Chapter 2: Laying the Ground Work
I was only three when I caught my first fish. My family would go to my grandparents’ house in Thorp, Wisconsin every summer. They had an old Grumman canoe that my grandpa, my brother Jeff, and my dad and I would pile into and with a 2 ½ horse Johnson outboard; we motored across Miller Dam to our favorite crappie hole. I would get so excited watching the bobber plunge underwater when those pan-fish took my minnow. With a fish tugging my line, it was all my dad could do to get me to tone it down a notch or two…or three. He’d say I was scaring the fish but in reality, I think he was just a little embarrassed.
At the age of seven my family moved to Brainerd, Minnesota. “The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes” was its claim to fame, which is no exaggeration. The old man often said if you weren’t careful you might be aiming for one lake and accidentally cast into another. With my grandpa getting up in years and us living in such a great place to have it, we were gifted the Grumman and spent countless days on the little neighborhood lake called White Sand.
White Sand is a typical lake for Minnesota formed by glaciers thousands of years ago. As they receded, ice-chunks were left buried under layers of sediment and gravel. As the ice melted, pot-holes formed and filled with water. The structures of these lakes were very consistent from one to another with gradual shorelines eventually dropping off into deeper water but never really getting deeper than about 25 feet. Sand bars jetted out creating huge flats of bull rushes and reeds where monster largemouth bass hung out on the inside edges and the vicious northern pike patrolled the deeper water off the weed lines.
At eight years old my brother started taking me out wading these bull rushes for bass. My mother worked part-time at a clothing store and would sometimes join us since my dad worked so much and couldn’t. I think she genuinely wanted to spend time with us and we were more than happy to have her along. She could really get it done. Looking back, she was probably nervous that we were going down there by ourselves and wanted to know we were safe. We were given a lot of freedom back then; probably wouldn’t happen these days.
All summer long we rode our bikes down to the lake. Carrying our rods and a bucket, we caught leopard frogs along the shoreline to use for bait. We would spend the first hour or so catching the frogs and then kept them in ice-cream pails tied to our waste. We worked our way out into the bull rushes and reeds, picking little pockets to cast into watching bass explode on the surface after the swimming frogs.
On the weekends and some evenings my dad would take us out in the canoe on the lake. The fishing was very different as we trolled spoons and lures behind the canoe. The trick was to get just on the edge of the weed lines slowing the canoe down enough to give pike the opportunity to rush out from their cover to smash the passing lures. The takes were never subtle and even the little hammer handles, as we called them, felt like twenty pounders on the initial hit.
In the fall before our third winter in Minnesota, the dependence on my father for these fishing excursions ended.
I was in the 4th grade and was attending Baxter elementary school. My brother, who I shared a room with, had to take a series of buses to Brainerd where he attended junior high. He always woke up earlier than I did in order to catch the bus. With 5 kids getting ready for school, you can imagine the chaos in the morning. Throw my one-year-old little brother into the mix and the noise of the morning ritual was that of rock concert at the very moment when the headlining band takes the stage. The breakfast table often became a battleground where a dirty look from my sister would start volleys of threats and insults across the table. I remember this particular autumn day like it was yesterday.
Unlike a typical morning starting out with the familiar voice of my mother yelling down the stairway to my room, the voice I heard was much quieter and a little less gruff. On the second call I recognized the voice as my neighbor’s. “What was she doing here?” I wondered. “What if she sees me in my underwear?”
Before I even walked out the door into the unfinished area of the basement I noticed something very strange. It was quiet. I looked at the clock on the dresser and even though it read 7:15am, it sounded more like 5am. By this time I should be hearing hair driers, clogs across the linoleum kitchen floor directly above my head, my sister yelling at my brother to get out of the only bathroom we had, and my mom doing her best to keep the peace, which usually just added to the volume and commotion. There was none of that.
