From forestgreen@rocketmail.com Mon Sep 22 07:53:24 1997 Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 22:06:24 -0400 (EDT) From: forestgreen@rocketmail.com Reply-To: conserve@savetrees.com To: forestgreen@rocketmail.com Subject: From Tim: "Two Boys and a Fish" "This week Tim's Hometown Stories Chapter 5: "Two Boys and a Fish" ************************ Important easy instructions to remove yourself from our list. 1. Send an email to conserve@savetrees.com, or just click on reply. 2. In the body of the letter and the subject line type 'remove' 3. In the body of the letter, list the complete email address or addresses you want to have removed or never contacted again from us. If I added you to our list without your permission, I apologize. At the end of each letter we ask for the referral of friends, but we have not confirmed those referrals. In the future we will, since we have had a few complaints. My letter is non-commercial. Every other week I send published true stories about my hometown of Sheridan, Wyoming, one of the last Old West towns left in America. The alternate weeks I send "Tim Talks Green" articles about preserving our Earth. If you choose to remove yourself, I understand. Please keep in mind that conserve has nothing in anyway to do with any other person on the savetrees.com domain. I am conserve. I will not contact you again if you request it. THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND WORDS! Many of you have told me that my stories are something you look forward to, and are words of encouragement for your own lives. I will try to make sure to keep offering encouragement and motivation in "Tim's Story". However, I am going to start devoting every other week for current events, ideas for conserving, recycling, shopping responsibly, education on ingredients of products, etc. In these letters I will also ask for feedback from you. ********************************************************************* DO I STAY, OR DO I GO? (Jimmy Durante) I need to know if you want to continue to receive my letters. I may have to cut back on our list, but I do not want to cut anyone that really wants to stay. Also, it helps me to know if I am helping you with my writings. If you want to keep receiving "Tim's Hometown Stories", please send an email to hometown5@answerme.com. If you want to keep receiving "Tim Talks Green", please send an email to TimTalksGreen@answerme.com. Please send all comments to conserve@savetrees.com. ********************************************************************** AND NOW, LET US RETURN to Sheridan, Wyoming. Tim's Hometown Stories Chapter 5: "Two Boys and a Fish" The year is about 1971. Two boys age 10 and 12 in T- shirts and torn dirty jeans are leaning back looking up at the sky resting on a grassy steep bank of a stream. Trees surround the knoll that forms a small round quiet area in the stream that is about 20 feet wide. Both have fishing poles propped up by sticks, and the lines dangle quietly in the water. The trees make a shady place to enjoy a hot summer day, and the bank, which was about 10 foot high, hides the boys from the world that might be passing by. It was the best place to be in the entire world. I was one of these boys, and the other was my very best friend, Jim Thompson. We were out to catch big trout that day. This was our secret fishing spot, and we fished there almost everyday. I had known Jim for about 2 years. His father's job moved their family from Kentucky to Wyoming. Jim had been around country a lot, but hot country. The short summers were very surprising to him and his family. And the cold winters were a tremendous shock. Jim lived in a house across the alley from mine, and for some reason we hit it off. I cannot even remember how I met him, except that I had seen a moving van bringing their belongings to the house. Jim was quite the colorful person. He wanted to experience everything which was quite a conflict with his natural fear of everything. Jim was an entertainment show all in himself. He was also very self-centered, but his strong loyalty to a friend made up for that. Jim had a large nose, in his opinion, and was a very sore spot of discussion with him. This represented some of his low self esteem, which, in character with Jim, was mixed erratically with bursts of self importance. If you presented a new idea to Jim, for a few minutes you might be revered as the greatest mind to ever exist, followed by a crashing low of , "it won't work"! This summer day we were set on catching the largest trout to ever fight on a fisherman's line. Of course, this was very similar to our goal the day before. And the day before that. By the end of the afternoon, even a catfish made us feel like super fishermen. The best part of fishing is the time between catching the fish. The hush of the wind through the trees in harmony with the babbling water, mixed with the cool shade from the hot sun, was probably the most enjoyable part. I had a back pack and canteen that was from Army surplus, and always packed a little lunch and snacks to chew on while we fished. We would lay back on the bank and look into the sky at the clouds. Shapes would form, and we would point out what they would resemble. Hours can easily whiz by while examining the intricacies of clouds. We kept one corner of our eye on the tip of our fishing pole. The small current from the stream kept the tip of our pole bobbing hypnotically back and forth. I would stop watching the clouds sometimes to watch this magical rhythm. Zing! It was unmistakable, something besides water would yank on the pole causing our hearts to slam against our chest. Jim and I bolted to attention. I grabbed the pole and held the line lightly in my fingers to feel what was happening on the other end. I felt no pull, so I knew that a fish was tasting my bait. I waited, and pulled the line slowly to entice the fish with a lively looking worm. Nothing. Reeling slowly until all the line was in, I seen that my hook was empty. Those crafty fish stole my bait, without getting hooked! It was a let down, but it made a few minutes become the highlight of the day. I put another worm onto the fishing hook, always wondering if it hurt the worm, and threw my line back in the stream, or "crick" as I called it. I then laid back for a short nap. Soon, Jim and I decided we had enough fishing and started pulling in our lines. Mine had something holding it, but it did not feel like a fish. More like seaweed that slowly gave way. When the end of the line appeared, attached was a hideous looking fish. It was white, round, had ugly eyes, and big fat lips. "Sucker fish!" Jim hollered. "Sucker fish? What is that?" I queried. They set on the bottom of the crick and suck all the dirty stuff up," Jim advised. "Yuck! I'm not going to eat it", and I started to throw it back. "What are you doing?" Jim panicked, don't throw it away! "What are you going to do with it" I asked rolling up my