I'm Just One Good Excuse Away from a New Shotgun

     As summer gets long in the tooth and humid days give way to cool nights with the smell of approaching fall in the air, my thoughts turn to adding to my modest gun collection. I begin leaving Gun Digest books around the house, and the "Favorites" space on our computer becomes populated with the websites of firearms manufacturers.

     How fortuitous, then, that the Federal Government decided earlier this year that my wife, Lori, and I were eligible for an "economic incentive" payment. Like many, I questioned the wisdom of stimulating our country's economy by going further into debt. However, while I have done some dumb things in my life, refusing free money has never been one of them.

     For many sportsmen, the chief obstacle to acquiring a new firearm is the considerable veto power of a spouse. Lori has never been that way.

     "If you need a new gun, why don't you buy one?" she told me this summer. "You can use the money from the government."

     Of course, I returned her generosity. Marriage, as they say, is about give-and-take. For example, Lori advised me last week that she had not bought a new pair of shoes in ten years and was forced to go barefoot.

     I allotted her $10. I am not an unfeeling soul.

     For years, I've lusted after a 20-gauge side-by-side to tote to my favorite grouse coverts. But I haven't been able to pull the trigger, so to speak, because I don't live in partridge country and don't get after the brown rockets all that often.

     In my neck of the woods, the primary game bird available when fall fishing and deer hunting is over is...the common crow.

     Nobody ever waxes nostalgic about fine crow guns.

     Perhaps I'll be the first. I could order a trim Best Gun from the Basque Country of Spain. Inlaid in gold on the receiver would be a delicate scene depicting a brace of crows tearing into curb-side trash bags.

     Of course, here in the real world, there are three obstacles to me acquiring a new upland gun. First is the fact that a good side-by-side is expensive.

     Second is the fact that they are overwhelmingly made in foreign lands.

     People in Turkey and Italy need to make a living, too, but I can't justify propping up the economies of those countries with a payment meant to support ours. Third-- and this is a mental defect on my part-- a new 20-gauge doesn't fill a significant niche which needs filling.

     The last gun I bought-- a Marlin .22 semiautomatic rifle-- filled a niche. For several years, I participated in a rabbit-hunting tournament based out of a tavern in Monroe. The first year I was invited, I showed up with a Marlin 39A lever gun. My fellow bunny chasers looked at me as if I was from outer space. The rifle was far too slow with repeat shots on speeding cottontails.

     The next winter, I took along a .22 target pistol. Wyatt Earp I'm not. Those bunnies are fast.

     Finally, last winter, I achieved success with the Marlin semi-auto. It was fast and reliable in the cold as we waded through briars in search of rabbits.

     Sadly, this past summer, the bar which hosted the tournament burned down. Now I have the perfect gun in my cabinet for a niche which no longer exists.

     My friend, John, is not troubled by the idea that a gun must fill a niche to be bought. For years, he collected Remington Model 700 rifles-- two in each caliber.

     I can understand that. I'm a Remington fan, and have a Model 700 myself.

     John's problem-- in addition to gun-induced poverty-- is that he is extremely susceptible to advertising shown on hunting programs.

     He is currently enamored with the Thompson-Center Encore rifles that are so common on hunting shows today, and now all those Model 700's will simply become rudimentary tools to him, not even good enough to scrape ice off of a sidewalk.

     Of course, the same fate will befall the Encore when a new rifle comes along. Then, John might only look on his Encores with a slightly wistful eye-- such as you might a former girlfriend who was nice enough, but "not quite marrying material."

     Perhaps I'll buy a pistol-- made in the USA, of course.

     My brother Craig and I, along with our friends Gregg and Cary, make an annual trip to Fountain City. Shooting is our main activity, and a new pistol would be a nice addition to the shotguns and clay targets we bring along.

     In regard to the trip, Cary possesses what men would term an innocent sense of adventure. Cary's wife, Ellen, would use the words "questionable judgment."

     Before Cary left to join us this February, Ellen kissed him at the door.

     "Have fun," she said. "Be safe, and DON"T DO ANYTHING STUPID."

     And so a Saturday morning found us looking out a farmhouse window at a snowy landscape while we drank coffee and anticipated the day's shooting.

     "I wonder if my truck can make it all the way down the valley and back," Cary wondered aloud, before thinking better of it.

     He wondered again and again, until finally, he raced outside to his truck that evening as we cheered him on.

     We watched his taillights shrink into the night, until they stopped, remained motionless for an hour, and winked out.

     Cary clomped into the kitchen after his long walk back.

     "I'm stuck," he said.

     "But I just need a little push," he added, in perhaps the greatest understatement of all time.

     Now, four-wheel-drive is a useful tool. But for it to be effective, a truck's wheels cannot be prevented from touching the ground by six feet of drifted snow.

     The next morning, as we shoveled and shoveled and shoveled, I gasped, "Cary, what did Ellen say to you before you left?"

     "Don't do anything stupid," he grinned.

     Speaking of stupid, I guess buying a new gun probably falls into that category. Our house has been sporadically maintained since it was built in 1940, and there is no shortage of improvements to throw money at. Lori and I charged a new stove, and will probably be better served by using our economy-improving incentive to pay for it.

     So, no new gun for me.

     That's alright. I don't mind.

     Having an oven that lets you know when it's pre-heated is so much better than swinging a nice, light 20-gauge at ruffed grouse or clays on high-house Station 8.

     Yeah... I didn't think you'd buy that.

Apocalypse Now: When Even the Sheepshead Won't Bite

     I'm ready. And I expect you are too-- ready to feel a warm breeze on your face and to feel line slip through your fingers as a fish takes the bait.

     The fishing opener might not be as big of a deal as opening day of gun-deer season-- because fishing season lasts so much longer-- but it's close.

     Part of the reason it's so exciting is that we're enduring another long winter. Of course, I'm not referring to first-ice, fresh-snow-on-the-evergreens winter, with deer season just concluded and venison in the freezer. I mean the mid-February kind of winter, where you sit on the ice all day for a wind-flag on the tip-ups and a perch you could read a newspaper through. It's leave-for-work-in-the-dark and come-home-in-the-dark winter-- the kind where you kick at the frozen slush clods clinging to your vehicle and break a toe, thus ruining the weekend's planned rabbit hunt.

     I get through winters like a lot of outdoorsmen-- with a little ice-fishing and a little rabbit hunting. And, of course, I watch fishing shows on television. You know the kind-- walleyes the size of spaniels are the norm on every cast, motors never conk out, and nobody ever botches a net job with the fish of a lifetime on a buddy's line and then has to endure the long drive home with that fact sitting cold between them like a marital infidelity.

     When I tire-- usually quickly-- of watching fishing shows, I pull out my fishing journals. I've kept them since I was a kid. It's fun to relive memories, whether of ancient times or the season just past.

