Hawaii, Tahiti, and sinking a boat in the Carribean!

Tahiti to Hawaii

I took my wife and my young son on a Pacific cruise. It was very contrarian of me. I was later accused of being a business contrarian by the Baltimore magazine. In this case, I would take the cruise in reverse, pick my own flight not the one offered to port of departure, and bring a two year old on the love boat. Joey would be the only child, to the delight of few and the horror of most on the Pacific Princess. My son was the smallest full-fare passenger on a cruise from Papeete to Hawaii.

We flew out of Baltimore on Air France, in smoky first class in a DC-10. The non-smoking section on a French airplane is an oxymoron. The flight was certainly too long. A monitor in the cabin showed the flight path slowly completing a line from North America. After a short stop in LA, we continued south across the open pacific to land in Tahiti’s capital. I had really wanted to get right on the ship, but we stayed at the Sofhotel because we were a day early, being turned away at the gangplank. The Gaugain museum was closed to my disappointment, and we didn’t get to see much of the capital. To be frank, it looked just like Hawaii, but not as clean.

The cruise seemed forced for Rhonda whom I found out only years later that she resented my selection of travel destinations. As a veteran’s wife, her mother had made one free trip to Europe romantically hanging from straps in a C-130 and always talked of her "Rome". Typical infrequent traveler, once in a lifetime and all that crap. Well I wasn’t that enamored with Europe after my trip to Russia and the Ukraine 2 years before with a UN group. Then I hadn’t started my family history quest, or things could have been different. I liked the wilder, more ragged destinations. I never knew it then, I have always followed the ghost of captain James Cook. I seem oddly to be drawn to his ports of call, nearly all of them, long before I read his biography only a few short years ago.

The most I can say about this cruise was that we ate a lot of good food. It was an older retired crowd for the most part. Lots of semi-rich blue-collar small business owner types, like builders and plumbing contractors. I enjoyed shooting off the bow, and I won the skeet tournament. I didn’t bother to pick-up my trophy. Joey loved the band and sat on the Philippino guitar players lap at dinner. Rhonda was a bit sullen, reading in our topside cabin as the Pacific passed by. Years later Joey would remember the names of the restaurant manager and chef, Seppi and Luca.


To stay occupied I like to play blackjack in the little casino on the giant ship. I spent most of my time there when not eating or wandering from lounge to lounge. The dealers weren’t very good. One girl named Liberty was particularly cute. But she was a lousy dealer. She had also helped us with Joey and brought things we requested to our cabin.

Well, I won nearly all the time at cards. I was playing next to a pretty but burned-out young blonde. I forget her name, but she had money to burn. I found out later she was an heiress to the Seagram’s booze fortune. She said to me one night, "You don’t like me very much, do you?" I told her that a pretty young rich girl shouldn’t be so dissipated. Actually we did like each other. I guess she was about 25.

I ended up with about 3000 bucks in the bank when the boat stopped. It paid all of my incidental charges on the cruise. Things such as the shooting, the spa, phone calls, and booze were extra. Its hard to think it wasn’t all inclusive with one ticket costing almost 10 grand.
I had one phone call on the 10 days at sea.

A voice from the bridge announced my name and said I had a satellite call. We were probably 6000 miles from nowhere, in the middle of the Pacific. It was my squeamish office manager at the home office telling me we were losing our biggest client. I called him and it was no problem. That client, Chrysler Corporations real estate group always threatened to pull the contract to get a better price. It was just a game we played.

I remember passing Christmas Island and I had planned to fly back to that remote island to fish. But the divorce came and I never made it there.

We stopped at Bora Bora and Moorea for a day and we rented a car to drive around. It was a third world kind of place, mostly poor unfriendly people. We ate lunch at Marlon Brando’s restaurant and played along with the crowd in that rustic little hut. I have a great photo of Joey naked on the beach there-next to a beached rowboat that says "hotel Bora Bora".

There was a little ceremony at the equator. We were crossing again from the south after flying over it days before. It was no big deal. Some of the crew had cold pasta dumped on their heads and dressed in funny hats, and drank too much. I thought of my dad’s "crossing the line" ceremony certificate I had. It was from when his troop ship, the SS Hughes, took him and a thousand other soldiers to the Philippines in WWII. It was a brightly coloured certificate with a dragon on it.

There was a formal ball to meet the Captain and crew. I had brought my Dior tux for the occasion, looking forward to it with Rhonda and Joey. Well Rhonda refused to go. So I, dressed to kill, be-rolexed and slick went and drank with the crowd. I didn’t stay long; just a little wine and time to enjoy the feel of my formalwear.

