
leggo maw hand!  Git back in thet water!  Wahl, dadgumit, if you ain't
got gumption enough to wiggle out of maw hand, you can jist go home
with me.  Ah ain't gonna force you to jump back in thet icy water if
you don't want to!"

"Better toss it back, Rancid," I said.

"Haaaww!"  he said.  "This hyar fish don't want to be tossed back, do
you fish?  You wants to be snuck home and et by the Phantom, ain't thet
right, fish?"  ignoring what the fish might have to say, I peered off
into the gusting snow.  "I've got some bad news for you, Phantom.  Here
comes Sneed."

I wasn't fooling either.  For a brief moment, I had glimpsed the
shadowy form of a tall man gliding toward us through the billowing
snow, approaching on our downwind side, which was unprotected by an
early-warning system.

"You joshin' me?"  the Phantom said.

"No!"  I said.  "But there is still time to toss the fish back.

"You better not be lyin'!"  Rancid said.  He moved to toss the fish
back, but then stopped.  "No!  Ah jist cain't do it.  It ain't natural
to throw back a fish this big!"  And with that, he opened up his coat,
stuffed the fish inside his shirt, and buttoned his coat back up.

Then Sneed was on us.  "Howdy, men.  Like to check your fishing
licenses.

See you got a nice catch of whitefish there.  Ain't no limit on
whitefish this year.  Catch all you want.  I suppose you know you got
to throw any trout back, though.  You know that, don't you,
Crabtree?"

"Shore," Rancid said.  But then, to Sneed's and my amazement, the
Phantom hunched slightly over and burst out in a shrieking giggle
totally unbecoming a grown man.  With obvious great effort, Rancid cut
the giggle short.

The game warden and I stared at the old woodsman with considerable
concern.  His whole chest was fluttering violently beneath his coat!

"You all right, Crabtree?"  the game warden asked.  "Ain't got a heart
problem, have you?"

"Ahim fine, fine!"  Rancid then let out a whoop that caused Sneed and
me both to jump back.  The fluttering had now moved down in the
direction of the woodsman's lower anatomy.  Rancid clutched his belly
with both hands and began to dance wildly about, alternately whooping
and giggling and working in an occasional shrill burst of cussing.

"What you got under your coat there?"  Sneed asked, his brow furrowing
with suspicion.

"A big bananner fer maw lunch," Rancid lied.  "Jist a big bananner."

"Well, that's the liveliest banana I ever seen," Sneed growled.

"Ain't it though," Rancid said.

Sneed folded his arms and, appearing much less concerned, watched as
Rancid struggled to control the fluttering and thrashing that now slid
slowly down his pant leg.

Then the trout squirted out of the pant leg onto the ice.  The three of
us stared down at the big flopping rainbow.

"Praise be!"  Rancid shouted.  "It's a miracle!  A bananner turned into
a fish!"

Sneed was already writing out a ticket, using my back as a desk.  He
handed the ticket to Rancid.  "That trout just cost you twenty-five
dollars, Crabtree."

"Twenty-five dollars!"  Rancid squealed.  Then he turned to me and
asked, "How many skonks you reckon thet is?"

"I reckon about all the skunks in Idaho," I said.  "But they probably
won't let you pay the fine with skunks."

"Wahl, hold on jist a dang minute, Sneed.  Ah don't thank Ah was
actually breakin' the law.  Ah was just warming thet fish up before
tossin' it back in the icy water, so ..."

But Sneed had vanished, leaving a couple of boot prints in the snow,
almost as if he were human.  The Phantom of the Woods and I stood there
thinking about Truth, Honor, Duty, and Sneed.  Then we packed up our
whitefish and headed home.

The Piano Lesson My wife, Bun, sprang breathlessly through the door,
slammed it shut, and, not satisfied with engaging the lock and dead
bolt, pressed her shoulder hard against it.  Upon regaining the power
of speech, she shouted out that the garage had attacked her.

"What utter nonsense!"  I exclaimed.  "There's no way the garage would
attack you.  It's harmless.  You may have startled it into making a
threatening gesture or two, but true garage attacks are virtually
unheard of."

"Oh yeah?  How about the time the Sweeneys' garage ate Retch's dog, old
Smarts?"

Bun had a point.  I myself had witnessed Retch Sweeney's garage gobble
up the inaptly named canine.  Smarts, shuffling along too close to the
open maw of the garage, had been slurped in, leaving only a surprised
yelp hanging in the air.  The dog was burped up a few minutes later,
none the worse for wear, and no brighter, but with a haunted look on
his face.  The dog went about for days afterward telling of the horrors
he had experienced in the labyrinthine innards of the Sweeney garage,
but who's going to believe a stupid dog?

"Well, sure," I said.  "A garage might gobble up a dumb animal but not
an intelligent human being."

"In that case, both you and Retch are at considerable risk."

"Ha!"  I shot back.

Speaking of garages, back when I was a young boy I knew a man who
actually kept his car in one.  His name was Mr. jefferies.  I don't
know where he kept his boat and motor and canoe and tent and fishing
tackle and all the other stuff usually stored in garages.  Maybe he
didn't own any.  He never worked at a job, at least one that anyone
knew about, because he went to the library almost every day.  Miss
Higgens, our town librarian, said she enjoyed checking books in and out
for him, because it was nice to have someone around occasionally, to
break the monotony.  She said Mr. jefferies knew how to read and speak
French, too.  Because of that some folks thought Mr. jefferies might
be a Communist saboteur, even though there wasn't anything around for
him to sabotage, except Gus Dreeper's sawmill, which Gus said he
wouldn't mind having blown up one dang bit anyway, as long as he had a
it of warning.

Actually, Mr. jefferies wasn't all that interesting.  I probably
wouldn't even remember him except that he kept his car in his garage
and later turned out to be totally insane.  He also did me a wonderful
favor.  He ran off with Miss Swartz, my piano teacher.  That's how I
knew he was insane.  A man would have to be crazy to run off with Miss
Swartz.

My mother bought the piano for next to nothing from the Gregorys, a
frail old couple whose farm the bank had foreclosed on.  The Gregorys
were going to try to make it to California in their old truck to pick
fruit for a living, which seemed like a lot of fun to me, and I wished
I had been going along, particularly when I found out Mom's intention
for the piano.  As it was, I had no way of knowing the piano had any
connection with me.  I assumed Mom had bought it only for some
decorative purpose, possibly to cover up the spot where a leak in the
roof had stained the wallpaper.  Without warning I was signed up for
piano lessons with Miss Swartz.  Right to the last I was deceived.  Mom
said Miss Swartz would give me some culture.  I thought it was
something to eat, like custard.  Piano lessons were the worst thing
that ever happened to me.  Thus did I become aware of the existence of
evil in the world.

I didn't mind going to a piano lesson so much while school was on,
because my day had already been ruined.  When you're suffering anyway,
another pain more or less doesn't make much difference.  What I truly
hated was piano lessons during my summer vacations.  A lesson tainted
an otherwise joyous day.

It was like eating a fine crisp juicy apple that you know contains a
worm.  My first lesson came on just such a fine crisp juicy apple of a
summer day.  I was hollered in off the creek and made to take a bath,
wash my hair, cut and clean my fingernails, and put on my good pants
and my good shirt, all of which coming in a single day would have been
too much to bear, except I was venturing into the unknown, which for me
has always posed the possibility of adventure.  I pedaled my bike off
toward town and Miss Swartz's.  So far so good.

About half a mile from town, I sighted Buster Cogwheel headed my way.

Buster had a build like a short brick outhouse and about as many
brains.  I had heard on the grapevine that Buster was looking for me.

He apparently had some notion that I had stolen his canoe, which he
kept hidden down on the creek so that the real owners couldn't find
it.

How Buster had got such a ridiculous idea in his head I don't know.

First of all, as I had told my friends, I wasn't in the habit of
stealing, and had I been, I certainly wouldn't have stolen from Buster,
who had spotted me by now and rushed to the center of the road, his
arms spread wide to nab me.  Aware of the folly of attempting to reason
with A Cogwheel, I speeded up, hoping I would have enough momentum to
run over him.  This maneuver might have succeeded had I been driving a
pickup truck but it was no good on a bike.

The impact scarcely caused Buster to blink.  He dragged me from the
bike by the neck and stood me up on the edge of the pavement.  I
thought this might be a good time to try reasoning with him, but before
I could collect my wits he punched me in the nose and sent me sprawling
down into the muddy ditch.

"That'll teach you to steal my canoe," he snarled.

Blood spurted from both my nostrils and sprayed all over my shirt.  I
was furious.  "Look what you did, Buster, you got blood and mud all
over my good shirt and pants."

Buster was shocked.  Even a lummox like him knew that wearing your good
shirt and pants put you off limits for beating up.

"Gee," he said, "I dint know.  How come you wearing your good shirt and
pants in the middle of summer?"

"Piano lessons," I said.  "I'm on my way to start taking piano lessons
from Miss Swartz."

Geez, how could your mom do that to you?"

"Beats me," I said, brushing away at the mud on my good pants.  "You
know women."

"Kinda," said Buster.  "Hey, guy, I dint mean to hit you in the nose.

I was aiming for your eye.  You musta moved."

"Yeah," I said.  "It was all my fault.  I hope you won't hold it
against me."

"Naw, no hard feelin's.  Here, let me help you with that nosebleed."

Buster tore two pieces of cloth from his grungy T-shirt and, tilting my
head back by my hair, stuffed them up my nostrils.  "There!  Now you
won't drip blood all over Miss Swartz's piano."

It bothered me a little, having pieces of Buster's T-shirt so near my
brain, but I thanked him, climbed back on my bike, and rode off to my
lesson.

I arrived at Miss Swartz's without further incident, except that Skip
Holly's dog, Grover, raced out and grabbed the leg of my good pants,
practically tearing it off at the knee.  Already piano lessons were
starting to get on my nerves, and I hadn't even had one yet.  The
worst, however, was still to come.

Miss Swartz was about the fussiest person I've ever known.  When she
opened the door to let me in, a look of undiluted horror spread across
her face.  Scared me.  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure some
wild man with an ax or something wasn't sneaking up behind me, but
nobody was there.  It was none other than me, her new piano pupil, Miss
Swartz was staring at.  She looked as if she was about to start
gagging, polite, dainty gagging I'm sure, but gagging nonetheless.

Miss Swartz took me by the collar and dragged me through her fussy
living room to her fussy bathroom and made me wash my face and hands
and remove the pieces of Buster's T-shirt, which had worked fine for
stopping my nosebleed.

Then she spread newspapers on her piano bench and we sat down on them
to begin my first lesson.  It was awful.  She made me sit up
unnaturally straight and hold my arms and hands and fingers just so.

The first song I was supposed to learn had three notes in it and was
something called "The Fairy Picnic."

Well, it was a pretty sorry picnic if you asked me, even for fairies.

I came right out and told Miss Swartz that I didn't think I was going
to enjoy my piano lessons.

"I don't think I'll enjoy them much either," she said, "but one must do
what one must do."

The minute the lesson was over she gave me a thin little music book and
ushered me out the door with orders to practice "The Fairy Picnic" an
hour a day for the next week.  Fat chance!  She never even mentioned
the custard.  As I was going down the walk, my nerves all frazzled and
jumpy, I noticed a man out front peering under the hood of his car.

"Engine trouble," he explained to me.  "I have to call a mechanic.

Know anyone around here with a telephone?"

"Miss Swartz here has one, but she'll make you wash that grease off
your hands before she lets you use it."

"Thanks, son.  I owe you one."

"No problem, Mr.  jefferies."

I still had five or six hours of daylight left to enjoy myself.  What I
needed was some quiet and solitude to calm my nerves.  What better than
paddling a canoe down on the creek?  I leaped on my bike and headed
home.

Zumbo and the Misty Mountain Ghosts Moving with the effortless ease of
the natural athlete, I ascended one of the steeper slopes of Misty
Mountain.  Off to my right, I could hear Jim Zumbo practicing his elk
call.  I knew it was Zumbo because of the distinctive sound of his
call: "Here, elk!  Here, elk!"

I don't know why Zumbo was practicing his elk call, because it's pretty
simple to master.  Also, we were hunting turkeys.  I moved off in his
direction and found him sitting on a log gazing off over the vast
expanse of the Misty Mountain Ranch, which is about the size of
Connecticut.  The ranch is so big and so remote that a hundred or so
years ago it had its own town-houses for the ranch hands and their
families, a school, a mercantile store, a saloon, a hotel, and even its
own cemetery.  Now all that remained of the town was the hotel, an
empty, two-story wooden structure jutting up forlornly from the
prairie, and, of course, the cemetery.

Jim pointed off at the hotel.  "It's getting late," he said.  "By the
time we work our way back down the mountain, it'll be dark.  The ranch
foreman says there's a couple of cots in the hotel, and we're welcome
to roll our sleeping bags out on them for the night.  We can get up
early and drive back to town by nine in the morning.  What say?"

The town Jim referred to was a hundred miles away.  We had to be there
at nine in the morning, because we were scheduled to participate in a
panel discussion at a conference.  Since we had to be in the area for
the conference anyway, we had decided to squeeze in a quick turkey hunt
on the Misty Mountain Ranch.  (I prefer to hunt slow turkeys, but Jim
insisted on quick ones.) Even from the distance, it was evident that
the old hotel was still in good enough shape to give us reasonable
shelter.

"Gosh, I don't know," I said."  I just have an odd feeling about the
hotel, like how come the ranch owners did away with all the rest of the
town and left only the hotel?"

"The way I hear it, the town got so run down and dilapidated that it
became an eyesore, and the owners decided to burn it to the ground.  So
the ranch hands burned down all the buildings but the hotel.  When they
tried to set fire to it, something kept blowing out the matches.  So
they left it."

"I thought that might be the case," I said.

"Ha!"  Jim laughed.  "I just made that up.  You're so gullible,
McManus.

You aren't afraid of ghosts, are you?"

"Me?  Afraid of ghosts?  Of course not!"  Although I am not overly fond
of ghosts, I am certainly not afraid of them.  I am not even sure they
exist.

On the other hand, I'm not sure they don't exist.  Over the years I
have had several encounters with phenomena that might be ghosts, but
urgent business elsewhere required that I depart the premises in haste,
and I was therefore unable to conduct a proper scientific
investigation, much to my disappointment.

I was once relaxing in my office at home when an empty pair of chest
waders came clumping through the door.  Simultaneously, I noticed that
I had levitated several inches off my chair and the book I had been
reading left my hands and ricocheted off several walls and the
ceiling.

Time seemed to stand still, something I had no intention of doing
myself, as soon as gravity canceled out my levitation, and I could gain
sufficient traction.  Then a voice from the waders said, "Look at me,
Grandpa."  I immediately investigated the waders and found a small,
redheaded child concealed inside.  Mimicking the child's favorite
television-show host, I asked if he could say "cardiac arrest."  He
couldn't, although that evening at dinner he spoke, with great clarity,
several other words he had learned that day.  Despite the boy's refusal
to reveal the source of his new words, because it was a secret between
him and his grandpa, the usual suspect was apprehended and sentenced to
the "silent treatment" and stern looks until well after dessert.

Then there was the time Uncle Shamus, dead for ten years, showed up in
my garage and asked for the return of a fly rod he had apparently
loaned me.  As I stood there calmly sucking garage-floor debris into my
lungs, I vaguely wondered what use a dead man had for a fly rod and
whether it was worth pursuing the subject with a ghost.  But the
apparition turned out to be none other than my live neighbor Al Finley,
who in silhouette and tone of voice bears a striking resemblance to
poor Shamus, so much so in fact that I almost panicked and returned the
fly rod.

Thus are so-called supernatural phenomena easily explained away as
nothing more than misapprehended effects of commonplace causes, and, of
course, the occasional ghost.

In any case, I was not about to engage in a discussion of
parapsychology with Zumbo, whose reasoning processes have been
profoundly distorted by an education in the sciences.  As a result, we
were soon hauling our sleeping bags from our car to the hotel, which
stared hungrily down at us with its empty window sockets.  The moon was
up, with the traditional shreds of cloud scudding across it.  A breeze
stirred the prairie grass and sent tumbleweeds bounding about like
frantic skeletons of giant insects, giving me the distinct feeling I
was about to step inside a Stephen King novel.

In short order, however, we had our propane lantern burning brightly in
the hotel kitchen and our supper sizzling away on our propane camp
stove.  A couple of the ranch hands, jeb and Biff, came in and joined
us for supper and a little bourbon sipping afterward.  We exchanged a
few hunting and fishing tales and then drifted into ghost stories, for
which the eerie setting was most appropriate, even to excess.  It
wasn't long before we were glancing over our shoulders and smoothing
down the hairs on the backs of our necks.  The stories soon eroded even
Zumbo's education in the sciences, particularly when the lantern began
to fade from lack of fuel.  As darkness settled over the kitchen, jeb
and Biff arose from the table in unison and departed the premises with
an urgency neither bothered to explain, which was probably just as
well.

"Don't go!"  I shouted after them.  "Wait!  We have more bourbon!"

"Come back!"  Jim shouted.  "Spend the night!"

But jeb and Biff sped away into the darkness, leaving behind only faint
aromas of burnt rubber and foul exhaust, which struck me as odd, since
they weren't driving a vehicle.

"Well," Jim said, "we might as well turn in.  But remember, we have to
get up early.  We've got to be at that conference no later than nine,
and it's a good two-hour drive."

"True," I said.  "So what would you think about starting for town right
now?"

"No way," Jim said.  "I'm too tired.  Grab your sleeping bag.  We each
have a reserved room at the top of the stairs."

"Why don't we both sleep in the same room?"  I suggested.

"Not a chance," Jim said.  "Your snoring keeps me awake."

At the top of the stairs, Zumbo and I had a brief scuffle to see who
got to take our lone flashlight.  As usual, he won.  I walked into my
room and slammed the door.  A shaft of moonlight revealed an old army
cot next to the window.  I rolled out my sleeping bag on the cot, and
then sat down on it to enjoy the moonlit landscape, the low, rolling
prairie hills and tall grass undulating in the wind like silvery ocean
waves.  It was all quite nice.  I stripped to my shorts, slipped into
my mummy bag, and, sedated by bourbon and merciful exhaustion, soon was
fast asleep, despite some minor lingering effects from the session of
ghost stories, not least of which were goose bumps of a size that
produced the sensation of sleeping on a bed of marbles.  My intention
was to snooze so deeply and soundly as to be totally oblivious to all
creaks, cracks, moans, and bumps in the night.

Sometime past midnight, however, I began to dream that I was still
looking out my hotel room window at the peaceful, moonlit landscape.

The scene in my dream was exactly as I had viewed it before going to
sleep.  So far so good.  But as I sat there enjoying the dream scene, I
detected some movement among the swaying grasses a couple hundred yards
away, in the direction of the old town's center.  Walking slowly toward
the town came a tall human figure, a man.  He was soon Joined by
another man.  My dream self wondered if the two were perhaps jeb and
Biff, sneaking back to execute some practical joke on Jim and me.

Then the two figures were joined by a dozen other figures, both men and
women and even some children.  Soon there was a whole skirmish line of
them, advancing toward the hotel.  "What's going on here?"  my dream
self asked.

"Who are these people?  What do they want?"  As the dream people moved
closer to the former outskirts of town, I noticed that they were all
dressed in old-fashioned clothes--clothes you might expect ranch people
of the last century to wear!

"Jeepers criminy!"  my dream self exclaimed.  "These are the
townspeople of a hundred years ago returning to their lost town!"  (It
is likely that my real self actually blurted out the "Jeepers criminy"
part of the above exclamation, because at that moment something
awakened Zumbo in the next room.) My dream self stared with increasing
intensity out the window at the approaching townspeople, all of whom
appeared pleasant and attractive, and even quite healthy, except for
the minor detail that I could see right through them!

The townspeople strode purposefully into the nonexistent town, while
both my dream self and real self sweated copiously.  Then it occurred
to me what the townspeople of a hundred years ago were doing.  They
were returning to their homes!  But their homes were gone!  What would
they do when they discovered their homes were gone?  Why, they would
come to the hotel!  They would be angry!  They would want to know what
Jim and I had done with their houses!  And they probably wouldn't be
satisfied with our explanations.

Zumbo, drowsily awake in the other room, picked up his watch.  Because
he was holding the watch upside down, he read the time as 7:00 rather
than the actual time, 1:30.  "Yowp!"  he cried, snapping wide awake.

"We'll be late for the conference!"

Thinking I'd heard an agonized shout, I popped upright on my cot.  I
looked out the window.  Everything was just the same as in my dream,
except the townspeople were gone.  "Why sure, I thought, they've moved
out of the range of my vision and are looking for their houses!

They're probably headed for the hotel right now.  They might be coming
through the door this instant!

Probably their shouting I'd heard!"

The door to my room banged open with such force it almost flew off its
hinges.  Since I expected none other than an angry mob of long-dead
townspeople, ghostly lynch rope in hand, my eyeballs strained at their
tethers while havoc played chopsticks with my bodily functions.  But it
was Zumbo who lunged in, wearing only his shorts.  His voice was
panicky.  "Get up!  Get up!"  he screamed at me.  "We've got to get out
of here!  Fast!"

Naturally, having forgotten all about the conference, I assumed that
Jim, too, had witnessed the approach of the townspeople.  Besides that,
I had been staring out the window and knew it was still the middle of
the night.  The only explanation for Jim's panic was that he, too, had
seen the ghosts approaching.

Zumbo seemed shocked by the immediacy and explosive energy of my
response.  According to his later report, I did two laps around the
walls of the room at shoulder height to pick up sufficient momentum for
my exit from the premises.  He was exaggerating, of course.  I doubt I
was ever more than three feet off the floor even at peak
acceleration.

Nor did I ever see any evidence that pieces of my sleeping bag zipper
were imbedded in the walls.

Jim, of course, was somewhat confused, never before having seen me
display such concern over being late for a conference or anything else
for that matter.  I for my part wondered why Jim just stood there in
his shorts with his mouth agape during an emergency of such potentially
dreadful consequences, like our being dragged off into the previous
century by a bunch of irate people you could see through.

Recovering from his stupor, Jim consulted his watch again and now read
the time correctly.

"Wait!"  he yelled.  "I made a mistake.  It's only one-thirty in the
morning, not seven o'clock!  Ha ha!  I guess the joke's on me.  Go back
to sleep."

Easy for Jim to say.

The Road Hunter While I was tidying up the garage the other day, my
wIfe, Bun, came out to critique my efforts.

"Why don't you throw some of this junk away?"  she critiqued.

"Somebody's going to get caught in a cave-in someday."

"Don't exaggerate," I said, adjusting the miner's light on my helmet.

"As soon as I finish putting some more timbers in Tunnel Three, it will
be perfectly safe."

Bun kicked at a little green metal box near an air shaft.  "What's
this?"

"Some keepsakes," I said.  "I have a lot of fond memories in that
little box."

"oh, yeah?"  she said, bending over and unsnapping the lid.  "What kind
of fond memories?"

"Uh, you know, hunting and fishing trips I particularly enjoyed.  That
sort of thing."

Bun extracted from the box a lock of curly blond hair tied with a
ribbon.

"What were you hunting on this trip?"  Her eyes had narrowed to such
hard little slits it was difficult to detect the bemused twinkle in
them.

For a feverish moment the fond memory associated with the lock of hair
eluded my attempt at recall.  Then it all came back to me, the
recollection so sharp and clear it raised beads of sweat on my brow.

"That's some of Buck's hair," I explained.

"Buck's as bald as a grapefruit."

"Yeah," I said.  "And about as smart.  But back when this fond memory
originated, Buck had beautiful curly blond hair.  It was his pride and
joy, his crowning glory.  He couldn't pass a reflective surface of any
kind without stopping to admire his golden locks and caress them with
his ever-present comb.  Buck's comb was practically an anatomical
appendage.  He was fascinated by his own hair.  It was as if he carried
his hobby around on top of his head.

And now all that's left of his hair is a ragged little tuft in a tin
box on the floor of a garage.  Sad to say, that box contains some bits
and pieces of what I once was, too."

"No kidding," Bun said.  "Well, I'm sure not sticking my fingers in
there again.  So what's the fond memory associated with this lock of
Buck's hair?"

I'm five years younger than Cousin Buck, which isn't much now, but back
when I was thirteen and Buck was eighteen, it was a lot.  I didn't have
a father or a big brother to take me hunting and fishing and teach me
things, so I often had to make do with Buck.  Buck's intellect peaked
at about age eighteen, and for several years he knew just about
everything worth knowing.

He confided this to me himself, so I'm sure it's true.  Alas, his
intellect began to fade a few years later, and it wasn't long before
you could strike it with a simple idea and not get so much as a spark,
let alone illumination.

For several years, though, Buck and I made a great team.  He knew
everything and I knew nothing.  We balanced each other out.

If Buck stopped by while I was making a slingshot, he'd say, "That
ain't no way to make a slingshot."  Then he would tell me how to make a
slingshot.

If I bought a new fishing fly to replace my old one, Buck would say,
"That fly ain't no good.  You should've bought ..."  If I was digging
worms for fish bait, Buck would say, "That ain't no way to dig worms.

How you dig worms is ..."  And so on.  I guess I was too dumb to fully
appreciate Buck's enormous intellect during the time that it
flourished.  Mostly, it just got on my nerves.  For several wonderful
years, though, Buck was my hero.

It was during this period that Buck briefly became a road hunter.  I
cannot even begin to tell how humiliated I was to learn that my hero,
indeed, one of my own relatives, had sunk so low as to hunt from the
seat of a car.

In the time and place of my youth, there were few people more despised
than a road hunter.  A conversation in the barber shop, for example,
might go something like this: "Hear Blacky got drunk t'other night,
wrecked the saloon and put nine people in the hospital.

"Um."

"I suppose he was still mad about getting' arrested for stealin'
hogs."

"Um."

"Tricked Widow Belfrey into sellin' him her car and never paid her a
cent for it.  Poor old woman has to walk fifteen miles to town and pull
her groceries home in a little red wagon."

"Um."

"Blacky's a road hunter, too, ya know."

"A road hunter!  Why that dirty no good rotten scum ..."

Everybody understood that road-hunting was one of the most contemptible
of all human activities.  Parents might have a son grow up to become a
deacon in the church, a medical doctor, a faithful husband, a loving
father, and a Republican.  But if that son also turned out to be a road
hunter, they would know they had failed miserably in his upbringing.

That is why I was so ashamed when I began to suspect that Buck had
become a road hunter.  I was afraid, too, because I knew that God would
punish him severely for sinking into such a slothful state that he
would actually hunt deer from the seat of his car.  And that is exactly
what happened.

Only a week remained in hunting season, and Buck hadn't got his deer
yet.

He stopped by my house one day a little before noon and told me it was
time he taught me something about deer hunting.  Even though my mother
considered me too young to hunt deer myself, I had studied deer hunting
in Outdoor Life for many years and knew how it was supposed to be
done.

Already I sensed something peculiar about this proposed hunt.

"It's almost noon," I said.  "Deer hunts start at four in the
morning.

You got to be out in the woods by the crack of dawn."

"Crack of dawn my elbow," Buck said.  "You going' or not?"

Of course I was going.  I didn't get invited along on that many deer
hunts that I could afford to turn any down.  Still, there was something
strange about this hunt, something that made me vaguely uneasy.  There
was Buck's car, of course.  That would make anyone uneasy.  Its
upholstery looked as if it had served as furnishings for a puppy
kennel.  All the fabric had been ripped off the interior of the roof,
exposing a web of what looked like chicken wire attached to metal
crossbars, one of which was directly over the front seat, apparently
functioning as a hard object on which to bang your head.  The
floorboards had rusted out, providing a nice view of the road surface
rushing by between your feet.  I could scarcely wait until I was old
enough to own a hunting vehicle just like it.

We drove up into the Twenty Mile Creek drainage and turned off onto a
logging road.  After a bit, we passed old Sam Smith's cabin.  Buck kept
driving and driving and driving, circling around one mountain and then
another.  I became so confused with all the driving that I didn't have
the slightest notion where we were.  Then we passed old Sam Smith's
cabin.  I thought about this for a while.  "Where you plan on hunting,
Buck?"  I asked.

"I'm still looking for just the right place."

"Well, I think we should get out and hike up onto that ridge above Ruby
Lake.  That's a good place for mulies."

"No, it ain't," Buck said.  "It ain't no good for mulies.  Anyway, I'll
let you know when I find the right place for us to hunt."

We drove another twenty miles or so.  I was getting so bored I could
hardly stand it.  Then we passed a little log cabin.

"Hey," I said.  "Isn't that ...?"

"Sam Smith's cabin," Buck said.  "Why do you ask?"

"Buck," I said, "I know what you're doing.  You're not fooling me one
bit.  You're road-hunting!"

"Am not," Buck said, yawning.  "Now listen careful.  I'm only going to
explain this to you once.  Road-hunting is where you go out and drive
around on roads looking for a game animal to shoot.  But if you're
driving around looking for a place to hunt, to actually get out and
look for signs and rattle some antlers and all that, and you happen to
spot a deer on a sidehill near the road and you shoot it, well that's
not road-hunting but regular hunting, which is what I'm engaged in
here.  You see?  Now shut up."

It still seemed like road-hunting to me, but I shut up.  We drove
around for another hour looking for a place to hunt, passing Sam
Smith's cabin a couple more times, and by then it was too dark to
shoot.

"We shouldn't have wasted all this time with your road-hunting," I said
to Buck.  "If we had got out and done some real hunting, we'd have a
deer by now."

"Shut up about road-hunting," Buck snarled.  "I told you we was just
looking for a place to hunt."

I could tell from his tone that he felt guilty, that he knew he had
been road-hunting all along.  I had seen how he would sneak up over the
top of a hill in low gear, hoping to surprise a buck on the other
side.

A road hunter's idea of stealth is to roll down a car window quietly.

He thinks "going on a stand" is to sit in his car near a clear-cut with
the radio and heater on, sipping hot coffee, eating a sandwich, and
reading a comic book.

That was what my hero had become, the epitome of slothfulness, a road
hunter.

We were now headed back down the steep part of Twenty Mile Creek
Road.

Buck, as was his practice to save gas, had shifted to neutral, turned
off the ignition, and was coasting.  We kept picking up speed.

"Better slow down, Buck," I said nervously.  "We're nearly to Good Gosh
Almighty Curve."

"I know what I'm doing," Buck said.  "If you'd just pay attention, I
could teach you something about mountain driving.  See, what I'm doing
here is using gravity to save on fuel consumption and ..."

We hit a tremendous bump.  Buck and I bounced clear up to the ceiling
and banged our heads on the crossbar that had been put there for that
purpose.  I crashed back down on the seat and, still dazed, glanced
over to see if Buck was all right.  He hadn't come down yet!  I blinked
my eyes and rubbed my head.  Buck was still suspended in the air!

"Stop fooling around, Buck!"  I yelled.  "We're going too darn fast!"

Then I saw what had happened.  Buck's hair had caught between the roof
and the crossbar.  He was hanging by his hair!  His thrashing feet
couldn't reach the brake!  His clawing fingers couldn't reach the
steering wheel!  We were racing down the mountain totally out of
control.

"The brake!  The brake!"  Buck screeched from up above.  "Hit the
brake!"

I started Jamming my foot in the general direction of the brake pedal,
but without success.  Then I scrambled down under the dash and Buck's
flailing legs and tried to push the brake with my hand.  I knew Good
Gosh Almighty Curve was zooming up at us.  I suddenly realized what was
happening: God was punishing Buck for road-hunting!  I started to pray:
"Lord, kill Buck if you must for road-hunting, but let me go.  I was
just along for the ride!"

Then we were into the curve.  Miraculously, we sailed around it on two
wheels, sending a shower of gravel out into dark space.  The car
dropped onto all fours and rocketed down the straight stretch true as
an arrow.  God had answered my prayer.  He had given Buck the good
sense to steer around the curve with his feet.  It was the first and
only time I ever saw two sets of toes clamped onto a steering wheel,
despite the impediment of boot soles.

A second later, we hit another big bump, which jerked Buck loose from
the bar and dropped him back down on the seat.  He hit the brake and
the car slid to a stop.  Buck eventually admitted the ordeal took a lot
out of him.  I suppose he meant the sizable tuft of hair, which I later
retrieved from the bar on the roof and saved as a memento of the
occasion.  We both sat there sweating and shaking in the stillness of
the night.  Buck had a terrible expression on his face.  I know the
expression on my face was almost as bad, because I checked it the next
morning in a mirror.

"Let this be a lesson to you, Buck," I croaked.  "God hates road
hunters!"

He stared silently at me for a moment, his trembling lips struggling to
form the right words, words that would express his true feelings for me
in that moment of our shared terror and narrow escape, words that
defined the ties that bound us together even beyond those of blood.

"Do me a favor," he said.  "Shut your yap!"

Five years later, Buck was bald as a grapefruit.  God had let him live,
but took the first tuft of hair as a down payment for the sin of
road-hunting and collected the rest in installments.

Why Is It?

Why is it whenever a tackle box slips out of your hand it never falls
right side up and closed?

Why is it the hunting partner who is going to rendezvous with you at
the old apple Orchard at noon never does?

Why is it even though you own four thousand dollars' worth of fine
tools you end up repairing an expensive piece of sporting equipment
with a flat rock and a wooden match?

Why is it shortly before she drifts blissfully off to sleep on the
first night of a tent-camping trip, your wife's last words are: "What's
that?  Did you hear that strange noise outside the tent just now?"

Why is it your kid thinks it so funny to test the clicker on his reel
while you are walking through tall grass in rattlesnake country?

Why is it your air mattress springs a leak on the first night of a
five-night backpacking trip and not when your kid was using it as a
trampoline on the driveway?

Why is it a woman who catches more fish than you thinks that's such an
interesting topic of conversation at parties?

Why is it the person who is supposed to net the largest fish you have
ever hooked in your life suddenly loses his depth perception, all
hysical coordination, any sense of urgency, and, quite often, the
net?

Why is it when the world's largest bass snaps your line right at the
boat your fishing companion is your priest, minister, rabbi, or, worst
of all, your little grandson, who later asks his mother, "Mommy, what
kind of fish is a bleeping bleep bleep bleep bass?"

Why is it your hunting partner's car always develops a funny sound in
the transmission when it's his turn to provide the hunting vehicle?

Why is it fish and deer can't keep the same hours as humans?

Why is it you reach your peak physical condition the last day of elk
season and not the first?

Why is it the older you get the more you begin to feel that actually
shooting something on a hunting trip is rather a nuisance?

Why is it you are always alone when you make the greatest shot of your
life, and your great misses are always made in front of a crowd of
sadistic hecklers?

Why is it game birds can sense that you have just changed the choke
setting on your shotgun?

Why is it the day's only flock of ducks comes in while you are putting
out your decoys?

Why is it when a storm confines you to a small tent for two days your
companion is never an attractive person of the opposite sex but an
unattractive person of the same sex who passes the time by trying to
perfect his John Wayne impersonation?

Why is it illegal to shoot a person who practices his John Wayne
impersonation for two full days in a small tent?

Why is it a fly will zip inside the ear of the person who is spreading
the barbed wires of a fence for you to crawl through?

Why is it outdoorsmen don't leave the key to their vehicle in the
ignition rather than hiding it on top of the left rear tire?

Why is it you develop a mysterious but temporary pain in your chest two
days before you are supposed to take the Cub Scouts on their first
all-nighter?

Why is it all rope is always six inches too short rather than six
inches too long?

Why is it trailer lights work only during the daytime?

Why is it boat manufacturers have never built a boat the right size?

Why is it wives cannot see the necessity of owning twenty-seven guns,
most of which you never shoot?

Why is it the person who tells you to "take a running jump, you can
make it to the other side" turns out to be a person with notoriously
bad depth perception or a rotten sense of humor?

Why is it you can't replace the starter cord on your outboard motor
without that big spring leaping out and grabbing you by the throat?

Why is it that the Forest Service has insisted upon making the trails
so much steeper and longer over the past ten years?

Why is it most of the gear in a backpack eventually ends up in your
pockets?

Why is it pamphlets of hunting and fishing regulations have become only
slightly less complicated than a treatise on nuclear fusion?

Why is it psychiatrists think nervous breakdowns in mothers may be
attributed to small boys carrying spare fishing worms in their shirt
pockets?

Why is it after you have hiked five miles in to a campsite on public
land you find that nine thousand cows recently camped there?

Why is it cows camped on public land aren't considered public cows, or
as we hunters like to say, slow elk?

Why is it your child gets that peculiar look on his face when you ask
for your two-hundred-dollar binoculars you loaned him three miles back
on the trail?

Why is it outdoorsmen who played with black powder during their youth
have only scar tissue for eyebrows?

Why is it the first you hear of your partner's back problems
(hypertension, irregular heartbeat, bad knee, etc.) is shortly after
you've shot an elk at the bottom of a steep canyon?

Why is it as soon as you buy the ultimate electronic fish-finder the
really ultimate fish-finder is put on the market?

Why is it outdoorsmen don't realize they can't live without a piece of
gear until they first see it in a catalog?

Why is it new inventions that will transform fishing never transform
fishing?

Why is it fish-finders can find fish but can't make them bite?

Why is it wives can never understand why an outdoorsman needs
twenty-three different kinds of boots and shoes?

Why is it no one ever invented a compass that points in a useful
direction--toward the place where you parked your car, for example?

Why is it on television fishing shows the anglers never get skunked?

Why is it when you need to tie a nail knot you never have a nail?

Why is it you never think to ask an outfitter why your horse is named
jitterbug until you are riding it along a thousand-foot drop-off?

Why is it white-water rafting guides think it's so funny to yell,
"Quick, everybody paddle back upstream!"?

Why is it bush pilots think it helps on takeoff from small lakes to
say, "Sit light on your seats, boys, and I think we can clear that
ridge."?

Why is it that at wild-game dinners someone always bursts into gleeful
laughter and cries, "I bet you don't know what that was you just
ate!"?

Why is it wives can't just accept the biological mystery of guns
reproducing in gun cabinets, and let it go at that?

Why is it when your fishing partner catches fish it's a matter of skill
and when you catch fish it's a matter of luck?

Why is it wives can't just accept the mystery of an outdoorsman's
needing a minimum of five boats, and let it go at that?

Why is it wives can't just accept the mystery of why an outdoorsman
absolutely needs so much stuff, and let it go at that?

Why is it after you have packed a six-pack of beverage in over a hot
and dusty trail and stored it in an icy stream to cool, you return to
find only a note that says, "Thank you, Lord!"?

The Late Great Fourth These days the Fourth of July seems more whimper
than bang.  I can remember a time when the Fourth wasn't a day but a
season, a progressive explosion starting in June, peaking on July
fourth, and fading out near August.  Most guys didn't even recover from
their injuries until Halloween.

Eyebrows finished growing back in about Christmas.  Some of them never
did.

It was as though we had been born with a secret message recorded in our
genes: "On the Fourth of July after the age of five your mission is to
self-destruct."

The big excitement on the Fourth nowadays is when my grandchildren go
out in the backyard and embroider the night with a few sparklers.  The
only loud noise is my wife's yelling: "Not so close to your face!

Don't let the sparks fall on your clothes!  Watch out!"

Why, heck.  Nobody did that much yelling when I was a kid unless a
fragment of flaming magnesium burned through somebody's hide.  Even
then it wasn't a mother doing the yelling.  After the Fourth, most
parents were accustomed to their children looking like cinders.  When
Mom reported to old Dad that little Harold had been caught smoking
again, she didn't mean cigarettes.

There's not a kid in our whole neighborhood now who knows the simple
delight of having a firecracker go off in his fingers before he can
throw it.

And it's probably a good thing: the average kid nowadays doesn't know
how to react properly after such an event--thrusting the fingers into
the mouth, pulling them out again to make sure they're still attached,
then tucking them in the crotch and doing a triple-time crouch-hop
around the yard, all the time trying to think of a joke to crack so the
guys will know he's no sissy.

Occasionally, I'll meet a man whose thumb and forefinger are shaped
like matching shoehorns, and I'll know that here is a veteran of
ancient Fourths, a person who as a youngster learned too late he didn't
possess quick enough hands for throwing firecrackers.

"The Fourth sure isn't what it used to be, is it?"  I'll say, in hope
of striking up a conversation.

"What's that?"  he'll reply, blinking bald eyes and cocking his
shoehorns behind a cauliflower ear.  "Speak up, man!"

Even the Fourth of July parades of today are but crepe-paper ghosts of
their former selves.  The floats never seem to break down.  In the
olden days, along with the hilarious shovel-wielding routines of the
clowns who followed the Sheriff's Posse, conked-out floats provided
much of the comedy.  Even now I remember what great fun it was watching
fourteen Elks push their nine-thousand-pound float the last mile of the
parade.  Men cheered and women wept when the float--powered by fourteen
straining Elks--crept up the Pine Street hill to the finish line.  I
once heard a logger among the spectators comment that maybe the clowns
should follow the Elk float, but the clowns weren't needed: the Elk
float was funny enough just as it was.  In fact, it was wonderful.  I
wouldn't be surprised if the Elks didn't intend for their float to
break down, just for the laughs.

Then there was the Fourth of July carnival, the most exciting event of
the year.  And dangerous, too.  But we weren't a bunch of rubes.  We
knew carnival people were evil, possibly even criminals on the lam, and
that the carnival always attracted pickpockets and wicked women.  MY
pocket went unpicked, but probably only because I kept my hand in it,
clutching my dimes and quarters.  But once, when I was about fifteen, I
did have a brief affair with a wicked carnival woman.  My pulse still
quickens at the memory.

Her lips were scarlet, her eyelids blue, and her hair the color of
sunset.  As I sauntered past her concession booth, she caught my eye
and beckoned me over with a sultry smile and a toss of her sunset
head.

I gave her a knowing grin, which I had perfected for just such an
occasion, and I started to move on, casually dismissing the sharp pangs
of panic that started in my midsection and spread to extremities.  Then
she gave me a long, languorous wink that temporarily arrested several
of my vital functions.  Well shoot, I said to myself, it might be fun
to toy with her emotions a bit, since she seems so enamored of me.  I
sauntered over and bought a set of darts to throw at her balloon
board.

Immediately after I had blown my last dime on the darts, she suddenly
realized that I had merely been dallying with her.  She broke off our
relationship on the spot, and turned her attention to a gullible kid
passing by, her wink stopping him like an ice pick through the heart.

I laughed throatily, tossed my jacket over my shoulder, and sauntered
off, secure in the knowledge that I had also perfected my sauntering.

Much older and wiser now, I'm fairly certain that the goal of the
carnival people was to extract every last cent from every last simple
soul to fall under their spell.  There were even little machines
designed like drag lines, with which, for a penny, you could attempt to
grab a wonderful prize with the jaws at the end of the line.  I blew
nearly a buck trying to fish out a beautiful silver-and-gold harmonica
and ended up with a crummy paper mustache.  Somehow, the jaws never
seemed quite strong enough to grasp the harmonica.  You'd think the
carnival people would have realized that and corrected it.

One of my worst experiences at a Fourth of July carnival resulted from
bumping into my former girlfriend, Olga Bonemarrow.  Olga had recently
terminated our romance in the bud, claiming I didn't know how to treat
girls with proper respect.  That was ridiculous.  She simply wasn't
accustomed to my suave and debonair manners.

"Hey, Bonemarrow," I said.  "How about riding the Octopus with me?"

"Naw," she replied.  "The Octopus makes me throw up.

"It doesn't either," I said.  "Nothing makes you throw up.

"It does, too.  Sometimes you make me throw up."

"I'll pay for your ride."

"Okay.  But the Octopus still makes me throw up."

"Yeah, right."

The Octopus really did make Olga throw up.  What we called the Octopus
had eight long steel arms that spun around and swooped up and down.  On
the end of each arm was a wire basket to hold the riders so they
couldn't fall out or escape.  At certain points during the swooping and
whirling, the basket would spin madly.  After the first of these spins,
Olga said, "I'm going to be sick!"

I stared in swirling horror as her rosy complexion changed first to
chalk white and then to a pale but ominous green.  So there I was,
trapped in a spinning basket fifty feet in the air with a person about
to throw up!  I yelled at the Octopus operator.  "Stop the Octopus!

Stop!  There's a person here about to be sick!"  The operator,
obviously a criminal on the lam, responded with an evil laugh and threw
the machine into high gear.  Taking one quick last look at Olga's green
ballooning cheeks and bulging eyes, I hurled myself to the floor of the
basket.  But for the lucky combination of a weak stomach, moderately
good reflexes, and a working knowledge of centrifugal force, I'd have
been a goner.  At every violent spin of the basket, Olga threw up.

Crouched on the floor and peering out like a caged animal through the
wire mesh, I could see people on the ground fleeing madly away from the
Octopus in all directions, attempting to escape the carnival version of
acid rain.  Once out of Olga's range, they turned and tried to make out
the identity of the persons in the offending basket.  It was
embarrassing.

Besides feeling faintly green myself, I particularly dreaded being
recognized when Olga and I emerged from the cage after the ride.  So
long, suave and debonair!

"I told you the Octopus makes me sick," Olga said afterward.

I attempted to comfort her.  "Boy, that's an understatement if I ever
heard one!"

"I feel better now, though.  In fact, I think you should buy us each a
hot dog."

"I'll buy you one," I said.  "As for myself, I've kind of lost my
appetite--like for about nine years!"

"In that case, I guess I'll forgive you," she said.  "But only if you
take off that stupid paper mustache!"

When we were twelve years old, Peewee Thompson, Retch Sweeney, and I
didn't waste any money on the Octopus, the Sword Swallower, or the
Tattooed Man.  We did treat ourselves to a couple of hot dogs each, for
the sake of tradition, but then headed right for the tent featuring the
beautiful wicked lady who purportedly danced around on a stage with all
her clothes off.  If there was anything we felt a compelling need to
see at that time in our lives, it was a beautiful dancing woman with
all her clothes off.  We didn't even care if she danced.  She could
just stand there and chew gum, as long as she did it with her clothes
off.

Nowadays seeing a naked lady is no big deal to any kid old enough to
toddle past a newsstand, but back then it was like a glimpse of the
other side of the moon.  To us, female anatomy was just a rumor we
hoped was true.  And now was our chance to find out!

Alas, the barker at the tent said absolutely no children allowed.

Adults only.  Guards were posted at all corners of the tent, he said,
to prevent youngsters from sneaking in and getting their brains
petrified by the sights inside.  We decided to try our luck anyway.

"How much?"  we asked the ticket seller.

"Two bits," she said.  "The line forms at the right, men."

Inside the tent, we squeezed into bleachers with the other men.  The
tent lights dimmed, music honked from the loudspeakers, and the ratty
stage curtain rattled open.  The crowd tensed, twittered, tested its
leers.

But what was that?  The lady had danced onto the stage all right, but
she wasn't naked!  She was wearing about ten layers of clothes!  Our
bewildered eyeballs settled back into their sockets, and we blinked for
the first time in five minutes.  In sullen silence, we watched the lady
twist and twirl about the stage, not that easy for someone dressed like
an Arctic explorer.

Suddenly, with a flick of her finger, the outside layer floated to the
floor.

So that was it.  She would take off the clothes.  This might be worth a
quarter after all.  Then the lady stopped dancing, the tent lights came
up, and the barker and several of his henchmen worked their way through
the audience collecting quarters for the "second act."

To us: "You men gotcher quarters?"

You bet!

By the eighth act, the farmers and loggers around us were shouting,
stomping, and trying to whistle through dry lips.  Only about two
layers of clothes, three at the most, to go.

I extended a sweaty palm.  "Loan me a quarter for the next act,
Peewee."

Peewee's voice squeaked with panic: "I was gonna ask you for one!"

"I ain't got none neither!"  Retch croaked.

The barker loomed in front of us.  "Let's have them quarters, men."

Wrenching our eyes away from the stage, we tried to plead with him, to
beg, if he had even a shred of decency he would let us ...!

"Hey, what you kids doing in here, anyway?  This ain't no kinda show
for kids!  Wanna git yer brains petrified?  Clear out!  Now!"

We shuffled glumly out of the tent, flat broke, without so much as a
dime left for cotton candy.  The veil had almost lifted for us on the
wondrous mystery of female anatomy, but then had slammed back down with
a steely thud.

For three measly quarters more, we would have known the naked truth!

"Whose idea was it we buy them hot dogs?"  Retch growled.  "Our one
chance to see a naked lady, and we blow it on some lousy hot dogs!"

Every Fourth of July, Uncle Finn would show up at our farm with eight
or ten boxes crammed with a delicious variety of high-explosive
fireworks.  One thing about Uncle Finn, he knew how to celebrate the
Fourth.

"How can he afford all those expensive fireworks?"  my mother asked one
memorable Fourth.  "Maybe he's given up drinking."

"It's possible," my stepfather, Hank, replied.  "I read just the other
day hell had frozen over."

Several dozen of our relatives and friends showed up to watch Uncle
Finn's fireworks.  A gargantuan picnic supper was spread on tables and
blankets across our lawn, and everybody sat there and ate and watched
Finn ignite his arsenal on the driveway, the rockets arcing up and
bursting into fiery blossoms over the hayfield.  Part of my uncle's
showmanship consisted of assuming an air of great gravity as he lit
each fuse and then dashed madly back behind the picnickers, partly out
of caution, but mostly to savor better the cries of "Oooooooo!  Look at
that one!"  This maneuver also gave him the opportunity to sneak
another quick swig from his hip flask.  Uncle Finn's degree of
intoxication thus paralleled the increasing size of the rockets.  As my
stepfather observed, watching the alcohol-breathed Finn wildly stab a
glowing punk at a rocket fuse, one never knew which was going to be
shot off--the rocket, Finn, or both.

At the culmination of the fireworks extravaganza, Uncle Finn staggered
forth with a rocket that looked as if it could bring down a B-29.  It
was a squat, ugly green projectile, armed with multiple warheads, three
in all, each only slightly smaller than a tennis ball.  "Oh my!"

spectators cried.  "Good heavens!"  Uncle Finn proudly placed the
monster on the old picnic table he used for a launching pad.  In his
usual fashion at this stage of the game, he grappled with the rocket
for several breathless seconds in his efforts to get the glowing punk
in contact with the fuse.  At last succeeding, he turned, bowed to the
applauding spectators, and said "Tuh-TAAHHHHH!"  Then he tripped and
fell flat, accidentally kicking the leg of the picnic table.  The
rocket toppled over, its warheads covering the startled picnickers like
the guns of the James gang!  A second later, the rocket went off with a
POW!  and a WHOOSH!  The screaming warheads streaked over the prostrate
Finn and exploded in rapid sequence at ground zero: BANG!BANG!BANG!

In ringing silence, the clouds of smoke slowly rose and drifted away,
revealing a desolate scene: potato salad strewn about, smoldering
rocket confetti fluttering into the remains of strawberry shortcake,
half-eaten pieces of fried chicken scattered hither and yon.

Fortunately, no one was injured.  This was due to the prompt and
orderly fashion with which the yard had been evacuated.  The
orderliness, perhaps, did not amount to all that much, and probably
should be dismissed as inconsequential.  It is the amazing promptness
that mostly stands out in my memory.  I am still moved by the image of
so many family friends and relatives rising as a single unit and flying
for cover like a glob of humanity fired from a giant slingshot,
prestretched and hung on a hair trigger.  Although the immediate
impression was one of togetherness, participants in the event later
recalled the spirit of the moment as being that of every man, woman,
and child for himself.  Old jake Saunders, who earlier had tottered
into the yard on the arm of his grandson, was so inspired by the sight
of the warheads trained on him that he fought his way out of the pack
and took the lead, setting a brisk pace for the rest of us, and even
managed to clear the picket fence at the far side of the yard by
several inches.  The fence wasn't particularly high, but it made a fair
jump for a man both old and lame and with a ham sandwich still in his
mouth.  just before the rocket went off, Hank said, he glanced back to
check on my grandmother, more out of curiosity than anything else, but
the yard was already empty, except for several glasses of lemonade
suspended in the air.

He said that even though Gram trailed the pack, she "was burning
rubber" when her wheelchair shot past him.  But Gram said to pay Hank
no mind; he was just exaggerating again.

The next Fourth of July, Uncle Finn was forced to set off his fireworks
display a hundred yards out in the hay field.  Even then the spectators
didn't feel entirely safe, but, as old Saunders pointed out, they would
have a little more time to get traction.

Those late, great Fourths are gone forever, leaving me only with the
memories, not to mention a dozen scars, bald eyes, and a slight
numbness in my fingers from discovering too late I didn't possess the
reflexes for the throwing of firecrackers.  It's probably just as
well.

I even yelled at my grandchildren last Fourth of July: "Be careful with
those sparklers!  Don't hold them so close to your face!  Watch out!

You want to look like a cinder?"

It seemed the least I could do, to stir up a little excitement.

Camping In When it comes to camping out nowadays my wife Bun, prefers
camping in.

She says she likes a little something extra between her and the hard,
cold ground, preferably several floors of a luxury hotel.

I must admit that I myself do most of my camping in my old pickup
camper.

It's adequate for Bun and me, and a darn sight cheaper than a luxury
hotel.

My camper may not be a luxury hotel, but it keeps Bun off the hard,
cold ground and, more important, out of the boutiques.  As I explain to
Bun, they just don't build luxury hotels where I want to go.  If they
did, I probably wouldn't want to go there.

My camper is a bit small.  I can almost cook breakfast without getting
out of bed.  "Room service again," I tell Bun.  "What more could you
ask for?"

I keep forgetting that is a poor question to ask someone who has spent
the night sleeping over the cab of a truck.

The camper is "self-contained," with its own tiny bathroom.  It's a bit
cramped though.  Besides cooking breakfast, you can practically shave
and shower without getting out of bed.

Just because a person prefers a camper and doesn't do a lot of hiking
into the high country anymore, Bun interprets that as a sign of getting
old and soft.  The other day I heard her tell one of our grown
daughters, "The curmudgeon is starting to slow down.  I haven't heard
him and Vern even mention hiking into Pyramid Lake this year."  They
both sat there chuckling over their coffee cups.

Well, first of all, I don't know why Bun would speak unkindly of my
neighbor Al Finley, the curmudgeon.  Al has never hiked anywhere in his
life.

He hates hiking.  Besides, he doesn't even know my old camping buddy,
Vern.

If by chance Bun was suggesting that I am slowing down, I can only
respond, "Nonsense!"  just last summer, for example, Vern and I hiked
into an alpine lake and camped out amid lingering drifts of snow.  We
had a nice time, too.

The night was quiet and peaceful, at least until about eleven, when
some anguished screeches began drifting over the lake.  It was
downright eerie.  Shortly afterward, however, our bodies became
completely numb from the cold, and we were able to shut up and get some
sleep.

The next morning both Vern and I were a little stiff.  He managed to
get up before I did, if you can call hobbling around in the fetal
position being "up."  Then I popped right up, with a little help from
Vern.  He said he was surprised to find such a good pry pole and
fulcrum right there in camp.

"Maybe they were left here just for this purpose," he said.

"Shut up and pry," I said.  "I want to be up and about by the time the
fish start rising."

Much as I enjoy roughing it in the mountains, I prefer my little pickup
camper.  It gives me a sense of freedom.  It's like having a little
house on my back.  If I don't want to be where I am, I drive my house
off toward where I am not.

The camper also gives me a sense of security I don't get from sleeping
out on the hard, cold ground.  It's much easier not to believe in
Sasquatches, for example, when you're sleeping in a camper.  I've
noticed that my friend Retch Sweeney will scoff at the notion of
Sasquatches while he's in my camper , keep an open mind about them
while sleeping in a tent, and put up a good argument for their
existence while sleeping out under the stars.

I don't know if Sasquatches exist or not, but I like to think they
do.

The idea of Sasquatches appeals to me, if not the real thing.  I
understand that they smell terrible.  If Sasquatches didn't exist, how
could anyone know what they smell like?

Numerous people report having actually smelled them.  Not long ago a
couple of backpackers were trekking through the mountains and suddenly
a roaring, eight-foot-tall, red-eyed creature with fangs the size of
railroad spikes bounded out onto the trail a few feet ahead of them and
then vanished into the brush.  The backpackers reported that
immediately after the sighting they noticed an unpleasant odor.  I
believe them, too.  Indeed, almost all reports of such sightings
mention an unpleasant smell.  If something smells bad, it must exist,
right?  I rest my case for the existence of the Sasquatch.

I do a lot of my camping in Sasquatch country.  If it wanted to, I have
no doubt that a Sasquatch could rip the door right off my camper.  It
could probably roll my camper and truck right off the side of a
mountain.  But I am prepared for just such a contingency.  Any time I
hear a serious ruckus outside at night, I yell "Red alert!  Red
alert!"

Then I open the sliding window to the truck cab and my camping partner
swings down out of the top bunk, shoots his legs through the sliding
window and lands in the truck cab in one easy motion.  He then starts
up the truck and we drive off toward someplace we are not, leaving
behind the source of the trouble, whether an irate moose, an angry
grizzly, or a smelly Sasquatch.  It's nice.

Sometimes when I plan to camp in one place for several days, I remove
the camper from the truck and set it on a couple of stout sawhorses.  I
have a battery pack for the electrical system, so it's easy to forget,
especially coming out of a deep sleep, that the camper's not on the
truck.

One night Retch Sweeney and I were camping up on the St. Joe and were
awakened in the middle of the night by a racket down the road from
us.

I got up and looked out the camper window.

"A gang of bikers just rode in," I said.  "They've built a big fire and
are setting up camp."

"Oh, great!"  Retch said.  "Just what we need--a gang of bikers camping
down the road, and us out in the middle of nowhere!"

"Maybe they won't notice us," I said.  "They probably wouldn't bother
us anyway."

"Fat chance of that!"

"Go back to sleep.  They'll probably be gone in the morning."

No sooner had we dozed off than we heard another disturbance outside
the camper.  "Red alert!"  I shouted to Retch.  "Red alert!"  I jerked
open the sliding window, and Retch in one easy motion swung down and
shot himself right out onto the ground.  We had forgotten that we'd set
the camper on the sawhorses!

"Whazzat?"  Retch said.  I grabbed a flashlight and shined it out the
window so Retch could see better.  Well, it was nothing more than a
yearling bear cub that had climbed up on a tall black stump next to the
camper, trying to reach a chest cooler we had secured to the roof.  He
was a cute little fellow and didn't seem the least bit afraid.

"Hey, Retch," I called out.  "Get a load of this cute little ..."

"SASQUATCH!"  Retch screamed.  "SASQUATCH!"

"Hush!"  I said.  "It's only a little bear trying to get at our
cooler."

But Retch had already streaked off, yelling back at me, "RUN FOR YOUR
LIFE!  SASQUATCH!  SASQUATCH!"  just as I suspected, he had forgotten
about the bikers.  As he went by their camp, still yelling
"SASQUATCH!

SASQUATCH!"  they leaped out of their sleeping bags and took off after
him.  He glanced back and saw that now he was being chased by not only
what he imagined to be a Sasquatch but also a murderous gang of bikers
he had rudely awakened.

Retch had been doing a lot of running lately and was in terrific
shape.

He didn't think he would have any trouble outrunning a gang of
bikers.

So he was pretty surprised when the bikers nearly caught up with him.

He leaped off a bank, hurtled some brush, ran through a little creek,
and spurted back up on to the road.  The bikers stayed tight on his
tail all the way.  He could see he was going to have a hard time losing
these fellows.  As he said later, he thought the bikers must have had
difficulty finding victims, to put all that effort into catching him.

At last Retch tired and slowed to a trot, concluding that a little
playful beating-up by the bikers was better than dying of exhaustion.

But the bikers shot right on past him.  As one hairy chap sprinted by,
he shouted at Retch, "Just how big was it, bud?"  Before Retch could
reply, the biker disappeared into the night.

In the meantime, I loaded the camper back on my truck, and took off
after my camping partner.

"What a night!"  Retch gasped, once he was safe inside the truck.

"First I nearly get nabbed by a Sasquatch and then a gang of bikers
chase me two miles through the mountains!"

"Yeah," I said.  "Actually, the 'Sasquatch' was only a little bear on a
big tree stump.  I thought you'd like to know."

Retch stared at me for a moment.  "Well, the bikers were real!"

"They were real, all right," I said.  "What I can't understand is why
they didn't chase you on their bikes.  Surely, they could pedal a lot
faster than they could run!"

"Pedal?"  Retch said.

" Pedal!"

We drove on in thoughtful silence through the night, toward someplace
we were not.

RUBBER LEGS AND WHITE TAIL-HAIRS By Patrick F. McManus Henry Holt and
Company New York Copyright (C) 1987 by Patrick F.

McManus All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form.

Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 115 West 18th Street New
York, New York 10011

Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited 195 Gate Parkway
Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McManus, Patrick
F.

Title Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs.

ISBN: 0-8050-0544-7

ISBN: 0-8050-0912-4 (An Owl book: pbk.) First published in bardoover by
Henry Holt and Company, Inc in 1987.

First Owl Book Edition-1988

Designed by Jeffrey L. Ward Printed in the United States of America
Stories in this book appeared previously in Outdoor Life as: "Shooter";
"The Belcher" (originally titled "The Sharps"); "To Filet or Not to
Filet"; "A Really Nice Blizzard"; "The Last Flight of Homer Pidgin";
"What's in a Name, Moonbeam?"; "The Big Fix"; "A Boy and His (Ugh!)
Dog"; "Throwing Stuff"; Muldoon in Love" (originally titled "Show and
Gawk"); "Letter to Santa" (originally titled "Dear Santa"); "Nude, with
Other Wildlife" (originally titled "Gummy"); "Claw of the Sea-Puss"
(originally titled "Mutiny on the Sea-Puss"); "The MFFFF"; "The
Mountain"; "Pigs"; "Not Long for This Whirl"; "Cry Wolf" (originally
titled "The Bridge"); "Outdoor Burnout"; "Advanced Duck-Hunting
Techniques" (originally titled "The No-Fail School of Duck Hunting").

In Outdoor Life Hunting Guns, 1985-86: "Gun-Trading" (originally titled
"A Trader in Our Midst").  In Reader's Digest: "Muldoon in Love."  In
Field & Stream: "Angler's Dictionary"; "Rubber Legs and White
Tail-Hairs" (originally titled "Getting Hooked on Fly-Tying"); "The
Cabin at Spooky Lake" (originally titled "A Strange Occurrence at
Nowhere Lake").  In Field & Stream Hunting Annual 1981: "The Fine Art
of Delay" (originally titled "Art of Delay").  In the Spokane (Wash.)
Spokesman-Review: "Summer Reading" (originally titled "Books for the
Beach").  In Chrysler-Plymouth Spectator: "Loud Screeching and Other
Tips on Getting Lost."

ISBN 0-8050-0544-7 HARDBOUND ISBN 0-8050-0912-4 PAPERBACK Also by
Patrick F. McManus Kid Camping From Aaaaiii!  to Zip A Fine and
Pleasant Misery They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

Never Sniff a Gift Fish The Grasshopper Trap Dedication To my mother,
Mabel McManus DeMers Contents Muldoon in
Love..............................................................1

Cry
Wolf...................................................................


.9

Pigs...................................................................


....15

The
MFFFF..................................................................


24

Summer
Reading..............................................................31


Angler's
Dictionary.........................................................35

The
Mountain...............................................................


40

Not Long for This
Whirl.....................................................48

Claw of the
Sea-Puss........................................................61

A Really Nice
Blizzard......................................................68

Rubber Legs and White
Tail-Hairs............................................76

Nude, with Other
Wildlife...................................................84

The
Belcher................................................................


92

Shooter................................................................


....99

The Last Flight of Homer
Pidgin............................................107

A Boy and His (Ugh!)
Dog..................................................."6

To Filet or Not to
Filet...................................................125

What's in a Name,
Moonbeam?................................................131

Loud Screeching and Other Tips on Getting
Lost.............................137

The Big
Fix................................................................142


The Fine Art of
Delay......................................................150

Gun-Trading............................................................


...157

Throwing
Stuff.............................................................162

Letter to
Santa............................................................171

The Cabin at Spooky
Lake...................................................176

Outdoor
Burnout............................................................186


Advanced Duck-Hunting
Techniques...........................................193

Muldoon in Love Afterwards, I felt bad for a while about Miss Deets,
but Mom told me to stop fretting about it.  She said the problem was
Miss Deets had just been too delicate to teach third grade in our part
of the country.

Besides being delicate, Miss Deets must have also been rich.  I don't
recall ever seeing her wear the same dress two days in a row.  To
mention the other extreme, Mr. Craw, one of the seventh-grade teachers
at Delmore Blight Grade School, wore the same suit every day for thirty
years.  Once, when Mr. Craw was sick, the suit came to school by
itself and taught his classes, but only Skip Moseby noticed that Mr.
Craw wasn't inside the suit.  Skip said the suit did a fair job of
explaining dangling participles, which turned out to be a kind of South
American lizard.  I would have liked to hear the suit's lecture,
because at the time I was particularly interested in lizards.  But I
digress from Miss Deets.

No one could understand why a rich and genteel lady like Miss Deets
would want to teach third grade at Delmore Blight, but on the first day
of school, there she was, smelling of perfume and money, her auburn
hair piled on top of her head, her spectacles hanging by a cord around
her long, slender, delicate neck.  We stood there gawking at her,
scarcely believing our good fortune in getting this beautiful lady as
our very own third-grade teacher.

We boys all fell instantly in love with Miss Deets, but none more than
my best friend, Crazy Eddie Muldoon.  I loved her quite a bit myself at
first, but Eddie would volunteer to skip recess so he could clean the
blackboard erasers, whether they needed cleaning or not.  For the first
month of school, the third grade must have had the cleanest blackboard
erasers in the entire history of Delmore Blight Grade School.  For me,
love was one thing, recess another.  God had not intended the two to
interfere with each other.  But Crazy Eddie now skipped almost every
recess in order to help Miss Deets with little chores around the
classroom.  She was depriving me of my best friend's company, and bit
by bit I began to hate her.  I wished Miss Deets would go away and
never come back.

Worse yet, in his continuing efforts to prove his love for Miss Deets,
Eddie started studying.  He soon became the champion of our weekly
spelling bees.  "Wonderful, Edward!"  Miss Deets would exclaim, when
Eddie correctly spelled some stupid word nobody in the entire class
would ever have reason to use.  Then she would pin a ridiculous little
paper star on the front of his shirt, the reward for being the last
person standing in the spelling bee.  It disgusted me to think Eddie
would do all that work, learning how to spell all those words, for
nothing more than having Miss Deets pin a ridiculous little paper star
on his shirt.

Then one day Miss Deets made her fateful error.  "Now, pupils," she
announced, "I think it important for all young ladies and gentlemen to
be able to speak in front of groups.  So for the next few weeks we are
going to have Show and Tell.  Each day, one of you will bring one of
your more interesting possessions to school, show it to the class, and
then tell us all about it.

Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Three-fourths of the class, including myself, cringed in horror.  We
didn't own any possessions, let alone interesting ones!  Miss Deets
looked at me and smiled.  "Patrick, would you like to be first?"

I put on my thoughtful expression, as though mentally sorting through
all my fascinating possessions to select just the one with which to
enthrall the class.  My insides, though, churned in terror and
embarrassment.  What could I possibly bring to Show and Tell?  The only
thing that came to mind was the family post-hole digger.  I imagined
myself standing up in front of the class and saying, "This is my
post-hole digger.  I dig post holes with it."  No, Miss Deets probably
had a longer speech in mind.  I glanced around the room.

Several hands of the rich kids from town were waving frantically for
attention.

"Uh, I need more time," I told Miss Deets.  Like about fifteen years, I
thought, but I didn't tell her that.

"All right, then, Lester?"  Miss Deets said to one of the rich kids.

"You may be first."

The next day Lester brought his stamp collection to Show and Tell, and
held forth on it for about an hour.  An enterprising person could have
cut the tedium into blocks and sold it for ice.  But Miss Deets didn't
seem to notice.

"That's wonderful, Lester!"  she cried.  "Oh, I do think stamp
collecting is such a rewarding hobby!  Thank you very much, Lester, for
such a fine and educational presentation.  Would you like to clean the
blackboard erasers during recess?"

I glanced at Crazy Eddie.  He was yawning.  Eddie had a habit of
yawning to conceal his occasional moments of maniacal rage.  Good, I
thought.

At recess, Eddie refused to play.  He stood with his hands jammed in
his pockets, watching Lester on the third-grade fire escape, smugly
pounding the blackboard erasers together.  "Did you ever see anything
more boring than that stupid stamp collection of Lester's?"  he said to
me.

" I think I did once," I said.  "But it was so boring I forget what it
was."

"I've got to come up with something for Show and Tell, something really
good," Eddie said.  "What do you think about a post-hole digger?"

Lester's stamp collection, however, was merely the beginning of a
competition that was to escalate daily as each succeeding rich kid
tried to top the one before.  There were coin collections, doll
collections, baseball-card collections, model airplanes powered by
their own little engines, electric trains that could chew your heart
out just looking at them, and on and on until we had exhausted the
supply of rich kids in class.  We were now down to us country kids,
among whom there were no volunteers for Show and Tell.  Miss Deets
thought we were merely shy.  She didn't realize we had nothing to show
and tell about.

Rudy Griddle, ordered by Miss Deets to be the first of us to make a
presentation, shuffled to the front of the class, his violent shaking
surrounding him with a mist of cold sweat.  He opened a battered cigar
box and tilted it up so we could see the contents.  "This here's my
collection of cigarette butts," he said."  I pick 'em up along the
road.  You'll notice there ain't any shorter than an inch.  If they's
an inch or longer they's keepers.  Some folks pick up cigarette butts
to smoke, but I don't.  I just collect them for educational purposes.

Thank you."  He returned to his desk and sat down.

The class turned to look at Miss Deets.  Her mouth was twisted in
revulsion.  Suddenly, someone started clapping!  Crazy Eddie Muldoon
was applauding!  And somebody else called out, "Yay, good job, Rudy!"

The rest of us country kids joined in the applause and cheering and
gave Rudy a standing ovation.  He deserved it.  After all, he had shown
us the way.  From now on, Show and Tell would really be interesting.

Farley Karp brought in the skunk hide he had tanned himself and gave a
very interesting talk on the process, even admitting that he had made a
few mistakes, but after all, it was the first skunk hide he had ever
tanned.  He said he figured from what he had learned on the first one,
the next skunk hide he tanned he probably could cut the smell by a good
50 percent, which would be considerable.

Bill Stanton brought in his collection of dried wildlife droppings,
which he had glued to a pine board in a tasteful display and
varnished.

It was a fine collection, with each item labeled as to its source.

Manny Fogg, who had been unable to think of a single thing to bring to
Show and Tell, was fortunate enough to cut his foot with a
double-bitted ax three days before his presentation and was able to
come in and unwrap the bandages and show us the wound, which his mother
had sewed shut with gut leader.  It was totally ghastly but also very
interesting, and educational too, particularly if you chopped firewood
with a double-bitted ax, as most of us did.

Show and Tell had begun to tell on Miss Deets.  Her face took on a wan
and haunted look, and she became cross and jumpy.  Once I think she
went into the cloakroom and cried, because when she returned, her eyes
were all red and glassy.  That was the time Laura Ann Struddel brought
in the chicken that all the other Struddel chickens had pecked half the
feathers off of.  Laura Ann had set the chicken on Miss Deets's desk
and was using a pointer to explain the phenomenon.  The chicken,
looking pleased to be on leave from the other chickens, but also a
little excited at being the subject of Show and Tell, committed a small
indiscretion right there on Miss Deets's desk.

"Oh, my gahhh ..."  Miss Deets gasped, her face going as red as
dewberry wine, while we third-graders had a good laugh.  This, after
all, was the first humor introduced into Show and Tell.  From then on,
those of us who still had to do Show and Tell tried to work a little
comedy into our presentations, but nobody topped the chicken.

So many great things had been brought to Show and Tell by the other
country kids that I had become desperate to find something of equal
interest.

Finally, I went with my road-killed toad, explaining how it had been
flattened by a truck and afterwards had dried on the pavement, until I
came along and peeled it up to save for posterity.  The toad went over
fairly well, and I even got a couple of laughs out of it, which is
about all you can expect from a toad.  Even so, Miss Deets chose not to
compliment me on my performance.

She just sat there slumped in her chair, fanning herself with a sheaf
of arithmetic papers.  I thought she looked a tad green, but that could
have been my imagination.

Now only Margaret Fisher and Crazy Eddie were left to do their Show and
Tells.  I knew Eddie was planning to use several pig organs from a
recent butchering, provided they hadn't spoiled too much by the time he
got to use them.  But Margaret changed his plans.  She brought in a
cardboard box and proudly carried it to the front of the room.  Miss
Deets backed off to a far corner, her hands fluttering nervously about
her mouth, as Margaret pried up the lid of the box.  A mother cat and
four cute baby kittens stuck out their heads.  Everyone oohed and
aahed.  Miss Deets went over and picked up one of the kittens and told
Margaret what a wonderful idea she had had, to bring in the kittens,
and would Margaret like to clean the blackboard erasers at recess?

At recess, Eddie was frantic.  "I can't use the pig stuff now," he
said.

"I got to come up with something live that has cute babies."

"How about using Henry?"  I suggested.

"Yeah, Henry's cute, all right, but he don't have no babies."

"Hey, I've got an idea!"  I said."  I know some things we can use and
just say they're his babies.  But you'd better call Henry a girl's
name.

Heck, Miss Deets won't know the difference."  Eddie smiled.  I knew he
was thinking he would soon have back his old job of cleaning the
blackboard erasers for Miss Deets.

Everyone in third grade counted on Crazy Eddie Muldoon to come up with
a spectacular grand finale for Show and Tell.  An air of great
expectation filled the room as Eddie, carrying a lard pail, marched up
to make his presentation.  Even Miss Deets seemed to be looking forward
to the event, possibly because it was the last of Show and Tell, but no
doubt also because she expected one of her favorite pupils to come up
with something memorable.

With the flair of the natural showman, Eddie deftly flipped off the lid
of the lard pail, in which he had punched air holes.  "And now, ladies
and gentlemen," he announced, "here is Henrietta Muldoon my pet garter
snake."  He held up the writhing Henry.

Miss Deets sucked in her breath with such force she stirred papers on
desks clear across the room.

"And that's not all," Crazy Eddie continued, although it was plain from
the look on Miss Deets's face that Henry all by himself was
excessive.

Beaming, Eddie thrust his other hand into the pail.

"Here, ladies and gentlemen, are her babies!"

He held up the squirming mass of nightcrawlers we had collected the
evening before.

At first I thought the sound was the distant wail of a fire siren, a
defective one, with a somewhat higher pitch than normal.  It rose
slowly and steadily in volume, quavering, piercing, until it vibrated
the glass in the windows and set every hair of every third-grader
straining at its follicle.

We were stunned to learn that human vocal cords could produce such an
unearthly sound, and those of a third-grade teacher at that.

Mr. Cobb, the principal, came and led Miss Deets away, and we never
saw her again.  We heard later that she had gone back to teach school
in the city, where all the kids were rich and she could lead a peaceful
and productive life.

As the door closed behind her, I turned to Eddie and said, "I think
you've cleaned your last blackboard eraser for Miss Deets."

"Yeah, I suspect you're right," he said sadly.  Then he brightened.

"But you got to admit that was one whale of a Show and Tell!"

Cry Wolf Sometimes it seems I can scarcely turn around nowadays without
being entertained.  I am surrounded by TV sets, radios, videocassette
recorders, video games, stereos, and assorted other electronic home
entertainment.  Then there are movies, plays, concerts, and the
symphony.  (True, I only attend the symphony when my wife can rent the
strait-jacket that looks like a tuxedo, which, too, is considered by
many people an entertainment.) Spectator sports exist in such copious
variety and number that I can scarcely find time for matters of more
consequence, such as my hunting and fishing.  In short, I live in a
veritable sea of entertainment.  But it was not always so.

During the years I was six and seven, my mother taught all eight grades
in a little log schoolhouse tucked back into a remote valley of the
Rocky Mountains.  There was no electricity, no running water.  Our
stove had been constructed out of an old steel barrel by a local
madman.  Countless fires had burned little holes through the metal of
the stove.  Sparks popped through these holes to provide our only home
entertainment, which consisted of stomping out the fires they
started.

The closest newspaper route ended forty miles away.  Our mailbox was
sixty miles away, which was all right, because we didn't have any
magazine subscriptions or anyone to write to us.  We didn't have a
radio.  Our only source of news was the Ouija board, and it wasn't
reliable, always trumping up phony illnesses in healthy but distant
members of the family or giving accounts of those who had passed on.

The departed generally seemed to be having a better time than we
were.

I did what I could to create my own entertainment.  Once I affixed a
pry pole to the girls' privy and hid in the brush until my victim
entered, a foxy eight-year-old by the name of Opal.  Then I leaped out
and pushed up and down on the pole, causing the privy to rock
precariously to and fro.  (This was one of my earliest experiments in
physics, and, I believe, quite a successful one.) The rocking produced
immensely satisfying screeches from inside the privy, thus proving my
hypothesis as to that effect.  Little did I realize that this innocent
prank would typify my future relationships with women, all of whom
would regard me with suspicion, even when I wasn't carrying a pry
pole.

