On Becoming An “Elder”
By Tom Hayes
I
was invited on an ice fishing trip recently by a couple of guys from work.
I know them fairly well but had never met their friends.
We all met at one of the guy’s cabins near a collection of lakes that are allegedly “good” ice fishing. I, myself, cannot speak to what “good ice fishing” is unless it is on Black Hills Lakes fishing for trout. Charley took me to Deerfield and one time we … that’s another story. Sorry.
The evening we all gathered, the introductions were made,
and the guys who knew each other started in with the usual banter and chiding
and guzzling beer and smoking cigars and such. Since I didn’t know
most of them and wasn’t guzzling beer and smokin’ ‘Gars
I just sat off to the side and observed. I was trying to tune into the “tempo”
of the group,
you might say. Or, you might say I was dozing off, which would be more
accurate.
At any rate, we all headed off to some “beer joint –
restaurant – bait
shop” combination establishment to have some supper. In spite of the
feint smell of the minnow tanks, they did serve absolutely fantastic big
burgers and home cut fries cooked golden brown and the ladies who wait
tables treated us like their long lost brothers. It was great. I was so
glad to be along on the trip, I quietly picked up the tab for all of us
and tipped our server handsomely. (I think all 6 of us had Super Burgers
with fries and beers and the total, with tip, came to something like
$45) The guys were impressed and frankly, that is when the journey began.
It
was observed that I was clearly the oldest member of this particular group
and since I bought supper, they went to calling me, “Dad.” I,
being one to hand it out from time to time, am a good sport and take it
all in stride. Back at the cabin, Lady Luck did smile in my direction when
the poker game got going and I even folded a couple of winner hands so as
not to appear piggish. I am sure that since I was the only one playing cards
that was not also guzzling beer and drinking peppermint schnapps depth charges
had some bearing on my good fortune at the gaming table.
As the evening wore on, the growing consensus was that Dad
was handy
with a deck of pasteboards. Finally, gratefully, enough of the players
decided it was time to go to bed and the game ended – at 3:30 am.
The next morning, the two guys from work gathered me up and
off we went
to some lake that they had heard was yielding up slab crappies. When we
arrived, there was nothing as far as the eye could see except a handful
of shanties off in the far distance. The driver said, “Well, where
do
you think we should try it? Do you want to go out by those shacks way
out there or experiment here or what?”
Knowing nothing of this lake, and having an almost terminal
need to
relieve myself, I piped up and said, “Turn Left, right here. See that
spot over there? I think we need to try it there.”
The driver, “Jim”, dutifully turned the truck
to the spot, and shut it
off. I was out like a shot to take care of Mother Nature’s calling.
While standing there in the white-out, I noticed some darkish circles.
After finishing what I got out of the truck to do in the first place, I
walked over to the dark circles and poked at one with the toe of my
boot. Lo and behold, it was a recently abandoned ice hole that had a
little snow blown in it.
I hollered over to the guys and said, “Forget the drill,
bring the scoop
and some rods, there are open holes here.”
There was muttering but I do not know what they said. I am
hard of
hearing, and some people do not have anything to say at any given time
that I want to hear. Dutifully the guys brought over our 5 gallon pails
with the rods in them and the minnow bucket. We each set up a couple
rods and while we stared at the little bobbers not doing anything in the
holes in the ice, Jim decided to take the drill for some exercise and
wandered off about 20 yards to the South.
About the time the engine sputtered to life and the ice started
to fly,
our other faithful companion, “Brian”, got a sterling strike.
The next
thing you know he was hopping around like a 4 year old gloating about
the nice slab crappie he dragged out of the hole. Then I got one, and
Brian got a double. After we had about 10 fish floppin’ on the ice,
and
Jim had drilled and “Vexilared” 4 or 5 holes, I wandered over
to let Jim
in on the good news.
He pretended to be happy about the fact we were laying the
fish on the
ice like cord wood while he was making Swiss cheese of the place. He
very quickly gave up his sport of drilling holes and started fishing.
The good news is that the bite did not stop and Jim got some nice slabs,
too.
The short night after playing cards with Jim’s beer
guzzling kinfolks
was getting to me so I decided to get in tune with the tempo of Nature
and hunkered down in a lawn chair out of the wind in front of the pickup
and began to meditate. Brian and Jim stayed entertained with what turned
out to be a good bite and then noticed I was snoozing. “Hey, whatssup
with you? Why are you sleeping? The slabs are still hitting.”
