Time stood still as I looked at the old rod tube in my hands. The dark patina of the domed brass cap with the engraving “EHW” contrasted with the dented, well worn silver color of the tube, and the remnants of a paper label too faded to read. If I hadn’t looked up when I did, I never would have seen it in the dim light of the basement, tucked away in the bracing of the overhead joists. Memories came flooding back, and I could almost hear my Grandfather’s voice again as he told me his tales of the Northern logging camps and his beloved Adirondack rivers and ponds. “Ricky”, he would say…… My cousin Tim had called from Albany, telling me that my Grandparents’ old house was to be torn down to make room for a new mall. “Last chance”, he said “If you want anything from the house you better get it now. The demolition is scheduled for December 22. ”. It had been years since I had been to the old house on Elm Street, so I cleared my afternoon schedule and headed for the parking lot. As I drove, I thought of the regular Sunday visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, many years ago.To my ten-year-old eyes Grandpa looked ancient. He was frail looking, his ears seemed too big for his head, and he had a bushy white moustache accented by his wire rimmed glasses. Growing up as an orphan, by the time he was 10, he was working on the riverboats on the upper Mississippi. At the time, the stark contrast between his early years and my suburban upbringing was lost on me.After the Great World War he took a jobs in a lumber camp in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, working at first as a cook, then as a teamster, driving the teams of horses used to skid the logs. It was there he forged his love for fly fishing and his passion for brook trout. One particular Sunday in late April, he was sitting at the dining room table with a wonderful collection of fishing gear spread out in front of him. When I walked through the door, he winked and patted the seat of the chair next to him. The aroma of Prince Albert and Grandma’s molasses cookies baking in the kitchen enveloped me as he asked, “You know what’s coming soon?”.I shook my head. He leaned close and whispered “ice-out”. I told him that I didn’t know what that meant. “Boy” he said, “that’s when the ponds open up, and the trout are hungry”. He went on to explain “That’s when you get the big trout , the lantern-jawed, man-size squaretails, when you get a little older, we’ll go, me and you” he said, pointing a crooked finger for emphasis. My Grandmother came into the room with a plate of her molasses cookies and two glasses of cold milk. She chuckled and shook her head as she set the tray down on the only clear spot on the table. “Harlan” she said, “stop filling the boy’s head with that nonsense. You haven’t fished in years, and you know it.” “Bah” he snorted to her, turning back to me, he smiled and winked. We spent the rest of the afternoon making plans, talking about where the best ponds were, which ones were apt to have a rowboat hidden on the shore, and what flies we would use. When I left their house that day, my thoughts were of brook trout, flies and remote Adirondack ponds.Grandpa didn’t fish that spring, and we never did fish together. He died the following September. With the rod case safely on the back seat, I started my car to begin the long trip home. The street lights were blinking on and snow started to fall as I took a last look at the old house. I drove off thinking about how time passes, and how things change forever. I thought about the wrecking ball that that would soon make room for another mini-mall. Suddenly, I could smell the aroma of Prince Albert, and molasses cookies as my thoughts turned to what it would be like to fish with Grandpa’s old fly rod, and I was warmed by the thought that it would not be much longer until ice-out.
Great story Rick, really enjoyed it. The phot is awesome, it tells you what the story is about before you even read it.
Great story, Great tradition great fish!!
(WARNING: a quick note before reading comment to rick: i tend to have my morning coffee and start to write a comment. as the coffee kicks in…the comment turns into more of a philosophical piece of content. geeze, sometimes i look what i wrote and i feel as though i just wrote my college thesis paper. anyway, i have come to really enjoy this little excercise i do. anybody who knows me knows that i am a thinker. sometimes too much of a thinker. it is a blessing and curse that i have lived with all of my life. i write music and songs and obsessivly focus on each and every word. i listen to other peoples music and hear the stories in their lyrics without even wanting to. i see all digital content at a pixel level. i am always writing music, lyrics, articles and all sorts of documentation. I am constantly searching for the perfect word, note, sentence, pixel, sound and when i find it another search beginns. so – i know that there are many out there who are not like me. my wife for example is exactly the opposite. she doesn’t hear lyrics in the music and quite frankly could care less about that level of detail – she just likes the sound. so, if you are reading this right now and are more like my wife than me – you might just want to stop because you are bound to think, “what the heck is he talking about.” and, that would be fine…because…many times i find myself craving to be more like you. but, we can only be who we are and i was told a long time ago, “above all else, be true to thyself.” so, i write long commentaries and such because i enjoy it. i think about all this stuff while driving to and from fly fishing locations and the only time i am not thinking is when i am fly fishing and maybe that explains why i love fly fishing so much. because, it is a break from the thinking process and everything is super simple – just me, the water and the fish. ok, so if you have similar tendencies and ACTUALLY liked things like algebra, creative writing, technical writing, statistics and philosophy in high school or college than by all means read on…. thanks….)
————————————————
rick,
a very well crafted piece. your descriptions of your grandfather and the cabin were perfect. as with all good writing, as i read along, your words provoked images and i could almost see your grandfathers ears that were too big for his head and smell the molasses. you gave me just enough info and detail to keep me interested but not too much. the dynamic nature of the content was nice too. I lreally iked the following elements:
1. Opening sentence – PERFECT
2. Strong use of descriptive adjectives
3. Elements that everyone could relate to such as..”rowboat hidden in the shore”…everyone has seen those little dingies and row boats that seemed to be just sitting there for anyone to use as long as they are put back.
