Blogsy Babbles

     Somewhere around number nine thousand six hundred thirty-seven on my list of things to worry about when I go to bed at night is the thought that a distant civilization of which we know nothing will one day come to Earth and, finding the inhabitants all dead from eating too much tapioca meat loaf, will have to judge us by our postcards.  They will find that dogs were primarily occupied in soaking trees, husbands were uniformly unfaithful, wives were good shots with rolling pins, children stole jam, and everyone who could steal time for it went fishing.

     I simply assume that every hotel or motel or general store within twenty miles of a pond or river stocked fishing postcards.  Maybe every cartoonist, deep inside, would rather be sitting on a dock or a riverbank, watching for a bounce on the line.  But the sheer number and variety of postcards would lead an alien observer, devoid of other information, to conclude that humanity became extinct because it was more interesting in catching the elusive trout than it was in…but we’ll get to that.

     We have already discussed catching The Big One.  For every soul who goes fishing, this is a great dream, but most would settle simply for catching a whole lot of fish.  And if everybody in the party catches their limit, as hinted above, it has been a successful trip.  Consider the plight this chap finds himself in: sometimes you just can’t fish fast enough.

     You simply have to be prepared for some of the worst dangers of fishing, like that slow ride home when your car is simply weighed down by the size of your catch.

     Or the dangers of your friends not believing the trouble you had on your last trip.

     Sometimes, though, in spite of everything,  fisherman will find himself coming home with a refreshingly light load (and a nasty grudge.)

     Of course, it’s not just the fish which can be terrifyingly amazing on such days.  (Look at that worm, for example.)

     Some fishermen, in fact, find the whole business of catching all those fish so exhausting that they decide THEIR fishing trip will not risk any such thing.

     Others, through careful planning, manage to have a nice time on the boat.  Just calculate which supplies to take with you, and you will not find yourself running into the difficulties suffered by other fishermen on this page.

     Thus you can simply relax while on your vacation.

     Other men take a more assertive approach.  The catching of fish can still be completely inessential to a successful fishing trip.  (Though one must be just as prepared for missing out on your quarry.)

     By the way, as mentioned in our previous visit, women fish, too.

     In fact, most postcards will agree that it’s a sport which everyone can enjoy.

     Coming Soon: Summing Up Fishing Postcards (for now)

    I know how disappointed you were on Friday, thinking we had wrapped up our discussion of fishing postcards so soon.  Well, be of good cheer, Pecan Chowder, we have not yet covered the full scope of the fishing postcard.  (I’m not sure it CAN be covered at this point, as the pool of knowledge is about the size of lake Michigan by now, but we’ll make another fishing trip.)

     There is considerable disagreement in the world of fishing over whether the practice is best done alone, or with a friend or two.  Misery loves company, after all, and, as experts across the world have pointed out that not catching a fish while fishing is more palatable if you’ve had a chance to talk for hours with a friend.  Others claim you don’t need a friend to be present with a pole to talk for hours, and these people tend to become postcard cartoonists.

    After all, as observed in the card at the top of this column, a partner can turn out to be a distraction when you’re busy.  Or a distraction generally, as seen below.

    The ideal companion on a fishing trip, of course, is one who can be useful.

    It can be even more of a distraction, though sometimes a pleasant one, if you are taking along a complete novice, who has to learn from your example how fishing is meant to be practiced.

    Though you can’t really get away with a grumble of “Beginner’s Luck”.

    There is no reason, despite the postcards above, that a woman cannot fish as avidly and intently as a man.  This can be seen in the way THEY react to taking along a guest.

    Some fisherfolk just LIKE solitude, though, independent of any annoyance caused by a companion.  Being alone provides time for contemplation of life’s mysteries (wearing white after Labor Day, say, what song the sirens sang, or Mr. Spock’s first name).  When alone, they claim, you just see things that you don’t notice if there’s another person along.  This has nothing to do with what you brought along for refreshments, but that may have some bearing on the matter,

    It’s not all just dreamy little dreams in the world of nature, you see.  There are nightmares as well.

    Of course, dreams are eternal, and the number of postcards treating of this particular fantasy are legion, covering what sort of bait one should be using, and whether you can actually take this catch home to the wife.

    Although, as mentioned hereintofore, women fish, too.

    Coming soon: Friday is Fish Day.

    In our last thrilling episode, as no doubt you recall, we discussed the extremely popular fishing postcard, and the tales it told of the success of the folks who dedicated their time and effort to the sport.  Cards extolled the joys of heading out at dawn to return with quite reasonable (record-breaking) castches.

