The “Wonderod”
My father and I had a tense relationship. I never felt that I truly “measured up” in
his eyes, although I never had a clear sense of why. It was just a gnawing feeling deep in my gut.
Part of the answer lied in the fact that my parents
really had, in essence, two families. My
five older siblings were born pretty much bunched together. Then there was a seven-year gap, between
those five and my brother Mike, who was 13 months older than me as I brought up
the rear.
I knew from family stories that my father was the
troop leader when my three oldest brothers were in the Boy Scouts. In fact, he and my brothers helped build the
original buildings at Bear Paw Scout Camp, and my older brothers all worked at
the camp for several summers in their teenage years. When I joined the Scouts part of me was
hopeful that this would be a point of common interest between my father and I,
but my father didn’t come to a single meeting, even when I expected to receive
an award. I overheard him tell my mother
once that he had “put in his time with the older boys”.
I also heard stories that my father played amateur
baseball at the time that he started dating my mother. He played catcher. He paid the price for that as he couldn’t
straighten the fingers on his left hand because they had all been broken a
number of times because of the poor quality of catcher’s mitts at the time he
played. He only told me one story about
his playing years. He recalled the first
game that my mother came to watch him play when they began dating. He really wanted to impress her. He stepped into the batter’s box and hit four
home runs in a row. The problem was they
all went over the fence on the wrong side of the foul pole. On the fifth pitch he hit a little dribbler
up the third baseline and was thrown out at first base by ten feet. When I wanted to play little league baseball,
though, I was told “no” because dad wanted to use all of his vacation from the papermill
for camping in the summer, which obviously was a conflict with summer baseball.
Probably the biggest wedge between us was the time
that I saw him sneaking a drink from a brandy bottle that he hid in the trunk
of the car on a camping trip. I saw him
and he knew I saw him. I never asked,
and he never said anything. Throughout
the remainder of my youth until I moved out, my dad’s drinking steadily got worse. It wasn’t a pleasant environment. I resented it for years, but as I had my own
children I began to better appreciate that parenting is hard, and we all have
our demons to battle, and so the bitterness has lessened.
So, in most ways we were very different people, but
there were two exceptions. On our many camping
trips it was my dad and I who stayed up the latest. Each night we would watch the fire die down,
and we would stare deeply into the glowing embers. I did say out loud one night that watching
the embers was my favorite part of having a campfire. He replied that it was his favorite too. Looking back, I am sure that this was my
introduction to contemplative prayer. We
almost always sat in silence poking at the shimmering red and black coals, but
it was a peaceful silence.
The place where we were the closest though was in a
little 12-foot fishing boat. My father
loved fishing. He grew up fishing on
Green Bay for perch. And perch remained
his favorite fish to catch. This was the
era of stout casting rods and knuckle-buster reels. They were called knuckle-busters, because if
you tried to cast with one, the spool and associated reel handles spun freely
as the line peeled off. You had to
“feather” the spool with your thumb to stop it the exact moment that your lure
hit the water, or else the line would become hopelessly snarled in what was
not-so-affectionately called a ‘rat’s nest”.
And if you didn’t keep your thumb and fingers out of the way of those
spinning handles, you learned the hard way why those reels were knuckle
busters.
But, we didn’t do much casting because regardless of
what other kind of fish may be in whatever lake we were camped at, our first
duty was to catch a stringer of perch.
All we had to do to catch perch was to bait the hook, let out enough
line that the heavy sinker hit bottom, then you reeled in just enough line that
the sinker was an inch or two off of the bottom so the line was taught, and wait
for a nibble.
My dad’s choice of fishing pole was his Shakespeare Wonderod. He had bought it in the later 1940’s – the
first solid fiberglass fishing pole on the market. He had literally caught thousands of fish
with it through the years. Even though the
Shakespeare Company eventually improved their rod design, changing to a hollow
core spun fiberglass, he stuck with his faithful original.
When my dad passed away in 1984, my brothers and I
divided up his fishing tackle. He had a
number of modern rods and reels by then.
I let the others divide up that newer gear. I took the Wonderod. It connects me to my younger father that I
never knew – someone more carefree; someone more at peace with himself. It connects me to all those evenings in that
little fishing boat when we could admire each other’s catch, maybe watch an
eagle soar, sit in the middle of the setting sun as darkness settled on us, and
be comfortable, even glad, to be with each other.
I don’t use it because I don’t want anything to happen
to it. It sits on top of my bookcase
upstairs. A couple of years ago I was in
a shop in northern Wisconsin that specializes in older and antique fishing
gear. I described my dad’s Shakespeare Wonderod
to the owner and asked him if it had any value.
I had, and have, no intention to sell it, but I was curious. He shook his head, “You’d think so, as old as
it is, but there were so many of those made, and the quality was high enough
that there’s still lots of them around.
It’s probably worth six or seven dollars maybe.” No real value. But to me, it’s priceless.
His Peace,
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