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Trout Fishing in Annapolis
By
Robert S. O'Brien
I loved everything about my dad. He was a cop for a while, so I became a cop for a while. He was a camper, so I became a camper. He was a hunter and fisher, so I became a hunter and fisher. He liked the whiskey, so I learned to like the whiskey, and that accounts for why I don’t have a clear recollection of about thirty years of my life. During that vacant time, I was focusing on the whiskey instead of the camping, the hunting and the fishing.
One sober day I had nothing to do, so I decided to go fishing. Dad had died several years before, so he was not available for the trip. Along the way to that day of sobriety, I had frittered away and lost all my equipment and I had to buy a fishing pole, a creel and a reel, and a handful of spinners and other artificial lures – lures instead of bait, for my dad had taught me that it was right and manly to fool a fish by catching it with something that looked like a fish or with something that looked a fish would eat it, but it was deceptive and feminine to catch a fish using an actual fish or something that a fish would eat.
Not wanting to violate any manly codes, I set off in the car alone, kissing herself full on the mouth and promising to bring home lots of fish for her to clean and cook.
"Where are you going, now?" she asked. "Is it down the block to Lake Merced?"
My mind was set on the wilderness.
"I’ll be going to the Sierra Nevada Mountains," I said. "I aim to fish in the Mokelumne River above Jackson."
"Maggie used to live up there," she said.
Maggie was her best friend, from high school days.
"Well and good, then," I said. "I’ll tell everyone that Maggie sent me," and I was off over Twin Peaks and headed across the Bay Bridge.
I arrived at the National Hotel in Jackson a little after nine o’clock in the evening. I went straight to my room, the cheapest in the building and called "the drunk tank" with good reason. The drunk tank did not have steel bars on the windows because it had no windows, there was no lock on the door, a single low wattage bulb hung from the ceiling, it was painted forest green with black trim and it was smaller than the toilet down the hall. The floorboards moved in synchronization with the dancing in the Main Ballroom on the first floor, a scary experience for anyone stupid enough to stay in this room while not drunk. I had stayed in this same room on previous occasions, perhaps contributing in a small way to its special name. But this night, there was to be no dancing for me in the Main Ballroom. I was only passing through Jackson, on my way to catch some fish. And, I was off the whiskey in any case.
Before dawn, I finished breakfast at Sammy’s, across the street, an oasis of bright light in an otherwise dark and deserted town. The sounds of clattering pots and urgent Chinese reminded me that I had regained consciousness in Sammy’s on many previous occasions, none of them having anything to do with tearing live fish out of the river. I finished breakfast and, with toothpick clenched tightly in place, started up 88, headed for Carson Pass at the top but keeping an eye out for a southbound road that would take me down to the north fork. I nearly missed the road leading down to the one-block-long river town of Annapolis, but by carefully slamming on the brakes I was able to get on to the road to where those foolish fish waited.
Like all roads that lead off Highway 88 and down a canyon wall, this one was dangerous and out of the range of all radio stations. I was headed down a dark and barely paved road that clung to the edge of the mountain, in an area so remote that the tape deck would not work. Perhaps the tape deck problem was mechanical, but it left me with nothing to do but downshift, ride the brake and steer the car, so for entertainment I began to sing Black Velvet Band, Mona Lisa and some of the other standards such as Rosella and Mr. Sandman. The singing seemed to brighten things a little, and indeed it was within a short while that the sun came up. In the early light, I was surprised to see that the road had a faded center white line. I had not seen it in the dark -- a matter of some irrelevance, as I had noticed no oncoming traffic since leaving 88 – since leaving Jackson, for that matter.
The road was level on the bridge across the river and into the small town. The first store was the bait and tackle shop, a good place to get the lowdown on fishing conditions, and a good place to get a fishing license. I had realized on the Bay Bridge that I should have bought a fishing license at the Lake Merced boathouse, two miles from the apartment on West Portal Avenue, but then I realized, as well, that fishing licenses were sold wherever people went to fish. So, I parked in front of the store and went inside to get one, and to maybe pick up the hottest lure for those waters, which would not have been available at the Lake Merced boathouse. So I reasoned with myself.
I hoped for a cup of coffee inside, but there was no one at the counter and no coffee. A man stood at the rear of the store, behind the bait and tackle cash register. He appeared to be in deep mourning, so I suppressed a friendly smile and cheerful banter and got to the point at once.
"Can I get a fishing license, please?" I asked.
"Nope," he said. His lips were pursed as if he didn’t want anybody to kiss him.
"I know," he said, "the sign out front says we got fishing licenses, but we don’t. We used to have them, but now you have to go to the butcher shop to get one. Unless you want to drive down to Drummond."
I nodded my head to express complete understanding.
"The butcher shop," I said.
He swung an arm around and pointed a finger at the street alongside the store.
