Howard Lindemann turns 100!

For many years a small group in Woodland Valley has stocked the stream with trout. Mike O'Neil (aka Boreegard) is the fearless leader of the piscatoral devotees. There have been many stalwart volunteers in the crowd, none more faithful than Howard Lindemann. Mike sent me this message in celebration of Howard's upcoming birthday. Read on:

"I'm sharing this old posting (18 years past) to illustrate how a spry 82 year old Howard helped us stock the Woodland Brook's fly fishing stretch, as he did many years before and many years after.

Howard is about to turn 100 on June 27. God Bless you Howard!"

Mike

SUMMER JOURNAL

The basic elements of stocking trout in the two mile fly fishing stretch of Woodland Brook are by definition felicitous simplicity itself. On the appointed summer day the volunteers gather about the trout hatchery truck—about fifteen of them is the right number. And for the next two hours they stroll behind the truck as the troutmeister—me—occasionally asks them to take a plastic bucket of fish down to the stream. There the trout are gently released into the brook’s accepting pristine waters. Ah, nature!

We stocked the stream last July. What a genuine bummer. Only four active stockers showed up. Somehow, through the steaming hot afternoon we deposited 300 fine trout. We were too few and too old, but we wanted to do it, so to Hell with statistics. Our premier stocker, Howard, was 82. Charlie was 73, and Jim was sixty. Then there was that workhorse John with his wife Lee and their five year old daughter Julie.

I hardly understand why wholesale collapse was not the order of the day. Twin Pines was the worst. I’d sent John ahead with a bucket of ten. I followed him with my own bucket for the long haul. I saw him and Lee on hands and knees in the sand, trying to scoop one of the big ones back into their bucket. I went around them. Fifteen feet later I was on MY hands and knees, scooping up two grit-covered trout. Then, with the sparkling stream just six feet away I tripped again and collapsed forward. With skinned knees, eyeglasses hanging on the tip of a sweaty nose, four more of the poor dears were flopping just in front of me. I finally managed to slide them into a circle of pristine water—the Grandparents Pool.

God determines and sets these exercises in a tumbling joke upon us. Each year’s stocking, with volunteers listening, I pontificate, giving the implacable instructions once again—just as my Daddy did before me. “If you feel you must touch the trout while you are putting them into the stream, “ I intone, “ALWAYS wet your hands first.” HAH! Yesterday the yoke was on me. Wet your hands, INDEED!

When we’d finished stocking we went to Howard’s cabin for refreshments. His wife Elinor was there to welcome us. Ah, the blessed cool of the shaded porch, freezing cold soda and beer, and munchies.

Julie, stationed on the porch hammock, said, “Know what we’re having for dinner tonight?” “Pizza,” I asked. “UH, uh,” she said, “lobster!” We all said, “Yum, Yum.” Julie was our relief during the hot stocking regimen—a sweet child who collected handful after handful of wild flowers and presented them to us as we tended to our piscatorial duties. Queen Ann’s Lace and Oxeye daisies were in the ascendancy, bunched with the occasional velvety stem of mullein and other delicate wild simples.

As the day finally cooled in earnest, one of the big bullfrogs in Howard and Elinor’s pond went GALLUMP, gallump, GALLUMP. Jim said it sounded like a moose. And you know, in that protected nook it did. Not to put too fine a hat on it, but I agree with whoever first said, “God is good.”

Bo--