Winter bored me most, with the roads to town blocked for months by
snowdrifts, and the privies frozen solidly to the ground.  Aside from
stomping out stove-spark fires, our family's only other entertainment
during the winter occurred on Tuesday evenings.  Although we had no
radio, our nearest neighbors did.  Their cabin could be reached only by
hiking three-quarters of a mile on a narrow trail cut through thick
second-growth forest.  The trail began with a long, winding, decaying
bridge once used by a logging operation to cross several meanders of a
creek and a swampy area.  The bridge consisted largely of gaping holes
suspended high in the air and roughly defined by rotting timbers.  A
cautious person would think twice before crossing it in daytime and
summer.  Only desperate fools would consider the possibility of
crossing the icy structure in the dark of a winter night.

"Watch where you step," my mother said one wintry Tuesday night.  "This
log is really slick."

She carried a torch made of a length of broomstick and a cloth dipped
in kerosene.  Huge shadows of ourselves leaped and played among the
trees as the Troll and I, in single file, followed Mom inch by inch
along the log.

" Hurry, " the Troll said."  We don't want to be late.

"There's plenty of time," my mother said.  "Careful!  Lord save us!  I
nearly slipped off the bridge!  Here, Trudy, grab MY hand and pull me
back up, so I can hook my other leg over the log.  Ah, thank you,
dear.

Whew!

C'mon, Ma, " I said.  "Stop foolin' around.  Now you've gone and
dropped the torch in the crick.  We're gonna be late for sure."

"Would you stop your eternal whining!  Reach back and whack him one,
would you, Trudy dear?  Thank you.  All right, now just another four
hundred feet and we'll be off the bridge."

Exactly what was this entertainment for which we risked crossing the
bridge?  Why, nothing less than the "Henry Aldrich" radio program, a
joyous half hour of unrelieved laughter and entertainment.  I remember
that the show opened with the teenager's mother calling out,
"Henreeeeeeee!  Henry Aldrich!"

Even now, the recollection of that parental cry gives me a warm feeling
of joyous anticipation.  I have a soft spot in my heart for dumb ol'
squeaky-voiced Henry Aldrich, for without him to look forward to each
Tuesday night I surely would have died of boredom at age six in a
remote valley of the Idaho Rockies.

The rich people who owned the radio, the Burfords, were a family of
woodcutters: a stringy little father, a plump mother, and four sons the
size and intelligence of pickup trucks.  We would all gather around the
radio and listen to the hilarious predicaments Henry was all the time
getting himself into, and we would laugh until our sides ached, which
was what everybody said every Tuesday evening, "I laughed till my sides
ached!"  After the program was over, someone would repeat something
Henry had said, and we would all be off again, laughing until our sides
ached even more than they had before.

"I don't know how one boy can git hisself into so much trouble," Mr.
Burford would say, wiping his eyes.  "A week don't go by but what that
Henry pulls some fool stunt."

As soon as the Henry Aldrich show was over, Mrs. Burford would clean
off the kitchen table and my mother, Mr. and Mrs. Burford, and the
smartest of the Burford boys would play a few rounds of pinochle.  The
Troll and the--it goes without saying--dumbest of the Burford boys
would sit in a corner and giggle.

I would curl up with the dogs by the stove and try to get a bit of
sleep, if for no other reason than to take my mind off the fact that we
still had the bridge to cross on our way home.

The pinochle game served not merely to milk more entertainment out of a
Tuesday evening, but had a practical purpose as well.  A wolfpack
roamed the valley in those days, and the playing of pinochle gave us
the opportunity to get a reading on the whereabouts of the wolves.  The
point of this was to improve the odds that the paths of the wolves and
the McManuses would not intersect on our way home.  Every so often, Mr.
Burford would say to one of the boys, "Cleetus, go check on the
wolves."

Cleetus would step outside the cabin and stand there in the frosty air
until he heard the wolves.  Then he would step back inside and report,
"They's movin' along the ridge above Wampus Crick, Pa!"

"Still too close," Mr.  Burford would say.  "Whose bid is it?"

When Cleetus finally reported the wolves a sufficient distance away,
the McManus family would spring into action.  Coats would be thrown on,
hasty good-byes shouted, and we would charge out the door of the
Burford cabin and race for home.

On the Tuesday night in question, the wolves failed to raise their
usual ruckus, possibly because there was no moon and the night was
black as pitch.

Cleetus stood outside until he frosted over, without hearing a single
wolfish yip.  "Cain't hear 'em, Pa," he reported.  "They could be
anywheres."

"Maybe you all should spend the night," Mrs.  Burford suggested.

"Thank you, no," Mom said.  "We'll go home."

"Wha ...?"  I said.  "We don't know where the wolves are!  You gotta be
kidding!  Wild horses couldn't budge me out that door!"

Five minutes later we were scurrying along the trail toward home, walls
of darkness towering above us on both sides.  The wolves, gaunt and
hungry, their black lips curling over their sharp white fangs, could be
lying in wait for us anywhere, watching for any telltale signs of
weakness in this panicky herd of hurrying humans.  Crouched beside the
trail, the leader of the pack points to the small human lagging farther
and farther behind the two larger ones.  "That's the best bet," he
says.

"Wait for me," I hissed through frozen breath, as the long legs of my
mother and the Troll churned up clouds of powdery snow in the
distance.

I caught up with them at the bridge, where they stood panting and
gathering their wits for crossing this last but major obstacle to
safety.  I stared glumly at the lacework of logs, whitened by snow and
ice, outlining the dark and gaping holes.

"Remember," Mom said, her voice shaky with barely restrained terror,
"just one step at a time.  Keep your balance and take it nice and
slow.

I'll go first and ..."

At that instant, from the darkness of the trees right above us, came
the loud hoot of a wolf!

"Wolf!  Wolf!"  I screamed.  "They got us!"

As a mist of snow settled around my small, defenseless body, I vaguely
made out the darting, hurtling, leaping, bounding figures of Mom and
the Troll midway across the bridge.  They sailed over an open expanse
of darkness, scarcely touched down on an icy log, then took off again,
rigging and ragging in midair, picking out occasional footholds as if
by radar, and elbowing each other for position on the turns.

The wolf hooted again above me.

"Wolves don't hoot," I said to myself, smiling with satisfaction over
the proof of another of my hypotheses about human motivation.  "Owls
hoot."

Everybody knew that, but Mom and the Troll had momentarily forgotten it
when subjected to the proper stimulus.  Interesting.  I felt a little
guilty, conducting experiments on live humans, but still, a small boy
snowbound in a remote valley of the Rockies had to invent his own
entertainment as best he could.

Pigs Retch Sweeney, Al Finley, and I were returning from a fishing trip
in Finley's new station wagon, when we saw the crudely lettered sign
nailed to the gatepost of a ramshackle farm: PIGS $7.

"Holy mackerel!"  Retch said.  "Did you see that?  Pigs for only seven
dollars!"

"Just keep driving," Finley mumbled peevishly.  Exhausted, irritable,
and still shivering from a little tumble he had taken into the river,
he had ordered me to drive us home, while he sprawled pouting on the
rear seat.  He claimed Retch had bumped him off the log on purpose.

Still, the drop into the river couldn't have been more than fifteen
feet at most, although from Finley's long, quavering screech you might
have supposed he had fallen off the Matterhorn.  Also, if he had just
relaxed and collected his senses, he would have realized that there was
no point in trying to swim upstream in rapids, thus saving himself a
lot of wasted effort.  The waterfall he went over was nothing to brag
about either, but, typically, Finley had to create practically a major
drama before he was swept over the brink.  I think what irritated him
the most, though, was Retch's yelling, "Stop thrashing about, Finley,
you're scaring all the fish!"  That, of course, was inconsiderate of
Retch and even untrue, because I caught a nice rainbow just a few
seconds after Finley washed by me.

"Pigs for seven dollars apiece!"  Retch cried.  "Stop the car!  Listen
to me!  I got an idea!"

"Will miracles never cease," Finley grumbled.

"Here's what we'll do," Retch went on.  "You guys buy two pigs for each
of us, that's two times three times seven which comes to ... uh"
"Forty-two dollars," I said, since I didn't want to grow old waiting
for Retch to work out the arithmetic.

"That's right," Retch said.  "So here's what we'll do.  You guys buy
the pigs and I'll raise 'em.  Then, come fall, we'll have them turned
into smoked hams and bacon and sausage.  Don't that sound good?"

"That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of," I said.

"Wait a second," Finley said, using his shrewd tone.  "You mean next
fall I end up with two full-grown hogs for a total price of twenty-one
dollars?

You'll do all the work and pay all the cost of raising them,
Sweeney?"

"Yeah," Retch said.  "I'll just gather up all the spoiled food the
supermarkets throw away.  Won't cost me nothin', except maybe for some
grain."

"Sounds good to me," Finley said.  "But we can't haul six pigs in my
station wagon.  You'll have to come back and get them with a truck or a
trailer."

"That's over two hundred miles round trip," Retch said.

"No, we got to take them now.  What we'll do, see, is fold down the
backseat.  They'll just be little pigs, so we can tie 'em up in
gunnysacks.  No problem."

"Well, okay," Finley said, ever alert for a bargain.  "I just don't
want pigs messing up my car."

My own reluctance remained intact.  Unlike Retch and Finley, I'd had
actual experience with pigs.  I was but seven years old when my friend
Crazy Eddie Muldoon asked me if I wanted to ride one of his family's
pigs.  "Why not?"  I said, never one to spend much time contemplating
consequences.  We walked out to the pigpen and Eddie pointed to three
huge hogs snoozing in the odorous mire.

"That one's Champ, next to him is Trigger, and the biggest one, that's
Silver.  Silver, he'll give you the best ride, 'cause I ain't broke him
yet.

just climb up on the fence there and plop down on Silver's back and
grab him by the ears.  You can be the Lone Ranger and I'll be Tonto."

"Which one is Tonto going to ride?"  I asked.

"Tonto ain't gonna ride.  He's gonna sit here on the fence and keep a
lookout for my pa."

Caught up in my anticipation of trotting about on Silver, I had
forgotten about that standard precaution.  Ninety percent of the things
Eddie and I did required keeping a lookout for his pa.

I climbed the fence and plopped down on Silver's back, grabbing him by
the ears in a single smooth movement, and started my Lone Ranger yell:
"Hi ...!"  In one second flat, two hundred pounds of furious pork
sizzled around the pen like a piece of ice on a hot griddle.  Champ and
Trigger joined in the general ruckus, but without anywhere near the
enthusiasm of Silver.  I quickly tired of the ride and began looking
for a way to dismount, finally deciding that the next time Silver tried
to scrape me off on the fence, I would make a jump for it.  Intelligent
beings that pigs are, however, Silver made a few quick calculations in
elementary physics, arriving at the conclusion that if he was to stop
suddenly, whatever was on his back would continue on at the same
momentum until the pull of gravity counteracted the original force.  He
instantly put this theory to the test, and with great success.  The
hog's sudden stop launched me like a torpedo off his back and sent me
streaking headfirst through six-inch-deep residue of pig.

I got up and shook off as much muck as I could, carefully wiping a
couple of eyeholes so I could see.  Tonto sat unperturbed on the fence,
nibbling a straw as he studied the situation.  Without speaking to him,
I climbed out of the pen and headed for the creek.  I knew what Tonto
wanted to say, that it was building up in him, demanding to be said,
because an opportunity like this might never arise again in his
lifetime.  When I was a safe distance away, but not so far that I
couldn't make out the words uttered in a small, pleased voice, he said
it: "Who was that masked man, anyway?"

From that moment on, I never had any use for pigs.  They had left a bad
taste in my mouth.

"I don't want to have anything to do with pigs," I told Retch and
Finley.

"They're nothing but trouble."

"No trouble for you and me, though," Finley said.  "We won't even see
them again until they're hams and bacon."

He had a point there.  I swung the car around and we drove back to the
farm.  A grizzled little man came out of the house picking his teeth
and rubbing his rounded belly as though he had just finished a large
dinner.

"Let me handle this," Finley said out of the corner of his mouth.

"This guy looks like a sharpie.  That seven-dollars sign was probably
just a come-on.  Guy probably thinks he's lured some dumb city slickers
into his snare.  Ha!"

I was glad we had a shrewd person like Finley along to handle the
deal.

"Howdy," the farmer said."  'Spect you fellas want to buy some pigs."

"Might be," Finley said.  "If the price is right."

The farmer appeared a little puzzled, and I could see that Finley had
got in a deft stroke.

"If you seen the sign, you seen the price," the farmer said.  "Seven
dollars."

"Uh-huh," Finley said shrewdly.  "Now, we're not talking about the
runts of the litter, are we?  We're talking good, healthy pigs?"

"Yep," the farmer said.  He pointed to a large, fenced area where about
fifty little pigs ambled about.  "There they are.  You can take your
pick."

Well, that seems fair enough," Finley said.  "You got a deal.  We'll
take six pigs."

"Good.  That'll be forty-two dollars.  I'll throw in some gunnysacks
for free to haul 'em in."

Finley handed him the money.  The farmer counted it and tucked it into
the bib pocket of his overalls.  "They're your pigs now," he said.  "Go
catch the ones you want."

"We have to catch them ourselves?"  Finley asked.  "How do we do
that?"

"Don't know," the farmer said, turning to walk back to his house.

"Ain't none of 'em been caught yet.  But you fellers might be faster
than most folks."

"Uh, I don't suppose you would be interested in buying the pigs
back?"

Finley said, now more nervous than shrewd.

"Nope.  I already got a surplus of pigs."

Our first tactic consisted of each of us selecting a pig and trying to
run him until he tired out.  But all the pigs looked pretty much
alike.

So when one of the chased pigs got tired, he would charge into a crowd
of other pigs, and a fresh pig would race out the other side, so that
we were competing individually against what amounted to a pig relay.

Another problem was, the pigs stood only about a foot high on all
fours.  When we closed in on one, we had to run stooped over in order
to grab at it, the posture not unlike that of a person doing a
toe-touching exercise while sprinting.  After an hour of this
fruitless--or pigless--effort, we met for a consultation.

"I think we should all three of us concentrate on one pig at a time," I
said.  "That way we can run it into a corner, grab the
bleep-of-a-bleep, and dump it into a gunnysack."

"Good idea," Retch said.  "Now, can any of us straighten up enough to
hold the sack?"

"I can raise my hands to my knees," Finley said.

"Close enough," I said.  "You hold the sack."

Only a few minutes after midnight, we cornered the sixth of our pigs
and sacked him.  We folded down the backseat of Finley's station wagon,
spread out a couple of plastic rain slickers, dumped our sacks of
little porkers on them, and headed for home.

"I still say it's cheap hams and bacon," Retch said, his body still
curled in the shape of a question mark.  "What say, Finley?  " "I say,
"Owww owww ooooooh ah oh my aching back," that's what I say!

"And I better never lay eyes on these pigs again until they are hams
and bacon!"

"You got nothing to fear," Retch said, thereby proving his inadequacy
as a prognosticator.

The pigs, apparently content in their gunnysacks, occasionally emitted
a quizzical grunt but otherwise caused no commotion.  Retch and Finley
dozed off.  I hung on the steering wheel, sucking an occasional drag
from a vacuum bottle of cold coffee to keep my eyelids from sneaking
shut.

After half an hour or so, we hit the freeway and had a straight shot
home.  Tired and aching, I paid little attention to a scuffling noise
behind me.  Suddenly, on the back of my neck, I felt a moist snout,
bristly little whiskers, and a hot panting breath.  I must have been
dreaming with my eyes open, because for a second I thought it was my
old high school girlfriend, Olga Bonemarrow.  I quickly realized,
however, that the cause of these sensations wasn't chewing bubble gum,
which ruled out Olga.

"A pig's loose!"  I yelled.

"Ye gads!"  Finley said.  "He's off the rain slickers too!  Don't scare
him!  If he does anything on the carpeting, I'll kill him now with my
bare hands!"

Alas!  The shrill tone of Finley's voice prompted the pig to commit an
act of hygienic indiscretion right on the station wagon's new
carpeting, even as the culprit stood blinking his little pig eyes at
his would-be assassin.

The resulting wail from the carpeting's owner sent the pig tearing
about the rear of the station wagon in a frenzy almost equal to that of
Finley.  This alerted the other prisoners to the festivities, and in a
matter of seconds they had torn loose from their sacks and joined in
the bedlam.  The hysterical squealing was deafening.

"Would you please stop squealing, Finley?"  I said.  "You're giving me
a headache."

"Stop the car!"  Finley ordered.  "We've got to get the pigs back in
their sacks!"

"Shucks," Retch said sleepily.  "They won't hurt nothin', Finley.  You
can hose out the back of the station wagon tomorrow and it'll be good
as new.

Let the little porkers have their fun."

" I said stop the car!  " "I can't stop," I said.  "You can only stop
on the freeway if you have an emergency.  You know that, Finley.  Now
calm down."

"Then someone's got to climb back there and stuff the pigs back in
their sacks!"

"Be my guest," Retch said.

"Oh, good heavens, I should know better than to hang out with you
nitwits," Finley said, climbing into the back and grabbing at a pig.

The station wagon rocked and swayed as Finley thrashed about, stuffing
pigs into sacks, only to have them escape when he lunged after another
one.  I turned up the radio in an effort to drown out the hideous
sounds.  Distracted as I was, and possibly because of strong motivation
to end the drive as quickly as possible, I pressed down on the
accelerator pedal a bit too hard.

At that moment a pig leaped over my shoulder and into my lap, only to
be pursued by a sweating, snarling Finley, who dragged the squalling
beast over my face and into the back.  The car swerved.  No sooner had
I got it back under control than a pulsing blue light filled the
interior of the vehicle, followed by the wail of a state patrolman's
siren rising ever so slightly above the din of Finley and the pigs.

"Cripes," Retch said.  "Now you gone and done it, Finley."  A fragrant
hush fell over our little group as I pulled the station wagon to the
edge of the road and stopped.  The patrolman walked cautiously up to my
lowered window, his right hand resting on the unbuttoned flap of his
holster.

The man knew a wild bunch when he saw one.

" I can explain, officer," I said, handing him my driver's license.

" I bet," he said, not at all friendly.  "Had a bit too much to drink,
right, sir?"

"Haven't had a drop," I replied.  "I'm waiting until I get home to have
too much to drink."

Oh, yeah?  Well let me just take a whiff of the inside of your vehicle,
sir.  Whewwweeeeee!  Choke!  Gag!"  He staggered back, barely catching
his balance and almost falling into the ditch.

"As I tried to explain, officer," I said, "we have a man in back here
trying to stuff pigs in sacks and ..."

"That's enough of that, pal.  I don't put up with wise ..."  The
patrolman flicked the beam of his flashlight into the back of the
station wagon.  Six pigs and Finley returned his stare.  Smiling
weakly, Finley held up a gunnysack, apparently as proof that he was
engaged in a legitimate activity.

"You see," I continued, "what happened was ..."

"Okay, okay, stop explaining," the patrolman said.  "I'll let you off
this time.  But don't ever let me catch you guys driving while stuffing
pigs in sacks again!"

"Rest assured, officer," I said.  "You never will."  Seldom have I been
so confident in one of my predictions.

The MFFFF No matter what you may have heard, hunting is a competitive
sport.  The competition, of course, comes not from seeing who can shoot
the most or biggest game, but from the display of one's physical
fitness.  How often have you been taunted by your hunting companions
when you've suggested taking a rest after a steep climb to the top of a
hill?  I myself once regularly underwent such humiliations, even when
the climb up the hill wasn't made in a vehicle.

Finally, I said to myself, "You must do something about your rotten
physical condition.  You must get in shape once and for all."  As it
happened, I wasn't listening to myself at the time, and thus I was
saved endless hours of boring exercise.

Most of my exercise has come from strenuously avoiding all forms of
physical fitness, although I do find it amusing to run the Jane Fonda
workout cassette at fast speed on the VCR.  But, you ask, how do you
avoid being taunted by your hunting companions for being out of
shape?

I'm glad you asked that, because otherwise this article would end right
here.  The answer is the McManus Formula for Fitness Fakery.  By
carefully following the MFFFF, you too can be a winner in the Great
Outdoors.

First, you must instill in your hunting partners the belief that you
have hidden reserves of supernatural strength that can be called up at
any moment.

Here's one ruse that works very well.  Conceal your lunch somewhere on
your person, such as in the game pocket of your jacket.  Then, when you
are a couple miles downhill from your hunting vehicle and in need of
extensive rest, you say, "Oh-oh, I forgot my lunch.  I'll just run back
to the car and get it.

You fellas wait here."

Naturally, this announcement is going to be greeted by hoots and
hollers and a few threats of bodily harm from your companions, but you
must persist.

Charge off into the brush.  As soon as you are out of sight of your
companions, slow to a walk--this goes without saying--for the next
fifty yards or so.  Make sure you are far enough away so you can't hear
their comments about you, because that would depress you
unnecessarily.

Sit down on a log and rest for fifteen or twenty minutes.  Then return
to your companions, bursting out of the brush at a speed sufficient to
impress them but not enough to make you breathe hard.

"You back already?"  one of them will say.  "Ha!  You didn't go back to
the car for your lunch after all!"

"I did so," you say.  "But the car was locked and you forgot to give me
the keys, Harold!"

Now repeat the entire performance, this time with the car keys, and
return with your lunch.  Works like a charm.  Your friends will be so
impressed by your superhuman feat that they will not want to risk
humiliation by challenging you to a race up a mountain with a
hindquarter of elk on your back, or some similar form of suicide.  You
will become a legend in your own time, or at least someone might
mention your feat in a bar sometime during the following week, but, of
course, don't hold your breath.

Next we have the Nature Lover ploy.  Recently I was on a three-state
turkey hunt that outfitter Ron Dube (pronounced "Doobee") conducts out
of Buffalo, Wyoming.  Ron runs the spring hunt up where the corners of
Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota meet.  Thus, during a typical
week-long hunt, you can shoot a turkey in each of three states,
provided you're not as selective about turkeys as I am.  (I select only
slow, dumb, nearsighted gobblers, in my dedicated effort to improve the
gene pool of the North American wild turkey.

But what thanks do I get?) After I had followed Dube around the hills
for a couple of hours, I became more than a little impressed at the
speed with which he moves up vertical ground.

"How many states wheeeeeeze have we covered so far?"  I asked him.

"Jeepers criminy," Ron said, using his most serious cussword.  "We're
still in South Dakota.  Why, you getting tired?

"Me?  Are you wheeeeeeze kidding?  Heck no."

"Good," Ron said, pointing to a mountain that must have been an
offspring of the Grand Tetons.  "Because there's a big gobbler hangs
out on the other side of this rise.

"My lunch wheeeeeeze!"  I cried.  "I forgot my wheeeeeeze lunch!  Back
at the wheeeeeeze car."

"Don't worry about your lunch," Ron said.  "I always carry plenty of
food in my pack."

Always expect any single ploy in the McManus Formula for Fitness Fakery
to be countered by a companion, especially an experienced outfitter
like Dube.

Now, note carefully how I moved smoothly from the Lunch gambit to the
Nature Lover ploy.

Ron and I started up the Teton, his legs gobbling up a yard of altitude
at every stride while mine nibbled on inches.

"Hey, hold up a second, Ron," I called.  "What's this little wheeeeeeze
flower here?"

Dube came back down the mountain, ready as always to impart some bit of
exotic nature lore to an interested client.  He stared at the little
flower.

"Why, that's a buttercup," he said.  "Jeepers criminy, haven't you ever
seen a buttercup before?"

"I guess not this close," I said, since my face hovered mere inches
above the ground, watering the little yellow flower with dribbles of
sweat.

A few yards more up the mountain, I ran out of breath again."  Hey,
Ron, what I s this gasp flower?

Dube loped back down the mountain.  "Still a buttercup," he said.

"Oh, " I said.  "It's a little different shade of gasp yellow.  What
gasp makes it a different shade of yellow?"

Thus cleverly did I slow our ascent of the hill, engaging Dube in a
discussion of each species of flora on the mountainside, including
everything from lichen to ponderosa pine, some of them three and four
times.  Never once did Ron catch on to my clever tactic, even when I
led him into the realm of geology.

"What's this choke gasp odd protrusion?  " I asked, pointing at the
object with my tongue.

"A rock."

"Well, gasp I'll be darned.  A rock."

Clare Conley, the editor of Outdoor Life magazine, also hunts with Ron
Dube, usually for elk.  He refers to a trek with Ron as a "Dube death
march."

He claims that since Dube always carries a backpack, the best method
for slowing him down is to sneak a bunch of rocks into his pack when he
isn't looking.  I consider such conduct unsportsmanlike, mean, and
contemptible, and besides, as far as I could tell, Dube didn't even
notice the rocks.  As I told Conley, if you are going to use an
unsportsmanlike, mean, and contemptible method of slowing down your
hunting partner, use one that's guaranteed to work.

Such is the Picture-Taking ploy.  This is a truly wonderful gimmick.

When the point of exhaustion is arrived at where your feet are no
longer taking orders from your brain and each is just wandering around
on its own, then you call out to your partner, who may be but a speck
on the horizon ahead of you, "Hey, Harold!  Come back here!  This will
make a great shot!"

"So shoot it!"  the speck on the horizon calls back.

"No!"  you yell."  I want you in the picture!"

The speck on the horizon then scuttles back toward you until finally it
becomes Harold.  It is a well-known truth that no outdoorsman can
resist having his picture taken against a wild and rugged backdrop.

Naturally, when Harold arrives he immediately realizes that the scenery
here is absolutely identical to all the other scenery within a
fifty-mile radius.

"What's so great about this shot?"  he asks.

"Good gosh, don't you see it?"  you say, putting Harold on the
defensive, because he has always been insecure in the area of art
appreciation.  (It helps to have a companion who had trouble coloring
inside the lines back in elementary school.  In fact, I make this one
of my main criteria in selecting a hunting companion.) "Man," you
continue, "look at the rare quality of light on the snow (water, grass,
sand, dirt, mud) here.  Stand over there so I can get this light on
your face.  Take off your hat.  No, put the hat back on.

Take off your jacket.  Hold your rifle in your left hand.  No, right.

Good, hold that pose while I put a roll of film in the camera."  And so
on.  With any skill at all, you can stretch the Picture-Taking ploy
into a good thirty-minute rest.

Warning!  Merely feigning to take a picture under these circumstances
may cause your partner to break off your friendship, not to mention
various parts of your anatomy, because he will insist on seeing and
having copies of each of the two dozen shots you took of him on the
trip.  ("And here's the one of you standing in a field of gray snow.

Oh, this is a good one of you standing in a field of gray snow.  Look
at this one of you in the field of gray snow.  And this one ...")
Finally, we come to the Sock-Changing ploy.  Most of your companions
won't catch on to the fact that you're sneaking a rest if you sit down
to change your socks every so often, particularly if you comment,
"Blisters can incapacitate an outdoorsman faster than anything.  The
best precaution against blisters is to change your socks frequently."

The one problem consists of having to leave most of your gear behind in
order to have enough room in your pack for socks.  But a night or two
in the wilds without a sleeping bag can be an invigorating and
memorable experience, particularly if you have the right attitude and
aren't exhausted from charging up and down mountains all day without
sufficient rest stops.  I have tested this ploy thoroughly and have
found that you can get away with one sock-change per mile of terrain
covered, if you have sensible and considerate companions.  But how
often does that happen?  Right.  I have some hunting partners who
change their own socks only once a month on the average, so with them I
go directly to the Picture-Taking or Lunch ploy.  The Nature Lover ploy
doesn't work well with them, either, because if you ask one of them to
identify a plant for you, he's likely to say, "That's just your regular
old weed.  Now quit foolin' around and get a move on."

One further cautionary note on the Sock-Changing ploy.  It should be
carried out expeditiously.  For example, I have found that if you try
to extend the rest period by playing "this little piggy went to market"
on your toes, some hunters will become irritated and attempt to throw
you off a cliff.

Well, those are all the tips I have for sneaking a rest on hunting
trips without suffering ridicule from your macho friends.  If you don't
like the tips, however, you can always go to an extreme and start
getting in shape.

just don't ask me to hunt with you.

Summer Reading Of all the classifications of literature, the only one
distinguished by season is "summer reading."  Why is that?  Do you
really care?  I thought not.

Nevertheless, I have put a good deal of work into this essay and you
had better darn well pay attention.

The phrase "summer reading" seemingly reeks of literary
permissiveness.

Many readers interpret this to mean they can read anything they please
between May and September.  Not so.  A set of rules governs summer
reading, and the consequences of ignoring them can be serious.  For
example, a man was arrested recently for reading Proust's Remembrance
of things Past on a public beach while naked.  If you have any sense,
you'll leave Proust in the library where he belongs.

Now for the rules.  First of all, books containing any of the following
disqualify themselves as summer reading.

Ideas--Nothing so provokes disgust in a summer reader as suddenly
coming upon ideas in a seemingly innocent book.  This is why my own
books are often recommended for summer reading.  An idea occasionally
will creep into something I write, but usually I catch it before the
book goes to press.  An editor once found a small idea in one of my
stories and nearly suffered an infarction.  "Listen, McManus," he
snarled, "we pay you to write, not think."

Thinking and summer reading are incompatible.  If the book has caused
either you or the author any thought, then it is probably regular
reading and not fit for summer consumption.

Socially Redeeming Qualities--I'm reading a book right now in which
medieval monks are being murdered by someone or something.  At first I
thought this in itself might be a socially redeeming quality, but
apparently it isn't.

Although this book does contain some ideas, the author had the decency
to introduce them with Latin phrases, so they can be easily recognized
and thus skipped over.  Several times I've caught myself almost
thinking while reading the book, so I doubt I would recommend it for
summer reading.

Self-Improvement--Summer is the time of degeneration, if not
degeneracy.

We readers of summer have no interest in improving our minds, bodies,
sex, children, pets, lawns, manners, mileage, etc. We are loath to
read anything that might improve us in any way.  Generally, we prefer
summer books that leave us a little bit worse for having read them.

Dust-jacket Blurbs--The perfect summer book lacks even one dust-jacket
blurb.  This means that reviewers could not find a single favorable
thing to say about the book.  Also, any book containing blurbs with the
words sensitive, intelligent, or brilliant should instantly be
rejected.  Blurbs containing the words "gross," "disgusting,"
"insipid," and "truly rotten" suggest the books might make good summer
reading, but they are hard to find.

Any summer-reading book should contain one or more of the following.

Sharks--If a shark doesn't show up someplace in a book, it's probably
not worth summer reading.  I just finished a police action novel in
which the villain gets eaten by a shark in the final chapter.  I
thought it was great.

My wife tried to read the book but said she thought it would have been
better if the author had been eaten by a shark in the first chapter.

She lacks the necessary credentials of a summer reader, however, and
her judgment can't be trusted in these matters.

Illicit Sex--Combine sharks and illicit sex and you have a darn good
summer read.  The sex scenes should not be too graphic, of course.

Otherwise, they are offensive or, worse yet, fall into the category of
self-improvement.

Murder--A murder or two should occur early in the book, unless a shark
is present, in which case a minor character can be eaten.  By early, I
mean no later than the first half of the second page.  Gorky Park opens
with three murders on the first page, which is about the maximum number
you can expect in that limited space.  The murders should be tastefully
done, preferably in the manner of the early British mystery writers.

They should also be fairly tidy and conventional.  Summer readers don't
like their victims turning up as pot roasts or that sort of thing.

Cardboard Characters--Nothing ruins a good summer-reading book faster
than well-rounded, complex characters.  They slow the action.  The plot
sits there idling while the hero ponders some moral dilemma.  There
should be no moral dilemmas in summer fiction.  If the hero must
ponder, he should ponder sharks, illicit sex, or the villain.  Ideally,
he will ponder nothing and get on with his pursuit of one of the
above.

That pretty well sums up summer reading.  Now hop to it.  Summer
doesn't last forever, and before you know it we'll be back reading the
heavy thinkers--Fyodor Dostoyevski, Herman Melville, Sigmund Freud,
Shirley MacLaine ...

Angler's Dictionary Note from the lexicographer: In my continuing
effort to comPile a dictionary of uncommon angling terns used by
newcomers to the sport of fishing, I have recently defined the
following words and phrases as they are commonly understood by
experienced fishers.  You will note that the dictionary is not in
alphabetical order.  This is a labor-saving device.  I have never been
very good at the alPhabet anyway, and have come to regard it as a
frightful nuisance, useful only for soup.  If some critics see this as
a shortcoming in a lexicograPher, I have only this to say to them:
Picky, picky.

Here, is the "Angler's Dictionary."

Wicker creel--This is a lively folk dance often performed by a
fisherman on the occasion of slipping the point of a No.  4 hook under
a fingernail.

While the dancer performs the wicker creel, his companions typically
will clap rhythmically and encourage him with shouts of "Go, man,
go!"

Kitchen table--Of all the dangers that confront an angler, the one
seldom mentioned to beginners is the kitchen table.  It is a repository
of various essential fishing tackle that never makes it out to the
fishing site.  As a personal example, I laid a brand-new,
ninety-dollar, 6-weight flyrod on our kitchen table one day last
summer, and it was never seen again.  This is an extreme case, of
course.  Usually the item can be found still on the kitchen table upon
the angler's return, although it often has been buttered and drenched
with maple syrup.

Car roof--This is a deadly variation of the kitchen table.  Car roofs
are to fishing what black holes are to outer space.  Whatever is placed
on them even for a few seconds gets sucked into another dimension.

"Where's my fly book?"  one angler will say to another.  His companion
will reply, "I saw you place it on the car roof at our last stop!"  The
two anglers look at the car roof.  It glares back at them with smug
emptiness.  I have had cameras, fly reels, sack lunches, and numerous
other items sucked into the void by car roofs.  Never place any fishing
gear on a car roof, and, even more important, never sit on one
yourself.

Spinning reel--This is a form of comical walk performed by anglers who
have spent an evening around the campfire exchanging stories and
sipping 150-proof rum.  The spinning reel is usually attributed to
excessive consumption of night air, although a doctor friend of mine
claims that theory is nonsense.  He speculates that the true cause is
altitude.  "We're only three hundred feet above sea level," I told him
once.  "Well, that's altitude, isn't it?"  he replied.  "In every
instance of the spinning reel that I've ever witnessed, there has been
altitude present."  I for one am certainly not going to argue with
scientific evidence.

Cast--There are almost as many kinds of casts as there are kinds of
anglers.  There's the foot cast, the leg cast, the arm cast, the
full-body cast, and many more.  One of the common methods of achieving
a full-body cast is by following the advice of a fellow fisherman who
yells, "Take a running jump, Stan!  You can make it!"

Sinker--An angler who steps off a dock with a ten-horse outboard motor
in his arms is referred to as a sinker.  Some athletic anglers claim
they have actually swum fifty or sixty feet to shore while dragging a
ten-horse motor, but it is generally believed that they simply walked
along the bottom until they reached shallow water.  Since the other
anglers present continued to concentrate on putting their tackle
together, no eyewitness accounts exist as to what actually may have
been the case.

Split-shot sinker--An angler who suddenly drops into the water while
standing with one foot on the dock and the other in a drifting boat and
holding a ten-horse motor in his arms is known as a split-shot
sinker.

First he splits, then he sinks like a shot.  The split is usually
accompanied by a hideous screech, so horrible in fact that other
anglers present have been known to look up briefly from sorting their
tackle boxes.

Purist--An angler who doesn't catch any fish, because he uses only dry
flies the size of dandruff, often conceitedly refers to himself as a
purist.

Other anglers refer to him as a loon.

Fresh ain- This is what the purist claims he enjoys getting out in,
even though he doesn't catch any fish.

Fishing journal--An imaginative work of sub-literature in which the
angler records the weight, length, and species of fish he didn't
catch.

Rock--This is a tool used in the field to make delicate repairs on
expensive fishing reels, because the tool kit was sucked into the void
by the car roof.

Pink nighty--Dry-fly purists enjoy coming up with colorful names for
the various bits of fluff they employ not to catch fish.  However, when
they see a lunker brook trout that they really want, they will often
tie on a No.  10 Pink Nighty, which usually does the job.  Also known
as a ten-inch nightcrawler.

New can-An expensive dehydration chamber that ten-year-old boys use to
dry out strings of perch on hot July days.

Blue upright--Although primarily the name of a dry fly, it also denotes
ice fishermen in Wisconsin.

Blue darter--Refers to a Wisconsin ice fisherman who has just stepped
through a hole in the ice.

Best fishing time--Yesterday or last week.

Worst fishing time--Now.

Gaff--What old gaffers do when they have a young fisherman trapped in a
boat with them.  Fatal only if the young angler leaps out of the boat
and attempts to swim three miles to shore while carrying his tackle
box.

Fishing tackle--This is an extreme but useful maneuver for preventing a
fellow angler from reaching the best fishing hole before you do.

Carp--This is a form of immature behavior displayed by fishing
partners, often consisting of whining, after you have clipped off the
tips of their flyrods by inadvertently pressing the switch on your
car's automatic windows.

Forked stick--Stylish fishermen often use forked sticks to carry their
catch, after a sixty-dollar creel has been claimed by the kitchen
table.

Who wants raw egg in their beer?--A little joke that charter-boat
fishing captains wish they had never called out to their clients after
the boat has been tossing about in rough seas for six hours.

Fair-to-middlin'--This is the standard reply used by fishing resort
owners to describe the worst fishing in fifteen years.

Good--Fishing resort owners use this word to describe fishing that's
fair-to-middlin'.

wesome--A favorite word of resort owners to describe fishing, it is
based on the fact that they heard of some kid whO caught two small
perch the previous week.

Let's tell MOmmy I caught some of the fish--This is a pathetic plea
that comes up anytime a father takes his little son or daughter fishing
for the first time.  The situation is delicate and should be handled
with utmost care.

One way is to promise the youngsters ice cream or candy.  Then there's
a good chance they'll let you get away with the ruse.

The Mountain "April" the Poet wrote, "is the cruelest month.  Boy, no
kidding!  If I had read that poem while in third grade at Delmore
Blight Grade School, I might very well have said, "How true!  How
true!"  Although it's more likely I would have said, "Do I really have
to read this stupid poem?"

Outside the grimy windows of third grade, April was dissolving the last
lingering stains of winter.  Inside, however, Miss Goosehart was
stretching us pupils on the rack of the multiplication table, a
fiendish device once used to torture young children.  April was
slipping from our grasp.  Flowers were bursting into bloom, trees were
leafing out, and the sap was rising, namely one Milton Clinker, to give
the answer to four times seven.  Who cared about four times seven,
anyway?  Only a sap like Clinker would want to multiply while all
outdoors filled up with April.

Miss Goosehart cranked up the rack another notch.  "Pat, would you take
one of your wild guesses at three times six?"

I scratched my head in a show of concentration.  Crazy Eddie Muldoon,
who sat behind me, leaned forward and whispered something.  I thought
maybe it was the answer.  But it was, "Saturday, let's climb the
mountain."

Eddie was so far gone with April he didn't even realize it was my turn
on the rack.  He wasn't called Crazy Eddie for nothing.

"Give me a hint," I said to Miss Goosehart.  "How many letters does it
have?"

Had Eddie really said, "Let's climb the mountain"?  What a terrific
idea!

My heart did a handspring at the very thought.  "Okay," I whispered
back.

Eddie groaned.  Miss Goosehart now had him on the rack, trying to
wrench out the answer to seven times seven.  It was ghastly.

The mountain Eddie and I intended to climb reared up abruptly from the
valley about a mile from our farm.  At night, in the glow of the moon,
the mountain took on the shape of a sleeping dragon, the high, ragged
peak fanning the hump of its back; a long, descending ridge was its
neck, and another knob of mountain was its head.  The head of the
dragon rested on the valley floor not far from Delmore Blight Grade
School.  It was easy to imagine the dragon awakening one night,
stretching out its neck, and gobbling up the school in a single bite.

In the morning the only evidence of what had happened would be a gaping
hole in the ground and the smile on my face.

The dragon lived only at night.  Daylight revealed a solid, no-nonsense
mountain, with a craggy granite peak, sheer cliffs, a crosshatching of
crevices and ledges, and, lower down, thick forest.

The mountain talked to me.  I don't mean to imply that we held long
philosophical conversations, but even as a small boy, sitting on the
back steps of my house, I could hear it calling: "Pat!  Pat!  Come
climb me!  It will be fun!  And I won't try to kill you, as I do some
folks!"

On an April Saturday at the age of eight, I learned that mountains
don't always tell the truth.

Before setting out for the mountain, Crazy Eddie and I told our mothers
that we were going for a hike.  It seemed like the only decent thing to
do.

"Don't you go barefooted," my mother ordered.  "It's too early in the
year, and you'll catch your death.  Stay away from the crick, because
it's too high and you might fall in and drown.  Don't tease the
Guttenbergs' bull, because he might gore you to death.  Don't cut
yourself with your jackknife because you might bleed to death.  Don't
wander around in the woods, because you might get lost and starve to
death."  She stopped to catch her breath and search her memory.  "Oh
yes, don't climb any tall trees because you might fall to your
death."

Mothers can be depressing.  Mom couldn't recall any disasters with me
and a mountain, and I saw no reason to give her further cause for worry
by going into a lot of unnecessary detail about the hike.  My mother
was downright permissive compared with Eddie's parents.  On Saturday
mornings at his house, the family had to get up an hour early to run
through the list of don'ts for Eddie and still have time enough to get
the milking done by eight.

Eddie, as I expected, was late getting to my house.  He looked good,
swaggering into the yard, his eyes bright with the anticipation of
great adventure.  His broken arm had healed nicely.  I envied the scar
at his hairline, the result of his not having ducked quite low enough
as we threw ourselves under the Guttenbergs' fence, and just in time,
too.  (There's nothing quite so disgusting as getting bull slobber
sprayed all over you.) I thought maybe Eddie was concealing his limp
from me, but apparently the fall from the cottonwood tree hadn't done
any lasting damage.  He seemed fit, which was more than I could say for
his parents, the two most nervous people I'd ever known.  As Eddie
said, they probably drank too much coffee.

"Your folks skipped 'Don't mountain climb,' didn't they?"  I said,
grinning.

"Yep, " Eddie said.  "Never even occurred to them.  They hit everything
else, except dirt-clod throwing.  The lump on your head go away?"

"More or less," I said.  "It was my fault.  I would have ducked faster
if I'd known you were gonna charge my foxhole.  You ready?"

"Sure," Eddie said.  "Let's go!"

An hour later we were working our way up the lower slope of the
mountain.

Here and there the April sun had slipped in among the trees and incited
a riot of buttercups.  We each picked a handful of the little yellow
flowers and put them in our shirt pockets to take home to our
mothers.

For some reason, mothers seemed thrilled by these little squished balls
of withered flowers.

So what the heck.  The effort more than paid for itself with the PR
spinoff.

Say you were found guilty of getting home five hours late and had been
sentenced to some whacks, the number to be determined by how long it
took the parent's arm to feel as though it were about to fall off; the
idea was to haul out the pitiful little bouquet and present it to your
mother just before the penalty was to be executed.  Nine times out of
ten the bouquet got you a stay of execution.  Wilted bouquets of
wildflowers were not only good PR but excellent insurance.  "You got
enough buttercups?"  I asked.

"Yeah," Eddie said.  "These should do the trick.  Anyway, we probably
won't get home that late."

We climbed the mountain for an hour, expecting always to reach the top
at the next rise.  But there was always another rise and another after
that and still another.  Finally we broke free of the sloping forests
and could survey the valley down below.  The familiar fields and
pastures had taken on a new look, shaping themselves into intricate
rectangular patterns of spring browns and greens.  Mouse-size cars
scurried up and down the roads.

The climbing had now become more difficult.  Eddie, a born leader (the
worst kind), took charge of planning our ascent.  It seemed to me his
motive was not to find the easiest route but to test our character.

When we came to a rocky knob we could just as well have walked around,
he insisted that we make a frontal assault on it, finding little cracks
and protuberances with which to pull ourselves upward.  When I
complained, he said, "This is the way mountain climbing is done.  Any
sissy could walk around."

Now we were high up on the mountain.  The cars below had shrunk to the
size of ladybugs; cows and horses appeared no larger than ants.

"It's getting steeper," Eddie said, panting.

"And colder," I said, shivering.

"That means we're nearly to the top," Eddie said.

"I don't know," I said.  "We've been 'nearly to the top' fifteen times
already.  Maybe we should turn back."

"Only a sissy would turn back," Eddie said.

"I'm not turning back," I said.

"Okay," Eddie said.

Among the patchwork of fields below, I could see my own little tiny
warm house.  It called to me in the same way the mountain had.  "Turn
back," it called.  "Turn back."

"I'm not turning back," I muttered.

"Okay, okay," Eddie said.  "I didn't say you were."

Eddie no longer had to seek out difficult routes.  Every route had
become difficult.  Once we had to drop into a deep ravine, losing
altitude we had already paid for, only to have to buy it again, inch by
inch, foot by foot.

On the shaded side of a ridge we encountered deep drifts of snow,
streams of ice water gushing from beneath them.  The April sun had
rotted the drifts, and at every step we sank in almost to our waists,
the gritty snow stinging our legs raw.

Once, as we stopped to rest against a gnarled, stunted tree, My pants
freezing to my legs, my lungs aching, I stared out over the empty space
to where Delmore Blight Grade School snuggled up against the edge of
town.  Old Delmore Blight Grade School, I thought.  Well, this is a
heck of a lot better than being there.  The thought gave me strength to
go on.

Late in the afternoon, finally, the jagged peak of the mountain came
into view.  There was no mistaking it.  A few hundred yards more and we
would reach the ridge that led up to the peak.  After that, the summit
would be as good as ours!  But our ascent now appeared to be blocked.

A twenty foot cliff rose directly above us.  To get around it we would
have to drop far back down the mountain and climb up again by another
route.  I knew now that we would have to turn back.  Only a crazy
person would try to scale the cliff.

"Boy, this looks dangerous," Eddie said.  "Great!  I bet a lot of guys
would chicken out right now.  Here, let me give you a boost."

I hauled myself over the lip of the cliff only to discover a great
expanse of rock sloping steeply toward me.  Water bright with sunlight
trickled in tiny streams down the face of the rock.  There was no going
back now.  I began to crawl on my belly up the slippery slab of
granite--five feet, twenty feet, fifty feet.  I thought: just about got
it made.  Then I can watch ol' Eddie climb up here.  Ha!  Bet he'll be
scared.  just a bit more and I can reach for the upper edge of the
slab.  Only ten inches to go!  Six inches!

Three inches!  Oh-oh, I slipped back an inch.  Better get a foot in a
crack or something.  Still slipping.  Still slipping!  Dig my
fingernails into the rock!  No!  Wait!  What's happening?  I can't stop
sliding!  I'm going too faaaaaaaaaaaaaast!

Buttons flew off my jacket and shirt like shrapnel.  The knees ripped
out of my pants.  I felt as though I were leaving a streak of hide all
the way down the rock.  I whipped over on my back to see where I was
going.  Then I saw where!  I tried to whip back on my stomach so I
wouldn't have to see.  But it was too late.  I shot off over the edge
of the cliff.

"WUFFF!"  I saw green.  I had flown spread-eagle right into a scrawny
but merciful fir tree.  It bent over and deposited me with a plop on a
patch of snow.

I lay on my back, eyes closed, letting life drain back into me.  Except
for a few miscellaneous patches of missing clothing and hide, I seemed
all right.  Presently I heard a scrabbling in the rocks off to one
side.  I knew it must be Eddie.  So I played dead to teach him a good
lesson.  He didn't say anything, but I could sense him looking down at
me.  I held my breath so he couldn't see me breathe.  I could feel him
studying me intently, wondering how he could explain the fatal
accident.  ("I tried to talk Pat out of it, but he wouldn't listen.

Can I go play now?") Peeking from beneath my eyelids, I saw him bend
over me.  What was he doing?  Checking to see if I might still be
alive?  Eddie set a large rock on my chest.  He put another rock next
to it, and then another.  He was burying me.

"Stop!"  I yelled.  "I'm alive!"

"I knew you were still in there," Eddie said.  "I saw you peeking out
from under your eyelids.  I just wanted to practice burying a person,
in case I ever have to.  Did you know you're bleeding through your
shirt?"

"Just a scratch," I said.  I had always wanted to say that.

"Good," Eddie said.  "But next time you get up near the toP of that
slab of rock, grab hold of a branch or something.  Otherwise, you'll
just slide off again.  C'mon, I'll give you a boost to get you
started."

I stared hard at Eddie.  "Forget it," I said.  "I'm not climbing back
up there."

"But we're SO near the top!"  Eddie cried.  "You can't quit now.  Look,
you can even see the peak."

Against my better judgment, I looked at the peak, that ragged, twisted
point of granite gleaming against the dark blue of the April sky, so
beautiful and majestic that the mere sight of it could make a person
dizzy with awe.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do, and I did it.

"Cripes!"  Eddie wailed.  "Not on my shoes," I wiped my mouth on my
torn, bloody sleeve.  "Sorry about your shoes, Eddie, but I'm going
back down the mountain.  You can climb to the top by yourself if you
want."

"I will, too!"  Eddie said.

I limped back the way we had come.  Then I heard Eddie running after
me.

"But I'll climb it some other time," he said.  "Now I'd better help
you."

"To do what?"  I asked.

"To pick buttercups," Eddie said.  "When your mom sees those clothes,
you're going to need a whole lot more buttercups than you've got."

Not Long for This Whirl At the beginning of every spring in our part of
the country, water invaded the world and ruled over it with a cold and
merciless hand.  It drizzled out of the murky sky, oozed up from the
saturated ground, and roared in torrents from the melting snow in the
mountains, filling the creek and river channels to overflowing, washing
out bridges, pump houses, and any other structure within its grasp. 
Water that could find nothing more enterprising to do with itself
turned the dirt roads of the country into sloughs of mud the color and
consistency of butterscotch pudding.

It was not a fun time for a teenage outdoorsman.  More or less trapped
in the close confines of our farmhouse with my mother, grandmother, and
sister (the Troll), I grew increasingly frustrated and irritable that
my weekend had been washed out by the water.  Seeing her chance, my
grandmother rushed to aggravate my sorry state of mind.

"Your grandpap wouldn't let a little water keep him all wrapped up in
the house like a festering sore, I can tell you that!"  Gram said
smugly, barely containing her glee.  "He'd be out there right now,
cutting down trees and skidding 'em to the mill.  I can't even get you
to go cut a pile of kindlin' wood.  Nope, your grandpa shore wouldn't
let a little water keep him in the house."

"Yeah, I can see why," I said meanly, trying to cut right to the
quick.

But Gram had tough, quick, thick skin, and a stirring spoon with which
she bonked me on top of the head.

"You're practically as worthless as that old reprobate Rancid
Crabtree," she probed.  "I ain't seen hide nor hair of him since the
melt came, which is one good thing.  You and him are both pantywaists,
lettin' a little dampness make you hole up by the fire like a couple of
sick pups."

"Arrrrh!"  I yelled, bringing a burst of delight to Gram's face.  "I am
not a pantywaist, whatever that is.  And besides, Rance is sick.  He
says he's dying."

Gram activated her scoff to full power.  "You believe that?  Well, let
me tell you, Crabtree is too mean and ornery and dirty and smelly to
die.  And he's so lazy, nobody could tell if he did.  What ails him is
probably somebody offered him a job and scared the old windbag so bad
he took to his bed."

I yawned to show her how bored I was with the debate, but I hoped Gram
was right.  My heart had welled with grief ever since the old woodsman
told me, "Ah ain't long fer this whirl."  I assumed he meant "world,"
but on the other hand he loved a good whirl as much as any man I've
ever known, so I couldn't be sure.  Rancid had taught me everything I
knew about woodcraft, hunting and fishing and trapping and numerous
other manly arts.  Now my mentor in all things I valued most seemed to
be dying.  I had hesitated for several days even to visit him, for fear
I might find him dead.  Gram's subtle attempt to cheer me up had helped
a little.  I began to accumulate enough gumption--one of Gram's
favorite words--to make a watery trek to the Crabtree shack, just to
see if Rancid still lingered among the living.

"Why don't you heat up some of that chicken noodle soup we had for
supper?"  I said to Gram.  "Maybe I'll take some over to Rancid.  It
can't make him any sicker than he already is."

"You think I'm going to waste good soup on old Crabtree, you must be
tetched in the head!"

Rancid was not one of Gram's favorite Homo sapiens, or even, for that
matter, vertebrates.  She stomped off to the kitchen, muttering to
herself.

Turning back to the window, I practiced my melancholy stare, getting it
perfected for the time I became a writer.  All writers have melancholy
stares, because they have seen so much misery.  I couldn't wait to
leave home so that I could start seeing misery.

Through the sheets of rain, I noticed a cloud of smoke moving down the
mud road toward our house.  It was accompanied by a series of
explosions, like a tiny war advancing across the country in search of a
truce.  I recognized the phenomenon immediately--Mrs. Peabody.  Mrs.
Peabody was a mountain car that my friend Retch Sweeney and I had built
ourselves and named after our favorite high school teacher.

Retch sloshed up the walk to our door.  "You ain't gonna believe this,"
he said.  "But I got Mrs.  Peabody with me."  "I know that," I said.

"I'm not blind and deaf, you know.

"I mean the first Mrs.  Peabody, our teacher!"

I wouldn't have believed it, either, except for the beaming of Retch's
big ugly face with the rain dribbling off the wispy chin-whiskers.  As
Retch hurriedly explained, Mrs. Peabody had telephoned the Sweeney
house and asked Retch if he could drive her out to a friend's house in
the country, where she had been invited for the weekend.  With the
roads so bad, she said, she thought it would be safer if she had a man
drive her.  I guessed that she hadn't been able to find a man, so she
called Retch.  Although Retch probably could have borrowed the family
sedan for such an important mission, he thought this would be a good
opportunity to show off the mountain car to Mrs.  Peabody.

"Want to go along?"  Retch asked me.  "Mrs. Peabody's friend lives up
past the Market Road junction.  Shouldn't take more than an hour both
ways."

"Hey, Gram," I yelled.  "I'm going out with Retch.  I'll have him drop
me off at Rancid's to see how he's doing.  You don't mind, do you,
Retch?"

"Naw.  That road up to Crabtree's will really show Mrs. Peabody what
the mountain car can do."

"Well, you just hold your horses," Gram yelled, "tin I get this hot
soup poured in a jug."

Gram poured the soup in a little crockery whiskey jug we kept in the
kitchen for decoration.  I thought Rancid would probably appreciate the
appropriateness of the container, since he had several just like it
that he didn't use for decoration.

Mrs. Peabody sat hunched over in her namesake, a bit of wet hair
plastered to her forehead.  "How do you like our mountain car, Mrs.
Peabody?"

I asked, climbing in beside her.

"Oh, it's fine, fine," she said.  "Quite lovely."

"I thought you'd like it," I said.  "Retch and I built it ourselves."

"Really?  I never would have guessed."

"Yep, what we did was, we left off everything that wasn't essential,
like fenders and the exhaust pipe and muffler."

"And seats," she said, smiling tightly.

"Yeah, well, actually we couldn't find any seats.  I hope that apple
box isn't uncomfortable."

"Good heavens, no!  Shall we go now, boys?  The fumes in here are
beginning to corrode my nasal passages."

"Wasn't me," Retch blurted.

"The exhaust fumes," I said.  "That's one of the reasons we didn't put
any windows on the car.  The fumes dissipate to the outside.  How'd you
like the way I tossed in that vocabulary word, Mrs.
Peabody--'dissipate'?"

"Very nice," she said, wiping a drop of water from the tip of her
nose.

"Very nice."

"Did you know we named the car after you?"

"Yes, I know," she said.  "It's a rare honor."

I noticed a distinct lack of enthusiasm on the part of Mrs. Peabody
when I asked Retch to swing by Rancid's shack so I could drop off the
jug of soup.

Her lack of enthusiasm became even more pronounced as we started
slipping and sliding down the mud road that led to the Sand Creek
bridge.

"Stop!  Stop!"  she shrieked.  "There's no bridge!  No ... bridge!"

Later, Retch and I vaguely recalled that Mrs. Peabody had inserted
into her shriek a bad word, but decided that couldn't possibly have
been the case, she being a teacher.

Retch and I laughed.  "Sure, there's a bridge," Retch said.  "You just
can't see it because it's about a foot under water.  Now I got to stop
talking, so I can concentrate on exactly where the bridge is supposed
to be, 'cause I sure wouldn't want to miss it.  Har dee liar!"

The mountain car crept slowly across the flooded bridge, the current
trying to get a hold on the vehicle and hurl it and us into the
maelstrom.

Mrs. Peabody snatched a cigarette out of her purse and lit it with a
trembling hand.

"I didn't know you smoked," I said, smoking not being common among the
ladies I knew at that time.

"Only on occasion," she said.  "This happens to be one of the
occasions."

Having safely traversed the bridge, we ran out of luck on the steep
slope of mud leading up the hill to Rancid's shack.  Its tires spinning
wildly, the mountain car suddenly lurched sideways into a ditch of
rushing water, where it stuck fast.

Mrs. Peabody heaved a sigh that could have knocked a bird off a fence
post, if the bird had been stupid enough to be out in the driving
rain.

"What'll we do now?"  she asked, her voice quavering only slightly.

"No problem, " I said.  "I'll go get my friend Rancid Crabtree and have
him tow us out with his truck.  I just hope he's not dead yet, because
then we'll be in a real fix."

"Dead?"  Mrs. Peabody said, digging frantically in her purse for
another cigarette.  "What do you mean, dead?"

I didn't waste any time explaining, because the car seemed to be
sinking deeper into the ditch by the second.

Splattered with mud halfway to my neck, I bounded through Rancid's
door.

"Knock!  Knock!"  he croaked, his hand reaching for a shotgun beside
his bed.  "How many times Ah got to tell you?"

He didn't look well, wrapped up with a blanket all the way to his
stubbly chin.  His energy seemed drained out of him by the long winter,
the watery spring, and, of course, his fatal illness.

"Good," I said.  "You're not dead yet."

"Not yet," he growled feebly.  "Ahim getting' thar, though.

I held up the whiskey jug of chicken noodle soup.  "Look here!  I
brought you a little something."

Rancid's face broke into his big, snaggletoothed grin.  "My, my!  Ah
knew thar was some reason Ah let you hang out with me all these
y'ars.

Mighty thoughtful of you.  Now hand me thet jug.  Iffen Ah got to die,
Ah might jist as well die happy."

"Don't you want a bowl and spoon?"  I asked.  "It's chick ..."

Rancid tilted the jug back and took a big swig.  His eyes popped wide
in horror.  A huge shudder convulsed his body, and he spat the chicken
noodle soup from one side of the shack to the other.  "Gol-dang
a-mighty!"  he cried.

"It's spiled!  It's got dead worms in it!"

"No, it's not spoiled," I said.  "It's not whiskey, for gosh sakes.

It's chicken noodle soup.  Gram sent it."

"Ah shoulda known!"  he said.  "Why, thet ornery old she-critter.  I
wasn't dyin' fast enough to suit her, so she put thet soup in a whiskey
jug to disappoint me to death."

I quickly explained about the stuck mountain car to Rancid and
suggested that he tow us out with his truck.  "I hate to bother you
while you're dying, but we've got to get the car out."

"Cain't," Rancid said, taking a tentative sip of the soup.  "Ahim too
sick.  jist leave her be till the ground dries out.  Thet's what Ah'd
do."

"I know.  But we got our teacher, Mrs. Peabody, in the car," I
pleaded.

"She can't wade through mud all the way back to our house."

A thoughtful expression came over Rancid's face.  "This Mrs. Peabody,
what's she look like?"  Even fatally ill, Rancid still had a strong
interest in good-looking women, a promising sign.

"She's beautiful," I said, without lying much.

"Whar's Mr.  Peabody?"

"I don't think there is one.  I never ever heard him mentioned."

"Hmmmmmm," Rancid said.  "Mebbe Ah could tow you out.  This hyar soup
seems to be bringin' some of maw strength back."

He whipped off the blankets and climbed out of bed, fully clothed right
down to his boots.

"You don't take your clothes off when you go to bed sick?"  I asked.

"What fer?"  he said.  "If Ah got well, Ah'd jist have to put 'em back
on again."

It made sense to me.

After much fussing around, finding chains and ropes and Rancid's
cranking his old truck to life, we arrived back at the scene of the
accident.  He parked the truck at the top of the hill, since he didn't
want to get it stuck, too.  If he didn't die right away, he said, he
might need the truck again before the mud dried out.  Rancid slogged
down the hill and peered in at the huddled forms of Retch and Mrs.
Peabody--particularly Mrs. Peabody, I was sure, because he had told me
many times he had seen all he ever wanted to see of Retch.

Howdy, ma'am," he said.  "What seems to be the trouble here?"

It was a dumb thing to say, since any fool could see what the trouble
was.  I knew Rancid was just making conversation, even if Mrs. Peabody
didn't.

From the look on her face, I suspected she doubted the solution to the
problem had just arrived.

"We're stuck," Mrs.  Peabody said.

"Yep, and pretty good, Ah'd say.  Ah'll tell you what we's got to do
hyar.  You and the animal has got to git out of the car, 'cause maw
truck won't pull it out with you in it."

I poked Rancid in the back.  "You don't expect Mrs. Peabody to wade in
mud all the way up to her knees, do you?"

"Nope.  Ah'll carry her up the hill and put her in maw truck."

"Uh, you think that's wise, you dying and all?"

"Sheddep and mind your own bidness."

At that moment, I realized that Rancid possessed the soul of a
romantic, and that right here, on a mud-choked, rain-splattered
mountain road in a remote corner of Idaho, chivalry was about to be
resuscitated by a grizzled old woodsman.  I was embarrassed.

As soon as the plan was explained to Mrs. Peabody, Rancid scooped her
up in his arms and, ignoring her embarrassed protests, began tromping
heavily up the slope to his truck.  I soon ascertained that Mrs.
Peabody was a bit plumper, the distance to the truck greater, and the
mud deeper than the old woodsman had judged.

To conceal the strain on him, Rancid began to hum: "Hmmmm mmmmm
mmmmm."

Presently, however, the hum turned into more of a rhythmic and
sustained grunt: "Mmmmm mm mmunh uuunh UNNNNNGH UNNGH UNGH!"  And
slowly his shoulders began to cave in and his back to bend, with Mrs.
Peabody swaying precariously above and ever closer to the mud that
sought to claim her.

"You're dropping meeee!"  Mrs.  Peabody wailed.

With a herculean effort and a hideous groan, Rancid wrenched the lady
back up and plodded on, his boots making great long sucking sounds with
every slow step he took in the mud.  My teacher looked as if she was on
the verge of hysteria, and I began to wonder how this might affect my
grade in sophomore English.  I also wondered if what I was witnessing
might qualify as a misery, just in case I ever wanted to write about
it.

At last Rancid reached the truck, and plopped Mrs. Peabody on the
seat.

He collapsed on the running board, alternating between wheezing and
sucking in great gasps of air.

"Well, thank goodness," Mrs. Peabody said."  I certainly never thought
we would make it.  I did get some mud splattered on my coat, but it
will probably brush right off when it dries.  Now maybe you should
hurry and get the car out of the ditch, Mr.  Crabapple."

"Wheeeeze GASP Wheeeeze GASP," Rancid replied.

Presently, he pushed himself up and started dragging the heavy logging
chain back down the hill to the mountain car.  After a good deal of
work, we finally got the chain hooked up and the car pulled out of the
ditch, turned around, and headed back in the direction of the invisible
bridge.

Rancid and I unhooked the tow chain and tossed it in back of the
truck.

"Well, all that's left to do now is carry Mrs. Peabody back down to
the car," I said.  "Maybe you should just let her walk, you dying and
all.  I think my grade in English is already shot anyway, so it
wouldn't hurt much."

Nope, " Rancid said.  "Ah wouldn't feel right, lettin' her walk through
this slop.  What a man's gotta do, a man's gotta do, even if he is dyin
."

"I'm ready for another ride," Mrs. Peabody called.  "But please do try
to be more careful this time."

"Yes, ma'am," Rancid said.  Suddenly he turned and staggered backwards
up to the door of the truck, where Mrs. Peabody stood on the running
board.  He bent over and put his hands on his knees.  He seemed to be
suffering some kind of attack.  The exertions of carrying Mrs. Peabody
and towing the car out of the ditch had taken their toll on him, and
now seemed to be hastening his departure from this whirl even sooner
than he'd expected.  I was almost paralyzed with shock and grief.

"Good heavens!"  cried Mrs. Peabody.  "Are you all right, Mr.
Crabapple?"

"Ah ain't exactly feelin' chipper, if thet's what you mean," Rancid
said.

"So Ah'd 'preciate it if you'd climb aboard before Ah sink any deeper
in the mud."

It was astonishing.  In one afternoon I had seen chivalry suddenly
reborn and just as suddenly snuffed out again.

And chivalry was not the only thing snuffed out.  Watching Rancid carry
my English teacher piggyback down the hill to the mountain car, where
the genetic accident known as Retch Sweeney howled in delight, I knew
for certain that my slight hope of ever passing sophomore English had
also just expired.

Tagging along behind Rancid and his human backpack, I could not help
but feel sorry for Mrs. Peabody.  All she had wanted was to be driven
out to her friend's home in the country, where the two dignified ladies
would spend the day sipping tea and discussing great literature.  Now
here she was, suffering the humiliation of being carried piggyback
through the mud and rain by a smelly old mountain man.

Rancid turned and backed up so that Mrs. Peabody could dismount into
the open doorway of the car.  I braced myself for the lash of sarcasm
for which Mrs.  Peabody was famous.

But to my astonishment, she was laughing.  She held out her hand to the
dumbfounded mountain man.  "Rancid, you dear man," she said.  "That was
wonderful!  I haven't ridden piggyback since I was a little girl!  How
can I thank you for all you've done?"

Rancid made some strange sound as he tried to untie his tongue.

"Oh, I'll tell you what," Mrs. Peabody went on.  "I'll have you over
to my house for tea.  I'll bet you're a wonderful conversationalist."

"Yup," Rancid said.

Retch cranked up the mountain car's engine.  Mrs. Peabody, coughing
only slightly, stuck her head out of a cloud of exhaust smoke.

"Remember the tea, Rancid.  I'll give you a call."

The rain had stopped.  Rancid and I waved at the departing mountain
car, he thinking he was waving good-bye to a new lady friend and I
knowing I was waving good-bye to a passing grade in sophomore
English.

All at once, the sun broke through and set all the water and even the
mud to gleaming as far as the eye could see.  The new buds in the birch
trees sparkled like emeralds, the mountains emerged from mists, and
somewhere off in a meadow, a lark warbled.

"Shucks, Ah feels pretty good," Rancid said, grinning his
snaggletoothed grin.  "Ah reckon Ah won't die after all."  His grin
vanished.  "Dang it!

That Miz Peabody didn't ask for maw number!"

"Even if she had asked for your number, Rancid, it wouldn't do any
good.

You don't have a phone."

"Ah knows that, but she don't.  Probably when she tries to call me and
Ah don't answer, she'll write me a letter."

His grin revived.

"Yeah," I said.  "She'll probably write you a letter."

I chose not to remind Rancid that he didn't have an address, either.

Claw of the Sea-Puss One day some years ago, I awoke to find myself
washed up on a beach in Hawaii.  I made a mental note never again to
partake of happy hour at a waterfront bar in Seattle.

Then it all came back to me.  In atonement for some minor indiscretion,
I had agreed to accompany my wife thousands of miles over the Pacific
Ocean for the purpose of lying on sand, which is a popular pastime in
Hawaii.

Considerate husband that I am, I tried to conceal from Bun that I rank
lying on sand well up on the list of the World's Ten Greatest
Tediums.

"Boy, this sure is fun," I said.  "Feel that sand, Bun?  It's made out
of pulverized diamonds.  That's why the hotels have to charge the rates
they do.

Maybe later we can tour the diamond-pulverizing plant, what say?  Wow,
have you tried pouring the sand through the cracks between your toes?

Fantastic!

When I tell the boys back at Kelly's Bar & Grill about this, they'll be
amazed.  'Tell us again, Pat, about pouring the sand between your
toes,' they'll beg, but I won't tell them right away.  I'll just
tantalize them with ..."

Bun propped herself up on an elbow and shot me a glance that missed by
a hair and knocked an innocent seagull head-over-tailfeathers into the
surf.

"I've got an idea," she said.  "There was a dark little alley we passed
yesterday.  I saw a sign down there for a deep-sea charter office.  I
don't know why I didn't mention it then.  Anyway, why don't you go see
if you can charter a fishing trip for yourself.

"What!"  I said.  "And give up lying on sand with you?  A man would
have to be an inconsiderate lout to do some thing like that!"

The sand was still spraying out of my thongs as I scurried down the
alley in search of the charter office.  A crudely lettered sign
identified the establishment as Scroom & Scram Deep Sea Fishing
Charters.

A sporty-looking chap extended his hand.  "Welcome to Scroom & Scram!

What can I help you with, pal?"

"Marlin," I said, shaking the hand.

"Biff.  Good to meet you, Marlin."

"My name's not Marlin."

"I understand.  My name's not Biff, either."

"What I mean is, I want to fish for marlin."

"Hey, no problem, pal.  I can fix you right up."

The one-day charter cost me scarcely more than a two-week cruise on the
Love Boat, but Biff said he was able to give me a discount because I
would be sharing the boat with three strangers, provided they all made
bail, ha ha.

"Have a good time, Marlin."

Early the next morning I drove my rental car down to the lagoon where
the fishing fleet moored, and began looking for the Sea-Puss, the boat
I had chartered.  It occurred to me that the owner of the boat must be
of literary bent, for I recalled that the author James Thurber had
somewhere written about a Sea-Puss.  I think the line went, "The claw
of the Sea Puss will get us all in the end."  Although I hadn't known
him personally, Thurber did not seem the fishing tYPe, and I doubted
that he had ever chartered the actual Sea-Puss.

Still, one never knows.  In any case, I was to recall the Thurber quote
several times during the day.

At last I spotted the Sea-Puss, and was relieved to see that it was a
large and nifty craft.  There had been something about Biff that gave
me the uneasy feeling my charter boat might turn out to be a nautical
hybrid achieved by crossing the communal bathtub of a skid-row hotel
with a sieve.  This excursion might turn out all right after all, I
thought.  Since the captain and crew had not yet arrived, I sat down on
the dock to wait.  "No doubt," I muttered to myself, "the catch here is
that my three charter partners will turn out to be mobsters, homicidal
maniacs, or life insurance salesmen."

Presently, a taxi pulled up and three mild-looking individuals got
out.

They appeared legitimate and sane enough, and none carried a
briefcase.

They Came over, shook hands, and introduced themselves as Ron, Bill,
and Ed, a dentist, a college professor, and a minister.  Much to my
surprise, they were not old friends but had met only the day before on
the Sea-Puss.

I said, "YOu fellows must have had a pretty good time yesterday, since
you're going out on the Sea-Puss again today."

They smiled inscrutably, although none appeared to be an Oriental.

When a non-Oriental fisherman smiles inscrutably, it means only one
thing--he knows where to catch fish and he's not telling anyone."

Hoo-boy, " I said to myself.  Today's my lucky day."

Soon afterwards the captain showed up, followed by a clothed primate of
indeterminate species.  The captain had a narrow, pinched face, with
mean little eyes.  The primate was the crew.  Its name was Igor.  The
captain's name was Bly.

"So, back for some more," Bly greeted my three companions, who nodded
meekly.  The captain laughed evilly.  Igor made guttural sounds of
amusement.

"You!"  Bly yelled, pointing at me.

"Wha-what?"

"Clean off those shoes.  You think I want you tramping dirt all over my
deck?"

"Uh, no, sir.  I mean, yes, I'll clean them."

"One more thing.  I hope you're not one of those posies who get
seasick, although you certainly look the type.  If you are, don't use
the head."

"Don't use the head?"

"No--over the side.  And another thing.  NO BANANAS!"

"No b-bananas?"

"Right.  Bringing bananas aboard a fishing boat is bad luck.  Boats
have been known to go for years without catching a fish after someone
ate a banana on board.  I catch you eating a banana on board, I'll
keelhaul you!  Now clean those shoes and go aboard."

Igor made threatening noises as I wiped off the soles of my sneakers
with my handkerchief.  Bly then ordered us aboard.  My fellow charter
partners scurried up the ladder to the deck ahead of me.  I could tell
from their frightened demeanor that they were intimidated by the
captain and Igor.  They were also insane.  Otherwise, why return to a
boat like this?

I had previously encountered rude charter captains, but only rarely.

This fellow and his crew took the prize as the worst I'd ever run afoul
of--real nasties, if you get my drift.  How, I wondered, could a boat
like this stay in business, given its customer relations?  Then I
caught a whiff of a familiar odor.  It was the sweetish smell of a tax
shelter.  Bly's only interest in clients was to snooker enough of them
aboard to qualify the boat as a business and thus make it
tax-deductible!  The captain may have been rude and surly, but he
wasn't dumb.

Still, why had my companions returned for a second outing?  Perhaps the
boat really did catch fish.

"How'd you do yesterday?"  I asked Bill.

He glanced around to see if Bly or Igor might overhear him.

"Terrible," he whispered.  "Didn't get a single strike.  Captain spent
half the day letting the boat drift to save fuel.  It was horrible,
worst day of fishing I've ever had."

Oh."

Before putting out to sea, the captain lined us all up and gave us
orders.  "Don't touch any of the tackle!  Don't ask a lot of fool
questions!

Don't get in the way of the crew, because Igor will run you over and
squish you on the deck!  Anyone thus squished on the deck must clean it
immediately.

Don't ..."

I wondered vaguely where I might find a secondhand mast from which to
hang the sporty Biff of Scroom & Scram Deep Sea Charters.  I even
thought about the size of the splash the scrawny captain would make if
someone inadvertently threw him overboard.  The sight of the hulking
Igor quickly erased the thought from my mind.

The four of us charter clients cowered in the cabin as the boat put out
to sea.  I did not much care to be in such close quarters with three
lunatics, even though they were nice enough.  Besides lunacy, they all
seemed to have in common a peculiar meekness.

After four hours of alternately trolling and drifting, we were
overtaken by a dense cloud, which I thought at first was fog but which
turned out to be boredom.  The boredom sat on me like a foggy
elephant.

Two things I can't stand are work and boredom.  I drifted off into
merciful sleep.

Suddenly--POW!--one of the lines snapped from its outrigger.  The reel
screamed.  Bly had assigned each of us a fifteen-minute section of the
hour in which a fish hooked on any line would be that of the person
assigned that time slot.  The marlin had chosen my time slot in which
to strike.

I ran toward the fighting chair, only to be squished by Igor, who was
rushing to tangle the lines.  I immediately leaped up, wiped all signs
of the squishing from the deck, bounded into the fighting chair,
strapped on the fighting harness, and waited for Igor to hand me the
rod with my marlin on it.

And waited.  And waited.  The primate was still busy tangling the
lines.

"Lines tangled," Igor informed the captain, who quickly came down from
the bridge to help tangle the lines even more.

"Oh-oh, he got off," the captain said, shrugging.

"No, he's still on," Igor said, giving Bly a wink.

"Oh yeah, right, I see that now, " the captain replied.  "Why did I
ever think he got off while the lines were tangled?  " Bly thrust the
rod at me.  "Reel fast!  Reel fast!  Take up the slack!"

I cranked the reel furiously.  But the whole line was slack.

"You lost him!"  the captain shouted.  "You lost him!  Didn't I tell
you to reel fast?"

I climbed out of the fighting chair.  As I slunk back into the cabin to
join my companions, I noticed a change in them.  Tension crackled in
the air.

"Ask him if he's going to throw in with us," Ed whispered, indicating
me.

"After all, they did lose his marlin.  That should be reason enough."

"We're going to scuttle Bly, Igor, and the whole damn boat," Ron
whispered to me.  "We've had enough of these louts.  This is our
revenge for the way we were treated yesterday.  We sat up all night in
a bar making plans.

Are you with us?"

"YOu guys really are crazy!"  I hissed."  Igor will kill you!  Even if
he doesn't, this is mutiny on the high seas--a hanging offense!"

"They'll never catch us," Bill whispered.  "Are you in?"

I thought of the only marlin I had ever had a chance for in my entire
life.  Igor and the captain had lost it and then blamed me.  I watched
Ron open a satchel and begin taking out the blunt instruments.  I
didn't know if I was up to this kind of violence.

"You want one?"  Ron asked.

"Yeah," I said.  "Give me that eight-incher."

"Know how to use it?"  Bill asked.

"Sure."  I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants.

"Okay, let's do it!"  Bill cried.  "Now!"

Savagely, we ate the bananas.  Bly and Igor never knew what hit them.

A Really Nice Blizzard Henry P. Grogan, proprietor of Grogan's War
Surplus, glanced up from his cash register as Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I
bolted through the front door of his establishment.

"Quick, Mr. Grogan," Crazy Eddie shouted, "we need to buy a
parachute!"

"A parachute?  What you boys need a parachute for?  And why ain't you
in school?  You fellas playin' hooky?"

"No, we're not playing hooky," I said.  "They let us out early when the
blizzard got too dangerous for us kids to stay at school.  We've got to
hurry because the school bus leaves to take us home in fifteen
minutes."

