Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs, page 3
“Oh, yeah? Well let me just take a whiff of the inside of your vehicle, sir. Whe wwweeeeee! Choke! Gag!” He staggered back, barely catching his balance and almost falling into the ditch.
“As I tried to explain, officer,” I said, “we have a man in back here trying to stuff pigs in sacks and—”
“That’s enough of that, pal. I don’t put up with wise—” The patrolman flicked the beam of his flashlight into the back of the station wagon. Six pigs and Finley returned his stare. Smiling weakly, Finley held up a gunnysack, apparently as proof that he was engaged in a legitimate activity.
“You see,” I continued, “what happened was—”
“Okay, okay, stop explaining,” the patrolman said. “I’ll let you off this time. But don’t ever let me catch you guys driving while stuffing pigs in sacks again!”
“Rest assured, officer,” I said. “You never will.” Seldom have I been so confident in one of my predictions.
The MFFFF
No matter what you may have heard, hunting is a competitive sport. The competition, of course, comes not from seeing who can shoot the most or biggest game, but from the display of one’s physical fitness. How often have you been taunted by your hunting companions when you’ve suggested taking a rest after a steep climb to the top of a hill? I myself once regularly underwent such humiliations, even when the climb up the hill wasn’t made in a vehicle.
Finally, I said to myself, “You must do something about your rotten physical condition. You must get in shape once and for all.” As it happened, I wasn’t listening to myself at the time, and thus I was saved endless hours of boring exercise.
Most of my exercise has come from strenuously avoiding all forms of physical fitness, although I do find it amusing to run the Jane Fonda workout cassette at fast speed on the VCR. But, you ask, how do you avoid being taunted by your hunting companions for being out of shape? I’m glad you asked that, because otherwise this article would end right here. The answer is the McManus Formula for Fitness Fakery. By carefully following the MFFFF, you too can be a winner in the Great Outdoors.
First, you must instill in your hunting partners the belief that you have hidden reserves of supernatural strength that can be called up at any moment. Here’s one ruse that works very well. Conceal your lunch somewhere on your person, such as in the game pocket of your jacket. Then, when you are a couple miles downhill from your hunting vehicle and in need of extensive rest, you say, “Oh-oh, I forgot my lunch. I’ll just run back to the car and get it. You fellas wait here.”
Naturally, this announcement is going to be greeted by hoots and hollers and a few threats of bodily harm from your companions, but you must persist. Charge off into the brush. As soon as you are out of sight of your companions, slow to a walk—this goes without saying—for the next fifty yards or so. Make sure you are far enough away so you can’t hear their comments about you, because that would depress you unnecessarily. Sit down on a log and rest for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then return to your companions, bursting out of the brush at a speed sufficient to impress them but not enough to make you breathe hard.
“You back already?” one of them will say. “Ha! You didn’t go back to the car for your lunch after all!”
“I did so,” you say. “But the car was locked and you forgot to give me the keys, Harold!”
Now repeat the entire performance, this time with the car keys, and return with your lunch. Works like a charm. Your friends will be so impressed by your superhuman feat that they will not want to risk humiliation by challenging you to a race up a mountain with a hindquarter of elk on your back, or some similar form of suicide. You will become a legend in your own time, or at least someone might mention your feat in a bar sometime during the following week, but, of course, don’t hold your breath.
Next we have the Nature Lover ploy. Recently I was on a three-state turkey hunt that outfitter Ron Dube (pronounced “Doobee”) conducts out of Buffalo, Wyoming. Ron runs the spring hunt up where the corners of Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota meet. Thus, during a typical week-long hunt, you can shoot a turkey in each of three states, provided you’re not as selective about turkeys as I am. (I select only slow, dumb, nearsighted gobblers, in my dedicated effort to improve the gene pool of the North American wild turkey. But what thanks do I get?)
After I had followed Dube around the hills for a couple of hours, I became more than a little impressed at the speed with which he moves up vertical ground.
“How many states wheeeeeeze have we covered so far?” I asked him.
