Book Offer

Mark L. Jarvie

761 Fourth Ave.

Lake Odessa, MI 48849                                                                       January 24, 2017

Dear friend, relative or casual reader, as the case may be,

       On my birthday this past October, my dear wife presented me with a small number of professionally bound copies of selected articles from my blog-site, bluegills on a fly rod.  The book contains a selection of twenty-nine stories from the first year of postings on my blog.  It was a beautiful gift that took me totally by surprise.  What a gal!

       Since then, a number of friends and associates have seen this little book and have encouraged me to offer it to a larger number of readers than the few copies I was gifted with could accommodate.  To that end, I plan to re-order enough copies to provide all who might wish to have this book one of their own.  This book has 140 pages of delightful fishing/devotional stories, each beginning with a passage of scripture and ending with an observation on fishing, family, friends and faith.  Several b&w illustrations are contained in the text and the cover binding features a beautiful color rendition of one of my wife’s stunning watercolor artworks.  It really is a nice looking book, and the writing is pretty good, if I do say so myself. 

       I have estimated that the costs of printing, shipping, and getting these books into the hands of their new readers is going to amount to over ten dollars per copy.  While I have no desire to make a substantial profit on this work, neither to I want to go in the hole.  So I am asking all who make an order to pay $15 per copy to cover my expenses (checks may be made payable to Mark L. Jarvie).  While advance payment with your order would be greatly appreciated, personal acquaintances may wait and pay upon delivery of the book if desired. 

       To order, send your name, mailing address, and number of copies ordered, along with payment if you so choose, to me at the address shown above.  I anticipate making the order at the end of March and should have the book in your hands by the end of April.

Thank you, and blessings be upon you all,

Rev. Mark L. Jarvie

A Mighty Minty Evening on the Ice

I’m sorry that my Christmas story for this year is so late.  If you read my entry for December you may know why.  Old S.C. is back, a little less rough around the edges than he was in ‘A Mighty Minty MORNING on the Ice,’ but still prone to course language.  I hope you aren’t offended by that.

Something from the tackle box:

       When the men went into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother, they knelt down and worshiped him.  They took out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and gave them to him.  (Matthew 2:11 CEV)

       It would be a calm but cold night, old Sam Cass had decided as he walked the mile and a half home from his job at the B&M service station and convenience store. 

       “Only six o’clock and it’s already darker than a sack full of ice holes,” he mused to himself, the same musing that he made every night as he made the walk home in the months of December and January.

        “Got damp daylight savings time can kiss my bass.”

       Despite the grumbling, Sam was in a pretty good mood, as he usually was most of the time.  His constant chatter, rife with course language even when no one else was around to hear it, was a habit going all the way back to his childhood.  He came by it honestly, as his dad had been just the same.  Sam was much like his father had been in many ways, - but not in all ways.

       “Sure hope old Rudy ain’t too wound up for his dinner when I get home.  Can’t help but hardly step on that damp cat’s paws two or three times before I can get the dank cat food into the dank bowl!  Har, har, and that’s the dank truth, har, har, har.”

       Old Sam loved his cat Rudy, who’d showed up and moved in with him at his shack on the lake over 16 years ago now.  They understood one another and enjoyed as close of a relationship as an old tomcat and a crusty old duffer could either want. 

       But the anticipated affections of an old cat waiting for his dinner was not the only thing old Sam was looking forward to tonight.  It was Christmas Eve and Sam would be going to the Midnight Candlelight Service at the Episcopal Church after a few hours of ice fishing.  Now, it might surprise the reader of this story to learn that the thought of going to a church service, and staying up late into the night to do it to boot, would lighten the mood of anyone possessing the crude mannerisms held by our old friend Sam, but such is the case. 

       If you would know the whole truth, I should tell you that Sam could be found in church every Sunday morning!  In fact, no local who knew him could recall a Sunday morning when Sam hadn’t been in church from the time he was an infant.  This can be accounted for by the fact that his dearly loved mother made him be there every Sunday morning until he reached an age where he could willingly promise her that he would be there every Sunday morning on his own until the day he should die.  Sam loved his mom – and he always kept all of his promises.