     A highlight of last season was a particular trip to Port Washington, a location my wife, Lori, calls my "Happy Place." On the day in question, I caught a huge brown trout shortly after arriving-- a great start to the day.

     Things got worse in a hurry, though, when Lori arrived and I had to explain that I'd blown the week's budget on a $54 electronic scale and a visit to the taxidermist. Happy Place, indeed.

     Older journal entries take me farther back, to Menasha, where I grew up a few blocks from Lake Winnebago. I was obsessed with fish then, same as now, and spent every available moment on the water.

     Looking back, it was a kind of paradise. Apologies to my hometown-- it was a wonderful place to grow up, and I'm sure it still is-- but I believe that's the first time anyone has ever used the words "Menasha" and "paradise" in the same paragraph.

     It was impossible to get skunked, or at least it seems that way to me now. If the walleyes wouldn't cooperate, then the smallmouths would. If the bronzebacks didn't bite, there were always white bass. If the white bass weren't willing, there was always the lowly sheepshead. If the sheepshead weren't biting, though, then you had best get your spiritual affairs in order, because that is the first sign of the impending apocalypse.

     Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to a trip I made to Lake Winnebago last summer.

     "Should be a sure thing," I told my co-workers. "After all, I grew up there, and even if conditions are a little tough, well, I am an extremely talented fisherman."

     I didn't actually say the last part, but I certainly felt it. Hey, I thought. I'll ask my dad if he wants to go. Ya know, it would be kind of a nice thing to take the old man out, fill his freezer with walleye fillets, and just generally repay him in some small way for being such a great father over the years. On top of being an extremely talented fisherman, I'm also a genuinely giving soul.

     The night before our trip, I packed an arsenal of equipment into my boat. I neglected nothing. Heck, I even replaced a trailer tire that was looking worn. In addition to being an extremely talented fisherman and a genuinely giving soul, I'm also exceptionally well-organized.

     I hit the road under a sky filled with bright, crisp stars, or at least stars which were bright and crisp once I left Madison and they were no longer so tightly regulated.

     I enjoyed the time to myself. I sipped coffee to the hum of the radials, and listened to the o-dark-thirty radio themes of spiritual salvation and home hairball remedies.

     In Fond du Lac, the sky began to split with lightning, and as I drove through the little towns of Pipe, Calumetville and Quinney, I looked to the west and saw dawn breaking over a lake pounding with waves.

     O.K., I thought to myself, this is a little tough. I downgraded my assessment of the day's possibilities to maybe four walleyes apiece instead of the full bag.

     Dad looked skeptical at the door when I rang the bell, with the Weather Channel screen sprawling like a green amoeba behind him, but we headed to the launch once the sirens abated and the last barnyard animal had cleared the roof.

     In the water at last, I pulled the starter cord on my 9.9 outboard and it roared (well, popped) to life-- and promptly quit.

     You know that little hose at the back of an outboard that squirts the water out after it has cooled the engine? Apparently it's crucial that the hose be outside of the motor, and not inside of it.

     My father, who built a houseboat in our backyard in his early 30's, quickly figured that one out. His son, who at almost 40 is reasonably adept with a mechanical pencil, did not.

     As we cleared the High Cliff harbor and headed south toward Stockbridge, the wind had abated somewhat. However, it was at this point that I admitted to myself that while I was familiar with the west side of the lake-- or, more specifically, with a tiny section adjacent to where I grew up-- I didn't know a darned thing about the east shore.

     "All right," I said to the fishing deities. "I'll make you a deal. Two walleyes apiece. They don't have to be huge, you understand. Then, maybe throw in a jumbo perch and an undersized bass and we'll call it a day."

     We trolled and we jigged. We casted and we drifted, until at last, the extremely talented fisherman and his father called it quits and headed back to shore.

     Final score?

     Me?

     Do I have to come right out and say it?

     Dad?

     One sheepshead.

     Apocalypse narrowly averted, and another notch in the belt of Boy Genius.


   

More Myth than Bird

     The morning air felt crisp and fine as the hunter followed the aging pointer through old, familiar coverts. The remaining aspen leaves twirled gently in the breeze as he listened to the tinkling of the bell. Suddenly the sound stopped. The hunter's pulse quickened. He walked in on the point, and the roar of one bird, and then another, found him with a shouldered gun. The double barrel spoke twice. After a brief search, the dog brought the birds to the hunter's feet. Later, as he cleaned his partridge by a woodland stream with gun broken over his knee, the hunter thought what a fine morning it had been.

     Has this ever happened to you?

     Me either.

     Well, the sentiment has, but the reality? Never. It hasn't because Bonasa umbellus isn't actually a bird.

     It's a myth.

     A squirrel is just a squirrel, and no one waxes nostalgic about the cotton-tailed rabbit or snowshoe hare. The white-tailed deer used to be more romantic, but years of 1 million-plus herds, bonus permits and car kills have made the deer seem, well, more common. But say "grouse," and the classic New England images of stone fences, apple orchards, small-bore doubles and braces of liver-and-white Brittanies come to mind. Never before has a beady-eyed, dim-witted, 1-pound bird received such a massive onslaught of public relations.

     I suspect I'm like most hunters in that I'm democratic-- I hunt what I can when I can. But I love grouse hunting, and get to do some of it each fall. My problem is that the classic images in my head never match my results afield.

     I remember well my first grouse. I walked along a trail near the Wisconsin River south of Stevens Point. With my gun at port arms, I looked ahead to see a block of woods consisting mostly of oaks but with some declining aspens. It was fronted by a thick wall of berry bushes and looked birdy. I had a sixth sense about what was about to happen.

     A grouse flushed and roared away with the sound of a bike with playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes. I pointed the gun toward the bird and pulled the trigger. As the report faded, there was a dying flutter of wings on the forest floor.

     I was elated.

     While cleaning the bird, I discovered no pellets-- not even in the head or neck. It stood to reason. I killed the only couch-potato partridge in Wisconsin-- the bird had died of a heart attack. Shortly before I arrived, it had munched lazily on catkins while its mate nagged about the unused Stairmaster in a corner.

     Nowadays, I have a side-by-side double-barrel-- just like those in the fancy magazines-- which I sometimes use for grouse hunting. But it is a .410, and it only looks expensive when the sun hits it right. In almost every how-to grouse piece I've read, the .410 has been deemed inadequate for grouse hunting or has been damned with faint praise as an expert's gun. I'm no expert, but I routinely dismiss their assertions that the .410's pattern is too sparse and likely to wound a bird. I don't worry about that. When I shoot at a grouse, it's in the next time zone when my shot arrives where it was. Inadequate or not, I enjoy carrying the gun, mostly in my own nod to sentiment. It was my grandfather's. When I hunt with it, I think of him carrying the gun behind beagles, and recall what he used to say to me during games of cribbage: "Miss 'em with one barrel, get 'em with the other."