“Jeepers criminy,” Ron said, using his most serious cussword. “We’re still in South Dakota. Why, you getting tired?”
“Me? Are you wheeeeeeze kidding? Heck no.”
“Good,” Ron said, pointing to a mountain that must have been an offspring of the Grand Tetons. “Because there’s a big gobbler hangs out on the other side of this rise.”
“My lunch wheeeeeeze!” I cried. “I forgot my wheeeeeeze lunch! Back at the wheeeeeeze car.”
“Don’t worry about your lunch,” Ron said. “I always carry plenty of food in my pack.”
Always expect any single ploy in the McManus Formula for Fitness Fakery to be countered by a companion, especially an experienced outfitter like Dube. Now, note carefully how I moved smoothly from the Lunch gambit to the Nature Lover ploy.
Ron and I started up the Teton, his legs gobbling up a yard of altitude at every stride while mine nibbled on inches.
“Hey, hold up a second, Ron,” I called. “What’s this little wheeeeeeze flower here?”
Dube came back down the mountain, ready as always to impart some bit of exotic nature lore to an interested client. He stared at the little flower.
“Why, that’s a buttercup,” he said. “Jeepers criminy, haven’t you ever seen a buttercup before?”
“I guess not this close,” I said, since my face hovered mere inches above the ground, watering the little yellow flower with dribbles of sweat.
A few yards more up the mountain, I ran out of breath again. “Hey, Ron, what’s this gasp flower?”
Dube loped back down the mountain. “Still a buttercup,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s a little different shade of gasp yellow. What gasp makes it a different shade of yellow?”
Thus cleverly did I slow our ascent of the hill, engaging Dube in a discussion of each species of flora on the mountainside, including everything from lichen to ponderosa pine, some of them three and four times. Never once did Ron catch on to my clever tactic, even when I led him into the realm of geology.
“What’s this choke gasp odd protrusion?” I asked, pointing at the object with my tongue.
“A rock.”
“Well, gasp I’ll be darned. A rock.”
Clare Conley, the editor of Outdoor Life magazine, also hunts with Ron Dube, usually for elk. He refers to a trek with Ron as a “Dube death march.” He claims that since Dube always carries a backpack, the best method for slowing him down is to sneak a bunch of rocks into his pack when he isn’t looking. I consider such conduct unsportsmanlike, mean, and contemptible, and besides, as far as I could tell, Dube didn’t even notice the rocks. As I told Conley, if you are going to use an unsportsmanlike, mean, and contemptible method of slowing down your hunting partner, use one that’s guaranteed to work.
Such is the Picture-Taking ploy. This is a truly wonderful gimmick. When the point of exhaustion is arrived at where your feet are no longer taking orders from your brain and each is just wandering around on its own, then you call out to your partner, who may be but a speck on the horizon ahead of you, “Hey, Harold! Come back here! This will make a great shot!”
“So shoot it!” the speck on the horizon calls back.
“No!” you yell. “I want you in the picture!”
The speck on the horizon then scuttles back toward you until finally it becomes Harold. It is a well-known truth that no outdoorsman can resist having his picture taken against a wild and rugged backdrop.
Naturally, when Harold arrives he immediately realizes that the scenery here is absolutely identical to all the other scenery within a fifty-mile radius.
“What’s so great about this shot?” he asks.
“Good gosh, don’t you see it?” you say, putting Harold on the defensive, because he has always been insecure in the area of art appreciation. (It helps to have a companion who had trouble coloring inside the lines back in elementary school. In fact, I make this one of my main criteria in selecting a hunting companion.)
“Man,” you continue, “look at the rare quality of light on the snow (water, grass, sand, dirt, mud) here. Stand over there so I can get this light on your face. Take off your hat. No, put the hat back on. Take off your jacket. Hold your rifle in your left hand. No, right. Good, hold that pose while I put a roll of film in the camera.” And so on. With any skill at all, you can stretch the Picture-Taking ploy into a good thirty-minute rest.