"Go down there half a block and you’ll see it," he said. "It says ‘Meats and Produce’ on the sign out front. Don’t say nothing about fishing licenses, but that’s where the state wants to sell them now, so I say, ‘that’s fine with me, just fine’. We didn’t make that much off them anyways."
As I mentioned, he had the demeanor of someone staggered recently by an enormous loss. That loss was losing the fishing license franchise, I now suspected, and I also suspected that it was a matter of pride and not dollars that he was dealing with. I walked over to the lures on display and asked, "What’s biting now?"
"Ain’t the fish, I can tell you that," he said.
It was now plain to me that the conversation was headed straight for hell, along with the coffee that was not at the counter, if it ever had been, so I made elaborate movements with my hands to indicate that I wasn’t pocketing any of the merchandise, then I left and got in the car. I drove the sixty or seventy feet to the next stop not because I was too lazy to walk it, but because I knew that my car would not be welcome in front of the bait and tackle shop if I was down the block and inside the Meat and Produce store for any reason.
The little street off the main road had two houses and one store. Two rows of ash trees lined the street and stretched past empty lots to the edge of town. The leaves were in full spring blossom, trembling in the chill upriver breeze. But this was pine and fir country, I thought. Then I remembered that Annapolis had been a gold mining camp, and the ash trees perhaps had been set out to remind a generation of gold panning boys of their homes on the civilized side of the continent.
Two men were inside the store. The one at the produce side wore a crisp green apron. He was fondling carrots. Behind the glass-front meat case, the other man wore a bloodstained white apron that looked like he had been in a terrible car wreck. Both men ignored me and ignored the bells that announced I had walked through the door. So I went over to meat case and asked the car wreck guy, "Do you sell fishing licenses here?"
The answer seemed to be inside the meat cabinet, for he squeezed his eyelids together tightly and pondered either the olive loaf or my question. He held a laminated white card about the size of a paperback book page in his left hand, while his right hand held a felt tip pen poised to write on the card.
"What do you want?" he asked.
I repeated the question, stifling an impulse to elaborate on this complex matter.
"No, we don’t," he said. "At least, we aren’t selling them today. Today, we’re getting ready to go into business tomorrow, so if you come back tomorrow I can sell you one then."
"Tomorrow," I said.
"Yes, come back tomorrow."
"Can I ask you a question?" I said.
"Make it short," he said, motioning toward the full meat cabinets.
"How far is it to Drummond?"
"Now, Drummond, will take you about half an hour, right down that road up at the corner."
"The road that crosses the bridge."
"That’s right, except don’t go across the bridge. That’s the wrong way. You want to go in the other direction. About half an hour, I’d say," he said.
I nodded and pursed my lips together like I didn’t want anybody to kiss me.
"Well," I said, "thanks for all your help."
"No problem," he said, and I believed that he meant that.
I turned back to the door and was nearly there when I heard the meat department manager say, "Hey, just a minute."
Finally, I thought, he’s come to his senses and is going to sell me the damned license!
But when I turned to face him all I said was, "Yes?"
He waved the card and the pen at me and motioned toward the meat case, where his first sign was stuck into a thick roll of lunchmeat. The sign said, "BOLOGNA – ideal for lunches!"
"Let me ask you something," he said. "How do you spell ‘salami’?"
He glanced slyly at the man in the produce department, and poised his pen above the card, waiting for my answer so he could write it down.
I thought about the fishing licenses that were not at the bait and tackle shop -- fishing licenses that were now within spitting distance of where I stood, yet might have been still in Sacramento at the state capitol of fishing licenses. Then I walked back over to the meat case and leaned in towards this butcher person, leaned in close to him, and looked him in the eye.
"Salami," I said, "is spelled S-A-L-A-G-N-A," I said. I paused between each letter so he could write it onto the card exactly as I said.
"S-A-L-A-G-N-A," he repeated, writing on the card with a printing style developed in many fourth grade after-school sessions with an exasperated teacher thinking about how these sessions always made her need wine with dinner.
He held up the card and nodded his head. He kissed the card, transferring wet ink to the tip of his nose.
"Salami!" he said. "Good with spaghetti, right?"
"Don’t forget the cheese!" I said.
"Thanks, pod’ner!"
"No problem," I said -- and I meant that.
As I got to the door I heard the meat guy hiss at the produce guy, "See, stupid? TOLD you it had a ‘G’ in it!"
I forget the reason, but that day there were no fishing licenses on sale in Drummond either.
First I gave up the whiskey. Then I gave up fishing. Soon after, I gave up hunting and camping. The bait and tackle shops of the world were making it too complicated to camp or hunt or fish. And small country butcher shops were making it impossible to figure out what they were selling.
My dad would be appalled by any one of these facts, and he’s better off where he is.
Copyright © 2002 Robert S. O'Brien
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