     I do him one better, and miss 'em with both.

     My regular grouse gun, though, is the same gun I use for everything else: a nearly 9-pound 12-gauge pump. The wood is plain, and the checkering is pressed, not cut. At the end of a day with it, I feel like I've been lugging a small child. However, it does the job when I do my part, and I like to think it hearkens back to the days when guns were tools, not status symbols.

     Occasionally, I encounter some waxed-cotton swell with a silver-plated, hand-embossed dog whistle and a gun that cost more than my car. I know there's a brand-new Range Rover or the like packed with the entire contents of two sporting-goods catalogs back at the logging road.

     "Road-hunter. He's only in it for the meat," I can almost hear him think as he issues a condescending farewell after a last glance at my gun. I get some perverse satisfaction out of that, and I think it's because of the chance to thwart one of the main elements of the old, classic, "gentlemanly" idea of partridge hunting: snobbery.

     Outdoorsmen are lucky because there seems to be less snobbery in our pursuits than in other sports, such as golf or tennis. But it is there, particularly in sporting clays, grouse hunting and grouse hunting's aesthetic twin, fly-fishing for trout. I think we've all encountered someone who acted as if the accumulation of accoutrements earned access to a fraternity. What these people don't understand is that we go to the woods to escape the social scale, not to climb it.

     When trout fishing, I use spinning tackle --the horror!-- and favor spinners and chub tails as bait. My pet stream is a jungle laced with deadfalls, swamp muck and stinging nettles, and I like to get so far back that the only boot prints I see are mine from a month earlier. I despise coming back-- cut, stung and sweating, cooled only by the leaks in my waders-- to find some sneering chap belaboring the bridgeside pool for the few remaining hatchery trout because backcasts are easier to make there, and besides, those alder thickets upstream are just so nasty.

     Enough of my vendetta. Back to grouse.

     When I was in college, my friends and I hunted a small patch of woods near Polonia, which is near Stevens Point. We hunted a lot, and our grades reflected it. The land was beautiful-- a brook trout stream ran through it, and a peak gave way to reveal a golden cornfield framed on three sides by flaming maples and aspens. The spot looked classic, and every time I paused there I thought of a painting: Two birds roar away from a pointing dog as a gentleman shoulders his side-by-side.

     But the birds didn't care about art. They were in the thick stuff; a nearly impenetrable jungle of black spruce. We got through by lumbering, sweating and falling, cursing as we became mired in muck and as branches slapped us in the face. The partridge were there, but we couldn't shoot what we couldn't see until one of us hunkered low to the ground and walked like a crab. We imitated him. Shots came awkwardly, but at least we could see. One memorable day, we killed three grouse that way; all on the wing, which was an important distinction in those days. We celebrated with beer and pickled eggs in a Rosholt tavern; bent low over the bar to minimize the pain in our backs.

     A week later my grandmother commented on my poor posture.

     Maybe I'm just being cranky, and I-- who received 12 years of Catholic education-- should be more sympathetic to the old idea of grouse hunting and its quirks. After all, what is grouse hunting to the people who live for it but a religion? And discounting snobs, maybe the fine guns and the hand-signed, limited-edition prints are just symbols of the religion, which gets its faithful through off-seasons and off-cycles when birds are scarce. Maybe my old pump-gun ethic is itself a form of snobbery, and I'm guilty of confusing poverty with morality.

     I don't know.

     I bought a glossy sporting magazine the other day; the kind where the writers have names like landed gentry and where you swear the publishers have infused the pages with the smell of English leather. In the magazine was an advertisement for a gun; a fine gun with two barrels, gold inlays and exotic wood to match an exotic name. I want that gun.

     A turnaround?

     Maybe.

     But at night, when the moonlight streams through the blinds and glints off the barrel of the pump-gun leaning in the corner, I hide the magazine under the mattress, like a teen-ager with a copy of Playboy.

     One year, we hunted up north, the entire Jump River crew. It was the third day, and we divided into groups, each with a dog, to explore new territory. Before we left the logging road, Kevin's golden put a bird up. It flew straight away-- an easy shot.

     I missed three times.

     The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to limit my magazine's capacity to one to conserve lead.

     Hours later, we were exhausted and soaked, and I remembered why they call it Indian Summer: it was hot.

     We missed everything we shot at, and the dog had long since departed for parts unknown. Below us was a vast expanse of bog that we had to cross to reach a birdy-looking stand of popple. There wasn't a New England-y stone fence or apple orchard in sight.

     We started down the slope, calling for the dog. I thought of the words of another New England icon, Robert Frost. Other lines are more famous, but I remember these:

     "And miles to go before I sleep.
      And miles to go before I sleep."

     I did sleep later-- a nap before the campfire-- and I dreamt of grouse. They were as big as turkeys, and they were laughing at me.

BB Guns, a Mortgage and the Flow of Mystical Energy

     After years of living in apartments, my wife Lori and I just bought our first home, a bungalow just a couple of blocks from Lake Monona on Madison's east side. It's a nice little house, and we like it a lot. But while owning a home to me chiefly means that at long last I have a place to bury fish guts, it means much more to Lori. She's been painting like a fiend, using colors with names like "Seafoam" and-- I'm not kidding-- "Frosty Melon." With names like that, it's obvious that paint companies are catering to women. If they catered to sportsmen, my den would be "August Algae Bloom," and not "Pear Cactus."

     Lori also bought new furniture, which she's been arranging according to the principles of feng shui. Since most outdoorsmen come from the "Case of Beer Doubles as an End Table" school of decorating thought, I'll explain: Like 99 percent of manufactured goods, feng shui is from China, and supposedly it alters the home environment by improving the flow of Ch'i, or universal energy. After trying dozens of furniture combinations, Lori discovered that the chief obstacle to the harmonious flow of energy in our home was, in fact, me. That's alright. I like it down here behind the water softener, with the litter boxes for our four cats and the scaps of wood left by the previous owner. My goose decoys are here, too, and while Lori's upstairs thinking color combinations I'm thinking of punching some Horicon Zone tags with my friend Bruce this fall.

     I am allowed out of the basement on an every-other-Tuesday basis, and this was my week. I was lying in bed, wide awake, and I could tell that Lori was awake, too.

     "You know, I've been thinking," she said. "I'd really like a winding cobblestone path."

     Ironically enough, I had been thinking the exact same thing, though where the path would wind to I have no idea, since the toad which lives in our backyard can traverse the entire length of it in about 3.5 seconds.

     Actually, I had not been thinking of a winding cobblestone path. I had been thinking of something far, far better, and no, it did not involve Keira Knightley, a hot day, and two hundred pounds of gelatin. I had been thinking of building an airgun range in the basement. Not only would it give me something to do during those bleak days between gun deer season and turkey hunting, but it would make our cats' trips to the litter box far more interesting. A home airgun range would also do something else: bring back a piece of my childhood.