"I don't know about sellin' a parachute to two fool kids," Grogan
said.

"You probably got some notion about jumpin' off a barn roof with it,
ain'tcha?

Gitcher selves killed or worse doin' something like that.  No, I
wouldn't feel right about it."

"We got over seven dollars between us," Crazy Eddie said, looking the
proprietor right in the eye.

"But I've been wrong before," Grogan said.  "Lemme see your money."

That was one of the things I liked about Crazy Eddie and Mr.  Grogan.

They both knew how to do a deal.

As Eddie and I hurried toward the door with our parachute, Grogan
called after us.  "Just out of idle curiosity, boys, what are you gonna
do with that parachute?  " "Oh," I said, "because we got out of school
on account of the blizzard, Eddie and I thought we could rig a sail
with the parachute on a sled and sail across a field.  This is the only
good blizzard we might get this year, and we don't want to waste it."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Grogan said."  I always did like a good
blizzard myself."  When we got home and tried to hook up the sail to my
sled, we discovered that rigging a mast with an old two-by-four and a
broom handle wasn't easy.

We struggled with the contraption until we were both half frozen.

Finally I said, "We'd better go get Rancid to help us.  He'll know how
to hook up a sail.  Rancid knows just about everything."  Crazy Eddie
and I tramped through the blizzard to Rancid's shack and, covered with
a snow veneer, burst in without bothering to knock.  The old woodsman
was standing by his barrel stove, stirring something in a frying pan
with a hunting knife.  He leaped back with the knife raised in a
stabbing position, and yelled, "Aiiigh!  Aiiigh!"  (Later he told us
that yelling "Aiiigh!  Aiiigh!"  in a shrill voice is a good way to
confuse evil forest spirits until you can think of a good way to deal
with them.) "Gol-dang an' tarnation, ain't you fellas ever heard about
knockin'?

Why, in another second Ah mighta had both of you chopped up into
itty-bitty pieces!  Ah got lightnin' relaxes."

Eddie and I shook off our coating of snow onto Rancid's floor and
rushed over to warm our hands by his stove.

"Why cain't the two of you shake off thet snow out doors?  Now it'll
just melt and turn to mud.  Ah'll be slippin and slidin' on it all
day.

You raised in a barn?"

"Sorry," I said.  "We were just about frozen.  Anyway, what we want is
to have you help us build something we can use to sail on the snow.

We've got a parachute for the sail.  It'll work great in this
blizzard."

"Hmmmm," Rancid said.  "Let me thank about it a spell.  You boys want
something' to eat?  Ah got plenty to go around."

"I don't think ..."

I said.

"Sure," Crazy Eddie said.  "I'm starved."  He had never yet had the
experience of eating with Rancid.

Rancid blew the dust off a couple of tin plates he kept for guests and
scraped out a glob for each of us from the skillet.  He ate his share
out of the skillet with the hunting knife.

"This is pretty good, Mr.  Crabtree," Eddie said.  "What is it?"

"As best Ah can recall, it's some chopped up b'ar meat, boiled taters,
beans, a chunk of hog fat, and, uh, let's see, oh, some dried wild
mushrooms and a couple of squirrels.  Why, you thank your momma might
want the recipe?"

"She might," Eddie said.  "She wouldn't use the wild mushrooms, though,
because she can't tell the difference between the good ones and the
poison ones."  He chuckled, presumably at his mother's ignorance of
wild mushrooms.

Rancid joined him in the chuckle.  "Thet's okay, Ah cain't tell them
apart neither."

"You can't?"  Eddie croaked, staring down at the few little bites left
on his plate.

"Nope, Ah cain't.  But don't you worry none.  Ah always tests wild
mushrooms out on maw dog, Sport.  If he likes 'em and don't drop daid,
Ah eats 'em mawsef.  Fed him a batch of these mushrooms a couple hours
ago.  Here, Sport, come show Eddie here you ain't daid.  Sport!  Here,
Sport!  SPOrt!

Where is thet dang dog?  He always comes when Ah calls him."

Eddie rose slowly from his chair, wild-eyed and suddenly pale.  I
stared uneasily at him as he selected a finger to put down his
throat.

"Don't do it, Eddie," I said.  "I'm still eating.  Besides, Rancid
doesn't have a dog."

After we'd all had a good laugh over the mushrooms and Rancid's
mythical dog, Eddie and I presented our idea about the sailing
parachute to the old woodsman.

"If thar's one thang Ah knows about, it's parachutes," he said
authoritatively.  "Ah done a lot of parachutin' in the Great War.

General used to have me dropped behind enemy lines to do spyin' work.

Ah ever tell you about the time ..."

"Yeah," I said.  "But what about using the parachute as a sail in the
blizzard?"

"A sled won't work," Rancid said.  "The sled will cut through the snow
crust and you'll be stuck tighter'n a fly on a stirrin' spoon.  You
needs something' flat on the bottom, something' like a big pan."

"Shoot!"  Eddie said.  "There ain't no pan that big.  Right now we've
got this great blizzard and no way to use it!"

"Hold on a sec," Rancid said, putting on his thoughtful expression.

"Hot dang, Ah thank Ah got just the thang!  " He stomped outside and
soon returned with a large, curved metal object.

He banged the snow off it onto the floor, in his enthusiasm apparently
having forgotten about turning the floor to mud.

"What is it?"  I asked.

"A fender off an old wrecked truck.  Been keepin' it out in the yard.

Figured some use would turn up fer it, and one has."

Eddie and I shouted with joy and relief.  We would be able to put the
blizzard to good use after all.

Rancid was a person who could never take a good idea and leave it
alone.

He had to improve on it.  Eddie's plan had been for us to sail across
the open fields on the icy crust burnished to a high polish by the wind
and driven snow.  Rancid, however, said the best idea would be to hike
over to the Old Market Road.  "It's just one long strip of shiny ice,"
he said.  "It's so slick thar won't be nobody drivin' on it, thet's fer
shore.  We can have it all to ourselves."

"But what about a mast?"

Eddie said.

"Won't need a mast," Rancid said.  "Ah'll show you how it's done."

We cut through the woods to the Old Market Road, and sure enough, there
was not a vehicle on it as far as we could see through the driven
snow.

Off in the distance, an undisturbed snowdrift slanted across the
road.

We had to lean into the wind in order to stand, and even then our feet
skittered along on the snow-polished ice.  It was slick.

Rancid threw the fender down with a metallic ker-whump.  "Which one of
you boys wants to go Just?"

"Let me try it," Crazy Eddie said.

Getting no argument from me, he climbed into the cavity of the
upside-down fender and lay down on his belly.

"Thet ain't no way to do it," Rancid said.  "Git up out of thar and let
me show you how."  Rancid got in the fender, sitting upright.  "Now
hand me the parachute harness."  For an old experienced parachuter, he
didn't seem to know much about putting on the harness, but I suppose so
much time had passed since the Great War that he had forgotten.

Finally, he simply tied various straps of the harness around his waist
and let it go at that.  Then he grabbed a cluster of shroud lines in
each hand like so many reins.

"Now here's the idear," he said.  "Eddie, you take the bundle of
parachute out in front.  When Ah gives the signal, you throw the chute
open so the wind can catch it.  Pat, you push on the back of the fender
to get me going' so's the chute can pull me along.  Ah'll show you how
it's done.  Then you fellas can give it a try."

Crazy Eddie and I, slipping and sliding on the icy roadway and fighting
against the fierce wind, took up our assigned positions.

"Okay, ready?"

"Yeah!"  Eddie and I yelled against the pounding wind.

"On the count of three!"  Rancid yelled.  "One!  Two!

ThreeEEEEEEEEEEEEE ...!"

Eddie and I skated along the road, driven by the wind at our backs.

There was no sign of Rancid, except an occasional blasted-out snowdrift
marked by a spray of tobacco juice and claw marks that looked as if
they might have been made by human hands.

After a while we stopped at a farmhouse and knocked.

A skinny old man in bib overalls and a flannel shirt opened the door
and stared down at us.

"What in tarnation you boys doin' out in a storm like this?  You look
half froze.  Come in by the fire and thaw out."

"Thanks," I said.  "But we were lookin' for our friend, Rancid
Crabtree.

He went by here on the road about half an hour ago."

The farmer scratched his jaw.  "Nope, can't say I seen anybody go by.

You're lookin' for Crabtree, you say.  What was he drivin'?"

"An upside-down truck fender," Crazy Eddie said.

"Yes," I said.  "And he was wearing a parachute and ..."

"Oh, Mavis," the farmer called out to his wife.  "Better put some hot
chocolate on for these boys.  I think the cold's about got 'em.  How do
you fellas feel, anyway?"

"I don't feel so good," Eddie said.  "But I think it may have been some
poison mushrooms I ate for lunch."

"I see," said the farmer.  "Poison mushrooms.  Hurry up with that hot
chocolate, Mavis."

After the hot chocolate, and not knowing anything else to do, Eddie and
I returned to Rancid's shack.  Much to our relief, the old woodsman
came in a short while later, looking like a tattered icicle in more or
less human form.

The cut ends of the parachute harness dangled from his snow-caked
waist.

"You don't look too good, Mr. Crabtree," Crazy Eddie said with rare
understatement.

Rancid sank down on a chair and dug some snow out of his whitened ears
with a blue finger.  "Oh yeah?"  he snarled.  "Wal, you wouldn't
neither if you'd been blowed halfway 'cross the gol-dang county in a
truck fender.  Ah'd still be going' iffen Ah hadn't had the good
fortune to get snared by a barb-wire fence and torn dang near to shreds
and .

. . " As he ranted on, I heard a sad sound from outside.  With one last
thrust at tearing the shakes from the roof, the wind dropped away with
a rattling moan.  The blizzard was dying.  It had been a fine blizzard,
and I was sorry to see it pass away.

Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs Caught up in the media craze of
placing one-hundred-dollar bills end-to-end to see if they reach to the
moon and back, as a way of making the national debt more understandable
and poignant to the taxpayer, I recently laid all my fly-tying books
end-to-end to see how far they reached.  They reached from my writing
desk to the cat box in the utility room.  How far is that?  Not nearly
far enough, believe me.

"Look," I said to my wife, Bun.  "I laid all my fly-tying books
end-to-end to see how far they would reach.  What do you think?"

So who cares what she thinks?  The point I wished to illuminate with
this comparison is simply that an unfathomable copiosity of fly-tying
books exists, and I possess most of the copiosity.  I have been
studying fly-tying books for forty years and have yet to succeed in
tying a single fly that resembles anything more than a hair ball.

The fault lies with the books and not with me, despite my childhood
nickname of "Thumbs."  Here is the problem.  Fly-tying books all
contain a powerful spring in the binding.  Whenever I reach Step 15 in
the tying of a fly, with both hands fully engaged in maintaining a
cat's cradle of thread m the vicinity of a wad of feathers and fur
clinging precariously to a hook, the powerful spring is activated and
snaps shut like a bear trap.  I lean over and open the book with my
ear.  Using my tongue, I flip pages back to the instructions for the
fly.  Holding the book open with my chin, I read Step 15 with my nose
while telescoping my eyes around to watch what my hands are doing.

When the fly is finally finished, I remove it from the vise and place
it in my fly box.  You never can tell when the fish might go for a hair
ball.

The other problem with fly-tying books is that the author has
deliberately designed each fly so that it will contain one material
that the fly-tyer doesn't have on hand.  This requires the tyer to
drive forty miles around town looking for a shop that hasn't sold the
last of the material to some guy who came in fifteen minutes before the
tyer arrived.  Recently I was tying a fly that called for rubber
legs.

I rushed down to the nearest sporting goods store, hoping to get there
before the guy who always arrives fifteen minutes ahead of Me.  The
lady clerk stared at me wearily, as she always does, her fat elbows
propped on the counter.

"You got rubber legs?"  I asked.

"No, just tired," she snarled.  "So whatta ya want?"

"I mean rubber legs for fly-tying.  You know, the little ..."

"Guy come in here just fifteen minutes ago and ..."

"Yeah, I know him," I said.  "Thanks anyway."  Boy, I just hope that
guy is fifteen minutes late someday, and I'll show him a thing or
two.

When I reached Step 18 of my latest fly, I could hardly believe my
nose.

"Next take a pinch of white tail-hairs of calf ... it began.  I
repeated these words aloud, causing our cat to rise screeching like a
banshee from the cat box.  "White tail-hairs!"  I repeated in a more
moderate tone.  "Who's got white tail-hairs of calf?"  just then my
finicky neighbor Alphonse Finley barged into my den and demanded to
borrow his lawn mower.

"Oh, all right," I said irritably.  "Just remember to return it."

"You sound irritable," he said.  "What's the matter?"

"It's just this stupid fly-tying book," I said.  "The instructions for
this fly I'm tying call for white tail-hairs of calf.  Now, where am I
going to find white tail-hairs of calf.

Finley studied the makings of the fly in my vise.  "Odd," he said.

"Why would a No.  16 hair ball need white tail-hairs?  However, I may
be able to help you out.  I was driving in the country a few miles from
here and noticed some calves in a barnyard.  If I recall correctly, and
I do, they had white tail-hairs, or fairly white, calves being what
they are."

"Great," I said.  "Let's drive out right now and you can show me where
they are.  I'll ask the farmer if we can clip a few tail-hairs from his
calves."

"I assure you, my good man, that I have much better things to do than
to assist you in clipping hairs from the tail of a calf."

As I say, Finley is a finicky character.  Even so, I was surprised he
would dress in a pinstriped suit to mow his grass, as I deduced from
the fact that he was thus attired when he came begging to borrow his
lawn mower.  I called this perversion to his attention.

"Dear boy," he said, "I have no intention of mowing my lawn in a suit
and tie or any other way.  I'm going to hire young Raymond down the
block to handle the chore for me.  I'm wearing a suit and tie because
I'm speaking at a luncheon this noon."

"You're going to pay Raymond real money to mow your lawn?  What will
the other bankers think?  They might drum YOU out of the union.

Listen, you go out and show me where the white-tailed calves are, and
I'll mow your lawn for free.  Actually, I'll have Raymond do it, since
I've already advanced him the money for approximately twelve hundred
lawn mowings."

"Really?  And I don't have to do anything else but show you where they
are?  I just wait in the car?"

"Yep."

"Gosh, I don't know.  Every time I get involved in one of your
escapades, I end up in some humiliating predicament."

"What could happen to you, Finley?  All you have to do is wait in the
car."

Twenty minutes later we drove into the farmer's yard.  Sure enough,
Finley had been right.  Half a dozen calves with white tails were
moseying about in the goo of the barnyard.  They were quite a bit
larger than I had expected, more the size of adolescent cows than
calves, but they did have white tails.  How would fish know where the
white hairs came from?  Would they care?  They probably would, at least
if they had ever seen a calf mucking around in a barnyard, PaYing
little or no attention to proper hygiene, but that wasn't my problem.

My problem was how to ask the farmer if I could clip some tail-hairs
off one of his calves.

I decided on a direct approach: "Sir, this may seem like an unusual
request, but I could use a few of your white tail hairs to tie flies
with.

You have plenty of them and I doubt if they're of any use to you.  I'd
even be glad to pay, and I'll clip them myself."

Unfortunately, the farmer failed to respond to my knock on his door,
and I assumed that he must have gone to town to buy feed or barbwire,
or whatever it is farmers do away from the farm.  It seemed unlikely to
me that the farmer would miss a few tail-hairs or that he would care
one way or the other about the loss.  I scribbled out a hasty note
informing the farmer of my intended acquisition and inserted three
one-dollar bills as payment.  Having no idea what tail-hairs go for
these days, I guessed that three dollars would be more than adequate.

Perhaps, I told myself, the note and the money would alert the farmer
to a whole new market, the tail-hair market, which in the long run
might prove more profitable than the calves themselves.  Not a little
Pleased with myself over this contribution to the economics of
agriculture, I headed for the barnyard.

I climbed through the barnyard fence and extracted from a pocket my
folding fly-tying scissors, looking around for a promising candidate.

Much to my somewhat nervous surprise, for I had expected the calves to
be suspicious of strangers, the herd of a half-dozen or so converged
upon me and began nuzzling my clothes with their slimy muzzles.  I
attempted to shove away the friendliest of my assailants, but they were
a stout and aggressive lot.

Apparently disappointed that I didn't conceal a feedbag somewhere on my
person, they began to bump me about in a rather rude fashion.  Trying
my best to ignore their brazenness, I selected one of the nasty beasts
and began to work my way down his back in the direction of his tail,
but the calf, suspecting that I was up to something not in his best
interest, quickly swung his rear end away from me.  He had repeated
this maneuver several times, when I heard a supercilious chuckle from
Finley.  He was standing there, one foot propped on a fence board,
thoroughly enjoying my lack of success.

"C'mon, Finley, be a good sport," I said.  "Give me a hand here."

"You must be mad," Finley replied.  "Do you think I want to get calf
slime or worse all over my new suit?"

At that instant, the other calves lost interest in me and wandered off
to other parts of the barnyard, while the one in my embrace amused
himself by trying to suck the buttons off my shirt.

"It'll only take a second Finley," I said.  "Just come over here and
hold the calf, while I clip off some tail-hairs.  Then I'll drive you
back to town for your luncheon."

"Oh, all right."  Finley tiptoed through the barnyard ooze, complaining
about its effects on his shiny black oxfords.  "What shall I grab on
to, the ears?"  he asked in a whiny tone scarcely conducive to arousing
confidence in his skill as a calf-wrangler.

"No, I'll hold him by the ears until You can get a good grip on his
tail.

Leave the white hairs hanging down, so I can slip back and cut some
off.

A grimace puckered Finley's face as he gingerly took hold of the calf's
tail.

"Got a good grip?"  I asked.  "Okay, I'm letting go of the ears."

"Just hurry, that's all I ...!"

The calf had lunged forward.  Finley's feet spun in the muck.  Flailing
his legs wildly in an attempt to regain his balance, he pulled the tail
straight back from the point where it was hooked onto the calf, thus
saving himself from a disgusting fall.  The calf, deciding it had had
enough of Fenley's uncouth intimacy charged across the barnyard.

Finley sailed after it in the angled posture characteristic of water
skiing, a sport at which luckily he is proficient, for the calf's tail
made an extremely short tow rope.

I rushed after the two of them, hoping to get my white tail-hairs while
Finley still had the calf in hand.  Upon glimpsing me in hot pursuit,
the calf, alas, broke into a frenzied gallop, with the result that
Finley's shoes now sent up two curling and overlapping wakes of
barnyard muck.  The other calves, caught up in the excitement,
stampeded ahead of Finley and his calf, all of them bellowing and
bawling and in general creating an uproar typical of the bovine
species.  I must say the whole hullabaloo was beginning to get on my
nerves, particularly the bellowing, not the least of which came from
Finley.

I wondered briefly if perhaps Finley might be enjoying himself, since
as a child I had often played grab-the-cow-tail in our own barnyard.

As the calf rounded the corner of the barn, however, and as Finley cut
a wide arc and jumped the curl of his own wake in the classic manner of
the expert water skier, I was disabused of the notion that the man was
having fun.  His spectacles were askew on his nose, his eyes protruded
like soft-boiled eggs from egg cups, and his pinstriped suit had
acquired a splattered effect not unlike that of a Jackson Pollock
painting, only in a bland monotone lacking aesthetic appeal.

It was upon rounding the corner of the barn myself that I discovered
that the farmer was home after all.  In a nearby field, two men, one of
them presumably a hired hand, were tinkering with the innards of a
tractor.  They straightened and turned to determine the cause of the
commotion, namely Finley's skiing, rather stylishly I must admit,
behind one of the farmer's calves.  Naturally I can't say for sure, but
judging from the expressions on their faces, I would venture to guess
this was the first time the farmer and his hired hand had witnessed an
event of this sort.

Approaching the far end of the barnyard, the calf gunned itself into a
right-angle turn, at which moment Finley let go of its tail and skied
gracefully into the fence, to which he clung in an attitude that
suggested extreme agitation.  The farmer and his hired hand moved
somewhat cautiously in Finley's direction, each carrying a large
wrench, and neither perhaps entirely dismissing the possibility that,
instead of a mere prankster in a business suit, they might be
confronting a lunatic.

At this point I decided that Finley, after all, was an articulate
person and fully capable of explaining the situation as well as I. Just
in case that wasn't well enough, I returned to the car and revved up
the engine, pausing only briefly to remove from the farmer's door my
note and the three dollars.

As I told Finley when next I saw him, I certainly wasn't going to pay
for white tail-hairs I didn't get.

Nude, with Other Wildlife In my youth, there were two things I wanted
to be when I grew up: either a mountain man or an artist.  Deep down, I
had a strong preference for mountain man, but even at a young age I
realized that course in life was closed to me because of a severe
handicap--acute fear of the dark.  I had given much thought to
inventing a portable night-light suitable for mountain darkness, but
its bulk would have been impractical.  It was too easy to imagine a
band of hostile Indians closing fast on me as I galloped uphill, towing
my night-light.  So I opted for artist.

From age seven to ten, I worked very hard at becoming a wildlife
artist.

My first efforts revealed enormous talent, recognized only by my
mother.  I would show her one of my drawings, and she would say, "Very
nice maybe you'll be an artist when you grow up have you seen my car
keys?"  Without such encouragement, I surely would have given up, if
for no other reason than the ridicule directed at my art by my sister,
the Troll.  Once I had the bad judgment to show her a picture I had
drawn of a mallard duck in flight.  She turned the drawing this way and
that, studying it intently.

"I've got it!"  she exclaimed, as if I had asked her to Solve a
puzzle.

"It's a dead chicken run over by a car and flattened out on the road,
right?"

"Right," I said.

"But why did you put that dog collar around its neck?  Chickens don't
wear collars."

"It's a pet chicken," I said.

"What's the dead chicken got in its mouth?  Looks like a piece of
toast."

She was referring, of course, to the duck's bill.  I was still in my
straight-line phase, and I suppose it was possible for a person
ignorant of art to mistake a duck's bill for a rectangular piece of
toast.  Later I would experiment with curved lines.

Although I worked exclusively on wildlife art, I also wanted to paint
nude women.  I never mentioned this to my mother, and certainly not to
the Troll, since our family was devoutly religious and probably would
have been upset by a ten-year-old boy bringing home nude models to
paint.  With the exception of my dog, Strange, I was the only deviate
in the family.

Ideally, when I was grown up and had my own studio, I would be able to
combine my two great interests--nudes and wildlife--in paintings titled
Nude with Grazing Elk or Nude Hunting Ducks.

Lacking any instruction in art, I had to make my way as best I could
through trial and error.  The problem was, I couldn't tell which was
the trial and which was the error.  Furthermore, I had no idea what a
nude woman looked like, never having seen one.  I asked my friend Crazy
Eddie Muldoon if he had ever seen a nude woman, and he claimed he
had.

Eddie tried to describe her to me while I drew, but just as I was
finishing up the details, my mother walked by and glanced at the
picture.  Both Eddie and I were scared, but she said only, "Oh what a
nice duck maybe you'll be an artist when you grow up have you seen my
car keys?"  It was a close call but also made me suspect that Eddie had
never seen a nude woman either.

The only artist I knew in our area was a logger who whittled
interlocking chain links out of boards.  Whittled chains are nice, but
once you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all.  Besides, I
didn't have the patience to whittle even one link, which is scarcely
enough to impress anyone, let alone an art critic.  Then one day Eddie
and I discovered a real, honest-to-goodness artist, an old man by the
name of Gummy johanson.

Gummy johanson got his nickname not because he lacked teeth--he had a
fine set--but because he constantly chewed gum.  Gummy looked after a
ranch for the banker who owned it but who lived in town.  Crazy Eddie
and I occasionally passed by Gummy's little white house on our way to
fish a stream that wound through a meadow on the ranch.  One day Gummy
was sitting out on his porch, and we exchanged a few pleasantries with
him.  To anyone who didn't know him, Gummy might have appeared a bit
weird and even a little scary.  His eyes bulged, giving him a look of
extreme intensity, and his white-stubbled jaws worked ferociously at
the ever-present wad of gum, which he snapped, crackled, and popped in
a frenzied manner.  Ranch hands Claimed they would rather be beaten
with a stick than have to work beside Gummy and listen to his
gum-chewing.  But Crazy Eddie and I didn't mind it, particularly since
Gummy usually offered us sticks of gum, and we would stand around and
chew ferociously with him.

On this particular day, Gummy said to us, "If you got a minute, boys,
c'mere.  I wanna show you something."  We followed him into the house,
which was usually neat and clean but now was a total mess.  Dirty
clothes and piles of rubbish covered the scant furnishings, the dishpan
and stove were heaped with unwashed dishes, and strewn about the floor
like silvery leaves were hundreds of empty gum wrappers.  A whole case
of chewing gum rested on the kitchen table.  Eddie and I had never seen
so much gum, and we thought that was what Gummy wanted to show us.  But
he walked into the bedroom.  "In here, boys," he said.  We followed
him.

While I wondered what possibly could have happened to the tidy old man
I had previously known, Gummy led us over to his grungy,
blanket-tangled bed.

The metal bedposts were painted a dull blue, except for one, which was
covered from top to bottom with a strange, grayish glob, something that
looked as if it might have been deposited by insects.

"This is it," Gummy said, pointing at the glob.

Crazy Eddie and I backed away.  "What is it?"  I asked.

Gummy beamed.  "MY sculpture."

He turned on a bedside light and tilted the shade so that the light
threw the glob into relief.

We gasped in astonishment and delight.  The glob had been transformed
into a cluster of tiny deer, elk, bears, ducks, and various other fauna
and even flora.  It was magnificent!

"Holy smokes!"  I said.

"WOw!"  Crazy Eddie said.  "It's beautiful!  it's all made out of
..."

"yep," said Gummy, his little eyes bulging with pride.  "Chewing
gum!"

Gummy explained how the sculpture had come about.  Every night just
before he went to sleep, he said, he took out his wad of gum and stuck
it on the bedpost.  Over the years, the gum had accumulated until it
became the glob.  The oldest layers of gum had turned almost black with
age, with each successive layer lighter than the one before, the
gradation from dark to light producing the illusion of depth sought by
all the great classic artists, in whose company Gummy johanson must
certainly have belonged.

One morning, Gummy went on, he had awakened early and was lying in bed
thinking about nothing in particular, when he glanced at the glob,
backlighted as it was by the rising sun in the window.  He imagined he
saw the shape of a deer's head in the glob, much as Michelangelo saw
the figure of David in a block of marble.  He got a kitchen match and
began to poke and mold with it, until the deer head emerged in relief
from the glob.

Gummy was so excited by his newly discovered talent that every moment
he had free from ranch chores he spent sitting by the bed chewing gum
as fast as he could and molding it with the match into all the
wonderful creatures that had so awed Crazy Eddie and me with their
exquisite and delicate beauty.

"Where did you learn to do this?"  I asked.

"Never had an art lesson in my life," Gummy said, giving his suspenders
a pleased snap with his thumbs.  "I'm self-taught."

"Gosh, you're the best artist I've ever seen," Eddie said.

"Thank you," Gummy said modestly.  "Say, how would you boys like to
watch me do some sculpture work?  You can help me chew up a batch of
fresh gum."

"We'd love to," I said.  At long last, I had found someone who could
teach me fine art.  I imagined apprenticing myself to Gummy johanson,
first serving as a chewer for him, then maybe doing some of the detail
work on the flowers and animals, and finally, after Years of study,
being given the opportunity to create my own chewing-gum sculptures.

Maybe someday I too would have my own glob of gum on a bedpost, and
people would come from miles around to look at it.  It was not too
difficult to imagine my bedpost displayed in an art museum.  I shivered
with excitement at the awesome opportunity suddenly opened up to me.

Eddie and I hauled some chairs into the bedroom and began to chew
sticks of gum for Gummy as he worked on his sculpture of a Canada goose
in full flight.  Every so often he would lean back and hold the kitchen
match up and sight along it at the sculpture.  Apparently this helped
him get the right PrOPortions for the goose, and I could tell it was a
very Professional thing to do.  In practically no time at all the goose
was finished, and it was one of the finest geese I'd ever seen.  Eddie
and I shouted and applauded, and Gummy looked as if he would burst from
excessive pleasure, he was so pleased.

"Well, boys," he said, "I got time for just one more before I have to
get back to chores.  What would you like to see next?"  all The room
filled with silence.  I could practically hear Crazy Eddie's brain
cells clicking together as he thought about what he wanted to see next,
and I knew it was the same thing I wanted.

"Oh," I said casually, "how about a nude woman?"

"I was thinkin' the same thing," Eddie said.

Gummy looked startled.  "Well, I don't know.  I ain't never done a
woman before, nude or not.  All I ever done is other kinds of wild
critters."

Our shoulders sagged.  Well, what the heck, it was worth a try.

"Shoot!"  Gummy said, apparently noticing our disappointment.  "If I
can do a nude goose, I should be able to do a nude woman."

Finally-I said to myself-I get to see what a nude woman looks like!

Crazy Eddie and I began to chew gum like mad, cramming stick after
stick into our mouths, until our jaws ached.  Gummy hunched over his
sculpture, working furiously with the matchstick, molding and carving,
poking and smoothing, as Eddie and I tried to peer around him.  We
chewed and chewed and chewed.

"More gum!  More gum!"  the artist cried feverishly, and we boys
feverishly passed him our wads of chewed gum and crammed more sticks
into our mouths.  Beads of sweat formed on the back of Gummy's neck,
and his long gray hair stood out at all angles.  "More gum!  More
gum!"

he croaked.

Slowly the sculpture began to take shape.  Aha, I thought, a nude woman
looks a lot like a moose.  Then the artist wiped out his creation and
started over.  Oh, I thought presently, I see now, a nude woman looks
like a bunch of grapes.  Once I even thought that a nude woman was
going to look like one of my own drawings of a duck.  I began to
suspect that Gummy didn't know any more about what a nude woman looked
like than Crazy Eddie did.

Gummy suddenly stopped working.  He slumped down in his chair and held
his face in his hands.  Eddie and I glanced at each other.

"What's wrong?"  Eddie asked.

The artist didn't answer.  He got up slowly and walked to the window,
where he stood for a long while, looking out over the meadow.

"I guess I can't do nudes," he said after a bit.  "I just can't seem to
do them!"

Eddie said, "You do good geese."

"Thanks," Gummy said sadly.  He seemed enormously disappointed by the
discovery of this major void in his talent, although, I must say,
scarcely more than Eddie and I.

We got our fishing poles and walked out across the meadow toward the
creek, rubbing our aching jaws.  There was still enough light left for
us to catch a few fish.

"What do you suppose was wrong with Gummy?"  I asked.

"He was just tormented," Crazy Eddie said.  "All artists are
tormented.

Didn't you know that?  If you want to be an artist, you got to learn
how to be tormented."

"I don't want to be tormented," I said.  "Maybe I'll be a mountain man
after all."

I knew mountain men weren't tormented, at least not if they had
night-lights.  The next day I started inventing a very large portable
night-light.

The Belcher While I was making a minor adjustment on my muzzle-loader
one day last fall, several parts fell off.  I thought maybe I hadn't
tightened the doohickey enough or maybe had allowed too much play in
the thingumajig.

In any case, while I was banging the barrel on the concrete floor in
the garage, all these parts fell off.  So much for amateur
gunsmithing.

Fortunately, I have a friend who is a certified gun nut, one Gary Roedl
by name.  (Rhymes with yodel.) For a living, Roedl teaches metal shop
in a high school, as is evident from his wild, darting eyes and facial
twitch.  To calm his psyche after school, he goes home and tinkers with
his guns.  He even writes about guns.  His gun articles are so
technical they don't have any words in them, but only numbers,
abbreviations, and a smattering of punctuation.  The average gun nut
probably finds them interesting, but to me they're deadly.  I read his
"Origins of the Cleaning Patch" aloud in the garden to bore insects to
death.  It makes a wonderful pesticide.

I threw the parts of my muzzle-loader in a box and rushed them over to
Gary's house.  "Can you fix it?"  I asked him.

Roedl looked at the gun and almost burst into tears.  "What did you do
to it?"  he cried.  "Beat it on a concrete floor?"

The man's intuition is eerie.

At first he said he thought the gun had been damaged beyond repair and
probably should be put to sleep.  I begged him to save it.  He agreed
to try, and finally got all the parts reassembled.

"Looks good as new," I said.

"Not quite," Roedl said.  "When you shoot it in the future, I recommend
you trip the trigger a little differently."

"How's that?"

"With a long string."

"But that will ruin my accuracy."

"Not all that much," Roedl said.  "Not all that much.  Say, did I tell
you, I bought that Belcher I've been looking for."

"You've already got a dog," I said.  "What do you want with another
one?"

"It's not a dog, it's a gun.  Belonged to a famous old buffalo
hunter.

I'm writing a book about him and the gun."

"No kidding.  Going to use words in this one, or just go with the
abbreviations and numbers?"

Ignoring my protests and skidding feet, Roedl dragged me into his gun
vault, which is fashioned after the gold bullion room at Fort Knox.  He
held up the Belcher.  "Now there is a gun!"

Why he told me this, I don't know.  Even I, non-gun-nut, could identify
it as a gun at a hundred paces with one eye blindfolded.

"Right," I said.  "Well, I've got to be running along.  Thanks for
fixing my muzzle-loader."

Before I could move, Roedl deftly kicked shut the door of the vault and
set the time lock for two hours.  If there's one thing gun nuts love to
do more than tinker with guns, it's talk about them.  "Now here's
something you'll find interesting," he began.  "This .50-70 M. 1874

Belcher blaw blaw 12 lbs.  blaw blaw .50 cal.  "-h-in.  straight case
blaw blaw 70 grn F or FFG & 370 gr.  PP.........."

I immediately took off on an out-of-body experience, my consciousness
floating gently up to the ceiling.  Looking down, I could see my own
body seated in a chair listening to Gary, the head nodding and saying,
"Yeah, uh-huh, right, fascinating."  I saw two bugs race across the
floor, trying to get out of hearing range, but they were overcome with
boredom before they could escape.  They rolled over on their backs,
kicked a few times, and were still.  What a rough way to go, I thought,
even for an insect.  I vowed never again to read Gary's "Origins of the
Cleaning Patch" aloud in the garden.  A bug bomb would be more
humane.

Finally, I heard Roedl say, "And that's about it for the .50-70

M-1847

Belcher.  Pretty fascinating, what?"

Instantly, I was sucked back into my body.

"Kept me on the edge of my chair the whole time.  Can I go now?"

"One more thing.  When we go hunting in Montana next week, I'm--are you
eady for this?--going to hunt with the Belcher!  What do you think
about that!"

My jaw hinges cramped up from stifling a yawn.  "Wow.  I can hardly
wait.

But please don't tell me any more.  I'm already hyperventilating from
excitement."

Thus it was that on the following week I found myself trapped in the
cab of a pickup truck on a five-hundred-mile journey into the wilds of
Montana with not one but two gun nuts, the second being the outdoor
writer Keith Jackson.  Jackson, by the way, is a wonderful fisherman,
possessing the rare ability to make fish materialize out of thin air.

On several fishing trips I've taken with jackson, I have been under the
misapprehension that we both had got skunked, only later to read his
accounts of the expeditions and learn that Jackson had done very well
indeed, landing numerous monstrous fish on No.

28 dry flies, whereas I, failing to follow his advice, had landed only
a single fingerling with a bait consisting of a nightcrawler, a kernel
of corn, and a pink marshmallow.

As might be expected, Keith and Gary droned on endlessly about calibers
and grains and muzzle velocities and trajectories and other boring gun
stuff.

I tried to ignore them by leaning back in the seat and catnapping, but
they wouldn't allow it, often resorting to screaming and calling me
vile names.  I told them if they didn't like my catnapping, they could
just stop talking about gun stuff.  Otherwise, one of them could
drive.

True to his word, Roedl hunted with the ancient Belcher.  On the first
day of the hunt, a mule deer buck strolled out of some brush about
fifty yards ahead of us.  This was Gary's first opportunity to try out
his prized possession in an actual hunting Situation.  From what I had
been told about the power and accuracy of the Belcher, I expected the
first shot instantly to transform the buck into a pile of venison
steaks and chops ready for the freezer.

Roedl raised the Belcher and fired.  A rather longish BOOOOOM!  and a
plume of smoke issued from the muzzle.  The deer was stopped in his
tracks.

Apparently the ruckus raised by the Belcher had aroused his curiosity,
because after stopping in his tracks he stared intently at us for a few
moments.  Then he noticed the slug traveling in his direction.  He
watched the slug for some time and then, becoming bored with it,
nibbled some grass, occasionally glancing up to check on the progress
of the slug.  When the slug was nearly to him, he stepped aside and let
it plop onto the ground at his feet.

Roedl was demolished.  I tried to comfort him, but without much
success, possibly because I was squealing with mirth.  Upon recovering,
I advised Roedl that on his next shot he should lead the deer by about
twenty yards.

"He's not even moving, Roedl snarled.

"Yeah, I know," I said.  "If he starts moving, you'd better lead him by
at least eighty yards!  Har liar!"

"Here's the problem," Roedl said.  "I loaded that shell at sea level.

This higher altitude is affecting the ballistics.  Fortunately, I
brought along some shells with a little more oomph to them."

"Sea level!"  I cried.  "Oh, my aching sides!  Har liar heee!"

"Okay, wise guy," Roedl said.  "You get the honor of taking the next
shot with the Belcher."

"Har ... what?  No, I don't wanna."

"Hush!  This is not a request.  You will take the next shot.

I always hate it when Gary uses his teacher voice.  It's so
intimidating.

I get the feeling that if I don't obey, I'll be sent to The Office.

"Oh, all right," I said, "If it will make you feel any better.  Hand me
the Belcher."

Instantly, my hand sagged to the ground from the weight of the rifle.

I now knew why it was called a .50-70 Belcher.  It was .50 caliber and
weighed 70 pounds.  I wondered if the famous old buffalo hunter had
killed the buffalo by shooting them or by dropping the Belcher on
them.

It should have been equipped with wheels--and a team of draft horses to
pull it.

In the meantime, the buck, grinning and shaking his head in disbelief,
had retreated to a little grove of pine trees.  Roedl claimed it was
still within easy range of the rifle, and handed me one of his
handloads.  The shell was about the size and shape of a wiener--a
.50-caliber wiener.  I slipped it into the breech and snapped the gun
shut.  Staggering about under the weight of the Belcher, I tried to set
the sights on the deer.  My finger brushed the hair trigger.

When my vision cleared, the deer was gone, possibly vaporized but more
probably merely escaped.  A mature ponderosa pine had been shot in two
near where the buck had stood.  Beyond it, a smoldering gravel pit had
been gouged out of the hill.  Aftershocks rolled under my feet.  Echoes
of the deafening blast boomed up and down the valley.

"Dib I miss hib?"  I asked, feeling about my face in search of my
nose.

"Eh?"  Roedl said.

"Eh?"  Jackson said.

"I think you loaded that shell a might heavy with the it or the PP, " I
said.  "Probably it was the PP.  Well, no harm done.  I suppose Bozeman
has a doctor who can surgically remove the stock of a Belcher from a
person's shoulder.  By the way, anyone seen my shoulder around?"

On the ride back home, Roedl continued to insist that his Belcher
didn't kick.  "It was the way you were holding it," he explained.

"Technically speaking, there's going to be 14 psf of recoil, but with a
.50-70 straight-case Belcher Shooter shell with 85 XYZ cubed to 400 PF
blaw blaw MV 40,000 FPS blaw blaw 52 IRAs blaw blaw 87 BBDs.  ... Are
you listening to what I'm telling you, McManus?"

Shooter Retch Sweeney and I fished the little creek up on the old Bone
place one day last summer for the first time in thirty years.  Weeds
had grown up shoulder-heigh in the meadow, and a ragtag army of
volunteer pine trees had invaded the pasture.  On the hill above us, a
weary privy stood sentry amid an orange explosion of honeysuckle.  A
short distance away, a brick chimney poked up from a pile of blackened
rubble that had once been the Bone house.

"I can scarcely believe it," Retch said, unhitching his creel and
flopping down on the bank to rest.  "The fishing here hasn't changed
one bit since we were kids!"

"You're right," I said.  "I remember it was lousy back then, too.

That's probably why we haven't fished here for thirty years."

"Yeah," Retch said.  "Thirty years.  The last time was before that
house burned down.  The folks who lived there, what was their name?"

"Bone," I said.  "Mr. and Mrs. Bone, and they had a boy our age.  His
name was, uh, uh, oh yeah, Henry.  You remember Henry Bone."

"No, can't say as I do."

" Sure you do.  He went to school with us in the sixth grade.

"Couldn't have!  I'd remember him.  Oh, wait a minute ... was he kind
of ... of ... well, uh ...?  No, I can't place him.  You certain he
went to school with us?"

"He was the Shooter."

"The Shooter!  Henry Bone was the Shooter?  Good gosh almighty!  " I
could easily understand why Retch might have trouble remembering Henry
Bone, even though he had gone to school with us for a whole year.

Henry Bone was one of those people so totally average that they're
almost invisible.  He was neither smart nor dumb, rich nor poor, ugly
nor handsome, polite nor rude, dirty nor clean, just average
everything.  Shy and unobtrusive, Henry blended so perfectly into his
surroundings that he scarcely seemed to occupy space.

If Henry had played sports, of course, he would have been noticed.  A
person could be terrible in sports, as I was, and still have a public
identity, such as being the person always chosen last for a team.

Everyone in school knew that I had laid claim to that particular
athletic distinction.  In softball, the advice given to a batter on the
opposing team was always, "Try to hit to McManus.  In football it was,
"Okay, we'll run the next series of plays over McManus."  Being the
worst athlete wasn't much of an identity, but it was at least an
identity--something Henry Bone lacked.  For one brief moment, though,
Henry was to emerge from obscurity and achieve the fleeting fame of the
grade-school playground.  He was to become the Shooter.

During much of the school year, Delmore Blight Grade School was held in
the icy fist of North Idaho winter.  The ball fields and the basketball
court lay under two feet of gray, gritty snow packed hard as
concrete.

Then, in late March, the sun warmed the brick walls of the school and
the snow began to recede, leaving an irregular margin of bare dirt
along the south side of the building.  Bare dirt!  No field of
wildflowers ever looked so beautiful to us as that naked piece of
earth.  Marble season began.

I was a fair marble shot and could hold my own against most of the
other guys.  There were three top nibslingers, though, with Retch
Sweeney being about the best of the three.  The other two were Elwood
Scopes and Lonnie Custer.  By the end of the marble season, these three
would have won all the marbles in the school.  They kept their winnings
in quart jars on shelves in their rooms.  I remember that Retch had
seven or eight jars of marbles in his bedroom, arranged on a shelf like
trophies.  The rest of us would supply marbles by buying little netting
bags of them for ten cents apiece.  After school each day, a big marble
tournament would be held in which Retch, Lonnie, and Elwood would win
all the marbles.  The next morning all of us losers would go Out and
buy more bags.  I think there must be a lesson in economics here, but
I've never understood what it is.

One March afternoon, we regulars had all anted up for the first marble
game when a shy voice said, "Can I play?"

We looked at the owner of the voice.  He was vaguely familiar, but none
of us could place him right off.  After a bit, Scopes said, "Hey, ain't
I seen you someplace before?"

"I sit across from you in the back row in sixth grade," the boy said.

"Oh," Scopes said.  "I knew I'd seen you someplace."

"Is it all right if I play?"

" Sure, kid, " Retch said."  The more the merrier, heh heh."  The kid
took some marbles from his pocket and anted up.  The "pot," drawn on
the soft dirt with a stick, was a good six feet in diameter and
contained at least a hundred marbles.  We lagged with our laggers,
marbles about the size of ping-pong balls, toward a line some distance
from the playing circle.

The stranger's lagger stopped right on the line, giving him first
shot.

Next in the shooting order were Elwood, Retch, and Lonnie.  Well, at
least the kid would get a shot, which was more than the rest of us
could expect.

While the top nibslingers stood around warming and limbering up their
trigger fingers, the kid took out his handkerchief and began to unfold
it, revealing a beautiful agate shooter.

Scopes eyed the kid's aggie.  "Shooters are up for grabs, too," he
said.

"Okay," the kid said.

I didn't know much about him except that he had to be really dumb to
risk that beautiful aggie in a game with these marble sharks.

"No way," I said.  "Shooters are safe."

"Forget that," Scopes said, making a threatening move in my
direction.

I smiled and stepped over next to my good friend and protector, Retch
Sweeney.  "Tell him shooters are safe, Retch."

"Forget that!"  Retch said.

" It's all right, the kid said."  I don't mind.

He knelt down and studied the arrangement of marbles in the pot.

Apparently satisfied, he made a little tripod with the fingers of his
left hand, placed his right hand atop the tripod, loaded the beautiful
agate shooter between the tip of his forefinger and his thumb
knuckle.

Snack!  We all jumped at the sound of the kid's first shot.  Three
marbles had flown out of the pot like shrapnel, with the aggie stopping
dead still at the point of impact on the target marble.  Dumbfounded,
we all leaned forward to watch the kid's next move.  Snack!  Snick!

Pop!  Snap!  Crack!  Marbles began flying out of the circle in all
directions.  Within a few minutes the pot was bare.

New pots were anted up.  The kid cleaned them, one after another, until
darkness fell.  Then he pulled a long brown cotton sock out of his
pocket and placed his winnings in it.  The sock looked like a lumpy
sausage hanging over his shoulder as he walked off into the darkness.

"Hey, kid!"  Scopes yelled after him.  "What's your name?"

"Henry Bone," came the reply.

"Tomorrow I'll take him," Scopes said.

"If I don't," Retch said.

"Or me," said Custer.

"You've got to get a shot first," I said.

"Shut up," Scopes said irritably.

I looked at my protector.

"Yeah," Retch said.  "Shut up for once."

In the days that followed, the marble competition quickly narrowed down
to Retch, Scopes, Custer, and Henry Bone.  The stakes were too high for
the rest of us.  And day after day, Henry went home with his sock
bulging with winnings.

Nearly every kid in school and even some of the teachers had become
spectators at the marble shoots.  Henry would make his way through the
crowd, trailed by little first- and second-graders trying to touch
him.

"Yay!"  the kids would yell.  "Here comes the Shooter!  Yay!"  And
every time Henry's beautiful agate would go sizzling into the pot to
decimate the antes of Retch, Scopes, and Custer, a great roar would go
up from the crowd.

One day toward the end of March, Retch took me aside.  "Tell me
something," he said.  "Where do you buy them little bags of marbles?"

I was stunned.  Retch Sweeney, forced to buy marbles!  He could
scarcely conceal his humiliation.  The Shooter had won his whole stash,
his whole hoard of marble winnings from the eternity of years we had
spent in grade school!

I helped Retch sneak down to the five-and-dime to buy some marbles.  We
met Scopes and Custer coming out.  They said they had come to buy
candy.

Retch handed the money to the clerk for two bags of marbles.  "They're
for my kid brother," he explained.  Later he said, "How embarrassing!

I actually paid money for marbles!  I ain't ever, as long as I live,
gonna forgive the Shooter for this!  " Although it seemed much longer
at the time, I believe the marble season lasted only about three weeks
at most.  In that brief span of time, Henry Bone achieved fame and
glory, and even riches of a sort, in the form of colorful little glass
spheres.  A fifth-grader who had visited the Bone home, or so he
claimed, reported that Henry "the Shooter" Bone had lined one whole
wall of his bedroom with gallon milk jars full of marbles.  Nobody
believed the report.  Fifth-graders as a group were suspect in general
and considered totally unreliable.

Everyone wanted to be Henry's friend, with the obvious exceptions of
Retch, Scopes, and Custer.  Kids casually dropped his name: "I was
talking to Shooter today and he told me ..."  "I ate lunch with Bone
today and ..."

"Look at the marble Henry gave me."

The Shooter wore his new popularity well.  He was still quiet and even
shy, but we noticed a confidence in him that we had missed before.

That was natural, I suppose, because we had never even noticed Henry
himself before.

At the very peak of his fame, Henry was struck by one of those
disasters that seem to stalk us all at one time or another: the last of
the snow melted off the softball diamond.  Marbles were instantly
forgotten.  Henry Bone was forgotten.  Within a matter of hours he
faded back into the same obscurity from which he had emerged but a
short time before.  What he thought of the fickle nature of fame, I
don't know--I never asked him--In fact, I never even really noticed him
again.  I was too busy dealing with my own fame as the worst softball
player in the history of Delmore Blight Grade School.

Shortly thereafter, the Bone house burned down and Henry and his family
moved away.  He was not missed.

Those events of thirty years ago flashed through my mind in seconds as
I stared up the hill at the ruins of the old Bone place.  "Hey," I said
to Retch.  "Let's go up and poke around in the rubble.  Might find
something interesting."

"Even if we don't, it'll beat the fishing," Retch said.

We kicked through the ashes for a while and were about to leave when I
noticed a strange lump.  I picked it up, a heavy glob of something, and
brushed it off.  For a moment I was puzzled.  Then I held it up against
the rays of the dying sun and saw that it was composed of melted glass
shot through with a thousand colors.

"Wow!"  I said.  "YOu know what this is?  It's a gallon jug of Henry
Bone's marbles melted by the heat of the fire!"

"By gosh, it is!"  Retch said.  "Well, I'll be!"

We started digging through the rubble and found a half-dozen more of
the melted blobs.  We polished them off and set them up in a row on the
stone foundation so that the sunlight played through them and sent the
colors dancing across the ruins.  So, I thought, this is what the brief
fame and glory of the Shooter came to--a bunch of melted glass, and
colors dancing on old ashes.

"It's kind of sad, isn't it?"  I said to Retch.

"What?"

"All those marbles Henry won, all those hours of shooting, all that
excitement, all of it reduced to globs of colored glass.  It's sad."

Retch stared at the colors dancing on the ashes, a slight smile on his
face.

"Oh, I don't know about that," he said.

The Last Flight of Homer Pidgin Back during the Paleozoic era, when I
was just getting started with camping, any kid who fled home from a
camping trip about the time it started to get dark was known as a
"homer," a term possibly derived from "homing pigeon."  It so happened
that the boy most endowed with this characteristic had the last name of
Pidgin.  Thus it was even more appropriate that he acquired the
nickname of "Homer."

I should mention here something about the use of nicknames in that
distant time and place of my youth.  The idea, as I understood it, was
to give a kid a nickname appropriate to his appearance or eccentricity
of behavior, the crueler the better.  A kid with warts, for example,
might be known as "Toad" or "Frog" or maybe simply "Warty."  In the
course of time, the warts might vanish, but the nickname would remain,
continuing its work of warping the kid's personality and kicking holes
in his psyche.  Nicknames were fun.

Often the nickname would come to dominate the kid's whole identity, and
even teachers and parents would know him by it.  Coaches in particular
were quick to adopt the nicknames of their charges: "Okay, here's the
batting order--Toad, Pig, Goat, Larry, and Lizard."  In the case of
Homer, his parents soon started calling him by the nickname his friends
had conferred upon him, although it's unlikely they knew that the name
derived from cowardice in the face of darkness.  Little did they
realize that every time they said something as simple as "Homer, eat
your peas," they were calling attention to a major defect in his
character.

The only thing worse than being known by a monstrous nickname--say,
Slug, Snake, or Wormy--was to have no nickname at all.  I myself had
the good fortune to be honored with a nickname by my friends and
associates.  Alas, time and Freudian slippage have erased it from my
memory.  Too bad.  Let's just say that it was "Rocky."

Oddly, although I can no longer recall my own nickname or how it came
about, I have a vivid recollection of the event by which Ralph Pidgin
became known as Homer Pidgin.  Ralph loved to plan things, particularly
camping trips.  To him, an hour's excursion into the wilds of the
Fergussons' woodlot required all the planning and preparation of an
expedition to the South Pole.

An overnight camp-out on one of the creeks in the nearby mountains
posed complications comparable to those of a voyage into the outer
realms of the universe.

Ralph was a maker of lists.  For his first overnighter with us, he
called a meeting of the expedition party.  "All right, guys," he told
us.  "First, I've made up this list of provisions we'll need.  Salt,
pepper, butter, lard--the butter and lard should be in leakproof
containers, ditto the jam and syrup.  To continue: two loaves of bread,
one pound pancake flour, three cans pork 'n' beans ..."  He had a list
for each of us, with the shares of the provision evenly divided.  After
he had distributed the individual lists, the other members of the party
made paper airplanes out of them and sailed them back at him.

"Look," Retch Sweeney said, "why doesn't each of us just bring what
grub he can lay hands on at home, and when we get to our campsite we'll
dump it all out in a pile and see what we got.  How does that sound to
you, Rocky?"

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"Me too," said Birdy Thompson.

"I'll take my .22 along and shoot us some fat squirrels for meat,"
Retch said.

"Maybe somebody should bring wieners," Birdy said.  "Last time you shot
only one squirrel, and the drumstick I got looked like a burnt match.

Tasted like it, too."  Retch held a fist up in his face.  "Good,
though."

Ralph shook his head.  "This trip requires planning.  You guys can do
what you want, but I'm going to make sure my own gear and provisions
are in order."

He did, too.  On the morning of the camping trip, he had all of his
stuff spread out on the lawn, food items in one section, gear in
another, fishing tackle in another, and extra clothes in another.  He
went from section to section, checking items off his lists.  Not a
little annoyed, we gave him a few hints that we wished to be off on the
adventure without wasting any more time.

"Step on it, Ralph, or we'll leave you behind!"  Retch hinted.

"Get a move on," Birdy said.  "We don't have all day, Pidgin.  "
"Yeah," I said kindly.  "Throw your junk in the pack and let's go!"

"... extra handkerchief, check," Ralph said.  "Extra socks, check.

Okay, that's it.  Now as soon as I arrange everything neatly in my
pack, we can depart."

"ARRRGGHHHHH!"  his friends said.

The hike to our camp took less than two hours.  In contrast to Pidgin's
tidy, compact pack, ours weighed upwards of eighty pounds each.  Our
reasoning was that too much time would be wasted selecting only the
equipment appropriate to an overnighter.  So we took all the camping
gear we owned, mostly war-surplus stuff, dumping it expeditiously into
our packsacks.  The size of our packs also helped in selecting our
campsites.  The first guy to collapse from exhaustion automatically
dropped onto our campsite, whether it was in the middle of a swamp or
on a steep mountain slope.  Even today I marvel that such an efficient
process for finding a campsite should have been discovered by a bunch
of fourteen-year-old boys of average intelligence, excluding Retch
Sweeney, of course.

As soon as we had made camp, which consisted largely of dumping our
packs on the ground, we set out to catch some fish for supper.  Even at
that age, we had developed a sportsmanlike attitude toward angling.

The first rule was never to catch more fish than we could eat.  I don't
recall that we even once broke this rule, our restraint continuing to
be a source of some pride to me.

We were also careful to throw back "the little ones."  As we set off to
fish, Retch shouted, "Remember, don't keep no little ones!"  This was
understood to mean no fish under four inches.

Toward evening, we met back at the camp and discussed our luck at
catching fish.

"I told you we should bring wieners," Birdy said.

"I'd shoot us some squirrels, but there don't seem to be none around
here," Retch said.  "I wonder how chipmunk tastes."  As the first
shadows of evening crept across our Camp, we chopped firewood, smoothed
out the ground for our sleeping bags, and generally prepared for the
night.  It was then that a strange look came over Ralph's face.  He
swiveled his head about, peering into the recesses of the forest, as
though surprised by the deepening darkness.  Somehow, despite all his
meticulous planning, he had apparently overlooked the possibility that
sooner or later darkness might occur on an overnight camping trip.

Without a word of explanation, Ralph began stuffing his gear into his
pack, paying little attention to neatness.  He whipped his pack on,
pulled his hat down over his ears, and tore out for home, leaving
behind nothing of his presence but a few wisps of smoke from the soles
of his tennis shoes.

We stared after him in dumbfounded silence.  Presently, Birdy said,
"Cripes!  What happened to Ralph?"

Retch stuck a match in his teeth and pondered the mystery."  Well, " he
said, " it looks like Ralph is a homer."

"A homer?"  I said.

"Yeah," Retch said.  "You know, a kid that runs home every time it
starts to get dark."

"Ha!"  I said.  "Homer Pidgin!"

And that was how Homer acquired his nickname.  I should mention that we
did not hold his flight home against him, or even consider it
extraordinary for human behavior, based on the humans we were familiar
with.  It never occurred to us to exclude Homer from future camping
trips..  He always came along.  Apparently his pleasure in camping at
that stage of his life consisted of planning the camping trip in
infinitesimal detail, preparing his pack, hiking into the campsite, and
joining in the futility of trying to catch enough fish for our
supper.

At that point he had acquired the maximum pleasure from camping of
which he was capable.  He then had the good sense to terminate the
excursion before it was ruined by darkness.

We soon became accustomed to Homer's style of camping.  As darkness
approached and the strange look came over his face, we would
matter-of-factly bid him farewell: "So long, Homer."

"See you, Homer."

"Have a good trip."

Retch, Birdy, and I naturally assumed that Homer had no intention of
camping through the night with us, but we were apparently mistaken.  As
we later deduced, Homer never even considered that he would flee home,
until the very moment the urge to take flight came upon him.

What led us to this deduction was a trip we took twenty miles up Pack
River, one of our grumbling parents driving us to our destination in
the wild upper regions of the river.  We were to camp out there for
four days or until one of our parents remembered to retrieve us.  Of
course, we assumed that Homer would refuse to come, since the distance
from his home was approximately thirty miles.  But as soon as the
proposed trip was announced, Homer immediately set about planning and
making up his lists.  We were puzzled by his intentions, still
believing that he included the flight home in any of his camping
plans.

We were dumped off at our campsite about seven in the morning, with the
parent immediately roaring back toward town in an effort to get to his
job on time.  I could tell that Homer's intentions were much on Retch's
mind.

"Uh, say, Homer," he said casually.  "You know, if a fella happened to
decide he wanted to run home from here before dark, it--uh--it might be
a good idea to start right about now."

"Are you kidding me?"  Homer said.  "Who would be dumb enough to run
home from here?  It's almost thirty miles."

Retch shrugged.  "Just thought I'd mention it."

We went through our usual camping routine of building a ring of rocks
for our fire, chopping up three cords of firewood, fishing for our
supper, and then, suddenly, without seaming, the sun slipped behind the
mountain.  Birdy started PreParing our supper of fried wieners, fried
potatoes, and fried pork 'n' beans.  We were all joshing each other and
messing around, when I glanced up and saw Homer standing still and
silent, with the familiar strange look creeping across his face.

"Don't try it, Homer," I said.  "It's too far."

Birdy looked up from his frying.  "You can't, Homer."

Retch threw his arm around Homer's shoulders.  "Listen, Home, it's
gonna be all right.  You'll see.  We're gonna have a lotta fun tonight,
burn a few marshmallows, tell some jokes, poke at the fire."

Homer didn't take off for home, but he didn't relax either, and the
strange look remained.  It seemed as if a huge invisible rubber band
stretched between Homer and his house, growing ever tighter, and at any
second would snap him in the direction of home.

About ten o'clock we climbed into our sleeping bags under the lean-to
we had built as a precaution against rain.  Homer hadn't said a word
all evening, but at least he was now in his sleeping bag.  The rest of
us began to relax a bit, assuming that Homer's urge to flee home had
given in to reason.  We wer about to drift off when all at once we
heard the frantic scrabbling of Homer stuffing gear into his pack.

Without further notice, he rushed off into the night.

We lay there silently for a while, thinking about Homer scurrying the
thirty miles home.  As we were mulling over the odds of his making it,
lightning flashed and thunder boomed.  Then rain began to pound down on
our lean-to and, of course, on Homer, out there all alone in the night,
racing madly down the road.

"Poor old Homer," I said.  "Think he'll make it?"

"Yeah," Retch said.  "Probably by about next Tuesday."

"We should have tried to stop him," Birdy said.  "We had a
responsibility to ..."

"Shut up, Birdy," Retch said.

Suddenly it happened.  A long, loud, quavering screech came down off
the mountain above us.  We had never heard anything like it before, the
kind of sound that spikes your hair and raises goosebumps the size of
peas.

"Cr-cripes," Birdy whispered.  "Wh-what was that?"

"I d-d-d-d-don't know," I explained.

"It was s-s-something' b-big, though," Retch whispered.  "Wh-where's my
.22?"

"Y-you didn't bring it," Birdy said.  "We brought w-wWieners
instead."

Then the screech came again, louder and closer this time.

"J-j-jeeeez," Retch said.  "I think it's coming for us."

"M-maybe it's just s-some weird bird," I said.

"You really think it's only a b-b-bird?"  Homer said.

"Y-yeah," Retch said.  "Probably only a b-b-bird.  A b-big b-b-bird,
though."

"G-good," Homer said.

"Homer?"  I said.  "You're back?"

"Homer's back!"  yelled Birdy.

"Hey, Homer!"  Retch said.  "What brought you back, Homer?"

"I don't know," Homer said.  "I just thought, what the heck, I might as
well spend the night with you guys."

We never did find out what made the horrible screech in the night, and
we never heard it again.  It did, however, make the night memorable,
almost as much as did the last flight of Homer Pidgin.

A Boy and His (Ugh!) Dog Retch Sweeney's dog, Smarts, has distinguished
himself over the years as the least aptly named animal with which I've
ever been associated.

Retch, of course, thinks Smarts is the Einstein of hunting dogs.  For
example, as Retch and I were driving his old sedan out for a little
bird hunting the other day, Smarts interrupted his pastime of
slobbering down the backs of our necks long enough to emit an excited
yelp, causing my eardrums to vibrate like bongo skins during a Jamaican
festival.

Retch chuckled.  "Ol' Smarts said he can't wait to get out there and
start rounding up pheasants for us."

"No, he didn't," I said irritably.

"He didn't?"  Retch said.  "What did he say then?"

"He didn't say anything.  Dogs don't talk."

"Well, excuuuuuuuse me!"

"Don't get your tail in a knot," I said.  "It's just that I can't stand
all the anthropomorphizing going around nowadays."

"Me neither," Retch said, turning thoughtful.  "I think it gets spread
by toilet seats in public restrooms.  But what's that got to do with
dogs talking?"

"Anthropomorphizing," I explained patiently, "means the attribution of
human characteristics to animals or even inanimate objects."

"Holy cow!"  Retch said.  "It's even worse than I thOught.  I can tell
you one thing, I ain't using public restrooms no more!"

"Let's forget it," I said.  "All I meant was, I don't like people
pretending their dogs talk, that's all."

"Oh yeah?  I just so happen to recall you letting on that your
miserable old dog Strange used to talk.  How about that?"

"That's different," I said.  "Strange did talk.  He could SaY more with
one raised eyebrow than Smarts could yelping night and day for a
week.

But I'll admit I didn't care much for what he had to say."

"Ha!"  Retch said, as if he had just won an argument.  "I don't
remember you was very proud of Strange, neither."

"No, I wasn't," I said.  "I tried to be, but it was impossible,
particularly after we learned he was an incorrigible lecher."

"I didn't know that.  I thought he was mostly mutt with a little
spaniel mixed in.  How come you to keep a worthless, disgusting dog
like Strange anyhow?"

"We didn't keep him, exactly.  He just sort of hung around--for about
twelve years."

As I explained to Retch, when Strange first started hanging out around
our place, I didn't pay much attention to him.  I thought he was just
passing through our farm on his way home.  I fed him a few scraps from
the dinner table, thinking he would be gone in a day or two.  Weeks
later he was still loitering around the house, hitting me up for a
handout at every opportunity.

When it became apparent that he was intent on establishing a permanent
relationship with us, I decided I had better think up a name for him.

Since I was doing a stint in the Cub Scouts at the time, I thought at
first that I might name him Scout.  It soon became apparent, however,
that he was untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly,
discourteous, mean, disobedient, uncheerful, unthrifty, cowardly,
dirty, and irreverent.  I decided it wouldn't be right to name such a
dog Scout.

My mother suggested Stranger, still hoping the dog might be passing
through.  For a few weeks, we called him Stranger, but this was soon
shortened to Strange.  The name fit.  In the years to come, we would
learn only how well.

Strange lived in a dog shack in our backyard.  It was a doghouse, of
course, but the rest of the family cruelly referred to it as the dog
shack, because I had built it with my own two ten-year-old hands.

Driven by powerful but vague ambition in those years, I had intended
the doghouse to be a replica of a medieval castle, complete with towers
and battlements.  The project turned out to be much more complicated
than I had first imagined, and I finally gave up on it, after
completing only one tower (often mistaken for a chimney--but why would
anyone think a dog needed a chimney?), a half-dozen battlements, and
the drawbridge.  Visitors sometimes expressed curiosity about the
shallow ditch around the dog shack.  It's surprising how many people
don't recognize a moat when they see one.

The dog shack matched nicely Strange's shabby pretensions of nobility,
and he seemed not to mind it particularly, although he chose to ignore
my instruction on how to raise the drawbridge.

During the early part of his excessively long life with us, I still
hoped Strange would exhibit some talent or characteristic to make me
proud of him.

None became evident.  He would slouch around making rude comments,
swearing, belching, burping, gagging, and in general engaging in any
disgusting activity that occurred to him, and many did.  Visitors would
recoil at his approach, perhaps expecting not so much that he would
bite but that he might try to mooch some change for a bottle of cheap
wine or sell them some dirty pictures.

More than anything else at that stage of my life, I wanted to be able
to brag to the kids at school about some neat trick my dog could
perform.  I tried to teach Strange to fetch sticks, but he would shrug
and say, "You threw it, stupid, you go get it."  He refused to roll
over on command, stand on his hind legs, play dead, heel, sit, or even
acknowledge that he had been spoken to.  Then one day a marvelous thing
happened.  Returning home from school I glanced at the roof of our
house, and sitting up there like a degenerate prince surveying his
domain was Strange.  My dog climbed houses.  Now that was something to
brag about.  Why he climbed the house, I could not even speculate.  How
was fairly easy to determine.  He obviously had climbed a stack of
firewood, jumped from it to the back POrch roof, and from there made
his way to the roof of the main house.

There was no way for me to know, of course, that my dog's learning to
climb houses was not an isolated incident, but was instead a line of
fate that would converge with other lines of fate upon a single point
in time and space and produce what is commonly thought of as a
coincidence.  In this case the coincidence would also be a
near-catastrophe.  Somewhere it is written that any coincidence traced
back far enough will prove to have been inevitable, and I'm sure that
must have been the case here.

These were the converging lines of fate: (1) The long history of
genetic malfunctions that eventually combined to create Strange; his
aimless meanderings that brought him to our farm; and finally his
learning to climb to the roof of our house.

(2) All the genetic and societal forces that combined to shape the
particular rebellious nature of my stepfather, Hank; his deciding to
grow a beard; and most important, his fractious relationship with my
mother's cousin Winnie.

(3) The continuum of factors that led to the creation of Winnie's
haughty personality, her fractious relationship with Hank, and her
peculiar compulsion to visit us for a week or two every year.

Beards were not popular in that era, and that, as much as anything
else, was probably why Hank decided to grow one.  He was a man who
enjoyed going against the grain of society, or at least what little
society existed locally.

Winnie, who harbored no great fondness for Hank in the first place,
associated beards with comic-strip anarchists who went around carrying
bombs that looked like bowling balls with fuses.  The stubbly growth of
beard seemed to prove her suspicions about my stepfather.

Hank, for his part in the relationship, regarded Winnie as a "mindless
twit."  Her arrival for the annual visit produced considerable unease
for the family, an unease that was well founded, even though Mom had
browbeaten Hank to be on his best behavior on this particular
occasion.

Since even Hank's best behavior left something to be desired as far as
Mom was concerned, the tension in our house during Winnie's visit could
have been "cut with a knife," to use my mother's phrase.

"Good heavens!"  Winnie greeted Hank immediately upon her arrival.

"What is that horrible hairy growth on your face?"

"A beard," Hank mumbled, picking up Winnie's Suitcase to lug to the
upstairs guest room.

"Uh, I think the beard's kind of ... of ... dashing, Mom blurted out
with a faint laugh, hoping to extinguish the fuse smoldering in Hank's
eyes.

"Really?"  Winnie said.  "Reminds me more of tree moss.  suppose
various flying insects might find it irresistible, though.  Hee hee."

Hank scurried upstairs with the suitcase, clearly straining to be on
his best behavior.  Throughout the next few days, Winnie never missed
an opportunity to poke fun at Hank's beard.  It seemed to have become
an obsession with her.  Oddly, Hank never responded with any of the
biting and usually off-color wit for which he was locally famous.  My
guess is that he took considerable pleasure in Winnie's loathing of his
beard, and the more she pecked away at him about it, the keener was his
enjoyment.

And then the fates converged.

After breakfast one morning, Winnie announced that she was going to
take a long, leisurely bath, and departed upstairs.  Hank shook his
head in disbelief.  "Another bath," he chuckled.  "Why that's the
second bath she's took in less than a week.  What a twit!"

"Now, now," Mom said soothingly.

Hank and I then went out to clean the rain gutters on the roof.  I held
the ladder while Hank climbed it to dig away at the muck in the
gutter.

Strange, already perched on the roof, wandered over to breathe his
road-kill breath at Hank.

Hank gasped and choked.  "Git out of my face!"  he snarled, taking a
swipe at Strange.

Strange showed Hank his teeth, made a couple of rude remarks, and then
wandered off to another area of the roof, the one containing the dormer
window to the bathroom where Winnie was taking her leisurely bath.

As we learned later, Winnie, naked as a noodle, had just emerged from
her bath and was drying her hair with a towel prior to putting on her
spectacles, without which she was considerably nearsighted.  At that
very moment, Strange decided to prop his paws on the sill and peer in
through the window.  Winnie was staring vacantly in the direction of
the window.  Slowly her eyes came into focus, or as much focus as they
were capable of without her glasses.

There, on the other side of the glass, was a hairy, leering
face--peeping at her.

As Mom said later, Winnie's shriek could have wilted the flowers on the
wallpaper.  It started at a high, marrow-chilling pitch and went up
from there, quavering off into a range beyond human hearing.  Among the
members of the family, all of whom suffered temporary nerve damage,
Hank was the closest to the source of the screech.  Following his
natural instincts, he took off running at the first high warble.  He
said later that he noticed right off that he was having trouble getting
traction.  Then he remembered he had been standing on top of a
ladder.

Fortunately, he had not traveled any great distance when he remembered
the ladder and was able to reach back and get a hand and finally one
foot on it.  He said the exertion of getting back to the ladder took so
much out of him that it might have been better just to take the fall
and be done with it.  But he said he thought Winnie was being murdered,
and if he happened to get knocked unconscious in the fall, he would
have missed out on it.

By the time Hank had got himself safely back to the ladder and sucked
in a couple of deep breaths, and Winnie had collected her wits, her
bathrobe, and her spectacles, Strange had vanished from sight.  I
suppose it was only natural that upon seeing a hairy, leering face at
her bathroom window, Winnie would leap to the conclusion that it must
belong to Hank, particularly given her opinion of his character
defects.  In any case, she jerked up the window, stuck her head out,
and shot fierce glances around the roof.  And there, to confirm her
worst suspicion, was Hank's grizzled face poking up from the edge of
the roof.

"You hairy pervert!"  Winnie screeched.  "I saw you, YOu .  . . You
...

you peeper!"

Hank, of course, had not the slightest notion of what she was talking
about, and cared even less, as he was still regrouping his senses after
his recent acrobatics.  Even after Winnie's head had disappeared back
in the window, he clung silently to the top of the ladder.

You gonna come down or what, Hank?"  I asked.

'Yeah," he said.  "Pretty quick.  As soon as I can make my hands let go
of the ladder."

"What was Winnie screeching about?"

"I don't know.  Probably tryin' to scare me to death, the crazy
twit!"

I could tell from his tone that Hank had abandoned his best behavior.

We soon got the whole mess straightened out, and Winnie had a good
laugh over the misunderstanding.  Hank, however, seemed depressed.  He
disappeared into the bathroom for a while and then returned,
clean-shaven.

"You shaved off your beard!"  Winnie yelped.  "Why, You know, I think I
liked you better with it.  Covered up your weak chin."

Hank responded with a comment that indicated he was off his good
behavior.  Winnie laughed.  Hank was back to normal, and the tension
began to melt away.  He and Winnie matched insult for insult, and if
I'm not mistaken, both of them thoroughly enjoyed the rest of her
visit.

But every so often, I would catch Hank staring moodily off into the
distance, and it wasn't too hard to guess what troubled him.  I'm sure
he didn't care one way or the other about being mistaken for a Peeping
Tom, but it bothered him no end to be mistaken for Strange.

As usual, the dog escaped unscathed and unrepentant, but he kept a wary
eye out for Hank the next few days, and for good reason.  Shortly after
we had determined the identity of the true culprit in the troublesome
affair, Hank made a strangling motion with his hands and snarled,
"Where is that miserable mutt?"

"I don't know," I said.  "Probably at the dog shack, trying to figure
out how to raise the drawbridge."

Strange never again climbed the house, and it was a long, long wait
before he did anything else of which I could be proud.

To Filet or Not to Filet During the years I was a college sophomore, I
became interested in philosophy and signed up for several courses,
hoping the intellectual discipline would improve my mind, or, failing
that, help me get girls.

Even to this day, I still read philosophy on occasion.  I have just
been perusing Mortimer J. Adler's Ten Philosophical Mistakes.

Surprisingly, Mr. Adler forgot the most important philosophical
mistake: enrolling in philosophy courses as a sophomore.  In his
chapter "Consciousness and Its Objects," he cuts right to the heart of
the problem: "If two persons are talking about an object that is an
object of memory for both of them, or an object of imagination for
both, or an object of memory for one and an object of imagination for
the other, the question about whether that common object is an entity
which also really exists, which also once existed, or which also may
exist in the future, cannot be so easily answered."

Right!  In fact, I found such problems absolutely impossible to
answer.

I never even knew they were problems, no one in my family ever having
mentioned them.

But I have no regrets about studying philosophy.  For one thing, it
comes in handy for fileting bluegills.  just the other night, my friend
Keith Jackson and I went out on the lake and caught a nice mess of
bluegills.  As is well known among pan fishermen, there is no such
thing as catching too many bluegills while you are catching them.  It
is only when you must start fileting them that you realize that any
number of bluegills is too many to catch.

Upon returning home late at night, Jackson and I were both overcome
with the traditional generosity of successful bluegill fishermen the
world over.

"You take all of them," I told Keith.  "Then when we go walleye
fishing, you can pay me back."

Jackson said he would stand for nothing of the sort.  "I took all the
bluegills last time," he said.  "No, it's your turn.  You take 'em.  Be
my guest!"  This last exclamation being expressed in the intimidating
tone of Clint Eastwood's "Make my day!"  and given the fact that
Eastwood is but a puny shrimp compared to Jackson's six-foot-five, two
hundred fifty pounds, I reluctantly acquiesced and hauled the whole
mess of bluegills into my house.

My wife, Bun, was stretched out on the couch, wineglass in hand,
watching the late news.  "Catch anything?"

"A couple thousand bluegills," I said.  "I'll just stow them in the
refrigerator for tonight and get up first thing in the morning and
filet ..."

Bun's eyes narrowed instantly to the slits that thirty years of
marriage have taught me mean trouble and, even worse, work.  No doubt
she recalled the last time I had stowed a plastic sack full of crappies
in the refrigerator.

Her friend Lulu had been spending the night.  I had told Lulu a dozen
times that a lady of her intelligence and sophistication should not
watch movies like Son of Killer Piranha in which a vicious fish comes
ashore and eats tourists.

Furthermore, I told her, piranha are seldom if ever found lurking in
the fitting rooms of chic dress shops, although that's not a bad
idea.

Even less are they likely to be found crouched in suburban
refrigerators.  All right, I will admit that a crappie does look
something like a piranha.  So what happened was, Lulu can't sleep and
gets up in the middle of the night and goes down to the refrigerator
for a glass of milk.  She opens the refrigerator door, reaches for the
milk carton, and a half-expired crappie flops out of the plastic bag in
front of her.  There is no way that it could have gone for her throat,
as she hysterically claimed.  I, on the other hand, would have been
happy to go for her throat, a voluminous organ that no doubt instantly
raised all the neighbors a good three feet straight up out of bed.  I
personally was raised to within a few inches of the ceiling.  Hovering
there, exuding cold sweat, I calmly tried to deduce the reason for the
psyche-shredding screech emanating from my kitchen.  The only thing I
could come up with was that a burglar had broken in and was feeding
Lulu through the pasta-making machine.

Later, when I learned that a mere crappie had set off Lulu's alarm, I
gladly would have paid a burglar to perform that service.

Rising menacingly from the couch, Bun pointed to the back porch and my
fish-cleaning table.  I slouched out, the bulging bag of bluegills
sagging from my weary casting arm.  It is at times like this that my
years of delving into the quirky, quicksand depths of philosophy pay
off.

I spread newspapers on the porch, then dumped the spiny, slimy pile of
bluegills on them.  Immediately, as I Stared down at the pile, the
philosophical question of guilt came to mind.  Would there be any
reality to the guilt I would feel if, instead of fileting the
bluegills, I used them in their entirety as fertilizer for Bun's
roses?

