It’s purely a coincidence, of course, but it’s amazing how often excellent hunting and fishing are to be had in close proximity to places my wife and I vacation at. She’d like to go to, say, England, or spend a week touring continental Europe by rail, but what has tended to happen over the years has gone something like this:
     “Hey Lori, can you believe that the brown trout are in shallow and Lake Michigan is RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET?”
or
     “Honey, turns out that Park Falls calls itself  The Ruffed Grouse Capital of the World. Bet you’re glad I brought that 20-gauge now.”
     Heck, even part of our honeymoon seven years ago was spent in…Algoma. Now, Algoma is a gorgeous town, and need not take a back seat to anyplace. But I’m guessing that most little girls don’t dream of the day they marry and their prince whisks them there. Which is why, in the wedding announcements of your local paper, you read things like “The couple honeymooned in St.-Tropez and will reside in Shorewood,” and not “The bride spent her honeymoon staring out a hotel room window while the groom caught two bass and a walleye and speared a really big carp.”
     But Algoma is where my wife found herself, on the first morning of our honeymoon, with a bad case of the flu. This presented her husband with an ethical dilemma: stay and tend to his sick bride, or cast for staging salmon just a few blocks away from the bed-and-breakfast?
     In a word, I owe her. Which is why we are going on a cruise this December where there will be no fishing at all, unless I can talk the captain into letting me troll. I won’t lie to you—cruises are expensive—but we saved money by avoiding the popular ships with names like Jubilation, Excitement, etc. Our itinerary aboard the Apathy (the Trepidation was already booked):
*Day One: Embark (or not)
*Day Two: Lunch served, if steward is in the mood.
*Days Three-Six: Mill around in the middle of the ocean.
*Day Seven: Return to port; disembark. Possibly. Whatever.
     I bring all of this up to point out, in a very roundabout way, that our cruise will cause me to miss one of my favorite activities: hunting deer during the muzzleloader season. I will of course be on hand for the really big show, the nine-day gun season, which I spend partly in Adams County and partly in other areas of the state. But no matter where I go, from Superior to Sinsinawa and from Gills Rock to Lone Rock, there is one question I am constantly asked, and that is, “Kurt, how can I be more like you?”
     It’s certainly a fair question.
     Well, I’ll tell you. You can start be hunting like me. The following two tips ought to give you a start.
Be ever vigilant.
     I hunt mostly in Deer Management Unit 54A, with my friends Jack, Tom, Ted and Zach, and our buddies Nick, Mike and Dan from the neighboring camp. Two years ago I walked out to Tom’s stand after sitting for about four hours on the morning of the day after Thanksgiving.
     “See anything?” I asked.
     “Nope. You?”
     “Me, either,” I replied.
     Tom’s stand is at the edge of a huge meadow, and you can literally see for a mile. Which is about how far away we’d have been able to see the group of does from as they approached, had we not been talking and laughing and thinking up risque alternative lyrics to country music songs.
     “Hey, check it out. Deer,” I said. We watched, slackjawed, with our rifles slung, as the animals covered the last few yards before they disappeared into the woods.
You’ll hunt better with proper nutrition
     As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in charge of our night-before-opener fish fry, not because I possess an abundance of culinary skills, but because it’s my fryer. Most years I bring bluegill or white bass fillets from the Madison lakes, with maybe some walleye fillets from Lake Winnebago thrown in, and my friend Tom’s folks send down bass and crappies from the Lac du Flambeau area. But on this particular year we had already eaten our catches and had empty freezers.
     “That’s alright,” I said. “I’ll pick up something from the store.”
     The only problem was that I had a hellacious week at work and was too tired to go to the store when I returned late from my job the night before we were to leave for camp.
     “I’ll take care of it in the morning for you,” my wife Lori said. “That way you guys can just take off when you get back from work. What would you like?”
    “Lake perch,” I said.
     How was she to know that the perch were not yellow perch, from the Canadian waters of Lake Erie, but Nile perch, from, I’m guessing, Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria isn’t anywhere near, say, Lac Courte Oreilles, but is in Africa. Anyone who has stopped for ice twice on the way home from a trip in order to keep fillets fresh can imagine the difficulty involved in having a fish from Africa arrive in Wisconsin in reasonably palatable condition. The “perch” looked gray, mottled with spots of white, and smelled like a long-dead carp pushed up on the rocks in August.
     Even though I was frying the fish outside, the smell preceded me into the cabin, and I will never forget the looks on the faces as I came in through the door with the platter of reeking slabs. Tasting them did not improve the overall experience any, and we all agreed that the fish tasted exactly like soap (a taste some of us are intimately familiar with.) Everyone went to bed hungry, and the looks of recrimination kept me awake all night.
     Well, not really. But they could have.
     Hope the tips help. Best of luck to you, and me, this deer season. I’ll raise a sundowner to you in December as I sit on a balcony overlooking the Caribbean Sea. I might even throw in an extra shot of rum.
     I’m pretty sure you’d do the same for me.
     

 There is a Catholic parish a block-and-a-half from our house, and during the year-plus my wife Lori and I have lived here, we’ve often spoken of checking it out. I have been the main obstacle to this occurring, because a sign I drive by every day promises fellowship. “Fellowship,” to me, means enforced hanging out with people you don’t know. Anyway, the parish recently had their biggest annual fundraiser, a parish picnic, and cars lined our street for four days. I got to thinking what an alien anthropologist observing from outer space might write in a scholarly journal if he mistook simple fundraising for actual spiritual practice:
 
  “The indigenous peoples attempt to curry the favor of their deity by the eating of corn and bratwurst and the drinking of a fermented beverage called beer, and by playing a game of chance called “Bingo” which brings about undue excitement over relatively small prizes. Oh, and by listening to really crummy cover bands.”
 
   When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I took as many Anthropology courses as I could, in addition to my required Natural Resources curriculum. In one class we studied “cargo cults.” My column is not usually a forum for matters of metaphysics, but one cult believed that the large amounts of goods delivered to Pacific islands in World War II by U.S. servicemen would return, post-war, if the islanders conducted certain rituals. These included the construction of mock airstrips, wooden headsets, and even aircraft and radios made of straw.

     Well, right then and there, like St. Paul on the road to Emmaus, I saw the light and converted, in a little classroom on the third floor of The College of Letters and Science. I can’t say that it has been an easy road I have chosen, and I have endured much persecution for my beliefs. And yet I have persevered, confident that if I keep my nose clean, eventually a large truck full of free Cabela’s merchandise will show up at my door.
 
  Another aspect of cargo cults, according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is that “members, leaders, and prophets of cargo cults maintain that the manufactured goods (“cargo”) of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that, unfairly, the foreigners have gained control of these objects…by malice or mistake.”

    I have recently gotten back into goose hunting after a ten-year sabbatical from the sport, and I'm more excited than ever. I love watching the sun rise over Horicon Marsh, I love seeing a bank of honkers turn and circle and finally commit, and yes, I get a kick out of watching a goose fold to a load of BBB’s. But I don’t have much in the way of gear—pretty much my Remington 870, a call, and a dozen “wind-activated” decoys which work great on those days when Canadas are attracted to a spread of spinning pinwheels. So I’d like to add to my collection. But if you’re a waterfowler, you know that the sport can bankrupt you pretty quickly if you don’t exercise some restraint.

     My neighbor gets a lot of UPS deliveries. Yesterday the delivery guy hauled a large rectangular box to his door, and I just knew it contained a dozen super-realistic full-body decoys. I conducted my ritual, imitating what my neighbor does when he’s out in the yard, but no dice. Then the deliveryman carted a long, flat box to my neighbor's door, and I was certain that inside the box was a state-of-the-art layout blind.

     “No! No! No!” I yelled, with my nose pressed against our living-room window. “That’s miiiine!”

    My younger brother Craig finds my religious beliefs bizarre, if not incredibly self-serving. That’s his prerogative. But I, in turn, take inspiration from his Buddhist leanings. The idea is to look clear-eyed and with an open mind at any spiritual practice and ask, “How can this help my hunting?”