     Remember how much fun BB guns were? Do you remember the thrill of seeing a long box under the tree at Christmas, and the pleasant heft of a tube of BB's?

     My brother Craig and I had twin Daisy air rifles when we were growing up in Menasha, and we spent hours in the basement with those guns, shooting at targets and pop cans and plastic soldiers suspended from a string. We were jealous of a neighbor who had a barrel-cocking European pellet gun which achieved velocities over 1,000 feet per second, but when it came to any kind of competition my brother and I always won. Since we spent countless hours behind the sights of our guns, we were far better shots.

     Mostly, our BB guns were directed at inanimate objects. I hesitate to say this, but I say "mostly" because I did once plug my brother from hiding as he walked home from school. That we are close siblings now is something to wonder at, and I suspect that at some future Thanksgiving between the corn bread and the pumpokin pie he'll drill me with his Daisy and yell, "Twenty years! For twenty years I've been waiting to do that!" That's alright. He already got me back. In high school I had no luck with girls, to the point where I was considering buying a mail-order bride just so I could get a date. My buddies and I would be at my parents' kitchen table, trying to remember which card was trump, and Craig would waltz in with a dozen of the most beautiful girls to be found in the Fox Valley. Maybe it was his prowess with a BB gun.

     Sometimes Craig and I trained our sights on my father's nemesis: starlings. Dad had a birdhouse which he had built erected on a pole in the backyard. It was intended for purple martins, but its chief tenants were starlings and English sparrows. We'd be at the dinner table, with Craig and I trying to sneak scraps to our collie Bonnie, and Dad would hiss "Starling!" One of us would slowly nose a barrel through the kitchen window, tighten a trigger finger, exhale and...

     "Pa-tink!"

     Of course I long ago graduated from cans and starlings to deer and geese and turkeys. My wife Lori was kind enough to let me buy a gun cabinet for my new den-- I guess it didn't interfere with the Ch'i too much-- and there are a couple of empty slots. One of them might just have to be occupied by a BB gun-- maybe even a Daisy like I had when I was a kid. Then, one day when winter is getting to me, I'll slip into the basement with a tube of BB's and while away the hours plinking at targets.

     A man has to get away from Frosty Melon somehow.

Sunset

I'm a lady of few words - so let's just say the pictures speak for themselves.  (Thanks for the suggestion Cousin Ick!)  - Lori (the Art Director and Kurt's other half). Pictures taken Lake Monona, Madison, WI.

Wildlife Art, and Art on Wildlife

     When I first started writing this column, I was concerned that I might eventually run out of material because I need calamitous events to happen so I have something to write about.

     But then I had a happy thought: Why is it necessary that these events happen to me?

     So look for a hilarious account of how my buddy broke his leg in an upcoming issue. Only thing is, he won't break his leg until the second day of this year's muzzleloader season. Guess I can't count on that.

     I was also concerned that as news spread of my ineptness in the woods and on the water, I'd find myself short of hunting and fishing partners.

     This indeed seems to be the case.

     I stopped by my parents' house recently-- kind of a pop-in after a trip to Green Bay-- and asked my dad if he wanted to try a few casts off of the breakwall at High Cliff State Park on Lake Winnebago.

     "No thanks, son," he stammered through the door as he barred the latch. "I have to help your mother pick out dried flower arrangements."

     So now I'm having a difficult time finding someone to hunt squirrels with this fall. My friend, Hodag, would be game-- he was always up for anything-- but he's gone on to his just reward, and by that, I mean heaven, and not the return of 10-point bluebills.

     Fact is, not many people hunt squirrels anymore, and if you mention that you're going, folks look askance at you and exclaim, "Tree rats! What do you want with them for?"

     It wasn't always that way, of course. Kids used to get their start in hunting, as I did, by chasing squirrels. And bushytails were a hunting mainstay of a lot of sportsmen and women even in adulthood.

     I admit that I haven't spent a whole lot of time hunting them in recent years, but I'm not joking when I say that I still dream about my favorite Calumet County squirrel woods, even though I haven't been there in 20 years. I can still feel the roughness of a shagbark hickory against my back, and in my mind's eye, I can see sunlight filtering through black walnut leaves as I sit listening for the patter of falling cuttings.

     I used to have squirrels on the brain the way most hunters nowadays go bonkers over big bucks. I checked out books on them, and even kept them as pets-- I didn't see any contradiction in feeding city squirrels in the morning and going out to hunt their wild cousins in the afternoon. And I live-trapped squirrels in our backyard.

     I trapped them for an advanced biology class I took when I was a senior in high school. That was the only advanced class, except for art, that I've ever taken. If you'll allow me to digress for a little bit, I'd like to talk about that art class before I return to advanced biology.

     I had won promotion to Sister Carla's Salon of Artistes on the strength of a watercolor I painted of a smallmouth bass-- a painting which, against all odds, turned out so well that it won a few awards.

     The advanced art class was full of studious artists. Nothing excited ever happened, except for when I got my tie stuck in a lathe in front of a girl I had a huge crush on. Thus freed of any further concern about scoring points with her, I was able to concentrate on my masterwork. I spent a whole trimester chipping a large plaster block into a small one, which I then painted brown and called a rock.

     True genius is amost never recognized in its time. Being a giant smart-aleck, however, almost always is, and I richly deserved the "F" I received on that project. My classmates from back then probably all work in commercial graphics now, or are artists-in-residence at the Louvre. I, however, am back to having other people draw when I play "Hangman."

     O.K. Thank you. Back to advanced biology.

     A major part of the class consisted of a field project, followed by the dreaded presentation in front of the class. I had the idea of live-trapping squirrels, marking their tails in some manner, and then releasing the squirrels in a far-off neighborhood and observing to see if they returned to their home ranges. The only real hitch was in the marking, as far as I could tell, so the first day of my project found me kneeling next to a closed box trap in the backyard, with a can of yellow spray paint in hand, wondering what all wildlife biologists wonder:

A.) Should I use a primer?
B.) Why are the neighbors staring?
C.) How on earth am I gonna get steel wool anywhere near this critter?

     In the end, a long plastic tube attached to the nozzle of the paint can worked fairly well. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I marked and released a dozen squirrels.

     In case you are wondering, yellow-tailed squirrels do return to their home ranges, and when they come home, they're moving at a pretty good clip.

     As an aside, I repeated this experiment in college for a class in wildlife biology, only this time with people. The results were much the same, only they didn't return to their homes, they returned to mine, and when they arrived, they were plenty peeved.

     As you spend time afield this fall, I ask that you refrain from shooting yellow-tailed squirrels. Instead, please write the date, time and circumstances of your encounter on a 3x5 card and mail to: Kurt Helker, c/o Mrs. Stecker's Remedial Art Class, Toki Middle School, Madison, Wisconsin.