Our last stop was Lahaina on Maui. The day was spent in port so the tourists could look around and shop. We had already toured the island, so Rhonda and Joey stayed on board. It is truly a beautiful place, but way too touristy and very expensive. I just decided to shuttle ashore and hang around the harbour. I have always enjoyed looking at the boats and talking to any fisherman that may have been out seeking big billfish.

There is a bar right at the dock there. It’s a small place and at least then was unpretentious. I went in for a beer and quickly struck a conversation at the bar. An unshaven skinny guy a little younger than me started talking about Raro Tonga. I guess because I told him I had just come from Tahiti. He said the fishing was great on that south sea island, and the women friendly. He encouraged me to go someday. After a few rounds, he asked me if I had seen any whales, humpbacks. I told him, a few, at a distance. Well he said he had a fast boat and would take me out into the whale pods outside the harbour. I thought close approach was illegal, but I said sure.
He grabbed a couple girls from the bar he knew, almost like props, and we walked over to his boat. It was around 25 feet long and sported a huge engine. We flew out across the crystal water and only in minutes slowed and approached some whales. He cut the engines. We all cracked beers and exchanged small talk and admired the almost plastic swimsuit model girls with us.

I was concerned about getting back to the Princess. And this guy was in no hurry. I started to think if I missed the boat I would have to take a shuttle flight over to Lihue to meet the boat. It was only minutes to spare, and the Princess, way in the distance a distant tiny white dot, sounded its horn. All aboard. My host seem totally unconcerned. I was starting to panic as he snoozed over the beers, whales, and girls. The whales were right there among us, close enough to touch. It was hard to believe something that huge could be that graceful, gentle.

Finally as I heard the final toot from the ship as he cranked up the engine. Pulling slowly away from the whale pod, he gunned it. The boat was blazingly fast. We flew across the water and in only a few minutes we approached the moving now Princess. The crew at the closing door waved us away angrily. I waved my ticket pass madly and finally, after what seemed eternity we were motioned over to the leaving cruise ship. We pulled along side, the walkway was removed, and 2 burly crewmen lifted me aboard. Many passengers watched this happen from above. After going up to the front observation area people said they had cruised for years and had never seen anything like that before. It was quite a short stop on Maui!

The trip ended for us there in Hawaii. It was supposed to end in Honolulu, but we always stayed in a condo at Poipu, on Kauai, when in Hawaii. So it was a big hassle having to get a customs officer to check us in at the port on Kauai. I had a cab take us to the rental car, and we went for the next 2 weeks to stay at our always condo in Poipu.

It wasn’t our condo on Kauai. I had been visiting Hawaii, all the islands, several years at this point. I always flew first class then.Well that often engenders a friendly response from airline staff. Once making a reservation, an American airlines girl suggested I call a pilot friend of hers, Chuck, who had a place at Poipu. He was never there, and might rent it out. So I called this guy and just sent him a check whenever I wanted to go to Hawaii. He would send a key and we went.

This was the last place, just before Alexis was born, that we all went as a family. I mean Shel as nanny, Rhonda, me, and Joey. I had photos of Joey with the black crabs on the beach.
Another photo is of me holding Joey in my arms on a charter fishing boat. My tired son resting in my arms as I troll for whatever, I think I caught a Bonito that day, which I cooked for dinner back at Chuck’s condo. I love that photo. Most of those albums are lost now, so I cherish what little exists outside my mind.

One of our favourite places was a "cook it yourself" restaurant. They had great steak, fish, or burgers you cooked yourself. There was a fancy resort where we took a small boat to get to the restaurant. I think it was the Hilton there. I remember the food being expensive and disappointing. The waitress referred to Shel as our daughter. It was a common mistake for years.

I never went back to Kauai after hurricane Iniki hit. I wonder what has changed. That island was another home to me, just as Anchorage got to be. I would often go directly from Anchorage to Hawaii if I didn’t feel like going back to work. Well, it wasn’t direct. I had to change planes in Frisco or Seattle.

One of my best Hawaiian memories is a trip alone with Rhonda before my son was born; we stayed at a then nouveaux jet-set place called Kona, at the Hyatt. It was really nice, little cabanas on the beach. Really good 5 star restaurants. Kona is on the big island, so I took her to see Volcano Park and Mauna Loa. It was cute- she was scared of the pocked earth and smoke rising from fumaroles. We stayed at a little lodge, called volcano lodge near the mountaintop. Even in summer it was cold enough for a fireplace at that elevation. It was romantic, and one of my favourite memories with my first wife.