Would my guilt amount to anything in the endlessly expanding universe
with its trillions of stars, some of which were probably orbited by
worlds containing intelligent life, one being of which was probably at
that very moment staring down at the equivalent of a slimy, spiny pile
of bluegills, wondering how he could get out of fileting them?  That
would certainly be one test of his intelligence.  As to the question of
guilt, I could only answer, "Yeah, probably."  I had killed them.  So I
would filet and eat them.  I picked up a bluegill and had at it with
the fileting knife.

An exhausted and shivering person fileting ten thousand bluegills at
midnight could easily slip into insanity and scarcely notice it.  Thus,
the need to invent ever more difficult philosophical questions to keep
the mind firmly astride the track of rational thought.  Here is one of
the tougher problems I came up with: "If a wife has never expressed an
interest in hunting in the past or the present and shows no inclination
of doing so in the future, and if she has shown no discernible
enthusiasm for guns, and indeed mildly distrusts them, would it be a
relevant and significant act to give her a really nice .257 Roberts for
her birthday?"  In the existential sense, the answer is, of course,
yes.  Still, the risk must be weighed.  As the great philosopher
Immanuel Kant pointed out, under such circumstances one must be alert
to every slight deviation in one's normal existence, such as having
your oatmeal taste funny three days in a row.

Perhaps the single most difficult question that has stumped
philosophers since the time of Aristotle is, "Why do men fish and call
it sport?"  Clearly, the act of sport fishing is absurd, lying as it
does outside the realm of reason.  No sport fisherman can deny the
absurdity of his activity, particularly at one o'clock in the morning
as he stares down at a pile of twenty thousand bluegills that he must
filet.  Nevertheless, one must learn not only to accept the absurdity
of one's acts but to triumph over it.  In one of the Greek myths, a
character by the name of Sisyphus is caught by the gods in some
misdemeanors involving wine, women, and song while he is supposed to be
boringly dead.  For his punishment, the gods force Sisyphus to push a
huge stone uphill for eternity.  As soon as Sisyphus gets the stone to
the top of the hill, the stone rolls back to the bottom, and Sisyphus
must walk back down and start pushing it up again.  One version of the
myth has it that Sisyphus triumphs over his fate and the gods, because
on his way back down the hill, he laughs!  Okay, so it's not that big a
triumph.  Nevertheless, it appeals to me, because that is often the
only triumph we have over our fates--to laugh.

Bun jerked open the back door.  "Would you stop that silly cackling!"

she hissed.  "You'll wake the neighbors!  You've got every dog in the
block barking his head off."

So much for Greek myths.

At 2:00 A.M with the eyes of fifty thousand unfileted bluegills staring
gleefully up at me, I turned to the philosophical question of
identity.

Say, for instance, you have wooden boat A. You remove a piece from it
and use it to start building wooden boat B. You transfer each piece of
boat A to boat B.

Eventually, you have transferred all the pieces.  Now what is the
identity of the boat--is it A or B?  That's a tough question to answer,
unless, of course, I am doing the work, in which case boat B leaks like
a sieve.

Finally, with 200,000 bluegills glutting the porch at three o'clock in
the morning, I came to the ultimate philosophical question.  Is it
possible for lifeless matter, such as rock and ice swirling in space,
which the world once was, to evolve eventually into intelligent life,
or approximately one-sixty-fourth of the human population on the planet
today?  I mean, go out and look at a rock and ask yourself how long it
would take that rock to become a divorced public-relations man who is
three months behind in his child support.  Quite a while, right?  In
fact, just about the same length of time it takes to filet half a
million bluegills.

What's in a Name, Moonbeam?

One of my daughters and her husband were recently going through the
mystical ritual of naming a new baby, which, upon its arrival, they
claimed, would be either my grandson or granddaughter.  They had failed
to take into consideration that I am much too young to be a
grandfather.  As I told my wife, Bun, I'll be danged if I'll have some
little whippersnapper going about referring to me as " Gramps."

"Don't be so crotchety," she said.

"Crochety!"  I bellowed.  "Do you realize what you said, woman?"

"I must have been out of my mind," she said.  "I meant to say
'irascible."" "That's not any better."

"Miffed?"

"Okay.  Now, do you know the name they're thinking of giving this new
baby, if it's a boy?  Treat!"

I think Treat's a nice name for a boy."

"Nice!  Why you couldn't even call the kid without sounding like a damn
bird ."

"So what kind of name do you think is appropriate?"

"Well, certainly not any of these nature names you hear all the time
nowadays: Rain, Breeze, Sky, Snowflake, Moonbeam.  What's wrong with
the good, solid-sounding names we used to have?  They could call him
Horace, for instance.  Now there's a name with character built into
it."

"Horace!  I wouldn't feel right about calling a little baby Horace."

"He's only a baby for a little while.  He and you can put up with it
for a little while.  But he's going to be a man practically forever,
and Horace is a man's name.  I sure as heck can't imagine myself
saying, 'Watch closely, Treat.  I'm gonna show you how to gut an elk.""
"That's so disgusting!"  Bun said.

"Right," I said.  "Why would anyone name a kid Treat?  I can tell you
this, I won't call one of my grannnnn ... grannnnn ... one of my small
relatives Treat.  I'll give him a name of my own, probably Horace."

At this, I drifted into one of my dream sequences.  My small relative
was now ten years old, and he and I were on our way out to fish the
beaver ponds on the Conckle place.  Only the lad had shown any signs of
aging.  I looked the same as I always have for the past thirty-seven
years, since the age of sixteen.  The fishing trip was but another of
the many lessons in the extensive outdoor education I would provide the
youngster.

When we got out of my pickup truck, I locked it up tight and then put
the keys on top of the right front tire.

"Pay attention to this, Horace," I said.  "All outdoorsmen always hide
their keys on top of the right front tire.  No one would ever think to
look there if he wanted to steal your vehicle."

"That's a wonderful bit of outdoor knowledge, sir," Horace replied, his
eyes shiny-bright with appreciation.

As we were climbing through the barbwire fence onto the Conckle
property, Horace caught his back on a barb, tore his shirt, and cut a
bloody scratch across his back.  "Ha, ha," he laughed.  "I just cut a
very painful bloody scratch across my back, sir."

"You handled that very well, Horace," I said.  "As I have taught you
many times, a person cannot enjoy the outdoors unless he is willing to
laugh off a few cuts and bruises.  No outdoorsman ever screeches or
whines over a bit of pain.  Let me hear you do the laugh again."

"Ha ha, sir."

"Good.  You don't want to overdo it."

We then waded into the swamp that surrounds the beaver ponds, sinking
into the slimy, smelly muck almost up to our knees.  Actually, since my
knees were higher than Horace's, he sank in almost to his hips.  Clouds
of mosquitoes descended, and queued up in dozens of lines so each would
get its fair turn at us.  Deerflies soon arrived and tried to crowd in
line.  Threats were exchanged.  Fights broke out.

"This is bad," I said.  "Still, it is much better than some other
things you could be doing.  What are some of those things, Horace?"

"Lying around the house watching TV, " Horace said.  "And hanging out
in shopping malls.  Those are two of the worst things, sir."

"Right."

We soon emerged from the swamp and passed through a grove of aspen.  In
the branches above us, a bird went "Tweet."

"What, sir?"  Horace said.

"I didn't call you, Horace.  I never call you by that name."

As we strolled along the stream bank, I suddenly did a one-legger down
a beaver hole.  After a bit, I smiled grimly.

"It's all right, then," Horace asked, "to screech when you do a
one-legger down a beaver hole?"

"Only if you think the beaver has hold of your leg," I replied, "and
has mistaken it for a cottonwood limb.  That was what I surmised in
this instance.

By screeching the way I just did, you can often frighten the beaver
into letting go."

"That is a useful bit of information, sir.  Are the other words used to
frighten the beaver, also?"

"Yes.  However, they also frighten mothers, so I advise you not to use
them around your mother or Granny.  Use them only when you do
one-leggers and after you are twenty-one or older.  Now, if you will
excuse me for a moment, I would like to say this: OWWW!  OOUCH!

OOOOOH!  AHHHHHHHH!"

"When are you going to do the laugh, sir?"

"In about six months, Horace, in about six months."

We finally arrived at the beaver ponds, and I showed Horace how to hold
large boulders over the water in the slight chance that a beaver might
stick his head out.  I then made several deliberately bad casts in
order to show the boy how to remove a $1.50 fly from the top of a fir
tree.  I further demonstrated to him how to make a No.  14 dry fly
splash like a diving osprey, which is a good way to excite fish from
midday doldrums and get them to strike.  A good outdoorsman, as I told
Horace, must be a keen observer of the psychology of wildlife.  Later,
when he was older, I would teach him what Freud had to say about the
subconscious of fish, and why jung was ridiculed by Freud for his
interpretations of perch dreams.

I did not neglect his instruction in aquatic insect life, explaining
the various stages of development: egg, baby bug, child bug, adolescent
bug, and finally, of course, adult bug.

"I'm sorry, sir," Horace said, "but all this is too technical for me.

I'm only ten."

One of the worst things you can do while educating a youngster about
the outdoors is to push him along too fast.  I decided to instruct him
in more practical matters, such as how to build a campfire to cook a
couple of our trout.  I cleared a spot on the ground with my boot,
carefully arranged a handful of tinder on it, built a tiny pyramid of
sticks around the tinder, and touched a match to it.

"See," I said, "if you touch a match directly to the tinder, Horace,
nothing happens.  First you must strike the match on something.  Here
is a good way to strike a match.  Place the underside of your thumbnail
on the head of the match.  Then snap it down and back like this and
..."

"It's all right then, sir," said Horace presently, "to say those words
when you have fire shooting out from under your thumbnail?"

"Yes," I said.  "Also, I hope you noticed how I grasped my thumb with
my crotch and leaped about in a circle.  That is an excellent way to
extinguish the flames shooting out from under a thumbnail.  So, anyway,
that is how you build a fire.  Remember, don't practice it in your
bedroom.  Now I will show you how to take the fish home and trick
Granny into cleaning and frying them."

"That is something I would really like to learn, sir," Horace said.

"It is wonderful to be your small relative."

"Thank you, Horace," I said.  "You are a very fine small relative, and
someday you will be a great outdoorsman."

At that moment, my dream sequence was interrupted by the ringing of the
telephone.  Bun answered it.  She came back a few minutes later,
beaming.

"Guess what.  You have a new baby relative--a girl."

"Great!"  I said.  "Just think, in ten years I can start teaching her
all I know about the outdoors.  She will make a fine woodsperson.  By
the way, what did they name her, 'Moonbeam'?  'Snowflake'?"

"Clementine."

"All right!  Now that's a name I can live with."

Loud Screeching and Other Tips on Getting Lost Summer is that time of
year when thousands of otherwise normal citizens arc overcome with the
urge to rush out to the great forests and mountains of America and get
themselves lost.  Most of them, however, have not the slightest notion
of how to get properly lost, and if they do somehow manage to achieve
that exhilarating state, it is by mere accident.  Since getting lost in
the woods is almost always the highlight of any outdoors vacation, it
should not be left to chance.

Getting lost requires planning.  Otherwise, you will discover your
vacation almost at an end without your having been lost even once.

Then you will have to rush to get it done, and in the process you will
probably botch the whole thing.

if, for example, you have a week for your wilderness vacation beginning
on Saturday, set aside the following Wednesday for getting lost.  That
will give you Thursday, Friday, and the next Saturday to recover, to
let the shakes die down and the goosebumps recede, and to sit around
camp savoring the experience of, first, getting lost, and second,
getting found.  Some people claim that getting found is even more
satisfying than getting lost, but my research shows that people tend to
treasure the memory of being lost much more than of being found.

Another thing about getting lost on Wednesday is that it gives the
Search and Rescue people Thursday and Friday to find you, and therefore
doesn't use up their weekend.  My own forty years of experience at
getting lost in the woods has proven to me that it is much better not
to get lost at all than to be found by Search and Rescue people who
have spent their whole weekend looking for you.  They are often tired
and irritable and may have a tendency to regard you as a nuisance
rather than as a pathetic but nonetheless heroic lost person.

Actually, Search and Rescue people will regard you as a nuisance under
any conditions, but more so on weekends.  So plan your getting lost for
midweek.

Keep in mind, also, that you will need several days to polish the
account of your harrowing adventure for the folks back at work.

Imagine yourself telling the people at the office, "Yeah, I got lost in
the woods and sat down on a log and an hour later a park ranger came by
with a nature-study group and found me."  That simply won't do.  To
return to work without a polished and suspenseful story about getting
lost deprives you of much of the enjoyment of the experience.

Now, how should you go about getting lost?  Naturally, you don't want
to tell the other members of the party, "Well, now that it's Wednesday,
I think I'll wander off in the woods and get lost."  You must appear to
have some other objective in mind.  Efficiency is a good one.  If you
are camped in a public campground, simply say that you are going to
take a shortcut to the communal spigot to fill the water bucket.  Since
you have absolutely nothing else to do in a public campground but go
for water, someone may inquire as to the need for a shortcut.  You
could take three hours to fill the water bucket and nobody would care
or even notice.  Therefore, simply ignore any inquiries about the need
for a shortcut.

Shortcuts rank number one among ways to get lost quickly and
thoroughly.

The typical shortcut requires triple the time to traverse as the long
way around.  Some shortcuts to destinations no farther away than the
campground restroom stretch into days and weeks, which many lost
persons find excessive and even tedious.

Before starting your shortcut, take careful note of the position of the
sun.  This will give the impression that you know what you're doing but
otherwise is absolutely useless, because the next time you try to take
a bearing on the sun, it will have moved.  The North Star is much more
reliable, but you can only see it after dark, when you have other
things on your mind, such as the strange loud snuffling noises at the
foot of the tree you've climbed.  Under such circumstances, I've never
found that the North Star had the power to hold my attention for any
length of time and was best ignored.

Always study on which side of the trees the moss is growing.  Guides
and other experienced woodsmen are fond of giving this advice, because
looking at moss helps even them to get lost.  The moss would help you
get unlost if it always grew on the side of the tree facing camp or the
nearest population center or some other meaningful direction.  The sad
truth is that moss--rather perversely, I might add--grows on any side
of a tree it takes a mind to.  That is why it is such an invaluable aid
in getting lost.

If you have been out in the woods for an hour and still aren't lost,
you must resort to drastic measures.  Start picking wild berries, for
example.

When I was a child, my father and mother always used huckleberry or
dewberry picking for getting us lost in the woods in a quick and
efficient manner.  We would start out with our empty lard buckets roped
to our waists, the individual berries making pleasant little plunking
sounds as we dropped them on the tin bottom.  The standard joke shouted
back and forth, as we worked our way from bush to bush, was, "Is your
bottom covered yet?  Ho!  Ho!"  It was always good for a laugh.

"Over here," my father would call.  "These bushes are loaded."

"Oh, my goodness," Mom would say.  "Look up there!  The berries are as
big as grapefruit!"

We would charge from one berry patch to another, and in practically no
time at all we would be lost.  I always knew when we were lost because
my parents would suddenly get into a loud and complex argument about
the direction back to the car.  "I know the way!"  Dad would shout.

"The sun was off to our right and the moss was growing on the other
side of the trees, and ..."

"It certainly was not!"  Mom would yell.  "I remember, I climbed over a
big log and there was a little creek ...!"

Both of them would have wild, desperate looks in their eyes, and I
could see that it was time to introduce a little levity into the
situation.

"Is your bottom covered?"  I would ask, thereby learning that lost
persons are the toughest audience in the world to get a laugh out of.

What should you do once you know you are actually lost and not merely
standing behind some brush next to a shopping center?  Well, the first
thing you do is panic.  Get the panic out of your system immediately,
so that you can start thinking straight.  Inexperienced lost persons
often try to hold the panic in until it explodes and sends them
ricocheting off rocks and trees, or propels them over entire mountain
ranges.  Years ago, I invented the Modified Stationary Panic, which
consists of madly running in place and screeching.

(you may wish to substitute an inspirational song for the screeching,
but you would be the exception.) The MSP has the advantage over
uncontrolled panics in that when you are finished you are still in the
same place and in one piece, thus making yourself easier and neater for
Search and Rescue to find.

Once the MSP has been performed to your satisfaction, sit down and
calmly carve a notch on a piece of wood.  All lost persons carve
notches on pieces of wood, each notch indicating another day they've
been lost.  Carving notches is part of the tradition.  Actually, it's a
good idea to carve several notches right away, just in case you get
found within the next fifteen minutes.  The people back at work might
laugh if you showed up with only one notch on a stick.  Lost persons
must always plan ahead.

The Big Fix I had the opportunity the other day to ride in the perfect
outdoor vehicle, namely one of those vehicles that belongs to somebody
else.

In this case, the owner of the perfect outdoor vehicle was young Milt
Thomas, a lad scarcely older than his car.  Although I own a
four-wheel-drive pickup, the road up to the mountain stream Milt and I
intended to fish was so rough and terrible that I quickly realized that
the only appropriate vehicle for such terrain was Milt's 1968 sedan.

As he is still relatively inexperienced in outdoorsmanship, the lad was
slow to perceive why his vehicle was the more appropriate one to meet
the challenge.

"It's quite simple," I explained.  "The Blue Creek Road is rough and
dangerous, and requires a certain delicacy of motion to traverse.  Your
car just happens to possess that essential subtlety of traction
provided by tires unencumbered by tread.  See?  Now shut up and
drive."

Scarcely had we left the interstate and begun pounding up the Blue
Creek Road than the wisdom of taking Milt's vehicle became loudly
apparent.  A horrible sound began emanating from beneath the sedan:
WOPPITTY WOPPITTY WOPPITTY WOPPITTY!

"Aaaaigh!"  Milt cried.  "A flat!  Do you know what this means?"

"Oh no," I said.  "You don't have a spare?"

"Sure, I have a spare," Milt said.  "But we still have to change the
tire.  Then if we have another flat, we won't have a spare."

"Yeah, I already worked that out on my fingers," I said.

"We better change the tire and then go get your pickup," Milt said.

"Let's not be too hasty," I said.  "Going thirty miles back up into the
mountains without a spare, that's the sort of risk the true outdoorsman
thrives on.  Remember, Milt, it's risk that whets the edge of a
person's life."

"Really?"

"Yup.  Now, you hurry up and get that tire changed, while I have a cup
of coffee and peruse the fishing regs pamphlet one more time.  I'll be
over there in the shade of that tree if you need any advice."

I would like to point out here that I eschew making the pretense that I
am helping someone change a tire by standing next to him and
occasionally handing him a tool that is no more than six inches from
his hand.  Such a pretense allows the stander-by to lay claim to a
share of the work of the actual tire-changer.  "We had to change a
tire," he can brag.  But think how much better it is to remove oneself
entirely from the workplace and allow all the honor and glory to fall
intact upon the person who does the real work, traditionally the owner
of the perfect outdoor vehicle.

Unschooled as he is in logic and ethics, Milt failed to perceive the
favor I was doing him.  He seemed irritated even by my words of
encouragement, such as, "Let's speed it up, Milt.  Fish don't bite all
day, you know."

As Milt shaped his mouth into its whining mode, I quickly offered
inspiration.  "Milt, Milt, my boy, you should look upon this bit of
adversity as an opportunity to build your character."

"I don't see you building your character none," he retorted clumsily.

"That's because you fail to realize the strenuous mental labor required
to comprehend fishing regulations pamphlets these days.  Build my
character?

Why, just trying to understand the possession limit has put up four
walls, roofed, and added a porch to my character in the short time I've
been sitting here.  My character's overbuilt, anyway.  But to return to
my original point, you should consider having to change a tire as an
uplifting experience.  Now fixing a tire, as they used to do in the old
days, that was a journey of the spirit, Milt, a journey of the spirit,
fixing a tire."

"Gosh," Milt said, "for a moment there I thought I heard background
music.  You kidding me?  How could they fix their own tires in the
olden days?

They didn't even have VCRs back then."

"Yes," I said, "we are talking ancient times--pre-Columbian, pre-VCR.

I myself was but a small child when I first was witness to a
tire-fixing."

Tire-fixings were to become a regular and enlightening occurrence
during the years of my early youth.  My father was a man who believed
that a spare tire ranked as a shameless luxury, an accessory serving no
other purpose than evidence of conspicuous consumption.  He apparently
felt the same way about tire tread, if not the thin film of rubber
coating the cords of his tires.

The typical tire-fixing occurred on remote dirt roads, where my father
frequently took us on Sunday drives.  Deprived as I was of almost any
form of entertainment in those days, I looked forward to the drives
with great anticipation, largely because of the excitement and
adventure promised by the inevitable flat.

That first flat tire remains one of my earliest and most cherished
memories.  We were driving happily along, my father and mother in the
front seat singing the forty-ninth verse of "The Old Gray Mare," my
sister (the Troll) and I enthusiastically slugging it out in the back
seat, when suddenly the joyfulness of the moment was shattered by an
ominous sound: WOPPITTY WOPPITTY WOPPITTY!

"Oh dear, a flat," my mother announced.  "Well, you will just have to
get out and fix it.  You really should buy a spare."

Dad responded by banging his forehead up and down on the steering
wheel.

"Women!"  he snapped, in a tone suggesting the flat was Mom's fault.  I
wasn't sure how she had made the tire go flat, but supposed she had
driven a nail into it when no one was looking.

We all got out and gathered around the flat, staring at it as though it
were some aberration of nature.  Dad kicked the tire a few times.  That
effort failing to inflate it noticeably, he heaved a long sigh.  Hoping
to cheer him up, I suggested that we could all sing "The Old Gray Mare"
while he fixed the tire.  Dad stared at me as though I, too, were an
aberration of nature.  After that I kept my suggestions to myself and
concentrated on learning how to fix a tire.

A car jack apparently fell into the same category in which my father
placed spares and tread.  In any case, we never seemed to have a jack
with us.

Thus, Dad would go off in search of what he termed a "pry pole,"
usually one of the fenceposts a considerate farmer had stationed at
intervals around his field for just such an emergency.

Dad returned with a pry pole and built a fulcrum out of rocks and
pieces of rotting wood, giving no indication that he heard a word of
Mom's lengthy lecture on the subject of jacks.  Once the car was
levered up into the air, Dad crawled under it and blocked up the axle,
while the rest of the family sat on the end of the pry pole, bouncing
it up and down to Dad's hearty cries of, "Steady!  Steady!

Steadeeeee!

" As soon as the car was precariously blocked up, Dad remembered that
he had forgotten to loosen the lug nuts on the wheels, and so the whole
process had to be repeated.  This was the first time I realized my
father knew a foreign language.  "Sum guts um blotten putter fitzon
mang fudder dits!"  he shouted, although I can no longer remember the
exact words.

Nowadays, lug nuts are welded to their bolts by fiends in garages using
pneumatic wrenches, in the expectation that the tire might next be
changed at the edge of a busy expressway at night in the rain by a
pudgy middle-aged man using a hand-powered lug wrench.  Pneumatic
wrenches being unknown in the old days, lug nuts were held in place by
rust, an early fixative possessing the qualities of both holding
strength and cheapness.

Once the rust bond had been broken and the wheel removed from the axle,
Dad set about separating the tire from the rim.  To accomplish this, he
used a tire iron--an instrument now unfamiliar to the average
motorist--and a screwdriver.  The screwdriver substituted for a second
tire iron that was essential for removing the tire from the rim.

I studied Dad's technique carefully, to be ready for the day when I,
too, would be old enough and lucky enough to fix tires on remote
roads.

First, Dad shoved the tire iron between the lip of the tire and the
wheel and pried a six-inch section of the tire up over the rim.  Next,
he stuck in the screwdriver and pried up a three-inch section of tire
lip, leaving a gap about as wide as a man's hand between the
screwdriver and the tire iron.

Finally, holding the tire iron down with his knee, and the screwdriver
down with his other hand, he thrust his fingers into the gap and
attempted to jerk the rest of the tire lip up over the rim.  That was
when his knee slipped off the tire iron and the tire clamped shut on
his fingers with kind of a slurping sound.

Mom gasped.  The Troll emitted a frightened yelp.  My father, not to be
outdone in the dramatics of the moment, sprang to his feet and began to
dance around in an impromptu impression of a foreign-speaking maniac,
the tire swinging from his fingers like a vicious but toothless dog.

"Glop kitch feng dopper glitz!"  Dad shouted, clasping the tire under
one arm and wrenching his fingers free.  His lighthearted antics had
provoked me instantly to loud, delighted laughter, which was quickly
smothered by Mom's hand over my mouth and a vague but ominous
prediction as to my immediate fate should I persist.  Nevertheless, I
have long cherished the thoughtfulness of my father in taking time out
from a dirty and difficult task to entertain his young son, a person
generally regarded as somewhat peculiar by the family.

Eventually, Dad managed to eviscerate the tube from the tire.  For
those unacquainted with tubes in this day of the tubeless tire, I will
explain that tubes consisted of a donut shaped collection of patches
held together by narrow margins of rubber.  Dad hated tubes.  The
patching kit was equipped with a perforated lid used to roughen the
tube surface so that a patch could be affixed to it.  Muttering
incoherently, Dad scraped the tube so vigorously as to make one think
he was trying to torture out of it a confession of all its many crimes
against him.

At last the tube was patched, reinserted in the tire, and inflated with
a hand pump.  Inflating a tire by hand pump, I learned from my father,
is made easier by chanting a mantra as you pump: "Hennnn-UFF!

Henn-nn-nnUFF!

Hennn-nn-nn-nn-n-n-n-UFF!  " It works!

Two hours after the intrusion of the flat into our Sunday drive, we
were back in the car heading home, Dad slumped behind the wheel in
dense silence.

"There, there," Mom said consolingly, "that wasn't so bad, was it?

Still, if we'd had a spare and a jack ..."

"Women!"  Dad barked, his tone speaking volumes in explanation.  I knew
then once and for all that women are responsible for flat tires.

Even to this day I am alert to any suspicious movements in the vicinity
of my tires by my wife and daughters.  Still, they manage to sneak by
me from time to time and cause a flat.  I guess they can't help
themselves, and I try not to hold it against them.

"Hey," Milt called, rudely awakening me from a peaceful slumber.

"Guess what caused the flat.  A nail!  How do you suppose a nail got in
that tire?"

"Your wife put it there," I said.

"Wife?  I'm not even married."

"Oh, that's right.  It must have been your mother, then.  Or your
sister.

If not her, possibly a neighbor lady.  Women are responsible for all
flat tires."

"But why?"

"Nobody knows, Milt, but they are."  I paused and shook my head for
proper effect, just as my father had shown me so many decades ago, and
then barked: "Women!"

The Fine Art of Delay Young Wally Whipple showed up at my house the
other morning a whole hour late for the start of our hunting trip.  The
first thing he did was offer excuses.

"I'm sorry to be so late," he said, "but Retch wasn't ready when I got
to his house."  Here he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate
Retch Sweeney, who was grinning broadly and shaking his head in
disbelief.  "Retch wasn't even out of bed yet.  Then, while he was
making his lunch, he asked me if I would change a flat tire on his
wife's car so we could get started sooner.  After I got the tire
changed, he still had to oil his boots and put new laces in them.  So
he asked me to pick up after the dogs that had knocked over his garbage
can.  Next he had to look for his sleeping bag, while I changed the
bulb in his porch light.  Geez, if I hadn't given him a hand, we
wouldn't have got started on the hunt until noon.  Now I see you ain't
ready either."

"I suppose you are referring to the fact that I'm still in my
nightgown," I replied.  "It just happens you guys were so late I
thought you weren't coming, and I decided to go back to bed."

"You wear a nightgown?"  Retch said, a note of suspicion in his tone.

"Of course," I replied.  "Doesn't everyone?"

During the course of Wally's long harangue, I had scarcely been able to
suppress a chuckle of appreciation at Retch's skilled performance.  The
man was a master of delay.  I happened to know that Ernestine Sweeney's
tire had been flat for three days, the garbage can had been the sport
of dogs nearly a week earlier, and the porch light had been out for a
year.  Not bad, not bad at all.  A delay of that quality and magnitude
would be tough to top.

"I'll be ready in a jiff, " I said.  "Why don't you fellows sit down
and have a cup of coffee while I get dressed?  Oh, I nearly forgot!"

At this, Retch turned and headed for the door, mumbling that he didn't
want any coffee and would wait in the car.  As a master of delay, he
can recognize one coming from a mile off.

"Hold it," I said.  "We want to get this hunt under way as soon as
possible, right?"

Retch stopped, his shoulders sagging in surrender.  "As I was saying, I
nearly forgot that my wife asked me to perform an organ transplant for
her before I left."

"Good grief!"  Wally said.

"Yeah," I said.  "The organ is in the basement rec room and she wants
it transplanted up to the living room."  I thought the joke pretty
good, but it didn't get so much as a smile.  "Just so we can get
started a little sooner on the hunt, why don't you boys transplant the
organ while I get dressed?"

As soon as they had disappeared into the basement, I whisked the
nightgown off from over my hunting togs and started putting on my
boots.  A nightgown, for Pete's sake!  I limited myself to a couple of
brief chuckles as I listened to them grunting out what sounded like an
off-color Gregorian chant as they hauled the organ up the stairs.  An
organ transplant beats a flat tire, a spilled garbage can, and a
blown-out light bulb any day of the week.

And Retch knew it, too, even if Wally didn't.

There are many reasons for hunting and fishing delays, other than
getting help with a few chores around the house.  Take, for example, my
goose-hunting trip with two burly friends I'll call Keith and Gary.

I had been all but paralyzed by cold for the past hour, a particularly
grim circumstance, since we were still in the car on our way out to the
goose pits.  Soon I would be crouched in one of the muddy pits, with
icy rain rattling down on me like machine-gun fire.  All I could think
about was curling up under a nice warm electric blanket and dreaming
that I had never heard of goose hunting.  I needed to come up with a
delay, one that would last until the rain at least eased up to a
downpour.

"I love mornings like this," Keith said, throwing out his chest and
beating on it with his fists.  "It makes a man feel alive!  " "Yeah,"
Gary said.  "It's invigorating.  Grows hair on your chest.

Some guys, all they could think about on a morning like this would be
curling up under a nice warm electric blanket, the lily-livered
sissies."

"Pardon?"  I said.  "You say something to me?"

"No, I was talking about lily-livered sissies."

"Oh," I said.  "Hey, we're nearly to Greasy Gert's Gas & Grub Truck
Stop.

Let's whip in there for a quick cup of coffee before hitting the ol'
goose Pits.  just take a couple of minutes.  We can warm up a bit and
give the hair follicles on our chest a rest.  What say, guys?"

"I guess we got time for a quick cup," Keith said.  "But just one, no
refills."

It is important to note here the skill with which I eased my companions
into the first stage of a delay.  Both Gary and Keith are experts at
delay themselves, and had neatly parried my utility delay back at my
house, where I had tried a thrust at getting them to put the snow tires
on my truck.  Once on the road, however, they quickly relaxed their
vigilance, and I was able to take advantage of the element of
surprise.

As soon as we were seated in the restaurant, Gert herself came over to
take our orders.  "What'll ya have, fellas?"

"Three coffees, Gert," Gary said.

"And an order of French toast," I blurted out.

"We don't have time for French toast!"  Keith snarled.

"French toast takes hardly any time at all," I said.  "Besides, on an
empty stomach I can't get the full enjoyment out of freezing off
assorted parts of my anatomy in a flooded goose pit."

Twenty minutes and three coffee refills later, Gert returned with my
French toast.  I glanced out the window.  Icy rain still pounded
down.

"What's this white stuff on my French toast?"  I asked Gert.

"Powdered sugar," she snapped.  "What'd ya think?"

"I can't eat French toast with powdered sugar on it," I said.  "Cook me
up a new batch, plain."

"We don't have time!"  Gary screamed.  He reached across the table,
grabbed my slices of French toast, and wiped them across his pants
leg.

"There.  Now your French toast doesn't have any powdered sugar on it.

Eat!"

"Those pants clean?  Okay, okay, put down the knife!  I'll eat, I'll
eat.

Uh, say, Gert, you forgot my bacon."

"YOU DIDN'T ORDER BACON!"

"Did so!"

"Did not!"

I looked outside.  The rain had stopped.  Shafts of sunlight were
breaking through the clouds.  "Are we going to sit here and argue all
morning, or are we going to hunt?"  I said.  "Let's go.  Sometimes I
think you guys would do anything to stay out of a goose pit for a few
extra minutes."

Among the delaying tactics I've had pulled on me, the "roadside
historical attraction" is the one I hate most, possibly because it is
favored by my neighbor, Al Finley.  We'll drive by a sign announcing
HISTORICAL SITE ONE MILE.

"Historical site one mile," Finley says.

"I can read," I say.  "But we're not stopping.  Otherwise, we'll miss
the peak feeding time."

"We're not talking fish here, we're talking history.  Abe Lincoln,
Thomas Jefferson ..."

Knowing he'll give me no peace and probably even accuse me of being
unpatriotic, I swerve into the turnout, where a rustic board sign hangs
by chains from two posts.  The printing on the sign tells us that at
this very spot 150 years ago, the first white man to enter the region
probably camped for the night, although it may have been a spot
eighteen miles away, but it was easier to dig the postholes for the
sign here.

"Isn't that interesting?"  Finley says.  "You can almost see him camped
here, old Fletcher Malone.  Hostile Indians finally did him in."

"Small wonder, " I say.  "I've never laid eyes on the man, and he's
already made me hostile."

I have known many masters of the hunting and fishing delay, but none
greater than Mr. Cranston, a tall, bald man who lived down the road
from our place when Retch Sweeney and I were youngsters.  Retch and I
would be riding our bikes past his place and Mr. Cranston would call
out, "Hey, you boys want to go fishing with me tomorrow?  Be here at
five in the morning sharp."

Retch and I would be at his place at five sharp.  Mr. Cranston would
stick his head out of his garage.  "Be with you in a minute, boys.

I've got to do a little work on my outboard motor's carburetor.  SaY,
while you're waiting, would you mind pulling those nails out of the
pile of boards by the barn?  We can get away a little faster that
way."

Mr. Cranston always had huge piles of old boards around his barn.  Why
the nails needed to be pulled out of them at this very moment, before
we could go fishing, remained something of a mystery to us, but we
never questioned him about it.  About ten o'clock, Mr. Cranston would
finish his carburetor work and relieve us of our five hours of free
labor to go fishing with him.

We went fishing with Mr. Cranston several dozen times, but never once
that he didn't first have to spend four or five hours tinkering with
his carburetor.

"I sure wish Mr. Cranston would get a new motor," Retch would say,
pulling his ten-thousandth rusty nail and tossing it into a coffee
can.

"Or at least a new carburetor."

"Me too," I would say.  "He probably doesn't realize how much time he
wastes fooling with that old thing."

After several years of pulling nails for Mr. Cranston, we finally
caught on and found someone else with a boat to take us fishing.  Mr.
Cranston didn't seem to mind.  Every so often, we would go by his place
and see a couple of little boys out by his barn, enthusiastically
pulling nails.

"What you guys doin'?"  Retch would yell.

"Going' fishin' with Mr.  Cranston," one of them would yell back.

"What does it look like?"

As I watched Retch and Wally stagger into the living room to complete
the organ transplant, I thought once again of Mr. Cranston and what a
fine old gentleman he had been, taking the time to teach Retch and me
so much about fishing and, of course, the fine art of delay.

Gun-Trading As my friends will be quick to tell u I'm normally this
easygoing guy, practically brimming over with goodwill and love of
humanity.  It's only when I trade guns that I turn into a shrewd,
hardhearted sharpie.

Take last week, for example.

Gary Roedl called me up.  "You want to go to the gun show tomorrow?"

he asked.  "Maybe we can trade a few guns.

"Sure," I said.  "Sounds like fun.

I'm learning gun-trading from Roedl.  Fifteen years ago he started out
trading with a rusty single-shot .22 and has turned it into 47,000
guns.

Roedl is shrewd.

The next morning when he picked me up in his truck, I was carrying my
.48-caliber bolt-action, silver-inlaid, custom-checkered Thumlicker
rifle with the digital readout sights.  "You going to sell your
Thumlicker?"  Roedl asked.

"Nope," I said.  "This is my trading stock."

"Wow, " Roedl said.  "You're starting out in a big way."

"Right," I said.

"But you've got to be shrewd," Roedl said.  "Let me see your shrewd
look."

I gave him my shrewd look.  Roedl shook his head.

"You've got to practice more," he said.  "You still don't have the eyes
right.  Your squint is too tight.  Well, forget that for now.  Let me
see your dumb look."

I gave him my dumb look.  Roedl complimented me on it.  He said it was
so natural he would almost guess that I had been born with a dumb look,
which pleased me.  To trade guns successfully, you have to be able to
do a good dumb look.  Nobody wants to trade guns with somebody who
looks smart.

Next, I did my yawn for Roedl, and he said that was pretty good, too.

The yawn is one of the best weapons in the gun trader's arsenal.  It
works like this.  You see a trader who is offering a deal so absolutely
fantastic you want to leap in the air, click your heels, and give a
rebel yell.

Instead, you study the offered item with your look of casual
disinterest--have I mentioned the look of casual disinterest?--and then
you do your yawn.  It should be a wide, slow, gaping yawn, the kind of
yawn that implies that the deal being offered is so ordinary and boring
that it's practically putting you to sleep on your feet.

Master gun traders like Roedl can even talk while yawning:
"Hoooh-ah-you-ahh-hum-ever notice-yaaawph-that the barrel-ho-hummmm-on
your gun there-unnnnh ahhh-is badly warped-hummmm?  " I tried the
talking-yawn once but it didn't come off the way I expected.

A 300-pound gun trader snatched me off my feet, wrapped his arms around
me, and began performing the Heimlich maneuver, almost crushing my ribs
in the process.  He stopped when a piece of meat shot eight inches out
of my mouth, not realizing it was my tongue.

"What are you using for trading stock?"  I asked Roedl.

"Four empty .30-30 shell casings and a brass belt buckle, " he said.

"I'm not in the mood to do any heavy trading today."  He yawned.

The gun show was at the fairgrounds.  We bought our tickets, got our
hands stamped, and went into one of the buildings housing the show.  A
hundred or so tables had been covered with blankets.  Artistically
arranged on the blankets was every kind of gun I'd ever heard or read
about.  Tiny derringers rested in the shade of antitank guns.  There
were rifles, shotguns, revolvers, automatics, knives, hatchets, bows,
arrows, shells, bullets, cartridges, shot ... In short, just about
every conceivable thing even slightly related to weaponry covered every
flat surface as far as eye could see.  Actually, eye couldn't see that
far, because pressed shoulder-to-shoulder between the tables were
hundreds of prospective gun traders, their trading stock in hand, all
looking for that once-in-forever bargain.  I jumped right in.

I stopped at a table where the trader, a grizzled old chap in a
battered cowboy hat, had spread out his collection of fine old
muzzle-loaders.  He looked dumb.

"Is that an authentic Hawken rifle there?"  I asked.

"Duh, I don't know fer sure.  One gun looks about like another to me.

All I knows is my great, great, great-grandpap owned it.  I found it up
in the attic.  Think it's worth anything?"

The man obviously was so deficient I almost hated to take advantage of
him.  I yawned and stared off with my disinterested look.  "well,
shucks, I don't know.  I suppose I could take a chance on it."  Then I
Put on my dumb look to set him up for the coup de grace.  "I reckon I
could trade you my Thumlicker here for it."

The trader yawned so long I thought he had forgotten I was standing
there.  "Oh, all right," he said.  "I guess I could let you have this
here gun, which might be an authentic Hawken for all I know, if you was
to throw in a twenty-dollar bill with the Thumlicker."

Well, I could scarcely pull out my wallet and get the twenty-dollar
bill, my hands were so slippery from the sweat on them.  All the time I
was afraid the trader would catch on to me and back out of the deal,
but he didn't.  He just sat there looking dumb and happy, without the
slightest notion he was getting taken.

Shortly thereafter I made another fine swap, the Hawken for a knife
once owned by Jim Bowie, with only one of the blades broken, and a nice
little single-shot .22 rifle and a fine pump shot gun that some maniac
had painted red, white, and blue.  I calculated that a little paint
remover would make it good as new, which is what I told the man I
traded it to.  By the end of the day, I'd made so many trades my jaws
ached from yawning.  But I felt exuberant and triumphant, and not a
little shrewd.  Gun-trading gets in a man's blood.

When I met Roedl back at his truck late in the afternoon, he seemed a
little depressed.

"How'd you do?"  I asked him.

"Not too well," he said.  "I ended up with only three rifles, two
shotguns, and a revolver.  The stock on one of the shotguns has a small
scratch on it, though.  How'd you do?"

"Great!"  I said.  "I traded up from the Thumlicker to four empty
.30-30 shell casings and a brass belt buckle!"

"Hey, all right!"  Roedl said.  "That's a whole lot better than you did
last time.  You're starting to get the hang of gun-trading."

"No kidding?  You really think so?"

"Sure," Roedl said.  "No doubt about it."  Then he stared off at the
horizon and yawned.  Small wonder.  Gun-trading can wear a person
out.

Throwing Stuff As far back as I can remember, I've had a compulsion to
project objects through the air in the direction of a target of some
sort.  This compulsion peaked at about age eight and has been in slow
decline ever since, although I still cannot pass up a good throwing
rock.

My wife, Bun, and I were strolling along a beach the other day when I
suddenly pointed in the direction of her feet and shouted, "Look!"  She
bounded into the air and performed a series of acrobatics usually
associated with persons who have just stepped on a dead mouse with
their bare feet.  I admit to surprise at Bun's display of agility,
something rarely found in a person of her years and demeanor.

"What!  What!  What!"  she demanded in a voice not unlike the quacking
of a startled duck.  "What did you point at?  " "Why, nothing less than
an absolutely incredible throwing stone, that's what," I replied,
plucking the projectile from the sands.  "Look at the way it fits
perfectly the curve of my thumb and finger.  Notice the texture, smooth
but with just enough surface grain to provide good grip.  The
aerodynamics of its shape could scarcely be improved upon by
aeronautical engineers.  This is a throwing rock of rare quality, its
equal not likely to be found anytime in the near future.  Oh my gosh,
there's another one!  And another!  Bun!  Bun!

We've struck the mother lode of throwing rocks!  " "Give me one of
them," Bun said, blowing her hair out of her face and tucking her
shirttail back in.

"Why?"  I said.  "There's nothing here to throw at."

"Let me be the judge of that!"  she snapped.

Ever alert to possible marital pitfalls, I deposited the rocks in a
pants pocket, safely out of the reach of persons unfamiliar with the
dangers of accidentally discharging a throwing rock.

"Nope," I said.  "Too dangerous.  Gosh, that reminds me.  I remember
back when I was a kid ..."

Bun rolled her eyes heavenward.  "Please!  Please!  Spare me!"  she
cried.

I quickly assayed the area around us and, detecting no signs of threat
to our well-being, concluded that Bun was merely a bit distraught from
her recent fright.  I hurried on with the little tale of my youthful
experience with throwing things, hoping to distract her from the
unfathomable horror that seemed to hold her in its grip.

As a boy of eight, I simply could not pass up a good throwing rock.  I
would pick it up, rub the dirt from it with my shirtsleeve, test it for
heft and balance, and then deposit it in my pants pocket.  At the end
of the day, I would return home with my pockets so full of good
throwing rocks that my pants would come slouching through the door a
good five seconds behind me.  What did I do with the good throwing
rocks?  Well, I saved them.  I never wasted a good throwing rock by
throwing it.  Naturally, there was some expectation that one day I
would come upon a target worthy of being thrown at with a good throwing
rock.  The problem was that every time I came upon such a target, all
my good throwing rocks were stored in a box under my bed and
unavailable.  So I had to throw at the target with just any old rock
that was handy.  It was seldom if ever that a good target and a good
throwing rock converged on the same point in space and time.

Thus it was that the rock collection under my bed grew and grew, until
the floor joists under it creaked ominously, and any round object
dropped anywhere in the house rolled in the direction of my bedroom.

(I think it had something to do with Einstein's theory of relativity.)
And then one day, I looked under my bed and the rock collection was
gone!

"My rock collection is gone!"  I shouted.

"Oh my gosh!"  my mother exclaimed.  "We must have been burgled!  Is
anything else missing?  The furs, the jewelry, the silver?"

"We don't have any of that stuff," I pointed out.

"Thank goodness for that.  I guess all the thieves made off with was
your rock collection, terrible loss that it is."

There was something in her tone that aroused suspicion, but of course
nothing could be proved.

Wonderful as rocks were to throw, there were things even more
satisfying.

Once my friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I found a nest of chicken eggs
in a stump pile.  We had no way of knowing how long the eggs had been
abandoned by the hen who laid them, until, of course, we fired the
first one against a tree.  Then we were able to calculate that the eggs
had been ripening anywhere from two months to two years.  The rotten
egg made an explosive pop!  when it hit.  The egg gunk splattered
around the cottonwood and then began a slow slide down the trunk,
eating away the bark as it went.  The shock wave of poisonous gas
arrived a few seconds later, smiting us almost to our knees.

The odor was so potent and disgusting and nauseating that we could
scarcely believe our good fortune.

"Wow choke!"  Crazy Eddie said, wiping tears from his eyes.  "This is
gag great!"

"Yeah rrretch!"  I exclaimed joyfully.  "The smell almost gasp blinded
me!

Neato!"

We then set out to find targets of sufficient quality on which to
expend our deadly ammunition.  We blasted a few stumps, which seemed to
shudder in revulsion upon impact.  We defaced a large rock, probably
for the remainder of its life.  None of these targets, however, seemed
truly deserving of being hit by such fine projectiles as rotten eggs.

We looked around.  Several of the Muldoon cows stared at us
malevolently from the pasture.  The thought crossed my mind that ...

But Crazy Eddie looked knowingly at me.

"No, we'd better not," he said, his voice tense from unaccustomed
restraint.  "My pa probably wouldn't like it."

"How about just one cow?"  I said.

"Okay."

One of the nice things about Eddie was his willingness to compromise.

But before we could execute our plan, the cows somehow got wind of it
and galloped off.

"Hey, I know," Eddie exclaimed.  "We only got six eggs left.  You take
three and I'll take three, and we'll play war.  I'll hide over there in
the woodlot, see, and you attack my position."  I stared at Crazy Eddie
in disbelief.  In all the years I had known him, he had come up with a
lot of stupid and dangerous ideas, but this one ... this one ...

Why, it was absolutely brilliant!

"Yeah!"  I said.  "Let's do it!"

As it turned out, I had the opportunity to charge Eddie's position only
once.  Crouching low, I ran along using some high brush for cover.

Then I snapped a twig under my feet, and Eddie fired at the sound.  An
egg whizzed by my head and struck a limb three feet to my rear.  The
blast of odor lifted me off my feet and slammed me to the ground.  I
staggered out of the woodlot and collapsed behind a pile of brush,
trying to collect my senses, although my sense of smell now seemed
pretty well shot.

As I lay there recovering, I heard footsteps.  Eddie!  He was charging
me!  I snatched up an egg in my throwing hand and peeked over the brush
pile.

Much to my relief, I discovered that the footsteps weren't those of
Eddie but his father.  Mr. Muldoon stopped to fill his pipe, resting
his double-bitted ax on the ground.  I saw him sniff the air, turning
his head this way and that, then holding his tobacco pouch to his nose
and sniffing it.  He shook his head, lit his pipe, put the ax on his
shoulder, and strolled into the woodlot.  I heard one of his big boots
snap a twig.

Poor Eddie, I thought.  If only Mr. Muldoon weren't carrying that
double-bitted ax!  I really didn't want to see this.  Since I was
already halfway home, however, it was highly unlikely I would.

I was somewhat surprised to see Eddie the next day, alive and in one
piece.  He said he had survived the disaster pretty well, considering,
and figured that within a week or two he would be able to sit on hard
surfaces again.  He estimated it would be at least that long before his
mother let his father back in the house, and in the meantime Eddie was
enjoying the peace and quiet while he had the chance.  His father, he
said, got on his nerves a lot.

Certainly nothing was more exciting to throw than rotten eggs, but dirt
clods probably came in second in providing a satisfying throw.  I think
it must be at least twenty-five or thirty years since I've seen a
really fine dirt clod, but when I was a kid we had trillions of them
around.  The road in front of the house, where we got the car stuck all
the time in the spring, provided a sufficient supply of clods to last
me all summer.  The ruts would dry out and cake off into fine dirt
clods, just the right size for throwing.

The summer sun would bake them even harder.  You could pick up one of
these dirt clods and fire it at a tree, and it would explode into dust
with a wonderfully satisfying pop!

One summer we had a chicken named Herbie, who was indistinguishable
from all the other chickens, except he had a talent for getting out of
the pen and digging in my mother's vegetable garden.  One of the few
chores I had consisted of running Herbie out of the garden.  To do
this, I would lob dirt-clod mortar rounds at him.  Herbie would take
off running as soon as he saw me, his neck stretched out and his feet
churning like mad, and all around him the mortar shells would be going
off, WHOP!  WHOP!  WHOP!  I don't know if Herbie enjoyed the game as
much as I did, but he continued to escape from the pen and raid the
garden, so he must not have minded too much.  Your average chicken
leads a pretty dull life.

That summer my rich Aunt Alice came to visit from back east.  My mother
was particularly apprehensive about her visit, because, Mom said, Aunt
Alice was a wealthy and genteel lady and unaccustomed to some of the
rough ways of Westerners.  Alice apparently held the opinion that
gunplay still enjoyed a lot Of Popularity in our part of the country
and that human life hereabouts was generally regarded as cheap.  Mom
put on an elaborate welcoming dinner for Alice, and we all sat around
trying our best to act couth.  In the middle of dinner, my sister, the
Troll, went out to the well house for another jar of buttermilk.  Upon
returning, she reported disgustedly, "Herbie's out in the backyard
again."

"Oh good," I said, sliding my chair back from the table.  "I'll go have
a little fun with him.  Excuse me.  I'll be right back."

"Oh, you have someone to play with way out here in the country," Aunt
Alice said, smiling.  "That's nice.  I've always been partial to the
name Herbert."

" Herbie's just a chicken," the Troll said.

Aunt Alice laughed genteelly.  "My dear, don't be so quick to judge
others.  What we sometimes perceive to be cowardice often turns out to
be wisdom."

Aunt Alice had a peculiar way of talking, so we all just smiled and
tried not to look puzzled.

I excused myself and stepped out to the back porch.  Herbie saw me
immediately and made a dash for cover, his neck stretched out to its
limit.

Seeing I had only time for one shot, I snatched up a clod and, rather
than mortaring it, rifled it at him, leading his beak by about six
feet.  Much to my astonishment, and probably even more to the
chicken's, the sun-baked clod detonated right on Herbie's head.  The
chicken skidded along the ground in a cloud of clod dust, finally
coming to a stop, with not so much as a feather twitching.  I shrugged
and walked back into the house, dusting off my hands.

"Guess what," I announced."  I just killed Herbie."

Aunt Alice's forkful of mashed potatoes stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Wha-?  Oh, I see, you're making a jest."

"Nope," I said.  "I killed him deader than a doorknob."

"Are you sure?"  Mom asked, buttering a roll.  Do-it-yourself execution
of chickens was a routine activity around our place, and not one to
arouse much interest.

"Yeah, I'm sure," I said.  "I hit him in the head with a dirt clod.  He
didn't even twitch."

"MY gawwww ...!"  Aunt Alice said, turning whiter than her mashed
potatoes.

I thought she must have a soft spot for chickens and decided to change
the subject.  "Boy, is it ever hot out!"

"Well, if you ask me," the Troll said, "it served Herbie right to get
killed."

Aunt Alice's fork clattered into her dish, and Mom, too, noticed that
she seemed ill, her eyes wild and blinking, her lips quivering as if
she had unexpectedly found herself amid a band of cold-blooded
killers.

"Enough talk about killing," Mom said.  "This certainly isn't very
pleasant dinner conversation.  Alice, let me freshen that coffee for
you, and then I'll serve the pie.  Fresh huckleberry with homemade
vanilla ice cream!

Doesn't that sound good?"

Aunt Alice's head made a little jerking motion.

Reluctant to let go of the topic, the Troll asked, "You gonna bury
Herbie?"

"B-bury?"  Aunt Alice said.

"Naw," I said.  "I thought I'd just chuck him on the manure pile."

"Enough!"  Mom ordered.  "Now go wash your hands before you eat your
pie.

You'll give Aunt Alice the impression we're nothing but a bunch of
savages out here in the West.  Right, Alice?"

"N-n-n-," Aunt Alice said.

About then, Herbie staggered by the living room window, all
goggled-eyed and grinning stupidly, which is about the only way a
chicken can grin.

"Look, you didn't kill him after all," the Troll yelled.

"Herbie's still alive!"

Aunt Alice gave a little jump and stared at the chicken.  After a
moment she whispered, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," although I
wasn't aware that any of us had done her any particular favors.

Aunt Alice left a few days later, cutting short her visit by a week.

She was a nice lady, if a little strange, but we weren't sad to see her
go.  We'd had about all the couth we could stand for one summer.

By the time Bun and I had finished our stroll on the beach, I had
managed to collect a sizable arsenal of fine throwing stones.  When we
got back to our cabin, Bun still nursed a raging fit of feminism,
merely because I had offered the opinion that women are incapable of
appreciating the fine art of throwing stuff.

"Cramming all those dumb rocks in your pockets!"  she raged.  "That's
the most infantile exhibition of macho ... and your new pants, too
...

what about your new pants!  just tell me that!  What about your new
pants?"

"What about them?"  I said.  "We've only been home a few seconds.  My
pants will be along any time now."

Letter to Santa Dear Santa: For some time now, I have been in
correspondence with one of your subordinates, a Mr. Elf Watson,
Vice-President, Hunting and Fishing Gifts.  As you are aware, most
inquires to your firm ar now answered by computer.  Thus it was with
some relief that I finally received a reply from a real person, namely
Elf Watson--assuming, of course, Mr. Watson is a person.  (I confess
my ignorance as to which species elves belong, if any.) In the
beginning of our rather lengthy correspondence, Mr. Watson impressed
me as an amiable and ingratiating chap, and we soon arrived at a
first-name basis.  As time passed, however, Elf became increasingly
surly and, in my opinion, even somewhat irrational.  In his most recent
letter to me, he lowered himself to outright insults, inquiring
sarcastically, "What's a grown man like you doing writing letters to
Santa for, anyway?"  I am sure you don't approve of such belligerence
shown toward your clientele by your employees and will take appropriate
disciplinary action.

After my unhappy experience with Elf Watson, I decided to take my
problem directly to the top, namely yourself!  (I trust that by writing
"personal" on the envelope, I have ensured that this letter will elude
the computer and make its way to your desk.) Let me say, first of all,
that I have generally been well pleased with my Christmas gifts for the
past thirty or forty years, although there have been a few problems.

The insulated waders you brought me last Christmas were several sizes
too small, prompting my children to laugh hysterically when I tried
them on and my wife, Bun, to comment dryly that I looked like a roasted
wiener about to burst its skin.  I can understand how you and the elves
might enjoy playing a little joke from time to time, but in the future
I would appreciate a more serious attitude when it comes to filling my
gift order.

You also made a minor error last Christmas in giving my wife a nice
little side-by-side 20-gauge shotgun, since she doesn't hunt.  But
don't concern yourself about it.  As I told Bun, even Santa can slip up
on occasion, and there is no reason to hold a grudge against you.  I
think she is starting to come around, but I might suggest that this
year, instead of entering through the chimney, perhaps you should just
sling our presents on the porch as you go by.  Okay?

Also, when I said I wanted fish scales for Christmas, I meant an
instrument on which to weigh fish.  Either there was a communications
breakdown or Elf was pulling another of his practical jokes.  True, Bun
had a good laugh over the look on my face when I opened the package,
but she stopped laughing when she had to vacuum the fish scales out of
a shag carpet.  So when you sling our presents on the porch, don't go
"Ho, ho, ho" or any of that stuff, and you'll probably be all right.

It might be well to press the pedal to the metal on old Dancer and
Prancer, even though Bun still isn't much of a wing Shot.

But now to my point of contention with Elf.  The Christmas in question
was that of 1941.  As YOu may recall--and I hope your memory's better
than Elf's--I was six years old at the time and living with my folks in
a small log cabin in a remote valley of the Rocky Mountains.  The Great
Depression was over by then, as I've since learned, but nobody had told
my parents.  They thought we were still poor.  My father kept saying
things like, "Well, it can't get any worse than this," and then it
would get worse.  "Now I know we have hit rock bottom," he would say,
only to have the bottom drop Out from under us once again.  I had grown
quite accustomed to my father's optimistic pronouncements and didn't
Pay much attention to them.

Then one December day over our breakfast gruel, he muttered something
so ominous and frightening I forgot what I was doing and actually
placed some of the gruel in my mouth.

"Pickings have got so slim," Dad said, "I kind of doubt whether Santa
Claus will even be able to afford to show up this year.  I expect he's
busted just like the rest of us."

"Choke, petewweee, gag!"  I said.  "Wha-?  What did you say?"

Dad repeated himself, staring at me glumly through the gruel steam.

"But what the heck," he said, "you have lots of other Christmases ahead
of you.

you'll make up for it later.  No presents one Christmas ain't gonna
knock a big hole in your life, I guess."

Not knock a big hole in my life?  It would kick down all four walls of
it, that's what it would do, no presents for Christmas!  If Santa Claus
thought he could weasel out on me just because times were hard, he had
another think coming.  Why, I'd ... I'd ... Actually, there was nothing
I could do, as you, Mr. Claus, are well aware.  I probably could have
given up believing in you, but I was only en raged, not crazy.

Now, you may think this is one of those maudlin stories where at the
very last minute you, Santa Claus, do show up, and everyone stands
around laughing and wiping away tears of joy and saying this was the
best Christmas ever.

Forget it.  You, Mr. Claus, did not put in an appearance at our house
that Christmas in 1941.  I hope you are ashamed of yourself.

Sure, my father tried to get you off the hook by whittling me out a
little toy boat and saying it had come from you.  One reason I think he
said it came from you was he didn't want to take the blame for the boat
himself.

Dad wasn't much of a whittler and lacked patience.  The boat was a
board with a point at one end, and a long nail pounded into it for a
mast.  The mast was too heavy for the boat and caused it to float
upside down.

"This is the worst Christmas ever!"  I complained.

"Shut up," my father said, "and go play with your boat."

So, the way I see it, Mr. Claus, you still owe me a Christmas, and I
would like to collect.  If you will check your records, you will see
that in my letter to you in December 1941, I requested a tin boat that
you put these little wax candles into and lit them and they generated
steam and powered the little boat.  Having computed the interest,
compounded semiannually, on that little boat over a period of
forty-five years, I find that it now amounts to a thirty-eight-foot
sportfisher with twin diesels and a flying bridge.  I would like you to
pay up this Christmas, or I shall have to turn the matter over to a
collection agency.

You needn't gift wrap the boat.  Also, it would be best if you left it
at the local marina, with my name on the gift tag.  For gosh sakes,
don't try to drop it off at the house!  It might get peppered with
stray birdshot.

Sincerely yours, Pat The Cabin at Spooky Lake One dark and stormy night
in 1953, I participated in a strange and frightening occurrence at
Spooky Lake in the mountains of North Idaho.

Although the exact cause of that inexplicable event remains unknown,
Birdy Thompson and Retch Sweeney advanced the theory that we were
attacked by an enraged ghost.  I personally find that theory to be
sheer nonsense and even laughable.  Sure the ghost may have been a
little upset but he certainly wasn't enraged.

The three of us were college sophomores at the time, and had been
granted an unexpected leave of absence from the university.

Somehow--and this in itself is amazing--the mascot of a rival
university got hold of a hacksaw, sawed the lock off its cage, and made
its way over twenty-five miles of rough terrain, up the back stairs of
the dormitory, and right into our room, where it managed to conceal
itself from us for three days!  As we told the Dean, it was a terrible
shock for us to discover that we had been sleeping in the same room
with a 200-pound mountain lion, old, moth-eaten and toothless as he
might be.  We could certainly sympathize with the fright given the dorm
counselor when he investigated our room as a possible source of strange
smells, a more or less routine practice of his.  The man apparently
possessed an insatiable curiosity.

The Dean said our shock was certainly understandable and that he was
giving us the rest of the semester off, to let our nerves calm down.

We replied that we appreciated his thoughtfulness but that our nerves
were already much better.  He insisted, however, and thus it was that
we were released on short notice from our strenuous academic labors.

As we packed our belongings and cleaned up the room, no small task as
the result of the brief visit of the runaway mountain lion, we debated
over the most profitable use to make of our free time.

"Maybe we won't have all that much free time," I said.  "When our folks
get the letters from the Dean, they'll probably kill us right off.  I
think what we should do is write letters home ourselves, explaining the
whole misunderstanding and telling our folks that we are going on a
camping trip for a week or so.  Then we head up into the mountains and
camp out until everybody has time to cool down.  How does that
sound?"

"Good," Birdy said.  "Where shall we camp out?"

"You ever hear of Spooky Lake?  Rancid Crabtree told me about it.

Claims it's haunted.  Ha!  He says nobody goes there because they're
afraid of the place.  So Spooky Lake never gets fished.  Rancid says
it's fun of huge old trout just waiting to be caught.  Boy, it's funny
how people can be so stupid and uneducated as to believe in ghosts."

"Yeah," Birdy said.  "I hear Elk Lake is nice this time of year."

"Or Mirror Lake," Retch said.  "I been wantin' to get back to ol'
Mirror Lake for some fishin'."

"Nope," I said.  "It's settled.  We'll go to Spooky Lake, unless you
guys happen to believe in ghosts and are too chicken to ..."

"Naw, sounds okay to me," Birdy said.  "Educated men like us don't
believe in spooks, right, Retch?"

"Right," Retch said.  "I still think Mirror Lake would be nicer,
though."

That settled, we wrote our letters home and finished up the packing.  I
checked to make sure we had all our stuff--three shotguns, three .22s,
two .30-06s and a .30-30, six flyrods, six casting rods, twenty fishing
reels, three backpacks, three sleeping bags.  "I guess that's about
it," I said.

"Wait," Birdy said.  "Where's the book?"

"Oh, yeah," I said.  "We did have a book, a history of something or
other."

"What the heck," Retch said.  "We can always get another book if we
have to.  Let's go.  Man, what a relief to get away from studying all
the time!"

We stopped in our hometown long enough to stock up on grub at the
mercantile, and then headed out to Rancid Crabtree's shack to get
directions to Spooky Lake.

"Spooky Lake?  " Rancid said.  "You sure you fellers want to go up
thar?"

"Why not?"  I said.  "Don't tell me you believe that story about the
ghost that haunts the lake?"

"Course Ah do."

"Well, we don't," I said.  "We're college men now, Rancid.  College men
don't believe in all the superstitious nonsense about ghosts.  The
phenomena people call 'ghosts' are quickly revealed to be nothing other
than natural occurences, if investigated by means of objective and
rational thought."

"Ah didn't know thet," Rancid said, "Ah guess the ghost Ah seen at
Spooky Lake didn't know it neither."

"You're joshing us, Rance.  You didn't see any ghost."

Birdy cracked his knuckles.  "Know anybody else who claims to have seen
the so-called ghost, Mr.  Crabtree?"

"Oh, mebbe a couple dozen folks is all, most of them timid souls.

Pinto jack claims the ghost jumped him up near the old Spooky Lake
cabin one day, but you fellers know Pinto.  Can't believe a word he
says.  Swears the ghost gave him that white streak runs through his
ha'r.  Ah tells him, 'Good, It'll match the yeller streak runs down
your back."  Ha!  Well, thet riled him, and he comes back at me with
..."

"C'mon, Rance," I said, having heard about the exchange of witticisms
many times before, "did you just mention a cabin?"

"Yup.  Thar's a cabin thar all right, but Ah'd steer clear of it iffen
Ah was yous.  Got a bad feelin' about it, thet cabin.  Belonged to an
old trapper.  B'ar broke both his legs.  He drug hisself into the
cabin, tied splints on his legs with some rawhide, climbed into his
bunk, and died.

Coulda saved hisself the trouble of makin' the splints.  Now as Ah was
sayin', Pinto comes back at me with ..."

We spent the night at Rancid's shack and left early in the morning for
Spooky Lake.  I had asked Rancid if he wanted to go along, but he said
his old legs weren't up to a hike like that anymore.  He stood in the
doorway and waved goodbye as we drove away.  "Member what Ah told yous,
he called after us.  "Don't go n'ar the cabin!"

I laughed.  "Rancid doesn't fool me.  He's just as scared as anybody of
the Spooky Lake ghost.  Did you hear that malarkey about his tired old
legs?

Last summer I saw him walk straight up Blacktail Mountain without even
stopping to rest.  I was glad to hear about the cabin.  We can stay
there.

What say, guys?"

"I say we give Mirror Lake a try," Retch said, cracking his knuckles.

We left the car at the end of a logging road and started our climb up
the mountain, according to the complicated directions given us by
Rancid.  If there was a trail, it had grown up with brush, and now was
impossible to find.

I began to wonder about the reliability of Rancid's directions, vaguely
recalling a map of the area that showed a supply trail that ran to a
Forest Service fire lookout station.  If I remembered correctly, the
trail offered a much shorter and easier route to where Spooky Lake was
supposed to be.  Still, Rancid knew this country like the back of his
grubby hand, and there was no reason I could think of that he would
deliberately give us bad directions.  He did love a good practical
joke, but this would be too cruel even for him.

After three hours of climbing through steep, thick woods, we finally
broke out into the open on a rocky ridge.  There, down below us, Spooky
Lake sparkled like a blue jewel in the sun.  Even from that distance,
we could see the rings of feeding trout rippling out all over the
surface of the water.  I instantly regretted all the mean thoughts I
had begun to harbor about Rancid.

At the far end of the lake stood a grove of massive cedars.  In the
shadowy, park-like area beneath the cedars we could make out the shape
of the trapper's cabin.  It didn't look the least bit scary.  "The
cabin seems fine from here," I said.  "I think we're going to need it,
too."  I pointed to a mass of thunderheads looming over a distant range
of mountains to the west.

"Yeah," Birdy said.  "Looks like rain, all right."

"What are we standing here yacking for?"  Retch said.  "Let's go catch
some of those fish for supper."

The fishing was fantastic, for half an hour.  We hauled in one nice
cutthroat trout after another, and soon had plenty for both supper and
breakfast.  Then, as is the case with most hi mountain lakes, the bite
ended abruptly.  The lake grew still and glassy, and we headed for the
cabin.  The rising thunderheads cast a soft, ominous light into the
tiny valley.

Up close, the cabin did not appear so fine.  It looked as if it had
been tucked away among the cedars for a hundred years, which probably
was the case.

The mud-and-moss chinking had cracked out of the spaces between many of
the whitish-gray logs.  Moss covered the thick shake roof.  The door to
the tiny cabin was massive, made out of split cedar logs.  It leaned
unhinged against the doorway, held in place by a stout limb someone had
wedged against it.

Retch kicked the limb out of the way and, grunting mightily, set the
door aside, commenting that it was a good thing he was along, because
Birdy and I between the two of us probably couldn't have moved it.

"Yeah, sure," Birdy said.  "Well, give me brains over brawn any day.

Yeeesh!  Look in there!"

The cabin was a mess.  Garbage, animal droppings, pieces of old
clothes, a rusty tin plate, bones, and various other debris not easily
identified cluttered the floor.  "Looks almost as bad as our dorm
room," Retch said.

"Well, at least a mountain lion hasn't been cooped up in here for three
days," I said.  "Let's get the place mucked out.  We aren't at college
now."

By evening, we had the place tidied up and a fire built in the little
tin-can stove, which, after Retch had set the heavy door back in its
opening, gave off the only light in the cabin.  The mixed aromas of
sizzling trout and bacon and fried potatoes with onions filled the air,
as did the raucous sounds of our mirth at recalling our surprise at
finding the runaway mountain lion in our dorm room.  Quickly, the
strain of intense study vanished from our countenances, and a
disinterested observer might never have guessed that we had any college
education at all, so quickly did the three of us revert back to our
true, carefree natures.

"Ah, this is the life," Retch said, munching a crisp trout held in his
fingers like an ear of corn.  "You know what our problem was at
college?  We was just getting too civilized, that's what."

"Yeah, " I said, blowing on a handful of fried potatoes.  "But a man
needs an education.  Now, you know, most folks probably would be afraid
to stay in this cabin, because of all the ghost talk and all.  We take
the rational view, shrug off all that superstitious nonsense, and we've
got ourselves a nice cozy cabin to spend the night in."

"Speaking of the ghost," Birdy said, "I wonder where the old trapper
was buried around here."

"What?"  Retch said.  "Buried?  You don't suppose they buried him
around here, do you?"

"Probably wasn't much to bury," I said.  "According to Rancid, they
didn't find him until ten or fifteen years after he died.  Found his
skeleton in that bunk over there, with the rawhide and splints still on
his broken leg bones."

The three of us looked at the bunk.  At that moment, thunder shook the
tiny cabin and slivers of light leaped through the cracks between the
logs.

Big drops of rain began splattering down on the shake roof.  An eerie
gloom filled the cabin as the fire sputtered lower in the tin stove.

"Throw another stick in the stove," Retch said.

"Good idea," I said.  "It's, uh, starting to turn cool in here."  I
mopped sweat off my forehead with my sleeve.  "By the way, who wants to
sleep in the bunk?"

"WhY, I think I'll roll my bag out right here on the floor," Birdy
said.

"Me too," Retch said.  "You take the bunk, Pat."

"Naw," I said.  "Too cramped for me.  I'll sleep on the floor."

Sleep evaded me.  All my senses seemed to be standing guard in the
darkness of the cabin, alert to every rustle and scratch.  The fire
died out.

Minutes crept by like lame hours.  Then I heard a strange thumping
behind the cabin, as though some creature were trying to pound its way
through the logs.

A chill filled the inside of my sleeping bag.  I wondered if I should
disturb Retch and Birdy from their slumbers.

"Guys," I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"What?"

They seemed alert enough.  "Do you hear that strange thumping sound?"

"Been listening to it," Retch said.

"What could make a sound like that?"  Birdy whispered.

The sound stopped.  We listened.  All was still, except for the
cracking of knuckles and dripping of beads of sweat.  Then something
climbed to the roof of the cabin.  We stared up into the darkness,
above which the unmistakable sounds of two feet crunched across the
shake roof in the direction of the tin chimney.

"Something's on our roof," Retch said unnecessarily.

"Probably just a ..."  I said.  I couldn't think of what it might be.

"Sure," Birdy said.  "Th-that's all it is."

A hideous moaning came down our chimney: "Ooooooooahhhhhhhhhhh!

Ooooooaahhhhhhhhh!  Maw leeeeeeeeeeggggss!  Ooooooahhhhhhhh!  Mawwww
leeeeeegggggggs!  Ooooooooo ..."

That at least was what the hideous moaning sounded like.  It was
difficult to hear it clearly because of all the hyperventilation going
on inside the cabin.  A few frantic moments passed.  Slowly I began to
collect my wits, even as my heart beat wildly.

"Let's calm down," I said.

"Good idea," Retch said.  "No point in getting ourselves all worked up
over nothin'."

"All we have to do is think this thing through," Birdy said.

"No need to panic," I said.  "There has to be a rational explanation
for this."

"Yeah," Retch said.  "I got one for you.  It's that old trapper's
ghost!"

"Right," Birdy said.  "It's his ghost."

"I know that," I said.  "But what's the rational explanation for its
wanting to bother us?"

At that moment we raced onto the rocky ridge above the lake and paused
to see if we were being followed.

"You can drop the door now, Retch," I said.

"Well, shucks," Retch said.  "So that's what was slowing me down!"

We got back to Rancid's cabin just before dawn, but he was already
up.

He was sitting in his underwear having a cup of coffee.  His pants,
shirt, and jacket were spread out around the stove, drying.

"What happened?"  I asked.

"Fell in the crick," he said.  "What brings you fellers back so soon?

Thought yous was gonna stay up at Spooky Lake fer a week or so.  You
educated fellers run afoul of the ghost?"  He wiped a big hand across
his mouth, in a vain attempt to conceal his concern for us.

"Rain," I said.  "Too much rain.  We decided to risk going home
early."

"I hate rain," Retch said.

"Me too," said Birdy.  "Say, Mr. Crabtree, you know, that Spooky Lake
is kind of, well, weird.  I don't think I'd go up there ever again if I
were you.

Its name is pretty dam appropriate, if you ask me."

"It should be," Rancid said.  "It was named after the trapper what
built thet cabin.  TOm SPooky.  Say, did Ah ever tell you boys about
the turble thang what happened to poor ol' Tom?  A b'ar broke his legs
and ..."

"Yeah," I said.  "You told us."

Outdoor Burnout I recently received a letter from a young fellow who
has spent several months working in a state park.  "It is a 27,000-acre
park and wood reserve with three hundred head of American bison, deer,
antelope, turkey, elk, and highorn sheep, as well as nongame species
such as coyotes, porcupines, coon, golden and bald eagles, and an
assortment of ground critters."  He went on to describe the beautiful
lakes and streams stocked with brown, rainbow, and brook trout.

It seemed like a wonderful place to work, and I thought perhaps he was
getting around to inviting me up for a visit.  But then he said, "When
I first arrived here I mentioned to my associates that 'it would take a
lot of this to make me sick."  Well, I've reached my saturation
point!"

In other words, he was fed up to the eyeballs with beautiful streams
and lakes, forests, mountains, bison, highorns, golden eagles, the
whole sordid mess.  I knew at once that he was suffering from a classic
case of outdoor burnout.

Outdoor burnout, a term often used to describe camp cooking, is
actually a severe malady brought on by overexposure to beautiful
scenery, wildlife, and wilderness in general.  I have suffered from it
myself.

By the time I was seven years old, I had spent most of my life in a log
cabin surrounded by forest.  Everywhere I looked there was nothing but
trees--big trees, small trees, skinny trees, fat trees, green trees,
brown trees, trees, trees, TREES!  So many trees can drive a person
mad, and very nearly did me.

Even the house was made of dead trees, trimmed and peeled but
nevertheless retaining the unmistakable character of trees.  At
breakfast, I would glance up and there would be the trees, peering at
me from all angles.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"  I would scream.

My father would give me a quizzical look and say, "Son, if you're not
gonna eat the rest of your gruel, pass it on over here."  Dad was not a
man to coddle a person suffering from burnout.

Such was my hatred of trees that if we happened to drive by a logging
camp, I would yell out the car window, "Cut em all down!  All of
them!

You hear meeeee?"

I loved a good forest fire.  My father would come in from fighting a
forest fire off in the mountains somewhere, drop his smoke-blackened
self into a chair, and say, "We couldn't hold her.  Fire topped out and
jumped the line.

Went up the side of Wolf Mountain like a blowtorch.  Wiped out a lot of
timber."

Delighted, I would gleefully clap my little hands.  "Tell me again,
Dad, how the fire burned up all the trees!"

Dad would pull back from me and say to Mom, "I tell you, the boy ain't
right.  We get some money we better take him in and get his screws
tightened."

Eventually, we moved into open farm country, broken only by a woodlot
here and there, with the forests off at a sensible distance.  I was
amazed and relieved to discover that trees didn't blanket the entire
world.  It made life seem worth living.

After a while, I didn't mind trees as decoration, a patch of them here,
a row there.  I even developed an affection for a huge old solitary
cottonwood out in the middle of our pasture.  One summer day I took a
picnic lunch out and ate it in the cool shade of the tree, listening to
the wind rustling softly through the leaves.  The tree seemed nice.  I
smiled up at it.  The tree dropped a huge limb and tried to squish
me.

So much for trying to start a meaningful relationship with a tree.

As I grew older, of course, I learned to love the woods and the great
outdoors in general.  This was because I didn't live there, but made
only periodic visits, to fish, hunt, camp, pick berries and mushrooms,
that sort of thing.  When I got tired of the wilds-five days was, and
still is, about my limit-I went home.  Sure, just as much as the next
outdoorsperson, I enjoy sleeping in a dirty, soggy sleeping bag,
freezing one side of me and roasting the other at the campfire, choking
on woodsmoke, eating green hash and granite biscuits, and so on.  No
matter how much fun it is, though, after about five days the enjoyment
begins to wane.  I start to long for the roar of traffic, the smell of
exhaust fumes, the clamor of shopping malls, and the haunting, melodic
wail of sirens in the night.  Then I know that outdoor burn out is not
far off.

Frequently, I run into people who spend their entire lives in the
woods.

As a general rule, I notice that their appreciation for their
environment will have diminished.  I spent a night recently with Sam
Scuppers in his cabin up at High Meadows.  In the morning, the first
rays of sun softly illuminated the meadow, with patches of wildflowers
dappling the delicate greens of the new grass.  A rainbow hung faintly
in the mist rising from the glistening steam, and standing in front of
the rainbow were a beautiful whitetail doe and her twin fawns.

"Wow!"  I said.  "Come look at this, Sam!"

Sam got up stiffly, pulled his suspenders on over his underwear, and
hobbled over to the doorway.