I opened one eye, shut it again, and said, “I am not
sleeping, I am
meditating on where we can catch us some wall-dorfs after you guys have
us limited out on crappies.” I did not want to admit that I am too
old
any more to stay up until 3:30 am playing cards in a smoke filled cabin
and be able to get interested in catching crappies.
Around noon, it was decided that we needed to go to town,
eat a hot
lunch and then go look for some walleyes on one of the other lakes.
Hmmm. The lunch part was just fine, but I was not sure about how I would
handle the part about fishing for walleyes. I surely would not be able
to take a nap when there were walleyes to be caught. The Red Gods of
Walleye Fishing smiled upon me that day.
While I was in the men’s room at the restaurant, a guy
came in. He
struck up a conversation and asked if I was fishing or what. I told him
we were fishing and had had some good luck on Lake XYZ that morning and
limited out on some real nice crappies. That interested him. He asked me
if I would be willing to tell him where the lucky crappie spot was if he
would give me GPS co-ordinates of the spot where he had limited out on
…get this!! WALLEYES, that same morning.
I took him to the cash register stand and drew him a very
detailed map
to our honey hole for crappies on the back of a strip of cash register
tape. He, in turn, got out his GSP and pulled up a waypoint and I wrote
down the latitude and longitude. We shook hands and wished each other
the best of luck and went our separate ways. He left the place to go try
out his new found information and I went to join Brian and Jim to gobble
up a hot beef sandwich meal, complete with mashed potatoes (straight out
of an instant spuds box) with brown gravy (straight out of a sack from
the grocery store) and, yes, there were green beans on the side. I can
tell, you, too, have eaten there.
After we finished up, I left my money with Brian and hustled
out to the
pick up to retrieve my GPS from hiding and put the co-ordinates in for
the walleye spot, then slipped the unit into a breast pocket on my
parka. The troops got out to the truck and off we went to the new lake.
While the driver and the navigator were talking about where to go, I
took a peek at my GPS in the “Go To” function to see where the
hot spot
was compared to us, then asked if there was a road onto the lake “Near
Here?”
“Why, yes, there is one right down at the next bend
of the road,”
replied Jim.
“I think we ought to take that and just get on the lake
and see what it
looks like,” I said.
We did that and the GPS said we were only 0.57 miles from
the hotspot
and we were heading right for it.
I closed my eyes and made some little “thinking”
sounding noises. Brian
must have looked at me because he asked, “Are you OK?”
I pretended to be startled and opened my eyes and said, “Oh,
I’m fine. I
think we need to start looking for a spot to try fishing.”
Jim and Brian laughed, but then caught themselves and said
something
about maybe listening to me since I had taken them right to the spot
that morning.
“OK, Tribal Elder, where do we go,” Jim asked.
I sneaked a peek at the GPS. “Oh, I’m thinking
anywhere in this area.
How about over there?”
Jim turned the truck toward the spot I pointed out and shut
it off. I
got out, looked around, and guess what -- Dark Circles!! “Hey guys,
here
are some open holes. That worked this morning, let’s try it again.”
There was some low conversation about “being damned”
or something, but
the troops came over with the rods, minnows, and the Vexilar and we set
to fishing.
An hour passed. Nothing. There were some disparaging comments
being made
about the Tribal Elder letting certain people down. I noticed something
toying with my bobber. More talk and some guttural laughs about the
Elder. The bobber went D-O-W-N like a shot. I set the hook. I cranked up
line, the 4 pound line peeled out of the tiny ice reel’s loose drag,
I
cranked some more. Eventually, just as the “Elder got Lucky this
morning, Har har har” talk got going, I pulled a 4 _ pound walleye
out
of the hole and tossed it on the ice between the two non-believers.
I said, “Why don’t you guys set up the ice house
right here for the
night bite. I think I am going to meditate.” Then I dug into the pocket
of my parka, dug out a cigar, lit it up, and sat back in my lawn chair
out of the wind. I couldn’t help but mention that, “Tribal Elders
don’t
take kindly to being disparaged. You might want to keep your criticisms
to yourself. And, by the way, who is buying supper tonight? I am
thinking sirloin. BIG sirloin. With maybe a shrimp cocktail.”
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