I'd rather be fishin'
Jul. 11th, 2009 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistToday some part of me is still five, straining sympathetically with my Snoopy fishing pole as if it were an extention of my own body, struggling to turn the handle on the reel.
“I can’t do it,” I told my dad between clenched teeth. “You’ll have to take it.” My dad just watched me from his seat behind me, his expression impassive (I couldn’t turn to look, my concentration all needed on getting this fish in the boat before the pole broke, but I knew the look I’d see if I could have looked at him), mildly telling me that I would be fine. I really didn’t believe him, but there was nothing I could do about it.
And then when the fish was finally pulled out of the water,flopping miserably, it was my fish.
The guy who ran the resort we were at then used to tack polaroids of lots of people holding up their catch, mostly middle-aged guys in life jackets they never zipped up, stoically holding a stringer of northern pike. The picture of me, I well remember, is of a little girl in a zipup hoodie from Fleet Farm, arm tense with the effort of holding up a fish almost as long as she is tall.
That year, and so many years since (and probably even before, but that’s the first one I remember), my family has gone Up North for our summer vacations.
Minnesotans all talk about The Cabin, on The Lake, as if northern Minnesota’s all one big lake. Ours is at one of a couple resorts about six hours’ drive from our outpost at the southern edge of the state, near Bemidji for a few years but mostly on a much more remote lake with the imaginative name of Big Sand Lake, distinguishing it from the hundreds of regular Sand Lakes among the way-more-than-10,000 in Minnesota), which is an hours’ drive from the nearest town of any size and several miles from anywhere you can even get a pint of milk or fill up your gas tank, though you can buy live bait much closer. Priorities, eh?
Today I woke up at six o’clock, thinking that if I was with my parents I’d be up about that time. We start early.
I know just how it would go. We always drive to the other side of the Cities before we stop for breakfast, always the same truckstop with its giant attached shop full of Hank Williams cassettes and souvenir t-shirts with big cartoony pictures of mosquitos declaring them to be MINNESOTA’S STATE BIRD and bumper stickers that say “I’d rather be fishin’!”
Full of maple syrup and biter coffee, we set off again, slowly drifting away from the unbearably tedious AM sports talk radio station my dad likes so he starts trawling for a good oldies station which always ends up having a name like “96.9... The Loon!” We stop somewhere for gas and are allowed the luxury of pop in the car, my dad getting grape or orange soda, my mom getting a 7Up she’ll only drink half of and that only after it’s gone warm and flat, my brother and I guzzling ours down. Then we go back to the MagnaDoodles or Walkmans, depending on how old we are.
That’s where I want to be today. Even if I don’t have a Snoopy fishing pole to pack, this time.
“I can’t do it,” I told my dad between clenched teeth. “You’ll have to take it.” My dad just watched me from his seat behind me, his expression impassive (I couldn’t turn to look, my concentration all needed on getting this fish in the boat before the pole broke, but I knew the look I’d see if I could have looked at him), mildly telling me that I would be fine. I really didn’t believe him, but there was nothing I could do about it.
And then when the fish was finally pulled out of the water,flopping miserably, it was my fish.
The guy who ran the resort we were at then used to tack polaroids of lots of people holding up their catch, mostly middle-aged guys in life jackets they never zipped up, stoically holding a stringer of northern pike. The picture of me, I well remember, is of a little girl in a zipup hoodie from Fleet Farm, arm tense with the effort of holding up a fish almost as long as she is tall.
That year, and so many years since (and probably even before, but that’s the first one I remember), my family has gone Up North for our summer vacations.
Minnesotans all talk about The Cabin, on The Lake, as if northern Minnesota’s all one big lake. Ours is at one of a couple resorts about six hours’ drive from our outpost at the southern edge of the state, near Bemidji for a few years but mostly on a much more remote lake with the imaginative name of Big Sand Lake, distinguishing it from the hundreds of regular Sand Lakes among the way-more-than-10,000 in Minnesota), which is an hours’ drive from the nearest town of any size and several miles from anywhere you can even get a pint of milk or fill up your gas tank, though you can buy live bait much closer. Priorities, eh?
Today I woke up at six o’clock, thinking that if I was with my parents I’d be up about that time. We start early.
I know just how it would go. We always drive to the other side of the Cities before we stop for breakfast, always the same truckstop with its giant attached shop full of Hank Williams cassettes and souvenir t-shirts with big cartoony pictures of mosquitos declaring them to be MINNESOTA’S STATE BIRD and bumper stickers that say “I’d rather be fishin’!”
Full of maple syrup and biter coffee, we set off again, slowly drifting away from the unbearably tedious AM sports talk radio station my dad likes so he starts trawling for a good oldies station which always ends up having a name like “96.9... The Loon!” We stop somewhere for gas and are allowed the luxury of pop in the car, my dad getting grape or orange soda, my mom getting a 7Up she’ll only drink half of and that only after it’s gone warm and flat, my brother and I guzzling ours down. Then we go back to the MagnaDoodles or Walkmans, depending on how old we are.
That’s where I want to be today. Even if I don’t have a Snoopy fishing pole to pack, this time.