Gear

     The other day I was sitting at home feeling downright disgusted with the state of the world we live in. New housing is being put in across our street, and the builders had filled in and paved over a tiny pond. The pond had always been populated with spring peepers which cheered our spring evenings, and I wasn't happy about seeing those frogs go. To make matters worse, my wife Lori and I had gone for a walk in the woods and found it strewn with trash-- every conceivable type of trash. There were beer cans, soda bottles, plastic bits of unknown origin, and what seemed like hundreds of Styrofoam fast-food containers.

     I fumed when we got home.

     "We live in a consumer culture run amok," I said. Well, I didn't say "amok," but you get the idea. "It always has to be more. More, more, more. Pave over that last piece of farmland, slap up those condos, buy the latest gee-gaw. Anything to increase the Gross National Product."

     I looked around me and got a malevolent glint in my eye.

     How many candles do you have?" I asked my wife. I didn't wait for an answer. "That one there's new, isn't it? The raspberry one?"

     "It's mulberry, and it's not new," she said. "We've always had it." (Sure. I tried that with a new gun last fall-- "I've always had it"-- and it didn't work for me.)

     You see, my wife collects candles. Well, she would say "collects," while I would choose a word more along the lines of "archives." Her collection is a living, breathing entity, like an amoeba; oozing and sprawling to fill every space in the house. I have to say here that I was kind of disappointed none of the Y2K calamities happened as predicted. I figured we'd make a killing selling candles on the black market. I pictured a survivalist hunkered in a candlelit bunker somewhere, awaiting the looting hordes, saying "Is that...is that a hint of soapberry I detect?"

     "Why don't you go fishing for awhile?" Lori said. "I can tell you're going to be a crab today."

     Ah, fishing. Relaxing fishing. "Perhaps she's right," I thought. "I have been meaning to get out for the early trout season."

     I went out to the garage to collect my ultralight spinning outfit.

     It wasn't there.

     It wasn't in the boat. It wasn't in the back of the garage, by the belly boat and lanterns and duck and goose decoys. It wasn't in the front corner, either, by the nets, the four tackle boxes, the pair of waders, and the ice-fishing gear.

     It wasn't under the raingear or stashed in the tangle of rods: the three spinning outfits, the two casting rigs, and the three fly combos.

     It had been stolen! This was some kind of day I was having-- my favorite spinning outfit; stolen right out of my own garage. I decided to calm down by undertaking a long-overdue review of the contents of my tackle boxes-- surely there were some things I could get rid of.

     There were, too. After much painful deliberation, I threw out a rusty three-way swivel, two old spoons lacking hooks and split-rings, and an old plug I had fashioned when I was a kid. Basically, it was just a whittled piece of bark wrapped in tinfoil. It had no discernible action, but still I had saved it for all those years against that tough-conditions day when I figured fish might just be looking for a piece of bark.

     I didn't touch any of the plastic worms, though. I have a hundred or so-- not as many as a lot of folks, I know, but still probably more than most, and in every color of the rainbow.

     "I don't want to throw any of these out, " I thought. "You can go through a hundred worms pretty quick."

     As I placed the worms neatly in their slots, I remembered a trip I had taken with my wife.

     We were out in a rowboat up North at my folks' place, and it was one of those magical still evenings when the water is dark and full of promise and the shouts of children playing carry all the way across the lake. We had caught a mess of bluegills for a late supper, and decided to try for bass for awhile. I opened my tackle box to the worm compartment.

     "Why do you have so many?" Lori asked.

     I thought it was a rhetorical question like "What's it all about?"-- the kind best answered with another question.

     "Why, indeed?" I mused.

     "Well, I'll take a brown one," Lori said.

     "It's not brown, it's motor oil," I sighed.

     "Whatever. A pink one, then."

     I monkeyed with the fish basket and muttered under my breath. "Bubble gum. It's bubble gum."

     But my wife is relatively new to fishing and can't be expected to absorb a lifetime of knowledge in the space of a few short trips.

     To get back to my tale of the missing ultralight rig-- I have now largely concluded that it was not stolen, but instead left streamside by me after my final trip of the season last September. I would prefer if it had been stolen, because then I would get to feel righteously indignant instead of merely stupid. But the important thing is that after my anger had subsided, I was secretly pleased, and pleased because I got to buy more gear.

     That got me to thinking about the nature of gear, and I have concluded that it is of only two kinds: gear you have, and gear you want. I almost said "need,"
 but I think that is not the case more often than we'd like to admit. And those categories can be divided into stuff which is usually relatively easily attained, like lures, and big-ticket items such as boats and firearms which require real sacrifice.

     Last year I thought I "needed" a salmon/steelhead spinning outfit. I enjoy casting for trout and salmon from Lake Michigan's beaches and piers, and get to do a little of it most years. I figured the extra casting distance offered by the long rod would pay off in terms of more fish. I took the rig to the mouth of the Pike River, near Kenosha, and found that I could cast, alright. The rod could launch a Krocodile spoon well over a hundred yards. I caught fish, too, a three-pound coho and a twenty-pound king, both of which had the nerve to hit the spoon only a dozen feet from shore. But that's the way with fish: you spend hard-earned money to outsmart them, and they prove themselves to be still just stupid old fish.

Guns are another matter, and for me, at least, they usually fall under the category of mercurial wants; wants which dry up like a seasonal wetland as soon as the rent payment or an unexpected car-repair bill arrives. I have to admit that I have enough guns-- a few "working" guns, and a few "luxury" firearms, like a dedicated clay-target shotgun and a cap-and-ball copy of the Colt 1860 Army revolver. There are a couple of perennial wants, though-- a Ruger Number One in .270 Winchester with a full-length Mannlicher-style stock and a 2-7x compact scope parked up top, and a lightweight 20-gauge for the popple patches and overgrown fencerows.

     I've been trying to justify the 20-gauge to myself for years. Never mind that I already have a 20-gauge-- the bolt-action Mossberg which was my first gun. It's very light, and holds the distinction of being one of the few shotguns I shoot well. And having essentially one shot has never struck me as being a huge handicap in the hunting fields. Still, the old Mossberg isn't specialized; it lacks a label as a dedicated grouse gun. All of the famous New England partridge scribes wrote about old L.C. Smiths and Foxes and Parkers. You never read, "I stopped by a woodland stream to clean a brace of birds and light my pipe, and there I received quite a shock. I noticed that the baling wire securing the forearm of my full-choked single-shot to its rusty, pitted barrel was completely missing."

