My Friend Wayne

Something from the tackle box:

       Be sincere in your love for others.  Hate everything that is evil and hold tight to everything that is good.  Love each other as brothers and sisters and honor others more than you do yourself.  Never give up.  Eagerly follow the Holy Spirit and serve the Lord.  Let your hope make you glad.  Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying.  (Romans 12:9-12 CEV)

Wayne in the back of our boat

       My good friend, parishioner and fishing buddy, Wayne Swiler, passed away yesterday morning.  He bore the onslaught of his cancer over its last and terminal stages with more strength, dignity and quiet grace than most folks I know would, far better than I ever could I am quite sure.  Wayne was an inspiring model of patient Christian faith and peace over this last year of his illness.  It seemed that as his body decreased in strength his spirit increased so, a fact taken note of by many who knew him well.  His inner strength notwithstanding, yesterday morning death claimed another temporary victory over one of God’s Saints, or at least over his body.  Wayne’s death leaves, at least for now, a big hole in several aspects of my life.  My social life, my church life, and my fishing life, will not be the same without Wayne.

       Wayne and his wife Pam started attending the church I work at quite a few years ago now, not too long after that church had brought me in as pastor back in 2003.  They had heard something from someone about our church, and they were checking it out as a possible new spiritual home base.  Pam seemed to love being a part of us right off the bat.  Wayne – not so much.  He really preferred a much more upbeat and contemporary style of worship, he told me back then, but, if Pam liked it so much, he allowed that the preaching was acceptable – and he could tolerate attending church here – at least for the time being.  It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. 

       It was not long before Wayne was as beloved a part of our church family as anyone there was, on an equal footing with those who were by far his elders in membership, and even on a par with those who had been born into our circle, which is an unusual and amazing thing to see happen in an old-line small town church, believe me.  This was in no small measure due to his infectiously good personality, brimming over with good natured, good humored, goodwill towards everyone.  Just plain old goodness will do that for you.  That and the fact that, right from the get-go, Wayne stepped forward to take part in doing so many of the things that need to get done to keep a church building up and running, and even improve itself, right up and into the last year of his life.  A whole lot of “upkeep” got done at the church by Wayne Swiler and Company, and that is going to be hard to replace.

       Oh, maybe this would be a good place to mention that Wayne dealt with pretty severe arthritis for much of his life.  I’m talking about the kind of arthritis that presented the world with legs that didn’t look right when he strode towards you, and very crooked fingers to navigate your way around when he reached out to shake your hand with that big smile on his face.  It was bad.  But note that I say he dealt with it, not that he suffered from it, or even that he was afflicted with it.  Perhaps those descriptions were true.  I suspect that they might have been in some ways.  But if they were, Wayne never let on to anyone else.  He just went ahead and did everything that he wanted to do as best he could do it.  Hunt, fish, chop wood, run tractor, play with the dogs, he did it all with a smile on his face over the fact that he was doing it at all.  If he had to use a slightly unorthodox technique for handling an ax or casting bait with a fishing rod, what was that compared to the joy to be found in doing it at all?!

a good day on the lake

       Which does bring me around to the fishing, which is where I got to know Wayne the best, and grow the closest to him.  Which, I’ll admit, is a funny thing for a pastor to say about someone in his flock, but truth nonetheless.  We did plenty of other things together, church functions, conversation over coffee and sweets after church, card playing at both Euchre (the game he loved) and cribbage (the game I love), among many other things, but fishing is different than all of that. 

       For some people, like Wayne and I, fishing is to be in this world – at the same time as you reach out and touch existence in the next.  Or maybe it reaches out and touches you. Probably both of those things happen at once.  Who can know?  But, for some of us, there is deep truth to be found pondered in the ancient Babylonian proverb, which states that God does not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing. 

       Now, not everyone who fishes gets this point.  As in any other inherently spiritual pursuit, uncritical and self-absorbed fisherman abound, those who fish, as they generally do everything else in life, without an open heart towards that other realm right there in front of them.  As Henry David Thoreau famously said; “Many men go fishing all of their lives without ever knowing that it is not fish they are after.” 

