Tom pulled into my driveway at 8:30--just a half hour late today.
"Got worms?" he shouted over the public radio saturday morning bluegrass show.
"Goin' anyway!' I replied, automatically to his standing joke.
Tom is "my old guy." He taught me to fish when I was 7 years old. Thirty years later, we're still fishing together. He retired five years ago and now has the enviable ability to fish seven days a week.
"Coffee in the thermos," Tom indicated, holding out his plastic travel mug.
"What do I look like?" I joked. I poured him half a mug. "So where are we headed today?"
"A nice caddis hatch came off yesterday down on the Hay. If we get down there by 9:30, we should be on the water by ten. Hatch should come off right about then."
I set Tom's mug on the dash and let centrifugal force slide it down to him as he took a hard right onto a county highway.
"Nice shot," he said, acknowledging my dashboard slide. "Now where did those matches go?"
I felt around in my seat. "Sorry, I was sitting on them."
Tom took three wooden matches out of the cardboard box and laid them on the dash.
"You see," he started, striking the first match on the side of the match box. The car slowly angled toward the shoulder as he drew in the match to light his pipe.
". . . if you can get out in mid-morning on a day like today. . ." He waved the nearly expired match before dropping it in an old tobacco tin he uses as his ash tray. The wheels on my side of the car were gently cutting closer to the grass bordering the road. Tom jerked the car off the shoulder, back into his lane.
". . . when it's not too bright and it's fairly cloudy, like right now. . ." He paused after lighting the second match and holding it to his pipe. ". . . I find that the trout are in a better mood for feeding." The car was now veering into the opposite lane.
"Where'd I put that pipe tamper?" Tom asked, looking up and jumping the car back into his own lane. I looked under the arm rest, found the tamper and handed it to him.
"Yesterday they were working emerging nymphs for a couple hours before the hatch came off. You shoulda been there," he smiled, lighting the third match.
"Ran out of. . . " Tom paused, drawing on his pipe. "Elk hair caddises?" I finished. "Mmmm hmmmm," Tom mumbled past his pipe. By now the passenger side tires were shushing in gravel on the far side of the shoulder. Tom eased the car back onto the highway and flicked the still burning match into the ash can.
"Tied up a bunch more last night, though. They really like the tannish ones more than the olive dubbing I found."
With the pipe finally lit, Tom was now able to dedicate his full attention to driving. I always ask myself why I always let him drive.
We were in the middle of a debate over hand-tied versus store-bought leaders when suddenly the paper candy wrappers in the ash can ignited. Taking this distraction in stride, Tom laid his pipe next to him on the seat, rolled down the window and calmly flung the ash and half burnt tootsie roll wrappers out the window.
"And the knots hold the leader up in the current better, so they prevent drag better," he concluded, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.
His pipe had fallen to the floor when he had emptied the ash can out the window. "Here take over," he said. I took the wheel and he ducked under the dash to rummage around for his briar.
The pipe had gone out so Tom lit it again. This time he ran a couple on a tandem bicycle off the shoulder as he focused on holding the match inside the bowl. After tamping his tobacco, he then returned his attention to the road, completely oblivious to the yelling bicyclists.
"You know," Tom mused. "You just can't beat a good pipe in the car. You can really appreciate the tobacco so much more than when you're out in the open and the wind is blowing away your smoke." He grinned and admired his pipe, narrowly missing a mailbox.
That's how it is fishing with my old guy. Getting there is always half the fun.
©copyright 2002, Perry S. Fuller
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