       Now this is not to say that Sam could always be found in the same church every Sunday morning.  That was not part of the promise.  There were six churches within an hour’s walk of his shack on the lake and Sam attended them all on a regular rotation system.  First Baptist, St. Agnes Catholic, Pilgrim Congregational, Laketon Methodist, St. George Episcopal, and the New Life Original Four Square Gospel Holiness Temple, all saw his presence in that order before he started over again.  He liked variety in his worship more than his dear mother would have probably approved of, her having been a staunch Baptist through and through, but, again, that hadn’t been part of the promise.    

       The strict rotation was ignored for certain special Holy Day observances however.  Easter Sunday was always spent at the Baptist church of his childhood, Ash Wednesday always found him at St. Agnes, Good Friday was at the community service hosted by the Methodists, and Christmas Eve was always with the folks at St. George.  As he often told his cat, Rudy, “No one puts on a fancier Christmas shindig than those ‘piscopals do!  Too bad I can’t take you with me to see it!… Although… they do bless their critters inside the church every summer.…… hmmmm….”

       Home now, Sam let himself in and almost tripped over Rudy twice between the door and the bag of cat food waiting on the counter opposite the door.  The shack only had three real rooms, if you didn’t count the glassed in mudroom, coat rack, boot scraping, front porch you had to walk through to get to the only door.  It had been Sam’s home since he was fifteen and had moved in with his mom the year after his dad had died in the wreck. 

       Without dad’s pay mom’s work at the cash register of the B&M wasn’t enough. They’d had to downsize from the larger place they had lived in on the other side of the lake.  The new place wasn’t much, but Sam had always liked it.  As soon as Sam was out of school he took over his dad’s old job in the garage at the B&M fulltime.  Things got better for a while, and they talked about moving into a bigger place again, but then mom got sick and followed dad into the Promised Land.  By the time he was twenty two Sam had the place all to his self and didn’t see the need for any more room.  That was a long time ago now.  Rudy liked it too. 

       “Well Rudy, is you ready to go do a little fishin’ with me before I leaves ya to go listen to that fancy Christmas music and bible story readin’ by candlelight service over at the ‘piscopal church later on?” 

       Rudy did not look up from his dish, but Sam knew that he would go.  Whether it was in the boat or riding the fishing sled over the ice, Rudy always went out with Sam whenever he went fishing.  The cat seemed to love being on the water as long as he didn’t have to get into the water.  It was one of the things that kept the pair so close knit.

       “Well, you’d dank well better hurry up and get your pie hole filled then!  I’m headed out to the porch to suit up and get the damp sled ready right now.  Won’t take me five damp minutes before I’m ready to go, so fill yer guts and come on! – har, har, har.”  Sam knew the cat would be ready to head out when he was.  Ten minutes later they were on their way.

       If there wasn’t any snow Rudy liked to walk ahead of Sam as he pulled his sled across the ice.  The sled would carrying the ice spud, lantern, tackle (including a rod given him by a very nice young man he’d met on the ice just a year ago now) and two buckets, one to sit on and own to toss fish into.  Sam would follow Rudy and chop out his holes wherever the cat decided to stop and sniff the ice.  You can pooh-pooh the system if you want to, but Sam caught more than his share of fish in this way.

       “Fancy electronic fish-finders is all fine and dandy I guess, but who needs ‘em when you got a cat that can smell those dank fish right through the ice like you can old buddy!”

       The cat was taking him a long way across the lake tonight, three quarters of the way across the lake in the direction of the place where Sam had grown up.  On these longer excursions Sam liked to sing on the way.  Sam actually possessed a pretty decent singing voice, which was why folks didn’t mind that much when their church came up on his Sunday rotation.  (Although, you could never be quite sure what kind of lyrics to the hymn tunes might come out of his mouth the minute Sam stepped out the front door of your church.) In keeping with the season, he decided on a bowdlerized secular Christmas jingle tonight.

     “Ohhh – Rudy the pink nosed kitty cat – had a very snot-ty noooose.  And if you ev-er saaaaw it, - you would say that it was grooooss!  All of the other pussy cats – used to run away in fear. – They didn’t want old snot-nose – to come and chew upon their eeear!  Har-har-har.  Whad ya think of that little tune, ya old waste of cat food? Har-har.”  Rudy just stopped and sniffed the ice.  “Well, - if this is the spot, then this is the spot, - ain’t it!”

