I missed a call from my dad when I was in the middle of something at work the other day. A missed call from my dad can be anything from "I'm hungry. Let's go out to eat at Macaroni Grill" to "Come over after work so I can show you where I keep my will." Consequently, I always call him back as soon as possible.
On the phone, he told me that my Uncle Frank just died.
Now, every boy has those special people in his life, those adult males that he looks up to and just thinks are flat-out cool. (And you can't count your dad, because he's in the inner circle, every day. It had to be someone outside that circle.) I had two. My Uncle Dan is my mom's little brother, and he'll be written about later for sure. My Uncle Frank was on my dad's side and wasn't my uncle at all. My dad was the youngest of a bajillion siblings, and my Aunt Dorothy was actually his niece, and was about his age. She married Frank, probably when they were adults, and he became my dad's nephew. When I was born, he was as old as my dad, so he instantly became my uncle, although Ancestry.com would only identify him as my cousin.
In my youthful eyes, Uncle Frank was the man. Ever since I can remember, my folks would get together with him and my Aunt Dorothy on weekends and play everything from golf to cribbage, from Skittle Bowl (Google it - better yet, just buy it on eBay!) to tennis. He taught me to fish. We started on the lakes at Busch Wildlife area catching catfish on chicken livers and bass on plastic worms. Now, these were no ordinary plastic worms. Uncle Frank made his own freakin worms! He even loaned me the molds, the plastic pellets and the heater to melt them. Good Lord I concocted some psychadelic worms. Never caught a darn thing with them, but man was it fun!
I used to hang on his every word. He was incredibly funny. His jokes had jokes. He broadened my horizons. While my friends were stuck reading the TV Guide, Uncle Frank had me learning the first stanza from 'The Jabberwock' ('Twas brillig in the slithy toaths... is that right?- that was from memory from about 30 years ago.) He had a reel-to-reel tape recorder from the 40's or 50's that was in pristine condition. I had never seen one before. He let me talk into the microphone at slow speed, then he'd play it back and let me hear myself as a chipmunk. Way cool! He taught me an F#m chord on the guitar before I ever had an inkling to play. He sang some kind of hilarious song from the 40's at my request. I can't remember the lyrics, but it ended like this: "You may think - this is the end - well it is!" Hilarious! And he loved Pepsi. I have no idea if my addiction to Pepsi is owed to him or not, but I do know that it was encouraged by him. There was ALWAYS a cold bottle of "Peps" in the fridge.
He was a walking mail man and always offered up larger-than-life stories about his high adventures on his route, including ultra-fascinating epics involving vicious dogs that succumbed to his personality and pocketful of dog treats.
And he had this trout mounted on the wall above his TV set. It was a beautiful rainbow trout, 5 pounds even, caught at Bennet Springs State Park. It was beautiful and always well-dusted. And draped over the wooden mounting board was the fly he caught it on. When I first saw it, as a very young lad, I thought it was an actual bug or piece of lint or something. As I grew older and bold enough to ask, I learned that he caught that monstrous fish on that nearly microscopic fly. And thus began one of the passions of my life.
The greatest thing my Uncle Frank ever did for me, and the thing for which I shall be forever indebted to him, was to teach me how to fly fish. It took several years of build up. Lots of stories about monster fish and Hemingway-esque battles filled childhood years. Then, when I was ten years old, Uncle Frank told me he was going to teach me how to fly fish. It was very much like Mr. Miagi and the Karate Kid. It started with some backyard lessons involving a fly rod with a piece of cotton tied to the tippet. He set up a Jarts (YES JARTS!) ring by one of the chain link fences and taught me the art of flycasting. One o'clock, wait for the line to tighten, ten o'clock, let it fly. He was critical, like Miagi, but still funny.
While he taught me how to cast (patiently untangling every bird nest of fly line and tippet), he taught me how to fish. He explained how trout feed, waiting in the current behind rocks and next to logs, stalking a feeding lane and expending minimal energy to inhale their food (which is about 90% insects smaller than my pinky nail.) He taught me to cast silently upstream from the feeding fish or likely hot spot, allowing enough distance for the fly to sink and smack the picky thing right in the shnoz.