     I'd like a large-bore centerfire revolver, too, for...well, for no good reason. I tried to convince myself that I could carry it in the deer woods. That line of reasoning didn't work-- my rifle and my slug gun and my muzzleloader all work just fine. So I thought that perhaps I would use it as part of a personal protection plan. That didn't work, either. I can't see any gun owned by me as a particular deterrent to crime-- after all, generations of wild game can attest to the fact that seeing me at the end of a gunstock is no bar to a long and happy life. Besides, in the town where my wife and I live, we are the criminal element. Just last year, for instance, at the beginning of what can only be called a "spree," we received a warning for having unauthorized patio furniture. Then, barely a few days later, I again succumbed to baser passions by leaving my car parked on the street on the last night of our town's snow ordinance.

     But there comes a time in every outdoors-minded person's life when he or she has to admit that they have enough stuff. Luckily, that period doesn't last long, for new interests arise, and with those interests comes the desire for more specialized gear. Such is the case for me and turkey hunting...after all, there are always calls to buy, and I do need new camouflage, and perhaps a short-barreled 12-gauge with the latest screw-in chokes...but here I have to mention that buying clothing-- any clothing-- has always left me cold (literally, too, and why I probably should have paid more attention to it.) I'm largely immune to the catalogs' depictions of rugged-looking models attired in English waxed-cotton as they cast flies or split wood at some rural retreat. My looks could never be desribed as "rugged"-- utilitarian, maybe, but not rugged-- and I already own a waxed-cotton jacket. I received it for Christmas a few years back. It got accidentally thrown in with a week's worth of laundry, and now it looks less like a jacket and more like a waxed-cotton halter-top.

     Writing all of this has depressed me. Like most sportsmen, I always thought of myself as a simple, straightforward type unimpressed with the trappings of the material world. But a look in my garage, and in my boat, and in my gunrack tells a different story. Thoreau said, "Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplify, simplify." Maybe he was right.

     I remember reading that in class once. At the time I was living the bachelor life in an old farmhouse. It hosted truly Biblical plagues of flies, but it was a farmhouse, and I could hunt geese right out my back door. I sat in my living room one day, recalling Thoreau's words and feeling pretty darned good about myself. After all, like most bachelor pads, my place was pretty spartanly furnished. Call it the feng shui of not much caring. I had a stereo, a few dishes, a "Great Lakes Gamefish" poster, and a chair (even Thoreau needed a place to sit.) I felt so good, so simple and Zen-master-like, that I decided to reward myself by going after geese in the fields behind the house. When shooting hours had ended, I packed up my decoys and went into the barn to put them away. I had to climb a pile of gear to find a space for them, and I tumbled down and smacked my funny bone.

     I remember that incident now, and I resolve myself: "Simplify, simplify." And I will, too.

     Right after turkey season.

Vegas Baby!! February 2012

Shark Tank Golden Nugget -
water slide goes right through the tank! sweet!

We always suspected as much.

Shark Tank Golden Nugget

Downtown Vegas Street View

Fremont Street

A buddy says that when Judgement Day comes, Vegas will have the honor of being the first thing obliterated.

Chart House Restaurant, inside Golden Nugget.

Artistic view from the Stairwell outside the Venetian

Gardens inside The Bellagio - Vegas Strip

Stratosphere Vegas Strip

Golden Nugget pool. Las Vegans in parkas, Midwesterners and Canadians swimming.

Downtown Las Vegas

Mini Elvis!! and me :)

"What, no tip for mini-Elvis?"

New York New York  - Vegas Strip

Breakfast shot at the Vegas Airport, they send you off  partying!

Breakfast Brewski at McCarran International.

http://www.goldennugget.com/

http://www.vegasexperience.com/

Brunch at The Avenue Bar , Madison, WI

The BEST biscuits and gravy EVER! 

BLOODY MARY :)

Avenue Bar, Voted Madison's Best Fish Fry by Madison Magazine

www.avenuebarmadison.com/

Technical Difficulties

       "Guys on Ice," by Fred Alley and James Kaplan, is billed as "The Ice-Fishing Musical," and is set in my home state of Wisconsin. I haven't seen it, since I have a long-standing aversion to theatrical productions not involving showgirls. But I understand dancing is involved.

     I think I speak for ice-fishermen from the Finger Lakes of New York State to the Sandhills of Nebraska when I say that anyone performing a dance in an ice shanty should be shoved outside, and then pelted with dead smelt.

     Well, wait. I suppose a little impromptu jig if you've caught more fish than me is entirely appropriate. But any sort of choreographed number is completely unacceptable.

     As an aside related to dance, I will say that after I graduated from college I obtained work as a forester in Michigan. While in Michigan I maintained a dalliance with a gorgeous young woman whose name escapes me now. And by "dalliance" I mean that I pursued her ardently, and she was dimly aware that I existed.

     Anyway, she was heavily involved in flag team competitions, where groups of girls performed dance moves to music while waving brightly-colored pieces of cloth. To impress my intended, I attended one of her competitions in some Detroit suburb. I took my seat in the gymnasium bleachers, and the first number began to pulsating beats. After it ended, I admitted to myself that it was really good, in much the same way that the moment when you stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is really good.

     After a couple more such exhibitions, I surmised the entertainment was pretty close to an end. I thought the same thing after the next number, and the next, and the next. On it went, for six hours, until finally the whole god-awful mess came to a halt. I scrambled out of the gym, knocking over contestants and coaches and proud grandparents, and sprinted to my truck.

     Back to Guys on Ice. My general impression after reading press releases and critical reviews is that the musical portrays we of the hard-water clan as good-natured, if a little dim, and maybe a bit behind the times.

     Good-natured but dim perfectly describes my fishing buddy, John. But behind the times? Many ice-fishermen, John included, use technically-advanced equipment which would have left our jigstick-wielding forebearers slackjawed. Locators. Lightweight, mobile shelters. Global positioning system units. And underwater cameras. We're practically ready for a trip to Mars.

     Of course, I do not own an underwater camera-- out of concern for the fish. Just as I don't want a recorder in my living room, catching me sitting in my boxer shorts eating hot dogs from the package while watching professional wrestling, so I want to spare a bluegill the embarrassment of me catching it doing the piscine equivalent of picking its nose.

     The truth is, you could say I have a somewhat adversarial relationship with technology. A month or so ago, I called my wife, Lori, out to the driveway for our annual trailer-light inspection ritual. The results are always the same, no matter how well the lights worked the previous year. This year was no different as I looked in my truck's rearview mirror while Lori stood behind the trailer:

     "Brake lights?"

     "Good."

     "Right turn signal?"

     "Good."

     "Left turn signal?...Left turn signal?...(Expletive!)"

     It has now gotten to the point where the collective wads of electrical tape attached to the trailer's wiring weigh more than the trailer itself, and I have a more extensive collection of wire nuts than most hardware stores.

     John has no such adversarial relationship with technology. In fact, he never met a piece of technology he didn't like (or buy), especially when it pertains to ice-fishing.