       In ten minutes time the lantern was lit, a hole was in the ice, and Sam sat on a bucket with a line down into the lake and a purring cat in his lap.  The perch were there sure enough, and over the next hour or so Sam hauled them up and out at a steady pace.  He had his two dozen plus one limit some time before he really needed to head back in to clean up and make it to St. George’s on time for the service, so he sat there and just thunk for awhile.

       He could see the lights on in the old place.  When he and his mom had moved out the place had been bought by a Joe and Marge Bignall.  They had both been four years older and five grades ahead of him in school, but Sam knew them.  Joe and Marge had gotten married the summer after graduation from Laketon High and the old Cass place would make a good starter home for the young man and his bride.  Not that they planned to live there a real long time, as Joe would someday be a partner in his dad’s local hardware store, and they could move up.  Sam knew that they had both hated to see little Sam and his mom have to move out at the time, but the place was going to be sold one way or the other, and they agreed to meet the asking price, which was pretty nice when you think about it. 

       The Bignalls still lived there.  Dreams don’t pan out for lots of folks I guess.  The hardware had folded and was sold at a loss.  After that Joe went to work at a furniture wholesale store in the next big town down the highway, where he did OK, - until the MS put him in a wheelchair. 

       Fairly late in their marriage Joe and Marge had had a daughter, whom they loved, but who was a problem for them growing up on account of booze and bad company.  Same old story.  The daughter had married poorly and both she and her husband were now in prison, down for quite a while for engaging in a variety of criminal activities.  This was hard enough on Joe and Marge - without considering the little ones – Ned, Mike and Little Joe – aged eleven, eight and five – who had been living with Grandpa and Grandma Bignall for the last three years – and probably would be living with them for the next seven or eight years at least.  Good boys, a joy to their Grands, but a hard row to hoe for them nonetheless. 

       Sam had seen Marge just that morning, when she came to the B&M to pick up their rusty old wheelchair-lift van that Sam had put a set of new/used snow tires on for them.  Nope! The Bignalls would never be moving up from the place they’d bought from Sam and his mom as a starter home all those many years ago.

       “Ya know what, Rudy?  I’m thinkin’ maybe we ought to slide on over to the old place and leave some of these pretty perch by the front door.  I know they like ‘em.  Joe used to fish with me onest in awhile afor he got chair-bound, and he never minded taking the extras home.  I’m dank near certain they’ll still be at the Methodist church for another hour yet, as their Christmas Eve blast only started about half an hour ago.  They’ll never even know it was us! Har-har-har! Wha’d ya say, ya snot-nosed old bass turd?”

       Rudy just got off of Sam’s lap and hopped up on the ice sled.

       In another ten minutes it was done.  Of course the footprints in the snow, coming up off the lake, leading to the front door where the bucket of fish was set, and then running back down to the lake and heading off in the direction of old Sam’s shack, would be a dead giveaway.  But what did that matter?  On the way home across the lake Sam felt as talkative as usual. 

       “Rudy, I’m sure glad you reminded me of those six candy canes I had in the pocket of my overalls.  They sure looked pretty hanging around the rim of that dank fish bucket! Har-har-har.  How about another song, in keepin’ with the season.”

       Sam thought for a minute, then struck up one he didn’t sing often, but which he had always liked from the time he was a kid.

       “Ohhhh – Good King Wenceslas looked ouuut – on the feast of Steee-phaaaan. – When the snow lay ‘round abouuuut, - deep and crisp and eeee-vaaaan! ……….”

       And so old Sam sang in his heart all the way home, and then on to the best midnight candlelight Christmas service he could ever remember the ‘piscopals ever putting on for him.

Something to take home in your creel:

       The wealth of the Magi had very little to do with their gold, or their frankincense, or their myrrh.  It had a great deal to do with their hearts.  I hope your holidays were filled with generosity and goodwill towards all mankind.  Blessings be upon you all my friends.  M.J.

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. :-)