SINS OF THE SON

LESSON ONE
Be as enthusiastic about responsibility as you are about play.

The Rock River Monster Walleye

For a period of two or three years before my 10th birthday, one event, or perhaps more correctly, one activity captured my imagination like no other, with the exception of staying awake to see Santa. I longed for the swift passage of January, February, March, and finally April. Not that I didn't enjoy the winter months, mind you, because the ice skating, sledding, snow fort building were crucial skills for a young boy to master and I took to mastering them with great relish. No, rather, the longing occurred in those short moments just before sleep, when a rainbow of stars burst behind my eyelids and signaled the end of another exciting day. It was in those brief pregnant moments, that my mind flashed forward in time to the coming of Spring, more specifically the official opening of the Walleye season on the Rock river.

I cannot fathom at this time what it was that made me so enamored of the activity of spring fishing on that river. My memories are not in the least clouded about any of the two or three times each spring Pa would take me to the same place and we would engage in manly talk and pit our strength and cunning against that of the monster Walleyed Pike who hid in the frigid fast flowing depths of the Rock River, awaiting only the right moment to grab my bait and yank me into his swirling milieu. My father's constant admonition to keep well away from the slippery river bank only added to the danger in our adventure.

When the sky no longer held the promise of fresh snow, and the remnants of my last snow fort were no more than black-speckled mounds of re-melted snow, I would listen carefully at the breakfast table for those important words from my father's mouth, carefully hidden though it might be, behind the morning newspaper. "Hmm, Walleye season opens this week" That was my signal to begin the hectoring and badgering that would later in life cause me substantial grief. But parents must accept a certain amount of this behavior to allow the child to develop a sense of anticipation to offset the practicing of patience. Instant gratification remains to this day, a concept stillborn in our family. Patience and anticipation were opposites to be balanced and controlled, one in each hand, so the value of each could be judged and used in future endeavors.

As the tension rose to when the exact day might occur, that one day with the weather warm enough, school out, and Pa off duty from his job as a fireman, I was rarely able to contain my enthusiasm. Nearly every evening I would sneak downstairs into the basement, gently slide the rusty old green tackle box off the top workbench shelf, and quietly as I could manage, unsnap the clasps. While each tier of nooks and crannies successively revealed itself, my eyes would select the evening's project. With tens of strangely shaped and colorfully painted lures beckoning to me, I passed them all, and went directly to the only piece of tackle we would need for the Rock River Monster Walleye... the famous Wolf River Rig. Why it was named the Wolf River Rig while we would only use it to fish on the Rock River, I never thought to inquire. I did know that the "Wolf" was another fishing river, further up in the wilds of "the North Country." My own river, the Rock, was as large a river as my imagination could carry.

The `rig' as my father called it, was a simple swivel device connected to the end of the main fishing line with two 16" arms, one holding a 3 ounce weight at its end, and the other arm with the gleaming No.13 snelled fishhook that could put your eye out in a flash of carelessness or embed itself in your hand not to be recovered without excruciating pain. A simple device, it allowed the sinker to drop towards the bottom in the swift spring current, while the hook with a live lip-impaled minnow would be free to wiggle and waggle unfettered in the middle of the Rock's raging spring runoff current and tantalize Mr. Monster Walleye.
Carefully polishing the hooks and the swivels, I would replace them as I found them and sneak back upstairs secure in the knowledge that I had fully prepared the weapons of our assault. And on that long awaited morning itself, cereal, toast, or any other item placed in front of me intended as a speed bump, I would simply inhale. Pa would take forever to finish one measly cup of black coffee. Still dark, we would load the car with the fishing gear and the sandwiches Ma had made for our lunch. Leaving home in the damp dark before dawn was the exclamation mark of my early life, because it only happened on momentous occasions, like fishing trips, vacations, or going up to my Uncle's dairy farm for a few days. All important and exciting events for a ten year old.

I'm sure sunrise was beautiful but during all the times Pa and I went to the Rock, I always fell asleep under the gentle sway and hypnotic hum of our fat Buick, and only awakened as we pulled in at the bait store to buy the minnows. Still rubbing the sand of sleep from my eyes, I would follow Pa into the dank interior of the bait shop. Tanks of all sizes, bubbling, spritzing, and hissing menacingly, each with it's own specific sized denizen, loomed nose high around me. Miniature rivers with miniature monsters of the deep waiting their chance to tempt the real thing. At each outing I was amazed at the baitman's speed and ability to count out the three dozen minnows Pa always bought. While he paid, I would stare down into the bait bucket and count as quickly as I might, but never getting beyond five before they became hopelessly confused with their brethren. It was many years before I realized the baitman couldn't count to thirty-six that fast either, and so for a long time, he remained in my mind, a man of inexplicable talent and skill

With the pale yellow sun climbing into the morning sky, dew sparkled on the tiny new leaves of the oaks and elms dotting the rolling hills. The hills themselves were painted with a shimmering green of spring grasses, and I could always sense when we were close to our epic battleground. Would this be the day I caught the Monster, or would he win the battle and pull me into his river before Pa could grab my coat and save me? Anxious but determined, I prepared myself as we pulled off the highway thirty or forty yards and parked. With the engine off, the sudden quiet within the old Buick was disconcerting, but as I opened my door, the distant soft roar of the Rock River grabbed my attention. It was only another twenty or thirty yards along a path surely trod by Chippawa's, Oneida's, and Potawatomies before me, down to the river itself. With banks twice as high as me, the muted roar would not sound it's fury until we stood right next to the icy churning waters.

I would remember the rest of the day only in terms of small incidents. Pa allowing me to be the first to reach into the icy minnow bucket to grasp the wily minnow. Pa patiently resetting my pole because I would need to lift it every 60 or 70 seconds to see if the minnow was still wagging his tail. Pa helping me take a walleye off the hook. And most often, Pa smiling at me when, for the thousandth time I would ask if our `monster' was still lurking near our dangling hooks. Riding home with fish or riding home skunked made no difference, the day was a great adventure. An adventure to be related to a mother who listened carefully but who, as even I could sense, had no interest in the manly sport of stalking the `monster' of the Rock River.
It was fully thirty years later when during an evening reminiscing with my Mother about Pa, that I mentioned how the two of us had not been fishing since I was a boy. "Not surprised," she said, "considering your father always hated fishing."

"What?" I cried, "He loved those days we spent on the Rock fishing for walleyes!"

"Oh don't be silly," she said, "he only went because you got so excited about it every spring."

All those years and I never suspected that our `Rock River monster expeditions' were solely for my benefit. I truly believed he looked forward to them as much as me. Treating me, a small boy filled with the excitement of anticipation, to the rarified view from that narrow window looking forward into adulthood, Pa generously gave me a brief but precious glimpse of one more potential path leading to my future. All with a smile on his face. And so it was that I learned (albeit late) to be as enthusiastic about responsibility as I was about play.

End Chapter One