"Jeer cripes, " he said.  "It's just some fool deer."  Grumbling, he
hobbled over to the stove and put on the coffee.  it occurred to me
that Sam's outdoor burnout has been going on for about forty years
now.

I judged it to be terminal.

At the opposite extreme are some friends from Los Angeles whom I
recently picked up at the airport and drove up to my lake cabin.  As
they were getting out of the car, Bert yelled at his wife, "Back in the
car, Martha, back in the car or we'll suffocate!  There's no air
here!"

"Don't be silly, Bert," I said.  "Of course there's air here."

"I don't see any," he said, panicky.

I explained to Bert that only in large cities can you see the air.  In
most other places, air tends to be invisible.  Thrilled and amazed,
Bert and Martha took Pictures of the air to show their friends back in
Los Angeles.

"They wouldn't believe us if we just told them," Bert said.

I must confess that I myself have occasionally forgotten about outdoor
burnout.  Back in the days of my brief and unlamented career as a
free-lance photojournalist, I came up with a great idea for a photo
essay and queried a national magazine about it.  "What would be the
most wonderful place in the world for a boy to grow up in?"  I wrote
the editors.  "Why a national park, of course!  just think of a
youngster fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by beautiful
mountains, forests, lakes and streams, wildlife And so on.  The
editors, no doubt looking at the air outside their offices in a New
York skyscraper, wrote back that the idea sounded super to them and for
me to go ahead and do the photo essay.

My first problem was to find a boy about nine years old who lived in a
national park.  I unearthed one, the son of a park ranger, whose
parents happily volunteered the kid to be the subject of my photo
essay.  Terrific, I thought.  This essay is as good as sold.  I'll go
out and shoot a few dozen rolls of film of the kid enjoying his
wonderful and exciting life among mountains, lakes, wildlife, etc.
Nothing to it.  My reputation as a photojournalist would be made.

I drove a thousand miles or so to the park, found the rustic house in
the rustic compound provided for park employees, and knocked on the
rustic door.

The kid's rustic mother answered.  "Oh, Pithwood," she called to the
kid.

"Guess what!  The photographer is here to take pictures of you enjoying
your wonderful and exciting life growing up in a national park.

Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Pithwood, slumped in front of the TV with an unwavering stare, snarled,
"How many times do I have to tell you!  I ain't going to do it!"

The free-lance photographer, who hadn't slept for days and had just
driven a thousand miles plus and whose fingers were still frozen in the
position of being clamped around a steering wheel, laughed uneasily.

"Ha ha.

What does he mean, he ain't going to do it?"

Wishing I had thought to bring along a power winch, I finally managed
to move the lad away from the TV and out into the open air of the
park.

Once outside and alone with the boy, I assumed that fake cheerfulness
adults use with children who refuse to believe they are having fun.

"KnOw what, Pithwood?  We're going to hike over to 'Huge
Billion-Year-Old Cedar Tree' and you get to climb up into one of its
giant hollows and pretend it's your secret hideout while I photograph
you!  Hey?  What say, guy?"

"You crazy?  I ain't climbing no tree.  I hate climbing trees.  YOU can
fall out of them.  They're dangerous."

"Well, we can put that off until later.  We'll start with something
fun.

You can sit on a rustic stone wall with the beautiful glacier in the
background and feed some bread to the squirrels.  Hey?"

" I hate squirrels, the dirty, fat, ugly little beasts, always nosing
around for a handout.  Forget the squirrels."

"I see, heh heh.  Forget the squirrels.  Well, Pithwood, perhaps you
can tell me something you like to do in the park."

"Something I like to do in this crummy, stupid park?  I can't think of
nothing.  oh, wait!  I got it!"

"Yes?  Yes?"

"You could photograph me slurping down a milk shake at the Old Rustic
Snack Bar, with a burger and fries.  How does that sound?"

I told little Pithwood how that sounded, first checking to make sure
his mother had gone back in the house, and then went on to explain that
I would be happy to photograph him slurping at the snack bar as soon as
we got the other photographs of him enjoying his wonderful and exciting
life in the national park, photos by which my future fame and fortune
hung in precarious balance.

He reluctantly acquiesced.

After seemingly endless days of slogging about the park, shooting
pictures, Pithwood and I one afternoon wearily made our way to the Old
Rustic Snack Bar, as had become our custom after each day of
shooting.

We slumped down at a split-log table and ordered milk shakes and
fries.

"Listen, Pithwood," I said.  "I really appreciate your going through
with this sham of letting me photograph you pretending to love your
wonderful and exciting life in a national park."

"You're welcome," he said.  "Just don't ask me to do it again.  I hate
this crummy park."

"No kidding, pal," I said.  "What a rotten place for a kid to grow up
in.

By the way, if you could grow up anyplace in the world, where would it
be?"

Pithwood's face brightened.  "Disneyland!"

"Sounds good to me.  Hey, smell that, Pithwood.  Nice, huh?"

"Yeah," he said.  "It comes from the parking lot.  It's called car
exhaust."

"I know.  Back in the city where I live, you can smell car exhaust
anytime you want.  Especially in the morning, during rush-hour traffic,
when the exhaust fumes come wafting over our neighborhood in nice thick
blue-black clouds.  And off in the distance you can hear the screech of
tires and the blare of horns."

"Gee," Pithwood said, "I wish I lived there."

"I don't blame you, pal.  Maybe someday, huh?"

I didn't bother to send the magazine my photos: Pithwood frowning at
Bridal Veil Falls; Pithwood sneering at squirrel; Pithwood throwing
rocks at deer; Pithwood littering patch of wildflowers; Pithwood
yawning at Spectacular Canyon; Pithwood consulting his watch at Eternal
Bliss Vista ...

Poor kid.  You would think his parents would have had better sense than
to raise him in a place like that.

Advanced Duck-Hunting Techniques Dave Lisaius is a great duck hunter,
but very secretive about his techniques.  "C'mon, Dave," I pleaded with
him the other day.  "Tell me.  Is it some little trick you do with the
call?"

"Nope."

"Okay, it's the way you set up the decoys, isn't it?"

Dave shook his head.

"You'd better tell me," I threatened.  "Otherwise I'm not going to give
you any more fishing tips."

He was instantly unnerved, or so I judged by his attempt to distract me
by holding his sides and making raucous, annoying sounds.

But I was not to be put off.  "Furthermore, I won't give You any advice
on how to hunt whitetail deer."

"Stop!  Stop!"  he cried, holding up his hands.  "You're killing me!"

Then he emitted a weird, loonish shriek and beat on his thighs with
both fists.

"As for my instructing you on the best procedures for hunting elk--I
..."

" Stop!  Please stop!  Have mercy!  I'll tell!  I'll tell!"

"Good," I said.  "I really don't like having to use threats about
withholding my fishing and hunting expertise but ..."

"I said I'd tell!  Now stop!  I can't stand any more."

As soon as he had composed himself, Dave went on to explain his secret
duck-hunting techniques in detail.  I have not had the opportunity to
field-test them, but they seem highly promising to me.

"Deception," Dave said.  "Deception is the key to successful duck
hunting.  Master deception and you've mastered the sport."

"I know that," I said.  "I know all about camouflage, decoys, duck
blinds, and duck calls."

"That's all secondary," Dave said.  "Now to begin with, here is a
little trick that almost never fails to bring in ducks."

He held up one hand with the fingers straight but clustered tightly
together.  Then, with his other hand, he began to fold down the
clustered fingers one by one, all the while smacking his lips.

"Know what I'm doing now?"

"Yes, irritating me."

"This gesture simulates peeling a banana," he said.

"Right, first you pretend to peel a banana, then you put out the
decoys," I said, not without a trace of sarcasm.

"No, you've got it backwards.  First you put out the decoys, then you
pretend to peel the banana.  Got it?"

I nodded my head affirmatively.  "Sure.  What could be simpler?"

"I haven't known the ol' banana ploy to fail yet," Dave continued.

"Many years ago, I noticed that even when I hadn't caught so much as a
glimpse of a duck in over four hours, the instant I started to eat
lunch, a flight would go whistling directly over my head.  I started
doing some research.  I'd set my gun down close at hand, begin to
unwrap a sandwich, drop it, snatch up the gun, and usually nail a
double as the ducks went over.  I'd catch 'em totally by surprise."

But, Dave explained, using an actual lunch was messy.  For one thing,
until he became practiced in the maneuver, he used up as many
sandwiches as shotgun shells.  Other hunters would call out, "Hey,
Dave, that's a big sack of decoys you got there," and he would reply,
"No, this is my lunch.  The sack with the decoys is the small one."

In the excitement of the moment, at first he had trouble keeping the
procedure straight.  Once he bit into a shotgun shell while trying to
load a 10-gauge pickle into a 12-gauge gun.

Finally it occurred to him that ducks weren't all that smart.  He tried
just pretending to eat a lunch, and sure enough, here came the ducks.

He eventually refined the technique down to the simple banana-peeling
gesture.

This alone provided him with the reputation of being a master duck
hunter.

Not satisfied with mere mastery of the sport, Dave wanted to achieve
greatness, and he went on to develop even more sophisticated
techniques.  Here are just a few of them: The Long-Overcoat Trick--With
this maneuver, the hunter wears a long overcoat, one that reaches
nearly to his ankles.  He makes a show of leaning his shotgun against a
tree and walking away from it.  The ducks will wait until he is about
thirty feet from his gun.  Then they will fly in and begin cavorting in
the air above the hunter.  At this point, he whips a second shotgun
from beneath his overcoat and has at them.

Unloading the Gun--This bit of deception requires sleight of hand,
which should be practiced at home until the hunter becomes proficient
at it.  First the hunter shakes his fist at the duckless sky.  Then he
slumps his shoulders and hangs his head in the standard manner of
skunked duck hunters the world over.  He then makes a big pretense of
unloading the gun and inserting the shells in his vest.  But in fact
the shells he inserts in his vest are shells he has palmed earlier.

The gun is still loaded!  Finally, the hunter walks in the traditional
dejected manner back toward his car, occasionally kicking angrily at a
rock or stick.  He should remember to keep his head down so the ducks
can't see his smile.  Ducks can detect a smile on a hunter's face at
six hundred yards, and even though they think his gun is empty, they
will refrain from darkening the sky with their multitudes.

Toilet Tissue--It is a well-known scientific fact that a hunter
scurrying out of a blind with a roll of toilet tissue in hand will
bring in every duck within a ten-mile radius.  The trick here is to
have a second gun concealed some distance from the blind.

The Decoy--The hunter should obtain a mannequin from a department-store
supply house and dress it in hunting togs identical to his own.  An
hour before dawn, he sets out his regular duck decoys, with the
mannequin standing in the middle of them.  While concealed in his
blind, the hunter can pull a string that causes the mannequin's arms to
move, as if it were still tossing out the duck decoys.  As is well
known, ducks will drop everything else they are doing in order to fly
over a hunter while he is standing hip-deep in water arranging his
decoys.  Properly executed, the decoy ploy will provide excellent
shooting.

On those days when absolutely nothing is moving, the hunter may have to
resort to drastic measures to bring the ducks over.  Throwing the
mannequin into the water and causing it to thrash around as though it
were drowning brings fantastic results.  Ducks will fly twenty miles
out of their way to see a hunter fall out of his blind.  If the weather
is extremely cold and the hunter falls through a sheet of ice, ducks
will walk twenty miles for a chance at such first-class
entertainment.

The Cigarette Lighten-This is a simple but effective bit of
deception.

The duck hunter merely fakes the recommended procedure for thawing out
his frozen trigger finger by holding it in a lighter flame.  Since in
this case the finger is already thawed, it is a good idea to use either
a fake lighter or a fake finger.  A fake finger is especially useful
for veteran duck hunters whose real fingers have already been frozen
down to nubbins.  Finger nubbins are too hard for ducks to detect from
a great distance.  Ducks cannot resist Coming in once they think a
hunter's trigger finger has frozen up, and Dave recommends this ploy
highly.

Fake Game Regulations--This device can be expensive, but Dave claims it
is well worth the cost.  You have a fake game regulations pamphlet
printed up.

In it you have set the official opening and closing times for the day's
hunting fifteen minutes later and earlier respectively.  Then you let
the pamphlet appear to fall out of your pocket accidentally, making
sure that it is open to the page where the ducks can see the times.

"During those fifteen-minute adjustments in the fake opening and
closing times," Dave said, "You will have some of the best duck hunting
you ever had in your life."

"C'mon, Dave!"  I said, looking up from the pad on which I was
scribbling notes.  "You know good and well ducks can't read.  Here you
give me some good, sound, practical techniques for hunting ducks, and
then you try to pull this on me."

"You don't think ducks can read opening and closing times?"  Dave
said.

"Well, then, you're never going to master duck hunting, I can tell you
that right now."

THEY SHOOT CANOES, DON'T THEY?

By Patrick F. McManus HOLT AND COMPANY An Owl Book NEW YORK Copyright
(C) 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 by Patrick F. McManus Published by
Henry Holt, and Company, Inc. 521 Fifth Avenue New York, New York
10175.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McManus, Patrick
F.

They shoot canoes, don't they?

1. Outdoor recreation--Anecdotes, satire, etc. 2. Camping--Anecdotes,
satire, etc.  3. Fishing--Anecdotes, satire, etc.  4.

Hunting--Anecdotes, satire, etc.  ISBN 0-8050-0165-4

ISBN 0-8050-0030-5 (An Owl book, (pbk.)) First published in hardcover
by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1981.

First Owl Book Edition--1982

Designer:joy Chu Printed in the United States of America All stories in
this book originally appeared in Field & Stream or its allied
publications, Field & Stream Deer Hunting Annual and Field & Stream
Fishing Annual, with the exception of"Meanwhile Back at the B Western,"
which first appeared in Colt American Handgunning Annual 1979,
Aqua-Field Publication, Inc. ISBN 0-8050-0165-4 HARDBOUND ISBN
0-8050-0030-5 PAPERBACK Dedication TO DARLENE Also by Patrick F.
McManus Kid Camping from Aaaaiii!  to Zip A Fine and Pleasant Misery
CONTENTS All You Ever Wanted to Know About Live Bait but Were Afraid to
Ask...........1

The Green
Box................................................................8

Skunk
Dog...................................................................1


Cold
Fish...................................................................


6

The
Rifle..................................................................


35

They Shoot Canoes, Don't
They?..............................................43

My First Deer, and Welcome to
It............................................54

The Crouch Hop and Other Useful Outdoor
Steps...............................62

Meanwhile, Back at the B
Western............................................70

The Education of a
Sportsman................................................77

The
Gift...................................................................


89

The Sensuous
Angler........................................................100

And Now Stay Tuned for "The Camp
Chef"....................................."0

The Heartbreak of A
Stigmatism............................................."8

Sneed..................................................................


...126

The Hunter's
Dictionary....................................................134

Tenner
Shoes...............................................................140


Reading
Sign...............................................................150


Tying My
Own...............................................................159

Psychic Powers for
Outdoorsmen.............................................167

The Fishing
Lesson.........................................................174

The Hunting
Camp...........................................................183

If You Don't Mind, I'll Do It
Myself.......................................191

Useful Outdoor
Comments....................................................199 journal
of an
Expedition...................................................209

All You Ever Wanted To Know About Live Bate But Were Afraid To Ask
Surprisingly, many anglers are ashamed to admit that they fish with
live bait.  You'll run into one of these so-called purists on a trout
stream and ask him what he's using.  He'll say, "A Number thirty-two
Royal Coachman on a three-ounce leader."  Then he'll get a bite, snap
his line out of the water, and there will be a worm on his hook.

"That's the problem with these tiny flies," he'll say.  "You keep
catching worms with them."

The truth is that live-bait fishing has a long and noble history.  Live
bait was totally unknown to the early cavernen, who had to make do with
a rather limited assortment of dry flies, nymphs, and a few
streamers.

One day, whether out of exasperation or simple impatience, a cavernan
made a backcast with a gray hackle he had not bothered to remove from a
sage hen.  Instantly, it was taken by a brontosaurus.  The cavernan was
elated by his discovery, even though it was several centuries before
anyone learned how to take a brontosaurus off the hook.

The cavernan reasoned that if you can catch a brontosaurus with live
bait, you can surely catch fish with it, and he immediately began
conducting experiments.  He tried live chickens, ducks, and geese, but
he soon found these very undependable, particularly on casts that
passed directly overhead.

When he was about to give up and go back to dry flies, the cavernan
decided to bait his hook with a worm.  He cast out into a deep, dark
pool and immediately received the surprise of hir- life.  A
five-hundred-pound wild boar charged out of the brush and chased him
for eighteen miles, and he never did learn whether worms were good
bait.

Thus the discovery of worms as fishing bait was left to a humble cook
in the army of Genghis Khan.  After a busy day of conquering the
Civilized World, the Khan decided he would like fish for supper and
dropped a casual hint to one of his lieutenants.  The lieutenant, who
had had considerable experience with the Khan's casual hints, nearly
trampled three foot soldiers getting the news into the kitchen.

Dismounting, he said to the cooks, "Guess what?  Old G.K. wants fish
for supper."

Since fishing had been extremely poor and no one had had so much as a
nibble in days, the kitchen staff immediately bought tickets and caught
the first stage out of town, the single exception being a little hor
dourve specialist, Leroy Swartz, who knew absolutely nothing about
fishing.  Leroy had never developed the knack for plundering and
pillaging--though he wasn't bad at razing--and as a result his total
loot for the campaign was a spade with a broken handle.  For a reason
known only to Leroy, he started digging up the ground with the spade.

The lieutenant, assuming he was digging a grave, said, "If we can't get
G.K. any fish for his supper, you might as well make that big enough
for two."  Then Leroy started picking up worms and stuffing them into
his pocket, tomato cans not yet having been invented.  He grabbed a
fishing pole and went off to the nearest river, from whence he shortly
returned with his limit, in those days as many as you could carry plus
one fish.  Everyone danced and shouted over Leroy's discovery that
worms were excellent fishing bait.  Even the Khan was beside himself
with joy, a condition that caused Mrs. Khan considerable annoyance
since they slept in the same bed.  Leroy Swartz was henceforth known as
the Father of Worms, a title he did not much care for, but it beat
employment as a battering ram on the next fortress to be attacked.

Toward the latter part of the eighteenth century, grasshoppers were
discovered to be exceptional live bait.  Up until then they were
thought to be good only for devouring grain crops and causing
widespread famine.  One day an angler was walking along a country road
in search of a good place to dig a supply of worms.  He happened to
glance out into a field fairly alive with grasshoppers and noticed a
man leaping about on all fours and slapping the ground with his hat.

The angler thought the fellow must be crazy to behave in such a strange
manner and walked over to see what he was up to.  It turned out the man
was crazy, but the angler didn't discover this until he had helped him
catch a dozen grasshoppers.  Since by then it was too late to dig any
worms, the angler decided to bait his hook with grasshoppers--and the
rest is history.

Up until the Industrial Revolution and the invention of tomato cans and
the flat tobacco can, there were no suitable containers for live bait,
and anglers had to carry their bait around in their hands, pockets, and
hats.  In the case of grasshoppers, wealthy fishermen would sometimes
hire a boy to drive a herd of them along the bank.  In later years
worms were carried in pokes similar to those used for gold coins.

There is at least one recorded instance in which a card-playing
fisherman narrowly escaped lynching when he attempted to bluff with a
poke of nightcrawlers.

So much for the history of live bait.  We will now examine some of the
various kinds of live bait, where to find it, how to preserve it, and
assorted techniques for using it.

First off, there are only two kinds of bait: live bait and dead bait.

Worms, grubs, grasshoppers, minnows, and the like are live bait, unless
left unattended in a hot car too long, in which case they become dead
bait.  I have on occasion forgotten to remove a can of worms from my
car on a blistering July day, a mistake that has led to attempts to
bait hooks with little balls of worm paste, not to mention the
necessity of driving with all the car's windows open until
approximately the middle of February.  On the other hand, I've carried
around salmon eggs and pickled pork rind until they were showing
definite signs of life.

My favorite method of preserving live bait is to store it in the
refrigerator until it is ready for use.  There are two schools of
thought on the proper execution of this procedure.  Some hold it is
better to tell your wife first, and the others claim it is better to
let her make the discovery for herself.  I'm a member of the latter
group and have been ever since my wife came across a jar of my
hellgrammites while she was sorting through the refrigerator in search
of some mayonnaise.  The incident would probably have passed without
any lingering ill effects had she not at the time been entertaining her
church bridge club.  It is difficult to describe the resulting
commotion with any accuracy, but I learned later that cards from our
bridge deck were found as far away as three blocks and one of the
olive-and-avocado sandwiches served at the party turned up in a ladies'
restroom halfway across town.  Our dog was asleep on the front sidewalk
when the ladies left, and it was weeks before we could get all the
dents out of him left by their heels.

I have on occasion attempted to lay in a supply of worms during the
spring months while they are still near the surface and one doesn't
have to dig down to the aquifer to find them.  I'll stash a couple of
hundred of them in a washtub filled with dirt and feed them coffee
grounds.  The reason I feed them coffee grounds is that numerous people
have told me that that is what worms like to eat.  Whether they do or
not, I'm not sure.  In any case, I've yet to find a single worm when I
dump out the tub later in the summer.  I'm beginning to suspect that
worms can't stand coffee grounds (or maybe coffee grounds like
worms).

When you stop to think about it, where would your average worm develop
a taste for coffee anyway?

The beginning angler is often of the impression that there are only
three kinds of worms: small, medium, and large.  Actually, the size of
the worm makes little difference.  Temperament and character are
everything.  These two characteristics seem to be determined primarily
by environment.  For example, I've never found a worm raised in a
manure pile who could earn his keep as fishing bait.  Manure-pile worms
are soft and pale and accustomed to easy living.  To a worm, a manure
pile is a suite in the Ritz, a villa on the Riviera.  He never has to
worry about where his next meal is coming from.  (If he knew, he would
probably worry, but he doesn't know.) Manure-pile worms don't have any
street savvy.  Now, you dig up a worm out of a garden, an individual
who has been through a couple of rototillings, and that worm has been
around.  He's going to go out and put up a good fight.  Nothing builds
character in a worm like a good rototilling.

Some time ago a sporting-goods company sent me a package of
freeze-dried worms.  Honest.  At first I thought it was some kind of
veiled threat, but then I found a note saying that if I soaked the
worms in water they would reconstitute into fishing bait.  I stuck the
package in my backpack with my other freeze-drieds and a couple of
nights later at a mountain lake took it out and soaked the contents in
some water.  It turned out to be macaroni and cheese sauce.  "That's
funny," my friend Retch Sweeney said.  "I thought we ate the macaroni
and cheese sauce last night."  The freeze-dried worms never did turn
up.

The most troublesome of all live bait is the grasshopper.  By the time
you've caught enough of them you're usually too tired to go fishing.

Furthermore, grasshoppers are not content simply to sit around in a
bottle waiting to be fed to some fish.  Once a worm is in the can, he
pretty well knows his fate is sealed and will lie back and take it easy
until his number comes up.  Not so with grasshoppers.  They are no
sooner in the bottle than they're plotting their escape.  Every time
the lid is lifted to insert a new inmate, half a dozen of the others
will try to make a break for it.  While I was still a young boy, I
learned that the only way to foil their escapes was to shake the bottle
vigorously and then slip the new grasshopper in while the others were
still dazed.  What apparently happens is that the grasshoppers get high
from the shaking and like it so much that after a while you can hardly
chase them out of the bottle with a stick.  They just lie on their
backs, smiling.  Of course this is confusing to the new grasshopper,
who thinks he has been incarcerated with a bunch of degenerate insects
who keep calling out, "Come on, man, give us another shake!"

To my mind, the best live bait is the hellgrammite, an insect that
resides on streambeds and builds little cocoons for itself out of
pebbles.

Fish cannot resist them, in their shells or out.  They are the salted
peanuts of baits.  Not long ago I was fishing a stream in Idaho and
hadn't had a nibble all day.  Then I discovered a nice patch of
hellgrammites and within a half an hour had nearly filled my limit with
plump cutthroat.  There were a dozen or so other anglers on the stream,
and they were so astonished at my success that they could not help
expressing their awe by jovially threatening to slash my waders the
next time I was in deep water.  Finally, after I had creeled my final
catch, a couple of them came over and demanded to know what I was
using.

"These," I said.

"Jeer, those are ugly-looking things!"  one of them said.  "I almost
hate to touch them."

"Trout love'em," I said.  "Here, take a couple of mine just to try them
out."  I thought it was the very least I could do.

As I was climbing into my car, I heard one of the other fishermen yell,
"What was he using?"

"These nasty-looking things," the first fellow yelled back.  "Big, red,
white, and blue flies!"

I felt a little bad about the deception.  On the other hand, you can
never tell.  There could be such a thing as patriotic fish.

The Green Box The other day I came home and found my wife cleaning out
the garage.

She was covered from one end to the other with dirt and cobwebs.  Beads
of sweat were dripping off the tip of her nose as she came staggering
out of the garage carrying a huge green box in the general direction of
the garbage cans.

"You shouldn't be doing that," I scolded.

"I shouldn't?"  she said, putting the box down and massaging the small
of her back with both hands.

"No, you shouldn't," I said.  "I'm saving the stuff in that box.  Now
you carry it right back to where you found it."

I could tell I had hurt her feelings, partly because her eyes got all
teary and her mouth formed into this cute little pout, but mostly
because of the way she sprang forward and tried to crush my instep with
her sneakers.

After she had calmed down a bit, I explained to her that the box she
was attempting to commit to oblivion was filled with priceless relics
of my sporting youth.

"You must be thinking of some other box," she said.  "I checked, and
this one is just filled with a bunch of old junk."

"Ha!"  I exclaimed, thrusting my hand into the box and withdrawing an
artifact at random.  "And just what do you call this?"

"Junk," she said.

"Well, it just so happens that this little metal band is a 1950 deer
tag.

This is the tag of my very first deer."

"You shot your first deer in 1950?"

"No, my very first deer got away that year, but this was its tag."

The deer tag tripped the hair trigger of my reminiscence mechanism, and
suddenly the last hour of daylight was flitting away on the last day of
deer season, 1950.  I was crouched behind a log at the edge of an
abandoned apple orchard on the side of a mountain.  A quarter of a mile
away, my very first deer and several others were meandering down a
brushy slope in the general direction of the orchard.  My hope was that
they would step out into the orchard while there was still light enough
to shoot.  The only sounds were those of my own nervous breathing and
Olga Bonemarrow's impatient popping of gum in my ear.

"Jeer, I'm freezing," Olga said in a nasty tone.  "I don't know why I
ever let you talk me into this."

"Shhhh!"  I said.  I slipped out of my mackinaw and told her to put it
on over her own coat, which she did.  I myself was wondering why I had
talked Olga into coming along.  As a matter of fact, I hadn't had to
talk that much.

Olga had stopped by my place just as I was getting ready to go
hunting.

All I had said to her was, "Hey, Olga, how'd you like to take a little
ride up into the mountains with me?"

She had given me a long look.  "What for?"

I smiled mischievously, an expression I had been attempting to perfect
in front of my bedroom mirror for the past few days.  "You'll find
out," I said.

"It's something you ain't never done before."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Olga said.  "But okay."

It turned out that this was indeed Olga's first experience with
hunting.

She tried her best to conceal her surprise under a veneer of rage.

Despite my best efforts to keep her quiet as we waited for my first
deer to step into the orchard, she continued to growl and complain and
whine, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of my mackinaw.  In the
thicket on the far side of the orchard, my straining eyes picked up a
movement.  Then a buck stepped halfway out of the brush and ran an
inventory on the orchard.  This was it.  Tensely, I slipped the safety
off my Marlin .32 Special.

"Hey," Olga said suddenly.  "How do you unlock this dumb cheap
bracelet?"

I looked at her in horror.  Snapped shut around her wrist was my deer
tag!

I stood up, slipped the rifle safety back on, and jacked out the
shells.

My first deer vanished in a single bound.

"How come your eyes are watering?"  Olga said.

"'Cause I'm cold," I said.  "Give me back my mackinaw."

The sound of my wife's voice snapped me back to the present.  "I don't
know what's so great about an old deer tag," she said.  "Look, it's
even been snipped in two.  Why would you lock it and then snip it in
two if you never used it?"

There are certain things the female mind is incapable of fathoming, so
I ignored the question.  Rummaging around in the box, I found the first
dry fly I ever tied and held it up for my wife to view.  She screeched
andjumped back.

"It's just a dry fly," I told her.

"Thank heavens!"  she said.  "I thought the cat had killed another
bird."

"So, you're interested in birds, are you?"  I said, pulling from the
box one of my most prized treasures.  "This is the first grouse I ever
shot.  I mounted it myself."

"Why, that's just some feathers glued on a board."

"Actually," I explained, "I was a little close to the grouse when I
shot.

That's all that was left.  Anyway, I think that's all that was left."

It happened like this.  I had pursued the grouse into a swamp near my
home and had just stepped over a deep drainage ditch, my old
double-barreled 12-gauge at the ready, when I spotted the grouse on a
limb a scant twenty feet away.  He spotted me too, revved his engine,
and took off.  I pointed the shotgun and fired, thereby learning once
and for all the valuable lesson of having the butt of the stock pressed
firmly against one's shoulder, not six inches away from it, at the
moment one squeezes the trigger.  Even so, I probably would have
survived the impact a good deal better had not both barrels fired
simultaneously.  Upon regaining my senses, I immediately assumed I
would spend the rest of my life with my right shoulder wrapped around
my back in approximately the shape of a taco shell.  What really scared
me though was that I was cold all over, my vision was blurred, and I
couldn't breathe.

Then I realized that I was a five-footeight person standing in a
six-foot-deep drainage ditch filled with green slime.  I scrambled out
of the drain ditch with the alacrity of a person who has a profound
dread of green slime, and went in immediate pursuit of the grouse.  A
few feathers were still drifting in the air, but there was no other
sign of the grouse.  "I couldn't have missed at that range?"  I
mumbled, scarcely able to bring myself to accept the obvious.  It was
almost too sad even to think about.  I had vaporized my first grouse.

Glumly, I picked up as many feathers as I could find, took them home,
and glued them on a board, printing neatly underneath them with lead
pencil the words MY FIRST GROUSE, 1948.

"Maybe you just plain outright missed the grouse," my wife said.  "Did
you ever consider that possibility?"

"No, I would never consider that possibility," I informed her.

"Anyhow, if I missed, it wouldn't have been my first grouse, would
it?

How do you explain that?"

While she was still struggling with this flawless bit of logic I
extracted another relic from the green box.  "Now this lovely piece of
material is what remains of what once was one of my finest fishing
hats.  I called it my lucky hat."

"Looks like an old grease rag to me," my wife said.

"That's just because you don't have any true sense of aesthetics and
...

uh ... say, this is a grease rag!  How'd it get mixed in with these
valuables?

I bet I had you fooled when I let on like it was my lucky hat.  Heh,
heh."

"Heh, heh," she said without enthusiasm.

The next item extracted from the green box evoked a memory of high
school.  It was a moldy plug of tobacco, with one sizable chaw taken
from a single corner.

In the days of my youth I spent a great deal of time in the company of
an old woodsman by the name of Rancid Crabtree.  He was my idol.  More
than anything I wanted to be like Rancid, a man who owned himself, who
spent his life roaming the woods, hunting and fishing and trapping,
almost always enjoying himself.  I tried to emulate him in every way,
and even went so far one time as to try a chaw of tobacco.

On that memorable occasion, some of the guys and I were discussing
deer-hunting tactics in the back of the classroom while we waited for
the teacher, Mrs. Axelrod, to come in and start haranguing us about
the French Revolution, as if it had been our fault.  I casually hauled
out my plug of tobacco, took a good healthy chaw, then stuffed the plug
back in my pocket.

Not one of the guys so much as blinked, but I could tell they were
impressed.

At that moment Mrs. Axelrod sailed into the room and ordered us to our
seats.

Since she didn't even allow gum chewing in class, I decided I had
better get rid of the tobacco fast.  So I swallowed it.

A few minutes later, it became apparent to me that one does not
actually get rid of a chaw of tobacco by swallowing it.  The chaw, in
fact, was traveling up and down my esophagus like a yo-yo on a short
string, and was giving every indication that it was about to reenter
society at any moment.

"Now, who can tell us the underlying causes of the French
Revolution?"

Mrs.  Axelrod asked.  She looked at me.  "Pat."

I pointed a questioning finger to my chest, hoping to delay answering
until the chaw was on the downstroke"Yes, you, the green person with
the bloated cheeks!"  Mrs.  Axelrod snapped.

One second later I departed the room in a manner I hoped was not
totally without dignity but which was later described to me by Peewee
Thompson as a "sort of greenish blur."

Peering into the green box, I could scarcely refrain from emitting a
shout of joy.  There, nestled among such collector's items as gopher
traps, a single warped bearpaw snowshoe, a rusty machete, a jungle
hammock, a collection of spent cartridges, a collection of dried toads,
a perforated canteen, a casting reel encased in a permanent backlash, a
dog harness made out of nylon stockings, and other rare and priceless
momentos of my sporting youth, was without doubt what had to be the
world's most powerful hand-held slingshot.  I had thought the slingshot
lost to posterity.

The slingshot had been designed and built by me at about age ten.  I
describe it as hand-held because later I also had built a more powerful
slingshot, one that consisted of two live trees and a series of bicycle
inner tubes.  That slingshot almost earned the distinction of putting
the first human into orbit, a kid by the name of Henry, who, when a
gang of us stretched the inner tubes back to the limit of our combined
strength, failed to hear the order "Fire!"  Henry reported later that
the lift-off actually had been a lot of fun, but he had run into
difficulty at the termination of reentry.

The fork of the world's most powerful hand-held slingshot consisted of
a Y-shaped section of trunk from a birch tree that I hacked down with
my machete.  The bands were made of strips cut from a tractor inner
tube.  These strips were then woven together in such a manner as to
greatly increase their firing power.  The pouch consisted of a tongue
cut from a leather boot.

Whomper, as I called the slingshot, was a magnificent and awesome
instrument.

Originally, my intention in building Whomper had been to hunt elk with
it.  I was disappointed to discover upon its completion, however, that,
strain as I might, I could no more stretch the bands than if they had
been made of cast iron.  I considered this only a minor defect,
however, and took to carrying Whomper about with me in a special
holster attached to the back of my belt.  I also carried a regular
slingshot for utilitarian and sporting purposes.  It was this
combination of elastic armaments that resulted in one of my more
satisfying experiences as a youngster.

My old woodsman friend Rancid Crabtree had taken me to the Loggers
Picnic, an annual event in which the loggers competed in eating,
drinking, and feats of strength.  Rancid said he figured he could hold
his own in two of the categories but that he was too old and feeble for
feats of strength.

"Ah'll leave the feats of strangth to you," Rancid told me.

Actually, I figured I might do quite well in some of the events, but I
was immediately sent to humiliating defeat in arm wrestling by the
strapping offspring of a logger.

Rancid tried to console me.  "Don't fret about it," he said.  "Some of
them girls is a lot stronger than they look.  You'd a probly won iffin
she'd been a boy."

No doubt my defeat by Mary Jane Railbender would have gone unnoticed by
most of the picnickers had it not been for the presence of a large,
loud, loathsome fellow by the name of Whitey.  Whitey, though ten years
older than myself, was one of my most despised enemies and passed up no
opportunity to torment me.

"Har, liar, liar!"  he roared.  "Got beat by a little snip of a girl,
did you?  Har, liar, liar!"  He then rushed to spread the news among
the loggers and their kin, who, while they didn't exactly find the news
of my downfall sidesplitting, seemed at least mildly amused.  To me,
that constituted excessive mirth at my expense, and I stalked off
beyond the reach of their liar, liar's.

While I was drowning my sorrow in a bottle of orange crush, I happened
to notice a flock of crows flying over.  As was my practice in those
days, I sprang to my feet, drew my regular slingshot to its full
capacity, and let fly at them with a rock.  I missed the crows by a
quarter of a mile, but suddenly somebody yelled out, "Holy cow!  Who
threw that rock?  That's one heck of a throw!"

"That was just Pat," somebody else said.  "But he done it with a
slingshot."

"A slingshot!"  shouted out Whitey.  "Pat's got a slingshot?  Must be
made out of wishbone and a rubberband if he can shoot it, anybody who
lets himself get beat by a little girl in arm wrastlin'."  Whitey took
the little sounds of amusement from the other picnickers for
encouragement.  "Here, Shrimpy, toss me yore peashooter.  I'll show you
how a man does with a slingshot."

From deep inside me I could feel this great, evil, hysterical laugh
welling up, but I fought it back down.  Calmly, with just the right
touch of nonchalance, I reached behind me and drew Whomper from its
holster.  The big slingshot landed with a solid chunk at Whitey's
feet.

He stared down at it: the massive fork, the woven rubber bands thick as
a man's wrist, the boot-tongue pouch, all of it bound together with
wrappings of baling wire.

Even from where I stood I could tell he was impressed.

"C'mon, Whitey," shouted Rancid from the crowd of spectators.  "Show us
how a man does with a slangshot!"

"All right, I will," said Whitey, and he scooped up the slingshot,
fitted a stone the size of a walnut in the pouch, and hauled back.

Well, it was a terrible spectacle to have to witness, and I've always
felt a little remorseful that I enjoyed it so much.  Up to the part
where the buttons started popping off the front of Whitey's shirt and
flying about like shrapnel, I thought Whitey might actually stretch the
sling an inch or two.

But by the time the women and little children were sent away because of
the horrible sounds he was making, I knew there wasn't a chance.

At last, quivering with rage and exhaustion, Whitey threw the slingshot
to the ground.  "Ain't nobody can pull that thing," he gasped.  For a
second, I thought I detected a wave of sympathy, even admiration,
flowing from the spectators toward Whitey.

Then Rancid stepped forward.  "Shucks," he said.  "Let a feeble old man
give thet thang a try."  He grabbed up Whomper, hauled back until the
woven tractor-tube bands hummed like guitar strings.  He then shot the
rock out of sight.  His face split in a big grin, Rancid handed Whomper
back to me.  The loggers laughed and applauded and slapped both me and
Rancid on the back.  I never again had any trouble from Whitey.

When we were driving home, Rancid still had the big grin on his face.

"What's so funny?"  I asked him.

"Ain't nuthin' funny," he said through his teeth.

"How come you're grinning like that then?"

"Ah ain't grinnin'," he said.  "Ah thank Ah ruptured maw face pullin'
thet dang slangshot!"

My wife kicked the green box with one of her sneakers.  "All right, all
right, I won't throw thisjunk out if it means so much to you that you
have to reminisce for twenty minutes over every piece of it."

"What?"  I said.  "No, of course you're not going to throw it out.  I
won't let you.  Say, look at this!  Look at the stuff in this jar.

It's some of my old bear grease!"

"Oh, good heavens," she said.  "Now I suppose you're going to tell me
how you used to grease bears."

That really burned me up.  Who would have thought she would guess the
punch line of one of my best stories?

Skunk Dog When I was a kid, I used to beg my mother to get me a dog.

"You've got a dog," she would say.

"No, I mean a real dog," I'd reply.

"Why, you've got Strange, and he's a real dog, more or less."

Strange was mostly less.  He had stopped by to cadge a free meal off of
us one day and found the pickings so easy he decided to stay on.  He
lived with us for ten years, although, as my grandmother used to say,
it seemed like centuries.  In all those years, he displayed not a
single socially redeeming quality.  If dogs were films, he'd have been
X-rated.

I recall one Sunday when my mother had invited the new parish priest to
dinner.  Our dining room table was situated in front of a large window
overlooking the front yard.  During the first course, Strange passed by
the window not once but twice, walking on his front legs but dragging
his rear over the grass.  His mouth was split in an ear-to-ear grin of
sublime relief, and possibly of pride, in his discovery of a new
treatment for embarrassing itch.

"Well, Father," Mom said in a hasty effort at distraction, "and how do
you like our little town by now?"

"Hunh?"  the pastor said, a fork full of salad frozen in mid-stroke as
he gaped out the window at the disgusting spectacle.  "Pardon me, what
were you saying?"

During the next course, Strange appeared outside the window with the
remains of some creature that had met its end sometime prior to the
previous winter, no doubt something he had saved for just such a formal
occasion.  As he licked his chops in pretense of preparing to consume
the loathsome object, Mom shot me a look that said, "Kill that dog!"  I
stepped to the door fully intending to carry out the order, but Strange
ran off, snickering under his breath.

"More chicken, Father?"  Mom asked.

"Thank you, I think not," the priest said, running a finger around the
inside of his Roman collar, as if experiencing some welling of the
throat.

Fortunately, the dinner was only four courses in length, ending before
Strange could stage his grand finale.  A female collie, three dead
rats, and the entrails of a sheep were left waiting in the wings.

Mom said later she didn't know whether Strange was just being more
disgusting than usual that day or had something against organized
religion.

in any case, it was a long while before the priest came to dinner
again, our invitations invariably conflicting with funerals, baptisms,
or his self-imposed days of fasting.

Strange was the only dog I've ever known who could belch at will.  It
was his idea of high comedy.  If my mother had some of her friends over
for a game of pinochle, Strange would slip into the house and slouch
over to the ladies.

Then he would emit a loud belch.  Apparently, he mistook shudders of
revulsion for a form of applause, because he would sit there on his
haunches, grinning modestly up at the group and preparing an encore.

"Stop, stop!"  he would snarl, as I dragged him back outdoors.  "They
love me!  They'll die laughing at my other routine!  It'll have them on
the floor!"  I will not speak here of his other routine.

In general appearance, Strange could easily have been mistaken for your
average brown-and-white mongrel with floppy ears and a shaggy tail,
except that depravity was written all over him.  He looked as if he
sold dirty postcards to support an opium habit.  His eyes spoke of
having known the depths of degeneracy, and approving of them.

Tramps were his favorite people.  If a tramp stopped by for a free meal
at our picnic table and to case the place, Strange would greet him
warmly, exchange bits of news about underworld connections, and leak
inside information about the household: "They ain't got any decent
jewelry, but the silver's not bad and there's a good radio in the
living room."  The tramp would reach down and scratch the dog behind
the ears as a gesture of appreciation, and Strange would belch for
him.

Face wrinkled in disgust, the tramp would then hoist his bedroll and
depart the premises, no doubt concerned about the reliability of food
given him by a family that kept such a dog.

My friends at school often debated the attributes of various breeds of
dogs.  "I tend to favor black labs," I'd say, going on to recite the
various characteristics I had recently excerpted from a Field & Stream
dog column.

Somehow my classmates got the impression that I actually owned a black
lab and had personally observed these characteristics.  While I was
aware of the mistaken impression, I didn't feel it was my business to
go around refuting all the rumors that happened to get started.

Sooner or later, however, one of these friends would visit me at
home.

Strange would come out of his house and satisfy himself that the
visitor wasn't a tramp in need of his counsel.  That done, he would
yawn, belch, gag, and return to his den of iniquity.

"That your uh dog?"  the kid would ask.

"I guess so," I'd reply, embarrassed.

"Too bad," the kid would say.  "I always thought you had a black
lab."

"Naw, just him.  But I'm planning on buying me a black lab pup first
chance I get."

"I sure would," the kid would say, shaking his head.

As a hunting dog, Strange was a good deal worse than no dog.

Nevertheless, he clearly thought of himself as a great hunting guide.

"Fresh spoor," he would say, indicating a pine cone.  "We can't be far
behind him.

And for gosh sakes shoot straight, because I judge from the sign he'll
be in a bad mood!"

Chances of shooting any game at all with Strange along were nil.  He
had no concept of stealth.  His standard hunting practice was to go
through the woods shouting directions and advice to me and speculating
loudly about the absence of game.  I would have had more luck hunting
with a rock band.

Strange did not believe in violence, except possibly in regard to
chickens.  He couldn't stand chickens.  If a chicken walked by his
house, Strange would rush out in a rage and tell the bird off and maybe
even cuff it around a bit in the manner of early Bogart or Cagney.

"You stupid chicken, don't ever let me catch you in ths neighborhood
again, you hear?"

Some of our neighbors kept half-starved timber wolves for watchdogs.

Occasionally one of these beasts would come loping warily through our
yard and encounter Strange.  Since Strange considered the whole world
as his territory, he felt no particular obligation to defend this small
portion of it.  He would sit there, figuratively picking his teeth with
a match, and stare insolently at the wolf, who was four times his size,
its lip curled over glistening fangs, hackles raised, growls rumbling
up from its belly.  After a bit, the wolf would circle Strange, back
away, and then lope on, occasionally casting a nervous glance back over
its shoulder.  "Punk!"  Strange would mutter.

Probably the reason none of these wolves ever attacked Strange was that
they figured he was carrying a switchblade and maybe a blackjack.

Despite the peculiar passive side to his character, Strange did commit
a single act of violence that was so terrible my mother actually
considered selling the farm and moving us all to town.  At the very
least, she said, she was getting rid of Strange.

The episode began one warm spring evening when my grandmother sighted a
skunk scurrying under our woodshed.

"He's probably the one that's been killing our chickens," Gram said.

"I wouldn't be surprised but that he has his missus under there and
they're planning a family.  We'll be overrun with skunks!"

"Well, we'll just have to get him out from under the woodshed," Mom
said.

"Land sakes, a person can scarcely get a breath of fresh air in the
backyard without smelling skunk.  Maybe we should get Rancid Crabtree
to come over and see what he can do about it."

"He'd certainly overpower the skunk smell," Gram said, "but I don't see
that's any gain."

"What I mean is," Mom said, "maybe Rancid could trap the skunk or at
least get it to leave.  It's worth a try."

"I don't know," Gram said.  "It just doesn't seem like a fair contest
to me."

"Because Rancid uses guns and traps?"  I asked.

"No, because the skunk has a brain!"  Gram and Rancid were not fond of
each other.

The next day I was sent to tell Rancid we needed his expertise in
extracting a skunk from under our woodshed.  His face brightened at
this news.

"Ha!"  he said.  "Thet ol' woman couldn't figure out how to git a skonk
out from under yore shed, so Just thang she does is start yelling fer
ol' Crabtree!  If thet don't beat all!"

"Actually, it was Mom who told me to come get you," I said.

"Oh.  Wall, in thet case, Ah'll come.  jist keep the ol' woman outta ma
liar."

When we arrived, Gram was standing out by the woodshed banging on a pot
with a steel spoon and whooping and hollering.  The old woodsman nudged
me in the ribs and winked.  I could tell he was going to get off one of
his "good ones."

"Would you mind practicin' your drummin' and singin' somewhar else?"

Rancid said to her.  "Me and the boy got to git a skonk out from under
thet shed."  if Gram could have given the skunk the same look she fired
at Rancid, the creature would have been stunned if not killed
outright.

The glare had no effect on Rancid, however, since he was bent over
laughing and slapping his knee in appreciation of his good one.  It
was, in fact, one of the best good ones I'd ever heard him get off, but
I didn't dare laugh.

"All right, Bob Hope," Gram snapped.  "Let's see how you get the skunk
out from under there.  Maybe if you stood upwind of it, that would do
the trick!"

"Don't rile me, ol' woman, don't rile me," Rancid said.  "Now, boy, go
fetch me some newspapers.  Ahim gonna smoke thet critter outta thar."

"And burn down the shed most likely," Gram said.

"Ha!"  Rancid said.  "You thank Ah don't know how to smoke a skonk out
from under a shed?"

Fortunately, the well and a bucket were close at hand and we were able
to douse the fire before it did any more damage than blackening one
corner of the building.

During these proceedings, Strange had emerged from his house and sat
looking on with an air of bemusement.  There was nothing he loved
better than a ruckus.

"Maybe we should just let the skunk be," Mom said.

"Land sakes, yes!"  Gram shouted at Rancid.  "Before you destroy the
whole dang farm!"

Rancid snorted.  "No skonk's ever bested me yet, and this ain't gonna
be the Just!"

After each failed attempt to drive out the skunk, Rancid seemed to
become angrier and more frenzied.  Furiously, he dug a hole on one side
of the shed.

Then he jammed a long pole in through the hole and flailed wildly about
with it.  No luck.  He went inside the shed and jumped up and down on
the floor with his heavy boots.  Still no skunk emerged.  At one point,
he tried to crawl under the shed, apparently with the idea of entering
into hand-to-gland combat with the skunk, but the shed floor was too
low to the ground.  Then he grabbed up the pole and flailed it wildly
under the floor again.  Next he dropped the pole and yelled at me, "Go
git another batch of newspapers!"

"No, no, no!"  screamed Mom.

"Leave the poor skunk alone," Gram yelled.  "I'm startin' to become
fond of the little critter!"

Rancid stood there panting and mopping sweat from his forehead with his
arm.  "Ah know what Ah'Il do, Ah'Il set a trap fer him!  Should of did
thet in the Just place.  No skonk is gonna ...

At that moment, the skunk, no doubt taking advantage of the calm, or
perhaps frightened by it, ran out from under the shed and made for the
nearby brush.

"Ah figured thet little trick would work," Rancid said, although no one
else was quite sure which trick he was speaking of.  "And this way,
there ain't no big stank, which is how Ah planned it."

Then Strange tore into the skunk.

The battle was short but fierce, with the skunk expending its whole
arsenal as Strange dragged it about the yard, up the porch and down,
into the woodshed and out, and through the group of frantically
dispersing spectators.

At last, coming to his senses, the dog dropped the skunk and allowed it
to stagger off into the bushes.

Strange seemed embarrassed by his first and only display of heroism.

"I don't know what came over me," he said, shaking.  "I've got nothing
against skunks!"  Still, I couldn't help but be proud of him.

The skunk was gone, but its essence lingered on.  The air was stiff
with the smell of skunk for weeks afterwards.

"That dog has got to go," Mom said.  But, of course, Strange refused to
go, and that was that.

it was years before Strange was entirely free of the skunk odor.  Every
time he got wet, the smell came back in potent force.

"Phewi" a new friend of mine would say.  "That your dog?"

"Yeah," I'd say, proudly, "he's a skunk dog."

Cold Fish Show me a man who fishes in winter, and I'll show you a
fanatic.

Actually, I'll get the better of the deal, because for sheer spectacle
a fanatic doesn't hold a candle to a man who fishes in winter.

I have often thought that if you could capture a half-dozen winter
fishermen and put them in a circus sideshow you could make a fortune on
them: "Step right this way ladies and gentlemen--no children please, we
don't want to warp any young minds--and see the men who actually fish
during the winter!

They are amazing, they are absolutely astounding!  Their skin is blue,
their hair is blue, ladies and gentlemen, even their language is
blue!"

Much as it pains me, I must confess that I too am a winter fisherman.

It has been said that the first step toward recovering from this
affliction is to admit that you are one, but I have been admitting it
for years without noticeable effect.  Actually, I take a certain pride
in being a member of this select but compulsive group of hearty
anglers.  We even have a number of sayings: "No man is an icicle unto
himself, but each a piece of the whole cube."  And: "If one ice
fisherman is defrosted, another will freeze to take his place."  This
goes to show that you can't expect memorable sayings from a bunch of
demented fishermen.

Frequently I am asked why a man of My age and character persists in
fishing right on through the most bitter months of winter.  if I recall
correctly, the exact wording of the question is: "Why does an old fool
like you persist in going fishing in sub-zero weather?"

My answer is succinct and to the point.  "Shut up and help me off with
these bleeping boots.  And be careful with my socks!  I don't want my
toes falling out and rolling under the chesterfield!"

There is a thin streak of sadism that runs through the directors of
state fish and game departments.  I have long suspected the
requirements for fish and game directors include the following: "Must
be outstanding citizens of their communities; must have demonstrated
deep interest in outdoor sports and recreation; must have not less than
three years experience as fiends."

How else explain their declaring certain waters open during the winter
months?  indeed, I have no difficulty imagining the directors roaring
with maniacal laughter as they debate the subject of which waters to
open for winter fishing.

"Hey, fellows," says Milt Thumbscrew,"how about opening Lake Chill
Factor during February?"  He giggles wildly.

The other directors stomp their feet and pound on the table as they try
to withdraw from fits of hysterical laughter.

"Oh dear, that's absolutely great!"  says Adolf Wrinklebunn.  "Can't
you just see those poor devils up to their armpits in snow and ice,
fighting their way to the lake!"  He slides from his chair,
shrieking.

"And they aren't even out of their cars yet!"  screams the chairman.

"Oh, stop, stop, you're killing me!  Quick, somebody call for the
vote!"

Now, even though I know that is basically how and why certain water is
open for winter fishing, I find the enticement almost impossible to
resist.

Consider, if you will, a telephone conversation I had with my friend
Retch Sweeney a while back.

"Speak up," I said.  "The wind is howling so bad outside I can't hear
you."

"I said," Retch shouted, "I tried to get through to you earlier, but
the lines were down.  I guess the ice got so heavy on them they
broke.

Anyway, I got this terrible urge to go fishing."

"Well, that's easily cured," I said.  "Just go out in your backyard and
stand in a bucket of ice water while your wife shovels snow down the
back of your neck."

"I already tried that, but I still got the urge," Retch said.

"Have you talked to a psychiatrist?"

"As a matter of fact I did.  I ran into Doc Portnoy over at the
hospital.

He was the one who told me about catching a five-pound rainbow up on
the Frigid River.  It's open in February, ya know."

"A five-pounder!  Did he say what he caught it on?"

"Salmon eggs.  That was all I could get out of him before the nurses
rushed him into the furnace room in a last-ditch effort to thaw him
out."

"I'll get my gear together and pick you up in half an hour," I said.

Actually, it took me a bit longer than I had anticipated.  I hadn't
figured in the time it would take to stand in a bucket of ice water in
the backyard while my wife shoveled snow down the back of my neck.

When I was a kid still in my single-digit years, I got my start in
winter fishing under the tutelage of old Rancid Crabtree.  Rancid was a
man who believed in teaching a kid the basics.

You know how to check fer thin ice, boy?"  he would ask me.  "Wall,
what you do is stick one foot way out ahead of you and stomp the ice
real hard and listen fer it to make a crackin' sound.  Thar now, did
you hear how the ice cracked whan Ah stomped it?  Thet means it's too
thin to hold a man's weight.

Now pull me up out of hyar and we'll run back to shore and see if we
kin built a fahr b'fore Ah freezes to death!"

Our usual practice was simply to hike out on the frozen surface of the
lake or river, chop a hole in the ice, and try to catch some fish
before either the hole or we froze over.  One year, however, we built
ourselves a luxurious fishing shack.  it was made of scrap lumber,
rusty tin, tarpaper, and other equally attractive materials.  We put a
tiny airtight heater inside with the stovepipe running out through the
roof at a rakish angle.  I always expected the stovepipe to set fire to
the roof and was not often disappointed.

Having the roof catch fire became so much a part of our fishing routine
that Rancid would say to me, "Go put the fahr on the roof out, will
ya?

Ah thank Ah jist had a bite."

The truth is I was always glad for an excuse to step outside of the
shack for a breath of fresh air.  Rancid was a man who bathed only on
leap years, and the previous leap year had escaped his notice.  He
smelled bad enough dry; wet, he could drive a lame badger out of its
hole at forty yards.  Sometimes in the warmth of the tiny shack he
would actually begin to steam, and that was the worst.  I'd sit there
hoping the roof would catch fire so I'd have an excuse to step
outside.

Sometimes when I knew I'd be cooped up in the fishing shack with Rancid
for several hours on the following day, I'd try to induce in him the
desire to take a bath.

"You know what I like to do after a nasty chore like this," I'd tell
him as we worked together at his place.  "I like to climb into a nice
hot tub of soapy water and soak and scrub and soak and scrub and soak
and scrub Doesn't that sound good?"

"Nope, it don't.  Now watch what yore doin' thar!  How many times I got
to show you how to skin a skonk?"

Despite Rancid's aversion to bathing, the days we spent fishing
together in the fish shack were among the best I've ever known.  From
the darkness of the shack you could peer through the hole in the ice
clear down to the bottom of the lake and watch the fish move in to take
the bait.  And Rancid would tell me all the old stories over again,
changing them just enough each time so that they always seemed fresh
and new.  He gave me little fishing tips, too.

He said one good way to warm up bait maggots was to stick a pinch of
them under your lower lip.  I said I'd have to try that sometime when
the need arose.  After thirty years and more, the need has not yet
arisen, but it's a good thing to know anyhow.

Another interesting thing he told me was about the time he went fishing
in winter and it was so cold his line froze right in the middle of a
cast.  He said it was downright comical the way his linejust stuck out
in the air stiff as a wire from the end of his pole.  He had to stand
his line up against a tall snag and build a little fire near it.  As
the end close to the fire thawed out, the line just slid down the snag
and formed itself into a nice little coil.  Rancid knew all kinds of
neat fishing lore like that.

The one problem with the fishing shack was that dragging it about the
lake from one fishing site to another bore a striking resemblance to
hard work.  Rancid said that he didn't have anything against hard work
in principle and that if other folks wanted to indulge themselves in it
that was all right with him and he certainly wouldn't hold it against
them.  He said that some folks were born with that flaw in their
character and just couldn't help themselves.  All a decent man could
do, he said, was pretend that such folks were just as normal as anybody
else and that they should never be looked down upon or ridiculed or in
any way be made to feel inferior.

Rancid told me that what a normal man did when confronted with a task
that bore a striking resemblance to hard work was to sit down and try
to come up with an idea for avoiding it.  That is exactly what Rancid
did in regard to the fishing shack.

"Ah got a great idea," he said.  "What we is gonna do is rig up a sail
fer the fish shack!  We'll let the wind blow the fish shack along the
ice and we'll jist foller along behind and steer it whar ever we wants
it to go."

In practically no time at all, Rancid had a tall, slender cedar pole
bolted to the front end of the fish shack for a mast.  A massive canvas
tarp was converted swiftly into a sail.  A confusion of booms, lines,
and pulleys allowed the sail to be hauled up the mast, in which
position its general appearance was not unlike some of the sails on the
boats pictured in my geography book.

"Say, it looks just like a Chinese junk," I told Rancid, realizing at
once that I had hurt his feelings.

"Ah don't care iffin it looks like a whole gol-durn Chinese dump," he
snapped, "jist so it works."

Looking back through the corrective lens of time, I now realize that
Rancid was one of those men who just can't let a good idea be but have
to keep improving on it right up to the point where it turns into a
catastrophe.  I didn't know that back then, of course, and just assumed
that what happened was one of those unavoidable mishaps that occurred
with surprising regularity while I was in the company of Rancid.

Much to my surprise, the sail worked like a charm.  The gentle breeze
on the lake filled the billowing tarp and moved the little fish shack
steadily if somewhat jerkily across the wind-burnished surface of the
ice.  We walked behind or alongside the shack, guiding the little
vessel this way and that by pulling on various lines, much as one
guides horses with a set of reins.  Then Rancid came up with his
improvement on the basic idea.

"Say," he said, "Ah got me a good notion to get inside the shack and
jist ride along.  Ah bet Ah kin steer it jist by pushing a stick along
the ice through the hole in the floor.  Iffin the critter gits to
movin' too fast, Ah'Il jist drag maw feet to slow it down."

The breeze had fallen off for the moment, so we made fast all the lines
and Rancid climbed into the shack and made himself comfortable.  Later
Rancid was to accuse me of having dropped the spike through the latch
on the outside of the door, thereby locking him inside; but if that was
the case, the action was merely an absentminded reflex on my part and
bore not the slightest hint of mischief.  Besides, how was I to know
that anytime he wanted out I wouldn't be there to pull the spike out of
the latch?

I stood around outside the shack stomping my feet and rubbing my hands
together, waiting for a breeze to come up and get us under way again.

Every so often, Rancid would shout at me from inside the shack.  "Any
sign of wind out thar yet?"

"Nope," I'd reply.  "It's pretty quiet."  If I'd been more attuned to
the weather, I would have known that the particular quiet we were
experiencing was the kind known as "ominous."

I heard a distant rustling behind me.  Turning, I observed a rather
startling phenomenon.  Clouds of snow were billowing up off the far
side of the lake and moving in our direction.

"HOLY COW, RANCID, THE WIND ..."

"The wind's comin' up is she?  Hot dang!  Now yore gonna see ..."

He never finished his sentence.

As soon as I got to my feet after being knocked down by the first blast
of wind, I tried to track the fish shack as best I could.  I felt I
owed it to Rancid, since by then I had remembered dropping the spike
through the latch.

Rancid wasn't a person you wanted to have mad at you.

For a long ways, I could see the skid marks Rancid had made with his
boots on the ice.  After that I saw some scratches that looked like
they had been made by two sets of fingernails.  Then there were only
the ski marks made by the sled and an occasional board or piece of tin
from the fish shack.  Over several long stretches, where the shack had
become airborne, there were no signs at all.

After a while I came across two ice fishermen fighting against the wind
on their way home.  I asked them if they had seen Rancid go by in the
fish shack.

They said they had.

"I don't know what that durn fool will think of next," one of the men
said, "but he was reachin' out a little winder with a hatchet, and it
looked like he was tryin' to chop down the pole holdin' up that hay
tarp.  He went by so fast we couldn't rightly see what he was up to."

"Did you hear him say anything?"  I asked.

"Nothin' I'd repeat to a boy your age," the man said.

A half-mile farther on, I ran into another fisherman.  Before I could
ask him anything, he said, "Land sakes, boy, you shouldn't be out alone
in a blizzard like this!  Why, I just saw some farmer's hay tarp fly by
here.

Somehow it got hooked onto his outhouse and was draggin' it along
too.

just tearin' that privy all to pieces.  Strangest dang thing I ever
seen!  Anyway, come along with me and I'll give you a ride home."

I was about to refuse, when I glanced off across the lake and saw the
figure of a tall, lean man striding purposefully in our direction
through the clouds of driven snow.  Even though he was downwind from
me, I could tell it was Rancid.  I could also tell he was carrying what
looked like a piece of broken ski in one hand.

"I'll ride home with you on one condition," I told the fisherman.  "And
that is that you leave right now."

The Rifle At least once a week from the fifth grade on, I made it a
practice to stop by Clyde Fitch's Sport Shop after school.  Clyde was
always glad to see me, and we would josh each other.

"Hi, Clyde," I'd say as I came through the door.

"Don't handle the guns," Clyde would say.

"Yeah, there is a chill in the air," I'd respond.  "Folks say it's
gonna be an early winter."

"You got peanut butter on one of the twelve-gauges last time," he would
retort.  "I wish you'd find someplace else to eat your after-school
snack."

I would nod appreciatively at Clyde's sharp wit and mark up a score for
him in the air.  Then, as he turned to wait on a customer, I would hear
a soft sweet song beckoning me to the gun racks.  it would be the
rifles and shotguns singing to me: "You drive me to distraction When
you work my lever action," sang a .30-30.

"When you give my stock a nuzzle, You send chills down to my muzzle,"
trilled a.270.

"I lie awake nights After you peer down my sights," moaned a .30-06.

I'll admit they weren't great lyricists, but they had nice voices and
the melody was pleasant.  Before I knew what was happening, a .30-06
would have leaped into my hands and I would be checking its action.

"DON'T TOUCH THE GUNS!"  Clyde Fitch would yell, doing a fair
impression of an enraged businessman.

"Good, Clyde, good," I would say as I set the rifle back in the rack
and peered down at a sleek, inviting .300.  Apparently displeased by my
lack of enthusiasm for his performance, Clyde would rush over, grab me
by the back of my coat collar and belt, and rush me out the door of his
establishment.  We kidded around with each other like that for about
four years, occasionally working in new bits of dialogue but with Clyde
always opening with his favorite line, "Don't touch the guns!"  I
suppose the reason he liked it so much was that it always got a
laugh.

just a few days short of eternity, my fourteenth birthday finally
arrived.  I had expected it to come bearing as a gift one .30-30 rifle,
about which I had dropped approximately 30,000 hints to my family.  No
rifle!  I could tell from the shapes of the packages.  They were all
shaped like school clothes.  "Something seems to be missing here," I
said, nervously ripping open a package of jockey shorts.  "You sure you
didn't forget and leave one of my presents in the closet?"

"No," my mother said.  "That's the whole kit and kaboodle of them right
there."

"I was, uh, sort of expecting a, uh, thirty-thirty rifle."

"Oh," Mom said.  "Well, if you want a rifle, you'll just have to get
yourself a job and earn enough money to buy one."

It was not unusual in those days for parents to say brutal things like
that to their children.  There were no laws back then to prevent
parents from saying no and, worse yet, meaning no.  Life was hard for a
kid.  Still, I couldn't believe that my mother was actually suggesting
that her only son go out and find a job.

"Surely you are jesting," I said to her.

"No," she replied.

Naturally, I had heard about work.  My family was always talking about
it within range of my hearing, and, as far as I could tell, seemed
generally to be in favor of it.  I didn't know why.  Nothing I ever
heard about work made it seem very appealing.  My old friend Rancid
Crabtree had told me that he had tried work once as a young man.  He
said that he was supposed to cut down trees for the man who had hired
him, but when he picked up the ax and started to chop, his whole life
passed before him.  He gave up work then and there.

He said that he knew some folks loved to work, and that was fine, but
that he himself couldn't stand even to be near it.  Of the two opinions
about work, I favored Rancid's.

Still, if I wanted to hunt deer that coming fall, I would need a
rifle.

On the other hand, if I got a job, that would ruin my summer and leave
me only mornings and evenings and weekends to fish.  At best, I might
be able to get in some more fishing on days I was too sick to work.  I
weighed my need for the rifle against a ruined summer and, after much
long and painful thought, arrived at a distasteful decision: I would
have to borrow a rifle.

Then, as now, people did not stand in line to loan out their rifles to
beginning hunters, or to anyone else for that matter.  Rancid Crabtree
seemed to me to be the best prospect for the loan of a rifle.

"By the way, Rancid," I said to him casually one day, "how about
loaning me your thirty-thirty for deer season this year."

Rancid's face erupted into that beautiful snaggle-toothed grin of
his.

"Thet's a good-un," he said.  "Make it up yersef or somebody tell it to
you?"

"It's no joke," I said.  "I need a deer rifle, and I don't see why you
can't loan me your thirty-thirty."

"Wall, Ah would loan it to you except fer one thang," Rancid said.

"An' thet is, Ah don't want to."

Rancid had only two defects to his character: He had never learned the
art of mincing words, and you could never talk him into doing something
he didn't want to do.

I shook my head in despair.  "You're the only person I can think of,
Rancid, who might loan me a rifle.  I guess the only thing left for me
to do is to get a job and earn some money."

"Now don't go talkin' like thet," Rancid said, as soon as he had
recovered from the shock.  "A young fella like you, got everthang to
live fer, talkin' about getting' a j-j-jo-throwin' away his life.  No
sar, Ah won't stand fer it!  Now, hyar's what you do.  You go ask the
Inyun if you kin borry one of his rifles."

"Pinto jack?"

"Why shore, ol' Pinto'd give you the hide omen his scrawny carcass
iffin it had a zipper on it."

I found Pinto jack puffing a pipe on the front porch of his cabin, and
put my request straight to him.

Pinto jack smiled only on rare occasions, and this was not one of
them.

"You want to borrow my rifle?"  he said, studying me thoughtfully
through a cloud of pipe smoke.  "If I loaned you my rifle, what would I
use when I raided the ranchers and burned their buildings and drove off
their livestock, and like that?"

"Couldn't you use a bow and arrow for a few raids?"  I said.

"You tell me, how am I going to drive my old truck and shoot a bow and
arrow at the same time?  No, I got to have my rifle for raiding the
ranchers."

I looked crestfallen, having many years before learned that this was
one of the best looks to use on Pinto jack.

"Tell you what," he said after a moment.  "I could maybe let you use
the old rifle my father brought back from the Great War."

"First World?"

"Little Big Horn.  It's a single-shot and kicks a bit, but you're
welcome to it."

I rushed home lugging the monstrous firearm, pinned a target to a fence
post backed by a sandbank, paced off a hundred yards, drew a bead on
the target, and gently squeezed the trigger.  Later I heard that all
the livestock within a mile radius sprang two feet into the air and
went darting about in all directions at that altitude.  Apples rained
down out of the trees in the orchards.  Three lumberjacks swore off
drink, and two atheists were converted to religion.  My own
interpretation of the event was that I had just been struck by
lightning, a meteorite, or a bomb.  When my vision cleared, I knew I
was in trouble.  Not only would my folks be upset about my shooting one
of their fence posts in half, but the neighbors would be mad at me for
destroying their sandbank.  Nevertheless, I decided to try one more
shot, this one left-handed.  The second shot went off a little better,
since by now I knew what to expect.  It was easier for me to keep my
nose out of the way, too, because the first shot had moved it up into
the vacant area above my right eyebrow where it would be safe.  By the
time I had finished sighting in the rifle, I figured I'd be the only
kid in the school talent show who could applaud behind his back with
his shoulder blades.

My first deer managed to elude me that year.  Even though I had
opportunities for several good shots, by the time I had grimaced enough
to pull the trigger, the deer was always gone.  At the end of the
season, I returned the rifle to Pinto jack.

"Any luck?"  he asked.

"Nope.

"Well, don't feel so bad about it," he said.  "Come on in and have
yourself an orange pop, and I'll show you how I can applaud with my
shoulder blades.  Bet you don't know anybody who can do that."

By the time the next summer rolled around, it had become apparent to me
that the only way I was ever going to get a deer rifle was to earn the
money for it.  There was a dairy farmer by the name of Brown who lived
nearby and whose reputation in the community was that of a kindly, if
somewhat frugal, gentleman.  Out of desperation for a deer rifle, I
broke down and indentured myself to him at the rate of fifty cents an
hour manufacturing postholes.  Mr. Brown gave me the job after asking
if I thought I could do a man's work.  My ingenious reply was: "It
depends on the man."  The farmer said later that he supposed the
particular man I had been referring to was an Egyptian mummy.

For all his other drawbacks, Mr. Brown did not lack a sense of
humor.

About his other drawbacks.  It was only after going to work for him
that I discovered that he wasn't a kindly gentleman at all but the
former commandant of a slave-labor camp.  Our mutual misfortune was
that he had somehow missed the last boat to Brazil and had been forced
to escape to Idaho, where he took up dairy farming as a cover.

"Vork, vork!"  he would scream at me, slapping the leg of his bib
overalls with a swagger stick.  "Make die postholes, make die
postholes, fahster, fahster!"

And I would streak about the landscape, trailing fresh-dug postholes.

Sometimes, after glancing nervously around, I would step behind a tree
to catch my breath.  The farmer would drop out of the branches and
screech at me: "Vot you do-ink?  I not pay-ink you fifty rents an hour
to breathe!  Vork!

Vork!"

At day's end, my mother would drive over to the farm to give me a ride
home.  She and the farmer would chat about my capacity for hard
labor.

"I'm surprised you can get any work out of him at all," Mom would
say.

The old farmer would laugh in his kindly way.  "Actually, I have found
him to be a bit slow, but he is doing better.  just today, while he was
digging a posthole, I thought I detected some motion in one of his
arms."

Then he would give me a pat on my sagging, quivering back.  "Off you go
now, lad.  See you bright and early in the morning!"

Odd, I thought.  He seems to have lost his accent.

Bright and early the next morning the farmer would tell me: "Vork,
vork, lazy Dummkopf!  Make die postholes, fahster, fahster!"

At the end of the very hour in which I earned the last fifty cents I
needed to buy the rifle, I resigned my position.  When I told the
farmer I was quitting, he tried to conceal his disappointment by
leaping in the air and clicking his heels.  There are few things, by
the way, more disgusting than a dairy farmer clicking his heels in the
air.

"I'll say this for you," he told me.  "You have dug what I regard to be
the most expensive postholes in the whole history of agriculture.  If
it was possible, I would gather them all up and put them in a bank
vault rather than leave them scattered randomly about my property.

Nevertheless, lad, should you ever find yourself in need of ajob to buy
yourself, say, a shotgun, why youjust come to me.  I'll be happy to
recommend you as a worker to my neighbor, Fergussen, who, though I may
say a harsh word about him now and again, is not a bad sort at all,
particularly for a man who is stupid and greedy and probably a
thief."

Naturally, I was flattered by this little farewell speech.  I even
changed my mind about his being a former commandant of a slave-labor
camp.

"Thanks," I told him, "but now that I've tried work and found it to be
about what I expected, I think I'll avoid it in the future."

Mr. Brown said he thought that would be a good idea and that, as far
as he had observed, I had considerable talent for that line of endeavor
and was practically assured of success.

The very next day, with the money for the rifle wadded up in a pocket
of my jeans, I sauntered into Clyde Fitch's Sport Shop.

"Hi, Clyde," I said.

"Don't touch the guns!"  Clyde shouted.

I took out my wad of money and began to unfold it.

"Seriously though, my boy," Clyde said, "I was just asking myself why
ol' Pat hadn't been in lately to fondle the guns.  Yes indeed.  Now,
good buddy, I'd be much obliged if you would try out the action on this
new thirty-thirty and give me your expert opinion of it."

They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

Awhile back my friend Retch Sweeney and I were hiking through a
wilderness area and happened to come across these three guys who were
pretending to cling to the side of a mountain as if their lives
depended on it.  They were dressed in funny little costumes and all
tied together on a long rope.  Their leader was pounding what looked
like a big spike into a crack in the rock.  We guessed right off what
they were up to.  They were obviously being initiated into a college
fraternity, and this was part of the hazing.  Not wishing to embarrass
them any more than was absolutely necessary, Retch and I just let on as
if everything was normal and that scarcely a day went by that we didn't
see people in funny costumes hammering nails into rock.

"We seem to have taken a wrong turn back there a ways," I said to
them.

"Could you give us some idea where we are?"

The three pledgies seemed both angered and astonished at seeing us.

"Why, this is the North Face of Mount Terrible," the leader said.

"We're making an assault on it.  You shouldn't be up here!"

"You're telling me!"  I said.  "We're supposed to be on our way to Wild
Rose Lake."

"Say, it's none of my business," Retch put in, "but this thing you're
makin', don't you think you would get it built a lot faster if you
found some level ground?  It's steep up here."

That didn't seem to set too well with them, or at least so I
interpreted from their flared nostrils and narrowed eyes.

"Say, don't let a couple of flabby, middle-aged men disturb you," I
said.

"We'll just mosey on past you and climb up to the top of this hill and
get out of your way.  Maybe we can get a bearing on Wild Rose Lake from
up there."

Well, I was glad they were all roped together and the rope was fastened
to one of the spikes they had hammered into the rock.  Otherwise, I
think they would have taken off after us, and that slope was so steep
you could just barely walk on it, let alone run.  They would have
caught us for sure.

"Those guys certainly weren't too friendly, were they?"  Retch said
later.

"No, they weren't," I said.  "The very least they could have done was
offer to give us a hand with the canoe."

Upon later reflection, I came to the conclusion that it was probably
the canoe itself that had disturbed the pledgies.  There are people who
can't get within fifteen feet of a canoe without turning psychotic or,
as my psychiatrist puts it, "going bananas."

I've been around canoes most of my life and have high regard for
them.

They're versatile and efficient and serve the angler and hunter well.

But I have no truck with the sentimental nonsense often associated with
them.  Some years back I wrecked an old canoe of mine that I had spent
hundreds of happy hours in.  When I saw there was no way to salvage it,
I tossed it on top of the car rack and hauled it out to the city
dump.

That was it.  There was no sentimental nonsense involved.  just to show
you some of the strange things that can happen, though, a few days
later my wife went out to clean the garage and found the canoe back in
its old place.

I had to laugh.  "Well, I'll be darned," I said.  "The old thing must
have followed me home from the dump!  Well, if it cares that much about
me, I guess we'll let it stay."

After babbling sentimentality, the next most prevalent form of
irrational behavior evoked by canoes is raw terror (occasionally there
is boiled terror or even fried terror, but usually it's raw).  Take my
neighbor Al Finley, the city councilperson, for example.  I figured
that anyone so adept at floating bond issues as Finley certainly
wouldn't have any trouble floating a canoe--a duck to water, so to
speak.  I've taught him most of the paddle strokes and he is quite
proficient at them, but he has never gotten over his fear of canoes.

"Careful!"  he screams.  "It's tipping!  It's tipping!  Watch that
rock!

Careful!"

The way he acts is absolutely pathetic.  I don't know what he'd do if
we ever put the canoe in the water.

Some canoe-induced behavior is so odd you can't even put a name to
it.

Take the time I was canoeing up in Canada with Dork Simp, a chap who
had been a staunch atheist for as long as I could remember.  When we
saw that we had made a mistake and had to shoot the Good God Almighty
Rapids (named by the first trapper to take a raft of furs down the
river), Dork yelled out that he had recently had some serious doubts
about the intellectual validity of atheism.

"Forget philosophy, for pete's sake!"  I screamed at him.  "It's
getting rough!  Get off that seat and kneel down in the canoe!"

"Amen to that," he yelled back.  "You say the words first and I'll try
to follow along!"

We smacked into a rock and broke several ribs, two of which,
incidentally, seemed to be mine.  As we slid sideways off the rock,
Dork shouted out that he had just found religion.

A few seconds later, as we were paddling up out of the vortex of a
whirlpool, he swore off smoking, drinking, and profanity, the last of
which cut his vocabulary by approximately half.  When we were at last
forcibly ejected from the lower end of the rapids, Dork said that he
had decided to enter the ministry.