     But the postcard cartoonists were well aware that the opposite luck is just as likely.  Well, maybe more than likelyu.  Well, maybe standard.  (The only fish I ever caught had to be thrown back, being rather smaller than the little finger of the nine year-old fisherman I was.  This struck me as mighty poor sport, and though my father had spent a tidy sum of money on fishing equipment, I don’t recall using it again.)

    So the cartoonists admitted that sometimes the luck just wasn’t with you.

    Part of the problem could be having to share the waters with other, less focused individuals.

     Sometimes your own equipment gave you troubles.

     And often, it was a combination of your equipment and your own efforts.

     We have mentioned before that the sitting area of a human being was of great interest to your average postcard artist, so the number of bottoms hooked by unlucky fishermen goes far beyond what we can cover in this space.  (In fact, the number of bottoms uncovered by a lucky cast…but that’s a whole nother blog.)

     Perhaps it was best to fish with a group, so that each person could handle another sorry aspect of the piscatorial passion.

     Because sometimes it seemed that nature itself was in league with your quarry.

     Even your equipment could be working with the enemy.

     At the end of the day, of course, it was what you caught that counted, not the trials and tribulations on the way to the trophy.

     Even if sometimes the law stepped in to tell you you hadn’t done as well as you thought.

     You could still wind up with a catch that was, well, impressive.

     Then, too, perhaps what mattered to the friends to whom you were writing was not how your day went, but  how you told the story.

     Coming soon: even more perils for fishing folk

     I think the time has come to address the five hundred pound walrus in the room.

     There was a time, hinted at hereintofore, when people sent postcards the way we send texts: it was a quick, easy, cheap method of communication.  But times changed.  The number of postal deliveries declined, the price of a postcard stamp went from a penny to two, and, what with one thing and another, a generation grew up which saw postcards as something for special occasions.

     Chief among these special occasions was the vacation trip.  “Send a postcard!” was the common phrase in goodbyes when your cousin or neighbor was headed out for adventures in the Cotswolds, Adirondacks, or Alps.  For a couple of solid decades, sending postcards back from a trip was simply your duty as a human being.  There was an art to buying postcards, like so many of life’s little pleasures, and, as with every art, some people lacked any perception at all.  This is why there are so many postcards of boring hotels and even more boring hotel rooms.  One of the largest categories of postcards we used to get at the Book Fair was the painting: people would stop and buy a picture of every picture they’d seen in the museum.  No need to deny it, or blush: I did it myself once upon a time.  We all did.

     But what we are going to consider in this column, and in several columns thereafter, is the fact that anyone who was NOT going to a boring hotel to dine at fine tables (also visible on postcards( and visit museums was instead going to some little cabin on a lake, where they intended to enjoy a little fishing.  I think there are more fishing postcards in this little assembly than there are on any other subject, even if you include all the dogs and trees in with the outhouse jokes for a general Potty Joke section.

     People who go fishing are just as likely to engage in a certain round of expected activities as dogs at fire hydrants or rooster in chicken yards.  One of those activities is, of course, to lie.  More than one postcard asks the philosophical question “Do all fishermen lie, or do all liars fish?”  The answer to that is one for the ages, like Mr. Spock’s first name.

     But fishermen are expected to lie, to an extent that whenever they DO accidentally tell the truth, they get no respect.

     Even among liars, there are some who have greater physical ability for the sport.

     And they may admit this all themselves, though they all dream of graduating from people who can only LIE about big fish.

     OF course, another theme of the fishing postcard is catching the Big Fish  It’s good publicity for the place where you’re fishing to let people know you can catch…well, bigger fish than this.

     No, I mean really big fish.

     I’m talking about the really big ones, the ones you brag about.  Not as puny as this.

     Something big enough to present a REAL challenge to a genuine sportsman, and not such dabblers  in the water as we see here.

    It’s not really all that good for publicity to show so many fish of insignificant size, though I suppose if one brags how MANY one catches, one could get away with such stuff.

    No, not the ones you cut up for bait.  The BIG fish, big enough to satisfy a storyteller at the bar or barbershop.

     There ARE postcards with really big fish: the kind that today you’d be proud to post of Facebook.  I don’t know why they keep showing off these….

     See?  Eventually you can get out to where a real sport fish is available.  Next time, we’ll consider the other kinds of fishing luck.