Warning! Merely feigning to take a picture under these circumstances may cause your partner to break off your friendship, not to mention various parts of your anatomy, because he will insist on seeing and having copies of each of the two dozen shots you took of him on the trip. (“And here’s the one of you standing in a field of gray snow. Oh, this is a good one of you standing in a field of gray snow. Look at this one of you in the field of gray snow. And this one …”)
Finally, we come to the Sock-Changing ploy. Most of your companions won’t catch on to the fact that you’re sneaking a rest if you sit down to change your socks every so often, particularly if you comment, “Blisters can incapacitate an outdoorsman faster than anything. The best precaution against blisters is to change your socks frequently.” The one problem consists of having to leave most of your gear behind in order to have enough room in your pack for socks. But a night or two in the wilds without a sleeping bag can be an invigorating and memorable experience, particularly if you have the right attitude and aren’t exhausted from charging up and down mountains all day without sufficient rest stops. I have tested this ploy thoroughly and have found that you can get away with one sock-change per mile of terrain covered, if you have sensible and considerate companions. But how often does that happen? Right. I have some hunting partners who change their own socks only once a month on the average, so with them I go directly to the Picture-Taking or Lunch ploy. The Nature Lover ploy doesn’t work well with them, either, because if you ask one of them to identify a plant for you, he’s likely to say, “That’s just your regular old weed. Now quit foolin’ around and get a move on.”
One further cautionary note on the Sock-Changing ploy. It should be carried out expeditiously. For example, I have found that if you try to extend the rest period by playing “this little piggy went to market” on your toes, some hunters will become irritated and attempt to throw you off a cliff.
Well, those are all the tips I have for sneaking a rest on hunting trips without suffering ridicule from your macho friends. If you don’t like the tips, however, you can always go to an extreme and start getting in shape. Just don’t ask me to hunt with you.
Summer Reading
Of all the classifications of literature, the only one distinguished by season is “summer reading.” Why is that? Do you really care? I thought not. Nevertheless, I have put a good deal of work into this essay and you had better darn well pay attention.
The phrase “summer reading” seemingly reeks of literary permissiveness. Many readers interpret this to mean they can read anything they please between May and September. Not so. A set of rules governs summer reading, and the consequences of ignoring them can be serious. For example, a man was arrested recently for reading Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past on a public beach while naked. If you have any sense, you’ll leave Proust in the library where he belongs.
Now for the rules. First of all, books containing any of the following disqualify themselves as summer reading.
Ideas—Nothing so provokes disgust in a summer reader as suddenly coming upon ideas in a seemingly innocent book. This is why my own books are often recommended for summer reading. An idea occasionally will creep into something I write, but usually I catch it before the book goes to press. An editor once found a small idea in one of my stories and nearly suffered an infarction. “Listen, McManus,” he snarled, “we pay you to write, not think.” Thinking and summer reading are incompatible. If the book has caused either you or the author any thought, then it is probably regular reading and not fit for summer consumption.
Socially Redeeming Qualities—I’m reading a book right now in which medieval monks are being murdered by someone or something. At first I thought this in itself might be a socially redeeming quality, but apparently it isn’t. Although this book does contain some ideas, the author had the decency to introduce them with Latin phrases, so they can be easily recognized and thus skipped over. Several times I’ve caught myself almost thinking while reading the book, so I doubt I would recommend it for summer reading.
Self-Improvement—Summer is the time of degeneration, if not degeneracy. We readers of summer have no interest in improving our minds, bodies, sex, children, pets, lawns, manners, mileage, etc. We are loath to read anything that might improve us in any way. Generally, we prefer summer books that leave us a little bit worse for having read them.
Dust-Jacket Blurbs—The perfect summer book lacks even one dust-jacket blurb. This means that reviewers could not find a single favorable thing to say about the book. Also, any book containing blurbs with the words sensitive, intelligent, or brilliant should instantly be rejected. Blurbs containing the words “gross,” “disgusting,” “insipid,” and “truly rotten” suggest the books might make good summer reading, but they are hard to find.