"It's been a lifelong ambition of mine," he added.

"What!"  I said.  "Why, not more than fifteen minutes ago you were an
atheist."

"Was it only fifteen minutes?"  he said.  "I could have sworn it was a
lifetime!"

The weirdest reaction to canoes that I've ever observed took place in
Kelly's Bar & Grill.  I had just walked in and mounted a barstool next
to Doc Moos, owner and operator of Doc's Boat Works, where I had Zelda,
my old wood-and-canvas canoe, in for repairs.  Doc was chatting with a
new bartender Kelly had hired, a great dull slab of a man but pleasant
enough, or so he seemed at first.

"How's my Zelda doing, Doc?"  I asked.

"I got bad news for you," Doc said.  "I couldn't save her."

"Oh no!"  I moaned.  "I can't get along without her."

The bartender gave me a sympathetic look.  "Gee, I'm sorry fella," he
said.  "Here, have a drink on Kelly."

"What went wrong?"  I asked Doc.

"Well, first of all, as you know, she was cracked and peeling all over,
but that was no real problem since we could have put a new fiberglass
skin on her.  But ..."

"You can do that now, can you, Doc, put on a fiberglass skin?"  the
bartender asked.

"Sure," Doc told him.  "It's quite a bit of work and expensive, but it
wears forever."

"I bet it does," the bartender said.  "But how does it look?"

"Just like new," Doc said.  "Paint it a nice glossy red or green and
it'll knock your eye out."

The bartender looked astounded.  "I would've thought pink," he said.

"Pink!"  Doc and I both shuddered.  The man was totally without
taste.

"Anyway," Doc went on, doing his best to ignore the bartender, some of
her ribs were busted up pretty bad.  I was going to work up some new
ones out of some oak boards I got in the shop ..."

"What won't they think of next!"  the bartender said.  "Wood ribs!"

"But as I was saying," Doc continued, shaking his head, "that was when
we found the dry rot."

"Oh no, not dry rot!"  I moaned.

"Gee, dry rot," the bartender said.  "I think my brother got that once
from not washin' between his toes."

"Well, it was fatal for Zelda," Doc said.

"Here, have another drink on Kelly," the bartender said.

Up to this time the bartender had seemed like a decent enough fellow,
if only slightly smarter than a grapefruit.  Now he started to act a
bit weird, particularly after I had said something about how much I
enjoyed paddling Zelda, even when she was loaded down with all my
camping gear.  Then Doc asked me what I wanted to do with Zelda's
remains.  As I say, I'm not much on sentimentality so I told him just
to keep them around the shop and use them for parts.

"It's about time I got myself a new one anyway," I said.

"So much for grief, hunh, fella?"  the bartender snarled.  "Beat the
old thing, make her carry all your campin' junk, and then forget her,
just like that!"  He snapped his fingers so close to my face I
jumped.

"What's with you?"  I said.  "All along I thought you were a
canoeist."

That was when he tossed Doc and me out of the bar.

"Call me a canoeist, will you!"  he shouted from the doorway.  "Listen,
fella, I may not be too smart, but I'm a lot more normal than you!"

I suppose these strange attitudes toward canoes are to be expected of
persons who don't establish a meaningful relationship with them early
in life.

My own association with canoes began at age ten.  That was when I built
my first one.  Even if I do say so myself, it was one of the most
beautiful canoes I've ever seen.

I built it in a vacant upstairs bedroom out of some old lumber I found
in the hog pen.  The lumber was dirty and heavy, and I had great
difficulty dragging it through the house and up to the bedroom.  Most
of the difficulty was caused by my mother and grandmother, who kept
making nasty remarks about my character and trying to strike me with
blunt objects.

It took me about three weeks to build the canoe.  If you've never built
a canoe, you probably don't realize that the hardest part is shaping
the bow and stern just right.  I came up with an ingenious solution to
this problem that, if it had caught on, would have revolutionized canoe
design.  I put square ends on it.  There were a couple of other minor
modifications that also simplified construction--the bottom and sides
were flat!  I painted it with some red barn paint as a final touch, and
the end result was a sharp-looking canoe.  Everyone else in my family
thought so, too, except Gram.  She said it looked like a coffin for
someone's pet boa constrictor.  Gram, of course, knew next to nothing
about boat design.

The canoe's one drawback was that it weighed just slightly less than a
Buick, and since I was the only man in the family, we had to ask the
old woodsman Rancid Crabtree to come over and help us carry it out of
the house.

As Rancid was walking up the stairs, he sniffed the air and asked, "You
been keepin' hogs up here?  Smells like ..."

"Never mind what it smells like," Gram snapped.  "Just help us carry
that contraption out of the house."

Mom, Gram, and I got at one end of the canoe and Rancid at the other,
and with a great deal of shouting and groaning managed to lift it until
it was resting on our shoulders.  We carried it out of the bedroom to
the head of the stairs, at which point Rancid gasped that he couldn't
hold up his end a second longer.  While he was looking around
frantically for something to rest the canoe on, he accidentally stepped
down backwards onto the stairs.  We at the rear end of the canoe
naturally assumed from this gesture that he had changed his mind about
resting, so we charged forward.  It was just one of those innocent
misunderstandings.  As it turned out, no one was seriously injured, but
some of the language would have made the hair of a wart hog stand on
end.

The only ill effect I suffered was psychological.  As we all galloped
around the sharp turn at the landing, I caught a glimpse of the
expression on Rancid's face, and it just wasn't the sort of thing a
ten-year-old boy should be allowed to see.  For years afterwards, it
would cause me to wake up whimpering in the night.

When Rancid came into the kitchen for coffee after the ordeal was over,
he complained that he felt two feet shorter.  Gram pointed out to him
that he was walking on his knees.  Rancid was always doing comical
things like that.

Beautiful as it was, my first canoe was never launched but sat for
years in the yard at the place where it was dropped.  My mother later
filled it with dirt and planted flowers in it.  Strangers sometimes got
the mistaken impression from it that we were holding a funeral for a
tall, thin gangster.

The first store-bought canoe with which I had a meaningful relationship
was hidden in some brush on the banks of a creek near where I lived.

During the spring of the year, the creek was deep and fast with some
nice rapids in it, but I had enough sense to realize that it would be
dangerous for me to attempt to paddle the canoe down it.  The main
reason it would have been dangerous was that the big kid who owned the
canoe had threatened to put me in a sack and toss the sack in the creek
if he caught me messing around with it.

The big kid's name was Buster, and he divided his time among eating,
sleeping, and beating up people, although not necessarily in that
order.

Sometimes he would catch me down by the creek and practice his
beating-up techniques on me.  Although these sessions were more
monotonous than painful, they were sufficiently instructive to make me
realize that I didn't want Buster performing real beating-up on me.

Nevertheless, I could not force myself to stay entirely away from the
canoe, a lovely little fifteen-footer, mostly green but with a patch of
white on the side where Buster had attempted to paint over the words
PROPERTY OF SUNSET RESORT.  Once, I even slipped the canoe into the
water just to see how it floated.  It floated fine.  After giving
considerable thought to the questions (1) how much fun would it be to
paddle the canoe around a bit, and (2) how difficult would it be to
swim while confined in a sack, I slipped the canoe back into its hiding
place and wiped off my fingerprints.

About a mile from my home, the creek wound through a swamp that was
full of dead trees, rotting stumps, quicksand, mud flats, snakes,
frogs, slime--all the usual neat swamp stuff.  Brook trout the size of
alligators were said to inhabit the deeper waters of the swamp, and I
would occasionally pole my log raft into the dark interior in search of
them.  It was on one of these excursions that I happened to come upon
Buster's canoe, bobbing gently among the cattails that surrounded a
small, brush-covered island.  My heart leaped up.

"Well, I'll be darned!"  I said to myself.  "Ol' Buster's canoe has
somehow slid itself into the crick and drifted into the swamp.  Won't
he be tickled pink when I bring it back to him--in a day or two or the
week after next at the latest?"

My elation, however, was diluted by a sense of foreboding, even though
there wasn't a sign of human life in any direction.  I eased myself
silently into the canoe and set the raft adrift, just in case someone
might get the notion of using it as a means of pursuing me.

That the canoe had somehow drifted upstream and tied itself to a branch
with a length of clothesline and a square knot were matters of no
little curiosity to me, and I remember making a mental note to ask my
arithmetic teacher what the odds of such an occurrence might be.

As I was untying the square knot, I happened to glance out from among
the cattails.  What I saw momentarily freeze-dried my corpuscles.

Strolling right toward me, arm-in-arm from out of the brush in the
middle of the island, were Buster and a girl by the name of Alvira
Holstein.  Even as it was locked in the grip of terror, my fertile mind
groped with the question of what the two of them could be doing on the
island, Buster never having struck me as much of a picnicker.  On the
other hand, the occasion didn't seem appropriate for casual
conversation.  I did take some comfort in the fact that Buster did not
appear to have a sack with him.

Upon seeing me crouched in his canoe, Buster let out a roar that is
best described as approximating that of a grizzly bear having a
bicuspid extracted without benefit of anesthetic.  I had never paddled
a canoe before, but at that instant, such was the inspiration of seeing
Buster charging toward me, I instantly discovered that I had a talent
for it bordering on genius.  Within seconds I had the canoe moving at
sufficient momentum to plane easily over half-submerged logs, mud
flats, and flocks of waterfowl caught unawares.  I looked back once,
and Buster was still in hot pursuit, even though he was up to his
armpits in swamp slime.  He was screeching almost incoherently,
something to the effect that he would make sweeping but imaginative
alterations on my anatomy once he laid hands on it.  Alvira Holstein
was jumping up and down on the island, crying and screaming, and
yelling out, "Don't kill him, Buster, don't kill him!"  Even to this
day it sets my nerves on edge to hear a woman yell something like
that.

I paddled the canoe halfway to my house, which was remarkable only in
that the water ended some distance short of that.  My grandmother was
in the kitchen when I burst through the door.

"Land sakes, what's after you?"  she said.

"Never mind that now," I said.  "Just tell me this.  Is there really
quicksand in the swamp?"

"There certainly is," she said.  "And you just stay out of that swamp
if you don't want to get swallowed up by it!"

I crossed my fingers.  "Come on, quicksand!"  I said.

Actually, it was Gram who finally saved me from the sack or, at best,
going through life as a very odd-looking person.  When she found out
Buster was after me, she just scoffed.

"Buster ain't going to hurt you," she said, neglecting to mention why I
should be an exception to the rule.  "If he does, you just tell the
sheriff on him.  The sheriffs a tough man, and he don't stand for no
nonsense."

"Yeah, he's tough all right," I said, pulling back the window curtain
an inch to peer out.  "But he don't bother about kids' fightin'.  He
says it's just natural."

"Oh, I don't know," Gram said.  "Sheriff Holstein's a pretty sensible
man, and I think if you just told him..."

"Holstein?"  I said.  "That's right, it is Sheriff Holstein, isn't
it?"

I walked away from the window, cut myself a slab of fresh-baked bread,
and smeared on a layer of raspberry jam.

"Well, forget about Buster, Gram," I told her.  "I got to go paddle my
canoe."

My First Deer, and Welcome to It For a first deer, there is no habitat
so lush and fine as a hunter's memory.  Three decades and more of
observation have convinced me that a first deer not only lives on in
the memory of a hunter but thrives there, increasing in points and
pounds with each passing year until at last it reaches full maturity,
which is to say, big enough to shade a team of Belgian draft horses in
its shadow at high noon.  It is a remarkable phenomenon and worthy of
study.

Consider the case of my friend Retch Sweeney and his first deer.  I was
with him when he shot the deer, and though my first impression was that
Retch had killed a large jackrabbit, closer examination revealed it to
be a little spike buck.  We were both only fourteen at the time and
quivering with excitement over Retch's good fortune in getting his
first deer.  Still, there was no question in either of our minds that
what he had bagged was a spike buck, one slightly larger than a bread
box.

You can imagine my surprise when, scarcely a month later, I overheard
Retch telling some friends that his first deer was a nice four-point
buck.  I mentioned to Retch afterwards that I was amazed at how fast
his deer was growing.  He said he was a little surprised himself but
was pleased it was doing so well.  He admitted that he had known all
along that the deer was going to get bigger eventually although he
hadn't expected it to happen so quickly.  Staring off into the middle
distance, a dreamy expression on his face, he told me, "You know, I
wouldn't be surprised if someday my first deer becomes a world's record
trophy."

"I wouldn't either," I said.  "In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it."

Not long ago, Retch and I were chatting with some of the boys down at
Kelly's Bar & Grill and the talk turned to first deer.  It was
disgusting.  I can stand maudlin sentimentality as well as the next
fellow, but I have my limits.  Some of those first deer had a mastery
of escape routines that would have put Houdini to shame.  Most of them
were so smart there was some question in my mind as to whether the
hunter had bagged a deer or a Rhodes Scholar.  I wanted to ask them if
they had tagged their buck or awarded it a Phi Beta Kappa key.  And
big!  There wasn't a deer there who couldn't have cradled a baby grand
piano in its rack.  Finally it was Retch's turn, and between waves of
nausea I wondered whether that little spike buck had developed enough
over the years to meet this kind of competition.  I needn't have
wondered.

Retch's deer no longer walked in typical deer fashion; it "ghosted"
about through the trees like an apparition.  When it galloped, though,
the sound was "like thunder rolling through the hills."  And so help
me, "fire flickered in its eyes."  Its tracks "looked like they'd been
excavated with a backhoe, they were that big."  Smart?  That deer could
have taught field tactics at West Point.  Retch's little spike buck had
come a long way, baby.

At last Retch reached the climax of his story.  "I don't expect you
boys to believe this," he said, his voice hushed with reverence, "but
when I dropped that deer, the mountain trembled ."

The boys all nodded, believing.  Why, hadn't the mountain trembled for
them too when they shot their first deer?  Of course it had.  All first
deer are like that.

Except mine.

I banged the table for attention.  "Now," I said, "I'm going to tell
you about a real first deer, not a figment of my senility, not some
fossilized hope of my gangling adolescence, but a real first deer."

Now I could tell from looking at their stunned faces that the boys were
upset.  There is nothing that angers the participants of a bull session
more than someone who refuses to engage in the mutual exchange of
illusions, someone who tells the simple truth, unstretched,
unvarnished, unembellished, and whole.

"Even though it violates the code of the true sportsperson," I began,
"I must confess that I still harbor unkind thoughts for my first
deer.

True to his form and unlike almost all other first deer, he has
steadfastly refused to grow in either my memory or imagination; he
simply stands there in original size and puny rack, peering over the
lip of my consciousness, an insolent smirk decorating his pointy
face.

Here I offered that thankless creature escape from the anonymity of
becoming someone else's second or seventh or seventeenth deer or, at
the very least, from an old age presided over by coyotes.  And how did
he repay me?  With humiliation!"

The boys at Kelly's shrank back in horror at this heresy.  Retch
Sweeney tried to slip away, but I riveted him to his chair with a
maniacal laugh.  His eyes pleaded with me.  "No, don't tell us!"  they
said.  "Don't destroy the mythof the first deer!"  (which is a pretty
long speech for a couple of beady, bloodshot eyes).

Unrelenting and with only an occasional pause for a bitter, sardonic
cackle to escape my foam-flecked lips, I plunged on with the tale,
stripping away layer after layer of myth until at last the truth about
one man's first deer had been disrobed and lay before them in all its
grim and naked majesty, shivering and covered with goose bumps.

I began by pointing out what I considered to be one of the great
bureaucratic absurdities of all time: that a boy at age fourteen was
allowed to purchase his first hunting license and deer tag but was
prevented from obtaining a driver's license until he was sixteen.  This
was like telling a kid he could go swimming but to stay away from the
water.  Did the bureaucrats think that trophy mule deer came down from
the hills in the evening to drink out of your garden hose?  The
predicament left you no recourse but to beg the adult hunters you knew
to take you hunting with them on weekends.  My problem was that all the
adult hunters I knew bagged their deer in the first couple of weeks of
the season, and from then on I had to furnish my own transportation.

This meant that in order to get up to the top of the mountain where the
trophy mule deer hung out, I had to start out at four in the morning if
I wanted to be there by noon.  I remember one time when I was steering
around some big boulders in the road about three-quarters of the way up
the Dawson Grade and a jeep with two hunters in it came plowing up
behind me.  I pulled over so they could pass.  The hunters grinned at
me as they went by.  You'd think they'd never before seen anyone
pedaling a bike twenty miles up the side of a mountain to go deer
hunting.

I had rigged up my bike especially for deer hunting.  There were straps
to hold my rifle snugly across the handlebars, and saddlebags draped
over the back fender to carry my gear.  The back fender had been
reinforced to support a sturdy platform, my reason for this being that
I didn't believe the original fender was stout enough to support a buck
when I got one.  My one oversight was failing to put a guard over the
top of the bike chain, in which I had to worry constantly about getting
my tongue caught.  Deer hunting on a bike was no picnic.

A mile farther on and a couple of hours later I came to where the
fellows in the jeep were busy setting up camp with some other
hunters.

Apparently, someone told a fantastic joke just as I went pumping by
because they all collapsed in a fit of laughter and were doubled over
and rolling on the ground and pounding trees with their fists.  They
seemed like a bunch of lunatics to me, and I hoped they didn't plan on
hunting in the same area I was headed for.

I couldn't wait to see their faces when I came coasting easily back
down the mountain with a trophy buck draped over the back of my bike.

One of the main problems with biking your way out to hunt deer was
that, if you left at four in the morning, by the time you got to the
hunting place there were only a couple of hours of daylight left in
which to do your hunting.  Then you had to spend some time resting, at
least until the pounding of your heart eased up enough not to frighten
the deer.

As luck would have it, just as I was unstrapping my rifle from the
handlebars, a buck mule deer came dancing out of the brush not twenty
yards away from me.  Now right then I should have known he was up to no
good.  He had doubtless been lying on a ledge and watching me for hours
as I pumped my way up the mountain.  He had probably even snickered to
himself as he plotted ways to embarrass me.

All the time I was easing the rifle loose from the handlebars, digging
a shell out of my pocket, and thumbing it into the rifle, the deer
danced and clowned and cut up all around me, smirking the whole
while.

The instant I jacked the shell into the chamber, however, he stepped
behind a tree.  I darted to one side, rifle at the ready.  He moved to
the other side of the tree and stuck his head out just enough so I
could see him feigning a yawn.

As I moved up close to the tree, he did a rapid tiptoe to another
tree.

I heard him snort with laughter.  For a whole hour he toyed with me in
this manner, enjoying himself immensely.  Then I fooled him, or at
least so I thought at the time.  I turned and started walking in a
dejected manner back toward my bike, still watching his hiding place
out of the corner of my eye.

He stuck his head out to see what I was up to.  I stepped behind a
small bush and knelt as if to tie my shoe.  Then, swiftly I turned,
drew a bead on his head, and fired.  Down he went.

I was still congratulating myself on a fine shot when I rushed up to
his crumpled form.  Strangely, I could not detect a bullet hole in his
head, but one of his antlers was chipped and I figured the slug had
struck there with sufficient force to do him in.  "No matter," I said
to myself, "I have at last got my first deer," and I pictured in my
mind the joyous welcome I would receive when I came home hauling in a
hundred or so pounds of venison.  Then I discovered my knife had fallen
out of its sheath during my frantic pursuit of the deer.  Instant
anguish!  The question that nagged my waking moments for years
afterwards was: Did the deer know that I had dropped my knife?  Had I
only interpreted it correctly, the answer to that question was written
all over the buck's face--he was still wearing that stupid smirk.

"Well," I told myself, "what I'll do is just load him on my bike, haul
him down to the lunatic hunters'camp, and borrow a knife from them to
dress him out with."  I thought this plan particularly good in that it
would offer me the opportunity to give those smart alecks a few tips on
deer hunting.

Loading the buck on the bike was much more of a problem than I had
expected.  When I draped him crosswise over the platform on the rear
fender, his head and front quarters dragged on one side and his rear
quarters on the other.  Several times as I lifted and pulled and
hauled, I thought I heard a giggle, but when I looked around nobody was
there.  It was during one of these pauses that a brilliant idea
occurred to me.  With herculean effort, I managed to arrange the deer
so that he was sitting astraddle of the platform, his four legs splayed
out forward and his head drooping down.  I lashed his front feet to the
handlebars, one on each side.  Then I slid up onto the seat ahead of
him, draped his head over my right shoulder, and pushed off.

I must admit that riding a bike with a deer on behind was a good deal
more difficult than I had anticipated.  Even though I pressed down on
the brake for all I was worth, our wobbling descent was much faster
than I would have liked.  The road was narrow, twisting, and filled
with ruts and large rocks, with breathtaking dropoffs on the outer
edge.  When we came hurtling around a sharp, high bend above the
hunters' camp, I glanced down.  Even from that distance I could see
their eyes pop and their jaws sag as they caught sight of us.

What worried me most was the hill that led down to the camp.  As we
arrived at the crest of it, my heart, liver, and kidneys all jumped in
unison.

The hill was much steeper than I had remembered.  It was at that point
that the buck gave a loud, startled snort.

My first deer had either just regained consciousness or been shocked
out of his pretense of death at the sight of the plummeting grade
before us.  We both tried to leap free of the bike, but he was tied on
and I was locked in the embrace of his front legs.

When we shot past the hunters' camp, I was too occupied at the moment
to get a good look at their faces.  I heard afterwards that a game
warden found them several hours later, frozen in various postures and
still staring at the road in front of their camp.  The report was
probably exaggerated, however, game wardens being little better than
hunters at sticking to the simple truth.

I probably would have been able to get the bike stopped sooner and with
fewer injuries to myself if I had had enough sense to tie down the
deer's hind legs.  As it was, he started flailing wildly about with
them and somehow managed to get his hooves on the pedals.  By the time
we reached the bottom of the mountain he not only had the hang of
pedaling but was showing considerable talent for it.  He also seemed to
be enjoying himself immensely.  We zoomed up and down over the rolling
foothills and into the bottomlands, with the deer pedaling wildly and
me shouting and cursing and trying to wrest control of the bike from
him.  At last he piled us up in the middle of a farmer's pumpkin
patch.

He tore himself loose from the bike and bounded into the woods, all the
while making obscene gestures at me with his tail.  I threw the rifle
to my shoulder and got off one quick shot.  It might have hit him too,
if the bike hadn't been stil strapped to the rifle.

"Now that," I said to the boys at Kelly's, "is how to tell about a
first deer--a straightforward factual report unadorned by a lot of lies
and sentimentality."

Unrepentant, they muttered angrily.  To soothe their injured feelings,
I told them about my second deer.  It was so big it could cradle a baby
grand piano in its rack and shade a team of Belgian draft horses in its
shadow at high noon.  Honest!  I wouldn't lie about a thing like
that.

The Crouch Hop and Other Useful Outdoor Steps While going through my
mail at breakfast the other morning, I noticed a picture on a magazine
cover of what was purported to be a group of backpackers.  The
individuals portrayed were all neat, clean, and beaming with happy
smiles as they came striding up over a grassy knoll.

"Those aren't backpackers, they're fashion models," I told my wife.

Always keen to assimilate my wisdom on such matters, she fixed me with
an intense look.  "Did you eat my piece of bacon?  That last piece of
bacon was mine!"

"Well, first of all," I explained patiently, "they're all neat, clean,
and beaming with happy smiles, whereas backpackers are generally messy,
grubby, and grunting.  Second, they're climbing a grassy knoll instead
of a forty-five-degree, rock-strewn snake path the Forest Service
laughingly calls a trail.  What really gives them away, though, is that
they're striding.  No self-respecting backpacker would be caught dead
striding."

"You even ate my English muffin!"  my wife shouted.

This enlightening exchange got me to thinking that there are probably
many people like my wife who have waited in vain for someone to erase
their ignorance concerning the various foot movements, or steps, as
they are sometimes called, employed in the practice of outdoor
sports.

I herewith offer as a public service the following compendium of the
basic forms of outdoor pedestrianism.

THE PACKER'S PLOD--Backpackers, being generally optimistic souls, will
start off on an excursion at a brisk pace, which they maintain for
approximately nine steps.  They then shift into the standard packer's
plod.

One foot is raised and placed forward three inches on the trail.  The
backpacker then breathes deeply, checks his hip strap, wipes the
perspiration off his face, takes a swig from his canteen, eats a piece
of beef jerky, snaps a photograph of a Stellar's jay, and consults his
map.  Then he repeats the process.  A good backpacker, if he had a
table handy, could play a hand of solitaire between steps.  His forward
motion defies detection by the human eye.  Nevertheless, his progress
is steady and unrelenting, and during the course of a day he can eat up
a surprising number of miles, not to mention several pounds of jerky.

It always amuses experienced backpackers to see neophytes of the sport
go racing past them on the trail.  The tale of the tortoise and the
hare leaps instantly to mind.  Last summer my old backpacking partner
Vern Schulze and I took his two boys, Wayne and Jim, on their first
overnight hike.  Our destination was a lake high up in the mountains of
Idaho.  Vern and I set off at the standard packer's plod, while the
boys tore off up the trail ahead of us, soon disappearing from view.

After about an hour they came racing back down the trail.

"What happened?"  they shouted.  "When you didn't show up at the lake,
we thought maybe you had fallen and hurt yourselves."

Vern and I just winked at each other.  "Don't worry about us.  You
fellows just go on ahead.  We'll catch up."

After the boys had charged back up the trail, I said to Vern, "You
know, when Wayne and Jim are exhausted and we pass them up, it would be
better if we didn't tease them too much.  It's a bad thing to break a
boy's spirit."

"Right," Vern said, munching a handful of beefjerky while he snapped a
picture of a Stellar's jay.

A couple of hours later the boys came jogging back down the trail.

"Look," I whispered to Vern.  "They're already starting to slow
down."

"Hey, Dad!"  Wayne shouted.  "The fish are really biting great!  We've
already caught enough for supper!"

It was all we could do to suppress our mirth.  Both youngsters were
showing definite signs of burning themselves out.

"You guys better speed it up a bit," Jim said.

"We can take care of ourselves," Vern replied, giving me a nudge with
his elbow that almost toppled me off the trail.  "Say, if you guys want
to sit down and take a rest, go right ahead.  It's nothing to be
ashamed of.  just because Pat and I never stop doesn't mean you
shouldn't."

"I thought you were stopped right now," Jim said.

"No," Vern said, "as a matter of fact we have just quickened our
pace."

"We'd better be going," Wayne said.  "We've got the tent pitched and a
rock fireplace made and want to finish gathering wood for the fire."

They made three or four more trips back to check on us, each time
moving a little slower.  Along about evening we came upon them sitting
alongside the trail eating huckleberries, and they both looked plumb
tuckered out.  Vern and I passed them up without so much as a single
unkind remark.  When we had dumped our packs in camp, though, I
couldn't help offering a bit of advice to Wayne, who was hunkered at my
feet.

"Easy does it," I told him.  "If you pull a man's boots off too fast it
hurts his ankles."

A boy is never too young to start learning the basics of backpacking, I
always say.

THE SIDEWINDER--Skilled anglers the world over are masters of this
rather peculiar outdoor step.  Essentially, it consists of sauntering
sideways.

While looking straight ahead as if wearing blinders, you attempt to
give the impression that you are oblivious to what is taking place on
either side of you.  The situation in which it is used is this: Your
partner has laid claim to a nice piece of fishing water twenty yards or
so downstream from you.

Suddenly he gets a strike and flicks his fly into the uppermost
branches of a thorn apple.  You know the fish was a big one because of
the way your friend suddenly crouches down and scurries about like a
hyperactive crab as he tries to untangle his line and stay out of sight
of the fish at the same time.

There is a great temptation on such occasions to be overwhelmed by your
partner's desperate maneuvers and to laugh yourself senseless.  A
master angler, however, will maintain an expression that is not only
sober but that conveys the impression he is totally unaware of anything
but his own rhythmic casting.  While maintaining this expression, he
then performs the sidewinder, which carries him sideways along the bank
to that portion of water where the monster trout has signaled its
presence.  Upon arriving at this position, the master angler must make
a pretense of being in a trance of sufficient depth that it cannot be
penetrated by the Vile epithets screamed at him by his former friend.

The former friend will at this point give up all caution and throw
himself into all-out combat with the thorn apple in order to free the
offending line.  Catching and landing a fish under such trying
circumstances is what qualifies one as a master angler, sometimes
referred to by fishing partners as a "no-good bleep of a bleep."  Good
sportsmanship requires that one refrain from maniacal laughter after
performing a successful sidewinder.

THE MOSEY--This is a walk that belongs almost exclusively to game
wardens, and they reserve it for occasions when they are moving in to
make a pinch.  If you see a man moseying toward you while you are
fishing or hunting, you had better make a quick study of your game
regulations because you may be in trouble.  If game wardens in your
area are prone to being sneaky, a stump or a bush moseying toward you
also may mean trouble.  I myself have on occasion put the mosey to good
use.  Indeed, it is rather amusing to see how quickly other anglers can
be cleared from a stream by the simple expedient of moseying toward
them.

THE HEEL-AND-TOE--This is essentially the same step employed in the
track event of the same name.  It is characterized by quick, tiny
steps, an exaggeratedly straight vertical posture, and a facial
expression combined of equal parts of indignation and suffering.  It is
not unusual to see a whole party of elk hunters going about camp in
this fashion after a twenty-mile horseback ride into the mountains.

THE CROUCH HOP--This is usually performed midway through the process of
driving in a tent peg with a large flat rock.  The individual will
suddenly leap up, clamp one of his hands between his thighs, and,
making strange grunting sounds, begin to hop madly about the camp.  I
have performed this exercise many times, and it does wonders for
relieving the pain resulting from a finger caught between a rock and a
tent peg.  It is equally important to recognize the crouch hop for what
it is when you see it being performed.  Once in Yellowstone Park,
blinded by tears, I accidentally crouch-hopped into the adjoining camp
space where an hysterical lady tried to run me through with her wiener
stick.  Luckily for me, she didn't have sufficient foresight to remove
the wiener and I escaped with a single bruise no larger than the
business end of a Ball Park frank.

THE SAUNTER--The saunter is applicable almost exclusively to bird
hunting.  I can remember the very first time I used it.  I was fourteen
and grouse hunting with my friend Retch Sweeney.  We were moving
stealthily through a thick stand of evergreens where we knew a grouse
to be hiding.

Suddenly the bird exploded off a limb almost directly above us and
roared away through the trees.  Startled, I whirled, pointed my old
doublebarrel at a patch of sky as big around as a bread box, and
fired.

Out of sheer coincidence, the shot and the grouse arrived at that patch
of sky simultaneously, and the bird landed with a dead thump ten yards
away.  All my instincts told me to race over, grab up the grouse, and
clamp it to my throbbing chest, all the while exclaiming, "Holy cow!

Did you see that shot?

Holy cow!  What a shot!"  For the first time in my life, however, I
defied my instincts.  I s-a-u-n-t-e-ne-d over, picked up the grouse,
and nonchalantly deposited it in my game pocket.  "That one sort of
surprised me," I said to Retch, whose tongue still dangled limply from
his gaping mouth.

Now, had I gone bounding and bawling after that grouse like a hound pup
after a squirrel, Retch would have known the shot was an accident.

Instead, my saunter filled the great empty spaces of his mind with the
impression that I was a fantastic wing shot.  He frequently commented
afterwards that he didn't understand how anyone who was such a great
shot could miss so often.  I have found, in fact, that a properly
executed saunter after downed game will sustain one's reputation as a
great shot through an unbroken string of twenty-five misses.

If one hunts with a dog, by the way, the same effect can be achieved by
teaching it to retrieve game in a manner that suggests unrelieved
boredom.

Personally, I haven't had much success in this area with my own dog,
since I've never been able to break him of the habit of doing a
histrionic double take every time I hit something.  You just can't
compensate for bad breeding, so there is nothing for me to do but
saunter to make up for a stupid dog who aspires to be a stand-up
comic.

THE TRUDGE--Used primarily for returning to one's car after a cold,
wet, windy day of hunting and you missed three easy shots and its the
last day of the season and you can't remember where you left your
car.

THE LOPE--Basically a fast saunter, in that it implies casualness.  Say
you're out fishing a remote mountain stream with your boy and along
toward dusk the hair on the back of your neck, for no reason at all,
rises.  You have the distinct impression that you are being watched.

You halt a cast in mid-air and reel in.

"What you doin'?"  the boy says.  "I just had a good bite."

"It's getting late," you say.  "We'd better head home."  You then take
off at a lope.

"Well, shoot!"  the boy says.

THE SHAMBLE--What the boy does in the above situation.

THE BOLT--What the lope is changed into if the feeling of being watched
is followed by a low, rumbling growl and a crashing in the brush.

Actually, a low, rumbling growl or a crashing in the brush are
sufficient reasons in themselves to engage in a bolt.

THE TRAMPLE--What the boy does to you when he hears the low, rumbling
growl and crashing in the brush.

There are literally dozens of other interesting and enjoyable outdoor
steps, but those given above are basic.  It might be well to practice
them at home until you feel both comfortable and confident with them.

As a matter of fact, my wife just crouch-hopped past the door of my
study.  I wonder what she was doing driving a tent peg with a flat rock
when she was supposed to be hanging a picture.

Meanwhile, Back at the B Western Few people appreciate the great
contribution the handgun has made to television and motion pictures. 
What would police shows, for example, be without .38 Specials and .357
Magnums?  Imagine police detectives standing around the squad room in
shirtsleeves, rifles dangling from under their armpits.  Ridiculous!

The shows that would really suffer from an absence of handguns, though,
would be the westerns.  Without the pistol, there would be no fast
draw, and without the fast draw, westerns would be a whole lot
different.  Consider, if you will, and if you have the stomach for it,
a quick-draw scene with rifles.

Matt Dillon clumps out into the street from the Long Branch Saloon to
issue a warning to one of the quaintly named villains so characteristic
of "Gunsmoke."

"Chester and I caught you red-handed stealin buffalo humps up on the
flat, Ick Crud" he says.  "You be outta town by sundown if you know
what's good fer ya.  Folks here 'bouts don't take kindly to
buffalo-humpers."

Ick Crud sneers.  "Reach fer yer iron, Marshal!"

The camera zooms in for a close-up of Matt's low-slung Winchester, the
tie-downs knotted around his ankle.  Quicker than Dean Martin can sing
"Old Man River," Matt draws ... and draws ... and draws.  Ick Crud uses
a frantic hand-over-hand draw on his Sharps-Borchardt.  During the
draw, Chester, Doc, and Miss Kitty go back into the Long Branch for a
drink to steady their nerves.

"Three whiskeys and be quick about it," Miss Kitty snaps to the
bartender.  "Matt's drawin' out there in the street, and we ain't got
much time before the shootin' starts."

"I don't know why Matt don't git outta the marshaling business," Doc
grumbles.  "I keep tellin' him, 'Matt, sooner or later a gunfighter's
gonna shade your draw by just a minute or two, and that'll be it fer
ya."" "We better git back out there," Chester whines.  "They should be
just about finished drawin', and I don't want to miss the shootin'."

No doubt about it, the handgun and the fast draw are essential to the
true western, and any movie fan worth his hot-buttered popcorn not only
expects them to be in the western but knows the ritual by heart.  The
ritual usually begins with the "call out."  The villain stands in the
street and calls out the hero--"C'mon out, Ringo, you yellow-bellied,
chicken-livered, varicose-veined, spastic-coloned wimp!"

Upon hearing himself being called out, the hero immediately begins his
preparations.  He tosses down his shot of whiskey and grinds out his
cigar on the greasy nose of the belligerent bartender.  He slips his
pistol out of its holster and checks the cylinder to make sure he
reloaded after his last shoot-out.  (There is nothing more
disappointing than to beat the other fellow to the draw and then
discover that you forgot to reload.) He then reholsters his gun and
slips it out and in a few times to make sure it isn't sticking.

(A stuck gun is just about as bad as an unloaded one.) Next he unstraps
his spurs, his motive here apparently being that, should he change his
mind about the fight, it is a lot easier to run when you're not wearing
spurs.  He pulls his hat low over his eyes, limbers up the fingers of
his gun hand, and tucks his jacket back behind the butt of his
revolver.  One purpose of all this preparation may be the hope that the
villain will get tired of waiting and go home.  The villain never does,
of course, although sometimes he gets a cramp in his lip from holding a
sneer so long.

Back in the olden days when I was a kid, we had what were called the B
westerns.  The B stood for "best."  These were movies starring Roy
Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy.  They weren't anything like
the westerns nowadays starring Clint Eastwood, the ones where you have
to buy a program to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  In the B
westerns, you always knew the good guys.  They were neatly dressed,
clean-shaven, and didn't cuss, smoke, drink, kiss, or do anything else
that was bad for health or morals.  Even the bad guys didn't do most of
these things, but you could tell them anyway.  For one thing, they all
used the interrupted curse: "What the ...!"

"Well, I'll be ...!"

"Why you ...!"

They had real action in the B's too, not like the "modern" western
where you spend half the movie watching Eastwood squint his eyes and
ripple his jaw muscles.  Clint holsters his gun like he was setting a
carton of milk back in a refrigerator.  Why, Roy, Gene, and Hoppy
wouldn't even think of putting their guns back into their holsters
without giving them a twirl or two first.

I don't recall seeing Roy, Gene, or Hoppy ever shoot anybody, but they
probably did.  Usually, they just shot the gun out of the villain's
hand and let it go at that.  Sometimes they would rope the bad guys,
often getting a single loop of their lasso around the whole gang.

Heroes knew their business in the B westerns.

One nice bit of business Roy, Gene, and Hoppy perfected was to leapfrog
over the rumps of their horses and land smack in the saddle.  They
never landed on the saddle horn either, although once I think I heard
the Lone Ranger cry out in a shrill voice, "Hii owwww Silver away!"

My cousin Buck, who was several years older than I and knew everything,
told me he was an expert at getting on horses like that and that there
really wasn't anything to it.  I said I couldn't believe that.  He said
if I had a horse handy he would show me.  I said I didn't have a horse
but I had a cow.

Would a cow work?  He said sure.  We went out to the pasture and found
a cow engaged in licking a salt block.  Buck said that one would do
just fine.  I suggested that we warn the cow of what to expect, but
Buck said that wouldn't be necessary.  As it turned out, Buck was wrong
about that and the rest as well.  I still think the cow probably would
have cooperated and even entered into the spirit of the thing had we
just let her know what to expect.  As it was, Buck got back twenty
yards or so and made a dash for her.  At the exact instant he got his
hands on the cow's rump and his legs had crossed over his arms in
mid-vault, the cow let out a frightened bellow and bolted forward.  As
the cow disappeared over a nearby hill, Buck was still perched on her
tail bones in a strange variation of the lotus position and screaming,
"Whoa, you stupid cow, whoa!"  "Well, I'll be ...!"  I said.

The B western heroes were big on tricks.  Say the villain got the drop
on Roy in a little cabin out in the middle of the desert.  just as the
baddy was about to plug him, Roy would shout "Watch out!"  and point
over the other man's shoulder.  The villain would spin around, and Roy
would jump him and thump his head to a fare-thee-well.  These villains
were dumb!  Otherwise, why would they expect the guy they were about to
gun down to warn them of a surprise attack?  They were slow to learn.

Roy, Gene, and Hoppy would catch them with this little trick movie
after movie.  Maybe the reason they were so dumb was from getting their
heads thumped so often.

Eventually, however, they did start catching on to the trick.  "You
ain't foolin' me with that old trick, Rogers," the bad guy would say,
as if he had seen some of these movies before himself.  But this time
Gabby Hayes would actually be sneaking up behind him and would thump
his head a good one.

Again, one might wonder why Roy thought it necessary to warn the
villain when his comical sidekick was in fact sneaking up behind the
man.  The reason, of course, was to complicate matters for the villain
when this particular situation arose in future movies.  Roy, Gene, and
Hoppy all worked half a dozen different ploys of this same routine,
always with success.  After a while the villain could scarcely get the
drop on one of them without instantly becoming a nervous wreck from
wondering whether or not he was about to be jumped.

The B western villain was a sucker for pebbles, too.  Anytime the hero
wanted to draw the baddy's attention away from himself, he would toss a
pebble.  The villain would whirl around and empty his six-gun into the
pebble.

Then he would see that it was only a pebble and would get this worried,
expectant look in his eyes, which said, "Head, get ready for a
thumping!"

Counting shots was a favorite tactic of B western heroes.  They would
wave a hat around on a stick or perform some other trick to draw fire,
all the time counting shots.  Then, suddenly, they would walk right out
in the open and announce, "Six!  That was your last bullet, Slade!"

Villains liked to try this trick too, but having the IQ's of celery,
they could never get it straight.  There was scarcely a villain in B
westerns who could count to six without making a mistake.  "Six," the
bad guy would say, walking out from behind his rock.  "That was your
last bullet, Autry!"

BANG!

If the movie patron wondered what it was the villain was muttering as
he lay sprawled in the dust, it was probably, "Let's see now, two shots
ricocheted off the rock, two went through my hat on the stick, that
makes five ..."

Even among the B western audiences there were those who counted
shots.

They counted the number of shots the hero fired without reloading.  I
hated these wise guys.  Right in the tense part of the movie, they
would guffaw: "That's nine shots without reloading!  Roy must be using
a nine-shooter!"

"Why you ...!"  I would say under my breath.  If there was anyone who
couldn't appreciate a B western, it was a nitpicker.

The last B western I ever saw in a theater was in a small college town
in Idaho.  It starred Randolph Scott, and in the big scene the baddies
had ganged up on Randolph in the saloon.  When they started blazing
away at him, Randolphjumped behind a cast-iron stove and, if I recall
correctly, used the stove lid as a sort of shield while he returned
their fire.  The theater was filled with college kids and, as is the
nature of college kids, they began whooping and jeering and laughing at
Randolph's plight.  Seatedjust behind me were an old farmer and his
wife who had paid their hard-earned $1.50 for an evening of serious
entertainment.  As the slugs were spanging off the stove like lead hail
and the college kids were whooping it up, I heard the old woman whisper
nervously to her husband.  The farmer, in a gruff but gentle voice,
reassured her.  "Don't worry, Mother," he said, "Ol' Randolph, he'll
figure a way to git hisself out of this mess."

You bet!  The farmer and his wife were my kind of people.

Looking back, I now realize it was a good thing Hollywood stopped
turning out B westerns when it did.  I was grown up and had a job by
then, and folks were beginning to ask, "What's that big fellow doing
down there, sitting in the front row with the kids?"

The Education of a Sportsman The letter came in the spring of my
eighteenth year, telling me when to report in, and later that summer I
packed my few belongings in my rucksack and an old battered suitcase
and prepared to depart my home in the mountains of Idaho.  Little did I
know what lay in store for me during the months ahead, but my mother
and grandmother offered plenty of warnings.

"Don't try to be a hero," Gram said.

"You don't have to worry about that," I consoled her.

"I know," Gram said, "but in the off chance the urge comes over you,
don't try to be one."

"Right," I said.

"Those people are savages, many of them," Mom said.  "They're not like
us.  I remember the atrocities your father used to tell about when he
was in ... Her voice trailed off.

"I can't believe it's that bad," I said.  "Lonny Henderson went, didn't
he, and he came back okay."

Mom shook her head.  "No, there's something wrong with Lonny.  Folks
say he talks strange now.  I don't want that to happen to you."

"Look, don't Worry," I said.  "I'm going to come back all right.  After
all, it's not as if I'm going off to war.  College is different than
that."

Mom and Gram helped me with my packing, and there was considerable
discussion over what a young college man should take or leave behind.

"Let's see now," Mom said, surveying my assembled belongings.  "You
have your fishing rods, your tackle box, your twenty-two, your
thirty-thirty, your shot gun your hunting knife, your hunting boots and
wool socks, your lucky hunting hat, your good pair of pants, and your
good shirt.  Since you're going to be gone for almost a whole year, do
you think you might need a change of underwear?"

"Wouldn't hurt," I said.  "Why don't you throw in a set?"

"How about the dictionary?"  Gram asked.

"Naw," I said.  "It'd take up the space of at least four boxes of
shells.

I know most words, anyway."

"Of course you couldn't think about leaving behind these hides you
tanned and the deer head you mounted yourself," Mom added.

"Yeah, I thought my dorm room might need a little decoration, something
to make me feel at home."  I did wonder a bit about the head, since it
had turned out with this stupid grin on its face.

Gram pointed to the big tangle of rusty traps.  "You think you might
actually have time to run a trap line between classes and studying?"

"There's lots of streams and wild country near the college," I said.

"And muskrat hides are probably going to get up to near three dollars
this winter."

"Why didn't I think of that?"  Gram said.

As it turned out, college was not nearly SO dangerous as Gram and Mom
had led me to believe.  The campus was located in the middle of a vast
farming region bordered on one side by a fairly decelot range of
mountains.  The surrounding countryside was dotted with lakes and laced
with streams ranging from rivers to creeks to cricks with an occasional
swamp thrown in for good luck.  From my dorm window, pheasants could be
seen strutting the wheat fields and deer were abundant in the
mountains.  It was my kind of place.

Originally an agricultural school, the college now enjoyed a reputation
for research and scholarship in dozens of different academic areas.

The chairman of my major department was himself a scholar of
international reputation, to which was added the honor of having me as
one of his advisees.

Later in my college career, after I knew him better, Dr. Osgood
revealed to me the peculiar circumstance under which he became my
faculty adviser, once and for all clearing up the mystery of how great
universities arrive at decisions that will forever influence the future
life of a student.  "I drew the short straw," he said."

Even now I remember our first meeting.  A secretary showed me into an
office, where Dr. Osgood, his great mop of white hair seemingly
suspended in midexplosion, sat staring intently at a file folder on his
desk.  He looked up, smiling.

"From a brief study of your academic record, young man, I see a great
future ahead of you as a scholar."

"Gosh," I replied, hanging my head and digging at the carpet with my
toe.

"I don't know about that."

"Now now now," Dr. Osgood said, "You have amassed a wonderful academic
record and are obviously a brilliant student.  There's no need for
false modesty, Heinzburger."

"McManus," I corrected.

"Oh, McManus?"  Dr. Osgood picked up another file folder and perused
it, occasionally allowing himself a slight shudder.  "Harumph!  Well,
now, perhaps I spoke too soon, McManus.  it appears from your record
that you have every reason for legitimate modesty."

I laughed, not wishing to embarrass him, even though I didn't find his
little joke particularly funny.

"By the way, McManus, what happened to the top of your head there, an
auto accident?"

That's my lucky hunting hat, sir."

"Oh.  Is it removable or permanently attached?"

"I almost always take it off when I go to bed," I said.  "Unless I
happen to forget."

"That's most admirable," he said.  "One must always strive to cultivate
the little niceties."  As far as I know, that was the first and only
compliment I ever received from Dr.  Osgood.

Then we got down to a serious discussion of my academic career, during
which Dr. Osgood at times raved incoherently and at other times
appeared on the verge of physical violence.  Finally, he sat up very
straight in his chair and began to perform what I later learned were
deep-breathing exercises.

Afterwards, for a while, he seemed calmer.

"Let's take a different tack," he said, forcing a small smile that
trembled at the corners.  "Let's concentrate for a moment on your
future, presuming you have one.  Now think about this very carefully.

All other things aside, what is your ultimate goal in life?  When
you're as old as 1, what single achievement would you like to look back
upon, the one great shining accomplishment?"

I could see that we had now got down to serious business, and I sorted
through all my vague hopes and desires and finally selected one that
stood out among all others, the impossible dream.

"I have it," I said.

"Yes?  Yes?"  Dr.  Osgood implored.

"I'd like to shoot a world's-record trophy moose!"

Dr. Osgood appeared at that moment to have suffered an infarction of
some sort.  He rose slowly from his chair, his face twisted in anguish,
leaned forward across the desk, and croaked, "Moose?  Moose?  What do
you mean, MOOSE!"

I must admit that my first meeting with Dr. Osgood made me a bit
uneasy, but in our later sessions over the years I was able to relax
and banter with him about my grades and various other trifles.  Often I
would leave his office in a state of high good humor, slinging one last
witty retort over my shoulder, while Dr. Osgood would put on a show of
weeping uncontrollably, at which he was very good.  The man could have
made his fortune as an actor.

Life in the dorm was not nearly so bad as Mom and Gram had predicted.

Oh, sure, occasionally some of the guys would commit a minor atrocity,
but nothing out of the ordinary as atrocities go.  There were the usual
panty raids, water fights, short-sheeting of beds, and dropping of
stink bombs into the ventilation system, that sort of innocent fun.

During the first semester of my freshman year I had extremely bad luck
with roommates.  My first roommate, Wilson Fawfush, flipped out after a
few weeks and finally insisted upon being moved to another dorm.  The
dorm director told me confidentially that Wilson had been suffering
from hallucinations, even to the extent of claimin he saw snakes
crawling all around the floor of our room.

"Poor Wilson," I said.

"Yes, it's too bad," the director said.  "Sometimes the human mind can
play strange tricks on us."

"No question about it," I said.

The next roommate assigned me was a real dilly.  His name was Lester
T.

Lillybridge III.  It immediately became apparent that Lester had been
spoiled rotten as a kid, one result of which was that he had just been
expelled from a classy private college back East.  His lips seemed to
be curled in a permanent sneer of superiority.  Scarcely had he dropped
his leather-trimmed luggage on the linoleum of our room than we had our
first exchange of hostility.

"What are all the guns doing in here?"  he asked.

"I'm a hunter," I said.

"Figures," he said.  "My parents have arranged this as a punishment for
me.  What's that ugly thing on the wall?"

His words momentarily crippled my ego.  No sooner had I learned I
possessed an ego than some fool had to come along and cripple it.

"That," I said indignantly, "is a deer head.  I mounted it myself."

"Why does it have that stupid grin on its face?"

"That question just goes to show you know nothing about deer," I
snapped.

"In their natural state, all deer wear stupid grins like that."

Lillybridge laughed evilly.  He walked over and kicked a crate I had
built in the corner of the room.  "What's in there?"

Snakes," I said.

"Don't be a wise-elbow," Lillybridge said, opening the lid on top and
peering in.  He slammed down the lid and jumped back.  "There are
snakes in there!"

"Yes."

"Can they get out?"

"Well, they did one night a few weeks ago.  That's why I built the
crate for them.  They can't get out now."

"Geez!"  Lillybridge said.  "My parents have really done it to me this
time!"

Lillybridge found some of the other guys in the dorm more to his liking
and spent most of his free time with them, planning and executing
various atrocities.  When not in class, I spent most of my time in the
museum of natural history, where I had a part-time job assisting the
curator in various chores.  I was thinking of becoming a naturalist.

The work was so much fun I would sometimes take it home with me.

"Where's that last batch of snakes we caught?"  the curator would ask
me.

"I took them home to study," I'd say.

"Well, bring them back!"

Occasionally, the curator would let me try my hand at taxidermy, but
the results were never up to his standards.  "You didn't do too badly
on that ground squirrel," he'd say, "but why does it have that stupid
grin on its face?"

During the day, when there were people milling about, the museum was
quite pleasant.  But at night, when I was there late sweeping the
floors or cleaning up a mess of some kind, not always of my own making,
the place was downright creepy.  The live rattlesnakes in their glass
cages, for example, would strike at me, popping the glass with their
noses as I walked by.  I knew that the snakes couldn't strike through
the glass, but my adrenal glands, being ignorant of that fact, would
pump a quart or so of adrenaline into my system every time a rattler
struck at me.  Pretty soon my nerves would be jangling, and shadows
would seem to dart and dance among the displays.  The huge, mounted
timber wolf would blink his eyes as I scurried by with my dust cloth.

The mounted cougar would lash its tail.  The bobcat would twitch its
whiskers.

There was one particularly loathsome room that I had to venture into in
order to empty the various waste receptacles, some of which
occasionally held startling surprises.  This was the dissection room,
where dead animals were prepared for whatever purpose the curator had
in mind for them.  One large glass case contained a kind of carnivorous
beetle, thousands of them, used for cleaning the flesh off bones,
leaving them shiny clean.  I would imagine I could hear the beetles at
their work, performing a grim symphony with their infinitesimal
chomp-chomp-chomps.  Between the rattlesnakes and the beetles, my late
night chores in the museum would often leave me in a state of barely
controlled terror.

The dissection room contained a dingy gray freezer about the size and
shape of a coffin, only somewhat deeper.  I often wondered what it
might hold.

One night when I was there alone, my curiosity overpowered my terror
sufficiently for me to peek in.  Ever so carefully I raised the lid,
feeling the beat of my heart in every single goose bump on my body.

Bit by bit, with cold sweat flooding off of me, I raised one eyelid.

Nothing!  The freezer was empty.

At that moment I thought of an atrocity to commit.

I had happened to mention to Lester, as we lay in our bunks one night,
that my nerves were a bit frazzled from my work at the museum.  He had
laughed in his nasty, evil way and expressed the opinion that I was
"Just chicken."

Confiding my fear to a person like Lillybridge had been nothing less
than a lapse of sanity on my part.  He had soon told all the other guys
on our floor, most of whom up to that moment had regarded me with a
certain amount of trepidation.  Now they began to feel that I was a
safe subject upon which to perform their practical jokes.  This was a
theory in need of puncturing.  I set my trap for Lillybridge with great
care.  First I wrote on a sheet of paper the message, "Dr. Smith,
please finish with the dissection of this cadaver as soon as
possible.

It's beginning to spoil."

Then I waited until late one night when Lillybridge and I were in our
bunks exchanging a few nasty barbs with each other before going to
sleep.

"Let's be serious for a moment, Lester," I Said.

"I am being serious, worm wit," he replied.

"Naw, come on, I mean it.  I've got to tell somebody about this.  It's
really getting to me.  I may even have to quit my job in the museum
because of it."

"So, what is it, mussel mouth?  You can tell your old Uncle Lester
anything in complete confidence.  Har!  Har!  Har!"

"Well, you see, there's this freezer in the dissection room at the
museum.  it's about the size and shape of a coffin.  And I'm dying to
look into it.  I just have this uncontrollable compulsion to see what's
inside.

But I'm scared of what I'll find.  I'm torn between my fear and my
curiosity.

I just can't stand it any more!"

"Har liar liar liar liar liar liar liar!"  Lester said.  "Har liar
liar."

"And what I was wondering, Lester, is if maybe you and I could sneak
out to the museum right now and open that freezer.  I've got a key."

"Sure!"  he said.  "Sounds like funl!"

"No kidding, Lester?  You promise you won't chicken out?  That no
matter what, you'll open the freezer?  I'd hate to have to tell the
guys that you were afraid to open the freezer!"

"Let's go!"  Lester said, bounding out of his bunk.

After checking to make sure the campus security police were nowhere in
sight, I unlocked the door to the museum and we slipped inside.  I told
Lester we couldn't turn on any lights because that would alert campus
security to our presence.  We'd just have to make do with the lights
from the display cases, which cast an eerie glow about the room.

"You're not getting nervous are you, Lester?"  I asked, as we worked
our way through the museum.

"Har!  Har!  Har!"  Lester laughed.

I led him up alongside the rattlesnake case.  Lester stared dully at
the snakes.  Then, buzzzzz-buzzzzz POP, POP pop!  The snakes hit the
glass a few inches from his face.

As soon as he had stopped dancing up and down, Lester said, "You should
have told me they were alive!  How was I to know they would strike at
me!"  I could see the level of adrenaline rising through his eyes.

We moved on a ways.  "What's that behind you?"  I asked suddenly.

Lester spun around to stare the timber wolf in the fangs.  Even in the
soft glow of the display lights, I thought I could see outward signs of
Lester's heart ricocheting around his rib cage.  "Oh, just an ol'
timber wolf," I said.

"Nothing to be afraid of."  By now, I calculated that Lester's
circulation system was pumping about 80 percent adrenaline.  And I
hadn't even shown him the carnivorous beetles yet.

When we reached the door of the windowless dissection room, I told
Lester to wait outside until I had gone in and turned on the light.  He
didn't argue.

I slipped in and placed my note on top of the freezer, then flipped the
wall switch.  The lights came on in a blinding glare.  Then I opened
the door and motioned Lester in.

"Here's something you might find interesting, Lester," I said, in the
manner of a tour guide.  "These beetles are used to clean all the flesh
off skeletons.  Gee, I wonder what they are working on now."

Lester stared at the quivering black mass of beetles, his eyes widening
in horror.

"Hear their tiny little chomp-chomps?"  I asked.

"Yeh," Lester said weakly.

I turned and pulled Lester stumbling along behind me.  "Now over here
we have the freezer.  Looks sorta like a coffin, doesn't it?  Maybe now
you can see why it gives me the creeps.  Can't tell what might be in
there, but I've got this terrible compulsion to find out!  How about
you, Lester?"

"Hunh?"

"Boy am I glad you came along to open up the freezer for me, Lester.

But what have we here?  Seems to be a note.  Dang!  I forgot my
spectacles!  Read it for me, will you, Lester?"

Lester's eyes fastened on the note like a matched set of vises.  "Good
jumpin' gosh almighty," he hissed through his teeth, something that's
not that easy to do even in the best of times.

"Well, forget the note, we're wasting time," I said.  "Go ahead and pop
her open, and let's see what's inside."

"N-no!"  Lester said.

"C'mon!"  I said.  "Quit kidding around!  Flip up the ol' lid there!"

"Un-unh," Lester said, shaking his head.

"You mean you're too chicken to open the freezer?"  I asked.

"Un-hunh," Lester said, nodding affirmatively.

"Har!  Har!  Har!"  I replied.  "Too chicken to open a measly old
freezer!

Wait till the guys hear about this!  I guess I'll just have to open it
myself!"

I grabbed the lid and flipped it up, watching Lester's face all the
while in order to record every detail of his reaction so I'd be able to
provide the guys in the dorm with an accurate report.  There was, for
instance, this little popping motion of his eyeballs as he stared into
the open freezer.

Then there was the way his jaw sagged and a bit of drool rolled over
his lower lip.  Overall, there was the general response of someone
accidentally sticking a finger in an empty light socket.  The effect
was even better than I had hoped for.

"Har!  Har!  Har!"  I laughed.  "There, you see, it's empty!"  I turned
to point into the freezer.  "Har!  Har!  HAAAAAAARRRRRR!"

Lester may have been a spoiled brat, but he sure knew how to run.  I
counted at least three times that he passed me on our way back to the
dorm.

Later, I learned that, unbeknownst to me, the curator had stored a dead
black bear in the freezer, its skin partially peeled off.

Lester and I went on to become good friends, and that winter I even
taught him how to trap muskrat, just in case he ever ran short of
money.  He changed into as nice a guy as you would ever want to meet.

It seemed as if the scare at the museum had purged all the meanness and
smugness and arrogance out of Lester.  Heck, I was even a little purged
myself.

The Gift Christmas is an uneasy time for me.  Maybe it's because my
father was a practical joker.  When I was small he would tell me that
if I didn't behave myself Santa would fill my stocking with kindling
sticks and rotten potatoes.

I would try to behave myself but could never seem to get the hang of
it.

Christmas thus became a matter of great apprehension to me, because
even though I couldn't behave I wasn't stupid, and I figured Santa
Claus had to have my name on some kindling and rotten potatoes.  Sure
enough, come Christmas morning I would creep out of bed, peek around
the corner at my stocking, and there would be some kindling sticks
protruding from it, along with a few sprouts from rotten potatoes.

"AAIIIGHHHHHH!"  I would exclaim.

"Ho, ho, ho!"  my father would laugh.

Then, of course, he would show me that under the kindling sticks and
rotten potatoes were a ball, a top, some dominoes, a tin soldier, and
maybe some candy orange slices.  I would punish him by playing all day
with kindling and potatoes.  We didn't have sychology in those days;
otherwise, I might have been emotionally scarred for life by my
father's little trick.  As it is, I become uneasy at Christmas time.

One of the reasons I become uneasy is the cost of things I put in my
own kids' stockings: digital watches, rock-concert tickets, skiing
lessons, and the like.  Fortunately, the kindling sticks and rotten
potatoes don't cost much and never fail to give me a good laugh.

There's nothing funnier than teenagers dumping out their stockings and
exclaiming, "AAIIIGHHHHHHH!"  They exclaim that when they discover the
stocking doesn't contain a set of keys to a new car.

Probably the main reason for my unease, however, is the gifts I receive
for Christmas.  Whenever the kids ask MY wife what to get ol' Whosis
for Christmas, she tells them, "You know how he loves outdoor sports.

Why don't you get him something outdoorsie?"

"Good idea" they cry in unison.  "How much can you afford for us to get
him?"

Let me state here that there should be a law prohibiting any person who
uses the term "outdoorsie" from dispensing advice about what kinds of
presents to buy an outdoorsman.  A few years ago, after my spouse
advised her I would like something outdoorsie, one of my wealthy aunts
gave me something called the Ultimate Fishing Machine.  As near as I
could make out from the operational manual, you stayed at home and
watched TV while the UFM went out and caught the fish, cleaned them,
cooked them, and ate them.  When it got back home, you asked the UFM
what kind of luck it had and it told you lies.

The manufacturer claimed in his literature that the Ultimate Fishing
Machine had been made possible through the miracle of
miniaturization.

I would have preferred a miracle that assembled the machine before
passing it on to me.  At the very least, the company could have
miniaturized an engineer and enclosed him in the package to help put
the UFM together.

I never even attempted to assemble the Ultimate Fishing Machine and so
cannot report on its competence at fishing.  Bothersome as it may be,
I'd just as soon go to the trouble of catching, cleaning, cooking, and
eating my own fish.  If I work at it, I can probably even learn to tell
fishing lies.

Nothing gladdens the heart of a sporting-goods store proprietor more
than to be approached by a lady who says something like, "My husband is
the outdoorsie type.  I wonder if you might suggest a suitable
Christmas gift for him."

The proprietor grins evilly and rumples his hair so as to conceal the
horns protrudingjust above his temples.  Here is his chance to revenge
himself on one of the arrogant sportsmen who have snorted de risively
and even guffawed openly at certain items of the proprietor's stock.

"Here's something fishermen are absolutely crazy about," he says.  "The
musical fishing creel!  Every time a fish is inserted, it plays
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  if they go over their limit, Elvis Presley
sings 'I Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog."' "Marvelous!"  the wife
exclaims.  "I'll take it!  Any other suggestions?"

"Now here's a nifty item--a pair of sleeping-bag warmers for
backpackers."

"They look like bricks."

"That's what they are--but not just your ordinary bricks.  No ma'am.

These are special high-density bricks--just feel how heavy they are.

The way they work, the backpacker heats them in the campfire and then
inserts them in his sleeping bag.  Keep him toasty warm all night."

"What a nice idea," the wife says.  "I'll take a set."

"How about a gag gift for the fellow who likes to go out exploring by
himself in the wilds--a trick compass.  See, every time you look at it,
North shifts to a different direction.  Ha!  Ha!  It comes with maps
that instantly dissolve when they come in contact with cold sweat.  The
compass and maps together are sold as The $8.95 Do-It-Yourself Divorce
Kit."

"It's tempting," the wife says, "but I'd better not."

"Here's a nice gift for the man who has nothing," the proprietor tells
her.  "A tiny inflatable vest for grasshoppers.  Keeps them afloat, and
with this little harness to fasten them to the hook, they can be used
over and over until a fish takes them or they die of old age.

"That is absolutely darling!"  the wife exclaims.  "I'll take two."

"Did I show you the grasshopper water skis ...?"

There are other reasons for my unease at Christmas.  After my father
died, Christmas was a rather bleak occasion at our house for a number
of years.  I got a foreshadowing of just how bleak one Christmas was
going to be when my mother warned me, "If you don't behave, all Santa
is going to put in your stocking is kindling sticks."

"What about the rotten potatoes?"  I asked.

"He can't afford them this year," she said.

Santa always seemed to come through with something though, even if it
was pre-owned, as they say.  I would get some used clothes, used books,
used toys, used candy.  It was my sister, the Troll, who gave me the
used candy.

"This Snickers bar has teeth marks on it," I said.

"I know," the Troll said.  "I forgot, I don't like caramel."

"You didn't lick it all over, did you?"  I asked, examining the bar
carefully for lick marks.

"No," she said.  "What kind of a person do you think I am?"

Thinking that she was the kind of a person who would lick a Christmas
present, I worried for weeks after eating the candy bar that I would
come down with some terrible disease carried by sisters.

Even back when I was nine or ten I was known as an outdoorsie type
among the relatives.  Rich Aunt Maude wrote my mother and asked what
kind of outdoorsie present I would like for Christmas.  My mother wrote
back that I would "just love something related to fishing."  We
speculated for weeks whether Maude would send me a fine fishing rod or
a fine reel or a tackle box filled with tackle.  I thought possibly she
might even come through with a boat, motor, and trailer.  When the gift
arrived though, the boat, motor, and trailer were instantly ruled out
because of the package's minuscule dimensions, so minuscule in fact
that they also ruled out the fine fishing rod, reel, and tackle box.  I
figured all it could be was a fly book filled up with expensive
flies.

Christmas morning we all got up and rushed down to the Christmas bush,
and the family waited with hated breath--mouthwash being unknown to us
in those days--as I tore open the package from rich Aunt Maude.

Even to this day I can recall my response upon unveiling the present:
"AAIIIGHHHHHHH!"

There, lying in state before me in a monogrammed box with glittering
foil wrapping and soft crinkly tissue paper were ... two silk neckties
... with pictures of fish on them!

"Don't be so upset," my mother pleaded, pulling me down off the wall.

"You can wear them with your new suit--whenever you get a new suit."

"And whenever you get a neck," the Troll added.  "Now open my
present!"

"What is it?"  I said, my bitterness ebbing.

The Troll smiled sweetly.  "Gum."

I must say it was pretty good gum, too.  There was still a lot of
flavor left in it.  My mother always used to say that we should be
grateful for whatever we received.  "Just think," she would admonish
us, "there are millions of people all over the country living in
poverty, who can't even afford popcorn to decorate their Christmas bush
with."  I tried not to think of the poor people as I decorated the
bush.  "How does this look?"  I would ask as I stepped back to study my
placement of the popcorn.  "Why not put it right up on the tip?"  the
Troll would suggest.  "That way it'll look like a little tiny white
star."

The only poor person I knew at that time was Rancid Crabtree, the old
woodsman who lived at the foot of the mountain about a mile from our
place.  I spent a large part of my early life following Rancid around
and studying him and learning all sorts of interesting things.  But
Rancid was poor.  He didn't seem to know that he was poor, however, and
I never had the heart to tell him, because he was the happiest person
I'd ever met.  If he had known he was poor of course, then he would
have been sad and miserable all the time.  As it was, Rancid was able
to live out his whole life in blissful ignorance of the fact that he
was poor.

A few days before Christmas one year, I wandered over to Rancid's cabin
to see what he was up to.  He was carrying an armload of firewood into
the cabin and invited me in.  I looked around, expecting to see a
Christmas bush with some presents under it.  There was nothing but the
rumpled bed, the old barrel stove, a table and some broken chairs,
rusty traps, a shotgun and some rifles on wall pegs, and a few other
odds and ends.

"Where's your Christmas bush?"  I asked him.

"If Ah was to have anythang, it 'ud be a Crimmas tree.  But Ah don't
see why Ah got to brang a tree into the house when all Ah's got to do
is look out the winder and see all of 'ems Ah want."

"But what do you put all your presents under?"  I persisted.  Rancid
stared at me for a long moment, then snorted.  "Ah use to git all kinds
of presents.  They'd be piled up n'ar to the ceilin' and Ah be kickin'
an' stumblin' over 'em all the time.  So finally Ah just up an' tells
folks to shet off givin' me all them presents.  Ya know, Ah ain't
missed 'em one bit.

A man just outgrows presents, Ah guess."

I hoped I'd never outgrow presents, and while I was thinking about
that, a great wave of sorrow crashed down upon me and poured right down
into the insides of my feet and filled up my toes and then came welling
back up again into my throat.

"What's wrong with you, boy?"  Rancid said.

"Your stove is smoking," I choked.  "I better get some fresh air," and
I bolted out the door.

Rancid came out on the porch and watched me as I gasped cold air into
my lungs.

hat was when the great idea occurred to me.

"Say, Rancid," I said, "why don't you come have Christmas dinner with
us at our house?"

"Naw, Ah couldn't do thet.  You know yer ol' granny an' me don't git
along."

"Why, it was her who told me to invite you," I lied.  "She said to me,
'Now you go give Rancid Crabtree an invite to Christmas dinner!'"
"Wall, dad-gum maw hide!  Shore!  You tell her Ah'd be happy as a hawg
at a hangin' to shar' yer Crimmas vittles with y'alls."

When I told Mom that I had invited Rancid to Christmas dinner, she said
she didn't know if we could afford the extra expense.

"Heck, he won't eat that much," I said.

"The expense I'm talking about is repairing the hole in the roof when
your grandmother goes through it."

Gram didn't go through the roof when she heard the news about Rancid.

She took it rather well as a matter of fact, as soon as she got done
hopping up and down in the middle of the kitchen and saying
"AAIIIGHHHH!"

"Good gosh almighty, boy, do you know what you've done?  That Rancid
Crabtree ain't took a bath since he fell in the crick in '27.  Folks
pay him just to walk by their farms so the smell will drive the ticks
off their critters.  And you invite him to Christmas dinner!  Well, all
we can do is put the extra leaves in the table and set you and him down
at the far end!"

"Hoooray!"  I shouted.  "I'll even help get things ready.  How many
extra leaves we got for the table, Gram?"

Gram shook her head.  "Not nearly enough, boy, not nearly enough!"

Personally, I didn't think that Rancid smelled all that bad, but there
was a story told that his approach from an upwind direction had once
raised an alarm that the stockyards had caught on fire.  In any case,
there was a great deal of moaning and groaning among the womenfolk that
Rancid's presence at Christmas dinner would be a lingering one.  The
Troll practiced eating with her nose pinched together, and Gram and Mom
debated whether we should eat with all the windows open and hope a
blizzard would come up and provide a strong cross draft.

All of this carrying on began to worry me, because I didn't want to
ruin Christmas dinner for the rest of the family.  So, the day before
Christmas I hastened through the snow to Rancid's cabin with the notion
of persuading him that coming to dinner might not be such a good idea
after all.  Upon approaching the cabin, however, I noticed great white
clouds rising from the doors and windows and cracks in the roof.  I
thought the place was on fire, and ran yelling for Rancid to get out of
the cabin.

Rancid stuck his head out of a steam cloud.  "What in tarnation is all
the ruckus about?"

I peeked past him into the cabin.  There was a great tub on top of the
barrel stove which was belching out smoke and flames on all sides, and
the clouds of steam were boiling up from the tub.

"Whatcha got in the tub?"  I asked.

Rancid shuddered.  "Water.  Ahim gonna do something' Ah ain't did since
'27.  It's a torture to me, but Ahim gonna do itjist fer you.  Ah hope
you appreciate it.  An' don't never ast me to do it agin, I cause Ah
ain't!"

"Oh, I won't, I won't never ask you to do it again, Rancid."  I turned
to sprint happily back to my house.  "See you at Christmas dinner
tomorrow!"

When I burst into the kitchen, Gram was just removing from the oven a
batch of cinnamon rolls.

"You don't have to worry about eating with the windows open at
Christmas dinner tomorrow," I told her.

"Oh?  Rancid ain't comin'?"

"He's coming all right, but this very moment he's fixing us up a nice
surprise."

"A gift!  Land sakes alive, we didn't think to get that dirty ol'
rascal anything!"

"well, it's not exactly ..."

Gram slapped a hot cinnamon roll out of my hand.  "Don't tell me
exactly.

I'll just wrap up these cinnamon rolls for him.  Ain't nobody gives us
a present we don't give him a present back!"

"But ..."

"No buts!"

Christmas day, as we waited for Rancid to show up for dinner, Mom said
"I'd feel better about this if we already had all the windows open when
he came.  That way we wouldn't be so likely to hurt his feelings."

"That's the way I feel about it, too," Gram said.  "And we should of
put the extra leaves in the table."

Suddenly, the Troll, who had been looking out the window, shouted,
"Here he comes!  And wow!  You're not going to believe this!"

There was a knock on the door, and Mom called out: "Come right on in,
Rancid!"

In burst Rancid with a big snaggletoothed grin.

"Surprise!"  he shouted.  And were we surprised?  Why, you could have
knocked every last one of us over with a feather!

As soon as Mom had recovered from her astonishment enough to speak, she
said: "Rancid, why don't you throw open a few Of those windows over
there and let in some fresh air while we put the extra leaves in the
table.  Then I want to get a better look at those skis."

"steamed the curve into the tips mawsef," Rancid said proudly.  "Put a
couple birch boards in a tub of water on top of maw stove and them ol'
tips bent up jist as purty as you please.  Ain't made a pair of skis
since '27."

"A mite wider on that window, if you please, Rancid," Gram said.  "My,
don't that blizzard feel good!  Now let me feast my eyes on them
skis."

"Thar fer the boy," Rancid said.  "But Ah made them big nuff y'all can
use 'em if ya wants."

That was one of the finest Christmas gifts and one of the finest
Christmas dinners I have ever known.  As Mom said as we sat shivering
happily around the table, "It's a chill wind that blows no warmth."

The Sensuous Angler There would be a lot less divorce in this country
if more husbands and wives fished together.  Spouses that fish together
stay together.

My wife, Bun, for example, used to absolutely detest fishing.  Whenever
I dragged her out on the lake, she would sit there in the boat with her
eyes fixed on me in an unblinking stare that I often imagined to be
almost murderous.  From time to time I'd even speak a few kind words to
her in an effort to break the spell: "Row a bit faster along here, will
you, Bun?  I don't want my lure to get snagged in the weeds."  of
course, there are some people who just don't respond to kind words, and
Bun seemed to be one of them.

Besides my compulsive interest in fishing, what complicated our marital
situation even more was that women find me extraordinarily
attractive.

"Irresistible" would not be too strong a word.  I sometimes have to
laugh to myself at the great show they put on to make me think they're
totally unaware of my existence.  Just recently I was sitting next to a
beautiful woman on the uptown bus.  I could tell she was flustered by
the way she rummaged around in her purse, finally dug out a compact,
and started fixing her face.  It was absolutely hilarious, particularly
when she wiped off some excess eye shadow with the tip of my tie.  I
mean, there are no lengths to which women will not go in their pretense
of ignoring me!

Bun, quite forgivably, used to be terribly jealous.  I'd try to kid her
out of it.  When we would come home from grocery shopping, I'd say,
"Did you see how that cute blonde at the store was pretending to ignore
me?  I nearly laughed out loud!"

"There's only one can of tuna here," Bun would say.  "I could have
sworn I bought two cans of tuna."

That's how bad it was.  Mad, uncontrollable jealousy was practically
destroying our marriage.

The combination of my obsession with fishing and my irresistible appeal
to women took a more extreme turn for the worse one day when Bun
discovered a reddish smudge on the collar of one of my white dress
shirts.

"Aha, I've got you now, you rascal," she snarled.  "What's this red
smudge on your shirt collar?"

How had I ever managed to overlook that smudge?  My mind raced,
feverishly searching for a plausible lie.

"It's probably just a lipstick smudge from one of the girls at the
office," I tried.

"Ha!"  Bun snapped.  "I wasn't born yesterday, you know!  This is
salmon-eggjuice!  Here I think you're down at the office working, and
actually you're sneaking off to go fishing.  You've probably rented a
secret apartment where you keep an extra set of fishing gear!"

But there's this other woman ..."  That's as far as I got.  if there's
one thing I can't stand about Bun, it's the way she expresses her
jealousy by laughing uncontrollably.

Actually, there was another woman.  Her name was Jennifer, and she
worked in the same advertising agency I did.  There was something about
her that made it almost impossible for me to keep my eyes off of her.

As with most womeng she made a great show of ignoring my existence.

There was that time, for instance, when I was standing by the coat rack
and she tried to hang her coat on me.  Of course she had laughed in an
embarrassed way, but not until she had made repeated efforts to keep
her coat from slipping off my shoulders.

My job at the agency was to invent benevolent lies about a client's
product.  So distracted was I by Jennifer that one day I allowed a
truth to slip into my copy and was nearly fired.  Naturally, I was
upset by the mishap, and as soon as the boss had gone down to the shop
to resharpen his reamer, I whipped out my portable fly-tying outfit and
began to tie a few Royal Henchmen to soothe my nerves.  Suddenly I felt
a pair of eyes on me.  At first I thought it was Charley five, playing
another one of his grotesque practical jokes.  Then I realized it was
Jennifer watching me.  She came over to my desk.

"Hello," she said, holding out a hand.  "I'm Jennifer.  You must be new
here."

"Oh, I've been here awhile," I replied suavely.

"How long?"

"Four years."

"Strange that I've never noticed you before.  Our desks are only twenty
feet apart."

"Yes, well I've noticed you, Jennifer."

"You have?  Anything in particular?"

"Is there ever!"  I breathed.  "For one thing, there's the way you read
Field & Stream so avidly at lunch while the other girls are gawking at
Glamour.  Then I saw the way you took that casting reel apart and put
it back together when you were supposed to be typing the annual
report."

"Oh dear!"  she cried, tittering.  "You caught me in the act, did
you?

I was just cleaning my Protron Ninety Double-Widget Power-Glide
Pro-Caster."