    Many Eastern religions have a concept called “nothingness,” which boils down to taking each moment as it is, accepting it as it is, and not expecting it to be anything more. I thought, wow, this can help me sit still and remain on stand during those days later in the deer seasons when the excitement of opening weekend is long gone and the woods are seemingly empty. Following is my field diary for the third day of last year’s muzzleloader season:

8:02: No deer sighted yet. Can’t feel toes.
8:38: I hate this stand. Why did I pick it? Going to explode out of skin if sit any longer.
8:40: No. Must…remain…still. At least long enough to have Jolly Rancher.
9:00: Think will have ‘nother Jolly Rancher.
9:43: Better switch to sugar-free. Dental hygienist will not be impressed.
9:45: Hygienist is cute.
9:46: Hygienist is really cute.
9:47: Think hygienist enamored with hunter. Said “Rinse, then spit” in leading manner at last cleaning.
9:50: Dentist not bad, either.
10:00: Wonder if spouse would object if hygienist and dentist live with us. Certainly cannot be against proper dental care so close at hand.
10:14: Probably not. Wife unreasonable in such matters.
11:02: Warming up. Can feel toes. Don’t like newfangled in-line muzzleloaders. Not in keeping with spirit of season.
1:05: Deer!
1:06: Dang! Misfire!
1:10: Must buy newfangled in-line muzzleloader.
3:15: Think will have another Jolly Rancher.
3:20: Another hour left to hunt, but must get going. UPS truck is in neighborhood around dusk. Just know cargo will arrive, as have been very good boy. Oh, and must brush teeth.
   

A Sense of Place

     It was an innocent age, back then, many years before I shouldered the double burden of discovering that my father knew nothing, and that I knew everything. I stood on the shoreline of a small northeastern Wisconsin lake, watching dragonflies light on rotten logs, all blur and stop-motion and there-they-are and there-they-aren’t.

     “Go ahead and take the canoe out,” Dad yelled. “Catch us some bluegills for supper while I set up the tent.”

     I suspect that a lot of today’s kids would be unable to conceive of the joy of being a small boy, free from adults, and alone in a canoe with a new fishing rod. I casted while my father’s swear words filtered through the trees. Setting up a tent was in those days akin to assembling a nuclear weapon from the household junk drawer, and this was no ordinary tent. It was a tent made of “miracle fiber” fabric, and we were testing it as a service to the manufacturer, Dad’s employer. This was the 1970’s, and New and Improved was the law of the land. Tang replaced orange juice on shiny, forward-thinking breakfast tables, and if we as a society could routinely send men to the moon, then we could damn sure come up with a better tent fabric.

     Late in the afternoon I pulled the canoe up onto a spit of sand. Dad filleted my fish as a storm approached, and we retreated to the tent as the first big drops smacked the canopy of the trees. Above our heads the water pooled and then began to drip through, first in trickles in a few spots, and then in torrents, everywhere. My father laughed, and I joined in, drinking from my can of Jolly Good while Dad sipped his nightly martini from a mushroom jar.

     Since that long-ago moment I have stayed in expensive resorts, and on a cruise ship, but I haven’t found anything which will match the pleasure to be had in the combination of a tent, a canoe, and a wild shoreline. We’re not exactly cachet here in Wisconsin. We don’t have large rodents acting as mascots. We don’t have palm trees, and our few nude beaches show that modesty is not only a virtue, it is also frequently a necessity. The latter circumstance is not our fault. What else can be expected when, as the old saw goes, the Wisconsin year consists of nine months of winter and three months of poor ice conditions?

     Okay. We’ve established that we’re not trendy. What do we have? We have cheese curds, and the Green Bay Packers. Oh, yes—and 15,000 lakes. Not to mention 17,000 miles of streams. Sure, we have mosquitoes. But we also have the dragonflies to eat them.

     Consider ourselves blessed.

Wings Over Waukesha, Wisconsin, 8/25/12

"Wings over Waukesha is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting aviation and honoring aviation history. The organization hosts the popular annual Wings over Waukesha aviation exposition and air show at Waukesha County Airport that features a variety of contemporary and vintage aircraft from both civilian and military aviation. The family-friendly event provides an opportunity to learn about flying, aircraft and the important role of military aviation, while meeting local pilots and getting a close-up view of their aircraft, many of which have been painstakingly restored to their original condition from the mid-1900s."

Photos from the day : 

Here's our beautiful girl again: B-17 "Aluminum Overcast" -
 Flying right over us before we entered the event!
Lori just got the camera out in time to get this shot.

"Aluminum Overcast"

C-130 transport, United States Air Force Reserve Command

A bad nickname if there ever was one.

Nice of the owner to let kids clamber all over his aircraft.

Chinese trainer.

A1-D "Skyraider."

Warbirds on display.

AT-6 trainer.

Royal Canadian Air Force jet, privately-owned.

Again.

For the vets of Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

"Proceeds are reinvested in the annual event, which also benefits numerous local non-profit organizations that participate and sell food and merchandise to raise funds for aviation education scholarships, vintage aircraft restoration and other military and aviation related efforts.

We believe that everyone who comes to the event also benefits by learning more about military aviation history and seeing some of the beautiful aircraft that have served our country in military roles. In addition, the event will feature many aircraft that serve the Waukesha, Milwaukee and surrounding areas, such as Flight for Life Helicopters, corporate jets, and flight school training aircraft.

We welcome all residents and families to enjoy the weekend with us and to salute our veterans who have contributed so selflessly to our national security."

Wings Over Waukesha
http://www.wingsoverwaukesha.com/

Please Complete to the Best of Your Ability

     I keep waiting for it to happen, and I expect that one of these days it will. There’ll be a knock at my door, and when I open it there’ll be two men standing there in dark suits and sunglasses.
     “Mr. Helker?”
     “Yes?”
     “We’ve come to remove your Adult status. You’ve been faking it for years, and we finally tracked you down.”
     I feel like I’ve been posing as an adult for, well, all of my adult life, despite the job, and the bills, and the hairline which passed “receding” some years back. But lately I’ve been thinking that I belong, if not firmly in the adult camp, then at least in a neighboring site. Why? Because life insurance is starting to make sense to me. “You know that new spinning rig you’ve been wanting? Forget it; you can make do with the old one. Instead, we’d like you to pay a sum out of each paycheck to an office somewhere. You won’t receive any tangible benefits for a long, long time, or at least hopefully not, in your case. We’ll increase the amount you pay out of each paycheck as the likelihood of you actually realizing your benefit increases, and when we finally do pay on our end, well, too bad for you, but you’re dead.” When I was younger, my reaction to such an argument would have been, “What! Are you insane?” But now, I’m thinking, “Sweet! Sounds too good to be true, but I’d better look into it.”
     I know, I know, life insurance isn’t for the people who die, it’s for the people who live. And in the event of my demise, I would like to keep my wife Lori comfortable in the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed, although I expect there’s more than enough money in the change jar for that. Please bear with me as I fill out some forms.

Do you exercise routinely?
If I’m frightened on a regular basis, well, then, yes. My most frenetic workout came along the Tomorrow River in Portage County, when I was spotted by a bull as I crossed a pasture while taking a shortcut between pools. I haven’t seen chest waders specifically marketed as a weight-loss device, but I figure I must have expended the calorical equivalent of fifty Big Macs before I reached the safety of the river.

Do you have children?
Not currently, but the topic does frequently come up between my wife and I, particularly during cocktail hour when we’re sitting on our porch in the early-evening sun, listening to our resident cardinal sing from its telephone-wire perch.
Lori, thinking to herself:  “Boy, I love that man of mine. I can’t wait until we start a family so we can really begin our life together. He’s pretty quiet; I’ll bet he’s thinking the same thing.”
Me, thinking to myself:  “Man, that guy across the street’s had his sprinkler on for a couple of hours now. I’ll have to go and pick nightcrawlers when it gets dark.”

Do you have elevated cholesterol?
Well, last time I had it checked, yeah, it was pretty high, and all of it can be traced to nine days in November. Like a lot of deer camps, ours tends to suspend dietary restrictions for the duration of the season. We have bacon for breakfast, bacon for lunch, and bacon for dinner. Visitors to our camp are issued a pound apiece, and if we could wear bacon, we would.

Do you consider yourself to be a healthy eater?
Sure, apart from the above. I do 90% of the cooking in our household, which allows me to watch what I eat. I also do 90% of the eating, which reflects less on my gluttonous nature than it does on Lori’s keen instinct for self-preservation. My “man’s kitchen” has expanded somewhat from my bachelor days, when I had a pot and a few plates and that’s about it. Now I have all of the cast-iron cookware an outdoorsman could want, along with the gadgets my wife brings home from “Spoiled Skilleteer” parties. Those—and their equivalents the Candle Party and the Lingerie Party—are a uniquely feminine phenomenon whereby women use “friend” status to “guilt” each other into buying stuff. Think of it as domestic mutually-assured destruction. Makes me glad I’m a man, too, and that we don’t do those types of things:  “Hey, Bob, coming to my Crankbait Party Saturday night? You’d better—I went to your Plastic Worms of the World thing in April.”