       But for those who do get the point, a fishing boat can become very sacred space.  And to share that space with another person who recognizes the gift of that perceived nearness of God in the pursuit, just as much as you do, is to share a deep and special bond with that one.  This was a bond that Wayne and I shared, I do believe. 

       Our fishing together started quite a few years back.  After Wayne found out that his pastor was an enthusiastic angler, he invited me out to a relative’s cottage on Saddlebag Lake to fish that body of water off a pontoon boat along with his brother-in-law, Jerry.  After that things escalated.  A number of trips to Sessions Lake and Morrison Lake, to fish out of Wayne’s fold-a-boat, would be the next chapter.

       Have you ever heard of a full sized two man fishing boat that you could fold up and lay flat in the back of your truck when you were done fishing?  Neither had I!  Even though the idea never caught on really big, I learned that the fold-a-boat had been around for over forty years, and Wayne, ever willing to try anything that might make going fishing a little bit easier, had one!  It’s a funny looking thing, and I have to admit that I was kind of leery about stepping off the dock down into it that first time, what with its soft looking bottom and sides.  Wayne just laughed and told me to get on in and I would love it.  And I did!  It turned out to be one of the most comfortable and stable feeling small boats I’ve ever fished out of.  Wayne and I have caught a lot of fish together – out of a fold up boat.  Go figure.

       But then, the special bond started when we bought a boat together.  I have an old friend I used to work with before I came to Lake Odessa, who called me up one day to let me know that he wanted to sell his 12 foot Martin flat bottomed rowboat for $100.  I had always liked that boat, and the price was right, but I didn’t really know where I would keep it at the parsonage if I bought it.  I told Wayne about my misgivings, and he suggested that we go in on that boat together and just keep it right at the dock of a friend who lived on a small private lake in the area.  I knew the lake Wayne was talking about.  He had access to it through this friend, and he had taken me out there a couple of times to help get the fold-a-boat in and out of the water for an morning’s fishing.  This fishing hole is phenomenal!  You can haul out big ol, slabber bluegills by the bucketful some days!  Needless to say, I was very interested. 

       And so that’s what Wayne and I did.  Soon, morning trips over several miles of dirt road in Wayne’s ATV, or his pick up truck, to get to that pot-hole and fish together in our boat, became pretty routine. We had a couple of summers of contemplating the blessings of living life in the palm of God’s hand together in that boat.  I count every one of those trips to be among the better spent days of my recent life, and Wayne always seemed to enjoy them just as much I did.  And more than a couple of big fish dinners came of it too, which only added to the blessings.   

       But, two summers back now, as good as the fishing was, Wayne was starting to have a harder time getting in and out of the boat when we went out there.  The smiling joy-filled willingness was all still there, but I had to help out with more than I used to have to, and Wayne and I both knew why. 

       This past summer we didn’t go fishing together at all.  Our boat sat in his barn as Wayne’s body progressively refused to do the fishing that his spirit willed that he could.  In the fall Wayne had a sportsman’s garage sale.  Friends came from far and wide to buy fishing and camping gear that we were all wishing he would just keep to use next year, but which we all also knew he wouldn’t be using again.  Better that we had it than some strangers, I guess.  Fishing friends and neighbors hung around and talked together for hours.  Wayne was happy with that. 

       Wayne and I still spent some good time together this past year, at church, and over cards or a meal, until his body, late in the game, refused to cooperate with even that much activity.  Earlier this month my wife and I took a drive around the countryside with the Swilers so that Pam could try out driving in Kathy’s Subaru and see if she liked it.  Wayne wanted to take her car shopping. 

       It was only the last couple of weeks that Wayne didn’t get out of the house at all.  Yet, even then there was the smile for all who came to see him.  It was the smile of love.  Love of family, love of friends, love of neighbors, love of God.  The Spirit’s love for life, and all the blessings that life holds for those who embrace it, never gave up in Wayne.  I don’t believe it has given up in him yet. 

