RUBBER LEGS AND WHITE TAIL-HAIRS By Patrick F. McManus
Contents
love. 1
Cry Wolf. 5
Pigs. 9
The MFFFF. 15
Summer Reading. 19
Angler's Dictionary. 21
The Mountain. 24
Not Long for This Whirl 29
Claw of the Sea-Puss. 37
A Really Nice Blizzard. 42
Nude, with Other Wildlife. 52
The Belcher. 56
Shooter. 60
The Last Flight of Homer Pidgin. 65
A Boy and His (Ugh!) Dog. 71
To Filet or Not to Filet. 76
Loud Screeching and Other Tips on Getting Lost Summer. 83
The Big Fix. 86
The Fine Art of Delay. 90
Gun-Trading. 94
Throwing Stuff. 97
Letter to Santa. 103
The Cabin at Spooky Lake. 105
Outdoor Burnout. 112
Advanced Duck-Hunting Techniques. 117
 
 
love
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 ReadingOf 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 DictionaryNote 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 WhirlAt 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-PussOne 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 BlizzardHenry 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 WildlifeIn 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 PidginBack 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!) DogRetch 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 FiletDuring 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 Summeris 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 DelayYoung 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 StuffAs 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 SantaDear 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 LakeOne 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 BurnoutI 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 TechniquesDave 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."