Have you ever been treated in a hospital?
What do you mean, “have I ever”? When I was a boy, my mail was permanently forwarded to the Emergency Room. I recall one after-school fishing trip to the Menasha Dam. I had my orange kapok life vest and my black eyeglasses with the elastic strap—I was walking birth-control in those days—and I had my spincast outfit loaded with heavy line. I used heavy line because I didn’t have a lot of lures, and I wanted to keep the few I had. And, in any case, I had already stolen and lost all of my brother Scott’s. I chucked my spoon out into the current, and promptly got a snag. I tried all of the little tricks for getting a snag out to no effect, and finally resorted to that old standby:  brute force. I shall never forget the Zzzzzzzzzt!  sound—like a major-league fastball—that the spoon made before it embedded itself in my ear. I’m more upset about the incident now than I was then, because I don’t believe I ever got that spoon back from the doctor. It was a nickel-and-blue Cleo, if I remember correctly, and I could use it to tempt brown trout off of the piers in spring.

Are you experiencing reproductive organ problems?
No sirrEEE. Everything good there. Couldn’t be better. Just peachy, really. Yep. Ahem. Next question.

And finally, are you currently pregnant?
At last, a “no” answer. That’ll bring my premiums down. Get ready, Lori, to live the lifestyle of your dreams: You’ll be rich, and I’ll be dead. Man, I hate being an adult.  

Cooler By the Lake

     A bright smear of stars hung off of the coastline to the north as my friend Mark and I casted in the dark for fall-run Chinook salmon. We paused occasionally to retie knots or make sure key pieces of gear were readily accessible, but for the most part we just casted; each of us alone with his own thoughts. I was happy to listen to the slap of the swells against the concrete and the little night-time noises of the small town behind us, and to let myself become absorbed in the cast-reel, cast-reel reverie of pier fishing. It was nice, after a summer spent trying to finesse tiny spinners into little pockets in trout-stream logjams, to be able to rear back with the long rod and sling a three-quarters-ounce spoon without fear of any obstacle except perhaps a passing tug or the opposite breakwater.
     I had been casting for maybe an hour, stopping every half-dozen casts or so to recharge the glow-in-the-dark spoon with a flashlight, when the first strike of the night occurred. My body, starved for sleep after a long string of early wake-ups and busy work days, came instantly awake with a sudden surge of adrenaline. I set the hook, and felt the kind of power which immediately sets off excited alarms in the mind:  “Big fish! Big fish!” The salmon took line and then splashed heavily on the surface.
     “Got one, Kurt? Got one?” My friend Mark approached quickly in the dark; his voice hopeful.
     “Yep,” I said, and then the fish was gone as suddenly as it had become attached. I’m sure I cursed then, but I wasn’t too upset. We had all night and all of the next day to fish. I reeled in, watching the spoon’s phosphorescent trail appear from the depths next to the breakwater, checked my knot, and let fly again.
     Mark and I were fishing in Algoma, Wisconsin; a Lake Michigan port which bills itself as “The Trout and Salmon Capital of the World”—a claim which any number of towns from Oregon and Washington up through British Columbia to Alaska might contest. We aren’t overly susceptible to hype—we’ve been skunked often enough to know better—but it’s a better than even bet that we wouldn’t have been there at all had Algoma billed itself as, say, “The Kohlrabi Capital of the World.”
     By three o’clock in the morning we had two fish in the bag—both hen kings—which I had caught on a small glow-in-the-dark spoon. Mark hooked several fish, on marshmallows, of all things, but didn’t land any. I botched the net job on one, which he had skillfully hand-lined after it made short work of a cheap reel’s innards (I have discovered that king salmon will expose a weak link in tackle in an instant, so inferior gear is to be avoided as strenuously as a person who capitalizes the word “art” when it isn’t someone’s name or beginning a sentence.)
     By 4 a.m., we had decided to attempt to sleep. Mark—who is always prepared for any eventuality—had wisely brought a cot along. I, however, have always viewed the purchase of any gear not directly related to fishing as consumptiveness of the worst sort, so I paid for my principles by making my bed out of concrete of the and the jacket I was wearing. Not that I slept for more than a few minutes, anyway—the cold of predawn had arrived, and with it a whistling wind. I got up and began to cast again as the first figures of approaching fishermen appeared far off where the pier met sand.

Great Lakes Grandeur


     I love big water.
     I love the ocean, but since I live in the Midwest and not in Maine or the Carolinas or California, I make do with the inland seas found on my home state’s eastern and northern borders. And seas, to anyone who hasn’t seen them, is exactly what the Great Lakes are—as the monuments to perished souls in many harbor towns attest.
     What it is exactly about the Great Lakes which captivates me so much, I’m not sure, but it’s probably a combination of things. I like the sound of the wind singing through the downrigger wires. I like the heft of a box full of brightly-colored spoons. I like the hard slap of waves against a boat’s hull, the sound of gulls and foghorns, and the signs advertising smoked chubs and fresh whitefish as I near the lake. I like sipping coffee on a pierhead in half-dawn light, and I like watching a Deep Six or Dipsy Diver trailed by a whipping dodger going down, down, down until finally it disappears from sight.
     But I guess what I like most about fishing on big water is the oddly comforting feeling of insignificance which it gives me. “It’s a feeling you should be having all the time,” I can hear my wife say, but this feeling can best be found, I think, when facing scenes of incredible grandeur—and it helps if there’s a little hint of danger thrown in. Personally, I think many a swollen-headed celebrity might benefit from such adventure—by, say, trolling ten miles offshore, with only a ten-horse kicker for power, or by gunning for sea ducks from a pitching, frozen layout boat (especially the latter—I just had a mental image of Angelina Jolie in camouflage, and it’s a pretty good image. Just give me a moment. Okay, I’m back.)
     I was lucky enough to grow up just a few blocks from Wisconsin’s largest inland lake, and we spent an awful lot of time on it as a family, on the houseboat my dad built. Our other big-water trips when I was growing up were centered on the Door County portion of Green Bay, where we vacationed every summer, and Lake Michigan itself.
     We did a fair amount of salmon fishing from our boat, the “Sea Six,” on days when the weather allowed it, although what we did can probably only be termed “fishing” in the loosest sense of the word. We were in the very early learning stages when it came to trolling for salmon—what we knew was from what I had read or from tips my dad picked up from captain’s chatter on the marine radio, and we didn’t have an overabundance of gear. Occasionally—very occasionally—we would catch a fish, but mostly we’d stare at our few rods for hours on end, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
     I prayed a lot in those days.
     I didn’t pray for the state of my soul—already a foregone conclusion, I figured—but for the sudden snap of a rod to announce that a king had ambushed a J-Plug somewhere down in the depths. Or that someone would notice I was gone if I flung myself off of the boat at the beginning of one of our frequent, unplanned “Man Overboard” drills. These were always a tricky proposition. Generally, my older brother picked on my sister, my sister picked on me, and me and the dog picked on my younger brother. Alliances among siblings were always shifting, however, and before you pitched into the icy waters of Lake Michigan you had to be certain that any witnesses would, in fact, report the incident to Mom and Dad in a timely fashion, and not eight hours later when the boat was at anchor for the night.

Back to the Pier


     In the first few hours after dawn, I hooked four fish on a big, flashy silver spinner, which I figured would be more visible to salmon in the wind-stirred water. Points to me for using my head, but points subtracted for not landing any of the fish. As the morning wore on and the sun climbed higher in the sky, action tapered off to nothing, but Mark and I still kept at it, slinging spoons until our arms hurt. Mark—again, always prepared—cooked chili on a little propane burner, and we talked with the other fishermen on the breakwater. By now a little community had formed, and we shared coffee and lures, especially with our neighbor, a fellow from Minneapolis by way of Germany whom we dubbed “Minnesota Guy.” Minnesota Guy kept fishing, too, while I stole catnaps on the concrete of the pier. By evening, none of us had had a strike in six hours, and the wind had grown to gale strength while a black bank of clouds approached from the west.
     We called it quits.
     We shook hands with Minnesota Guy while he retrieved a steelhead from our cooler, and then got into my car for the drive home. We were exhausted after 21 straight hours of fishing, and we had a choice to make:  to take the shorter route, which would take us inland, or the longer route through the lakefront towns of Kewaunee and Two Rivers.
     We chose the longer route, so we could keep the big lake in sight for as long as possible.

What Color Are Your Cement Overshoes?

“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”

Bacon.