Something to take home in your creel: 

       Wayne was a man of strong Christian faith and convictions.  He was never pushy about that, he just let it shine out of his life like a welcoming beacon.  He was more than willing to be and remain your friend or fishing buddy even if you didn’t care to share his beliefs, but make no mistake, he did have them.  He lived by them.  Wayne loved all of his friends, and he wanted to know that he would see them again some day, on the other side, in the Promised Land. 

       Now, I’m not sure if there will be fishing in the waters of the New Heaven and New Earth after Christ returns, but we are told that there is a river that will flow out of the New Jerusalem.  And, since the resurrected Lord did eat fish with his disciples on more than one occasion in the gospel accounts, – who knows!  Wayne and I may have a boat together again some day, on that further shore.  That would be nice. 

The Fisherman's King

Something from the tackle box:

       You can tell who the false prophets are by their false deeds.  Not everyone who calls me their Lord will get into the kingdom of heaven.  Only the ones who obey my Father in heaven will get in.  On the day of judgment many will call me their Lord.  They will say, “We preached in your name, and in your name we forced out demons and worked many miracles.”  But I will tell them, “I will have nothing to do with you!  Get out of my sight, you evil people!”  (Matthew 7:20-23 CEV)

The Fisherman’s King

When I fish I love the King

    who brought me to this place,

        the sun, the water, gentle waves,

            that rock me in his grace.

 

I think upon the King I love,

    who blesses all my days,

        with fish and sky, and waters deep.

            Oh, let me count the ways.

I love him as my baby King,

    ‘cuz baby Kings don’t rule,

        but lay there wrapped in swaddling cloths

            and smile, and coo, and drool. 

I love him as my healer King,

    I like that gentle touch,

        he makes me feel all fuzzy warm

            when life becomes too much.

I love him as my brother King,

    I like him as my friend. 

        I love him as my Savior King

            who’ll waft me skyward at life’s end.

 

Oh how I love my King today,

    brother, healer, savior, friend.  –

        But does that have one thing to do

            with how he’ll greet me then?

Time fishing spent is blessing sure,

     gifted by my King so grand,

        the rest, the peace, the joy-filled day

            with rod and line in hand.

But it will all amount to naught

    if the blessing is not shared,

        if all the “others,” through my life,

            can’t see the one who cared. 

For my King is not a King

    who calls me as his own

        without I go and fish for folks

            and let His love be shown. 

 Something to take home in your creel:

       I wrote stanzas 3,4,5 & 6 of this poem for my sermon this past Sunday, the last Sunday in Ordinary time on the church calendar and the end of the liturgical year.  The last Sunday of the church year has a special name; “Christ the King Sunday.”  I make a big deal out of that fact in my sermon every year on the last Sunday before Advent, - and every year it catches almost all of my parishioners by surprise (except the organist, who’s tipped off ahead of time to pick out “Royal” hymns for the day).  They never remember from one year to the next that it’s coming up. 

       Lots of Christians in America, - be they Protestant, Catholic, low-church, high-church, conservative-evangelical, liberal-mainline, dispensational, or so-called ‘Spirit filled,’ - like the idea of calling Christ their King.  They do it all the time.  But when it comes to following the mandates of Christ our King by actually walking in his ways, rather than just paying lip-service to them, - well, - let’s just say the talk is way more impressive than a lot of the fruit that gets produced.  And I’m sorry to say that it goes for me too!

       Our King gave us a detailed outline of the rules of good citizenship in His kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount, the gospel of Matthew, chapters 5, 6 & 7.  If you want to call the baby Jesus your friend, healer, brother, savior and even KING this coming Advent and Christmas season, go right ahead.  In fact - be my guest. – Just don’t neglect to go back and periodically review just how our King would like his loyal subjects to behave throughout the year that follows.  Maybe even try to put a little bit of what you find into practice before our next “Christ the King” Sunday rolls around.  That’s what I’m going to try and do. 

