The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories (19 page)

“You mailed it?” Dave said. “The [bleeping] post office! Well, maybe it will arrive today.”

“You never can tell,” I said.

I figured I was off the hook for the moment. I'd get busy right away, think up an idea for the piece, write it, mail it, and blame the whole delay on the post office.

Then Dave said, “Wait a minute. I need to get the artist started on the illustration right away. Describe one of the big scenes to me.”

“Hmm,” I said. “There are so many big scenes.”

By then I had been writing magazine pieces for a long time, and I knew it was a good idea to have a little conflict in each story. So I said, “My wife and I are having an argument.”

“OK got it,” Dave said. “Are you having this argument in the kitchen or where?”

“Outside,” I said. “By the garage.”

“What are you arguing about?”

“A big box,” I said.

“OK,” Dave said. “What's the outdoor angle?”

“The outdoor angle? Well, the box is full of a bunch of outdoor stuff—old fishing rods, and like that.”

“So what's the argument about?”

“Uh, Bun wants me to throw the old stuff away.”

“OK This box any particular color?”

“Green,” I said.

“What's the title of the piece?”

“The Green Box.”

So there is an example of all the thought and stress that goes into writing for a New York outdoor magazine. Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a 2,500-word piece about a stupid green box?

A Routine Fishing Trip

F

or twenty years we had a place on the Clark Fork River near the town of Clark Fork, Idaho. Nothing seemed to go right there. There were always problems. It was one of the few places in the world where I felt at home.

One day I got a call from a Portland, Oregon, TV producer who told me he was bringing a crew up to do a feature on me. I told him my friend Dave Lisaius and I would meet him and his crew in Spokane, and they could follow us up to our fishing spot on the Clark Fork River. The producer said that sounded great, just the sort of angle he was looking for.

So Dave and I met the producer and his crew in Spokane and started off toward the Clark Fork River, about eighty miles away. I was driving my old pickup truck, my canoe strapped to a carrier on top. As we were passing a tire company near a small Idaho town, we heard the distinct thumping of a flat tire—this sound was familiar to both Dave and me and not the sort of thing that caused us any concern. Alas, it turned out my spare tire was also flat. This came as something of a surprise to me, because usually
two
of my tires go flat when I am far back in the mountains. In this case, I had pulled right into the parking lot of a national tire company. I explained to the TV crew that this sort of thing usually didn't happen to me. They apparently assumed I meant getting two flat tires at once, rather than being lucky enough for the flats to occur right next to a tire company. I explained to the crew that I would simply buy a couple of new tires, have one of them installed by the tire company, and we would be on our way. The producer didn't respond well to this news, apparently because he had something called a “deadline” that evening. I had heard of deadlines before but had always found them easy to ignore. Apparently television was a whole different medium. It made me nervous. I ran into the tire company and told them what I needed. The manager sauntered out of his office and said it would be two hours before his people could get to me. I went out and told the producer. He started jumping up and down. I suggested they start shooting our fishing trip right there, even though there wasn't any water in sight. He smiled. “OK, we might as well.” Soon they had all the TV cameras out and were about to start taping me trying to change the flat with the tire company in the immediate background. At that point, the manager came running out and said he'd suddenly had a cancellation and could take care of my tires right then. Soon we were on the road again.

Presently, we arrived at our fishing spot. It wasn't the fishing spot I had planned on but a different one, because I had gotten distracted over all the problems with tires. Finally, we got the canoe launched on this unknown section of the Clark Fork River. It was then that I discovered we had forgotten the paddles. I say “we” because Dave is supposed to remind me of the paddles, because I almost always forget them. He has one responsibility, and he forgets it. I told the producer that this wasn't a serious problem, because Dave and I often used pieces of driftwood for paddles. The producer jumped up and down and pulled at his hair, while the crew got out the cameras and started shooting footage of Dave and me paddling around with two pieces of driftwood. After a while we caught a fish. It was about seven inches long. An hour or so later, we caught another fish but it was small. So far the fishing trip had been pretty much routine for Dave and me, but I could tell the producer hadn't had much experience with the art of angling. Dave and I regard fishing as a relaxing activity, but it was clear the producer wasn't enjoying himself nearly as much as we and his crew were.

