He saw what might have been a whirling dervish swinging a turban sash. The sight and the tumult and the caterwauling that accompanied the scene not only called him abruptly into the wakened world, but also scared the hell out of him. No Wagnerian heroine nor Persian dervish, it was his wife, Carna, causing all the commotion.
The first words he could pick out were delivered at both a high velocity and decibel level. Here was his bride, pointing and shouting: “How did these get into your car?”
She’d discovered the pair of panty hose Clayton McHugh hid in Jim’s fishing gear when he wasn’t looking. Thinking fast, Jim answered: “Oh, you mean those experimental, extra-light, stocking foot waders?” It didn’t do him a bit of good. His dream girl has absolutely no sense of humor when she is rattled.
From that auspicious beginning, Jim’s day continued, every moment replete with a full measure of wrath, indignation and bile, occasionally lapsing into acrimony, rage and choler. Every modest inconsideration of which he may have been falsely accused during the previous thirty years was dredged up, dusted off and hurled at him.
He spent the whole day with an almost tangible apprehension that he was about to be physically assaulted. He jumped at every loud noise and there were many of them. To be on the safe side, he locked the gun cabinet and hid the shells and cartridges.
The moon had risen on that long, long day before Carna was finally convinced the panty hose must have been planted. She concluded (a) Jim wouldn’t be that stupid; (b) he had a naturally honest look about him and, alternatively; (c) just maybe there was some truth in the story about them being left over from last fall when they were taken to the South Dakota hunt and intended to be used to carry pheasant specimen to the taxidermist without the risk of damaging their feathers.
With a calm and civilized atmosphere restored to the domicile, Jim’s review of the events of that longest day of the year provoked a serious reflection on the pressures, hardships and adversities inflicted upon mankind simply because of the times in which we live.
Consider the extent to which our lives have been dislocated by that complicated series of yes/no switches we call the computer. A reservation clerk at the airlines may make an error all by himself and put an extra passenger or two on a flight. Give a computer a chance and it will try to put twice the capacity of the airplane on board.
Then there’s that marvel of the age - television. Give any hardened criminal the choice and he will opt for capital punishment rather than be sentenced to ten years of watching TV commercials.
Ain’t science wonderful? A generation ago we managed to get by without cordless and mobile telephones which, each day, allow more people you don’t want to talk to to talk to you. Some people, I am told, actually arrange to have telephones put into their cabins. Incredible!
Thanks to the development of modern technology and probably mega-dollar governmental grants over the last fifty years, fishermen have been able to advance from the use of split bamboo to steel, to fiber glass and to graphite boron fly rods. Now that we’re friendly with China and can again get the right material, we are again able to make split bamboo fly rods.
Half the people in the country will die of some kind of heart problem. Now, due to advanced medical carpentry, we can give them sound transplanted hearts. Of course, we have to kill off the other half of the population in order to get the healthy hearts.
It’s a tougher world than that of auld lang syne - that yesteryear before the sensibilities of the human race were deflowered by such things as the form of musical expression known as punk rock. It’s no wonder the blood pressure, like Hemingway’s sun, also rises. When I was a lad, life was much more comfortable. The stresses and complications of today were absent. It was a simpler time.
For example, there were mud turtles and snapping turtle and no other kinds of turtles to clutter up the genus. There were only two kinds of snakes - pine and grass. Pine snakes were long and black. Grass snakes weren’t. Birds were a bit more complicated, but any small bird that wasn’t a wren or yellow and, hence, a canary, was a sparrow. Anthropomorphism hadn’t captured the hearts and minds of the non-sportsman.
(I apologize for that. You see, I’ve always wanted to use the word “anthropomorphism.” I’ve also wanted to use the word “antidisestablishmentarianism.” I suppose I’ll never cause the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” to appear in print.)
In that simpler time, people died of old age, not hypertension. A duck stamp and a fishing license cost one dollar. A Chrysler cost $777, F.O.B. Detroit. A dozen decoys set you back $10. Today you can sell the same used blocks for $100 a copy.
They were halcyon times. Wisconsin had a fifteen duck per day bag limit and no unmanageable point system. The water in trout stream ran 9 degrees cooler. The hatches extended throughout the entire season. There were no aluminum beer cans marking deer stands. The racks on bucks were thick and heavy at the base. Pheasants’ tails were all over 18 inches long.
What triggered the change from those happy times? What transformed our lives into this pressure tank, boiler factory existence? Was it the rise of Adolf Hitler? Or creeping socialism? Or the Department of Natural Recourses? No, friends, none of the above. According to Jim Zimmerman, the advent of stress and hypertension, the decay of ethical standards and the breakdown of time honored moral values all started with the invention of panty hose.
Wishing Won’t Make It So
Doug Owen’s wife collected things. She attended all flea markets and garage sales within a fifty mile radius of the homestead. Every auctioneer in the state knew her on a first name basis. It seemed like everything she bought went into the garage. It go so bad Doug had his choice of enlarging his home to accommodate all of the junk or throwing something away.
Doug sent his better half out of town so she wouldn’t know what was happening, rolled up his sleeves and started cleaning out the garage.
One of the items he found was a peculiarly shaped brass pot. Doug thought: “What the hell, maybe it’s a magic lamp. I’ll give it a couple of rubs and see what happens.” So he did and to his surprise nothing happened. He threw the pot into the trailer.
When he had a full load, he went to the dump. The pot was in one of the armfuls of trash Doug grabbed from the trailer. It fell to the ground as he made his way to the edge of the landfill. He didn’t want to drop everything and try to pick it up so he started kicking it to its final resting place. On the fourth kick, a cloud of colored smoke came out of the pot and a genie materialized before him.
“Just a minute,” said Doug. “I rubbed that pot three times and nothing happened. What’s this all about, anyway?”
“Well,” responded the Genie, “there’s been a change in the rules. The union met last year and we decided to switch from three rubs to four kicks. You see, everybody and his brother caught on to the three rub routine. Every time anyone saw anything made out of brass, they’d give it three rubs and we’d have to come out.
“There was no place to hide. We were being called on right and left. We were being worked to death - and the wishes we had to fulfill! Do you realize bust measurements averaged 28 inches before all this magic got going?”
“Oh, I’m not interested in stuff like that,” said Doug. “I’m too busy hunting and fishing and building ice shanties and tying flies and . . .”
“Not another outdoors type”, groaned the genie. “Just my luck. I’m getting awfully sick of having to produce trophy specimens for you guys. Last year’s world record black bear almost ruptured me.”
“O.K, O.K,” said Doug. “Just give me the standard three wish package - power, a million bucks, and a cabin on a trout stream.”
“You’re my kind of guy,” said the genie who then got a funny look on