     He not only has an underwater camera and a locator, he also has two ice shelters and a bucket full of graphite jigging rods, along with a dozen state-of-the-art tip-ups and a backpack to carry them all in. Of course, a lot of this has to do with the fact that John has obsessive-compulsive disorder and is compelled to buy every new piece of gear he finds.

     I guess that's better than, say, having to turn a light switch on and off 20 times before he enters a room. But if John ever misses a credit card payment all of us will be on street corners selling apples from carts...which John will happily buy.

     On our ice-fishing forays, I trudge behind John and his team of Sherpas, bearing a five-gallon bucket which contains my meager assortment of gear: one jigging rod, a tip-up, and a prescription bottle containing a few ice jigs.

     I usually get cold pretty early in our trips, because while John sports the most advanced apparel, mine hasn't advanced significantly since the days of my grandmother's hand-knitted yarn mittens-- which had the insulating qualities of, well, wet yarn.

     I wore a pair of those mittens one day long ago, during a fisharee on Wisconsin's Little Lake Butte des Morts.

     "Butte des Morts" is French for "Hill of the Dead," and in retrospect I should have considered that an omen.

     It was a very cold day, and to combat the cold I did what any kid would do, which was drink massive quantities of hot chocolate. Now, the human body requires a certain amount of liquid for its own needs, but the excess has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, my hands-- encased in a mixture of frozen snot and yarn-- were so cold that I was unable to unbutton my fly.

     Well, I fidgeted and danced and jiggled for an agonizing hour or so until I realized that I had to make a choice: Give in and let nature take its course, or have one of my warmer buddies unbutton my fly for me.

     You're right. Not much of a choice.

     Later, my friend's mother came to pick us up, and as she drove to drop me off at home the scent of urine filled the car.

     These days, I'm a little jealous of John's mastery of technology. Because of his gear and ability to use it to adapt to changing conditions on the ice, he regularly outfishes me. And because he pays attention to dressing for the cold, his truck doesn't smell like urine. Well, no more so than usual.

     Yet, I'm a sunny soul, and take solace in the fact that, after our trips, while he's no more than halfway through with putting away his stuff and has yet to clean his fish, I'm having a hot toddy in front of my fireplace.

   

My Glittering Ascent in the World of High Fashion

     I've been through many job interviews in my life, and in them I learned excellent lessons, some of which I'd like to pass on to you. Specifically, the store manager who called your business suit "a timeless classic" when you first bought it in 1974 was not using the word "timeless" in any generally accepted sense of the word. Also, when an interviewer asks, "What would you do differently if you had your life to live over?" DO NOT say, "I wish I had been born a woman." Unless you actually were. But Paul Wait, the editor of Wisconsin Outdoor Journal, really threw me a curveball a year ago when we first discussed the possibility of me writing the magazine's closing column.

     "Kurt," he said. "You're just about perfect for the position. You hunt; you fish; you do both of them badly. But-- and this is really what we're looking for-- do you know anything about the world of high fashion?"

     Do I know anything about high fashion? Let me repeat that, for dramatic emphasis. Do I know anything about high fashion?

     Well, no.

     But I assured Paul that I'd do my best to catch up before this, the highly-awaited Spring Fashion Issue. My "catching up" consisted of watching a Victoria's Secret special on television. Now, this was a fine, fine program, of such redeeming social value that it's a wonder it wasn't picked up by PBS. First the models all walked out together, and their body types were such that the stage looked as if a fleet of dirigibles had crash-landed at a Popsicle-stick factory. Then the models walked the runway individually; each in turn, looking mightily peeved to be so beautiful and so wealthy at the same time. None of them ever smiled, as if they'd been dining exclusively on lemons for weeks. That, or they'd just been told that their half of the tax refund no longer exists, because you let the salesman talk you out of the used rifle you secretly knew you weren't going to buy anyway and into the Remington Model 700 in .270 Winchester that you've always wanted. Not that I've ever done that.

     Well, I got to thinking. Why not put on an outdoors-themed fashion show? Wisconsin Outdoor Journal could use it to sell subscriptions, or as a benefit, maybe for Trout Unlimited or The Ruffed Grouse Society or another of the organizations that make our tired old world a tolerable place to live in. I can picture it now:

     The lights come up onstage. A man, who looks suspiciously like yours truly, shambles out. The crowd gasps in unison; retinas scorched. "It's the glare from his forehead!" someone yells from offstage. "Makeup! Makeup!" A girl runs out, buffs the model's head, and disappears. "Sorry," the announcer intones. "On with our show." The model walks to the center of the stage and stops while the lights illuminate his footwear. The announcer continues:  "These knee-length rubber boots are the centerpiece of our Spring Footwear Collection. They are perfect for turkey hunting. They are scent-free, for bowhunters, and in a pinch can also be put to use on the trout stream..."

     I guess it's not coincidence that I was thinking about footwear yesterday. Specifically, I was thinking, "How many pairs of shoes does my wife own?" (12, as it turns out.) Even more to the point, I was thinking, "How many of them will she not miss?" You see, I like to throw stuff out. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling deep inside, particularly when it's not MY stuff I'm throwing out.

     "No way," Lori said when she got home from work. "You're not throwing any of my stuff out."

     "But you have 12 pairs!" (This is just good information to know. At some point in the future when she yells, "You haven't entered any cash withdrawals in the checkbook for six months!" I can respond with, "Yeah, but you have twelve pairs of shoes!")

     "Bet you do, too," she said.

     "Do not."

     "Do too."

     Well, I got to looking. I have barn boots, for turkey hunting. And two pairs of leather boots. And ice-fishing boots. And old canvas tennis shoes for wade fishing when it's a billion degrees outside. Oh, and chest waders.

     Pleased to make your acquaintance. I'm the Imelda Marcos of the sporting fraternity.

     On with our show. And now our model is sporting a light rain jacket which can be kept rolled up under a boat seat until that moment when a sudden squall pops up...

     One of the benefits of living down here in the Madison area is the sheer abundance of cultural events. On any given weekend since we first moved here four years ago, there have been literally dozens of events available-- not one of which I actually attended. In fact, the last time I had a little culture whipped on me was years ago, at a dance program in Whitewater. I went because my then-girlfriend had an interest in the arts, and I had an interest in feigning interest in the arts. The centerpiece of the show consisted of a woman shouting while performing a series of awful contortions. A great many bridesmaids can attest that I've done the exact same dance at reception halls across the land, and I never got any grant money for it, either.

     I bring all of this up to mention that I very nearly attended a cultural event recently: a showing of the play "Muskie Love." I'm sure it's excellent, but what caused me not to attend was the poster. In it a man-- supposedly a muskie fisherman-- is wearing a floppy hat and a fly-fishing vest, and holding a spincast outfit which even a sub-legal muskie would destroy in about ten seconds. The muskie fishermen I know all look like Paul Bunyan-- or his Blue Ox-- and would tell this usurper to try his luck at the trout pond next to the petting zoo.

