WILL H. DILG
In the game of life there’s always one guy who talks a big game, but never quite lives up to it. Too often he lets his ego and excitement get the best of him and forgets to do the easy essentials. We can all relate to the following hilarious sketch about several friends on a fishing trip.
If the following incident had happened to me instead of to Jesse Newton, it would have been my most tragic moment, as it was his. As it turned out, it was tragedy for him and comedy to the rest of us. That, I believe, is the usual way with life.
Jesse is an old-timer, and when he was a young man he was among the best trappers, hunters, and fishermen in his little town of Lowell, Michigan. He owns up to it himself—not only owns up to it but insists on it. But he is getting old and rheumatic, and after a week’s work, feels more like staying around home than traipsing up and down a half dozen creeks looking for a trout.
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His younger brother and I have “parded” on the fishing stuff for many years, and in framing up one of our Sunday trips we asked Jesse to come along. He was pleased to accept the invitation. His jointed cane “poles” had been put away years before, all wrapped in newspaper and thrown into the attic, together with the usual amount of cast-offs relegated to that part of a well-regulated home. He gathered his package and his tobacco box full of the usual junk, and when Lizzie came, Sunday at about two in the morning, he was as “peppy” as we were and “rarin” to go.
It was a great pleasure to see the years fall from him and although usually taciturn, he talked a blue streak all the thirty-five miles to the first creek. These are “grasshopper” creeks—too narrow and grass grown to get a fly to, and at many places even too overgrown with grass to get a hopper into.
We hit the first one just as it was getting light enough to find hoppers. It was a perfect morning, everything set. Jesse was as cocky as an Airedale pup and assured us that, when he got his pole to working, he would have his limit by eight, and then would have to help us catch ours. The thrill of anticipation had him and he acted about thirteen years old.
First out of the car, he got his junk from under my feet. All of a sudden, he “blew up.” I have said he was quiet and unobtrusive. Right then, he was not. He sure does know lots of one-hundred-proof swear words, and I learned a great number from him in the next minute or two. Calamity had overtaken him. He had thrown his package into the grass, and after we had calmed him and had him coherent again, he showed us what he had trustingly brought thirty-five miles on a trout trip. What he had thought was his package of “poles” were two little parasols [umbrellas] belonging to his girls!