It’s become my habit
over the years to celebrate my father’s birthday by sending a piece of his
writing to friends and family.
Being a creature of habit and a first class packrat has its advantages—though
I hardly think my wife would agree.
By the by, He would
be 106 today, were he still alive.
Way out west in the
Cascades, in a first growth forest settler's cabin, near the entrance to Mount
Rainer National Park, tacked up on the log wall near the trophy elk's head and
a pair of broad old-fashioned snowshoes is this piece of writing from an old
magazine. I think it bears reading
again.
Happy Birthday, Pop.
UP A LAZY RIVER
Man would not be man
if, somewhere in his heart, he was not a bum—if he did not nurse a recurring
dream of indolence and irresponsibility, and did not yearn to stretch out on a
tropic beach or under a western watering tank and let his whiskers grow and
occasionally have a shot of something rousing from a bottle. It is a dream which has a way of
growing stronger in summer, but in most strata of society a fellow just can't
hustle off to hunt for Tom Sawyer's island, or for pearl oysters—he can't,
indeed, even doze off on the courthouse steps at noon—without causing a raise
of eyebrows and a wag of tongues.
Fish, however, are a bum's best friend. Not the lusty salmon, nor the leaping trout, nor any fish
which must be pursued, but the flounder and the catfish—fish which inhabit the
tide flats and the back eddies of slow rivers, fish which may be lured to the
bait from a recumbent position.
Millions of men annually escape that constricting maze erected over the
centuries by their women with no more equipment than is reflected in the still
life to the left. They escape in
every country under the sun—the photograph was made by W. Eugene Smith in a
Portuguese tidal inlet off the Gulf of Cadiz—and, though the red wine in the
jug might be white mule, or cider, or muscatel or rye in other parts of the
world, it is a picture which reflects a universal aspect of the masculine
soul. A man need not row a
weather-beaten boat such as this Portuguese fisherman's craft more than a dozen
strokes to achieve Purpose and, hence, a suspect but unassailable license for
bumhood. After that languid series
of motions he is free to drop an anchor (a tin can full of cement), bait his
hook, float his bobber upon the softly gurgling flood, pull out the cork, tilt
his jug, lower his hat over his eyes and sink back into that comatose and
reflective state in which man reaches true nobility of character. In the process, although the odds are
against it, there is a chance that he might even catch a fish.
--Paul O’Neil
Sports Illustrated 1956
Sports Illustrated 1956