       I love you all, - or I wouldn’t have said so, - I’d of just gone fishing for fish again. 

       M.J.

A Little Cold Water on Election Day

Something from the tackle box:

       Don’t let anyone fool you.  Many will come and claim to be me.  They say they will be the Messiah, and they will fool many people…. Many will give up and will betray and hate each other.  Many false prophets will come and fool a lot of people.  Evil will spread and cause many people to stop loving others.  But if you keep on being faithful right to the end, you will be saved.  (Matthew 24:4-5,10-13 CEV)

       I got up very early yesterday to vote in the election.  My wife Kathy wanted to get her ballot cast before heading off to her job at the community college in the first big town to the south of the small town where we live.  We figured that it would be a lot easier than waiting to vote in the evening after she got home.  So we were in line, along with a friend who had asked for a ride to the polls the day before, a good twenty minutes before the doors opened.  There was already a bit of a line when we got there, and by the time the doors opened the line stretched out into the parking lot.  I did not see a smile on anyone’s face. 

       The local election officials were expecting a good turnout and were prepared.  Things moved at a good pace and we had soon marked our ballots and fed them into the counting machine, just like many millions of others across the country were doing at the time. We walked out past an even larger crowd of waiting voters than before.  I still did not see any smiling faces, unless you counted one enthusiastically bouncing preschooler in tow with her mother.  Thank you God for the little things. 

       Kathy dropped our friend Tomi Jo and I off at the local diner for breakfast before heading off to work herself.  Tuesday morning breakfast with a half dozen or so of my parishioners, along with a couple of other community wags whom we allow to enjoy our company, is my usual habit.  The big round table at the C&R is already spoken for by the old duffers club, so we always pull a couple of the smaller square tables together, as far away from the old duffers as we can possibly get.  Which, as far as my opinion matters, is a good thing on a day like this election day.  Sometimes it’s bad enough having to put up with the talk of my own parishioners concerning the hot topics of the day, without the added layers of horse manure bravado that the old duffers can bring to any conversation. 

       You see, even though I am a genuine rural, small-town born and bred, hick-from-the-sticks boy myself, both related to and at home with red-necks, hayseeds, shop rats, duck commanders, catfish noodlers, and every other stripe of Midwestern country folk you can think of, somewhere along the line I got past and grew out of the political attitudes that dominate my native culture. 

       And dominate they do! At least on a local level.  I’m always amused by the ballots in small rural community elections.  Sure, we get the same choices that everyone else does for the National and State level races, but better than ninety percent of the time all of the local offices are uncontested, with only one candidate to vote for, and that candidate is affiliated with one certain party every time.  Those rare times when the man or woman from that party does have an opponent for an office, that contester will almost always run as an “independent,” rather than doom his run to certain failure by having it affiliated with that “other” party. 

a catch!

       This is the truth far more often than not in the rural small-town America that I’ve called home for sixty years.  In some ways it’s amusingly quaint, but in other ways it makes life very difficult for those of us who don’t think that the entrenched grand old party getting its way on every little thing, with everybody living outside of the big city, is necessarily good for the life of our grand old country as a whole.  I’ve felt that way for a long time now and have voted according to that conviction most of my adult life.  The results are that I’ve been on the losing side of almost every election that I’ve voted in over the last forty years, as far as the tally for my local precinct goes.  The upside of this situation is that, even though I’m often not smiling on election day, most folks are. 

       But not yesterday.  Even at my usual table, a hotbed of conviviality on most Tuesday mornings, the mood was glum.  And at the old duffer’s table, where they are in one hundred percent agreement with the social political norm of small town America, and ought to have been engaged in hearty back-slapping yesterday, not a happy face was to be seen.  I walked home from the diner under a grey, cold and sprinkle spitting sky as cheerless as the mood of the country, and that’s when I decided, I need to go fishing.

still feeling pretty glum

       So I got home, threw my insulated chest waders, along my best fly rod, into the back of the VW and headed for the Coldwater river through the drizzle.  It looked like a horrible day for fishing, and I sure wasn’t expecting to see a thing in the way of fish, but it had to be better than sitting home and moping about this God forsaken election day. 