Several weeks later, the TV station sent me copies of the feature, and it was wonderful, particularly in its realistic capture of fishing as a sport. After the first segment, the announcer on the show said to its producer, “I understand, John, this is the first time you've ever gone fishing.” The producer said, “Yes, Fred, it is. But never again!”

So, it was just as I had suspected.

The Brown Pelican

I

was just sitting here on the sixth-floor balcony of a resort hotel (
borrr-ing
!) in Florida, 3,000 miles from my home in the Pacific Northwest, when a brown pelican flew by. It's the first time I have seen a brown pelican. For that matter, it's the first time a brown pelican has ever seen me. I seem to be the only one of the two of us who was impressed. The pelican, by all appearances, couldn't have cared less.

I have been doing a lot of reading about brown pelicans lately. Well, not really. Any reading at all about brown pelicans probably seems like a lot. There isn't that much written about brown pelicans, or any other color of pelicans, for that matter. Nevertheless, I have been reading a hotel pamphlet about them. To me, they are much more interesting than, say, Wall Street raiders, Donald Thump, Porter Sims, or Zsa Zsa McShane, who right now are all the rage with the news magazines and newspapers. On the other hand, you could probably read all the publications on a supermarket magazine rack for a year and not come across a single word about brown pelicans.

One of the interesting things I've learned about pelicans— the brown ones, at least—is that when they dive into the water, they turn over on their backs a split second before impact. Supposedly, they do this to keep from breaking their necks. I wonder how pelicans discovered this. I can imagine a long history of pelicans in neck braces, before one of them accidentally flipped over on his back before striking the water—“Hey, guys, I think I've got it!”

My literature on brown pelicans reveals that they strike the water with such force that the target fish is stunned, and then the pelican gobbles it up. There seems to be some similarity here with the way Wall Street raiders strike their victims—a different kind of fish, of course. Perhaps the raiders have studied the pelican's fishing techniques. It would be interesting to know if they flip over on their backs just before the hit. I don't know that much about Wall Street raiders.

I regret to report that the brown pelican, unlike the Wall Street raider, is a threatened species. This may strike you as sad and even tragic, as it does me. I withheld the news from the brown pelican that just flew by, because I didn't want to ruin his day. I don't think there's anything he could do about his being threatened anyway. I suspect he's pretty ignorant about the whole business of extinction. Maybe one of the brown pelican's children asked him, “Daddy, what does ‘extinct' mean?” And he tells the kid, “Don't bother me with your stupid questions, Jason. Go catch a fish! And remember to turn over on your back!”

The brown pelican appears to me to be another innocent bystander who's about to become a victim to the great environmental disaster known as the Twentieth Century. Every year, dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands, of species become extinct. I'm sure no one knows exactly how many— or when. There might be a few tough old individuals of a species hiding out in a swamp or on a mountain somewhere, awaiting their chance to stage a comeback. Or maybe they don't even know their kind is about to be extinct. They might just wonder why none of their friends or relatives visit any more. He thinks, “Maybe I have bad breath. Maybe it's my unsightly dandruff.” You wouldn't want to tell him, “No, you idiot, your species is going extinct!”

It's hard to get worked up about the extinction of a species you never knew existed in the first place. Species come and species go, you say. The problem is that, during my lifetime, a few thousand species have gone, and I haven't heard of a single one coming back. We're running a deficit on species. We have a species-flow problem. Of course, maybe some species have come online that I haven't heard about. I don't get around all that much, and people don't make a habit of calling me to report new species. Maybe where you live, new species are popping up all over the place. I hope that's the case. I also hope none of these new species are flying snakes or that sort of thing. Flying cows would be bad, too. (“We interrupt this broadcast to report a low-flying-cow alert for the Denver area. Stay tuned for further details.”)