Any summer-reading book should contain one or more of the following.
Sharks—If a shark doesn’t show up someplace in a book, it’s probably not worth summer reading. I just finished a police action novel in which the villain gets eaten by a shark in the final chapter. I thought it was great. My wife tried to read the book but said she thought it would have been better if the author had been eaten by a shark in the first chapter. She lacks the necessary credentials of a summer reader, however, and her judgment can’t be trusted in these matters.
Illicit Sex—Combine sharks and illicit sex and you have a darn good summer read. The sex scenes should not be too graphic, of course. Otherwise, they are offensive or, worse yet, fall into the category of self-improvement.
Murder—A murder or two should occur early in the book, unless a shark is present, in which case a minor character can be eaten. By early, I mean no later than the first half of the second page. Gorky Park opens with three murders on the first page, which is about the maximum number you can expect in that limited space. The murders should be tastefully done, preferably in the manner of the early British mystery writers. They should also be fairly tidy and conventional. Summer readers don’t like their victims turning up as pot roasts or that sort of thing.
Cardboard Characters—Nothing ruins a good summer-reading book faster than well-rounded, complex characters. They slow the action. The plot sits there idling while the hero ponders some moral dilemma. There should be no moral dilemmas in summer fiction. If the hero must ponder, he should ponder sharks, illicit sex, or the villain. Ideally, he will ponder nothing and get on with his pursuit of one of the above.
That pretty well sums up summer reading. Now hop to it. Summer doesn’t last forever, and before you know it we’ll be back reading the heavy thinkers—Fyodor Dostoyevski, Herman Melville, Sigmund Freud, Shirley MacLaine … .
Angler’s Dictionary
Note from the lexicographer: In my continuing effort to compile a dictionary of uncommon angling terms for use by newcomers to the sport of fishing, I have recently defined the following words and phrases as they are commonly understood by experienced fishers. You will note that the dictionary is not in alphabetical order. This is a labor-saving device. I have never been very good at the alphabet anyway, and have come to regard it as a frightful nuisance, useful only for soup. If some critics see this as a shortcoming in a lexicographer, I have only this to say to them: Picky, picky.
Here, then, is the “Angler’s Dictionary.”
Wicker creel—This is a lively folk dance often performed by a fisherman on the occasion of slipping the point of a No. 4 hook under a fingernail. While the dancer performs the wicker creel, his companions typically will clap rhythmically and encourage him with shouts of “Go, man, go!”
Kitchen table—Of all the dangers that confront an angler, the one seldom mentioned to beginners is the kitchen table. It is a repository of various essential fishing tackle that never makes it out to the fishing site. As a personal example, I laid a brand-new, ninety-dollar, 6-weight flyrod on our kitchen table one day last summer, and it was never seen again. This is an extreme case, of course. Usually the item can be found still on the kitchen table upon the angler’s return, although it often has been buttered and drenched with maple syrup.
Car roof—This is a deadly variation of the kitchen table. Car roofs are to fishing what black holes are to outer space. Whatever is placed on them even for a few seconds gets sucked into another dimension. “Where’s my fly book?” one angler will say to another. His companion will reply, “I saw you place it on the car roof at our last stop!” The two anglers look at the car roof. It glares back at them with smug emptiness. I have had cameras, fly reels, sack lunches, and numerous other items sucked into the void by car roofs. Never place any fishing gear on a car roof, and, even more important, never sit on one yourself.
Spinning reel—This is a form of comical walk performed by anglers who have spent an evening around the campfire exchanging stories and sipping 150-proof rum. The spinning reel is usually attributed to excessive consumption of night air, although a doctor friend of mine claims that theory is nonsense. He speculates that the true cause is altitude. “We’re only three hundred feet above sea level,” I told him once. “Well, that’s altitude, isn’t it?” he replied. “In every instance of the spinning reel that I’ve ever witnessed, there has been altitude present.” I for one am certainly not going to argue with scientific evidence.