       I had to drive a bit further than usual to fish, as by November the Coldwater is closed to trout fishing above the Freeport dam, where I like to fish, until next April when the season opens back up.  Below the dam is year-round fishing, so I set out for Coldwater Park in southeast Kent County where the access is easy.  Unfortunately, I’ve never done that well below the dam on the Coldwater River any time of the year, and didn’t really expect to this day, for that matter.  I just needed to get into the river and get my head on straight for an hour or two.  Fishing will do that for me like nothing else I know of, and I needed it bad. 

       The water was higher and faster than I had expected, which made wading below the rapids, the better section of the park waters to fish, harder than I really liked.  After a half hour of fighting to stay upright in the current while negotiating the big rocks underfoot, I got out and moved to much calmer waters and less challenging footing above the rapids.  And here I found some peace, - thank God.

looking down towards the rapids

       I did not work hard at the fishing yesterday.  Instead of playing out a lot of line and making long casts through the hazards of overhanging tree branches to likely looking eddys in the rocky rapids, I just waded out to the middle of the stream, well above the  rushing water, and made gentle roll casts to the banks on both sides, letting my little bead-head, wire wrapped bug drift along the bottom with the current until I decided to haul her in and do it again. 

a couple of low hanging trophies

       Not even the hint of a fish to tantalize me was in the offing, although I did snag and draw up sunken leaves and small branches from the bottom now and then.  It was enough.  All I really needed.  In an hour I was feeling better about life in general, if not about the future of our nation. 

       I noticed that, with almost all of the leaves down from the trees along the banks now, the hung-up and broken off lures of my less accurate, crank-bait fishing cousins, now decorated the trees like Christmas ornaments.  It was actually very pretty and amusing to see.  While most of these trophies were well out of reach I did wade over and brake off a couple of low hanging specimens.  If I wasn’t going to catch any fish I might as well collect some lures to take home.  It felt good to do that.  I felt better.  In fact, I felt much better.

Something to take home in your creel: 

       By one o’clock I was getting cold, despite my insulated waders.  The Coldwater River is aptly named.  I was hungry too.  So I got out, de-geared, and pointed the old VW back east.  Halfway home I stopped in the town of Freeport to get lunch at the Shamrock Tavern, not too far from the old dam site that separates fishable waters from unfishable waters on the Coldwater from October through April.  They serve one of the best olive burgers you can find at the Shamrock, in quarter or half-pound varieties.  I had an appetite for one after fishing.  They have good craft beer on tap, too.  Getting there well after the lunch hour, there were only four other customers in the place when I sat down, all at the bar.  I guessed that they had just voted, or were on their way to vote and thinking about the prospect, as none of them were smiling. – But I was. :-)

King Fisher

Something from the tackle box:

       Samuel told the people who were asking for a king what the Lord had said: -

       He will force your sons to join his army…. Still others will have to farm the king’s land and harvest his crops, or make weapons and parts for his chariots.  Your daughters will have to make perfume or do his cooking and baking.

       The king will take your best fields, as well as your vineyards, and olive orchards and give them to his officials.  He will also take a tenth of your grain and grapes and give it to his officers and officials.

       The king will take your servants and your best young men and your donkeys and make them do his work.  He will take a tenth of your sheep and goats.  You will become the king’s slaves, and you will cry out for the Lord to save you from the king you wanted.  But the Lord won’t answer your prayers.