     It all began with the wheel.
     Eons ago, in some dank and musty cave, one of our ancestors was being harangued by his wife over a half-raw mastodon leg. It seems she was tired of being dragged by her hair whenever they went anywhere.
     “Oog,” she said, pausing between bites of the leg. “I would really prefer an alternate mode of transportation.” But there were no alternate modes of transportation, save dragging by body parts other than the hair.
     And so, necessity being the mother of invention, Oog went out and created the wheel.
     Life was grand—for awhile. Oog’s wife speedily got from Point A to Point B, while at the same time keeping her hair limp and manageable. Because his wife was happy, cave life was harmonious for Oog, except for a minor incident when he returned home to find that his wife had crashed the wheel (an accident, by the way, which necessitated the creation of the world’s first claims adjuster.)
     But Oog wasn’t quite satisfied. He knew the wheel had potential and would compete for a large market share; or would have, there being no market as yet. So he summoned his courage, hired some help, and began to produce wheels, which were snapped up as soon as they came off the rudimentary assembly line.
     Which is not to say that all went completely swimmingly—competitors arose; there were cost overruns; and Oog was nearly ruined once by a costly Workmen’s Compensation suit filed by a group of Australopithecines with claims of “stooped backs” (which the world’s first attorney unsuccessfully fought on grounds of it having been a “preexisting condition”.) But overall, things were going well—so well, in fact, that Oog found himself desperately short of manual labor. So he went out and hired himself the world’s first corporate recruiter.
     Now it so happens that labor was in short supply for a reason:  people were stupid, but not that stupid—after all, they are our ancestors. There were few applicants, it having been as true then as it is now what Russell said:  “Work is of two kinds:  first, altering the position of matter on or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”
     But a young Neanderthal didn’t care about any of that. All he knew was that he needed a job. Being nearsighted, he was a poor hunter and so needed the money; and having been subject to taunts of “Brachiator Boy” since childhood, he figured it would be good for his self-esteem. He answered an ad (“Wheelmakers Desperately Needed”) in the weekly edition of Tabula Mostly Rasa and showed up at Corporate Offices a week later; resume in hand.
     He didn’t get the job.
     There are lessons to be learned from this; kernels of wisdom for modern-day job-seekers. But for now the important lesson is this:  Those who wear the wingtips are the ones who get to evolve.

Jobseeking

     So how do you go about evolving? The time-honored way to search for a job since the days of Tabula Mostly Rasa has been through the classified advertisements in your local newspaper. It remains so, despite claims to the contrary. Internet devotees are fond of extolling the virtues of their medium as a job source; however, computer science employment is already in plentiful supply for those who want it.
     This leaves us with what “headhunters” (a suitably Paleolithic term) call “the hidden job market.” The first thing the job-seeker needs to understand is that the reason why it is hidden is because it is almost completely obscured by two towering monoliths of words. Those words are nepotism and patronage. (Point of fact:  a friend once hired a “headhunter” to access the “hidden job market”—the headhunter showed up at his house every Wednesday morning; cup of coffee in hand, with a copy of the very same classified ads which my friend regularly perused.)
     Which leaves us right back where we started. Having located a potential job in the newspaper, your next step is to send out a resume. There is little I can add here which hasn’t already been covered in the thousands of books dedicated to resume writing. But I will say that the “Career Objective” part requires careful thought—you know, the part where you write, “It has been my lifelong dream to acquire an exciting position as junior sales manager.”
     This sort of “Career Objective” is a double-edged sword. First off, don’t sell yourself short—it has been your lifelong dream to acquire an exciting position as junior regional sales manager. Secondly, the “exciting” part poses a bit of a dilemma, as it probably in no way describes the job which you are applying for. I advocate a more realistic approach; one perfectly in keeping with the hard demands of the business world. In that light, my own resume begins as follows:
Career Objective
Seek stultifying, poorly-paid position as minor functionary in large, faceless organization.

The Interview


“There is a demand today for men who can make wrong appear right.”

Terence.

     A reasonably happy fact is that sooner or later you will succeed in gaining an interview. This is where the real hard work of job-hunting begins. You will arrive at the designated offices at the appointed time “all gussied up,” and will probably be seated in a waiting room with other applicants, all of whom are more attractive and professional-looking than you are. You will wait. And wait. And wait some more. As nervousness mounts, you may be tempted to pick up a copy of the company’s Annual Prospectus, which is the only reading available. Don’t—not only are they deadly dull, but reading them only encourages you to think up some hopelessly inane question to ask at the conclusion of the interview. Why hand your interviewers rope to hang you with? They already have more than enough.
     No, now is the time to think about the type of image you want to project, and that is one of dynamism. Think Genghis Khan; wielding a remorseless sword in the boardroom. Think of the protagonist in Heinrich Boll’s short story, whose job consists of shouting into telephones, “Action has been taken! Action has been taken!”, and in the occasional change of pace, “Action will be taken!” It matters little whether you have the qualifications for the job—what matters is that you appear to have them.
     In any event, you will eventually be led into an interview room, long having forgotten the purpose of your visit. After the requisite glad-handing has ended, you likely will be seated, Spanish Inquisition-style, a great distance from your interrogators. At this point the questioning will begin. At first the questions will be fairly innocuous; dealing primarily with jobs you have held in the past. They may be posed by each of the interviewers in turn, or they may be posed by one while the other two take copious notes and nod sagely from time to time. Or the interview may take on a “good cop/ bad cop” format (not to be confused with any other variations of this game which you may have played.)
     In the “good cop/ bad cop” interview, one or two of your interrogators will pose questions while a particularly attractive member of the opposite sex sits close to you. After you answer a question, he or she will smile languidly at you as if to say, “Oh, don’t mind this. This is just a little formality,” or even, “I want you.” Do not be fooled—the reason this person is smiling is not because you’re getting the job or because he or she thinks your chromosomes a likely match. They are smiling in anticipation of the questions to come.
     The questions to which I refer are ostensibly to measure the interviewee’s ability to learn from experience and to adapt to corporate life. But the reality is that these questions exist solely for the amusement of the recruiting staff. They are:
“What do you think is your greatest weakness?”
“If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”
     Utmost caution is required in answering these questions. Remember, think action! Also remember that truth is relative—and if you were a relative, you wouldn’t need to be here, now would you. In lieu of lengthy prose, I have substituted a more practical instructional device:
Bad Exchange
Interviewer:  “What do you think is your greatest weakness?”
Interviewee:  “Well, I have this annoying habit. I feel compelled to take off my shoes and
socks and bite my toenails at all hours of the day. I know it’s disgusting, but there it is.”

Good Exchange

Interviewer:  “What do you think is your greatest weakness?”

Interviewee:  “Well, I have this habit. I remove my socks and bite my toenails in public. But I believe this is just evidence of my industriousness—the fact is that I simply refuse to be satisfied with just one task at any given time.”

Bad Exchange

Interviewer:  “If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”

Interviewee:  “Um… well, I feel really bad about this false harassment suit I filed last year.”

Good Exchange

Interviewer:  “If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”

Interviewee (remember, personal development is an ongoing process):  “Well, I feel really bad about this false pending harassment suit I filed last year. Hey, are you leering at me?”

     And thus concludes the interview process. Employment experts recommend that prospective employees send their interviewers a card or letter thanking them for their time. In my experience, this is a waste of a perfectly good stamp. If you get the job, you get the job, and you will know in short order, if you don’t, you will know after the company refuses to respond to inquiries as to your status. Cards don’t work—the corporation is not your grandmother.
Career Development

“I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

Morrissey.


The fact remains that even the most dim-witted among us will eventually obtain a job. But career development is a never-ending process. The author of a famous employment guide said words to the effect that the average person will change jobs seven times during their lifetime (of course most of us change our underwear that often in a week, but no one has seen fit to write a book about that.) So keep this essay for handy reference. Job-seeking, like death and taxes, is a fact of life—only considerably less fun.

Flies. They taste like love.

     You're a busy mom.
     Between work, household chores, the PTA, and picking up the kids from soccer practice, there just never seems to be enough time to prepare a dinnertime treat for those quality minutes together.
     Here's where Fly-Rite comes in. Just a quick stop at the neighborhood grocery, and you'll have the makings for a meal the whole family will enjoy.
     Imagine their surprise when they sit down to a plate of steaming flies. Microwaved, abob in milk, or in new budget-stretching Fly Helper, they're a mother's little time-saver. Imagine their beaming faces:
     "I get the bluebottle."
     "I get the horsefly."
     "No, I get the horsefly."
     You shush the children with a smile.
     "Sorry, Mom," they say. "These flies are delicious."
     "Sure are, honey," your husband raves. "You must have slaved."
     You didn't, of course, but that's just between you and Fly-Rite. You take your first heaping mouthful, and that exquisite flavor tantalizes your taste buds.
     "Mmm," you think. "These flies taste like... yes, yes, that's it..."

Flies. They taste like love.

