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Day 2...
Locked in some hazy dreamstate I saw a man coming down a loooooooong hallway. He asked, “Where are your keys?” I pointed to my backpack. He left quickly doing backward hand sprints down that same narrow hall.
I awoke at 7:30. It was cool. The air was still on. Jared wasn’t around. Upon further inspection I noticed his truck was gone. I rustled Jeff out of his sleeping bag. “Let’s go to breakfast. We scrambled down the mountain, grabbed the keys off the floor of my car, open the cattle gate and zoomed toward the Red Apple Inn.
Actually I wanted to breakfast on the tremendous seafood salad I had at Michelson’s the last time I was here. It is full of crab and shrimp and clams and oysters mixed with penne and a barely-there sauce. Michelson man said they wouldn’t have it until Thursday.
Instead we went for biscuits and sausage gravy. Jeff ordered black coffee, like he always does when we travel, and the waitress raised her eyebrows. Progressive city kid.
I took Hwy 171 back to the cabin doing some skydriving up through the apple orchards.
On the steep gravel road back, I let Jeff take a shot at driving. He will have his license within a year and I wanted him to see how easily you can skid out on gravel.
Back at the cabin we are packing up. Today is the second day and our last. Jared comes chugging in with bottled water in hand. I don’t know where he went early in the morning darkness but now he just returned from a 10-mile run. He has legs that are solid muscle. Jeff is all muscle too. I am muscle hiding under a layer of baby-bearing fat, not big, just squishy.
We schedule out our day. Fish. Be back at 2. We nix a hike up to the shiprock at the top of brother’s property. It’s a dreamy, top-of-the-world spot, but the trail is tick infested this time of year.
On the road. We are going to the Wisconsin River today. Well we were until Jared stopped and I pulled alongside, “Let’s go back to the Mississippi. We were catching fish there and that’s what we want to do.”
At Lynxville we find a new bait shop. The door is locked. A harried hippie opens up, white paint splatters in his fluff of long black hair. “I’m usually closed on Wednesdays. I’m painting so come on in.” This is a fantastic bait shop/art gallery with a huge bison head, a wall of mounted fish, a snapping turtle with it head stretched waaaaaaay out, a beautiful little fox encased in Plexiglas playing on it’s side. Of course they are all dead. Lots of paintings too, mostly uninspired realistic depictions. Other people come in the store, buy stuff and leave. We are gawking at all of the amazing stuff. I ask him what mousies are. Turns out they are grub worms with tails. We order up two containers of might crawlers. The shop owner opens up every container he sells. A proud man. Indeed the worms are huge and healthy and writhing around in whatever the stuff is they are packed in. Moist newspaper strips, I am to learn. He suggests we try Cold Spring two miles south. A decent fishing spot he says, although he doesn’t fish himself. He came out ten years ago to live along the Mississippi River, his childhood dream.
Cold Spring is a bust. Jared and Jeff get down there before I do. I am wandering with my camera. Before I can even get a line in they charge back to the vehicles.
We arrive back at the fishing place we used yesterday. Two elderly people, 80ish, a couple, are fishing off the first pier in like 1’ of water. Quizzical, yet it makes sense. The first pier is the only stable pier, the others roll with the waves and if your balance isn’t too good you could end up bobbing down the river.
We make it out to the last pier. The waves are crashing much harder, the sky pure blue, and a bigger breeze than yesterday. Dozens of bloated, bright yellow carp are riding in on the wave crests.
Today I keep snagging and lose my tackle. The men are landing ‘em. I am actually baiting my own hook today! All of my racket is attracting far more boat fishermen than yesterday so I take off. My idea is to try the lagoon behind us. At the entrance there was a DNR sign that said something about a trout project. My good idea turned bad as soon as I crossed the huge parking lot. The bank was weedy and I just couldn’t propel my body to* move forward. That visual of the man stomping the snake is still too vivid. I am wearing sandals. If I were to see one, the people in Des Moines would hear my scream.