       The people would not listen to Samuel.  “No!” they said.  “We want to be like other nations.  We want a king to rule us and lead us in battle.”  (from 1Samuel:10-20 CEV)

 I really wish that we had a law in our great nation, mandating that everyone who is eligible to vote HAD to vote.  I also wish that it was mandated by law that a - ‘none of the above’ - box be printed on each and every ballot, so that voters could check it off if they thought that everyone running for the office wasn’t worth wasting any bait on.  And then, if ‘none of the above’ got the most votes, all of the parties would have to put forward a whole new slate of candidates, with no repeats from the ones they offered the first time around.  It might take a few months to do it, but I’d be willing to wait.  

For as far back as I can remember into my childhood school days, and I’m sixty years old now, I’ve always believed in that old saying that we’ve all heard over and over again, all our lives, about our American form of democracy.  You all know it, in fact I’ve heard some of you repeat it, I’ve repeated it myself in years past.  We say:  “Our system may not be perfect – but it’s still the best system in the world!”  

Well, I’m able to tell you today, officially, that I no longer believe that statement to be the truth, - at all!  If our system can’t do any better than it’s done this year then there ARE better systems.  There has to be a system, one that still leaves us with a Democracy, that can give us better options for leadership than the mess we’ve created in this election cycle.  (I myself am becoming a bigger fan of multiparty Parliamentary models of Democratic representation all the time, but that’s just a personal opinion.)

But, regardless of the fact that I’d really rather cut bait than fish in this year's election, I will be up bright and early on Tuesday morning to cast my vote!  And if you haven’t already done so with an early ballot, then you should too!  It is your patriotic duty to vote even if you have to hold your nose while you’re doing it and then go home and take a shower before going to the local diner to have breakfast and listen to all the political B.S. getting spewed out at the old-duffer’s table.   

So I want to see you there with me at the polls, and then later on at breakfast down at the C&R. Even if you’re voting for the other ridiculous lump than the one that I’m voting for, you still NEED to VOTE.  After all, if we’ve all really decided that we’re actually going shoot holes in the bottom of our rowboat because we want the people sitting in the other end of it to jump out – then it will work best if we ALL take a turn pulling the trigger.

 

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Something from the tackle box:

       Don’t fail to correct your children.  You won’t kill them by being firm, and it may even save their lives.  (Proverbs 23:12 CEV)

       Growing up in a house located on the corner of two intersecting country roads in rural Barry County Michigan I did have neighbors.  Although none of them lived closer than half a mile away, we were surround by neighbors in each of the four directions you could go from our place. 

       To the east was the Decker family.  They were good friends, and we knew them well as they had youngsters in the family too, some older ones that babysat for my two younger siblings and I when we were very little, but also a couple who were closer to our ages.  We got on the bus and rode to school together with them from the little shelter built at the end of their driveway.  We would also go swimming with them in their pond, or in our pool, in the hot summer months as we were growing up together. 

       To the south of us was the old Sprague place.  You can read about what an “adventure” it could be to try and bike past their farm on ones way to a favorite fishing hole.  That story is recorded in a post I made on this blog back in July. 

       A half a mile north of our place was the home of Bruce and Dortha Brumm.  We knew them well too.  In fact, they were like an extra set of grandparents to my brother Joe, sister Joy and I as we were growing up.  It was only a ten minute walk to get a homemade cookie any time that you wanted one.  They had a gentle collie dog that liked to play with kids.  They had the first color TV in our neck of the woods, and they’d let you watch Bonanza, or The Wonderful World of Disney, on it.

       Bruce and Dortha lived on a farm that took up a good chunk of the land north and west of the intersecion of Thronapple Lake and Price Roads.  They would have had everything northwest of that stop sign for half a mile in both directions, had they not sold the old farmhouse I grew up in, along with eight acres of land, to my parents several months before I was born.  The Brumms were good friends to my folks, and awfully good to us kids over the years we were neighbors, and while this story isn’t about the Brumms, per se, their friendship towards our family does play a role in this adventure.

       This story is about an incident involving one of our closest neighbors to the west, Ellis Garlinger.  Ellis and Dot Garlinger were an older couple who lived on a nice little farm on the south side of Thornapple Lake Road, just a half a mile west, and on the other side the road, from our place on the corner.  Across the road from the Garlinger place was about where the fencerows, fields, meadows and woodlots of the property owned by our good friends, the Brumms, had its western boundry. 