upper lip. "It is disgusting." "I don't know, maybe I will eat it." Jim just wanted to take a fish home, and I thought if he was crazy enough to eat the disgusting thing, I would let him. We took off down the road to our homes, Jim proudly carrying the trophy sucker fish on a rope as if he had been the one to fight it out of the water. Jim started to swing the fish around and around and then brought it down with a slam on the concrete. "Why are you doing that, that is cruel" I cried! "Give me the fish!" "It s just a fish!" Jim retorted. This is where his selfish side seemed to peek out. I grabbed the fish, took out my knife and cut off the head of the flailing fish to end it's misery. "Fish have feelings too, you know!" and I stormed on home ahead of Jim. I was a strange Wyomingite, because although I loved to fish, and I liked to eat fish, I I always felt sorry for the worm on the hook, and then the fish when I caught it. My father and grandfather always filled a 5 gallon bucket with the water we were fishing in, and would put the fish in the bucket to swim around until we got home. They too cared about how the fish felt, and tried not to torture them and give them a quick death when it came time to clean them. The following day Jim came to my house, and in typical fashion of boys, our problems were already forgotten. We walked down to the river with our fishing poles. Walking by the wooden footbridge that crossed the water, we spied a couple boys fishing with their lines dangling from the center of the bridge. This bridge was most valuable, because underneath it was an abundant supply of minnows and tadpoles. Every boy, and even some girls, seemed to understand the quality of life that was added simply by chasing tadpoles and minnows with a net or jar. We walked across the bridge and looked into the boys' bucket. Trout!! Big ones! Hey, those were supposed to be ours! "Where did you catch those trout?" We asked. "Right here off the bridge," was the answer. Well our tackle boxes dropped, and our hooks went right into the water. We were going to get our trout today! Jim lost about 5 hooks catching sticks and weeds that put up a tremendous fight. I lost a couple, and gave up. "It's past feeding time Jim, the fish aren't biting yet. Let's come back this evening." "I am staying here!" Jim announced, with determination. Jim had never caught a trout yet, and he became more obsessed with the idea every day. I think seeing that other boy with trout out of "our" river, sparked a fire inside him. I went down below the bridge to inspect the growth of the tadpoles, and see how the minnow population was growing. A rumble shook the air, and looking up I could see storm clouds moving in. "Jim, it is going to rain, lets go!" I warned. "No! I want my trout!" Jim declared. I walked home without Jim, barely beating the rain. Rain was always nice because everything seemed green and smelled fresh afterwards. I loved the way trees drip on you as you walk past them after a rain. After the rain, I walked back down to the bridge, assuming that Jim had found cover. Nope. Jim looked like a drowned rat, and he was in the exact same position as when I left, with his eyes firmly attached to the river below. "Jim, did you know it rained?" I snidely asked. "Yes." Jim answered matter of factly. "It's all wet here, let's go to the store and get a pop." "I don't want to." Jim replied. I set down to help Jim watch the water, since that is a proven technique to coax a fish onto your hook. All of a sudden Jim's fishing pole bent in half! Wow! A strike! Jim started screaming and hollering and reeling in his line. I crawled down the bank under the bridge to help get the fish over far enough so as not to lose him back into the river. It was a trout, a very fine trout. Probably about 11 inches. Jim was beside himself with excitement. He finally had his first trout. It was then that we noticed it. A strange thing to be on a fish. There was an orange plastic tag attached to the gills and mouth. What is this? We could not figure this out. After a few minutes of pondering, we packed up Jim's wet gear and started home, Jim proudly holding his fish on a string. A couple days later, one of the boys in the neighborhood told us that tag had been part of a fishing contest that KROE radio had sponsored. You were supposed to have won a prize if you caught fish with the tag on it. KROE radio had stocked the trout when they were about 6 inches long into the river. Since Jim's fish was about 11 inches, we knew it had been a while since the contest, but Jim decided that he should be awarded a prize anyway. I tried to convince him that the contest was over, and he was not entitled to a prize. "Why not?" Jim whined. I caught the fish? "Yes, but it was after the end of the contest!" I explained. "Well, that is not fair!" Jim assumed that anything that did not fit into his perfect plan of life was not fair. Jim proceeded to head downtown to the radio station to claim his prize. I went with him. We entered the station reception office, and explained that we had caught a fish with the winning tag on it. The receptionist seemed to know nothing about it and told us to walk down the hall and talk to the manager. Walking past those interesting booths with large glass windows and record players we found the manager in a cramped messy office. We explained our situation and the manager told us that the contest was over a year ago and had ended. Jim started whining, saying it "just is not fair!" The manager said he would look in back and see if he had any prizes left. The prize had been a free fishing pole and tackle box. We set for a long while waiting on the manager, and Jim started whining that he already had a pole. He did not need another one. I just sighed and waited. Soon the manager returned with an armload of Nerf foam rubber toys. Nerf was new, and was pretty exciting stuff. He brought a foam Frisbee, a foam football, and some other Nerf toys. He gave some to Jim, and he gave some to me! What a haul! Jim and I had a lot of adventures together until his family fled the cold winters to Ocala, Florida. Jim was excited to leave because he wanted to be a marine biologist, which he said, "you can't do in Wyoming." Of course today Jim is a proud husband, father, and plumber in Ocala, Florida. I observed in this adventure how persistence can pay off. Jim decided to catch that fish, and he stayed there until he did. Jim also decided he deserved a prize for that fish, and he stayed until he got that. Of course I did not think Jim should have whined for the prize when it really wasn't deserved, but I did see that the persistence got him what he wanted. ************************************************************************ If you have a friend that would like to receive our non-commercial poplular letters, please send us their email address. Please, confirm with your friend that it is ok first. Thank you!! your friend, Tim