I opened the bedroom door, stepped from shag carpet to cement and prepared myself for the low light obstacle course the basement had to offer. Moving boxes filled with insignificant stuff we hauled to Minnesota from our last placement in Iowa littered the floor. My dad was a manager at Montgomery Ward so we moved a few times due to him Jones’n up the middle management ladder. I didn’t really like the basement and thought at any moment something would jump out from behind one of those boxes so I always made short work of the trek, grabbing the handrail at the bottom of the stairs, swinging my way up and out of the dungeon like a monkey’s narrow escape from a leopard. The top of the stairs was the worst as no light penetrated the area just before the door where the overhang enclosed the stairwell. If you caught it just right you could take three steps up the stairs and grab the door knob, turning it, swinging it open at the same time you took your last leap. Hopefully nobody would be standing on the other side.
On this day, however, my brother caught me before the flight instinct kicked in. He stood just outside the door and as I opened it I was startled to see him standing there. His face long, shoulders drooping, he said he needed to tell me something.
At twelve-years-old one can’t be expected to have developed the tact necessary to give the news he was about to give me. He did well.
I remember wondering what exactly a stroke was. I knew it was serious because my dad was in the hospital because of it and my neighbor was cooking breakfast; oatmeal. I absolutely hated oatmeal.
“Where’s the creamed wheat? Why can’t I just eat my damn cheerios? Why are you in our kitchen and where the hell are my mom and dad?” That’s all I could think of. “And why is everyone so flippen quite?”
I made it to school that day as did the rest of my siblings. At around 1 o’clock and somewhere in the middle of math class the uncertainty rocked me from the cool façade I had presented for most of the day. My head fell to the cold hard desk, which was actually quite welcoming after feeling so hot and flushed for so long. Gripping the edges of the desk, I held on as tight as I could with the hopes of holding back the tears that were now inevitable. It didn’t work.
Mr. Trucano came to my rescue and walked me to the nurse’s office. The entire school knew what had happened to my father and to some degree, was prepared for that moment when it all came crumbling down for us. Unfortunately the plan wasn’t well developed and I spent the rest of the day by myself wondering what was happening to my dad. At 3:15 the bell rang and I got on the bus to go home.
On the ride home, answers in the form of a ten-year-old girl came freely as she scooted next to me into the vinyl green bench seat. You know, I can’t even remember her name or what she looked like or even how she knew me but she obviously knew what had happened. Without even asking, she explained to me what a stroke was. As one can imagine, a ten-year-old is probably not the best one to explain the complexities of a stroke. Getting that information without the necessary sensitivity was shocking to say the least. All I remember from the conversation were the words “paralyzed” and “blood clot in the brain.”
The realization of my dad’s new limitations began that evening when I visited him in the hospital and continued throughout the calendar year afterwards. His speech was severely impaired and his entire right side was paralyzed. In the fall he would take my brother and I hunting nearly every weekend. In September and October we hunted grouse and in November we deer hunted—that was all gone. In December ice-fishing would start and go through March—again, gone. And the summers filled with my dad taking us out in the boat? No more.
I realize now how selfish it was to focus on the things I could no longer do with my dad but at the time, it created a lot of resentment for that nine-year-old boy—resentment that continued to plague me throughout my pre-teen years and even further into early adulthood.
It was a year and a half later with my brother entering his teen years and our parents trusting us enough to go out on our own that my brother and I started filling our own void left by my dad’s illness. (We would eventually help my dad fill his void as well by taking him fishing and hunting.) Minnesota’s fishing opener became one of those dates we always counted down to. The only days comparable were deer hunting opener and even Saint Nick would have taken a back seat if it weren’t for Christmas being in December instead of May.
My dad did regain the ability to drive and on those opening days, Jeff and I would load the canoe into the station wagon and he would drive us down to White Sand where we left it for the summer. By having the canoe down there, we could ride bike to the lake and go out without having to solicit dad for a ride. We must have put in at least 50 days a summer on that lake trolling around looking for monster pike. Most often we caught the little hammer handles but once in a while…
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