No Hyphens
I loved my sister Sandy, even though she lived most of
her adult life in error. You see, she
thought that Ron came into her life to marry her so they could live and love
and raise a family together. All of
which happened. I realized very early on,
however, that all of that was God’s clever way of bringing me exactly the kind
of big brother I needed most.
In many ways Ron was closer to me than my four blood
brothers. My three oldest brothers, through
no fault of their own, just grew up way ahead of me – the youngest. They were all in the military by the time
that I was 6 or 7 years old. Jim joined
the Navy out of high school, Gary joined the Marines. Since this was when the Viet Nam war was
raging, Tom said that if Uncle Sam wanted him, well he was just going to have
to come get him. And he did; Tom was
drafted into the Army. When they
finished their service stints they were all understandably in a hurry to get on
with their civilian lives. It didn’t
take long before they were all married and moved out. In fact, Jim moved out all the way to
California. My fourth brother, the one
who was closest to me in age was furthest from me in spirit. We never did get along. We were more like tenants that lived across
the hall from each other than brothers.
So, it was Ron who was the one I grew closest to. When he and my sister were dating he always
had time to play catch for a while before they headed out on their date. We tossed the ball back and forth and
talked. He actually listened to what was
on my mind. Around the time that I was
12 or so Ron introduced me to trout fishing – which developed into a lifelong
passion for me.
We started small.
There was a trout creek near where Ron grew up in Oconto Falls. He knew the stream up and down, having fished
it for years with his father. There were
native brook trout hiding in the dark shadows of undercut banks and in the few deeper
pools as the stream quietly meandered mostly through farm pastures or small
woodlots. This was the perfect stream to
apprentice on. If you could approach
close enough to casually drift a worm under the bank, or mid-stream log without
spooking them, it was a very good bet that a brook trout, aggressive by nature,
would inhale the bait, electrify the line, and come splashing and wriggling to
the net.
By the time that I was in high school Ron had gotten
the directions from a co-worker to a spot on the Oconto River just north of
Mountain that had some nice brook trout and the possibility of catching an even
bigger brown trout. And so, Ron and I
started heading up north whenever he could get away for a day of fishing.
Since the new destination was farther away, I started
staying overnight so we could get as early a start as possible. The alarm usually rang about 4:00 AM. Ron did not like coffee but being a paper
mill swing shift worker he still had a need for caffeine to get going: Ron got
his jolt from Coca Cola. I remember him
sitting at the kitchen table, chair pushed back and turned sideways as he put
on his shoes and socks. More than once
he rubbed his eyes, took a deep drag from his cigarette, guzzled a couple of
swallows from his Coke, and then dozed off with a half-pulled on sock dangling
from his foot. I had to shake him back
awake.
We always fished the big river the same way. Ron got to start in the big deep hole just
down the bank from where we parked the car.
I slipped through woods for about 25 yards to the next pool
upstream. After that we just
leap-frogged each other as we made our way upstream. When we reached the place where cabins lined
the river we turned and fished our way back to the car where we stopped for lunch. We chomped down ham sandwiches and shared the
stories of the morning. The fish from
each creel were spilled out so we could share the stories in detail of just
where and how we caught each one.
Although Ron had more fish in his creel at the end of
most trips, and he usually had the biggest fish of the day, I earned the
biggest trout ever award one July morning – more or less. Ron had been using trusty nightcrawlers and I
had done pretty well with a caddis fly pattern that I had learned to tie. Then came the blessing and the curse.
Caddis flies by the thousands suddenly filled the air
and everywhere you looked, trout were rising.
The surface of the river looked like it was raining – there were that
many trout rising. For me it was the
blessing. The very fly I had been using
was a good enough match that I was hooking trout one after another. For Ron, it was the curse. Once the trout were zoned in on caddis flies
they had no interest in his nightcrawlers. After about 20 minutes he stomped
over to the shore and sat down in a heap on a large boulder. Then it happened. I had cast my fly near the ring of a rise and
with the next rise my fly disappeared. I
brought my arm up and my fly rod arced gracefully, then it began to throb as
the big fish felt the hook and shook his head.
Ron jumped straight up, “Holy cow, don’t lose him!” I didn’t.
I was standing at the edge of a gravel bed where the
water was just a couple of inches deep.
The big brown came to net peacefully enough. As I watched him slip past the rim of the net
I hoisted him up. He more than filled
the net with the tip of his tail above one brim and the tip of his nose just
over the opposite side.
Ron wasted no time getting to me. “It’s a beauty! Let me get a good look at him.” I just stuck the net practically in his
face. Ron reached in, grasped the
monster and pulled him out of the net.
The big fish suddenly straightened out, gave a twisting flip and dropped
into the water. At first I watched in stupefied
horror as Ron, on all fours, like a fish-starved brown bear, pounced and pounced
and pounced as the trout tried to flee in the two inches of water that washed
over the gravel bar. The fish changed directions,
went frantically through Ron’s legs and made it to deeper water - gone!
I helped Ron to his feet. We both just stared for a long moment at the
place where the trophy made good his escape.
“I’m so sorry,” Ron moaned. I
looked him in the eye, smiled, and said, “You should have seen yourself trying
to grab that fish!” We laughed. We took turns retelling the story over and
over again the whole the drive home. That was the last summer that we fished together as Ron's children were growing and rightfully demanding more attention. I was spending more time with friends, one of whom shared my love of trout fishing.
I went back there last summer for the first time in 30
years. It’s much different now as cabins
line both banks of the whole stretch. I
had to park in a different place. But I
found the gravel bar of fame and fable. I had my fly rod
in hand but I didn’t even make a cast. I came for the river and the experience of the river. I
pictured it all again in my mind and smiled.
I pondered Ron again who has been a memory for nearly 10 years already. A good man; a good brother. I know that officially he was my ‘brother-in-law’,
but in my heart I dropped the hyphens way back when I was just a kid playing catch.
His Peace,
Deacon Dan
PS The nice brown trout in the picture was intentionally released as are almost all of the trout I catch these days.
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