"You're telling me!"  I said.  "You have about the prettiest little
Pro-Caster I've ever laid eyes on."

A flush of embarrassment filled Jennifer's cheeks, reminding me of the
red-bellies I used to catch in the creek behind our house when I was a
kid.

As she bent over to whisper in my ear, I detected the faint, lingering
fragrance of OFF!  "Did you notice anything else?"  Her voice was
husky.

"You mean ... the way you rewrapped the split bamboo rod during your
coffee breaks last February?  Of course I noticed!  It nearly drove me
wild!"

She smiled.  "You're really a very attract ... You're not that bad look
... I like large ears a lot, I really do."

I chuckled.  The poor girl was practically tongue tied.

"What attracted me to you most, though," she continued, "was your
little portable fly-tying outfit.  It's lovely.  Why don't u stop by my
place tonight and we'll ... well, you know?"

"I know!"  I said.  "I know!"

After I had slipped into Jennifer's apartment that evening, she poured
us each a glass of wine and turned on the stereo.  Then we got right
down to business.  I was amazed, I must tell you, at what that woman
knew.  In fifteen minutes she taught me more about how to cure fresh
steelhead eggs for bait than all the grizzled old anglers I've ever
known.  Such was our mad frenzy of curing steelhead eggs that some of
the juice apparently splashed on my collar.

That was the spot my wife detected.

"No one must ever find out about us," I told Jennifer as we shook hands
at the door of her apartment as I was leaving.

"oh, I know, I know," she said.  "But next time, next time ..."

"What?"  I gasped.  "Tell me what, jennifer!"

"Next time I'll show you how to filet perch!"

I was puzzled.  "But, Jennifer, I know how to filet perch."

She gave me a lascivious smile.  "Not the way I do it."

My imagination did a wild dance, raising goose bumps on my flesh the
size of bongo drums.  "When can we do it?"  I asked.  "When can we
filet perch together?"

"Maybe next Tuesday night.  Call me after eight.  But if a man's voice
answers, hang up."

"A man's voice?"

"Yes, my husband's.  He is very big, with a short temper.  And he hates
fishing and fish.  it would be most unfortunate for you if he caught
us--you know--fileting together."  I shuddered at the image conjured up
by her warning.

it was a long week.  Every time I looked up, I saw Jennifer typing her
reports a few yards away.  I could scarcely tear my eyes away from her
flying fingers, those very fingers which, but a few days before, I had
watched ...

had watched knead alum into a sinewy mess of steelhead eggs.  Once a
man, an angler, has experienced that with a woman, there is no turning
back.  And she had this lovely way of tossing her head.  It reminded me
of the way a fly fisher, hands filled with rod and line, will toss his
head in order to shake a deer fly off his nose.  It was beautiful.

At home during supper, I found myself staring absently at my plate.

All I could think about was fileting with Jennifer.

"What's wrong with Pop?"  one of the kids asked one evening.  "How come
he doesn't tell us those stupid stories about his childhood any
more?"

"Don't complain," their mother said.  "Your father has important things
on his mind."

"We ain't complaining!"  the kids said in unison.  "We ain't
complaining!"

"Have some respect!"  I shouted at them.  "I never once talked to one
of my parents like that!  Why, one time when I was only eight years old
and had just walked the fifteen miles home from school in knee-deep
snow ..."

"Forget I mentioned it," the first kid said.

After supper Bun followed me into my den, also jestingly referred to as
"the hole under the stairs."  She put her hands on my shoulders and
said, "Something's wrong.  I know something's wrong.  You get upset
over the smallest things.  I saw the way your eyes became all teary
when you couldn't stab that last pea with your fork at supper.  You can
tell me!  What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," I said.  What made me feel so bad about my affair
with Jennifer is that Bun's a great wife.  Sure, she has her faults.

There was that time she screamed as if she had found jack the Ripper in
our refrigerator instead of merely a mayonnaise jar containing live
hellgrammites.  Heck, Jennifer would never have screamed at the sight
of a few crummy live hellgrammites.

The truth was that Jennifer didn't really stand a chance of coming
between my wife and me.  Ol'Bun and I had just been through too many
things together.  She had stuck with me through thin and thin.  The
only thing to do, I told myself, was to try to forget Jennifer.  But I
couldn't.

When Tuesday night rolled around, I slipped out to a pay phone and
called Jennifer's number.  Jennifer answered.

"Is it all right?"  I asked.

"Yes," she said, breathlessly.  "Hammer is flying out of town on a
business trip tonight and won't be back until tomorrow."

"Great!"  I said.  "I'll sneak right over."

I told Bun I was going to spend the evening with the boys down at
Kelly's Bar & Grill and not to expect me home too early.  She said
fine, that she would leave the key under the cushion on the porch
swing.  I was halfway over to Jennifer's before it occurred to me that
there isn't a cushion on the porch swing.  We don't even have a porch
swing.  We scarcely have a porch.  I wondered if Bun suspected
anything.

A sudden thought jolted me: Hammer?  Her husband's name is Hammer?

When Jennifer met me at the door, I was disappointed to find her
dressed in a low-cut, filmy negligee.

"You're early," she said.  "Mix yourself a drink while I slip into
something a little more comfortable."  Presently she returned from the
bedroom dressed in baggy, patched fishing pants and a plaid wool shirt
sprinkled with fish scales.

"Hey hey hey!"  I said.  "Now that's more like it!"  I thrust a package
into her hands.  "By the way, here's a little something for you."

Her hands tore eagerly at the wrappings.  Nervously, I wondered if
maybe I had made a mistake, giving her such a personal gift so soon in
our relationship.

"Oh!"  she cried, clapping her hands together in delight.  "They're
beautiful!  You shouldn't have!  They must have cost you a small
fortune!"

"Nope," I said, smiling modestly.  "I caught them myself.  Off the old
Grand Street fishing pier.  Do you really like them?"

Jennifer wiped herjoy-streaked cheeks on her shirt sleeve.  "Oh, I love
them!  They are absolutely gorgeous perch!  All Hammer ever gives me
are long-stemmed red roses and dumb furs."

It was obvious her husband was either a thoughtless clod or totally
insensitive.  Some menjust don't know how to treat a woman!

Overcome by the excitement of the moment, Jennifer and I rushed into
the kitchen and began to filet madly.  Never have I known a woman who
could filet like Jennifer!  Perch after perch fell under her flashing
knife.  I became mesmerized by her very motions, the way she whacked
off the heads, stripped away the skins, and sliced off the filets.

Time ceased to exist for me, and all space seemed confined to
Jennifer's laminated maple chopping block.

Then the earth moved.

"Did the earth move for you, Jennifer?"  I asked.

"Yes yes yes yes yes!"  she cried.  "And do you know what made it
move?"

"What?"

"Hammer!  He always trips on that last step at the top of the
stairs!"

"HAMMER?"  I yelled.  "I thought you said he was away on business!"

"Maybe he missed his flight!  Maybe he suspects something!  But that is
Hammer coming down the hall!"

Now I could feel the earth move with every step Hammer took down the
hallway.  The steps sounded angry.

"What do we do?"  I hissed at Jennifer.

"What do you mean 'we,' you burglar you!"  she snapped.

Somehow I felt that Jennifer had chosen that moment to break off our
relationship.  Very soon I expected her husband to break off more than
that.

"Look at the evidence!"  I hissed, as Hammer rattled his key in the
lock.

"He'll know we've been fileting together.  No matter what you tell him,
he'll know a burglar didn't break into the apartment and force you to
filet!"

Jennifer scooped up all the evidence and flung it into the freezing
compartment of the refrigerator.

"Jen?"  called out Hammer, his voice rumbling into the kitchen like a
slow freight.

A second before Hammer's shadow fell upon us, Jennifer lunged across
the kitchen, threw her arms around me, and planted a big, wet, utterly
disgusting kiss on my mustache.  And then Hammer filled the doorway.

"Who ths?"  he demanded, pointing at me with a finger the size of a
zucchini.

"Oh," said Jennifer, "this is just one of my professors from night
school who heard you were going to be out of town tonight and thought
he'd sneak by."

"You 'spect me to buy a cock'n'bull story like dat?  It smells fishy in
here!  you two been up to something' wid fish, ain'tcha?  Filetin'!

I'll bet the two of you have been filetin' behind my back.  Or maybe
even, even--I can't stand the thought of it--curin' steelhead eggs for
bait!  As soon as I leave town to do a little job for the Godfather
..."

"No, no, Hammy, it wasn't anything like that," Jennifer cried.  "Please
don't kill him!"

"Repeat that last part, would you, Jennifer?"  I whispered to her.  "I
don't think Hammy heard it."

At that moment Hammer blinked, giving me the opportunity to leap out
the kitchen window and sprint to safety down the alley.  When I finally
stopped to catch my breath, I made up my mind right then and there that
never again was I going to filet with another man's wife, particularly
one whose apartment was higher than the ground floor.  For one thing,
it's so darn hard to sprint to safety with your legs protruding from
your armpits.

I had learned my lesson about other women and decided that the thing to
do was to give my own wife more instruction in the art of fileting.

That way she might even learn to enjoy the sport.  And the very next
weekend I started her lessons.

"All right, Bun," I instructed, "Just remember that balance is
everything.  There, you've nearly got it.  Raise your right arm a bit
more.

Good.  Now you've got the idea!  Heck, you could carry the canoe all
day like that if you had to.  Get started toward the lake now, and I'll
grab my fly rod and be right along behind."

Bun still isn't too enthusiastic about fishing yet.  As a matter of
fact, just the other day when we were out on the river she said if I
would forget about the idea of making her my fishing pal, she wouldn't
complain about another woman or two.

Not a chance!  "Listen, Bun," I said, you're the only woman for me, and
I'm going to make you love fishing if it's the last thing you do.

I could have sworn that she was so touched by this remark that a single
tear trickled down her cheek.  It was hard to tell for sure, though,
because of the cloud of mosquitoes around her.

"And Now Stay Tuned for The Camp Chef" A friend of mine, Fred Flim, is
a television producer, and at lunch a while back I suggested to him
that what the tube needs now is a show about camp cookery.  Scarcely
able to conceal his enthusiasm for such a show, Fred pretended to be
totally absorbed in an effort to suck the pimento out of a martini
olive.

"Great concept, hunh?"  I said.

"Fantastic," Fred said.  "Hey, man, can you believe those Yankees!

What a team!  After those first two games, I would have ..."

"You really like the idea that much?"  I said, almost overcome by
excitement.  "You're not just putting me on?  Wow!  I hope you're not
just saying this because we're such good friends."

Fred turned serious, his gravity only slightly lessened by his having
clenched a large, pitless green olive grotesquely in his eye.  "May I
have this dance, Miss?"  he asked me, hunching his neck down into his
shoulders and reaching out with two bread sticks protruding from his
sleeves.  People who are not friends of Fred's often have difficulty
telling when he's being serious.

I chuckled appreciatively at his little performance and told him that
it reminded me of the time his wife thought he was on a three-day
fishing trip with me but wasn't and what a kick she'd get out of the
story.

Fred plucked the olive from his eye and put the bread sticks back in
their basket.  "What are you thinking of calling this show of yours?"

he asked.

"'The Camp Chef,'" I replied.  "It will be kind of an outdoorsie 'The
French Chef' but with me as the star instead of Julia Child."

"Fantastic," he said.  "Really fantastic, it sort of gets a person
right here."

"How come there?"

"Well, I was never very knowledge,4ble about anatomy.  Tell you what,
you work up a script and get the necessary props together and be down
at the studio at ten sharp Monday morning and we'll shoot a Pilot of
'The Camp Chef."" "Fantastic!"  I said, just to show Fred I was already
picking up on the technical jargon.

"By the way," he said, "you don't happen to know any reliable hit men,
do you?"

"No, I don't," I replied.  "AnywaY, the hit-man concept has been worked
to death on television.  I'd scrap that idea if I were you."

Fred smiled thinly and drummed his fingers on the table.  I could tell
he was already calculating the Nielsen ratings on "The Camp Chef."

I was a little late getting to the studio on Monday.  For some unknown
reason, my brakes failed just as I was approaching the steep, winding
stretch of highway between my home and the television studio.  The
mechanic at the garage said it looked as if my brake line had been
sabotaged, but I told him that was ridiculous.  Then, while I was
hoofing back to the house to get my camper truck, some idiot in a big
black sedan nearly ran over me--twice!--which was odd, since I was
walking across a cow pasture at the time.

Anyway, I was late getting to the studio, and I guess Fred had just
about given up on me, because he seemed more than a little astonished
when I showed up carrying all my props.

"Boy," I told him by way of explanation, "you just can't hire competent
help anymore."

"You're telling me!"  Fred interrupted.

"Yeah," I went on, "I had this guy do some repair work on my car last
week, and the incompetent fool accidentally filed my brake line nearly
in half.  Lucky I wasn't killed."

"Hmmmmmm," Fred said.  "What's all that junk you got in the gunnysack
there, anyway?"

"These are the props for my show, 'The Camp Chef."" Fred shook his
head.  "Gee, I'm really sorry, but I forgot that we were going to do a
pilot of your show today.  All the studios are being used."

That's all right, Fred, ol' buddy," I said.  "Think nothing of it.

Danged if it doesn't remind me of that time you were supposed to be on
a three-day fishing trip with me but ..."

Fred picked up a phone.  "Clear Studio Five," he snarled.  "We need it
for a show on camp cookery.  ... That's right--camp cookery!  Are you
deaf or something!"  just as we were stepping into the studio, a
concrete block dropped from the darkness above us and crashed at my
feet.  It was a close call, and I must say I've never seen Fred more
upset.  Glaring up into the shadows, he screamed, "Not here, you
meathead, not here!"  I could tell this wasn't one of Fred's better
days either.

Knowing that time is money in the television business, I immediately
dragged my sack of props out to a lighted platform in front of the
cameras and started to get everything arranged.  I had studied Julia
Child's technique for many years and consequently was quite familiar
with the format, as they say, of cooking shows.

I quickly organized my cooking ingredients, utensils, and props, using
as a table a piece of television equipment that didn't seem to be in
use at the moment.  My friend Retch Sweeney showed up about then,
dragging several dried-up Christmas trees and a red-faced
receptionist.

"You can't haul that junk in here," the receptionist whined.

"Where do ya want these trees, Pat?"  Retch asked.

"Arrange them around the set," I said.  "It's all right.  Miss," I told
the receptionist.  "He's with me."

"Who are you?"  she asked.

"I'm with Fred," I explained.

"Gee, I dunno," she said.  "I better call the guard."

"Ha!  Ha!"  I laughed.  "That reminds me of a funny story.  One time
Fred was supposed to be on a three-day fishing trip with me ..."

"Oh, no!"  she responded.  "I remember you now!  Yeah, come to think of
it, Fred did tell me about your idea for a show."

"I bet he said to take good care of me, too, didn't he?"

"Gosh, I dunno.  I thought he said he had arranged for somebody else to
take care of you."

"Good ol' Fred," I said.  "It would be hard to find a more considerate
guy."

Even though dried out, Retch's trees gave a nice woodsy effect to the
set.

Two cameramen came into the studio, yawning and scratching themselves,
and started pushing the television cameras into position.  I could see
Fred in the director's booth arguing with a couple of technicians who
kept shaking their heads.  Finally Fred's voice came over a speaker:
"You ready?"

"Yes" I said.  "But there are only two cameramen here.  I thought we'd
use at least three cameras."

"Julia Child uses only two cameras," Fred said.

"In that case," I said, "I'm ready."

"Is your friend going to be on the set with you?"  Fred asked.  "We
wouldn't want viewers confusing your show with'The Incredible Hulk.""
"Yeah, I'll need his assistance," I said.

"What'd he say?"  Retch said.

"Nothing," I said.

"Okay, you're on!"  Fred said.

I had no sooner gone into my introductory remarks than I detected a
technical difficulty.  The red light that indicates a television camera
is on wasn't functioning on either camera.  As soon as I had called
Fred's attention to the problem, he corrected it, and I got my show
under way again.

Looking back, I wish I hadn't tried quite so many complicated dishes on
my first show.  Otherwise, I don't think matters would have gotten out
of hand.

I opened with my Whatcha-Got Hunters' Stew.  As I explained, this stew
derives its name from the situation of a group of hungry hunters
meeting at night at the end of a mountain road and deciding to cook up
a hearty meal before undertaking the long drive home.

"What we gonna cook?"  one hunter will ask.

"How about a stew?"  another hunter will say.

"What we gonna put in the stew?"  still another hunter will inquire.

Then the hunter who suggested the stew will say, "Well, whatcha got?"

At that point the hunters will start rummaging around in their lunch
sacks and food boxes and game pockets and trunks of their cars, tossing
whatever they find into the stew pot.  No one knows exactly what the
ingredients of Whatcha-Got Hunters' Stew are because there is a firm
rule against anyone shining a light onto it.  I am told that once a
hunter broke this rule and as a result had to be placed under a
doctor's care for treatment of hypergagging.

Of course, I couldn't concoct an authentic Whatcha-Got Hunters' Stew in
the television studio, but I came fairly close, or so I judged from the
fact that when one of the cameramen zoomed in for a close-up shot of it
he dropped to the floor, curled up in the prenatal position, and jammed
a thumb in his mouth.

"One thing about camp cooking," my commentary went, "you can't be too
picky about a few gnats, mosquitoes, ants, or even an occasional
deerfly that happens to land in your stew.  Since there are no live
insects flying about the studio, ha, ha, I have to make do with some
dried ones my kids gathered up for me in the garage.  They are by no
means as good as fresh insects but ..."

At this point I was distracted by the sound of running, footsteps
headed for a restroom at the far end of the studio.  I wondered in
passing if television cameras can be operated by remote control, since
cameramen seem to be such a temperamental lot.  Still, there was
nothing to do but continue with the show.

My Chipped Beef on a Shingle was a real smasheroo, judging from its
impact on the individuals in the control booth.

My one moment of embarrassment came when I started to prepare Creek
Mussels in Marshmallow Sauce and discovered that the piece of equipment
on which I had placed the ingredients had heated up and the
marshmallows had melted and dribbled down inside the thing.  I was
shocked, of course.  You know how much marshmallows cost these days?

I had counted on Retch's assistance in the show, but early on a rather
distinguished-looking lunatic in a pinstripe suit tried to rush onto
the set.

The guy probably would have ruined the whole show if Retch hadn't been
able to get a half-nelson on him and wrestle him to the floor.  There
are some people who will do just about anything for a chance to clown
around in front of a TV camera.

My most spectacular dish was the Flaming Bacon.  It also provided me
with the opportunity to demonstrate the proper procedure for
extinguishing a small forest fire.  I explained to the viewing audience
that a shovel should always be carried for the purpose of smothering
forest fires since one can't always expect to find the jacket of a
pinstripe suit out in the woods.

just as I was finishing up "The Camp Chef," my closing comments were
practically drowned out by the sounds of sirens.  As I told Retch while
e were slipping out a back exit, you'd think television executives
would wise up.  Viewers are tired of all the violence on crime shows.

Several days later I happened to stumble across Fred as he was crawling
under the front of my car with a hacksaw.

"Any idea when 'The Camp Chef' might be aired?"  I asked him.

"Hoo hooo heeee haa hooo," he replied.

I could tell ol' Fred had been under a lot of strain lately.  That
television business can really take it out of a person.

"Listen," I told him, "what you need is a good three-day fishing trip
with me.  Some of my camp cooking will straighten you out in nothing
flat."

Oh, I tell you, the look of gratitude Fred gave me would have wrenched
your heart!

The Heartbreak of A Stigmatism When I was about fourteen the world
turned fuzzy.  I wasn't particularly concerned with the phenomenon at
first, attributing it to the lateness of spring that year or possibly
the Communists.  It was a history teacher, Mrs. Axelrod, who finally
diagnosed my affliction.

She asked me to step to the front of the room and, with a long wooden
pointer, indicate on the wall map the region occupied by Gaul.  Not
knowing Gaul from MY left elbow, I decided to take a random stab at it
anyway, since I figured the whole world, including the map, had become
so blurred that no one would know the difference anyway.

Also, my walk to the front of the classroom would give me an
opportunity to display the attitude of debonair nonchalance I had been
attempting to perfect.

Arriving at the front of the room, I directed the pointer to a likely
little fuzzy blotch.  This drew a good laugh from the other kids, which
I immediately capitalized on by doing a Gene Kelly soft-shoe routine on
the way back to my desk.

"All right, Fred Astaire!"  the teacher snarled.  "I want to see you
dance yourself right back into this classroom immediately after school
tonight!"

I was miffed.  How could anyone mistake my Gene Kelly for a Fred
Astaire?

On the other hand, ever since the world had turned fuzzy, I myself was
having trouble distinguishing the two of them even when they were forty
feet high on the showhouse screen.  Perhaps, I told myself, her faux
pas was excusable.

I was hoping that by the time school was out, Mrs. Axelrod's rage
would have withered a bit, but I found it still in full bloom.  There
was a rumor going around that the history teacher could kill flies in
mid-air with her sarcasm, but I doubted there was any truth to it.

Sure, a few flies may have been stunned but certainly not killed.

"Ah!"  Mrs. Axelrod exclaimed as I entered the classroom.  "The master
of comic impersonations arrives!"

"Uh, I'm really sorry about that little dance," I apologized.  "It was
Gene Kelly, by the way."  she replied.  "I do hope you will forgive
me!"

I flicked a stunned fly off my shoulder.  "No problem," I said.

"Anybody can make a mistake."

"Has anyone ever told you how obtuse you are?"  she asked.

"No," I said, blushing, "but thank you very much.  You're not so bad
yourself, no matter what the kids say."

"Indeed!"  she said, attempting to conceal her pleasure under a veil of
wrath.  "Well, now that the exchange of compliments is over, we are
still left with the problem of Gaul."

"Actually," I confessed, "I didn't have the foggiest notion of where
Gaul was, so I just took a flying guess.  What country did I get?"

"Oh, you didn't get a country," she said with what I thought I detected
as a softening of tone.  "You are apparently unaware that I also teach
hygiene in this classroom.  What you got was the bladder on an
anatomical diagram of the human body!"

"Gee," I said, stunned.  "It's a good thing you didn't ask me to point
out Rome.  We all would have been embarrassed."

"No doubt," she replied.  "Are you by any chance having some trouble
seeing clearly?"

"Not at all," I replied, gallantly scooping her folded coat up off her
desk and helping her on with it.  "Why do you ask?"

"Just a woman's intuition," she replied.  "And little observations,
such as the way you just now helped me on with the American flag."

"I did?"  I said.  "Well, to tell the truth, you look pretty good in
stripes.  Besides, it's so blurred that nobody would even guess iCs a
flag.

Surely, you've noticed how fuzzy the world has become lately.  I think
it's the Communists doing it."

"My dear young man," she said.  "I have some news for you.  The world
has not become fuzzy.  Only you have become fuzzy.  You need
glasses!"

I was stunned.  People had said a lot of bad things to me in my day,
but this was the worst.  I hadn't expected even Mrs. Axelrod to stoop
this low, as mean as she was.  Didn't she know that I was famous for my
vision, that my friends all called me Hawkeye.  My gosh!  Glasses!

Spectacles!  What was she saying?  My mind reeled; my body beaded with
sweat.  If what Mrs. Axelrod said was true, that the world was not
blurred, then my whole career was finished.

No professional big-game guide could wear glasses!  jeer, could you
imagine what one of my clients would think if I told him, "All right,
we know the rhino's wounded and is going to charge as soon as we go in
after him.  But don't worry, I'm backing you up with my double-barreled
elephant rifle.

Before we start in, though, let me wipe the dust off my spectacles
because I want to be able to see him real good."

And my squint!  All the years I'd been practicing my squint, and now it
was down the drain.  A squint just doesn't look right behind a pair of
glasses.

I tried to swear Mrs. Axelrod to secrecy, but she would have none of
it.

You probably have never met a person as mean as Mrs. Axelrod, so you
may find it hard to believe the next thing she did.  She called my
parents and told them I needed glasses.

My folks wasted no time in hauling me down to an eye doctor to get me
outfitted with spectacles.  I did not go easily.  My rage was such that
it even worried the doctor.  At one point he said to my mother, "Would
you check his ropes again please?  I think he's starting to work them
loose."

Well, as I always said, you can buy a kid spectacles, but you can't
make him wear them.  I wore them only when my folks were around, and
the rest of the time I carried them stuffed in my pocket where they
stood a good chance of being broken.  Then one day I was out in our
pasture target practicing with my .22 rifle.  After I had put ten
successive shots right in the bull's-eye, the thought occurred to me
that maybe if I wore my glasses I could hit a smaller bull's-eye, one
less than three feet across.  First, I made sure that no one was in the
vicinity, a precaution I accomplished by shouting out "Hello!

Anybody around!"  Then I slipped the glasses out of my pocket and put
them on.

The world snapped into focus.  I could see mountains, trees, barns!  I
could see flowers and blades of grass and even ants crawling on the
blades of grass.  I hadn't seen ants in a year.  I thought they had
become extinct.  It was ... fantastic!

So after that whenever I went out into the great outdoors I wore my
glasses, but only when alone.  The real problem came when I was with
the other guys.  When we would go fishing, for example, I always had to
pretend that I was clowning around.

" Hey, look at ol' Pat, he keeps casting his fly across the crick onto
the sandbar!  Ho, ho!  That ol' Pat, he'll do anything for a laugh!"

So then I'd have to go along with the gag and put on my hyena grin and
wear my hat upside down.  It was a real pain.

One day when my friend Peewee Thompson and I were sitting in my
bedroom, I decided to sound him out on what he thought about people who
wore glasses.

"Say, Peewee," I said.  "You know that kid in the school band, Marvin
Phelps, the one with the glasses, what do you think about the way he
looks?

He's a pretty good-looking kid, don't you think?"

Peewee gave me a nervous, sidelong glance.  "I got to go home," he
said.

"No, you idiot, what I mean is, do you think wearing glasses makes him
look, uh, kinda funny?"

"Heck no.  He's always worn glasses.  He would look funny if he didn't
wear them.  He wouldn't even look like Four-Eyes Phelps if he didn't
wear glasses.  Why do you ask" "No reason," I said.  "Just forget
it."

"I'll tell you though," Peewee went on.  "I sure wouldn't want
ol'Four-Eyes Phelps backin'me up if I was going' into the bush after a
wounded rhino."

"I SAID FORGET IT!"

My greatest dread was that Rancid Crabtree would find out about my
spectacles.  If there was one thing Rancid respected in another
outdoorsman, it was keen vision.  His own eyesight was superb.  He was
always the first to spot deer on a hunting trip.  Pointing to a line of
dots moving through the snow on the side of a mountain, he would say
simply, "Deer."  Then, while the rest of the hunters were straining to
make out the dots, Rancid would say, "Mulies."  The other hunters would
stare at each other in disbelief.  "Looks like they's all does,
though.

No, by gosh, one of 'em's a little spike buck!"

Rancid was the last person in the world I wanted to find out that I
wore gllasses.  He wouldn't have any use for me after that.

One day we were in Rancid's old pickup truck on our way out to do some
fishing, and, in his usual fashion, the old woodsman was pointing out
distant sights to me.  "Look up thar on thet side hill!

Huncklebarries!  Two or three of the little buggers are startin' to
tarn color.  Won't be long till they's ripe."

I stared morosely off in the general direction he was pointing and
tried to penetrate the green blur.  "Yup.  They sure do look like
they're ripening up."

6"Say, look at the size of them deer tracks crossin' the road.  The
deer thet made them was a biggun.  Come fall, you 'n' me, we's gonna
come up hyar an' look fer him, Ah kin tell you thet!"

"Yup," I said.

"What's wrong with you?"  Rancid said.  "You sound about as happy as a
badger in a bees' nest."

"Nothin'," I said.

It was shortly after we got started fishing that Rancid began acting
peculiar.  Right at first he suggested that I fish upstream and he fish
downstream.

"That's no fun," I told him.  "We always fish together."

"Yeh," he said sheepishly.  "Oh, all right, c'mon!"

The only good thing about my impaired vision was that I could see
perfectly up to a range of two feet.  I therefore had no difficulty
tying on the tiniest flies in my book, which I instantly deduced were
the only flies likely to take trout in that particular time and
place.

In the next twenty minutes or so I caught half a dozen fish.  Rancid
didn't get a single bite.  "How come you don't change over to one of
these little white flies?"  I kept asking him.  "That's what they're
taking."

"Shoot," Rancid said.  "Ah got this big ol' Grasshopper already tied
on.

Ah'll fish it."

Now this was totally unlike Rancid.  I knew he didn't care all that
much for work, but changing a fly didn't require any great effort.

Usually he would have tried a dozen different flies by the time we got
our feet wet.

Then a whooper cutthroat (one that causes you to whoop, as
distinguished from a mere whopper) smashed into my white fly.  it took
me a couple of minutes to land the fish.

"Wow, it's a beaut!"  I whooped, thrashing my way across the creek to
show Rancid the fish.  When I was close enough, within two feet of him,
I could see that his little eyes were bugged out in their comical
fashion, as was their habit whenever he got excited.

"Gol-dang, thet's a purty fish!"  he said, almost trembling.

Instantly, he became stern.  "You got any more of them itty-bitty white
flies?  All I brung with me was these big ones."

"Sure," I said, and handed him a couple.

Then Rancid did a remarkable thing.  He reached into his pants pocket
and hauled out a pair of spectacles, the kind you buy off the counter
in a variety store.  He put the glasses on, snipped the big fly off his
tippet, and tied on the tiny one.  Then he leveled a fierce glare at
me.

"Wipe thet smirk off yer face," he snarled.  "If you so much as open
yer yap, I'll ..."

I stepped back and thrust my hand into my pants pocket, took OUt my own
glasses, and put them on.  The stubby whiskers on Rancid's face snapped
into focus.  They quivered for a moment, then rippled out into the
great crescent-shaped waves of his grin.

Neither one of us in all the years after that moment ever said a word
about glasses.  There was no need.

If a man like Rancid could wear glasses, I figured there couldn't be
any shame in my wearing them.  So the very next time I went out fishing
with the guys, I showed up with my glasses on.  The guys were all
lifelong friends of mine, fellows I'd suffered with on a hundred
camping trips.  We had shared each other's triumphs and defeats,
happiness and sorrows, the sweet and the bitter.  When they saw me for
the first time wearing my glasses, I learned once and for all the true
meaning of friendship.  It is that you don't thrash your friends within
an inch of their lives if they laugh themselves silly when you show up
wearing spectacles.

"What the heck," Peewee said later, after he had stopped pounding his
thighs and had wiped away the tears of his mirth.  "We ain't likely to
run into a wounded rhino in this part of the country anyway."

Sneed Back in the shadows of time when I was a youngster, a man by the
name of Darcy Sneed lived in our county.  I don't think I ever heard
anyone say a kind word for Sneed, and I'm sure nobody ever heard me say
one.

He was always showing up without notice when and where he wasn't wanted
and causing folks grief.  Several times he scared the daylights out of
me, catching me alone out in the woods, but except for one time I
always managed to escape.  As far as I know, Sneed never smiled nor
cracked a joke.  He was cold and hard and tightlipped and generally
unlikable.  Besides that, he was the game warden.

Now, the truth is I seldom broke the game laws, not because I had any
love for rules and regulations but because it seemed unsporting.  Once,
though, my friend Retch and I did sneak down to the creek early one
morning three days before the opening of fishing season.  We hid in
some deep brush along the bank and at the first hint of dawn cast our
salmon eggs out toward a logjam, where we knew some cutthroat had to be
waiting.  But I was so filled with dread and guilt that I couldn't
enjoy fishing, and I knew that if I caught anything it would just
compound the existing dread and guilt.  Retch, on the other hand,
didn't seem burdened by any doubts and was intently working his line so
the eggs would drift under the logs.  Somehow, I had to impress upon
him that what we were doing was wrong.  I searched for the right words,
the kind of words that would convey to him the deep moral and ethical
implications of our action.  Then I thought of them.

"Sneed's comin'!"  I hissed at him.

Retch instantly grasped the deep moral and ethical implications and
reeled in his line so fast only its being wet saved it from instant
combustion.  We stashed our rods under a log and beat it out of there,
hurrying down the creek trail.  Retch was in front.  As he rounded a
bend, he turned his head slightly and said out of the corner of his
mouth, "Good thing you seen him comin'."

"Who?"  I said, already having forgotten the lie.

"Sneed," he said.

And there was Sneed, striding purposefully toward us down the trail.

"Howdy, Mr.  Sneed," we said politely.

Sneed didn't say anything for a moment.  He just let his glare rove
over our quaking carcasses.  The seconds passed, ticked off by the
sound of our dripping sweat.

"What you boys doin' here?"  he demanded finally.

We answered simultaneously: "Looking' for a cow."  "Pullin' up
thistles."

Sneed didn't smile at these contradictory explanations.  He was not a
fun-loving man.

"I'm going to ask you boys one more time, what you doin' here?"

By now I had forgotten who had told him what, so I nudged Retch to go
ahead and answer, he being the more experienced and polished liar.  But
Sneed's glare had penetrated Retch's brain and tangled his speech
mechanism.

"We was just pullin' up cows," he said.

Sneed replied with another long silence.  Then he said, "Let me see if
I've got this straight.  You two were down here on the crick at five in
the morning pullin' up cows, is that correct?"

Right then I figured Sneed was going to throw us in jail, and for
what?

Not being able to think of a decent lie when we had to.

Sneed reached out and thumped a bony finger on Retch's chest.  "I know
and you know that you boys were down here fishin', getting' a jump on
the season.  I'd arrest you both, but I didn't catch you at it.  Next
time I will."

Sneed knew how to put fear into a person.  If he didn't manage to keep
people from breaking the game laws, he at least kept them from enjoying
it.

He never forgot me after that morning on the creek, having filed me
away in his memory bank as a person who took the game laws lightly and
who bore watching.

Sneed was not one of those game wardens who come semi-attached to the
seat of a pickup truck; he knew how to walk and was infamous for
suddenly materializing in remote and roadless places.  There was a
friend of our family who was widely regarded as the best trapper in our
part of the state.  During the winter he would snowshoe far back into
the high country to work his trap line.  "It's real nice to be up there
alone in the winter," he told me once.

"There's just you and the silence and the snow and Sneed."

Numerous theories were set forth regarding the game warden.  One was
that there were actually three Sneeds.  This was based on multiple
sightings of Sneed in different parts of the county at the same time.

Men would shake their heads and say, "There's something unnatural about
Sneed."

One time I was sitting in the kitchen of a chronic poacher, and he told
me how he had outsmarted Sneed once.

"I strapped my heels down on my snowshoes and walked backwards with the
deer over my shoulder.  Funniest thing you ever seen.  I hid in some
trees at the top of a rise to watch, and pretty soon Sneed hits my
trail.  He looks one way and t'other, and then he takes off followin'
my tracks toward where I been."  The poacher nearly split his sides
laughing at the memory of his little trick.

His wife glared at him.  "Now, Otis, you tell the boy the rest of the
story, you hear?"

Otis sobered up and reluctantly finished the tale.  "Well, when I got
the deer back to my truck and started scrapin' the frost off the
winders, there's ol' Sneed sittin' inside, smokin'a cigarette calm as
you please."

"Cost us a hunnert dollars!"  the wife snarled.  "Ain't no deer worth
no hunnert dollars!"

"Durn that Sneed," the poacher muttered, glowering into the coffee
grounds at the bottom of his cup.

Another time, three men poached a deer close to the bottom of a rocky
gorge and waited until after dark to sneak it up to their car parked on
a road a half-mile up the mountain.  The going was rough, and as they
fought their way upwards over logs and rocks and through brush, one of
the poachers plopped down on the ground for a rest and gasped, "Man,
this is hard!  It's a good thing there's four of us to drag this here
deer, 'cause otherwise I don't think we'd make it."

One of the other poachers looked around, counting heads in the
darkness.

"Ain't sposed to be but three of us draggin' this deer," he said
nervously.

130 They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?

"Ain't s'posed to be nobody draggin' it!"  Sneed said.

Over the years, I heard dozens of such tales about Sneed, some true,
some imaginary, but their net effect was to leave me with the
impression that the game warden was possessed of powers not generally
found among the psychic accessories of ordinary human beings.

I never went afield with rod or gun that I didn't feel Sneed's
presence.

One of my great fears was that I would sometime lose count and catch
one fish over my limit, and Sneed would nab me.  Then I'd be fined a
hundred dollars and since neither my family nor I had ever seen a
hundred dollars altogether at the same time, I would have to go to
jail.  Well, I wouldn't be able to stand being in jail, so I'd have to
break out and steal a car and escape in a hail of gunfire.  After that
I'd probably kill a bank guard and be fatally wounded myself.  And
while I was sprawled on a sidewalk breathing my last, a reporter would
come up to me and ask, "What made you do it, son?"  And I'd tell him:
"I caught one fish over my limit."

It was easy to see how it all would work out, so anytime I got anywhere
near my limit I practically wore my fish out counting them.  It was a
heavy burden for a kid, especially for one who didn't have any better
grasp of mathematics than I did.

In the light of this background, it will be clear that my decision to
fish the forbidden waters of the creek that fed the town reservoir was
not arrived at casually.

Despite all my fears and misgivings, I was simply over-powered by the
logic that led me to the conclusion that that creek had to be crammed
full of giant eastern brook.

I should mention here that water pollution as such was unknown at the
time.  It was simply referred to then as "dumpin' stuff in the
cricks."

A few enlightened and far-sighted individuals would occasionally speak
out in the cause of pure water.  "I wish folks would stop dumpin' stUff
in the cricks," they would say, thereby branding themselves forever
after as wild-eyed eccentrics.  The only creek that was sacrosanct was
that of the town reservoir, the townspeople being in unanimous
agreement that they didn't want anyone dumping stuff in their drinking
water.  My reasoning, however, was this: (1) a dry fly wouldn't dirty
the water; (2) 1 would be providing a civic service by removing trout
that certainly had to be dirtying it; and finally (3) my family got its
water out of a well.  There was only one flaw in this logic: Sneed.

My plan of attack seemed foolproof, however.  I would sneak into the
reservoir under cover of predawn darkness, follow the creek up into the
dense woods that would provide me cover through the day, then do MY
fishing and return after nightfall.  I would carry a few carefully
selected flies, a length of leader, and some line, and cut myself a
willow pole when I reached the spot where I wanted to start fishing.

The night before I launched my assault on Reservoir Creek, I went to
bed early, chuckling evilly over the boldness of the plan, beautiful
even in its very simplicity.  Sneed, as I told myself, had finally met
his match.

Thus it was that I found myself returning home late the following
evening with a fine catch of brook trout.  The fishing had been just as
fantastic as I had known it would be.  Nevertheless, I was filled with
fear and remorse and a dark sense of foreboding about what the future
held for me.  Part of the reason for these feelings was that I knew I
had deliberately and maliciously broken the law, discovering too late
that I possessed neither the temperament nor the taste for crime.  The
rest of the reason was that I was sitting alongside of Sneed in the
front seat of his dusty old Dodge sedan.

As I had come sneaking up over the edge of a logging road on my way out
of the reservoir basin, there was Sneed, sitting in his car with the
lights off.  True to his fashion, he didn't say a word.  He just leaned
over, pushed open the door on the passenger side, and motioned for me
to get in.  For an instant I thought of running, but then decided
against it.  You just can't move all that fast when you're paralyzed.

While Sneed drove along in his usual silence, I tried to appeal to his
sympathy, even though from all the reports I'd heard no one had ever
detected a smidgen of it in him.

"Look, Mr. Sneed," I said, "maybe it don't matter none to you, sending
a kid to jail, but don't you care nothin' about that poor bank guard?

What's his little children gonna do without him?"

"What bank guard?"  Sneed said.

Before I could explain, a voice from the back seat said, "Ain't no use
pleadin' with him, boy.  When he was born, they heated him white hot
and tempered him in oil, and he's been hard ever since."

This dismal report had issued from a tall, lean young man sprawled
across the back seat and chewing on a match.  He was covered with dirt
and bits of grass and brush, apparently acquired in an attempt to
escape from Sneed.

"What did he get you for?"  I asked my fellow criminal, feeling an
instant kinship with him.

"Nothin' a-tall.  I was just up there on the mountain tryin' out my new
jacklight.  It must have riled up this ol' buck deer, 'cause first
thing I know he come chargin' at me out of the brush.  I had to shoot
him to save my life!"

"Shut up, LeRoy," Sneed said.  "You can tell it all to the judge."

About that time we drove up in front of my house.  Sneed stopped the
car and motioned for me to get out.

"You mean you ain't arresting me?"  I said.

"What for?"  Sneed said.  "It ain't my responsibility to keep folks
from fishin' that reservoir; it's the Water Department's.  They own the
water, and they own the fish in it.  Besides, I get my drinkin' water
from a well."  The game warden went on to tell me, in his tone of cold
certainty, that he would turn me over to the Water Department for
appropriate punishment if he ever caught me within a mile of the
reservoir again.  I nodded solemnly, even though inside I was chuckling
silently to myself.  Ol'Sneed did have a soft spot after all, and I,
with my boyish charm, had touched it.  No doubt I had reminded him of
his own son or perhaps even of himself as a boy.  Even before the sound
of Sneed's old Dodge had faded off in the distance, my resolve to
retire from a life of crime had vanished and I was already plotting my
next raid on the reservoir.  Even if he did catch me, I knew the game
warden wouldn't have the heart to turn me in to the Water Department.

What changed my mind was an item my grandmother read in the newspaper
the following week.

"I see by the paper where a fellow by the name of LeRoy Sneed was fined
a hundred dollars for poaching deer," she said.  "When are folks ever
gonna learn to obey the law?"

One folk learned right then, and I'm happy to report that I've never
intentionally violated so much as a single game regulation since.  Oh,
I've been tempted several times, but even though Sneed has been dead
for fifteen years now, you just never can tell about a man like that.

The Hunter's Dictionary Many persons who have just started hunting
mistakenly assume that they understand the specialized terminology and
jargon of the sport.  As a result, they spend years in a state of
befuddlement, wondering at the perversity of fate and cursing the
contrariness of experienced hunters.

The problem is that they simply don't grasp the true meaning of the
terms, phrases, and casual utterances as used by the hunting
fraternity.  I have therefore compiled The Hunter's Dictionary,
published below in its entirety.  It will do nothing to improve the
beginning hunter's skills but should go a long way toward preserving
his mental health.

It has long seemed to me to be an affectation of the overeducated to
insist that dictionaries be printed in alphabetical order.  If during
my years spent in first grade I had succeeded in learning the alphabet,
I might now feel more kindly toward it.  In fact, I am rather fond of
that portion of it that runs up to the letter G; beyond that point my
feeling is largely one of hostility.  So much for the explanation of
why this dictionary is presented in a random and, to my mind, more
meaningful order.

One further note: For the purpose of conciseness, "beginning hunter"
and "experienced hunter" are abbreviated "BH" and "EH," respectively.

Without further display of my mastery of lexicography, I herewith
present The Hunter's Dictionary.

FivE MINUTES--This refers to a period of time ranging from five minutes
to eight hours, generally speaking, but has been known to run as long
as five days.  It is used in this way: "Wait here.  I'll be back in
five minutes."

What happens is that the EH who makes the statement will step off into
the brush to check for tracks or possibly for some other business.

While there, he will catch sight of a deer fifty yards or so up the
slope, but the deer's head will be behind a tree.  The hunter crouches
down and sneaks up to a little rise off to one side to get a better
look and determine the sex of the deer.  It turns out to be a nice
buck, which is just stepping over the ridge of the hill.  The hunter,
still in his crouch, scurries silently up the hill, expecting an easy
shot.  Cresting the hill, he catches a glimpse of its tail as the deer
rounds the bend of an old logging road.  The hunter will be occupied
with this pursuit for the next few hours.  His companion, if he too is
an EH, will wait no longer than it takes to consume half a sandwich and
a cup of coffee.  By then he knows that the "five minutes" is a period
to be measured in hours, and he will immediately proceed with his own
hunting.  A BH, on the other hand, assuming that "five minutes" means
five minutes, will remain rooted loyally to the waiting place until
lichens begin to form on him.

When the EH finally returns, the lichen-covered hunter will yell at
him, "I thought you said you'd be back in five minutes!"

The EH, somewhat puzzled by this display of wrath, will glance at his
watch and say, "Well, here I am, ain't I?  I left at ten-thirty, and
now it's only five-fifteen!  If I was going to be gone longer than five
minutes, I would've told you!"

HUNTING VEHICLE--The BH assumes that what is meant by this phrase is
any vehicle used to transport persons on a hunting trip, preferably a
four-wheel drive of some sort.  What the EH means by a "hunting
vehicle" is any vehicle so long as it isn't his.  If a BH is along on
the trip, it means the BH's vehicle specifically.  It matters not that
the EH owns an outfit capable of swimming rivers and climbing trees or
that the BH owns a sports car.  The EH will merely glance at the sports
car and observe: "Nice little hunting rig you have here."

FUNNY NOISE--A sound the EH reports the engine of his vehicle to be
making any time the subject arises as to whose rig should be used for
the hunting trip.

IMPASSABLE ROAD--Any road that gives indications it might mar the paint
job or muddy the hub caps, provided the vehicle under consideration
belongs to the EH.

PRACTICALLY A FOUR-LANE HIGHWAY--Any terrain slightly less hazardous
than a streambed at flood stage, provided the vehicle under
consideration does not belong to the EH.

BUILT TO TAKE IT--Describes any hunting vehicle not the EH's.

OOOOOOOOEEEEE-AH-AH-AHI--If there is one thing I hate, it's putting on
cold, wet pants in the morning!

PNEUMONIA--What the EH claims to have whenever it's his turn to climb
out of a warm sleeping bag and build the morning fire.  Between spasms
of hideous coughing, the EH may also request that someone say some kind
words over his remains if he drops dead while returning from starting
the fire.

MIRACULOUS RECOVERY--What the EH experiences as soon as he hears the
morning fire crackling cheerily and smells coffee perking and bacon
frying.

CAMP COOK--The guy who draws the short straw.

VERDONE--Used by camp cooks to mean "burnt to a crisp."

BURNED--At some point the meal was totally engulfed by flames.  The
meal is still regarded as edible provided the hunting trip has been
under way for at least three days.

RARE--The wood was too wet to start a cooking fire.

ASH--What all hunting-trip breakfasts appear to be.  There is yellow
hash, brown hash, gray hash, black hash, and green hash.  Only a fool
eats green hash.

STEW--Basically the same as green hash.

BLEEPING BLEEP-OF-A-BLEEP!--Phrase used by EH to announce he has just
stepped out of a boat three feet short of the duck blind in the
darkness of a cold December morning.

IMPOSSIBLE SHOT--What the EH has made anytime he downs game further
away than fifty feet.

FAIR SHOT--Any impossible shot made by someone other than the EH.

DID YOU FEEL THAT EARTH TRIMOR JUST NOW?--Question asked by EH
immediately after missing an easy shot.

A BIT--A lot.

SOME--All.  As in "I ate some of those little cheese flavored crackers
you had hidden in the bottom of your pack."

LEG CRAMP--What the EH insists is killing him and which requires that
he get out of the hunting vehicle and walk it out on any occasion that
a treacherous stretch of road appears up ahead.

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT--The EH is about to relate a story
approximately the length of the history of mankind since the
Creation.

I'M ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THIS IS THE RIGHT TURN--There's one chance in
ten this is the right turn.

IT AIN'T GONNA RAIN--Pitch tent on high ground and begin work
immediately on a log raft.

AAAIIII!--The hash has become too hot for the camp cook's stirring
finger.

BAFF MAST PIME IG BEAD FEAS MID MIFF PIFE!--That's the last time I try
to eat peas in the dark with my hunting knife!

WHAT'S THAT?  DID YOU HEAR SOMETHING PROWLING AROUND OUTSIDE THE TENT
JUST NOW?--Questions hissed to arouse snoring tent partner and keep him
awake for the rest of the night, listening.

DEER STAND--What the BH is placed on to keep him out of the way of the
EH.

JAMMED RIFLE, DAMAGED GUNSIGHT, BLINDING HEADACHE, BAD KNEE, FOGGED
SPECTACLES, ACUTE IRREGULARITY, SPONTANEOUS REGULARITY, and GREEN
HASH--Any one or all of these are given as reasons the BH got a deer
and the EH didn't.

CONSUMMATE SKILL--Why the EH got a deer and the BH didn't.

MEETING PLACE--AN imaginary point in space that hunters are supposed to
converge upon at a particular time.  It is sometimes referred to as The
Big Snag, The Old Apple Orchard, The Car, and Camp.  The EH knows that
such a place is merely a figment of the imagination and that the
proposed meeting will never occur.  It is hard for an EH to keep a
straight face whenever a meeting place is spoken of.

A TRUE STORY--A collection of the most outrageous, preposterous, and
unmitigated lies ever assembled.

DRESSED OUT AT 140 POUNDS--Dressed out at eighty pounds.

A RUNNING SHOT AT OVER 200 YARDS--I don't know how those powder burns
got on its hide.

FLAT TRAJECTORY--Describes the movement of a hunter leaving his
sleeping bag one hour after having eaten green hash for supper.

DID ANYONE THINK TO BRING--I left it sitting on my kitchen table.

MY CARDIOLOGIST--A mythical person casually referred to by the EH
whenever it is suggested that he help haul a dead elk up the side of a
steep mountain.

A HUNTING TIP--What the EH pays his hunting guide to keep his mouth
shut and not to regale the boys back at the camp with an amusing
account of what happened.

LEAVE THE LANTURN ON; IT'LL ATTRACT THE INSECTS AND KEEP THEM OFF OF
US--I have trouble getting to sleep without a night light.

I SCOUTED OUT A LOT OF NICE COUNTRY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE
MOUNTAIN--The EH was lost for most of the day.

DON'T WORRY--Worry.

WIND, SNOW, COLD; THIS IS THE MOST MISERABLE DAY I'VE SPENT IN MY
LIFE--Had a great time.

NEXT TIME, KID, TRY NOT TO MAKE SO MUCH RACKET, TROMPING THROUGH THE
BRUSH THE WAY YOU DO.  BOY, I'VE NEVER SEEN SUCH A CASE OF BUCK FEVER
AS THAT ONE OF YOURS!  ALSO, YOU'VE GOT TO LEARN NOT TO SHOUT "THERE'S
A BUCK!"  JUST AS I'M SETTIN' THE CROSS HAIRS ON HIM.  AND THOSE TRACKS
YOU THOUGHT WERE FRESH?  WHY, YOU COULD HAVE GATHERED THEM UP AND SOLD
THEM TO A MUSEUM AS FOSSILS!  GEEZ!--You did all right, kid.

Tenner Shoes "Why don't you throw out some of these shoes?"  my wife
shouted from inside the closet.

"Are you crazy, woman?"  I replied.  "I need all those shoes--my
bowling shoes, my jogging shoes, my hiking shoes, my canoeing shoes, my
sailing shoes, my black dress shoes, my brown dress shoes, my brown
casual shoes, my black casual shoes, my white casual shoes, my
moccasins, my hip boots, my waders, my canvas wading shoes, my hunting
boots, my mountain-climbing boots, my down booties, my camp shoes, my
sandals, my ..."

"Stop!  Stop!"  my wife screamed.  "I give up!  You can keep them!

What I wish, though, is that somebody would invent a pair of shoes that
could be used for everything."

Well, as a matter of fact, somebody once did.  I wore them every summer
when I was a kid.  The shoe's inventor, I believe, was a Mr.  Tenner.

At least that's what we called them--Tenner shoes.

Once a rich kid moved to our town and tried to tell us that the shoes
we were wearing were not called Tenner shoes at all but tennis shoes.

We'd never seen anyone as ignorant as that kid.  He didn't even wear
Tenner shoes, so we wondered why he thought he knew so much about
them.

"You tryin' to tell us these shoes weren't invented by a Mr. Tenner?"

Retch Sweeney said to the kid.  "How come everybody calls them Tenner
shoes, then?"

"Only illiterates call them Tenner shoes," the kid shot back.

Naturally, that got us all riled up, and we started yelling at him and
pushing him and trying to get him to fight one of us.

"Listen," Peewee Thompson said.  "We're all just as normal as you are,
except for maybe Birdy--he's a little weird."

"No, no!"  the rich kid shouted.  "'Illiterate' means you don't know
how to read and write."  Well, as soon as we found out that we hadn't
been insulted, everybody cooled down and started patting the kid on the
back and telling him he was all right after all, and we hoped he
wouldn't harbor any hard feelings against us because of a little
misunderstanding.

"Just the same," Retch said, "I ain't never heard of anybody by the
name of Tennis."

"I did once," I said.  "I think his son was one of them English poets,
but I doubt either one of them knew anything about shoes."

Tenner shoes were made out of black canvas and had rubber soles and
little round patches over the part that covered your anklebones.  They
were ugly.  Tenner designed them that way on purpose so girls wouldn't
want to wear them.

You got your pair of Tenner shoes each spring about the time the snow
began to recede from the lowlands.  There was an interesting little
ritual that went with the purchase of each year's Tenner shoes.  My
mother would take me down to Hobbs's dry goods store, where Mr. Hobbs
himself waited on the shoe customers.

"Howdy," Mr. Hobbs would say.  "By golly, I bet you brought that young
colt in to get him shod."  Mr. Hobbs and my mother would cackle at
monotonous length over this witticism.  Interestingly enough, when I
was very young and first heard the little joke, I thought Hobbs had
said, "to get him shot."  My fright was such that I behaved myself for
the better part of the day and wondered long afterwards in what manner
my sentence had been commuted.

Hobbs's arsenal of wit seemed to consist of the single joke, and as
soon as he had spent that round on his customers he seemed to revert
immediately into his natural self, perhaps best described as peevish.

"Sit down and take off your shoes," he would order.  The shoes he
referred to were generally some kind of clodhopper boots well along
into the first stage of oblivion, heels and tongue missing, soles
flopping loose, seams gaping, the laces a Chinese puzzle of knots and
frayed ends.  As I peeled off the boots, Mr. Hobbs and my mother would
both leap back and gasp.

"I thought I told you to wash your feet!"  my mother would screech,
more for Mr. Hobbs's benefit than my own.  "I've never seen the likes
of it."

Mr. Hobbs would mutter under his breath about having seen the likes of
it, something about hygiene films in Navy boot camp.

"How's that?"  my mother would say.

"Nothing," Mr.  Hobbs would snort.  "Nothing."

He would then lock one of my feet in a measuring device, all the while
doing his impression of a person removing a long-dead rat from a
trap.

The measurement taken, Hobbs would get up and return shortly with a box
of Tenner shoes, which he would drop in my lap and order me to try
on.

Even to this day I recall with ecstasy the pure sensual delight of
slipping my feet into a brand-new pair of Tenner shoes, my ol' toes up
in the forward part wiggling around, checking out their new quarters,
the ankles swelling boastfully under the protective cushions of the
rubber patches as the fat clean laces snugged tight the embrace of
canvas and rubber.  After a winter of wearing the clodhopper boots, I
felt like I was strapping on a pair of wings.

"I better go try them out," I would say.

"Stay in the store!"  Mr. Hobbs would shout.  "Don't take them out of
the store!"

But it would be too late.  I would be out on the sidewalk, and the
Tenner shoes would be carrying me in free soaring flight around the
block.  The test comPleted, I would brake to a screeching stop and
reenter the store.

"Maybe just a half-size larger," I would tell Mr. Hobbs.  "Gosh, I
don't know why anyone would let their dog run loose on the sidewalk,
but I washed these Tenner shoes off good as new in a mud puddle and as
soon as they dry ..."

"Dog?"  Mr. Hobbs would say.  "Dog!  Nothing doing!  Those are your
size!

That'll be ninety-eight cents, Missus."

"Ninety-eight cents!"  my mother would say.  "My land, I don't know
what folks are going to do if prices keep going up the way they are."

"Terrible," Mr. Hobbs would mutter.  "Don't know if these young whelps
are worth it anyways."  He always sounded as if he meant it, too.

To my mind, the Tenner was the ultimate shoe.  You could use it for
running and hiking and jumping, for Playing football and basketball,
hunting and fishing, mountain climbing, rafting, spelunking, swimming,
bicycling, horseback riding, cowback riding, Pigback riding.  Whatever
the activity, the Tenner shoe adapted itself to the task in noble and
admirable fashion.

The one area in which the Tenner shoe may have fallen a bit short was
as a dress-up shoe.  Suppose, for example, that you had to go to some
social event where all the youngsters were dressed up in their best
clothes.  You showed up wearing your good pair of pants, your good
shirt, your good socks, and your Tenner shoes, which by now may have
been showing the strain of hunting, fishing, pigback riding, etc. Now,
as soon as you got within hearing distance of some of the other mothers
at the affair, your mother would look down at your feet, conjure up an
expression of absolute horror, and say, "I thought I told you to wear
your brown oxfords!  My land, you'll mortify me to death!  Just look at
those filthy old Tenner shoes."

Now of course all of the other mothers would look at your mother and
smile and shake their heads in an understanding way as if to say, "What
can you expect of little boys?"  What was truly shrewd about this
charade was your mother's use of the phrase "your brown oxfords."  This
not only implied that you had brown oxfords but also black ones and
possibly white ones.  Maybe one of the reasons the ruse worked so well
was that most of the other guys had protruding from the cuffs of their
good pairs of pants the unmistakable rubber noses of Tenner shoes.  If
there was a poor kid present at one of these social functions, by the
way, his mother would look down at his feet and say, "Land sakes,
Henry, didn't I tell you to wear shoes!"  Of course, all of us guys
knew that Henry didn't have any shoes.  Otherwise, why would he paint
his feet to look as if he were wearing Tenners?  It made you kind of
sad if you thought about it.

The great thing about Tenners was their almost unlimited versatility.

They were great for wearing inside a sleeping bag, for example.

Nowadays, of course, there are little down booties especially designed
for wearing inside of sleeping bags.  The one problem with these
booties is that they really aren't designed for outside wear, and if
you have to get up in the night for any reason, they're not much good
for wandering around over rough ground in the dark.  Of course, when
you're camping out as a kid, there is only one thing that can make you
get up in the middle of the night, and that is the necessity of running
for your life.  And if ever there was a shoe designed for running for
your life, it was the Tenner.  Many was the dark night that a troop of
us young campers made our way home, trailing in our wake the distinct
odor of smoldering Tenners.

Tenners made great fishing waders.  Mr. Tenner, who must have been an
absolute genius, had designed them without any insulation so that when
you waded out into an icy spring stream it took only a few minutes for
your feet to turn numb.  From then on you could fish in complete
comfort.  The numbness also prevented you from feeling any pain when
your Tenners slithered into narrow and odd-shaped openings between
slippery rocks.  You could continue fishing in blissful comfort up
above while down below the rocks committed various acts of depravity on
your feet, rearranging the bones in imaginative ways, doing trick
shuffles with your toes, and playing football with your ankles.  We
would often return from a fishing trip with an affliction known
technically as cauliflower feet.  Fortunately, we had the good sense
never to remove our Tenners until they had dried, thereby preserving
our feet in the shape, if not exactly of feet, at least of Tenners.

Indeed, I was often afraid to remove my Tenners after a fishing trip
for fear of what I might find inside them.  I have always had a weak
stomach.

There was considerable controversy among us about how often Tenners
should be taken off.  The conservatives argued for once a week, the
liberals for three or four times a summer, and the radicals for never,
preferring to allow decay and disintegration to take their natural
course.  Although I was one of the conservatives, I shared the
radicals' curiosity over whether, when their Tenners finally
self-destructed, there would be any feet left inside.

I frequently shared space in small tents with Tenner radicals, and the
idea occurred to me more than once to take a caged canary in with me so
that its sudden demise could warn me when the gas escaping from the
radicals' Tenners had reached a lethal level.  To my knowledge, there
were never any human fatalities from this cause, although large numbers
of flying and crawling insects in the tent died mysteriously.

There were many other theories concerning the proper use of Tenner
shoes.

These theories were passed on from the older fellows to the younger
ones and were usually taken at face value.  One of these theories was
passed on to me by my cousin Buck, several years my senior, who told me
that little slits should be cut in the canvas of new Tenner shoes so
that in an emergency you could thrust some of your toes out through the
slits and get better traction.

This seemed to me to be a good idea, even though I could never bring
myself to cut a brandnew pair of Tenners.  It was just as well.  In
fact, I'll never forget the day I saw this theory put to the test.

Buck had taken me on a little hiking trip in the mountains for the
purpose of instructing me in woodcraft.  He was one of those people who
loved to teach but can never be bothered learning anything.  What Buck
taught me was any odd thought that happened to pop into his head, and
some of the thoughts were pretty odd.  He taught me, for example, that
woodpeckers were tapping out code on the trunks of dead trees, warning
other woodpeckers of our approach.

He even let me in on the secret that he had cracked this code and knew
what they were saying.  Sometimes, he said, the woodpeckers even made
jokes in code, and Buck had to laugh when he heard them.

"What did that one say?"  I would ask Buck when he laughed.

"Oh, you're too little for me to repeat a joke like that to," he would
say.  "But I can tell you this--them woodpeckers is pretty funny
birds!"

It turned out that Buck's theory about slitting Tenners to stick your
toes out of was on a par with his knowledge of ornithology.  After what
happened that day on the mountain, I never again had any use for Buck's
teachings.  What happened was this: We were walking along single file,
with Buck, of course, in the lead, reciting all sorts of incredible
nature lore to me.  The weather was chilly and the earth on the
mountain frozen hard, with patches of snow still lingering here and
there.  As we were making our way down the unexplored back side of the
mountain, we came to a huge slab of rock approximately fifty feet
square and slanting down to a drop-off.  The surface of the rock was
smooth and covered with frost.  Buck started walking straight across
the rock.  I stopped.

"Whatcha stop for?"  Buck asked, turning around about halfway across
the slab.  "Tenner shoes don't slide on rock.  The little suction cups
on the soles, they grab right onto the ..."

Buck was sliding.

"Well, this frost makes it a little slick," he said.  "I better ..."

By now Buck was really sliding.  He gave up all efforts at further
conversation and devoted his full attention to scrambling back up the
rock.

The problem was that no matter how fast and furious Buck's scramble
was, his downward rate of slide seemed to be greater by about an inch
per second.  I had no idea how much of a drop awaited him at the brink
of the slab--a hundred feet, half a mile?  I remembered all the
mountain-climbing movies I'd ever seen where a climber loses his grip
and plummets downward until he is just a tiny, noisy speck hurtling
toward the patchwork farmlands below.  From the look on his face, I
knew Buck was remembering the same movies.  Then I noticed that Buck
had forgotten to stick his toes out through the slits in his Tenners.

"Stick out your toes, Buck," I screamed at him.  "Stick out your
toes!"

Buck's toes suddenly emerged from the slits like little pink landing
gear, and I have to admit that he did some marvelous things with his
toes--in fact, just about everything it is possible to do with toes and
not get arrested.  But nothing worked.

Buck shot backward right off over the edge of the cliff.  His drop was
accompanied by a long, horrible, slowly diminishing scream.

I was a bit puzzled by the scream, since Buck was standing there on a
wide ledge just three feet down from the brink of the slab, his whole
top half still in full view of me.  Later, he tried to tell me he was
just doing his imitation of Tarzan's ape call.  Well, I'd heard his
imitation of Tarzan's ape call numerous times, and it had never before
made my hair stand on end.  Buck was finished as a mentor.  I was just
happy that I hadn't followed his advice and violated a perfectly good
pair of Tenners by cutting slits in them for an emergency.

As with all good things, Tenners did not last forever.  Spring eased
into summer and summer wore on, and the Tenners would begin to fade,
the dark rich black of the canvas turning to pale dirty gray.  Then the
seams where the rubber was glued to the canvas would start to peel
loose.  The eyelets for the laces would begin popping out.  The laces
themselves would break and have to be knotted; their ends would fray
out into tiny pompoms.  The round rubber ankle patches would fall
off.

The canvas at the balls of the feet would wear through.  Then a tear
would move back along the instep.  By September the Tenners would be
done for.

On the first day of school, your new clodhopper boots felt good.  Their
weight gave you a sense of security, of substance, of manhood, and the
will to face another year of school.  But there would be a note of
sadness, too, because Henry, the poor kid, would be there, his feet
painted to look like new boots.  You tried not to think about it.

MY wife's muffled voice came from inside the closet.  "How about this
pair of shoes?  Can I at least give these to the Salvation Army?"

"Those old tennis shoes?  Sure, go ahead," I said.  "Hell, I never play
tennis, anyway."

Reading Sign Back when I was a kid, the mark of a true woodsman was his
ability to read sign.  Knowing this, many persons trying to pass
themselves off as woodsmen would make a great show of staring at sign
for a few minutes and then offering up profound remarks about it: "I'd
judge from this broken twig that we're about ten minutes behind a herd
of mule deer, most of them yearlings or does, but there's one big fella
I'd guess to be a trophy buck.  You'll know him when you see him 'cause
he favors his left front leg when he's running flat out and..."

The only way to deal with a person like that was to walk over, look
down, and say, "For heaven's sake, so that's where I dropped my lucky
twig!  The amazing thing is, I broke it three months ago and it still
works!"  You then picked up the twig, put it in your pocket, and
strolled away.

My cousin Buck was one of these impostors.  Even though I was several
years younger than Buck, sign was serious business to me and I spent
long hours reading about it and studying it first-hand and trying to
find out what it meant and whether it was sign at all or maybe just an
accident.  Buck, on the other hand, couldn't concentrate on any subject
longer than fifteen seconds unless it wore a dress and smelled of
perfume, which sign seldom if ever did.  Still, ever so often I had to
endure his hauling me out to the woods to instruct me on how to read
sign.

"Hey, looky here," he would hiss at me.  "Elk sign!"

Now, any fool could see that the sign was not that of an elk but the
handiwork of a mule who stood nearby with a smile on his face and a
snicker in his voice.  If I hadn't been smarter than I looked, I would
have pointed that fact out to Buck.  But not wishing to have my head
thumped, I said, "Yes!

Elk!  Elk!  I can see now they were elk!"  Thumping your head was
Buck's way of proving to you that he could read sign.

If I, on the other hand, happened to discover some fresh deer sign,
Buck would always dismiss my find with a shrug of his shoulders and the
profound bit of wisdom: "You can't eat sign."

He lived to regurgitate those words.

One frosty November morning Buck had dragged me out deer hunting with
him.  I wasn't old enough yet to carry a rifle, but Buck needed someone
along to brag to about how he could read sign.  We were cruising down a
back road in Buck's old car, listening to Gene Autry on the radio and
looking for deer.

(Buck believed the way to hunt deer was to drive up and down roads;
that's the sort of woodsman he was.) For breakfast I had brought along
some chocolate-covered peanuts in myjacket pocket, and ever so often
I'd sneak one into my mouth so Buck wouldn't see it and demand a
share.

There was some fool notion in those days that if someone saw you with
something good to eat, all he had to do was yell "divvies" at you and
then you had to share with him.  If you didn't share with somebody when
he yelled "divvies" at you, he got to beat you up and take it all--but
only if he was bigger than you were.  If he was smaller, he could yell
"divvies" till the sun went down and you didn't have to share with
him.

In that way, I suppose, it was an equitable system.  But I digress.

So anyway, there we were driving down the back road, and all at once
Buck hit the brakes and yelled out, "Deer tracks!"  Sure enough, even
from where I now sat, wedged up under the dashboard, I could see that
sometime during the past six months a deer had come sliding and
bounding through the soft dirt of a high bank above the road.  As soon
as the car had slid to a stop, we jumped out, Buck breathlessly
thumbing cartridges into his rifle, and rushed over to examine the
tracks.  All the while, Buck was making sure he got full credit for
spotting the tracks.

"I told you they was deer tracks, and you didn't believe me, did
you?"

he whispered, his voice shrill with excitement.

"I believed you, Buck."

"Hell, we musta been drivin' past fifty miles an hour and I looks out
and I says to you, 'There's some deer tracks!"  Now didn't I say
that?"

"That's what you said, Buck."

We looked at the tracks.  Buck got down on his knees and felt the edges
of the tracks, apparently to see if they were still warm.  Then he bent
over and sniffed them!  it was almost too much to bear for a serious
student of deer tracks.  Any fool could see those tracks were so old
they could have been classified as fossils.  The deer who made them no
doubt had since known a long and happy life and finally expired at a
ripe old age.

"They fresh, Buck?"  I asked.

Buck stood up and tugged at his wispy beard as he studied the tracks.

"I'd say he went through here, oh, about a half-hour before
daylight."

"Gee," I said, stifling a yawn.  "We just missed him, hunh?  Dang.  If
we had just been a few minutes earlier, hunh, Buck?"

"Yep," Buck said.  "Well, win some, lose some."

While I was racking my brain trying to think of some that Buck had won,
a terrible idea occurred to me.  And the instant the idea occurred, I
implemented it.  Even after thirty years and more I am still ashamed of
pulling it on Buck.  That I am still convulsed with laughter upon
recalling the expression on his face is even more despicable.  Only the
desire to ease My conscience compels me to confess the deed.  What I
did--oh, I shudder still to think of it--was to take a handful of the
chocolate-covered peanuts and sprinkle them on the ground by my feet.

"Hey, Buck," I said, Pointing.  "Sign.  Looks fresh, too."

Buck looked at me in disgust and shook his shaggy head.  "How many
times I got to tell ya: Ya can't eat sign!"

At that, I reached down, picked up a chocolate-covered peanut, snapped
it into the air, and caught it in my mouth.

Buck's jaw dropped halfway to his belt buckle.

For years afterwards, Buck couldn't stand the sight of
chocolate-covered peanuts.  Offer him one and his upper lip would
flutter like a broken window shade.  Sure, when ol' Buck figured out
the trick I'd played on him, he thumped my head until both of us were
worn out, but that didn't change the obvious truth: He just wasn't a
proper woodsman.

Much of my early knowledge about sign was gained from reading books and
magazine articles.  These usually included drawings of the tracks of
various wild animals, and all you had to do was memorize the shape and
the number of toes and so on to be able to identify the track out in
the wilds.  I spent endless hours at this sort of study, but it was
well worth the effort.  For one thing, it taught me about true
friendship.  If you were out with one of your friends in the woods, you
could point to a set of tracks and say, "Look, lynx tracks."

"Gee," the friend would say in a properly appreciative tone.  If he
didn't say that or an equivalent expression, he wasn't your friend.

Now, if you followed the lynx tracks and at the other end of them found
a skunk waddling along, you would say to your friend, studying him
closely, "Sometimes skunks make lynx tracks, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't," he might reply.  "That's really interesting."  Such a
reply could mean only two things: This guy was impossibly stupid, or he
was a really good friend.

Strangely enough, many of the magazine articles on sign were written by
a lady.  Her underlying principle was that wild animals were actors on
the stage of the great outdoors.  If you could read the scripts, namely
their tracks in the snow, you could decipher the plot.  A typical plot
would go like this: Rabbit tracks are crossing the snow from one
direction and coyote tracks from another.  The two sets of tracks
intersect at the base of a tree.  Only the coyote tracks continue on
from the tree.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm.  How did the rabbit get away from the
tree without making any tracks?  Did he climb the tree?  The mystery
was almost mind-boggling.  The author of these articles could take an
hour's walk through the snow and encounter a dozen fascinating little
dramas, none of which, I might add, were ever comedies.

I hate to admit it, but at a certain age I was intrigued by these
articles and was forever searching the snowy countryside for evidence
of little wildlife dramas.  Unfortunately, most of the dramas I
encountered went about like this: Rabbit tracks emerge from thicket, go
under barbwire fence, mess around in a patch of blackberry brambles,
cross a creek over thin ice, go under another barbwire fence, mosey
back across the thin ice, meander through the blackberry brambles
again, pass under another barbwire fence, and go back into the
thicket.

That would be it.  Although the drama itself might be deadly dull,
following the "script" around the countryside could be fraught with
pain, danger, and excitement.  Several times I nearly froze to death in
my wet clothes while rushing home to bandage my scratches and cuts and
to dig out the stickers.

Where I really learned to read sign was from the old woodsman Rancid
Crabtree.  Rancid didn't care a hoot about reading little woodland
dramas.  To him, sign was not a form of entertainment but an essential
element in a complex scheme that he had devised to make working for a
living unnecessary.

About the only things Rancid needed money for were a few clothes, rifle
and shotgun shells, salt and pepper, some gas for his old truck,
chewin'tobacco, and his medicine, which a local pharmacist, a Colt .45
stuffed in the waistband of his pants, delivered at night in
quart-sized Mason jars.  These commodities required cash, particularly
the medicine.  Rancid acquired his cash by running a little trap line
each winter.  And successful trapping required a rather extensive
knowledge of sign.  The intensity and seriousness with which Rancid
studied sign can be fully appreciated only by realizing that to him it
was virtually the same thing as tobacco and medicine.  TO Rancid, sign
was a matter of ultimate concern.

A stroll with Rancid through the woods was a course in post-graduate
study in reading sign.  "Bar," he would say, pointing to the ground as
we walked along.  "Porky-pine ... bobcat ... skonk ..."  And so on.

One day we were going along in this fashion and he pointed down and
said, "Snake."

"Snake?"  I said to myself, glancing down.  "This is a new ...

SNAKE!"

My bare foot was descending toward the fat, frantic reptile.  Despite
my precarious posture, I managed to execute a successful lift-off
before coming into actual contact with the creature.  While involved in
this effort, I left my vocal cords unattended and they took advantage
of their moment of freedom to get off a loud and stardling shriek.

Upon hearing this, Rancid leaped to the conclusion that he had
misjudged the snake as being a member of a benevolent sect and
immediately began to curse and hop about and flail the earth with his
walking stick.  It was all pretty exciting, and Rancid was more than a
little annoyed when he found out the snake hadn't taken a bite out of
me after all.

"Gol-dang," he said, "don't never scream like thet agin fer no
reason.

Let the thang at least git a taste of you 'fer you starts hollerin'
like you's bein' et.  Now tarn loose maw ha'r and neck and git down
offen maw shoul ders!"

Over the years, my wife has become quite an expert on reading sign,
ferreting out clues here and there and matching up odd bits of trivial
information from which to deduce an ingenious conclusion that couldn't
make the slightest difference to anyone.  I like to call her the
Sherlock Holmes of sign.  just recently she came in and reported that
the reason the grass in an orchard up on the hill was matted down was
that a herd of elk had been sleeping there.

"Ha!"  I said.  "Probably just cows.  What makes you think it's elk?"

"Alimentary, my dear Watson," she said.  "Alimentary."

There are, of course, worse things than a smart-aleck woman.  A fellow
even told me what they were once, but I can never remember.

Campgrounds are my wife's favorite places for sleuthing.  As soon as we
arrive at a campsite, she's out of the car in a flash, reading the
sign.

"Party of four camped here last.  Spent at least three days, I'd say
from the amount of ash in the fireplace.  At least one of them was a
slob."

"How do you know that?"

"Threw the pull-tabs from his beer cans all over the place--boy, that's
really disgusting.  You'd think he'd care what kind of example he was
setting for his kids."

"His kids?"

"Yeah, there are three wiener sticks leaning against the tree over
there.

You can see the remains of toasted-coconut-covered marshmallows on two
of the sticks.  Only kids can eat burnt toasted-coconut-covered
marshmallows and live.  Boy, if I were married to that lazy slob!"  she
said, holding up the third wiener stick.  "Look the wife's stick has a
fork on the end of it.

That's so she could cook a wiener for the old man while she was doing
her own!

Well, I never!"

"The guy sounds like a real slob, no doubt about it," I said.  "Hey,
don't throw that forked wiener stick away.  You never know when
something like that might come in handy."

One good thing about forked wiener sticks: It's difficult to run a
person through with them.

I myself don't have much opportunity to read sign anymore.  To tell the
truth, my reading tastes have changed a good deal over the years and
I'd just as soon curl up with a good book or magazine.  Also, books and
magazines are nicer to keep around the house and you're much less
likely to get dirty looks if you read them in public waiting rooms.

Tying My Own Someday there will be a how-to-tie-flies book written for
people like me.

It will read something like this: "While holding the tying thread
between two thumbs of your left hand, take a hackle feather between the
big and little thumbs of your right hand ..."

I am a person who is just naturally thumby.  My eyesight isn't all that
good either.  When I read in a fly-tying book that I should "wrap each
successive turn of tinsel next to the preceding one, edge to edge
without overlapping," I can only shriek with delight and hope the
author can sustain this level of humor through the rest of the book.  I
am seldom disappointed.

Here's a line that really split my sides: "Wind the two hairs around
the hook, keeping the darker one to the left."  Keeping the darker one
to the left!  Oh what I wouldn't give to be able to come up with gems
like that!

Contrary to the rumor spread by some of my alleged friends, I started
fishing with artificial flies several years after the invention of the
real ones, not before.  Back when I was a kid, you could buy a good fly
for fifteen cents.  And I mean a good fly.  One Black Gnat would last
you a whole season, providing you were willing to retrieve it from such
receptacles as stumps submerged in rapids, thorn bushes on the sides of
cliffs, and rotting logs balanced over the edges of precipices.  I was
always willing to retrieve it.