Extinction, in my opinion, is not totally bad, as long as it's happening to the other guy, of course. I doubt if people would get too worked up to read the following news story: “Tragedy struck Thursday in Two Dot, Montana, when Molly, the world's last surviving mosquito, escaped from her cage and landed on the neck of a passing cowboy, who. . . .”

And how about pterodactyls, those vicious giant flying reptiles that lived back in dinosaur days, one of the least popular times for picnics? Suppose pterodactyls didn't become extinct. Suppose right now you're sitting in your duck blind and a flock of pterodactyls come flapping in over your decoys. (“Hush, Sport, hush!”) You see what I mean? Extinction isn't all bad.

Speaking of pterodactyls, does anyone know for sure what happened to them? Did they just suddenly die off, to the resounding cheers of the other creatures then extant, or did they slowly blend into another species, such as our own? Impossible, you say, but then you probably never saw my Uncle Shamus. Talk about your weird coincidences—my Uncle Shamus is also extinct now. So how do you figure that? As my mother used to be fond of saying, it just goes to show.

I hope the preceding thoughts and reflections give you some idea of just how boring it is to be sitting here on a tiny sixth-floor balcony in a Florida resort hotel. The only thing of interest to happen in the last hour was that a plump lady walked by the pool in a bikini so tight she looked as if she was about to be shot out of it. Oh, yes, and a brown pelican flew by. Well, the brown pelican hasn't come by again. I hope he hasn't gone and done something stupid, like become extinct. You know how it is, forget just one time to flip over on your back when you dive for a fish and,
whop
, you're history.

Canoodled

A

ll my life, I have loved canoes. I like anything that floats: inner tubes, float tubes, my boat-in-a-bag, rubber rafts, kayaks, rowboats, yachts, and even ships, although nothing larger than a light cruiser. (Battleships and aircraft carriers are too hard to turn.) But it's only canoes I love. Otherwise, I'm fairly normal.

Kayaks are fine, except I have trouble putting them on and taking them off. Yachts are great, too, but if the motor won't start and you become the sole source of power, they're awfully hard to row. Also, they're difficult to store in your garage. You can shove a canoe up into the rafters, but let's see you try that with a yacht. There's an old saying, “If you can afford a yacht, you can afford to moor it.” (Actually, the saying isn't that old. I made it up just five seconds ago).

One of the great hardships of my life is that I have never owned a jetboat. It's a terrible thing to admit, but there you go. Sometimes you simply become too distracted by work and other absurdities to focus on the important things in life. If reincarnation exists, I will definitely buy a jetboat my next time around, even if it means observers might shout out, “Look! A squirrel driving a jetboat.” There are certain risks to consider in regard to both jetboats and reincarnation.

I once wrote a book titled
They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?
For nearly forty years, canoe enthusiasts have bought that book like crazy. They actually think the book is about canoes! Ha! I haven't gone back and read the book in about forty years, so I'm not sure what it's about. It may even contain the story about how I came to marry my wife. Then again, maybe not.

I must confess that when I was young I was very particular about the women I dated. They had to be smart, beautiful, unmarried, and employed. A girl with the nickname of Bun had all those qualifications, and so one day I took her out for the final test—a canoe cruise down the North Fork of the Clearwater River in Idaho. At one point, the canoe swamped in rapids and Bun floated away in her life jacket, occasionally popping up through the whitewater on top of a towering wave. It was then that I noticed she was gathering up various flotsam of gear that had recently in the bottom of the canoe. Although I don't regard it as an essential, I do appreciate tidiness in a spouse. At that very moment, I said, “Bun's the woman for me!”

On our honeymoon, I took Bun on a river float trip in the rain. As she confessed later, it was then she had her first doubts about the institution of marriage. Rafting or canoeing rivers is a wonderful test for a spouse. Bun says so herself.