@brought to you by Fly-Rite and the American Fly-Marketing Board

All in all, I don’t mind being over 40. Sure, making mortgage payments has not been nearly the ball of laughs the bank led us to believe it would be, and if television advice is to be followed I should be lying awake at night worrying about my fiber intake more than I currently am. I should also be worried about eliminating free radicals, though a large net dropped over the city of Madison would do the trick without requiring me to drink exotic juices which taste like tainted cranberries. But I can’t complain. Middle age for me is about achieving small victories, like some measure of financial solvency, impending fatherhood, and discovering that there is not, as my brother Craig had led me to believe, any such thing as a home prostate exam.
     So I like my age. I don’t feel, as many people do, that the high school years were the best years of my life. It’s hard for me to be nostalgic about acne. But you know what I do miss? College, and in particular one aspect of college, and that is nicknames. It’s tough to acquire nicknames in middle age because we don’t do anything stupid enough to get them. If we did have them, a typical exchange would go something like this:
     “Hey, going to the neighborhood pot-luck, Man Who Lost Everything in the Stock-Market Crash?”
     “No, I don’t think so. My daughter has a soccer game, Guy Who Edges His Sidewalk Three Times a Week.”
     But twenty years ago, at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, my friend Tom and I were The Rednecks, and living with us on our dormitory wing of mostly Natural Resources students were Slime, Hodag, Johnny Quest, Sloth, Crispy, Dirty Dan, and Uncle Milty.
Slime
     My fellow Redneck Tom and I received our introduction to Slime when we first moved in, as he fired up a chain saw to construct a bed out of pine logs. The three of us split the cost of a case of Rhinelander beer, which, if memory serves, was $4.20. “Green Death” was our beverage of choice in those days, and if you brought enough returnables back to the liquor store you could get beer and a couple of bucks back for Ramen noodles, and thus had the makings of a dinner party.
     Slime spat Copenhagen between his teeth, was a cribbage player par excellence, and drove a rusty International Harvester Scout littered with empty tobacco tins, shotgun shells, and deer skulls. His attire tended to Army surplus, though there was period when a girl he was dating—the type who dotted her i’s with hearts—attempted a radical Slime makeover by forcing him to wear ridiculous yachting outfits.
     Slime played a significant role in one of my many romantic failures at the time. I was at a campus watering hole chatting to a comely girl from my Soil Science class, and to my delight she seemed to find me amusing, if not attractive. At this point Slime entered the tavern carrying a pizza. Upon being informed that carry-in food was not allowed, he exited and prepared his pizza for concealed carry by wadding it into a ball. He re-entered, seated himself between me and my romantic interest, and began munching on his giant pizza ball.
     I’d forgive Slime for that, but I don’t know where he is now. Still, I would not be shocked to open the door one day to find him standing on the stoop with a deck of cards and a couple of bottles of Rhinelander beer.
     “Play some cribbage, Redneck?”
Hodag
     I think of Hodag, my late friend and waterfowling partner, quite a bit. We were roommates during our senior year at Point, and on the ceiling above his bed he had tacked a poster of a scantily-clad model touting one beer or another. Hodag claimed to have a special relationship with this model, and sometimes I’d hear him talking to her late at night:
“No, no,” he’d say. “I don’t want to kill my roommate.”
     One fall morning during post-college years found us picking up goose shells behind his farmhouse after the morning flight had ended. We wanted to continue hunting, so we packed his boat with duck decoys and headed up to the Horicon Marsh.
     In those days I was severely poverty-stricken and existed primarily on oxygen, with a little bit of venison thrown in every now and then. Because of blood-sugar concerns, Hodag always had food on him, and on that day on the marsh it was an enormous bag of dried fruit. I think now that he must have been aware of the powerful laxative effects of dried fruit, because he kept offering it to me:
     “Here, Redneck. Have some more dried fruit.”
     In the end, I finished the whole bag and frantically scurried into a local establishment, waders and all, after shooting hours had ended:
     “Please tell me you have a bathroom in here.”
     Alas, those days are over, and nobody calls me Redneck any more. Still, I see some hope for a nickname after all. You see, our neighborhood is full of very nice people, which is not good. Every neighborhood needs an ogre. When I was a kid, it was the local undertaker, who was rumored to stoke his air rifle with salt pellets to fire into the backsides of young miscreants. Never mind that later in life I found Mr. Salt Pellet to be a cool guy of the highest order. As kids we were terrified of him, and showed our terror by antagonizing him at every opportunity. Once, my brother Craig and I and fellow hooligan Ted slid over his fence during a backyard barbecue and darted among the guests to the food. Craig and Ted grabbed as much chicken as they could hold and I grabbed a bowl of Jell-O, and we scrambled back over the fence and to our hideout along the Fox River before the pellet gun could be brought to bear.
     Now, Jell-O is a reliable enough accompaniment to a cookout, but the gastronomical joy to be found in eating it increases exponentially with its illicitness. That joy is equaled only by the profound disappointment upon finding out, in the dark, that the bowl of Jell-O you thought you heisted was, in fact, chicken fat.
     I remember that incident now, and I think I have my nickname. I have been feeling a bit crotchety lately. What’s that? Stirrings outside?
     “Hon! Fetch me the gun, and the salt pellets! Git offa my propitty, you punks!”
     Yeah, Old Man Helker. It has a certain ring to it.

When I was young—like a lot of Wisconsin Outdoor Journal readers, I’m guessing—I wanted to grow up to be a fisheries biologist. But while attending the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I found that I just couldn’t hack the high-level mathematics courses which were required. I started out in the lowliest remedial class with the other dunces and got an “F.” I took the class again the following semester and received a pity “D.” I then took Math for Dunces B (prerequisite: Math for Dunces A) and again received an “F,” followed by a “D,” and so on and so on, until I finally met my numerical Waterloo in a segment on imaginary numbers. I gave imaginary answers on exams, and thus ended my dream of becoming a fisheries biologist.
     My point is that not all of our childhood dreams come true. Maybe you are a firefighter, or a doctor, or even an astronaut, in which case, hey, well done with that whole landing on the moon thing. But most of us are accountants, or mill-workers, or short-order cooks, and while these jobs may pay the bills, and we may even like them, they’re certainly not what we had envisioned for ourselves.
     Me?
     I’m a courier.
     I like it, but it’s not what I thought I’d be when I was a kid, and sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet. Which is why I took a part-time job working for tips as a male burlesque review dancer-—you know, the type of guy who entertains your wife or girlfriend while you’re away at deer camp. Hey, don’t knock it. I worked only ten hours last week and pulled in a cool two dollars and fifty cents. And that’s tax-free, folks.
     Which brings me to rough fish. We can’t all be walleyes in the lake of life. Some of us are destined to be sheepshead, or suckers, or burbot.
     Or carp.
     I’ve had plenty of experience with rough fish over the years, starting with when I was a kid and sent off to the Department of Natural Resources for a book (which I still have) entitled “Rough Fish, Crayfish, and Turtles: How to Catch, Clean, and Prepare Them, and Why.” I became obsessed with the idea of feeding my family with a resource which, as the book notes, is “available in the fresh waters of Wisconsin and the rest of the United States by the hundreds of millions of pounds.”
     I ran set lines which I checked while doing my paper route, and the carp I snagged accidentally while pursuing walleyes and smallmouths were put to use. Once, I snagged a 30-pounder which I had to swim after, and after I landed it and retrieved one of my prized few Rapalas I pedaled home and cut the carp in half down the backbone with my Dad’s radial-arm saw. We had the fish smoked, and to this day whenever I get those little involuntary eye twitches I think of that carp and the amount of PCB’s we must have ingested.
     Mealtimes at the Helker household were very interesting for a period of time. My mother, ever encouraging, cooked whatever I provided, and my long-suffering father, the original meat-and-potatoes guy, would sigh, look at his plate, and put fork to yet another meal of sucare (we called it that to give it that special Old World ambience.)
     My interest in rough fish did not extend only to their gastronomical qualities. I also cut the “lucky stones” out of the skulls of sheepshead, with an eye toward using them to make jewelry. You know those jewelry commercials they show on television around the holidays, where a woman opens a small box next to the Christmas tree and her eyes get all glassy like a walleye’s and she says something along the lines of, “Oohh, Fred”? Well, imagine your loved one opening a small box after you’ve lit the candles and poured her another glass of wine. Inside the box she’ll find a necklace fashioned from calcareous structures extracted from the skulls of dead fish.
     The result?
     Pure romance, my friend. You’ll have to send the kids off to the in-laws for a solid week.
     I guess my interest in sheepshead continues unabated. A few years ago my friend Mark and I conceived of a tournament as a way for our old group of high school buddies to get together. Mark, a graphic designer, executed the RSVP card for which I wrote the text:
     As you hail, or have hailed, from the Fox Cities, you must be aware of such fishing tournaments as Otter Street and Fond du Lac’s Walleye Weekend. These tournaments, while grand in their own right, do not involve the great denizen of the Winnebago System: the freshwater drum…the sheepshead…the Gray Ghost.
     It is high time that such matters be rectified. So let it here be noted that you are cordially invited to the Gray Ghost Invitational Fishing Tournament to be held at Calumet County Park on May 21st.
     The event will begin, more or less sharply, at 11 a.m., with fishing concluded by 3 p.m. A highly technical weigh-in procedure which is too involved to detail to the layman, but which involves a garbage bag attached to a Zebco De-Liar, will follow. In addition to the honor and glory of it all a prize of sufficient grandeur will be awarded during cocktail hour, unless you are Birdy, in which case you are already too competitive and need no additional encouragement. Those interested may stick around for Poisson au Poivre avec Pommes de Frites, which is French for “Peppered Sheepshead with French Fries.” As far as you know.
     No entrance fees are required. You need only bring your license, fishing tackle, bait, and something for the grill at lunch. Alcoholic beverages may be brought as well, although you should know that overimbibing may cause you to miss the delicate tap of the Gray Ghost and thus forfeit your chance at angling immortality.
     The favor of a reply is requested:
Yes, I am fantastically interested and will attend. It is high time the Gray Ghost gets its due.
I am not particularly interested in fishing for sheepshead. However, the opportunity to drink beer under the guise of a sanctioned function sounds good to me.
You guys have too much time on your hands.