     "Now our model is wearing a thick flannel shirt. Wait, is he exposing a little chest hair? I think he's trying to impress that pretty woman in the front row..."

     When I was a kid, goodness personified lived about four doors away, in the form of Kristy McCook. You know the type: a scent of rose petals always seemed to be in the air, and her hair blew gently in the breeze, even during the doldrums of August when there was no breeze. Well, I was smitten, with a capital "S." One day I was pedaling the new bike my dad had bought me home from youth football practice, and from a block away I could see that Kristy was on her front porch.

     "Excellent," I thought to myself as I built up speed. "She'll be impressed; me being a football player and all." Heck, there was even a little blood on my jersey. Can't get much manlier than that.

     As I neared her house I switched to riding "no hands," and in front of her house I looked over, in a more or less smoldering way, and piled right into her dad's new Volkswagen.

     "And for the finale...Wait, he's fallen off of the stage. I believe he's hurt himself..."

     Some things never change.

   

   

Lake Mendota, Madison, Wisconsin, September 15, 2012.

Maple Bluff and Governor's Island from the stern.

Maple Bluff. How the other half-percent lives.
 It's O.K., they're liberal,
and consequently feel very, very guilty about it. 

White bass, destined as fillets for chowder this winter.
Hard not to catch them on Mendota  these days.

                                               “Come live with me, and be my love,
                                                 And we will all the pleasures prove
                                                 That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
                                                 Woods, or steepy mountain yields.”

                                                 --Christopher Marlowe.


                                                 “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

                                                   --P.T. Barnum.


     I went grocery shopping the other day. After a quick turn through the dairy products section, I ambled past “Meats,” warmed by messages from the National Pork Council, and finally ended up at the magazine rack. The magazine rack is an interesting sidelight to any grocery shopping trip, laced as it is with publications covering every conceivable topic from horror films to quilting. But what really caught my eye were the women’s magazines; each purporting to offer today’s woman what she really needs to know from “Put Menopause to Work for You” to “Sex, and How to Avoid It.” And underneath these shameless paens to human insecurity, there they were:  the bridal magazines.

     Bridal Monthly. Bridal Illustrated. Bucket o’ Brides. Bride-o-Rama. Row upon row of them, each with radiant models gazing beatifically at the viewer, reminding me of nothing so much as my First Communion copy of The Picture Book of Saints, with its wonderfully ironic images of martyrs reposing in transcendent bliss as they are stoned to death or torn apart by jackals.

     But I digress.

     You see, I have recently developed an interest in bridal magazines, spurred on by an inkling to take that most important of steps:  marriage. I have fallen in love. After a romantic career marked by passionate ambivalence on the part of my intendeds, my term as a throwaway scratch-off ticket in the lottery of love has come to an end.

     And so it was that with lilac-scented thoughts in mind, I recently found myself in a mall with thoughts of purchasing an engagement ring. I am normally loathe to engage in shopping, but am even less inclined to do so when the object of purchase is something as foreign to my experience as a ring. I wandered with trepidation down the aisles of the mall, past the Gap, past the Gap Kids and the Buddy Squirrel, and past a gaggle of mallwalkers stepping sprightly in athletic apparel. I walked into a jewelry store whose motto, believe it or not, is “When It’s Forever”—leaving me to wonder where all the short-sighted folks go for their jewelry needs. I was met instantly by “Madge,” a saleswoman who immediately recognized my preference for Field and Stream over Conde Nast and led me to the engagement rings.

     “Sir,” she said, “I usually explain The Four C’s to our first-time customers.”

     The “Four C’s,” as any engaged or married man knows, by heart and against his will, are Cut, Clarity, Color, and Confidence. The fourth C is not, as I suggested to Madge, “Cost,” although she was pleased because this gave her a chance to go into “the two months’ salary guideline.” This guideline, in short, is the process whereby jewelers seize men’s finest sentiments and then sell them back to us.

     I decided to play ball, and informed Madge that my income is limited only by the number of  bottles I can return for deposit during any given period. Madge was more than a little taken aback. “But surely, sir,” she said, “isn’t your love for… um… Lori?… worth the most you can possibly afford?”

     She had a point there. It’s just that she and I reckon cost differently. To be sure, Madge was just doing her job. Yet somehow I could not help but feel that the tenets of capitalism have no place tampering with something as sacred as love:  the boat of my best intentions had run aground in a sea of consumer culture. I had walked into the store with intentions of symbolizing my affection for my beloved. Instead I stood at the counter feeling as if I had just bought a used car and was about to drive off in a cloud of smoke, with the salesman laughing in my wake. And so I left ringless, but not before Madge gave me her card and a copy of The Wedding Planner—compliments of the wedding industry.

     The word “industry” is no exaggeration. The Wedding Planner lists no fewer than 27 categories wherein retailers prey on lovers’ natural desire to be married. Categories range from “Invitations” and (of course) “Diamonds” to “The Reception” and “Beauty.” Upon reading “Beauty,” I discovered that my whining about shopping for engagement rings had been just that—whining. Women have the real hard part of the bargain.

     The Wedding Planner’s section on “Beauty” begins:  “Every bride wants to look her best, and with foresight and planning, she can be beautiful in everyone’s eyes”—implying, of course, that without the judicious use of spackling compound and considerable structural work, the wedding guests will flee from the church in horror. The section suggests that the bride-to-be meet with a consultant to discuss such topics as “cosmetic background,” “headpiece selection,” and—I’m not kidding—“hair history.” Apparently this is where the bride reveals that her hair was with Napoleon at Waterloo and was instrumental in passing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

     By the time I finished “Beauty” and launched into “Receptions,” I was feeling a bit dizzy, and eloping was starting to look like a really good idea—maybe Las Vegas? I imagined a ceremony with an Elvis impersonator reading us our vows:

     “Do you, uh, Kurt here, take Lori tuh be yer, uh, lawful wedded wife?”

     “I do.”

     “Don’t be cruel. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
   
     After the ceremony, I imagined, Lori and I would retire to a small reception, there to dine on peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches, gorge ourselves on barbituates, and take our place on a row of crepe-bedecked toilets—wedding party in front—to die, like the King, on the throne. Given what I have seen of conventional wedding planning, this scenario not only seems more enjoyable, but also a good deal less ludicrous.

     But I’m being selfish here. As The Wedding Planner states, the wedding is not so much for the happy couple as it is for friends and relatives.

     Perhaps this has all been idle complaining.

    Maybe the important thing is that someday my beloved will walk, resplendent in white, down an aisle lined with smiling well-wishers. Lori and I will gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes, delirious with joy, and repeat those magical words:  “I do.”

     But I don’t have to be happy about it.