4. Emotion – Someone once told me that art is defined by its ability to draw emotion out of the user. The nature of the emotion is irrelevant. That made sense to me. So, since then I personally measure art (writing/painting/photography/music/video etc…..) by its ability to draw something out of me. So – if I look at a painting and see nothing but canvas and colors … it did not successfully draw emotion out of me. Conversly, if I look at a painting and feel any of the following: pain, yearning, sadness, hope, despair, humor, fear…. it did its job. Here is the real fun part – one piece of work may draw some sort of emotion out of me while another person only sees paint and canvas. That is the best part about any form of art. Nobody can really say that it is good or bad. They can only say that is is good or bad for them. With that said, Good artists seem to have the natural ability to tap into everyone’s emotion or should i say alot of people emotions. they are able to relate to a huge number of people. for example – john lennon, elvis presley, mozart, beethoven, jim morrison, bob dylan, rolling stones, picaso, stephen king, earnest hemingway, shakespeare, jimi hendrix, stevie ray vaughn etc…..now of course, there are thousand and millions of people who do not like these artisits – but nobody can argue the fact that the people who were not moved is far outwheighed by the people that were. that to me, is what any form of art is really about. not its ability to connect to a small percentage of people, but rather its ability to connect to the masses. because, in my opinion, in the end we are not really different. we all feel pain, humor, sadness, hope, despair and as jim morrisson said, “nobody gets out of here alive.” so – aside from the trivial details – at the root of our existance as human beings we are all basically the same. in fact, identical. we are born, breathe, eat, sleep, connect, feel and die.
5. Circular and Surprise – I read the article title about Ice – Out. So, I thought – ok its gonna be an article about fly fishing during Ice- Out. Then you took me by surprise by weaving your grandparents and their cabin into the article. So then I thought, ok – he’s gonna tell about how he and his grandfather slayed big trout at ice-out. I was surprised to come towards the end and hear that you never did get to fly fish with your grandfather. That drew emotion out of me and I appreciated that for the truthfulness that it supports. We all know that many times things work out great and everyone has fun and blah, blah, blah…However, everyone certainly knows that dissapointment and sadness is an equally powerful reality. Everyone can think of someone in their life who has passed on. And everyone can think of things that they wish they could have done or wish they could have said, but it can never happen. Everyone has things they wish they could change and go back and do a little differently , but it is a hard reality that time marches on and we can never go back. I liked that about your article (though I am sure you did not). I liked it because I could connect and relate to it in a far greater way than if you had told us that you and your grandpa went out and had an awesome day and caught lots of fish and blah, blah, blah.
6. Conclusion and Resolution – Quickly and profoundly you tuned the entire circumstances around in the very last sentence. A perfect end to a perfect beginning and middle.
A look at the past when things seemed easier and a kid could learn from his grandfarther about fishing, probably the most important thing handed down to me from him. Areally nice story and some good memories, thanks.
Jeremy, upload paradise by John Prine, Rickw wil like that song
Greg,You are right — hey RickW — Click Here For Song And Lyrics – you will certainly appreciate them both.
Thanks for the kind words.
Jeremy,
It means a lot to know that my story struck a chord. I put the story together quite a while ago, I write stories like this and “The Brook Trout” because these are part of who I am and they help me remember where I come from. Sometimes I hesitate to share because they are so personal.
Thanks again for providing this outlet for my nostalgic ramblings…..and one last thing, try the decaf 😉
ps. John Prine is one of my favorite artists, I play many of his songs myself. 🙂
decaf….never.
Rick,
I loved your story…it hits home so hard for me too…tears grew in my sockets as I read on….you see..my father never fished…always working to try to make ends meet with us 5 sons…..but, luckily my Uncle Mike was into fishing…he was lucky to join the ol CCC camps in the Bolton Landing area,learned to fish there…then went off to serve his country like alot of young men did back then..he then returned home and got into fishing for trout….finally one saturday morning as my year older brother ,and I were watching cartoons…the phone rang and we both got hooked on trout from then on…in 1980, my Uncle passed on ,but, the memories of our outings together will never die….you see, after he returned home ,a friend he met in his platoon,made fly rods in PA….I guess he sent him one as a gift after they returned home…well,I never knew my other Uncle had plans for that rod if he passed on…yes, I am so grateful to have received this special bamboo flyrod..I often take it out and wipe it down(the smell is of age ,so ripe and intereting) and put it together and false cast w/out the line,of course…then, I always pause, and the memories of him and his outings with my brother and I come flooding back…I love him and always will….thanks for telling your story to awaken mine again….
yours,
wildbrookies
wildbrookies,
thanks for the good words, I didn’t really expect any more comments after so many months had passed. Like your family, my father didn’t fish either although he did take me to places where I could fish and he bought me my earliest fishing gear.
I’ll never know for sure how I got the “fishing bug”, but my grandfather probably had a lot to do with it. The one thing I do know is I have always, as long as I can remember, been fanatical about fishing.
If I were you, I would fish with your uncle’s rod as an homage to the man who got you hooked.
Warmest Regards,
Rick