Yesterday afternoon I betook myself down to the stream that runs through our village, and put on the costume that on other person’s bodies might indicate a skilled fisherman, including waders and boots to keep a person from sliding about on mossy rocks. I then proceeded to vigorously flail the waters with my Tenkara rod and line while doing absolutely no damage to the fish population thereabouts.
There was a young couple upstream from me who were having the same luck, and were still enjoying themselves as much as I was. It was mid-December and the three of us were out there, with no shivering, no frozen fingers, no snow or ice … a complete absence of misery.
I wear sunglasses with Polaroid lenses when fishing, allowing me to cut through the normal glare on the clear water and see fish if any are present. I saw none at all. I have no idea where they went and why they weren’t on that particular stretch of water. I know that if I were a trout, that’s where I’d be, no doubt about it. It was lovely.
Walking around in flowing rivers is not the perfect milieu for a geezer. You know how it is to watch an infant who is just learning to walk? How they careen unsteadily across the room looking as if at any moment they will take a header into the furniture? I’m pretty sure that’s how I look walking in streams. Seniors like myself have enough problems navigating on dry and level surfaces, and our balance issues are magnified when walking on slippery and rocky-bottomed streams.
Yesterday I felt as if I were going to go in swimming … let’s see … about a gazillion times during my two hours on the river. Somehow that never happened, but I think that I am realistic in accepting that if I go out there enough times I will eventually take a cool bath.
******
******
******
Biting The Hand That Feeds Me Department
Most of my posts over the years have contained at least one purloined cartoon from the New Yorker archives. That wonderful storehouse is an amazing thing to wander. Type in the name of your subject and be rewarded with the best that the art form can offer. I publish a handful of them here because I love them, and try always to attribute them properly, hoping to be given a more comfortable prison cell when the magazine gets down to prosecuting small-change thieves like myself.
But when I get to the present-day version of the magazine, I find nothing worth stealing. Every week I go through these cartoons and am saddened by how pathetic they are, how unfunny, how they are repeatedly guilty of terminal archness. The old guard cartoonists have died off one by one and been replaced by, I don’t know, unimaginative people who draw fairly well. Don’t look for the lovely dementedness of a George Booth panel like the one above because you won’t find it in today’s bland drawings.
So how ungrateful can an unworthy burglar be, to criticize the people he is stealing from? It’s an upside-down world my friends, is the only explanation I can offer.
******
******
A Repeated And Enormous Puzzlement
Not infrequently I will order cole slaw as a side when eating out in casual restaurants. This, in spite of the fact that most of the time I will be brought a highly disappointing bowl of chopped and undistinguished cabbage that remains uneaten when I have departed my table.
I love cole slaw. It is a simple dish, requires no cooking, and asks very little of the preparer in order to be attractive and tasty. But over and over the words tasteless, insipid, plain, weak, unsavory, watery, thin, and dead come to mind as the first forkful reaches my taste buds.
It’s an affront of the highest order, and can mean only one of two things. Either the cook never tasted what they were sending out to the customers, or they did but didn’t care. Their eyes were on the main entrée and not on the sides.
The world of recipes available on the internet contains hundreds of formulas that one can follow to make excellent cole slaw. A few ingredients and no cooking skills are all that is required. We’re not talking Michelin stars here, just the most basic kitchen stuff.
I have begun to regard a limp and tasteless bowl of cabbage as an indicator, and marking the whole meal down as a minus score for the establishment.
******
******
******
I am a morning person. More so every year, with my tendency these days to rise before 0500 hours. I never thought of it as something to be concerned about, the world was divided into early people and late people, and that was that. Until today, that is.
This morning the New York Times published a piece in their Science section that stated:
***
***
I read the whole article, looking for bad science, loopholes, imperfect conclusions … couldn’t find any. And then I looked into the mirror and … hmmmm … naw, it’s my imagination. All I really need to do is clean up a bit, brush my hair, scrub my face, and I’ll get back to looking like good ol’ homo sapiens soon enough.
What I will not do is get one of those DNA analyses that purport to show who dallied with who a few thousand years ago and eventually produced me. My self-image is fragile enough without having to accept that just because I like to rise early every day that my distant ancestor’s name was likely to have been Glurk rather than Olaf.
However, the more I look at the photograph, the more I realize that the guy is a dead ringer for a second cousin on my father’s side. He was a little slow in school but by God he could throw a spear like nobody’s business.
******
Little Home In The Valley 