       Now, Ellis and Dot Garlinger were fine people, and good neighbors too, but as a kid I didn’t really get to know them all that well.  They had no children for me to play with, and they seemed to be busy with their own lives on the farm, which was as it should be.  I would wave to them if they were out as I biked past their place, and they would wave back, but I would never have dreamed of turning in their drive for a homemade cookie and cup of hot coco like I might have with our neighbors to the north.  They were just the older folks who lived down the road to the west, we knew them, but didn’t really take that much interest in them.  – That is, until they got the peacock. 

       I can still remember the first time I heard the bloodcurdling scream coming over the hill from the west.  I was sitting on the steps of the deck on the south side of our house, eating my Captain Crunch in the cool air of a beautiful summer morning, when the sounds of what I took to be raw human agony rent the misty peace and caused me to slosh half of my milk and cereal into my lap. 

       “Mom!  Dad!  Get out here quick!”

       “What is it son?”

       “I just heard somebody screaming over there!” I said, pointing to the west. 

       “THERE IT IS AGAIN!!”

       “My word!” cried my Mom.  “Elmer, you’d better get over there and see what’s going on!  It sounds like someone might need some help!”

       Dad just started laughing at us.  “Well, you’d better get used to it, because it sounds to me like Ellis has bought himself some peahens and a peacock for the barnyard.  It’s amazing how that sound will carry on a calm day.” 

       “Are you sure?” Mom replied, “Sounds to me like somebody is getting murdered with a hatchet.” 

       “I’m sure.  I saw Ellis putting up real high chicken wire around the empty henhouse yesterday and figured something was up.  I had imagined it would be turkeys or geese he was getting ready for, but that’s a peacock if I ever heard one.  We’ll drive by later and take a look.” 

       And that’s what we did, sure enough.  That peacock and his hens were beautiful, downright gorgeous in fact, and everyone who had heard them, and then driven around to see them, said the same.  But, gorgeous or not, we would all have to put up with the agonizing cries of dying ax murder victims on a daily basis for the pleasure of having those beautiful birds ensconced in our bailiwick. 

       Truth be told, we all got pretty used to the screeching pretty quickly.  It even became a source of entertainment for us kids when friends and relatives visited, and we could act out gruesome pantomimes in concert with the sounds of the merciless bloodletting that came from down the road.

       So, now that you have some background information, I can get around to telling you about a particularly memorable fishing adventure that I had with my brother, sister, and my younger cousin Ned, on a bright sunny Autumn day later that very year. 

       As I said earlier, our friends and neighbors to the north, the Brumms, owned a large section of land to the north and west of our place on the corner.  Being so close to us, and understanding the advantages that come with growing up in union nature as country folk, they allowed my brother, sister and I to run free on their property for the purpose of exploring and enjoying its woodlots, meadows, lanes and swales, like any kid would do if given half the chance.  As long as we didn’t disturb any crops in any field that might be tilled at the time, we could do as we pleased on the Brumm place.  And we did.  It was a gift to our young lives beyond price, and I will always love Bruce and Dortha for allowing us the access to what became, for us, a veritable kingdom of wilderness adventures.  This story is about one I remember particularly well.

       My cousin Ned was over for a weekend stay with my brother, sister and I, and one of us got the idea that we should make the trek over to the pond over on the western edge of the Brumm place for the purpose of hooking minnows, catching frogs, netting dragonflies, or otherwise seeing what kind of wildlife we could trap into temporary captivity along the pond’s cattail lined banks.  As all parties were agreeable to this idea, it was not long before we had outfitted ourselves with fishing rods, butterfly nets and an assortment of boxes and jars for our intended safari. 

