Chapter 1
The Wealth of the Loafer
Spending a day getting ready for fishing while retirement was going to work for me, I was thinking back to when I was a kid. The month-long eve of fishing season was a busy day for young anglers, who, upon first sign of spring, launched themselves into fishing preparations. This burst of focused energy lasted until they got distracted and didn’t resume until exactly midnight before the opener or later. That is the way it worked in my neighborhood, anyway.
Upon spotting a crocus shoot, my brothers and I would tear through the garage until we found our tackle box which ended up behind Halloween decorations, yard tools, snow shovels, Christmas decorations, canned vegetables, oil cans and the transmission of a 67’ Ford Fury. That always brought pause because we did not own a Ford. When the box was found it would gleam, in our eyes, like a pirate chest of gold. We would shoot for dibs. The loser would open the box, turn his head and wince, while knowing not to inhale. It is always amazing how a crawdad can survive harsh conditions. Then, it was time to restock the tackle box which could barely shut already being full of jumbles of muddy stringers and Skoal cans. Restocking consisted of finding my dad’s tackle box, cracking the lock, and tactically acquiring his best lures from the previous year. They may not have been for trout but that did not phase these little entrepreneurs.
If a fishing rod survived the previous season, it was usually hanging from a joist. We got away with pilfering tackle but as an unspoken code of honor, we only used our own fishing rods and tried to refrain from using mom’s earrings as spoons. A quality rod for us consisted of an ancient Zebco with twenty-pound test mono and perfectly preserved stream gravel between the gears which could still toss an earring approximately three miles, overhand.
Being a misguided youth trapped in school while all the important stuff happened, I would go see my guide to get the skinny on the season. The only guy that seemed available for the task or a fishing trip was, my buddy Choo Choo’s dad. Kids were not really allowed to utter adult’s names back then so I am not sure what he went by but there were some who called him… “Tim.”
In this twelve-year old’s undeveloped, unworldly mind he was the richest guy in the neighborhood. My dad said all he did was loaf and philander, which seemed like good business to me. For years I looked for those classes in school. Whenever anyone asked me, “Billy, what do you want to do when you grow up?” I learned that saying, “Be a Loafer and Philanderer” did not exact a great reaction. Reasoning that it must be a very hard thing to achieve as it brought about the same eye rolls as, “Be the President” so I figured they were the same thing.
Tim did not seem to have any of the problems of the other dads. He did not have to trudge off to work daily in early morning hours nor did he miss much fun stuff because of work. He was never upset when we hit a baseball into his Ford Fury. He would just laugh and say, “It’s okay, ya just knocked some rust off. You can’t hurt that thing.” Other neighbors’ cars were different. Anything could hurt or scratch those rides. We were not even allowed near them. Whatever the “high fallutin” people did , it didn’t seem to be enough. They could not even afford an indestructible car like Tim had. Mr. Andrews, the farmer, always said he did not make any money last year. Choo Choo’s dad never said that. Some of the other dads often seemed stressed out, complaining about the news, lack of time or money. Tim’s loafing seemed to provide more than enough cash and he was impervious to the stress of news.
I always hoped Tim would get around to teaching us how to get into loafing and philandering. He never really did, he just said not to worry about things. Instead, he took us along tracking honeybees, finding catfish holes, collecting pallets to build a sugar shack and stuff like that. Despite holding back on his trade secrets, Choo Choo’s dad always knew how to start the opener on the fish and somehow always seemed to get time off from loafing to take us along. Many of the adults, I can’t remember their names now, said Tim wouldn’t ever amount to much but us kids were always grateful for his time.
See you along the stream
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