The fish's view from that cold, deep waterhole on my grandparent's farm in Pennsylvania.
Last night, and quite out of the blue, by brother sent me a message on Facebook. We don’t talk much, my brother and I, having had a rift some years ago that left us both stinging. What happened isn’t important here, but we’ve been a long time getting to a point where we talk easily with each other, if not very often.
The message sent to me from C.T. (his given first and middle names are Colin Terrill, as are my father’s, and from his toddler years our immediate family has always called my brother by his initials to separate the two), had to do with a visit he’d recently paid to the gun shop I worked at nearly two decades ago. He’d gotten talking to whomever was working behind the counter there, had learned the original owner I’d worked for had sold the store and died a couple years ago, and thought I might like to know that bit of information.
Reading his note, I had the impulse to call my brother right then and there. It is not an urge I have often—besides the rift that has divided us, we have always been, and still remain, very different people with little in common. Even casual, catching-up chit-chat seems kind of pointless between us most of the time. Anyway, there’s never much excuse to talk outside the obligatory holidays and birthdays, so when the urge last night kicked in, I dialed before I could think twice about it. To his credit, C.T. picked up and answered as if we talked every day.
Somewhere during the thirty minutes or so we talked (easily, it turned out), I filled him in on the new blog and shamelessly asked him to read and subscribe even if the subject matter wasn’t of much appeal to him. He agreed, we talked a bit more about this, that, and the other (I was especially impressed that he’d gone to the gun shop to sign his wife up for some shooting lessons, she feeling less secure about the state of the world with Obama in office, he explained), and we let each other go for the evening.
I was a little surprised when I opened up my e-mail this morning and saw a message from C.T. I was also a little alarmed to see the subject line read, “Damn You!” I steeled myself for what was behind the curse, then clicked the message open. It read, in part:
Ok, I subscribed, I read the first two blogs (well I skimmed over the first one but found myself re-reading things). You sure do have a way with the pen.
The “damn you” part comes from the second blog. As I kept reading down and you started talking about the trout and Tommy, I kept wondering if you were going to mention that he ALWAYS caught the pregnant one. You did, funny how we remember that happening. Ok, I’ll throw in my guy card for a second, it brought a small tear to my eye. It was a VERY VERY VERY small tear. Now that it’s wiped away (I’m at work, can’t let them see you cry!!) … .
Whether hunting or fishing, those outdoor adventures experienced in childhood leave impressions that are permanent and indelible.
When I wrote that second blog, the one entitled “Headwaters,” I was pretty sure that story was accurate. But I also know memories are funny things. They often get the movie star treatment pretty actresses in the ’50s and ’60s used to receive. Ever seen an old Doris Day flick, something like Move Over, Darling? Close-ups of the pretty, perky, wholesome blonde were always softly lit and a tiny bit blurred. If Doris had crow’s feet, you’d never know it, and filmed in the manner she was, the actress appeared to have a kind of haloed glow about her.
Memories get treated like that. They fade a little around the edges, soften a touch in the middle, and take on a certain glow. So while I was pretty sure Tommy had caught a pregnant trout more than once, I wasn’t really sure it was “always,” until my brother wrote me saying he’d actually hoped I’d remembered it that way.
I guess what I’m saying is that the stories you’ll see here come from my mind’s eye and mine only. Many people have joined me on probably most of my hunting adventures, and maybe if they read the sentences here, they’ll recall things my way—but probably not all the time. Surely my own powers of recollection are flawed at time, and as it is with most people, I’d rather remember the good than the bad. But either way, flawed or not, embellished a bit or faithful to the original, I hope these stories give you a moment to think That reminds me of the time … . And if that, in turn, gives you the impulse to call your brother or sister, son or daughter, mother or father, just to chat and ask, “Hey, remember when … ?” then so much the better.
Read on … .
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