Teach a man person to fish
I nearly fell into that trap. It isn't just men who angle, right? And then the first part of that old saw regarding the giving of fish? Well, in my experience, and not to be sexist, if you give a man a fish he'll probably throw it in a frying pan, maybe with some butter, whereas, again based on my experience, if you give a woman a fish she's more than likely going to season it in interesting ways, perhaps douse it with lemon juice or wine, perhaps tarragon vinegar, maybe something zingy like red pepper oil, plus herbs and spices, and then bake it, or perhaps bread it with flavored crumbs of some Indo-European variety.
This is why, when I'm in fish-giving mode, I give fish to women and hope I'll be invited to dinner.
But as for the teaching part, I have my Mom to thank. [See cover photo.] Dad was only interested in smelt. Back in my youth the springtime smelt run in Lake Michigan was beyond astonishing. You could almost walk on them, there were so many. Just stand on the pier after dark and dip your net and you'd have a bucket-full in no time. Tasty? Oh my, yes.
Some folks filled pick-up truck beds for freezing and, one supposes, sale.
These days predator fish in the Great Lakes® have bounced back from their mid-century nadir and there are reportedly fewer smelt for the smelters, which is just as well since the little fish have been found to accumulate industrial waste toxins to the point that medical folk advise eating no more than one serving per month. A pick-up load would last a lifetime at that rate.
This takes me back to my earliest chicken-with-its-head-cut-off memory.1 When we were preparing the smelt for frying (Dad was in charge. See the third sentence up top) the first step was popping off the head. I discovered that if I did that and dropped the fish back in the bucket … it kept on swimming! What? (It would be decades before I actually witnessed a chicken performing the same stunt.) (Running, not swimming.)
Outside of that one night each spring Dad had absolutely no use for “fishing” and, honestly, that wasn't exactly “fishing.” It was basically “shooting fish in a barrel,” though that expression makes approximately no sense.
Why are the fish in a barrel? Why would you need to shoot them if they were already captive? Has anyone ever actually done this? Or seen anyone doing so? Or wanted to? Historically the only references I've ever seen to the presence of cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates in a cask involved salt, back before ice became readily available for shipment. Not much sense wasting ammunition on a few firkins of pickled pike.
Mom loved to fish year-round, even ice-fishing! She'd take me and my brother to docks, piers, jetties, beaches, frozen lakes and boats. We'd bait and bobber, bottom fish and surf-cast. We went out on party-boats in the Gulf of Mexico and came home with grouper!2 [See front cover! Look at those fish!]
Come to think of it, she's the one who taught me to cut worms in half.3 Her theory was that half a worm was every bit as good for bait as a whole worm and you therefore were doubling your supply. She also taught me to go out pre-dawn with a flashlight to collect night-crawlers.4
On the other hand, Mom wasn't much of a reader. That was Dad's thing. So there was a sense of intellectual balance in the homestead. Mom would read maybe half a book all summer. Something fat like James Michener®'s Hawaii. Dad would read a book or two each week. Mostly science fiction. [His Harvard Classics® may have been more posture than intellectual bent, though he could well have read those before I popped out.]
I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this, other than, perhaps, to set things up for the following thrilling tale.
Kevin's Mom was a fisher-person too. (!)
This little vignette,5 however, is about Kevin's father, who wasn't. Actually, come to think of it, it isn't exactly about him, it's about his brother's wife. His father's brother's wife if that isn't clear. So that makes it about Kevin's aunt by marriage.
Sylvia is a very interesting person. Her sister told me this over coffee a couple of weeks ago.
I've known Janese for ages and feel pretty certain she wouldn't try to bamboozle me, except perhaps on April first. So I'm pretty darn certain Sylvia is “interesting.”
I recall the time Janese and I pulled a couple of tricks on her nephew (not Kevin, if that isn't clear) after his wedding.
First we stuffed an old pair of pants and some socks with rags and put it under the happy couple's car so when they came out after the reception they would think there was a body there. Heh heh. But that wasn't the best one. Oh no. No, no, no.
Then Janese and I went to the motel where we'd learned the newlyweds had reserved a room where they were going to spend the first night before heading off on their honeymoon. She was wearing a white dress and I had on a suit and tie so we easily posed as the lately spliced couple. She asked the night clerk for the key-card to “our” suite. Heh heh. He happily complied.
We went upstairs and scoped things out. There was a balcony with wrought iron decorative vertical stanchions extending to the ground level. Oh boy!
We short-sheeted the bed, wrote CONGRATULATIONS! On the bathroom mirror with her lipstick, filled the tub with bubblebath (her idea, not clear why), locked the door and climbed down the ironwork from the balcony. Heh heh.
We learned later that the clerk refused to let the real couple have a key for an hour or more until he could get hold of a manager who demanded the pair produce identification. Heh heh.
Honestly, that whole escapade was Janese's idea and it so amused me that I gave her a fish!
I gave her a fish!
But she didn't invite me to dinner.
Sigh.
***
NOTE PER FOOTNOTES: Substack starts off with new numbering each time I post a story. But Footnotes in the original book are continuous and often refer back to previous super important stuff, So original Footnote #s are included below in [#]s.
1 [106] Coupled with the worm thing two stories back, this makes me wonder why, in a collection I've labeled “That's Life” I am busily dissevering.
2 [107] There's something appropriate about catching grouper when you're out with a group on a party boat, is there not?
3 [108]Thinking back to page 43, though the intent was not to regrow.
4 [109] This is very likely the reason I habitually wake at 3:30 or 4 a.m. to begin my writing day. Early birds and writers get the worms. Proof of the worms thus corralled is presently in your eager hands.
5 [110]Française!