As the fishing opener approaches I cannot help but think about my great-grandma who rattled. She didn’t make noises like the relatives who had been victimized by Polio — they had more of a squeak as their oak and chrome braces carried them along. My great-grandma rattled because she wore her tackle box. Long before steam-punk and retro-repurposing-artsy-ness my great-grandma saved and reused everything and when she went fishing she wore an eclectic work of art that I would give just about anything to see today. You see great-grandma had taken an old worn shop apron and turned it into her tackle box so that everything she needed was handy.
It would be fair to say of it that utilitarian ease was more important than fashion.
It rattled because most of the items useful for fishing, like hooks, sinkers, swivels, split shot, are metal and she kept all these things in metal containers. Sucrets Lozenge tins and snoose cans seemed to have had pride of place in her arrangements. Snoose, for the un-lutefisked, is what Norwegians called sniffing tobacco.
Hooks come in several sizes and varieties, as do sinkers and split shot, so great-grandma had a lot of tin fronting her. And each tin had its own pocket. Red plaid flannel, black plaid flannel, old Dickeys coveralls, old jeans, if the pocket was salvageable great-grandma cut it out to sew onto her canvas apron and thus increase her fishing arsenal. There was a pocket for pliers. There was a pocket for the button hook for spinning the bullheads off the line. She even had a pocket for the hammer for dealing with angry fish like northerns and catfish. One of great-grandma’s favorite sayings was, “You’re handier than a pocket on a shirt.” That was great praise from her because she would certainly know.
She and great-grandpa fished the Reno Dam in southeast Minnesota right on the Mississippi River and would drive out onto the dam (these were the days before terrorists and idiots), set up their steel springy lawn chairs, put their cooler of egg salad sandwiches and thermos of coffee handy, and fish. And they caught fish. The suckers they pickled, the carp they smoked, the dogfish were donated to the critters desperate enough to eat them, and everything else (sheephead, sunfish, crappies, bullheads, northerns, bass, catfish, rock bass) they kept and ate. And were grateful.
Today when you watch fishing shows you see these guys in $80,000 boats (called divorce boats today because that’s often all he has left after she has had enough of him) wearing $1,000 worth of gear with 10 rigged poles whispering and trying to create a sense of oneness with nature and the thrill of the pursuit. You see them, too, by trout streams in Montana wearing Eddie Bauer’s latest, and, again, whispering so that they do not disturb the fish. And I think, the Pied Rattler of Reno Dam could out-fish them all; this noisy, rattling little titch of a Norwegian with her glass rods, noisy bait casting reel, and black nylon line could catch fish like nobody’s business.
Great-grandpa had jumped onto a ship in Hanover, Germany, at the age of 15 to avoid being cannon fodder and worked his way to southeast Minnesota. Great-grandma was the first generation of a poor Norwegian family escaping the upside-down economics of Norway. They adored each other. They had found freedom, love, family, property, and fish. They were very grateful for all that they had. They didn’t have much. They had very little compared to their great-grandson, but they were grateful and took nothing for granted.
God has planted happiness in us. If we are grateful for the gift of life and creation around us we will find it. There is a whole industry devoted to making us discontented, to making us hate our cars, our carpets, our looks. It’s insatiable. It’s evil.
I am a Christian. I know that the path of happiness starts with gratitude. I have the Bible, I have Jesus, I have the witness of all the saints, to show that this is true. And if that were not enough, I also have the one to whom I owe one-eighth of my existence, the Pied Rattler of Reno Dam.
Bagikan Berita Ini
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