When I had learned to drop the cotton into the JARTS ring, imagining the pounding a 50 pound trout would give my cotton ball (I had high hopes as a boy) Uncle Frank told me it was time to learn to play the fish. Wow. This was complicated. So I cast into the ring. Uncle Frank grabbed the cotton ball and imitated a gargantuan rainbow, pulling the line tight. He yelled at me, "Rod tip up! Hook the line under your index finger! Rod tip up!" He let me play him into me, then told me to cast it back out and we did it again and again.
The sun was setting, my hands were cramping, and Uncle Frank needed a Pepsi. WAX ON was complete. WAX OFF began next week.
The next lesson was knot tying. He got out fishing line and taught me several knots with fancy fishing names, something like "blood and guts knot", "shephard's pie knot" and the all-important "hammer jowl lock knot" (or something like those.) After a few weeks of practice, I had just enough ability to NOT KNOT my fingers together. I was ready, at least ready enough.
We went to Bennet Springs. We left at 3am so we could get there for the siren, which sounds every morning and evening to officially announce the beginning and ending of the fishing day at the park (and wake up the siren ringer's ex-wife out of spite.) Oh, did I cast my arm off that day. I cast all morning. I cast all afternoon. I had a couple tugs, but hooked nothing. I was frustrated. I was young. I thought I was in over my head. I couldn't believe I woke up at 2am, ate cold egg sandwiches in the back seat at 4am, stood in freezing water up to my hips all day, cast until my shoulder almost separated, and was going to go home empty handed.
Uncle Frank to the rescue. He went to the far side of the stream in mid-afternoon, after he had fished next to me all day and caught a gazillion fish, which he promptly released. He watched the water through polarized lenses and gave me a Jack Buck-esque play-by-play of the underwater antics of my foe. "Easy... he's turning... he's looking at it... NOW! NOW!" I set the hook several times, several seconds late.
Then, miraculously, he yelled "NOW!", I pulled up on the rod, and felt something akin to a small boulder on the other end of the line pull back. I panicked as the line zipped through my fingers, and the fish, which must have been at least 35 pounds, took off away from me. My cheeks started throbbing, and I realized my heart had lept up through my throat and into my mouth.
"ROD TIP UP!!!!" he cried from the far bank. Oh, geez, that's why I practiced. I pictured a yellow JARTS ring downstream and lifted my rod tip. This time, however, that stupid fish kept pulling back. He pulled a lot harder than my Uncle Frank, who I guessed weighed about 175. So by my logic, I had a fish hooked that weighed at least 180 pounds. COOL! I'd be the hit of the school when I lugged that thing in on a wooden plaque!
But my fingers, hands, elbows and knees were trembling so much, things weren't going as smoothly as playing my Uncle Frank in the back yard. This thing was tearing me up. I'd pull him in a few feet; he'd take off and try to pull the rod out of my hand. I'd inch him in a few more, and he'd dive to the bottom of the hole. Several times I heard him taunting me, I swear, like Flipper would do if he got caught in a net or something.
And after what seemed like 2 hours, Cardinal's hat drenched with sweat, I held the net in my trembling left hand, leaned forward into the water, and scooped up the exhausted fish. I held it up, and Uncle Frank whooped it up. It was a half pound monster. How a midget fish could put up that much of a fight was beyond me. But who cared! I landed my first trout!
Uncle Frank was there with the camera, and took the picture of me and my first trout which still stands on my dad's basement bar. The smile on my face was priceless to this day. I didn't mount that fish, but I'm sure it tasted good out of my mom's skillet.
This story was courtesy of my Uncle Frank. It's a shame that I'm writing this after returning from his funeral. I hope you have access to blogs in heaven, and I hope my Uncle Frank reads this and understands what a huge part of my life he was.
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