Plus I have heard too much. I was chatting with the man that had a beautiful chocolate lab riding on the prow of his fishing boat. He told me about the 4 species of Asian carp that were accidentally introduced to the river. The silver carp when aroused by a boat, fly into the air and have been responsible for breaking legs, and arms of boaters. Some unfortunate fisherman suffered from concussions. Damn! Then there was that other story about a down-river practice called noodling. You jam your bare hands under the bank of the river and catch fish with your hands. Ohmigod. Sounds horrible. Plus there are animals like mink and otters, and snakes that live under there. Way too risky.
At Cold Spring I picked up a discarded fishing pole. It is very old and short, about 3’ long, and instead of a reel it has two screws sunk into the cork handle for your line. Jeff called it a poor-man pole, and said I should leave it for the next desperate person, but I took it as an outstanding example of river RealLife.
I’m taking pictures (huge barges are bringing goods up river, the train is going by every 15 minutes or so), chatting up fishermen, most from the cities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, not one local. And I spy my other souvenir, a beautiful dried lotus pod.
The water lilies in the shallow ponds next to the river are blooming now. Giant white flowers tinged with pink and those flat oval deep green leaves, right out of a Degas painting.
The fish have stopped biting. Jared is done and I tell Jeff 10 minutes and we are out of here. He casts and wowOwow he catches the biggest fish so far! It is 2 ½’ long, silvery with a bright red tail. Yippee!
He removes the hook and the fish goes deep. Bye bye. On the way back to the cabin my brother pulls over. I come up alongside. “Hey your boyfriend is here.” I smirk, “Which one would that be?” “Dubya. Well, he’s not here. He’s over in Waukesha. (The other side of the state, near Milwaukee.) But he is in the same state with you.”
“Brat.”
He races away roaring.
God I love my brother. He called me a “happy nutball” when I donned the camo mask while fishing, but he is the champion of illusion and tricksterness.
Our big catfish dinner is sizzling in the cast iron skillet…platters of catfish, dipped in milk, then breaded, big chunky fries, and rolling balls of hush puppy dough. It looks good. Smells good too. The fries…tasty; the hush puppies…southern and oniony, the catfish….um, well, let’s see…if you took a piece of fish and spread some mud on it and cooked it up all golden brown, well that’s what it would taste like, musty. Ack.
We all decided catfish sucks and the people who rave about it probably had it when they were children and since it was mother-love food, they like it. I recall father saying not to eat bottom dwellers and a catfish is a mudfish. But I was very happy to experience it because otherwise I wouldn’t know if I liked it or not. Jared’s cooking wasn’t wasted.
Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn over 110 years ago. I imagine the River was a different animal then…cleaner, wilder, and far narrower, at least in the northern region, prelocks. When I received my fishing license I was given a fishing regulations booklet.
There is a section where fish species are noted in two categories. You can eat one fish a week from each section. Pollution.
Good-bye Mississippi River. I put Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited in and started singing back homeward.
Jared flew back on the expressway, going so fast I could barely keep up. In Janesville he missed the Rte 14 detour and we ended up in a minimansion area, then on a rural road, back to a four-lane, up onto I-90, down on a six-lane, and finally back to 14.
Three hours later we arrive at his place and he says, “I think that was the fastest I ever drove that stretch.” I told him he was a maniac and thanked him before I left for Grayson City. Jeff was going home with me and he needed clean clothes. I met his new dog, Snoopy, a gorgeous short hair, mostly white with black spots. It had worms. All puppies do?
I called my honey and told him Jeff was coming home with me and that man, after doing a 12-hour workday, had a surprise hot wing dinner with potato babies and honeydew chunks ready for us when we arrived shortly before 11 p.m.
We were famished and very tired. What a man. What a mighty good man. How lucky I am!
Great adventure. Fun caper. A one-time shot and we did it!