       The pond was an easy march from our place.  You went down an old farm lane, due west from our barnyard, for a quarter mile.  From the end of the lane you cut diagonally across a beautiful meadow that was only occasionally cut for hay.  Once on the other side of that rolling meadow, you crossed a ridge with an old fence line running along it, and then entered a brushy swale with a two-acre pond at its bottom.  The pond would gather a lot of runoff, growing quite big on a wet year, but it also had spring that fed into it, so that even in a dry year it always held a couple feet of water and very small fish could be caught in it.  The whole thing sat due north of the Garlinger farm, about a quarter mile due north off the road.

       It was a beautiful parade on the way back to the pond on that sunny afternoon.  I had the fishing pole, Joy carried the butterfly net, Joe and Ned followed in train with the boxes and jars for our intended catch.  Optimism was running high about our prospects of success.  But once we were within site of our hunting and fishing grounds we realized that the gathering of specimens for our pleasure and study might not be as easy achieved as we had hoped for at first.  When the weather is dry the old pond would stay well within its appointed banks, with a very narrow band of mud and cattails being all that had to be negotiated when fishing or frogging.  But with much rain, as we’d had over the last couple weeks, the banks widened and sponged up considerably.  There would be no getting up to the water without some very careful scouting for suitable approaches.  We split up, surrounded the pond, and began our assault in these less than optimal conditions.

       “It’s too mucky over here!”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “IT’S TOO MUCKY!!”

       “Oh, .. Well, … be careful then.”

       “My shoe just came off in the mud.”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “I said, MY SHOE’S STUCK IN THE MUD!!”

       “Well, … OK, .. pull it out and back up.”

       “OK, … I’ll have to get down on my knees and get my pants a little muddy.”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “I said, MY KNEES ARE GETTING IN THE MUD!!  I CAN’T GET IT OUT!!”

       “Hold on, I’ll come over and help you.
       “What did you say?”

       “I said, HOLD ON I’LL TRY AND HELP YOU!!”

       “Hey!  What’s going on down there”

       “Ned’s got a shoe stuck in the mud.”

       “What?”

       “I said, NED’S STUCK IN THE MUD!!  COME OVER AND GIVE US SOME HELP!!”

       “If I go around this way I’ll get in the mud too.”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “I said, I CAN’T GET TO YOU THIS WAY!!  I’LL GET STUCK TOO IF I TRY!!”

       That’s about when we saw Mr. Garlinger come over the fenced ridge to the south of the pond.  He was on a dead run, huffing and puffing like an old man that had just sprinted a quarter mile, which is exactly what he was.  He pulled up short when he saw all four of us standing together on dry ground, one of us with dirty knees and holding a muddy sneaker.

       “WHAT IN TARNATION IS GOING ON!”

       “Hey there Mr. Garlinger.  Ned’s shoe just came off in the mud.  We got it out now.”

       Mr. Garlinger sat down on an old log, pulled a bandana out of the pocket of his bib overalls and began to mop his brow.  It took him a minute to say anything else, but when he did we all knew that he was pretty upset.

       “You kids git home right now!  And tell your mothers that you all need a spanking for scaring me half to death!  And don’t you come back here any time today!  Do you hear me!?”

       We somberly picked up our gear and headed in the direction of our house.  We were half way home before anyone spoke.

       “Boy, your neighbor sure was mad.”

       “I don’t think he can kick us off the pond.  Bruce and Dortha say we can play there any time we want.”

       “Well, …I don’t think we’d better go back and try again today.”

       “I wonder why Ellis was so upset.”

       “I don’t know.”

       “Maybe those screaming peacocks of his woke him up too early this morning and now he needs to take a nap.”

       “Mayy-beee.”

Something to take home in your creel:

        We sure as heck never did tell our mothers that we needed a spanking for scaring Mr. Garlinger half to death that day, or ever even hinted to our folks about what had happened for that matter.  Ellis is long gone to a better home now, and I never did apologize to him for upsetting him so that day.  But I’m sixty now, and much more in sympathy with him over what happened than I was back then…  The memory still makes me chuckle though.