     Maybe this will be the year The Gray Ghost Invitational actually takes place, maybe not. But I will forsake the game fish in the Madison lakes once or twice this summer and instead walk to the creek near my home. I’m sure it’s loaded with rough fish, and some days that’s about my speed. Like I said, not all of us can be walleyes in the lake of life. Some of us are doomed to be forever vacuuming the primordial substrate, endlessly rooting and rooting, grubbing with protruding appendage through slime and muck and mire in search of some half-rotten morsel.
     But then, if you’re a Chicago Bears fan, you already know that.

Each weekday morning, after I’ve showered and dressed and before I leave for work, I sit down in front of the television with a cup of coffee and whatever I’ve been able to scavenge for breakfast. I quickly check to see the sports highlights, and then flip until I find a certain infomercial offering investment opportunities and hosted by a gorgeous young woman sporting canyonesque cleavage. I watch, rapt, despite the fact that my net worth consists of whatever it is they’re paying per pound for aluminum cans these days. Sometimes I’ll hear a stirring in the background, and quickly change the channel as my wife emerges from the bedroom.
     “Whatcha watching?”
     “Bass fishing,” I say, and sometimes we sit together and watch as professional bass fishermen roar off to a part of a reservoir down South somewhere, fire a few perfunctory casts, and then roar off somewhere else.
     When I’ve had a tough week, I watch them and think to myself, “Hey, you know what? I could do that.”
     I think I can, too.
     First, I’ll need a gaudy outfit in colors not seen in my family since my brother Scott’s 1977 Homecoming date.
     Second, I’m a realist, and understand that things might be a little tough at first, since most of my bass fishing experience has involved rowing around quiet northern Wisconsin lakes at dusk with my dad. Until I get the fishing part down, I will—as we entrepeneurial types like to say—maximize revenue streams by acquiring sponsors. A shirt or jacket doesn’t offer much surface area for advertisement, so I will don a sandwich board. In light of my advancing age, potential sponsors include Metamucil, The California Prune Marketing Board, and Life Alert. Perhaps I can even hire Wilford Brimley for a television spot in which he eats a bowl of oatmeal in the bow of my boat.
     Speaking of boats, I know that standard procedure on The Tournament Trail is to operate a metalflake number with an engine consuming the annual output of a small OPEC country. I might not have the cash for that. Like I said, I’m a realist. So at first I’ll stick with my plain-Jane 14’6” aluminum boat powered by a 9.9 kicker because it possesses that most desirable of attributes: it’s paid for.
     My tackle will need some work. I need to change my mindset that six-pound-test monofilament is just about perfect and 10-pound is for heavy duty, and get line which is not only useful for hauling big ol’ hawgs out of heavy cover, but also for securing anchors and towing boaters-in-distress.
     Looking through the pages of a bass-fishing catalog, I realize that my reels are out of date, too. As Fletch said in the movie, well, “Fletch,”  “It’s all ball-bearings these days.” The reels in my catalog have 11, 16, even 20 ball bearings. Hah! I’ll have a reel constructed entirely of ball bearings. Drop it, and it rolls downhill. For backup, I’ll use a spincast reel because nobody on the circuit uses one. Think of the untapped revenue stream.
     I already have a bottle of garlic-flavored scent spray, so that’ll save me a few shekels there. The spray doesn’t work, as far as I can tell, but it does have the pleasant side effect of causing my boat to smell like a pizzeria. I was fishing with a friend a few years back, and I liberally doused my plastic worm with the stuff between casts.
     “You know,” he said, “vampires don’t come out in the daylight.”
     Salt-impregnated baits will probably be banned soon in the Madison lakes, due to the alarming number of cases of bass with hypertension, but that’s alright. I’ll introduce a line of baits which are impregnated impregnated. Cast, and they’ll give birth during the retrieve.
     I expect tournament success will come quickly, and I will parlay my fame into a television gig despite, as the saying goes, having a face made for radio. For my show, I will develop a signature line—something like “Ooo, son!” That’s Roland Martin, I think, and I probably haven’t hooked a fish in the last twenty years without uttering that phrase. Someday, after I tip, the final line of my obituary will read:
     “His last words were “Ooo, son!”
     One day maybe you’ll be like I was, sitting in front of the tube on a weekday morning, bemoaning your fate in the workaday world. You’ll idly flip the channels until you come across The Bassmaster Classic, and there I’ll be, my little aluminum boat idling amongst all the metalflaked monstrosities. They’ll blast off, and as I reappear from beneath the swells I’ll turn around.
     “Wait!” the commentator will say. “What’s he doing? He appears to be coming back to the landing!”
     And that’s exactly what I will do. I will don my sandwich board in full view of the phalanx of television cameras, take out my spincast outfit, and start jiggin’ and piggin,’ and rattlin’and buzzin’ and burnin.’ It shouldn’t be any problem to come up with a limit of lunkers.
     “Think of it!” the commentator will say. “It’s pure genius! He’s fishing virtually untapped water right beneath our feet!”
     Once ashore, I will hoist my mossybacks and get kissed by scantily-clad women. As an aside, this is a scenario which has not played out much for me in real life. James Madison Park here in Madison is on Lake Mendota, and is a popular sunbathing spot for University of Wisconsin students. Once I approached a particularly attractive pair of lotioned-up coeds, hoisted a stringer of really big bullheads, and awaited my smooch on the cheek.
     “Get those things away from us before we call the police,” they said.
     But after I get kissed at The Bassmaster Classic, I will chug a bottle of Metamucil in front of the cameras—thank you, sponsors! And then later, under the lights at the winners’ podium, I will say:
     “Thanks for the six-foot-long check. I have to go. No, I mean really. I have to go.”

Cox Hollow Lake Fishing 8/11

I’m not much of a joiner...