After all, fifteen-cent flies didn't grow on trees (although a casual
observer of my casting technique might assume they did).  Sure, by the
end of the season there would be some signs of wear and tear: the body
would be on the verge of coming apart; the head, lumpy and gouged; and
the general appearance, one of having been mauled and chewed on.  The
fly, on the other hand, would still look pretty good.

My friends and I kept count of the fish taken on each fly.  Truly great
flies were given names like Killer or Griz, unless, of course, they
failed to attract fish on a given day, at which time they might be
called simply Harold or Walter.  It was not unusual for us to become
quite attached to a fly.

Equally common was for a fly to become attached to us.  Since none of
us enjoyed the prospect of having a fly surgically removed from
whatever part of our anatomy it had become attached, we would
occasionally pretend we were starting a new fad: wearing a fly on an
ear, a shoulder blade, or an elbow.

Lest the reader think we were sissies, let me hasten to add that the
surgeon who excised the wayward fly was more often than not a burly
miner (thus the expression "miner surgery"), who would haul out his
pocketknife, run the flame of a kitchen match up and down the big blade
a few times, order the women and children from the arena, and then say
something like, "All right, you men grab hold of him and I'll have that
fly out of his hide in a jiffy!"

When you found yourself in this predicament, the better part of valor
if not of wisdom was simply to grab the embedded fly and remove it with
a quick jerk and a muffled cry of pain, the latter sometimes causing
all the cows in the vicinity to "go dry" for a month.  This tactic not
only saved you from "miner" surgery but for a brief period also enabled
you to bait fish and fly fish simultaneously with a single hook.

The fifteen-centers were the expensive flies.  The cheap flies cost
about thirty-five cents a dozen and came in a little cellophane packet
labeled "World's Greatest Fishing Bargain" or something like that.

Neither fish nor entomologists have ever seen an insect bearing the
slightest resemblance to any members of the world's greatest fishing
bargain.  Nevertheless, these eccentric flies served an important
function: They filled up the empty space in our fly books.  This
function was important because the first thing you did when you and
your fishing companions arrived at a fishing spot was to scoop a dead
insect from the surface of the water--any bug would do--and studiously
compare it with the contents of your fly book.  After a couple minutes
of such careful scrutiny, you would say, "By golly, I think what we
have here is a hatch of black gnats."  You would then take out your
venerable fifteen-cent Black Gnat and tie it on.  All the other guys
would usually go along with this assessment unless, of course, the
fifteen-center belonging to one of them happened to be a Silver Doctor
or a Royal Coachman, in which case this individual would take exception
to the verdict and argue heatedly that the hatch consisted of silver
doctors or royal coachmen.

I must confess that if there were still good fifteencent flies on the
market I'd hop naked on a pogo stick through a feminist picnic before
I'd tie my own.  But flies have gone up in price.  Last summer I heard
about a new pattern that was supposed to be good.  My plan was to buy
one, dissect it, and from the anatomical knowledge thus obtained,
counterfeit a few copies.  When the clerk told me the price of the fly,
I was not only shocked but embarrassed.  Unable to bring myself to ask
if I could purchase the fly on an installment plan, I said, "Maybe I
should have a look at some of your other flies."

"Oh, you mean the expensive ones," he said.  "I'm sorry, but our new
order hasn't come in yet."

As near as I could make out, either Lloyd's of London had refused to
insure the shipment or the armored car service was late in making the
delivery.  It was all I could do to keep from sticking my hand in my
jacket pocket, thrusting it toward the clerk, and saying, "This is a
stickup!  Give me all your dries, nymphs, and streamers, nothing larger
than a six.  And no funny stuff--this finger is loaded!"

A number of years ago--about the time investors started buying up
fishing flies as a hedge against inflation--I decided that once and for
all I'd better learn how to tie my own.  After all, I'd been giving out
advice on fly-tying for years, so I reasoned that it shouldn't be that
difficult to learn how to construct the little buggers.  Since I was a
fly fisher of consummate skill, word spread that I knew absolutely
everything there was to know about flies, including how to tie them.

It beats me how a rumor like that got started, but no matter.  Pretty
soon, fishermen from all over came seeking my advice, and, not wishing
to appear rude and secretive, I dispensed it to them freely.

Although innocent of such fundamentals as how one got all those
feathers and stuff to stay on a hook, I felt competent to offer
consultation on the finer aspects of the art.

"I want to make some of my nymphs sink faster," a fellow said to me
once.

"Got any suggestions?"

"That's simple," I replied.  "All you have to do is make them
heavier."

"Gee, I wonder why I never thought of that," he said, and walked away
shaking his head, no doubt at his own stupidity.

When the time came for me to learn how to tie my own flies, I couldn't
very well ask the same people I'd been advising what tools and
materials I would need to get started.  If nothing else, I might have
shaken their confidence in all the tips I had given them over the
years.  I decided the best approach would be to seek out an
establishment specializing in fly-tying paraphernalia and located in an
area of town where I was not likely to be recognized.  I soon foundjust
such a shop, the proprietor of which turned out to be an attractive
lady of approximately my own youthful age.

"Say, don't I know you from somewhere?"  she asked, scarcely before the
bells on the shop's front door had ceased jangling the news of my
arrival.

I smiled modestly.  "Possibly you're confusing me with the actor Robert
Redford, for whom I'm often mistaken despite his being of somewhat
slighter build and a smidgen younger."

"No, no," she said, studying me curiously.  "Now I've got it!  There
used to be this fellow who went fishing with my husband--Farley
Quartze?  I think his name was Pat or Mac or something like that, a
roly-poly guy with thinning gray hair."

I was instantly overcome by pity for the frumpy wretch.  Not only was
the poor soul suffering from seriously impaired eyesight, she was
married to a notoriously loud-mouthed know-it-all whose presence I had
in fact endured on a fishing trip or two.  Unless, of course, there
were two Farley Quartzes, which seemed unlikely.  In any case, it would
not do for word to get back to Farley Quartze that I had shown up at
his wife's shop to buy a beginner's fly-tying outfit.  There was
nothing to do but pull the dubbing over the lady's lovely but afflicted
eyes.

"Well, so much for chitchat," I said, kindly.  "Here's what I need.  My
fly-tying outfit has become such a mess, after twenty years or so of
turning out thousands and thousands of flies, that I've decided to
replace the whole shebang with a totally new outfit, something of
professional caliber, of course.  Why don't youjust go ahead and whip
me up one, all the usual feathers and stuff, you know?"

"Wow!"  she said, staring at me in a way that I could only attribute to
a momentary return of visual acuity.  "That's really something!  First,
let me show you a really nifty little vise."

"Perhaps some other time," I replied.  "Right now I think we should
confine ourselves to matters related to fly-tying."  The poor dear was
struck speechless with disappointment by my rejection of her overture,
and I couldn't help but feel sorry for her, particularly considering
that she was married to an insensitive lout like Farley Quartze.

Noting that she had absentmindedly extracted from a display case a tool
I instantly recognized as an instrument of fly-tying, I tried to change
the subject by calling her attention to it.

"I see you have a hook-clamper there in your hand.  I'm going to need
one of those for sure, and that certainly looks like a good one."

Aftera moment she asked, "How long have you been tying flies.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Probably not," she said, and immediately began removing materials from
boxes, bins, jars, and cases and stuffing them into clear plastic bags
for me.

I was happy to note that she was attaching to each bag a label that
identified the contents, few of which I could otherwise have told from
the plumage of a yellow-crested cuckold, ornithology not being one of
my strong points.  Having depleted the inventory of the store to her
apparent satisfaction, Mrs. Quartze began computing my bill on an
electronic calculator, her fingers dancing happily over its buttons.

For some reason, this simple exercise in digital dexterity seemed to
improve her mood just short of total delight, and I thought the moment
an appropriate one to impress upon her that I was not totally an
inexperienced, nay, an expert, her of flies but also one possessed of
certain ethical standards.

"By the way," I said, surveying the mountain of packages stuffed with
furs and feathers.  "I hope none of these materials are derived from
threatened or endangered species."

"Like what?"  she said.

"Well," I said, picking up a package and reading the label, "like these
chenilles."

Not only was Mrs. Quartze afflicted with poor vision, but she also had
the rather distasteful mannerism of allowing her mouth to gape open
every time a question was addressed to her.  "Why, no," she said
presently, regaining control of her jaw muscles, "there are plenty of
chenilles left.  They reproduce faster than lemmings."

"Good to hear it," I replied.  "They're such colorful little beggars,
it would be a shame if they became a threatened species."

"Yes," she said smiling.  "You'll probably be happy to learn that the
flosses are doing fine too.  And the tinsels ..."

Well, that conversation took place many years ago.  I have since
learned a good deal about the fundamentals of fly-tying, not that I
ever really believed there were such creatures as chenilles and flosses
and tinsels.  That was just a little joke for the benefit of Mrs.
Quartze.  Don't think she got it, though, because a few days after our
transaction somebody sent me a book in the mail--Fly-tying Made Easy
Even for Imbeciles.  Talk about your nerve!

On the other hand, it turned out to be a pretty good book, once I got
past the hard parts.

Psychic Powers for Outdoorsmen Even as a child I possessed psychic
powers.  For example, I once was fighting with my sister, the Troll,
and, as she sat on my chest braiding my fingers into a potholder, I
suddenly had this vision of a snake slithering happily about in the
dresser drawer where the Troll stored her fresh underwear.  Naturally,
I immediately dismissed the vision as preposterous.

How could a simpleminded snake manage to climb the sheer side of the
dresser, open a drawer, crawl inside, and finally pull the drawer shut
behind?  Why would a snake even want to do this?  What could its motive
be?  The very next day, however, the Troll announced the discovery of a
snake in her underwear drawer.  Her announcement was made
simultaneously with the discovery and had a certain operatic quality to
it, beginning with a rather elaborate inhalation, which was followed by
a series of staccato sounds similar to aborted sneezes, then culminated
in a long, quavering, sirenlike screech, the whole performance lasting
not more than twenty seconds and concluding with several loud thumps,
these last caused by the Troll's rebounding off the wall in an effort
to get a clear shot at the bedroom door.  As pure entertainment it left
something to be desired, but I found the routine not to be without a
certain psychological interest.  As with most psychic phenomena, the
mystery of the snake in the drawer and my precognition of its being
there never yielded to logical inquiry, although for years afterwards
the Troll insisted upon advancing a pet theory of her own as to the
unknown cause of the event.  No one, of course, pays much attention to
the theories of a person who goes through life forking her underwear
out of a drawer with a long stick.

Quite often in those days our house would be invaded by strange
odors.

"Smells like something died," my grandmother would say, giving me a
look heavy with accusation.  I would then perform an age-old rite of
exorcism, which consisted of removing from a secret storage place and
burying outside by the light of the moon a bait can of deteriorating
worms, a collection of more-or-less drying sunfish, or possibly a box
of ripening freshwater mussels.

Shortly after I had performed the rite, the mysterious odor would begin
to diminish in power and soon be gone altogether.  My family should
have been grateful that they had me around to exorcise odors, but they
were generally unappreciative.

I have managed to achieve true levitation only twice.  In the first
instance, I not only raised the person several feet off the ground in a
prone position but propelled him over a fence, across the countryside,
and into his own house, where his abrupt entrance through a locked
screen door caused his mother to spill a cup of hot cocoa on the cat
and his father to blurt out a word that nobody supposed he even
knew--or so the subject of my feat of levitation reported to me upon
returning to his senses several days later.

What happened was this: A kid by the name of Lester was spending the
night with me, and we were sleeping on an old mattress out in my
backyard.  I had complained of an earache the previous night, and my
grandmother suggested that I wear something around my head to keep the
cold night air from my ear.

Although I possessed half a dozen stocking caps, a search of the
premises unearthed not a single one of them.  Finally, My grandmother
said she would find me something of hers to wear.  She went to a trunk
in the attic and fished out one of her old bonnets, a thing made out of
bearskin and which she claimed once to have worn on hayrides.  At some
point prior to the bonnet's being stored in the trunk for reasons of
sentiment, a dog had apparently attacked it, either out of anger or
fright, and had managed to tear loose several large hanks of hair,
leaving in their place grotesque patches of naked skin.  It fastened
under the chin with two cords.  Naturally, I didn't want Lester to see
me wearing such a monstrosity, since he might spread rumors about me
around the schoolyard, a place where rumors about me were already
rampant.

I concealed the hairy bonnet inside my shirt until Lester had dozed
off, rather fitfully it seemed to me, even though I had entertained him
for several hours with true accounts of the numerous grisly murders
that had taken place in our neighborhood and which remained unsolved.

I then whipped out the bonnet, put it on, knotted the cords under my
chin, and slid down under the blankets, being careful not to disturb
Lester and hoping that I would be the first to awaken in the morning in
order to remove the headpiece before my bedmate saw it.

Sometime during the night, as luck would have it, the bearskin bonnet
became twisted around my head in such a manner that it was leaking cold
air to my faulty ear and shutting it off altogether from my nose and
mouth.  I awoke in a panic of suffocation and tore at the knots under
my chin, but to no avail.  There was only one thing to do.  I lunged
for Lester, hoping the moon was bright enough that he could see to
untie the knots.  "MOW WAAAA OOOD AAAAAAHHH!"  I shouted at him.

Through a ripped seam in the bearskin, I glimpsed one of Lester's
eyelids lift tentatively.  Then both eyes popped open.  Without further
ado, Lester levitated.

After Lester's departure, I groped my way into the house to my mother's
bedroom and shook Mom awake to have her untie the cords of the hairy
bonnet.

That's when the second levitation occurred.  It was less spectacular
than Lester's but every bit as good as what one might see performed on
stage by the average professional magician, although, on the whole,
considerably less dignified.

I also possess considerable talent for rainmaking although only in
collaboration with my friend Vern Schulze.  When we were still kids,
Vern and I discovered that we could produce rain any time we wished
simply by going on a camping trip together.  Our sleeping out in the
backyard would produce a steady drizzle for most of the night.  A
camping trip away from home for a couple of days would call forth a
series of cloudbursts that would awaken new interest in arks and set
people to arguing about the meaning of "cubits."

Once when we were about sixteen, we even managed to work up a major
blizzard in the middle of June by going camping in the mountains for a
week.  We learned from that experience that the severity of the weather
is in direct but inverse proportion to the warmth of the clothes we
wear camping.  Our light attire, appropriate to the normal weather of
late June, had in that instance brought on a blizzard.  If we had gone
naked, we probably would have launched a new ice age.

This past summer we had not a drop of rain for nearly two months in the
region where I live, and forest fires were erupting all over the
place.

I called up Vern.

"Vern," I said, "this drought has gone on too long.  The whole country
may burn up if we don't do something about it.  Get your gear ready.

Any questions?"

"Yeah," he replied.  "Who is this?"

"You know who it is!  Don't try to pull that wrongnumber routine on me,
Vern!"

"YOu must have the wrong number," he said.  "There's no Vern here."

"I told you not to try that routine on me," I snapped.  "Do you want to
be responsible for letting the whole country go up in flames?"

"I suppose not.  What's your plan?"

"Well, I figure a week-long backpacking trip into the Hoodoo Mountains
would do the job."

Vern gasped.  "Are you crazy?  Think of the floods, man!  No, three
days would be more than enough!  A few roads may wash out, but a
three-day backpacking trip shouldn't cause any more damage than that.

And it will certainly produce enough rain to put out all the forest
fires."

As soon as the word got out that Vern and I were going backpacking, the
local television weatherpersons began qualifying their announcements:
"The official forecast is for continued hot, dry weather; however, Pat
McManus and Vern Schulze are going backpacking for three days, and
rains ranging from severe to torrential should be expected."  Farmers
whose crops had been dying on the vine, hoisted their children to their
shoulders to catch a glimpse of Vern and me as we drove by on our way
to the mountains.  Their wives, cheeks wet with tears of joy, waved
handkerchiefs in the still air and blew us kisses.  Upon being notified
that our backpacking trip was under way, forest service officials began
pulling in their firefighting crews.  Long lines of weary,
smoke-blackened firefighters cheered our two-man relief team as we
passed, and fire-retardant bombers flew low over us and dipped their
wings in salute.  We drove on, our jaws set in grim determination.

"I sure wish they'd discover a less extreme way of making rain," Vern
said.  "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."

"Me too," I said.  "It wouldn't be quite so bad if they paid us to go
backpacking, but when we do it for nothing, that's a lot to ask."

"Yeah," Vern said.  "Say, the bridge over that dry streambed we just
crossed looked a little low to me.  On the way back, watch out that
it's not washed away."

"Right," I said.

By the time we had hiked the first mile up the trail, we could already
hear the thunder.

Materialization is one of the more difficult of the psychic arts.  To
perform this, I need to hike fifteen miles up a canyon to fish a
stretch of water generally supposed to be barren of fish and which
hasn't been visited by Homo sapiens since the beginning of the last
century.  I'll climb over giant logs, battle brush, slog through
swamps, and tunnel through clouds of mosquitoes and gnats.  At last
I'll arrive at a long, beautiful pool at the base of a waterfall, tie
on a fly, and cast out into the pool.  Crazed cutthroat slightly larger
than French bread boxes will rush for the fly.  I'll try to set the
hook too soon, and my line will whip back over my head and become one
with a fifteen-foot-high bush embellished with thorns the size of ice
picks.  The fly will dangle down in front of my face.  At that instant,
three other anglers will materialize out of thin air, gather around my
dangling fly, and say, "Too bad, fella.  Look Fred, what he got that
strike on is one of them with hackle from unhatched pterodactyl, wings
of gossamer, and body wrapping from the hair of the tooth fairy.  Lucky
we happen to have plenty of them along."

I'm also good at dematerialization.  Once, using only a map and a
compass for props, I made myself and two companions vanish for three
days in a Montana wilderness area.  I have attempted to repeat this
feat several times since and have succeeded.

Generally, however, I like to practice my dematerialization in a really
wild place--Kelly's Bar & Grill.  I simply say aloud the magic words,
"Speaking of big fish, that reminds me of the time ..."  At that point,
half of Kelly's customers will disappear with a suddenness that leaves
half-filled schooners of beer suspended in mid-air.

I'm not bad at hypnosis, either.  All I need to do is finish expounding
on my recollection and the rest of Kelly's customers will fall into a
trance or as Kelly puts it, "a stupor."  (Well, one man's trance is
another man's stupor.) Even Kelly, ignorant of the psychic arts as he
is, can't help but admire my powers.  Quite often he will point me out
to a new customer and warn, "Stay away from that guy.  He's a great
psycho!"

"Psychic!"  I correct him.  "A psychic!"

Kelly will just chortle.  If there's one thing I hate more about Kelly
than his abuse of words, it's his asinine chortling.

The Fishing Lesson Over the years, I've introduced several dozen people
to the pleasures of outdoor sports.  So what that some of them didn't
want to be introduced!  They might otherwise have ended up as criminals
or drug addicts or golfers.  I like to think I've had some small part
in saving them from such dismal fates.

My neighbor Al Finley, the city councilperson, is a good example of
what can be accomplished if you put your mind to it.  Up until a few
years ago, Finley had never been fishing in his life.  One day he
happened to mention that fact to me, and I couldn't help but feel sorry
for him.

"Al," I said to him, "nobody's perfect.  All of us have our faults.

Want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"  he said.

"Your degeneracy," I said.

Then he called me one of those nasty anatomical names so popular with
guys who like to pretend they're tough.

"Listen, you dirty no-good elbow," he said, "Just because I don't fish
doesn't mean I'm a degenerate!"

"Somebody call me?"  said Retch Sweeney, who had just walked in.

I explained to Retch that Finley had never been fishing.  Retch, as a
way of expressing amazement, has the irritating quirk of repeating the
same rhetorical question over and over.

"You never been fishing, Al?"  he asked.

"No," Finley said, irritably.

"I'll be darned, you never been fishing, hunh?"

"No!"

"That's really something!  You never been fishing?"

Finley's eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head.

"NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!"  he screamed.  "I HAVE NEVER BEEN FISHING, NOT ONCE
IN MY WHOLE BLANKETY-BLANK LIFE, yOU FRACTURED KNEECAP!"

"Well, that's probably what makes you so irritable," Retch said.

After I had helped pry Finley's thumbs off of Retch's windpipe and they
had both calmed down, I suggested that the three of us take a little
fishing trip together.  Neither one of them was too happy with the idea
at first, but I eventually brought them around.

"Hell, Finley," I said, "take a few days off from City Hall.  The
taxpayers can use the rest.  Besides, learning to fish will open up a
whole new way of life to you."

Once he sets his mind to do something, Finley goes all the way.  He
rushed out and bought himself rods, reels, leaders, hooks, creel,
waders, fishing vest, etc. He practically cleaned out the local
sporting-goods stores.  What made me mad wasn't that he put together a
better fishing outfit than mine but that the city's rate for garbage
collection went up in direct proportion to what he spent.  If I had
suggested an African safari to him, we wouldn't have been able to
afford garbage anymore.

The night before we were to leave on the fishing trip, Retch and I went
over to Finley's place to make sure he was properly outfitted and to
make last-minute arrangements.  Finley was flitting about getting his
stuff ready, and it was enough to make a petrified toad smile.

He had everything arranged in neat little piles according to function,
size, color, etc. His tackle box alone was so neat and orderly it was
pathetic.

Retch looked at it and grinned.  "This will never do, Finley."

"Why not?"  Finley growled.

"It just don't look right," Retch said.  "It ain't got any character.

What you need is a good snarl of leader in there with sinkers and hooks
and maybe a dried worm still attached.  And it ain't very efficient
either.  With my lures, I just keep them all dumped together down in
the bottom of the box.

Then all I got to do is grab one of them and they all come out in a big
clump.

I just turn the big clump around till I find something that looks good
and pluck it off.  You gonna waste a lotta time pokin' around through
all them compartments."

Finley was obviously embarrassed by his own ineptness in organizing a
tackle box.  Still, that was no reason for him to refer to Retch as an
"ingrown toenail."  Retch may not be smart, but he has feelings just
like anyone else.

Retch and I did everything we could to help Finley get his stuff into
some kind of respectable condition so we all wouldn't be embarrassed if
we ran into other anglers on the river.  But Finley said he liked for
his stuff to look neat and clean and brand new.  He wouldn't even let
me smear some salmon-egg clusters on his fishing vest or leak some
dry-fly dressing on his shirt.

Finally, Retch could stand it no longer.  He grabbed Finley's hat,
threw it on the floor, and jumped up and down on it.

"Now, that looks more like a fishing hat," he said, holding it up for
approval.

"I can see that, you shinbone," Finley said.  "Too bad it isn't
myfishing hat!"  Turned out it was his politicking hat.

Retch and I had a good chuckle over the little misunderstanding, and
even Finley was mildly amused by it, although not until several years
later.

To make amends, Retch offered to let Finley stomp on his fishing hat.

Finley said all right but only if Retch would agree to leave his head
in it.

I could see that Finley was becoming irritated, since he had acquired a
rather severe twitch in his left eye and was pacing back and forth
popping his knuckles.  It was apparent that all those years without
fishing had taken their toll on his nervous system.  I tried to be as
gentle as I could in giving him the last few bits of essential
information about our fishing trip.

"I've got some bad news and some good news for you, Al," I said.

"What?  Tell me.  I can hardly wait."

"First, the bad news.  The road into the Big Muddy, which is where
we're going to fish, is pretty treacherous--steep, winding, narrow,
washouts, logging trucks, that sort of thing."

"The good news?"

"We're taking your car, and you get to drive."

"What's so good about that?"

"Well, there are several high old wood bridges where Retch and I have
to get out and walk across just to make sure they're safe for you to
drive over.

Then there's the stretch of road along the top of Bottomless Canyon,
where we have to get out again and guide you alongjust to make sure
your outside tires don't hang so far out in space they might slip
off.

Hell, all that walking would sap your energy, and we want you to save
it for fishing."

"I see, I see," Finley said, twitching and popping.

The plan we worked out was for Finley to pick us up at three in the
morning.  Finley, not knowing anything about fishing, expressed some
amazement at the early hour for getting started.  We explained that it
was necessary if we were to catch the first feed on the Big Muddy.

"And don't be late," Retch said.  "The one sin I can't forgive is for a
guy to be late for a fishing trip."

The resulting foul-up was probably my fault.  I should have taken into
account the fact that Finley knew absolutely nothing about fishing and
its practitioners, and I should have explained the nuances more
thoroughly to him.

Right in the middle of the night, I was awakened from a deep sleep by a
horn blaring in my driveway.  I got up and staggered over to a window
to look out.

"What is it?"  my wife mumbled.

"I don't know," I said.  "Some maniac is down in our driveway honking
his fool horn off.  What kind of a person honks his horn in front of
your house at three A.M.?"

It was Finley, of course.  As I stuffed my gear into the back of his
station wagon, I tried to be as kind as possible.

"Al," I said, "when a fisherman says he is leaving on a fishing trip at
exactly, absolutely and positively, three A.M he means five-thirty at
the earliest.  If he's leaving at three, he says midnight."

After we had honked Retch out of bed, he staggered to the car looking
like something put together by an inept taxidermist.

"Wha-what is it?"  he said.  "The dam bust?  We gonna be flooded?"

By four we were on the road, pumping hot coffee into our veins from the
thermos Finley had had the good sense to bring along.  In a little
while, we felt good.  There is nothing better than to be headed into
the mountains on a clean fresh day with the sun rising through the
trees and good company and good talk and the sense of ease that comes
from the knowledge that you are in somebody else's car and it is not
your transmission that is going to get torn out on a big rock.  Even
Finley seemed to be enjoying himself.  Then we came to the road that
leads up to the headwaters of the Big Muddy.

"Hang a left there," I told Finley.

"A left where?  All I see is that rock slide coming down off the
mountain."

"That's it, buddy," I said.  "By the way, Al, how do you feel about
transmissions?  You don't strike me as the sort of man who would
develop an attachment to them."

I am happy to report that Finley is a superb driver and negotiated the
Big Muddy road without the slightest damage to his car.  In fact, the
only incident worth reporting was when the car started to teeter on the
edge of a washout and Finley became confused and jumped out of the car
at the same time Retch and I did.  When we explained to him that we had
merely had a sudden urge to check the huckleberry crop along the road,
he climbed back in and drove around the washout, by which time Retch
and I had pretty well exhausted our interest in the huckleberry crop
and were able to rejoin him.

"Why is it that every time we come to a bad stretch of road, you two
are overpowered by an urge to leap out and study the local flora?"

Finley asked, mopping the sweat off his brow so it wouldn't drip into
his twitching eye.

"Must be just a coincidence," I said.  "Say, isn't that a beautiful
specimen of Birdwell's lichen on those rocks up ahead there?"

"You mean up there where the road seems to be cracking off from the
side of the cliff" "That's it, buddy," I said, opening the door.

"Remind me sometime to show you my extensive collection of lichen."

As I say, we arrived at the Big Muddy without incident, and aside from
the fact that Finley went about for some time afterwards with his hands
shaped as though they were still gripping a steering wheel, we were all
in fine shape and high spirits.  Finley even commented that he didn't
know how he had managed to get through forty-three years of life
without fishing, he was having so much fun.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Retch told him.  "Just wait till you
actually start fishing."

"I can hardly contain myself," Finley said.

Retch and I helped Finley rig up his tackle, and then we all cut down
through the brush toward the Big Muddy.  It was rough going, and the
mosquitoes came at us like mess call at a fat farm.  I led the way and
did the best I could to point out the obstacles to the other two, but
apparently I stepped right over one beaver hole without noticing it.

Suddenly I heard a strange sound and turned around to see what it
was.

I was shocked.  There was Finley's head resting on the ground, its eyes
still blinking in disbelief!  It was about as horrible a thing as I've
ever seen.  Then the head spoke to me.

"You gluteus maxiMus," it said.  "Why didn't you tell me about this
hole?"

"I didn't see it, head," I replied.  "It looks pretty deep though-we
better warn Retch about it."

"Ha!"  Finley said.  "Whose shoulders do you think I'm standing on"
That was about the only real catastrophe to befall us.  The rest of the
day was pretty much your routine fishing trip.  Oh, Finley did lose his
sack lunch and made quite a fuss about that, but it was nothing
really.

As far as we could figure out, the lunch apparently washed out of the
pocket in the back of his fishing vest.  There was a pretty strong
current at the place where he was trying to swim to the north bank of
the Big Muddy, and that was probably when his lunch washed away.

Actually, I had thought there were good odds that Finley would make it
all the way across that high log over the river, even if he was
running.  But before Retch and I could shake hands on our bet, he ran
right off into space and dropped like a shot into the river.  Of
course, I hadn't taken into account the fact that he was holding up his
pants with one hand and had all those yellow jackets swarming around
him.  I had told Finley that yellow jackets sometimes hole up in old
brush piles and don't like to be disturbed, but he didn't listen.  I
won't go into how he was disturbing them or why he was holding up his
pants with one hand, because it isn't especially interesting.  Anyway,
to hear Finley tell it, you would think he was the only fisherman to
have such an experience.  You would think Retch and I had personally
put those yellow jackets under that brush pile.

"Look, Finley," I told him, "it's no big deal.  Fishermen lose their
lunches all the time."

I dug a sandwich out of my own fishing vest and gave it to him and
patted him on the shoulder.  He stared down at the sandwich.  "Looks
like peanut butter and jelly," he said.

I didn't have the heart to tell him it was supposed to be just peanut
butter, even though I could have put those salmon eggs to good use.  He
didn't seem to notice, anyway.

One of the most difficult things about introducing a guy to the sport
of fishing is determining whether it has taken hold on him.  Finley had
done so much complaining all day, I couldn't be sure.  As we were
driving back into town, I decided to ask him.

"I'm of two minds about it," he replied.  "One bad and one good."

"What's the bad?"

"I won't be able to get out of bed for a week."

"What's the good?"

"Next time we're taking his car."

"Whose car?"  Retch said.

"Yours, armpit, that's whose," he said.

I could see Finley was hooked.  Already he had picked up one of the
most important techniques.

The Hunting Camp The guys and I were practicing our lies down at
Kelly's Bar & Grill the other night, and before I knew it Fred Smith
had got started on a long and boring tale about one of his hunting
trips.  Something of an expert on long and boring tales, I can usually
spot one and snuff it out while it is still in the larval stage.  On
this occasion, however, Mavis, Kelly's harmaid, had just leaned over my
shoulder to replenish the beverages at our table.  At that instant I
noticed something flutter into my drink.  At first glance it appeared
to be an emaciated centipede.  Since Kelly's is not exactly a showcase
of the County Health Department, it was only natural for me to assume
that the creature had lost its grip while being pursued across the
ceiling by a pack of cockroaches.  I shrank back in disgust from the
loathsome creature and began to stab at it with a pepperoni stick in
the hope of either flipping it out of my glass or drowning it before it
drank too much.

Without warning, Mavis grabbed the pepperoni stick and, trying to
wrench it away from me, hissed in my ear, "It's mine, you idiot!  Give
it back!"

Mavis not seeming the type to own a starving centipede, I quite
logically leaped to the conclusion that she was referring to my
pepperoni stick.  "It is not yours," I snapped.  "It's mine, I bought
it, and I'm going to eat the darn thing!"

This simple assertion seemed to touch off a burst of maniacal strength
in Mavis, and, gasping with rage, she twisted my wrist back in such a
manner that she was able to remove from the tip of the pepperoni stick
the sodden centipede.  She then stalked off, sniffling something about
my trying to eat her eyelash!

Her eyelash, for pity's sake!  It should be easy for anyone to
understand how a man of my sensitivity would be upset by such a bizarre
assault on his person and character, not to mention his pepperoni.  I
relate this dreadful experience only by way of indicating the magnitude
of event necessary to distract me sufficiently that someone is allowed
to get a long and boring tale under way without having it instantly
snuffed.  By the time I tuned in, Fred had covered the first couple
hours preceding the hunt, leaving no detail unturned, no matter how
lacking in relevance or consequence.  The other guys at the table had
already been poleaxed by trivia and were staring catatonically at Fred
as he droned on: "So a couple of minutes after Ralph knocked the ash
off his cigar, we pulled off the road and made camp, and then me and
Ralph starts up the trail to look for deer sign and I steps on a twig
but it don't make no noise cause it's wet--did I say it rained the
night before?  Anyway ..."

"Hold it right there, Fred," I said, noticing how barren of detail was
the reference to making camp.  "Did you say'made camp'?"

"Yeh.  Now where was I?  Did I tell you the part about the wet twig?"

"C'mon, Fred, don't try to weasel out of it," I said.  "Admit that all
you did was turn off the ignition on your camper truck and set the hand
brake.

That doesn't constitute making camp."

"We had to let down the camper jacks, too," he said sheepishly, looking
about the circle of faces, which had suddenly filled with accusation.

I shook my head.  "You know the rules, Fred.  It's all right to lie
about unimportant things as long as it's entertaining.  Add a few
points to your buck, a few inches to your trout, a few miles to a
trail--but don't ever say YOu made camp when you didn't."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"  he cried.  "I don't know what came over me.

It just slipped out."

"All right," I said, patting his hand.  "We'll forgive you this time.

just don't ever let it happen again."  Snuffing out a long and boring
tale can sometimes be cruel, but it has to be done.

Then Fred made his second blunder of the evening, He looked at me and,
in a penitent tone, asked, "Say, Pat, just what does constitute making
camp on a hunting trip?"

Well, if that didn't create an uproar!  Everyone started jumping up and
down and shouting threats at Fred, and the situation looked as if it
might turn ugly.  Then Kelly got out his baseball bat from behind the
bar and charged over.  By the time the fellows had got him calmed down
and made him promise not to try to hit Fred with the bat, I had managed
to scribble out an outline and a few rough notes on a napkin.

"I'm glad you asked that question," I said.  "I can certainly tell you
what constitutes making a hunting camp, but it may take a while, so you
fellows might just as well sit down and relax."

They sank into their chairs, muttering.

"I'll have to ask you mutterers to be quiet," I said.

"Watch da language," Kelly said.  "Dis is a nice bar."

Since he was still fingering the bat in a psychotic manner, I resisted
the impulse to retort and got my lecture started.  It went something
like this.

The first hunting camps were invented by prehistoric man, who divided
his time equally between hunting for wild meat and having wild meat
hunt for him.

Interestingly, if a man made a hunting camp when he should have made a
hunted camp, he was thereafter referred to as "et."  (As in: "How come
I never see Iggy around anymore?"  "Got et.") The hunting camp
consisted of nothing more than a few branches thrown on the ground for
a bed, whereas the hunted camp utilized but a single branch, one
attached to the upper part of a tall tree, where the hunted would spend
the night standing on it.  Occasionally, a fun-loving catamount would
climb the tree and send the men fleeing wildly among the branches. 
From this activity arose the expression "tearing limb from limb." 
Usually, however, the hunted camp provided adequate security, not to
mention a cure for sleepwalking.

These prehistoric hunters were the first to come up with that boon to
camping, the shelter.  The first shelters, simple affairs made of rock,
eventually came to be called caves, after the cavernen who lived in
them.

Unlike the hunted camp, the caves provided protection from wind and
rain as well as from wild beasts, but they made for a heavy pack on a
long trip.

Since matches and camp stoves had not yet been invented, primitive man
was forced to carry his campfire right along with him from place to
place.

Archeologists believe this may explain why hunting camps in those days
were located only ten yards apart.  These early firebearers are thought
to have contributed to mankind the ten-yard dash and also the
expressions "Ow!"

"Ouch!"

"Yipe!"  and "Bleeping bleep-of-a-bleep!"

Harsh as these early camps may have been, they probably had a great
many similarities to the hunting camps of today.  Indeed, it is not
hard to imagine the following conversation occurring around one of
their prehistoric campfires.

"All right, who forgot to bring the salt?  If there's one thing I hate
it's pterodactyl wing without salt!"

"Squatty was supposed to bring it."

"The heck I was.  I carry the cave, remember?  It's Pudd's job to bring
the salt."

"Ow!  Ouch!  Yipe!  No sir!  I carried the bleeping bleep-of-a-bleep
fire!"

There is some evidence that early man very nearly invented the
interior-frame umbrella tent.  Apparently, a hunter one day got the
idea of stretching dried skins over a framework of poles he had lashed
together.  The contraption aroused a great deal of curiosity among his
fellow hunters, who up to that time had thought the man an imbecile.

"What is it?"  they asked him.

"A brontosaurus trap," he replied.

His fellow hunters concluded that the man was indeed an imbecile.

Because of his quick-witted reply, however, the anonymous inventor
saved countless generations from the agony of pitching interior-frame
umbrella tents, and he thus came to be regarded as one of the great
benefactors of mankind.

Before the invention of sleeping bags, the hides of hairy mammoths and
saber-toothed tigers provided cozy warmth through the long nights of
the approaching ice age, but, unfortunately, only for hairy mammoths
and saber-toothed tigers.  Early cave paintings, however, indicate that
one group of prehistoric hunters devised a clever substitute for a
sleeping bag.  They would lure a saber-toothed tiger into their cave,
where one of the hunters would knock it out with a club.  Then the
hunters would all lie down in a row and tug the tiger up over them for
warmth and try to get a few hours of sleep before the beast regained
consciousness.  The little band of hunters is thought to have vanished
suddenly and mysteriously.  The only theory for their disappearance
that archeologists can offer is that one night the man in charge of the
club forgot to put the cat out.

At this point in my lecture, Kelly began to shout incoherently and had
to be wrestled back into his chair and disarmed of the baseball bat.

"All right," I said.  "So much for the history of hunting camps.  I
will now move right along to my analysis of the phenomenon known as the
modern hunting camp."  And I did.

First off, as I told the boys at Kelly's, I don't consider anything
that's comfortable a camp.  I know one guy who goes hunting in a
$50,000 motor home that has everything but a front lawn and a
basement.

Driving a hunting camp fifty-five miles an hour down a freeway goes
against everything I believe in, and I simply won't stand for it.  A
hunting camp, after all, is not so much a thing as a state of mind.

Mention the phrase "hunting camp" to any hunter worth his
fluorescent-orange vest and the picture that immediately leaps into his
mind is this: A classic cabin-style tent, suspended from a framework of
slender, unpeeled saplings that have been lashed together by the
hunters, is situated on a flat, stoneless, grassy piece of ground with
a backdrop of evergreens, tastefully splotched here and there with
patches of autumn color.  The pipe of a wood-burning stove pokes up
through the roof of the tent.  A small, pure, ice-cold mountain stream
tumbles among boulders off to one side.  From a stout tree limb dangles
the standard fourteen-point buck.  One of the hunters is splitting the
evening's firewood from blocks that are miraculously dry, straight of
grain, and the right length.  The other hunter is pouring himself a
steaming cup of hot coffee from the pot hung over the near-smokeless
campfire.  There are no insects in the picture, and the only snow
glistens on a distant peak, made rosy by the sun setting gloriously in
the west.

This picture, of course, represents the ideal of the hunting camp,
which is seldom if ever achieved.  The average hunting camp, infinite
in its variety, falls somewhat short of the ideal.  Here are but a few
versions of it: THE NO-FRILLS CAMP--This is the camp that is resorted
to upon arriving at the hunting site very late on a cold and rainy
night.  One of the hunters will suggest something like this: "Hell, why
don't we just sleep in the car.  It's only five or six hours until
dawn."  A curious aftermath of the no-frills camp is that the hunter
who suggested it is not spoken to again by any of the other hunters for
approximately six months.  The no-frills camp may be injurious to your
health, but only if you should greet one of the occupants of it too
cheerfully on the following morning.

THE FLAT CAMP--This is the camp that is resorted to after someone asks,
"Okay, where are the tent poles?  Who put them in the car?"  And nobody
answers.

THE SLANT CAMP--The commonest of all camps used in the mountains, the
slant camp is the source of several interesting phenomena, one of which
is that anytime something is dropped, it falls horizontally.  Several
times I myself have seen men encased in sleeping bags shoot out through
the side of a slant camp tent like a burial at sea.  One of the
drawbacks of the slant camp is that by the middle of the night all the
sleeping hunters are stacked on one another at the low side of the
tent.  And the guy on the bottom is always the one who drank a beer
before turning in.

THE HANG-GLIDER CAMP--This camp results from the suggestion, "Let's
pitch the tent right on top of the peak.  That way the wind will blow
the insects away from us .

THE HORSE CAMP--Where everyone except the packer eats standing up.

THE DOUBLE-BAREL CAMP--Where ...

At this point, my lecture was interrupted by Mavis, who had returned
sullenly to replenish our beverages.  As luck would have it, her
eyelash plopped into my drink again.  I fished it out with a toothpick
and handed it to her.  You've never heard such screaming.  I told Kelly
afterwards, "Either fatten up these centipedes or make Mavis get rid of
the false eyelashes.

Otherwise, I'm not going to give any more lectures in this
establishment."

So far, he has failed to heed my warning.

If You Don't Mind I'll Do It Myself!

Altogether, I was off the stuff for nearly six weeks.  Did it cold
turkey, too.  Then I couldn't stand it any longer and sneaked down to
the basement for a quicky, just a little something to steady my
nerves.

But one of the girls caught me at it and rushed upstairs to tell her
mother.  I could hear her in the kitchen, sobbing out the news of my
relapse.

"I just found Dad hiding in the coalbin, and he's at it again."

"Oh dear!  I was afraid of this!"  my wife exclaimed.  "I thought I had
gotten rid of them all, but he probably had one stashed away under the
coal."

Another kid wandered into the kitchen.  "What's all the ruckus?"

"Your father's hitting the kits again."

"Figures.  What is it this time?"

"Looks like another muzzle-loader," the informer said.

My wife moaned.  "I tried to get him to take the cure."

"Actually, there's no cure for do-it-yourselfism," Big Mouth said.

"Our school brought in a do-it-yourself addict to tell us kids how he
got hooked on the habit.  He said a friend of his got him tying his own
fishing flies.  Then he started refinishing his own split-bamboo
rods.

Before he knew it, he was into the hard stuff--making his own
surf-casting rods, mountain tents, muzzleloaders ..."

"Oh, don't I know!"  my wife said.

"The really terrible thing," the kid went on, "was that while this guy
was talking to us, he rewired the teacher's reading lamp, overhauled
the pencil sharpener, and was starting to sand the desk tops when his
attendants dragged him off."

Well, everybody's got to have a hobby of some kind, I always say.  And
the next time I go on the wagon, I'm going to make it myself.  I've
never built a wagon before.

There's a lot of prejudice against us do-it-yourselfers.  Most of it
derives from jealousy.  Take my neighbor, Al Finley, for instance.  He
had to give up headaches because he couldn't figure out how to get the
tops off the new child-proof aspirin bottles.  But do you think he
would admit his incompetence?  Not a chance.

"I prefer to buy my stuff ready-made," he told me a couple years ago.

"If I wanted to waste my time doing it myself, I certainly could.  I'm
pretty good with tools, even though I just keep the basic ones around
the house--a pounder, a screwturner, and one of those cutters with the
sharp little points ..."

"A saw?"

Finley sniffed.  "You do-it-yourselfers just love to toss that
technical jargon up at a fellow, don't you?"

"Not especially," I replied.  "But now that you mention it, I'd
appreciate your returning the squeezer you borrowed from me.  You're
never going to get the top off that aspirin bottle anyway."

Usually, I can just shrug off the nasty cracks hurled at us
do-it-yourselfers, but once in a while they get to me.  When I built my
kids a sleek little soap-box racer, Finley leaned over the fence and
asked me why I was putting wheels on a packing crate.  That was bad
enough, but when I built my dog a new house, employing some of the most
advanced designs and technology of modern architecture, Finley called
up on the phone and hissed into my ear: "Don't make a sound!  Some kind
of huge, squat, brown, ugly creature has landed in your backyard!  And
that's not the worst!"

"What's the worst, Finley?"

"The worst is, I just saw it eat your dog!  Har, liar, liar!"

Three questions instantly crossed my mind: Is it possible to cement a
man's mouth shut while he is sleeping?  Would it be considered a crime
or, in Finley's case, a public service?  And finally, would he be
awakened by the sound of a pre-mix truck backing up to his bedroom
window?

I must admit that do-it-yourselfism may be getting a bit out of hand in
this country.  There are do-it-yourself baby deliveries, do-it-yourself
marriages, do-it-yourself divorces, and do-it-yourself funerals.  If
there were a kit and a set of instructions, there are probably people
who would undertake do-it-yourself brain surgery.  In fact, I once gave
myself a haircut that was commonly mistaken for brain surgery.

Although I will tackle just about any do-it-yourself project, my
specialty is outdoor gear.  Nowadays I prefer to work with store-bought
kits, but back when I was a youngster and just getting started on
do-it-yourselfism, there weren't any kits on the market.  You had to
make your own kits.  The way you made a kit was to wander around
gathering up the necessary parts as you found them.  You then threw the
parts into a large, handy container, often referred to as your
bedroom.

This procedure usually presented no problem if you were putting
together a simple kit, like for a slingshot.  On the other hand, if you
were putting together a more complex kit, like for a four-wheel-drive
ATV, family relations could become strained.  I recall one particularly
ugly scene with my mother, grandmother, and sister.  To have heard them
rave and carry on you would have thought there was something abnormal
about a kid's bedroom leaking crankcase oil.

I have since read in child psychology books that parents are supposed
to give their children "positive reinforcement" as a means of
stimulating their creative urges.  My family never gave me any positive
reinforcement.  The following account is an example of their
narrow-minded and negative attitudes.

The peaceful quiet of a warm fall afternoon was suddenly shattered by a
shrill scream from my sister.  "There's something decaying in his
bedroom!  I know there is!"

"Nonsense!"  I exclaimed.  It was a pretty good word for a
ten-year-old, and I exclaimed it every chance I got.

My mother and grandmother appeared at the bottom of the stairs.  They
conferred a moment and then, without warning, charged.  I tried to bar
the door but was too late.  Gram got her foot in the crack, and they
started forcing their way in.

"Most likely he caged some poor animal in there and let it starve to
death," Gram said, reaching around the door and trying to swat me out
of the way.

I ducked.  "I wouldn't do anything like that."

"How about the worms, young man?"  Mom snarled.  "You remember the can
of worms you left under the stairs last July?"

Then they burst in upon me, their fierce feminist eyes sweeping over
the various kits in progress.

"There it is," Gram shouted.  "Land sakes, what did I tell you?  just
look what he's done to that poor creature," Horrified, my mother sucked
in her breath.  Even I could have told her that it's unwise to suck in
one's breath in close proximity to a deer hide being tanned by a
ten-year-old boy in an enclosed bedroom during an unseasonably warm
fall.  Her reaction was impressive and well worth observing from a
scientific viewpoint.  Nevertheless, I'm almost certain that there have
been longer and more sustained fits of gagging, and for her to claim a
record was sheer nonsense, as was her charge that she had suffered
permanent damage to her olfactory system.  I proved on several later
occasions that her sense of smell was fully intact.

My reason for tanning the deer hide, a donation from a hunter I knew,
was to put together a kit for making myself a suit of buckskins.  I had
used an old Indian recipe for my tanning solution, but I should have
known that the old Indian was pulling a fast one on me because of the
way he kept wiping smiles off his face.  Some of the ingredients seemed
pretty ridiculous to me at the time, but lots of things seem ridiculous
to a ten-year-old, so I couldn't go by that.  Probably it would have
served Pinto jack right if I had told Mom that he was the hunter who
had given me the deer hide in the first place.

"You ever get your hide tanned?"  Pinto jack asked me some time
later.

"Darned near did," I said.  "But it's hard for a woman to run and gag
at the same time, particularly when she's carrying a rake handle."

Over the years I put together kits for bow and arrows, dogsleds,
snowshoes, packframes, tents, caves, log cabins, canoes, a forty-foot
sportfisher, and dozens of other neat things I can no longer recall.

The kits eventually flowed out of my bedroom, through the house, into
the yard, filled up the outbuildings, and started spreading over the
fields.  The neighbors considered me an unnatural disaster and worried
that their own lands would soon be inundated by my kits.  One old
neighbor lady complained to my mother that she and her husband lived
with their bags packed and in fear that my kits would break loose
without warning and flow over them in the middle of the night before
they could flee.  Another neighbor accused me of stunting his potato
crop, which was absurd.  A forty-foot sportfisher just doesn't shade
that much ground, except possibly in the late afternoon.  Nevertheless,
tiring of the constant stream of complaints and periodic attempts on my
life, I finally curtailed my output of kits and construction projects
in general and took up with girls as a means of filling in my spare
time.  Girls eventually turned out to be almost as interesting as kits,
and they didn't take up so much space.

Over the years, I have learned a good deal about putting together
do-it-yourself kits, and I herewith pass on to the reader a few helpful
hints.

Never buy a beginner's kit.  It is much more interesting to jump in at
an advanced stage and strike out from there.  After you have mastered a
particular skill, you can always go back and pick up the basics.

Nothing stimulates a high level of interest like a good dose of
desperation.

After you have put together a firearm of any kind, be sure to take the
following safety precautions when you test fire it.  First, it is
absolutely essential to carry a pair of sunglasses with you when you
drive out to the firing range.  Never test fire a homemade firearm when
you are alone; always take a friend along.  Then, load the firearm in
strict accordance to the standard procedures.  Finally, hand the
firearm to your friend and say, "Here, why don't you fire off a few
rounds?  I forgot my sunglasses in the car and have to go back and get
them."

Over the years, I've learned that it never pays to publicly put a name
to the results of one of my do-it-yourself projects.  For example, when
I made myself a really superb goose-down huntingjacket, other hunters I
happened to meet in the woods would ask me why I was wearing a red
sleeping bag.

Actually, it isn't at all difficult to come up with a good many sound
reasons for wearing a red sleeping bag, particularly if you give the
subject a little thought.

Another good strategy is just to make up an appropriate name.  Say,
you've just put together a mountaintent kit, but it didn't turn out
quite right.  Now if your friends happen by and ask what it is, you're
going to be subjected to a lot of ridicule, or worse yet, sympathy, if
you identify the object as a mountain tent.  So what you do is call it
a flamph.

"A flamph?"  they will say.

"Yeah, a portable flamph."

"What's it for?"

"For sleeping in up in the mountains."

"Hey, man, that's pretty neat, kind of like a mountain tent, hunh?"

The final precaution is this: Never encourage do-it-yourselfism among
your immediate neighbors.  I know this because Finley finally caught
the do-it-yourself bug from me.  One day I saw him out in the backyard
working away feverishly with his pounder and cutter and my squeezer.

"What are you doing?"  I asked, forgetting to restrain a contemptuous
laugh.

"Building a boat," he replied matter-of-factly.

"A toy boat?"

"No, a real boat."

I must say his antics Provided me with a good deal of amusement.  When
he finally had it finished, I couldn't resist one final little jab at
him.

"Tell me this, Finley, what kind of boat is that?"

"A flumph," he said.

Well, he had me there.  There's just no way you can say a flumph
doesn't look like a flumph.  The one thing that I can say about the
damn thing is that it has stunted the growth of my potatoes.  A
forty-foot flumph shades a lot more ground than you might think.

Useful Outdoor Comments Every year thousands of sportspersons suffer
unnecessary ridicule because they don't know the proper comments to
make in particular outdoor situations.

Merely extracting one's self from a predicament is insufficient; one
must do so with grace and style.  The proper comment not only enables
one to prevail over embarrassment but, in many instances, even to
survive.

Consider the following case: When my nephew Shaun and his friend Eddie
were about twelve, they considered themselves to be master woodsmen.

They demanded to be hauled out to a remote campsite and left to survive
for four days with nothing but a handful of matches, their sheath
knives, sleeping bags, a small tent, and forty pounds of food.  I drove
them to the campsite and dropped them off, giving each a firm handshake
and a manly look in the eye to let them know how much I respected their
courage and that I never expected to see either of them again.

On the second day of their adventure, Shaun's mother, my sister, had to
be repeatedly and forcibly detached from the walls she insisted upon
climbing.

That day, too, one of the worst rainstorms in the history of our county
struck.  and continued on through the night.  The next morning my
sister argued persuasively that the time had come for me to retrieve
the boys, which I set about doing the very instant I pried her thumbs
off my Adam's apple.

As I arrived at the campsite, an ominous feeling settled over me.  The
rain had scarcely subsided to a downpour, and clouds of mist hung in
the trees.  There was no sign of the boys, except for the soggy remains
of a campfire and the pitiful little tent.  They had pitched the tent
in a low area, and the waves of a shallow lake now lapped its walls.  I
waded into the lake, pulled back the entrance flap, and peered
hesitantly inside.  Shaun and Eddie, encased in their sleeping bags and
awash in a foot of water, peered back.  Both looked embarrassed.

Several seconds passed before Shaun spoke.

"Well, so much for woodcraft," he said.

Right then I knew that Shaun was a master woodsman and that there was
nothing more I could teach him--except possibly the feasibility of
pitching one's tent on high ground.  He had said the perfect thing for
the situation and, in so doing, had triumphed over it.  Even his
posture and facial expression were exactly right: body prone, limp,
waterlogged; eyes telling mutely about the other side of despair; pale
lips moving just enough to deliver the comment in an appropriate,
matter-of-fact tone: "Well, so much for woodcraft."  Perfect!

Since then I have found countless opportunities in which to use a
paraphrase of his comment: "Well, so much for mountain climbing."

"well, so much for scuba diving."  "Well, so much for flying
lessons."

"Well, so much for seven-X leaders."  "Well, so much for sex."  "Well,
so much for shooting rapids."  "Well, so much for sex while shooting
rapids."

As a service to my readers, I have put together a compendium of
situations and appropriate responses.  It is my hope that these
recommendations will be studied carefully and will enable you to
comport yourself properly in the outdoors and in a manner worthy of a
sportsman.

SITUATION--You have climbed into your mummy-style sleeping bag, wiggled
around to sort the rocks under your Ensolit pad according to size and
shape, and finally are about to drift into peaceful sleep when you
detect what appears at first to be a minor problem--the wool sock on
your left foot has become partially pulled off.

A partially pulled-off sock does not pose a threat to one's continued
existence.  On the other hand, it is not the sort of thing that can be
totally ignored.  It gives one the feeling that all is not right with
the world, that everything is not in its proper place, performing its
designated function in the prescribed and traditional manner.  A
partially pulled-off sock is an irritation, perhaps not one of the
magnitude of, say, a mosquito walking around inside one's ear or
nostril, but an irritation nevertheless.

After twisting and turning in your sleepin bag for some time, telling
yourself that the sock is of lo consequence, you at last arrive at the
conclusion that it will drive you absolutely mad if you allow it to
continue its insubordination for another minute.  The simplest way in
which to settle the matter is to unzip your sleeping bag, sit up, and
pull the sock back on with a firm and reprimanding jerk.  The problem
is that unzipping the bag will invite in a blast of cold air, which
will then require turning your metabolism back on to get everything
warmed up again, and that in turn will result in your staying awake
until you are once more nice and cozy.  Another problem is that your
previous twisting and turning have relocated the sleeping bag zipper
between your shoulder blades at the top and your peroneus longus at the
bottom.  You therefore decide to try pulling up the sock without
unzipping the bag.

Your first thought is that you can simply raise your leg high enough so
that you can reach the sock.  But no, your leg wedges against the sides
of the bag, keeping the sock just a few inches out of reach of your
clawing fingers.

This effort has caused you to become turned at right angles to your
Ensolite pad, but no matter; the contest with the sock has now engaged
your honor.

Since there is more room in the top of the bag, you now reason that by
tilting your head forward onto your chest, you should be able to double
over enough to get a grip on the sock.  As you execute this maneuver,
the nylon bag squeaks from the strain and squeezes your shoulders in
against your ears.  You are now locked into a semiprenatal position
inside the bag, presenting a spectacle that an outside observer could
not help but compare to a defective German sausage in need of recall.

But at last you have the offending wool in hand and pull it back on
your foot with a pained but satisfying grunt.  All that remains to be
done now is to extract yourself from your compressed posture.

Alas, the gentle slope you selected for a bedsite begins to take an
active and aggressive role in compounding your plight.  You topple over
onto your side.

With herculean effort and gasped curses that would provoke envy in a
Marine drill sergeant, you manage to roll onto your knees.  This is
immediately determined to be a mistake, since it leads to a series Of
flopping somersaults down the incline, which becomes increasingly
steeper.  You come to restjammed under a fallen tree fifty feet or so
away from your starting point.

In the morning your companions get up, stare with some puzzlement at
your vacated Ensolite pad, shrug and begin preparing breakfast.

Eventually you are discovered under the tree and extricated.  At this
moment you can either suffer ridicule or you can make the appropriate
comment and earn your companions' everlasting respect and esteem.

("Everlasting" nowadays means approximately two weeks.) What, then, is
the proper response in this situation?  Whining and inane jabber about
a partially pulled-off sock simply won't cut it, particularly if you
insist upon hobbling about in the posture of a chimpanzee with
lumbago.

Here's what you do: Smile, yawn, stretch luxuriously, and, as soon as
your vertebrae cease their popping and pinging, say with a slightly
lascivious chuckle, "Boy, I didn't think they made dreams like that
anymore!"

SITUATION--The bush pilot returns to pick up you and your companion
after a week of fishing on a wilderness lake.  "Now you fellas are
about to enjoy some real sporty flying," he says.  "Did you notice how
on my takeoff from here last week I had to flip this old crate over on
her side when I went between those two tall pine trees and then how I
stood her right up on her tail to get over that ridge?"  He now doubles
over with laughter and pounds his knee as you and your partner exchange
glances.  "Well," the pilot continues, "with the two of you and your
canoe and all your gear on board, the takeoff is gonna be a little
tricky this time.  What I was wonderin' is if maybe I could get each of
you fellas to straddle a pontoon, and if we come up a little short on
the ridge there, maybe you could just sort of walk us right on over the
top.  How does that strike you?"

Naturally, it will be difficult for you and your partner to contain
your joy at the prospect of being allowed in this way to assist in the
takeoff.

Since it is considered bad form to jump up and down and clap your hands
in glee, you must restrict yourself to a few lip tremors and an eye
twitch or two.

The important thing to keep in mind in selectingjust the right response
in this situation is that the pilot is probably joshing you.

Therefore, you just shrug and say, "Which pontoon do you want me on?"

If he isn't joshing, remember to walk really fast as you go over the
ridge.

SITUATION--Back when I was about fifteen, my stepfather, Hank, and I
drove out to the neighboring county to fish a stream that meandered
through a series of dilapidated farms, none of which showed any visible
means of support.  After the day's fishing, we returned to our car to
find that someone had stolen our battery.  My stepfather was a gentle
man of great kindness and understanding, and he said that the person
who had taken our battery probably did so only because he was too poor
to buy one.  Therefore, Hank said, he would not place a curse on the
thief that would strike him instantly dead but merely one that would
make all his skin fall off.  Suddenly.  All at once.

While he was square dancing Saturday night.  And just as he was winking
at the prettiest girl at the dance.  As we trudged along the dusty
road, Hank kept adding to and improving upon the curse until it seemed
to me that the kinder thing would be to have the thief struck instantly
dead.

Presently a car came by headed in the direction of town, and we waved
it down.  The driver was an elderly lady with a little flowered hat on
her head.

She asked if we would like a ride, and we said yes, but there seemed to
be a problem.  The lady had two large dogs in the car with her, and
they were carrying on as if we were the first decent meal they had seen
in months.  Hank suggested that maybe he and I could just stand on the
running boards, one of us on each side, and that way, "heh, heh," we
wouldn't disturb her dogs.  The lady said that would be just fine.

"Hold on good and tight," she warned.

We immediately discovered that she had not offered this bit of advice
frivolously.  She took off so fast our fishing lines came loose and
cracked like whips in the air behind us.  We were a quarter-mile down
the road before our hats hit the ground back at the starting point, not
that either Hank or I were concerned with such minor details at the
moment.

The lady seemed to think she needed to explain the sudden start.  She
rolled down her window and shouted out, "Bad clutch!"

Hank arched what he called his "vitals" back from the snapping jaws of
a dog.  "All right!"  he yelled.  "Perfectly all right!"

As the lady rolled the window back up, Hank and I dug our fingernails
deeper into the rain gutters on the roof of the car and clutched our
fishing rods with our armpits.  By then we were traveling sufficiently
fast that grasshoppers were splattering on our clothes.  And still the
car seemed to pick up speed.  Again the driver rolled down her window
and the dogs competed with each other to see which would be first to
get a bite of Hank's belly.

"Bad gas pedal!"  she shouted out, by way of explaining the speed with
which we were hurtling down the road.

"All right!  All right!"  Hank cried.

She rolled the window back up.

A grasshopper exploded on the left lens of my spectacles.  The air was
being sucked from my lungs.  My fingers were paralyzed, and I wasn't
sure how much longer I could hang on.  Then the situation took a sharp
turn for the worse.  A deputy sheriffs car sped by in the opposite
direction.  Upon seeing us about to break the world's record for
fastest ride on running boards, the deputy whipped a bootlegger's turn
in the road and came roaring up behind us with red light flashing and
siren going.  Hank released one hand and pounded on the glass to get
the little old lady's attention.  When she looked at him, he pointed
back at the deputy sheriff.  She smiled and nodded and pushed the
faulty accelerator pedal to the floor.  The deputy stayed right on our
rear bumper.  Every so often he would try to pass, but the old lady
would cut over in front of him and force him to drop back.  Then the
driver rolled down her window again and grinned up at Hank.  "What'd
you think of that?  Pretty fancy bit of driving for an old lady,
huh?"

"All right!  All right!"  Hank said, as one of the dogs clipped a
button off the front of his pants.

"Wait till you see the way I handle my rod!"  she yelled, cackling
wildly as she rolled the window up.  "What'd she say?"  I yelled at
Hank.

"She said, 'Wait till you see the way I handle my rod!'" Hank screamed
back at me over the roof of the car.

"That's what I thought she said.  What do you make of it?"

"I think she's going to shoot it out with the bleeping deputy," Hank
screeched.

"I thought that's what you'd make of it," I yelled back.  "She must be
some kind of criminal!"

"Yeah, the crazy kind!"

At that instant the old lady whipped the car over to the edge of the
road and braked to a stop in a cloud of dust.  Hank and I dropped from
the running boards, coughing and gasping, and wiped our eyes with our
deformed fingers.

The deputy slid to a stop on the opposite side of the road, and both he
and the old lady jumped out of their cars and went into gunfighter
crouches, the deputy's hand hovering over the butt of his revolver.

"Oh my gosh!"  Hank moaned.

Then the dogs went for the deputy.  Both of them leaped simultaneously
for what I thought would be the jugular, but he caught them both in his
arms and staggered backwards as they licked his face and wagged their
tails.

"Heeeee heeeee!"  the deputy laughed.

"Heeeee heeeee!"  echoed the old lady.  Then she pointed at the deputy
and said, "That there's my son, Rod!  Ain't he something'?  I can still
handle the big bugger, though!"

"Caught you again, Ma!"  the deputy squealed.

"Only 'cause I had to be careful these fellas didn't fall off the
running boards, that's the only reason!"  Ma shouted back.

"Somebody stole my battery," Hank said to the deputy.

"You don't say," the deputy said.  "Well, I got to be going.  Lots of
crime in these here parts.  Y'all be careful now, ya hear?"  And he
took off in pursuit of crime.

The old lady ordered the dogs back into the car, and they obeyed
instantly, scarcely bothering to take a snap or two at Hank.

"Well, hop back on the running boards and hold on good and tight," she
said to us, "and I'll haul you fellas on into town."

"Thanks anyway," Hank said, "but we can walk from here.  Can't be much
more than five miles to the nearest town."

"Fifteen," the old lady said.

"Shucks, is that all?"  Hank said.  "Why that's even better than I
figured.  Thanks again for the lift."

That's the sort of comment that not only saves the outdoorsman
embarrassment but enables him to survive.

Journal of An Expedition Rummaging through my files some time ago, I
happened across the journal I kept as leader of the expedition to
Tuttle Lake during the winter of '75.  I was immediately struck by the
similarity the record of that momentous and heroic struggle bore to the
journals of earlier explorers of the North American continent, and,
lest it be lost to posterity, I immediately began editing the material
for publication.

The other members of the expeditionary force consisted of my next-door
neighbor, Al Finley, and my lifelong friend, Retch Sweeney.  Neither
man was particularly enthusiastic when I first broached the idea of a
mid-winter excursion to Tuttle Lake.

"You must be crazy!"  Finley said.  "Why would we want to do a stupid
thing like that?"

"Well, certainly not for fame or fortune," I said.  "We'd do it for the
simple reason that Tuttle Lake is there."

"Hunh?"  Retch said.  "Ain't it there in the summer?"

"Of course it's there in the summer" I told him irritably.

"What I mean is that it would be a challenge for the sake of a
challenge."

Finley pointed out that there were two feet of snow on the ground.

"We'll use snowshoes," I told him.  "We'll start early Saturday
morning, snowshoe to Tuttle Lake, spend the night in my mountain tent,
and snowshoe back out Sunday.  It'll be a blast."

"Gee, I don't know," Finley said.  "I've never been on snowshoes
before.

I better not go."

"That's a wise decision, Finley," Retch said.  "A man your age
shouldn't take any more chances than he has to."

"What kind of snowshoes should I buy?"  Finley said.

Thus it was that the three of us found ourselves at trail's head,
preparing for the assault on Tuttle Lake.  The journal of the
expedition begins at that point.

History of the Tuttle Lake Expedition Under the Command of Patrick F.

McManus JANUARY 18, 1975-9:22 A.M. The weather being fair and pleasant,
the men are in high spirits as they unload our provisions and baggage
from the wagon for the trek into the mountains.  The drivers of the
wagon, a Mrs. Finley and a Mrs. Sweeney, offered to wager two of the
men that they would "freeze off" various parts of their anatomy.  I
warned the men against gambling, particularly with wagon drivers, who
are a singularly rough and untrustworthy lot.

The throttle-skinners hurled a few parting jibes in our direction and
drove away, leaving behind a billowing cloud of snow.  This cloud
apparently concealed from their view the man Retch Sweeney, who raced
down the road after the departing wagon, shouting "Stop, Ethel, stop!

I left the fifth of Old Thumbsucker under the front seat!"  It was
truly a heartrending spectacle.

9:45 A.M. I have assumed command of the expeditionary force.  The men
informed me that this is a false assumption, but I will not tolerate
insubordination particularly at such an early stage in the journey.  I
threatened both of them with suspension of rations from my hip flask.

They immediately acquiesed to the old military principle that he who
has remembered his hip flask gets to command.

11:00 A.M. The expedition has suffered an unexpected delay.  I had
directed two of the men to take turns carrying the Snappy-Up mountain
tent, but it made them top-heavy and kept toppling them into the
snow.

We have now solved the difficulty by obtaining an old toboggan from a
friendly native, who seemed delighted over the handful of trifles he
requested for it.  On future expeditions I must remember to bring more
of those little green papers engraved with the portrait of President
Jackson, for the natives seem fond of them.

All of our provisions and baggage are lashed to the toboggan, and I
have directed the men to take turns pulling it.  I myself remain
burdened with the heavy weight of command.  Rations from the hip flask
cheered the men much and, for the time being, have defused their
impulse to mutiny.

12:05 P.M. We have been on the trail for an hour.  our slow progress is
a cause of some concern, since by now I had expected to be out of sight
of our staging area.  Part of the delay is due to Mr. Finley, who is
voicing a complaint common to those who travel for the first time on
snowshoes.

He says he is experiencing shooting pains at the points where his legs
hook on to the rest of him.  To use his phrase, he feels like "the
wishbone of a turkey on the day after Thanksgiving."  I counseled him
to keep tramping along and that eventually the pains would fade away.

For the sake of his morale, I did not elaborate on my use of the term
"eventually," by which I meant "in approximately three weeks."

1:10 P.M. We have stopped for lunch.  Tempers are growing short.  After
kindling the propane camp stove, I had to settle a dispute between the
men about who got to roast a wiener first.  I narrowly was able to
avert a brawl when Mr. Sweeney bumped a tree and dumped snow from a
branch into Mr. Finley's Cup-a-Soup.  Mr. Sweeney claims the mishap
was unintentional, but his manner of bursting out in loud giggles gives
me some cause for doubt.  I have had to quick-draw the hip flask
several times in order to preserve order.

I sent one of the men ahead to scout for a sign to Tuttle Lake.  He
returned shortly to the main party, very much excited, and reported a
large number of fresh tracks.  I went out with him to examine the
tracks and to determine whether they were those of hostiles.  Upon
close study of the imprint of treads in the tracks, I concluded that a
band of Sno-Putts had passed through earlier in the day.  Upon our
return to camp, the band of Sno-Putts appeared in the distance, and,
sighting our party, came near and gunned their engines at us.  After
the exchange of a few friendly taunts, they went on their way.

For the last half-mile, Mr. Finley has been snowshoeing in a manner
that suggests he is straddling an invisible barrel.  We attempt to
distract him from his discomfort with copious ridicule.

We are now about to begin the last leg of our journey--a two-mile
ascent of Tuttle Mountain.  The weather has turned raw and bitter.

5:05 P.M. After a lengthy and difficult climb, we have at last arrived
at our destination--Tuttle Lake.  During our ascent of the mountain, I
found it prudent to order frequent rest stops, since I feared the
excessive wheezing of the men might bring avalanches down upon us.

Indeed, such was the extreme state of my own weariness that I at first
did not grasp the obvious fact that we had arrived at Tuttle Lake.  Mr.
Finley was the first to make the discovery.

"This is Tuttle Lake," he gasped.

"I don't see no lake," Mr.  Sweeney said.

"This is Tuttle Lake!"  Mr.  Finley shouted.  "We make camp here!"

It took but a moment for me to perceive that Mr. Finley was correct in
his assessment of the situation; the lake is frozen over and blanketed
with a good three feet of snow.  We are no doubt standing above its
very surface.  I am filled with wonderment, not only that we have
finally triumphed in achieving the noble purpose of the expedition, but
that Tuttle Lake should cling at an angle of forty-five degrees to the
side of a mountain.

Snow is now falling with an intensity that beggars the imagination;
either that, or we are caught in an avalanche.  We are unable to see
more than a yard before our faces.  It is imperative that we get the
Snappy-Up tent erected immediately.

7:15 P.M. The [obscenity deleted] Snappy-Up tent is not yet up.  We are
taking a rest break, whilst Mr. Sweeney, employing a cigarette
lighter, attempts to thaw his handlebar mustache, which he fears might
snap off if bumped.  Mr. Finley went behind the tent to bury a snow
anchor, whereupon he discovered a precipice.  The drop was not great,
or so we judged from the brief duration of his scream.  The rest of the
party were about to divide his share from the hip flask when they
detected sounds of someone or something ascending the slope.

We assumed it to be Mr. Finley, since few men and even fewer wild
beasts possess the ability to curse in three languages.  We celebrated
his return with double rations from the hip flask.

9:30 P.M. We are now ensconced in our sleeping bags in the tent, after
devouring a hearty stew, which I myself prepared.  Darkness and the
considerable violence of the snowstorm prevented me from reading the
labels on the packages of dried food, which I emptied into the cooking
pot.  I then supplemented these basic vittals with a can of pork 'n'
beans, several handfuls of spaghetti, four boiled eggs, six onions,
half a head of cabbage, six wieners, a package of sliced salami, one
wool mitten (recovered from the pot after dinner), and a sprig of
parsley.  The men were full of compliments about the tasty meal,
although not until after I served dessert--each a cupful from the hip
flask.

Strangely, I have been unable to find my package of pipe tobacco, which
I had stashed in the provisions sack for safekeeping.  It seems to have
been replaced by a package of freeze-dried shrimp curry.  Since smoking
shrimp curry may be injurious to one's health, I have denied myself the
pleasure of an after-dinner pipe.  The disappearance of the tobacco is
a matter of no little curiosity to me.

Upon preparing to enter his sleeping bag, which is of the style known
as "mummy," Mr. Finley discovered that the snowshoeing had bowed his
legs to such an exaggerated degree that he was unable to thrust them
into the bag.  The alternative of freezing to death or allowing Mr.
Sweeney and me to straighten his legs was put to Mr. Finley.  He
pondered the alternative for some time and finally decided upon the
latter course.  I administered to him from the hip flask a portion
commonly referred to as a "stiff belt," and, whilst Mr. Finley clamped
his teeth on a rolled-up pair of spare socks, Mr. Sweeney and I bent
his legs back into a rough approximation of their original attitude and
inserted Mr. Finley into his bag, he now being capable only of drunken
babbling.  Now, to sleep.

JANUARY 19, 1975-1:30 A.M. Have just been startled awake by a ghastly
growling seeming to originate from just outside the tent.  After
failing to frighten off the creature by the subterfuge of breathing
rapidly, I regrouped my senses and immediately determined that the
growling was gastronomical in nature and was emanating from the
expeditionary force itself.  I was suffering from a monumental case of
indigestion, an affliction that comes upon me every time I succumb to
eating parsley.  My men, who seemingly possessed no greater immunity to
that treacherous herb than I, moaned dreadfully in their sleep.  In the
knowledge that the growling is caused by something we've eaten rather
than something we might be eaten by, I shall once again retreat into
deep but fitful slumber.

6:15 A.M. The day dawned clear and cold.  The men arose early, kindled
the propane camp stove, and huddled around it for warmth.  I have no
notion of the temperature but have deduced from the fact that frost
keeps forming on the flames that it is considerably below the freezing
mark.

The men complain bitterly over the loss to the cold of various parts of
their anatomy, and I could not help but remind them of my advice
pertaining to betting the wagon drivers against that possibility.  They
failed to express any gratitude, choosing instead to make threats on my
life.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the hardships encountered
on this expedition have taken a great toll on the men.  They both say
they have no appetite for breakfast and claim to have a strong taste of
tobacco in their mouths, even though neither has been smoking.  This
sort of delusion is common among members of expeditions, and it is only
with a great act of will that I force myself to the realization that
the bits of pipe tobacco stuck in my teeth are only imaginary.  When I
try to encourage the men to down a few bites of frozen shrimp curry,
they can only shudder and make strange gagging sounds that are scarcely
audible over the chattering of their teeth.  I realize now that time is
of the essence, and that we must prepare for the returnjourney with the
greatest expedience.  The men realize this also, and without waiting
for the command, rip the Snappy-Up tent from its icy moorings, wrap it
around the baggage and leftover provisions, and heave the whole of it
onto the toboggan.

I dispense to each man a generous ration from the hip flask.  The
retreat from Tuttle Lake begins.

7:35 A.M. We have descended the mountain much sooner than expected and,
indeed, much faster than the main body of the party deemed either
possible or agreeable.  In the event that I fail to survive this
expedition and so that the offending party may be suitably disciplined,
I offer this account of the affair: Upon realizing that my hip flask
was either empty or contained not more than a single shot which would
not be wasted on him, Mr. Finley mutinied.  He refused to take his
turn at pulling the toboggan.  He sat down in the snow alongside the
craft and displayed a countenance that can only be described as
pouting.  After arguing with him briefly, Mr. Sweeney and I went off
down the mountain without him.  It was our mutualjudgment that Mr. 
Finley would pursue and catch up with us, as soon as he came to his
senses.  We had progressed scarcely two hundred yards down from the
campsite when we heard a fiendish shout ring out from above us.  Upon
turning, we could hardly believe what we saw, and it was a fraction of
a second before we realized the full import of the mutinous madman's
folly.  He was perched atop the mound of baggage on the toboggan and
hurtling down the slope toward us at a frightful speed.  Before we
could externalize the oaths forming on our tongues, he had descended
close enough for us to make out quite clearly that he was grinning
maniacally.  "How do you steer one of these things?"  he shouted at us.
 Dispensing with any attempt at reply, the main party broke into a
spirited sprint that would have been considered respectable for Olympic
athletes even if it had not been executed on snowshoes.  All was for
naught.  The flying toboggan caught us in mid-stride, flipped us in the
air, and added us to its already sizable load.

We descended to the foot of the mountain in this unsightly fashion,
clipping off saplings, blasting through snowdrifts, and touching down
only on the high places.  The ride, in retrospect, was quite
exhilarating, but I was unable to overcome my apprehension for what
awaited us at its termination.  This apprehension turned out to be
entirely justified.  Indeed, some of the finer fragments of the
toboggan are still floating down out of the air like so much
confetti.

Immediately upon regaining consciousness, Mr. Sweeney and I took up
clubs and pursued the unremorseful villain across the icy wastes, but
the spectacle of Mr. Finley plunging frantically through the snow,
even as he laughed insanely, struck us as so pathetic that we were
unable to administer to him the punishment he so justly deserved.

12:30 P.M. The wagon drivers rendezvoused with us at the appointed
time, and we are now luxuriating in the warmth of the wagon's heater.

The mutineer Finley has been pardoned, perhaps too soon, since he has
taken to bragging monotonously of his exploits on the expedition to
Tuttle Lake.

"I wouldn't mind doing that again," he said.  How about you fellows?"

"Perhaps," I replied, "but only for fame and fortune.  I've had enough
of just-because-it's-there."

"I'll tell you one thing," Mr. Sweeney said to me.  "The next time I
go on one of these winter expeditions, I'm going to get me a hip flask
just like yours.  Where do you buy that two-quart size, anyway?"

Before I entrust him with that information, I shall have to assure
myself he is fit for command.