     Oh, I belong to a bunch of conservation organizations, but I’m shy, and the few parties my wife Lori is able to coerce me into attending find me at the periphery of the knots of people, silently sipping my beer and calculating when we can leave without offending the hosts.
     Perhaps my fear of social situations got its start when I was in high school and teachers uttered those horrible words: “Let’s break into small groups.” You remember small groups. They were usually dominated by the person who knew the least about the subject in question. In my case frequently that person was female, and pretty, so when my turn came I’d slink up onto the soapbox and wholeheartedly agree with whatever it was she said: “Y…y…yes, I agree with Jennifer. She’s absolutely right in saying that the Revolutionary War was the high-water mark of Richard Nixon’s career.”
     So it was ironic that I found myself, a few years back, teaching a small group of youths at the church we attended. The situation was even more ironic because when I was the age of the kids I was—I hesitate to use the word—“teaching,” I couldn’t get out of church fast enough. I’d have my dad’s Jimmy outside, loaded with my fishing gear or shotgun and decoys and waders, waiting for my chance to exit. During the general hubbub of announcements was a good bet, although you could exit largely unnoticed at other times as well, provided you stayed low enough to the ground.
     My stab at bettering the spiritual lives of the youth of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was a brief and ignominious one. Some people are born teachers. My wife, for instance, is one, and not only because the skills of the three-year-olds she teaches dance to mirror those of her husband. I abandoned my post at St. Luke’s shortly after the conclusion of the Sex Education unit, which is not to say that I didn’t learn a lot. I won’t go into detail, because this is a family magazine, but suffice it to say that you would not believe how babies are made.
     I think about that class sometimes now, and I believe that my inability to connect with those kids had something to do with a lack of moral credibility on my part. For instance, my fishing journals are shot through and through with The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth.
Lust
     Again, I won’t go into detail, but my wife does look pretty fetching in her fishing hat.
Gluttony and Greed
     In September of 1987, a bunch of friends and I waded out to my honeyhole along Lake Winnebago’s northwest shoreline. Usually, it was a good spot for walleyes and smallmouth bass, but on the evening in question the rock bar was inhabited by huge schools of white bass. We caught fish for hours on literally every cast, and by the time we stopped fishing I could barely drag my stringer onto shore. The others had similar bags, and we filleted and filleted and filleted long into the night. My friend Slime went back to Washburn with enough fillets to feed his hometown, a chunk of Superior, and all of Cornucopia three times. My friend Tom kept a pile of fish too. I can’t speak of his mother’s skill as a cook, but she was nothing if not inventive, and after the unveiling of White Bass Pie Tom called, presumably about the trip:
     “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”
Anger
     I’m a pretty easygoing guy, so there isn’t much in my journals to document this particular sin. But like you I’ve fumed over jet skis and spot-hoppers who anchor an oar’s length away, and among my pet peeves are charter boat captains who have all of Lake Michigan to fish but insist on running planer boards right up against the breakwall.
Envy
     Nobody likes being outfished. Oh, it’s alright if your buddy catches four walleyes, say, and you catch three, but continually being bested—on your home waters, no less—results in a serious case of envy. Here’s my journal entry for April 17, 1984, during a period when I was a regular below the spillway of the Menasha Dam on the Fox River:
     “Caught one 12-inch walleye on a jig and minnow. One gate open. Saw one northern caught and a few suckers snagged. Not the greatest action, but that one kid got three again. Can’t figure out what he’s doing that I’m not.”
     Well, for starters, catching fish.
Pride
     My journal entry for Labor Day weekend of 2007 reveals that I caught two chinook salmon and a brown trout off of the Algoma breakwater, and that my wife lost a king when I was unable to net it due to the high surf pounding the south pier. What it does not reveal is that the people we met there—my friend Mark, his friend Steve, Steve’s brother, Kurt, and their dad—got skunked. After Lori and I returned home, Mark called.
     “Kurty,” he asked. “Why do you always outfish us?”
     My chest puffed out, and I delivered some advice in what I hope wasn’t too patronizing a tone.
     You know how this is going to end up. As the saying goes, Pride Goeth Before a Fall. I met Mark at the Algoma breakwater two weeks later. We fished all night, with a break only to grill lake trout fillets, and caught nothing. We fished all morning, too, still catching nothing, until Mark, tired of studying under the tutelage of a master who had caught exactly zero fish, left for greener pastures—a buddy’s boat in Port Washington. I stayed on the breakwater until 10 p.m. with only one legitimate hit to show for my efforts. After a burger and a couple of beers at a local tavern, I reached Mark on his cell phone in the Port Washington harbor, where he was helping to fillet the seven chinooks they had caught that day.
     I slunk out of Algoma the next morning without even bothering to fish, although to look on the bright side I did make it home in time to see the Packers defeat the New York Giants.
Sloth
     Well, at long last there’s something I can’t be accused of. Oh, I might let the grass get a little too long between cuttings, and as my wife constantly notes, I never, ever put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. But when it comes to hunting and fishing, I plead not guilty to laziness. They say that the devil finds work for idle hands to do. My hands, when they’re not working, are usually operating the bail of a spinning reel or the trigger of a shotgun. Perhaps there’s hope for me yet, and one day I’ll meet you at the Pearly Gates.
     Just steer clear if I’m teaching a class.

Mission Accomplished

Sunday night, 7:21 p.m.

Doctors told me that they want my life "to be as boring and routine as possible".

Um, watching "Hee Haw" re-runs. Um, mission accomplished!
"SAL-UTE".

In case you didn't get to watch, here are a few little "tidbits" from Korn County.

O.K. better. 7:49 p.m.

Meds taken, takes about 2 hours (based on last night's experience) to get so tired, I literally can't stand. Which, coincidentally, is just about exactly the time we have allotted for what's coming next on the idiot box: "Beavis and Butthead". Oh, yeah, heh-heh, heh-heh. 

It Finally Happened!!!

Dear Colgate-Palmolive Company,

I use your most excellent product, "Irish Spring Body Wash for Men."

I read the advertising blurb, "This here's the classic freshness of Ireland! Be ready, lad! It's been known to bring out the lasses!" in the shower every morning. I am ashamed to admit that I had begun to doubt, after these many months, that any such lasses would ever be forthcoming.

O.K., delivering supplies to Dean East Clinic this morning. After I backed into the loading dock, I got out of the truck, and there's a very pretty girl, evidently waiting for me.

"Hi!" she said.

"Wha-at?" I replied, suavely.

She proceeded to spend the next TWO HOURS following me, helping me, kind of joking with me, though I have to admit I was um, somewhat mystified, and was maybe able to string together a few vowel sounds.

I had a little mission up to Ear, Nose and Throat, and when I got back to the truck she was there waiting for me.

"Hi again!" she said. "Are we done?"

I was troubled, for I had no idea that she was supposed to have any involvement in my job whatsoever, but I suppose I must have stammered, Uhhh...yeah."

"O.K.!" she said. "Thanks!"

And then she walked away.

I have never, ever met the girl before in my entire life.

Your devoted customer,

Kurt Joseph Helker (Esquire)

A Deer Camp Tale

     Bill gasped against the cold as he let the cabin door close behind him. He realized that he had forgotten his lunch, but decided against going back inside. No sense in taking a chance on waking anyone up, as he really didn’t feel like talking. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged to the thermometer nailed to the side of the woodshed. He removed the glaze of frost with a mitten and peered inside:  14 degrees.
     He sighed and let his flashlight play among the trees and outbuildings before beginning his trek. Between two of the trees was bolted a 4 x 4 post, and from it hung two does and three fair bucks. His efforts weren’t represented, for the third year in a row, and as he walked he felt the old feeling creep into his mind. It wasn’t the excited anticipation he had felt on opening weekend. No, this feeling had a sort of dull-edged pang to it; almost like hunger, as if he would actually have to depend on the deer he had not yet gotten.
     He didn’t need the flashlight, but he used it anyway, keeping its beam focused on the ground. The landmarks were familiar even in the dark, and he remembered his father’s words:  “When you come out of the big woods, head due west through two stands of popple until you cross a marsh. From there you can see a tall white pine standing alone, and forty yards northwest of that tree is my stand.” After a long walk Bill reached the pine and glanced at the band of stars stretching across the sky.
     “Thanks, Dad,” he said out loud, but the words sounded hollow even as he said them. Bill climbed the steps to the stand, hoping the scrape of his coat wouldn’t alarm a deer. He settled in and listened to the trees groan with the cold. At least it isn’t windy, he thought, as he loaded his rifle and waited for shooting light to come. He knew already what kind of day it would be:  The sun would never really rise at all, and changes in the sky would occur so slowly they would be almost imperceptible. Ink-black would become less so until he could make out the long stalks of trees in the distance, and then gray would come in lighter and lighter shades until midday, when the whole process would be reversed.
     Around 6:40 Bill raised the rifle and found that he could see well enough to shoot. He then began the routine he had followed since opening morning. He moved his eyes, and only his eyes, from left to right and back again in long, agonizingly slow sweeps.
     Left to right, right to left. Left to right, right to left.
     Nothing was moving in the cold, except a chirring pine squirrel and a junco which flitted between the trees.
     Bill’s feet began to freeze. He withstood it as long as he could, until finally he descended and stamped his feet until he could feel each individual toe. He climbed back up into his stand. Left, right. Right, left.
     His eyes stopped at the remnants of his father’s old stand. The treated posts he had helped his dad carry in looked as good as ever, but the tarpaper roof was scattered in warped and faded fragments, and Bill could see through his binoculars that squirrels had cached pine cones underneath a piece of the angled roof.
     He began to wish that he had retrieved his lunch after all.
      How long has it been now? Bill wondered as he looked at the debris. Twenty-five? No, twenty-six years? Yes, that was it—twenty-six years.
     His father had gone out to hunt on the last day of Bill’s third season and had never come back. Bill tried to remember specifics, but only a few pieces stood out from the swirling, gray collage.
     “Windigo,” the bartender had said. It was a couple of seasons later, and young Billy was in the charge of his uncle as the hunters sat at the bar after the night-before-opener fish-fry. “A mythical creature… flesh-eating; said to prey most on those with weak or distressed minds, who would then become windigo themselves.” He went on in lurid detail until Billy’s uncle interrupted.
     “Quiet with that windigo crap, Frank,” he said, as he slid Billy another soda. “Don’t go scarin’ the boy.”
     The others laughed, and Billy laughed, too, but they had been hollow laughs, and for years he was afraid as he sat on stand. Windigo? It was one thing to dismiss the notion when you were perched on a barstool surrounded by booming giants; yet another when you were alone in the Chequamegon and beech leaves rattled in the wind and you had to admit to yourself that maybe you weren't so sure.
     And then, when Bill had been twenty or twenty-one, he heard the word again. They’d been driving, Billy and Roger and Ogre and the rest; joined by an Ojibwa who watched over the cabin and sometimes took part in the hunt. The drive ended a stone’s throw from Bill’s father’s stand, and the hunters stopped to rest and plan the next push. Bill squatted on his haunches in the snow, sharpening his knife, and he saw the old man jerk a thumb in the direction of the stand, scan the surrounding timber, and say simply:  “Windigo.”
     A premonition of noise interrupted Bill’s thoughts. He cocked an ear and brought the rifle to bear against his chest. A pine squirrel hopped into view, sounding for all the world like a deer, and Bill resumed his reverie.
     He could see how the windigo myth was able to develop and grow during starving winters. What had it been like, as cool became cold and cold became sub-zero, to endure an endless stretch of foodless days; to watch bellies become distended and then shrink back against gaunt ribs? And when hunger caused men to go insane, and to resort to cannibalism and murder in their madness?
     Bill felt he knew, at least on a very limited scale. After all, he had hunted for days without seeing anything, and his stomach growled in sympathy. The gray, green, and white of the woods screamed “Empty!” at him from dawn to dusk, with the message getting louder every minute.
     And madness? What had his mother said? Your father wasn’t right those last couple of years before he disappeared…
     Now he could see that that had been the case. But his father had not been unkind, and Bill could remember moments when his father would flash a rare unguarded smile, and slip back into his own skin for a second.
     And me? Bill thought. I am my father’s heir. His wife had noticed long before he had, and had made an appointment for him. He had canceled the first, and then the second, but now, from the perspective of his deer stand, keeping an appointment seemed like the right thing to do. And I will, Bill told himself—right after deer season.
     Ach, what am I thinking? At least I’m in the woods, and not at work. Quit being so glum. He shook his head as if to allow the bad thoughts to fall to the ground. He resumed his vigil, and descended twice more to restore feeling to his feet. He forced himself to stay on stand as the hours passed, saying, “Just ten more minutes,” and when that period ended, “Just ten minutes more.”
     Nothing.
     Darkness came early in the timber, and when Bill could no longer see he climbed down and headed toward camp.
     He wasn’t looking forward to getting there. He hadn’t been feeling well anyway, and now all this time with the same group of guys had set his teeth on edge. What is it those tour promoters say? Seven fabulous days and eight fun-filled nights? Near the first stand of popple Bill stumbled off his trail. He swung the flashlight through the trees and noticed a track.
     Another track? Out here? That’s odd. In all his years Bill had only seen two people not of his party, and they had been a couple from Chicago who had become lost while snowshoeing. They had looked quizzically up at the orange blob perched in a tree, and the woman asked hopefully, “Trailhead near here?” Bill knelt over the tracks. They were huge. His own feet were large—size thirteen—and these were well beyond that. There was no discernible tread mark, and the edges were smooth, rounded, and rimmed with ice, as if the snow had melted and then frozen hard again. Well, he told himself to dispel his uneasiness. You have to be damn dedicated to get in here, but it is a public forest.
     He walked faster just the same, and was sweating despite the cold by the time he saw the cabin light glinting through the trees.
     The old Ben Franklin in the corner of the room glowed and popped with the birch and popple he had cut and split, and he stripped off his long johns before crawling into the musty sleeping bag. That was the thing about deer camp:  it was either so cold your bones ached, or so damned hot you couldn’t stand it. He sighed and shoved his feet to the end of the bag with a violent kick.
     “Man, Bill,” Ogre said. “Why you goin’ to bed so soon? We still got poker to play, and you never did tell us whether you saw anything or not.”
     Bill didn’t feel like saying anything—always Ogre with that petulant voice—but did before he could stop himself.  
     “Didn’t see a damn thing. Ten hours on stand, and not even a button buck.”
     “Nothing, eh?” Robert said. “The Mighty Hunter.”
     Bill seethed at the insinuation. Old Fat Bob—like he was any better. The thought made Bill want to laugh. Hell, on opening day he had come back to camp for lunch and had found Bob standing over the stove in his underwear; scooping corned beef hash out of the skillet with his bare hands. Never even made it out that morning.
     Bill kicked his feet again and made himself as comfortable as he could.
     The whispering began:
     “What, is he just feeling antisocial tonight?”
     “Tonight, hell—he’s been that way all of camp. Don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
     “Problems at home, maybe?”
     “Maybe. But if you ask me, he’s acting like his old man did just before it happened.”
     “Oh, quiet about that, Andy,” the camp patriarch said. “He ain’t nothin’ like his old man was, and I don’t wanna hear anything more like that as long as we’re up here.”
     Thank God, Bill thought. At least Roger was sticking up for him.
     Ogre let loose a long, plaintive, tremulous fart, and guffawed for a solid minute over it. The others laughed, too. Maybe that’s the problem, Bill thought. He had come into camp the evening before opening day, and when the whole crew was present they had cracked open a fifth of bourbon. Then the old stories and the liquor-warmth made him feel close to the others. But now… after days of the same jokes and the same smells and the same losing hands… Perhaps deer season acted in different ways upon different people. For some men, Bill thought, the experience stripped away a year’s worth of the crap that came with earning a living and restored good animal nature to their souls. For others, perhaps the days worked on them until the nature part was removed, leaving only animal.
     That’s it, Bill felt. Ain’t my fault I’m in the mood I’m in. Sometime later the card players retired, and he finally fell asleep in the spaces between the dueling snores.

     From the depths of the dream he could see himself sit upright on the mattress, as if steeling for a dash to the outhouse. But the dream-he didn’t move further; just looked intently out the window as if waiting for something. The luminous face of the alarm clock below revealed the time:  2:15.
     Bill could feel the depth of the figure’s sadness, and as he watched an apparition’s face filled the window. The face was gaunt, with skin stretched tight over hollow cheeks. The creature’s eyes appeared dead deep within their sockets, and it opened a chasm of a mouth to reveal shrunken gums over impossibly long canine teeth. It was the windigo, and Bill realized that in order for it to reach the window it would have to be at least eight feet tall.
     The dream-Bill did not appear frightened; did not move at all; just nodded silently when the windigo spoke:
     “It is time.”
     The dream-Bill jumped to the floor and padded to the rifle rack. He picked one out, walked to the nearest sleeping form, and prodded it awake with the muzzle. The form leapt up and fumbled for the kerosene lantern.
     “What the…?” Ogre demanded; blinking against the light as he backed slowly toward the door. “What the hell are you doing?”
     In his dream Bill could feel the man doing the mental calculations:  Is that rifle loaded or not?
     Other forms began to stir, and in an instant all were wide awake, staring at the large hole at the end of the rifle.
     “Put the gun down, Bill,” Roger said. “I’m your friend.”
     The dream-Bill leveled the rifle at the men and they disappeared through the cabin door, knocking over furniture as they went. A lantern smashed and a puddle of kerosene caught, flared, and then burned itself out.

     The grating of the alarm dragged Bill from the depths of his dream, and before he was quite awake he shut the clock off with a flat slap of his palm. Man, what a dream, he thought as he dressed by feel in the dark. There was no noise in the cabin—not even snoring. The words of his father played in Bill’s head:  You can’t kill a deer by sitting in camp.
     It was warmer outside, and a cloud ceiling concealed the stars. Bill turned on his flashlight and stared at the ground. Tracks leading into the woods stretched out in a wide radius from the door. Well, Bill thought. That’s odd. Still, you gotta go; you gotta go. And the outhouse seat was notoriously cold.

     A grainy snow began to fall as Bill waited. It built in volume until the whole woods seemed to emit a soft hissing noise. Bill listened, aware that the night’s sleep hadn’t improved his mood. He felt blacker than ever.
     It came at first light, furtive like a deer; all there-it-is and there-it-isn’t and shifting form. When it got close enough Bill could see it for what it was:  the windigo; the creature he had seen in his dream. It moved fluidly, and he was astonished that such a horrible entity could be so graceful. In one giant bound it leapt to the crotch of a neighboring tree. It glared at Bill and uttered cries which sounded like sobs.
     It occurred to Bill to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, and he realized he wasn’t even afraid. He glanced impassively at the rifle laid across his lap. He did laugh as he realized he had forgotten his compass. Like that’s going to do me any good…
     The creature crouched to spring.

     It was Sunday, the final day of deer season, and the men of the camp stood outside of the cabin staring into the trees.
     “I hope he never comes back; doing what he did,” Ogre said.
     “I don’t think it was loaded,” another chimed in, and on it went until Roger put an end to the talking. The men stood; shifting nervously and wiping runny noses. The bare trunks of the swaying popples glowed silver in the afternoon sun, with the glow and the wind fading as sunset neared and the cold came on.
     “C’mon, let’s go inside,” someone suggested, and the men shuffled in through the door. Later, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the search copters faded into the distance, and the last light winked off in the old cabin. A snow began to fall, white and thick and heavy; and the woods put its secrets to bed for the long, dark winter.