We flew over to Lahina on Maui and I took here out to see Hana, at the end of the road there. It’s a nice twisty ride thru the jungle and pristine beaches, some with black sand and the always-bright blue ocean. We climbed the mountain on Maui to the astronomical observatory. It was in the clouds, on top of the world. It was almost too high for easy breathing. On the way up was a small pub where we stopped for lunch. There were flocks of jewel-like hummingbirds feeding there. We could almost have touched them.

Some years later, I would take Shel to Maui and a stay at the Hyatt in Lahina. We never got out of the room. To be young and in love again!

The little town of Hilo on the big island was like a trip back into the 50’s. I could live there, and still might.

At south point on the big island is the southern most point of the United States. It’s a wild place, at least then. A few WWII bunkers remained. There were electrical windmills there, which the whirring of always scared my son when he was little. Later, Shel and I would have wine and cheese picnics in all these places. We both still love south point, and the memory of it being just Shel, my son, and I. I will always think of that as my real family, although an impossible dream, a spectre of the soul.






The Last Bahamian trip

Shel and I took a trip to Abaco Island in the Bahamas. A radio friend of mine had a condo with a ham station on the beach. It was ok, but quite pedestrian compared to Windermere. There was a great little restaurant there and a bakery where a pleasant round smiling very black lady made the best pineapple upside down cake I have even had. Well I wanted to go fishing, and take Shel out beyond the reef to nakedly sunbath. I found a boat for rent from one John Cash. John was a typical stiff white Bahamian, and had a 20 footer to rent. So we cut a deal, packed a lunch and headed out of the bay towards Whale Cay ("key").

It was a beautiful warm day, with a light breeze. I anchored the boat from the rear, cracked a beer, and dropped a line. It was fun to catch such a variety of colourful fish on the reef edge. Sometimes a big (probably a shark) would grab my bait and just break the light line off.
We had a few beers and dozed off naked in the gentle waves.

Hitting my head on the hull awakened me. The mid-day swells had given way to stronger late afternoon on-shore winds, thrashing the little boat, anchored far from shore. I told Shel we had to go, and tried to pull the rear stern-secured anchor line up. Well, being a burly guy then, I just pulled the stern down, as the anchor was coral-stuck just as another wave splashed over the engine cutout in the hull. I tried to start the engine, but it was water logged.

Suddenly, another splash came over the stern and the boat twisted. I told Shel to jump, as I grabbed the cooler in one hand as a float, and the boat rolled, ejecting us both into the choppy Caribbean. I couldn’t see Shel. She later said she was trapped under the hull and felt a divine hand pull her to safety.

Her Blonde head popped up a few yards away, screaming. "I am going to die"..Over and over, hysterical. (I ponder now why she wasn’t concerned enough to scream, "We are going to die"…?) It took what seemed forever to calm her, attach her to the cooler and calm her down. We floated mostly naked with all possessions at the bottom of the sea.


Whale Cay, a little desert island (really!) was about 400 yards distant, swim-able. The problem now was we had company. In the clear water, very large and ominous looking barracuda were eyeing us. Actually, they were far more intrigued with the flotilla of bologna sandwiches discharged from the cooler.

There was a large yacht cruising along about a mile distant with obnoxious music blaring. They had watched in entertained enjoyment as I scuttled my boat, and headed our way just long enough for us our screams were to be ignored. Well, a whole boatload of very pale Bahamian lobster collecting rich boys pulled us out of the waters off whale cay.

They gave Shel a T-shirt (later to ask for it back) and tried to right out stubbornly capsized craft, and dove to get Shel’s bag with our keys, ID, and cash, credit cards, etc. Well, we finally had to call John Cash on the radio. He came out with a famous fat man and local guru, "Samson", to assist and tow the upside down boat back to the harbour.

Well it cost me about 3 grand in damages, and Shel won’t boat with me again. I am almost sure this was the event on my last trip to the Bahamas.

Copyright information

All stories and poetry herein Copyright 2008 by Joseph Manduke, all rights reserved.
Portions may be quoted for editorial with appropriate credits.

Love in Ten

In a place that tells the tales of time by tides and windswept coast, I lie.
And when the moon peeks out of rushing clouds, I wept for that found and unfound
No place that time has left such mark, a stasis of my heart,

Without record beyond the scorns I find the deep silence in the night
All stays silent now awaiting the birth of the new day: renewed in pleasant
light as sky renews the heart and mind in a quiet time, renewed again.

That the words I heard, of sparking drops of glistening stream,
Renewed as in my passing dream, as the final snows melt away.
No love is pure if heart is not the same
That passion fleets as memory wanes.

And soon the spring brings life anew in the new spring, and it rains.
Without a pure heart I still cry in vain
As what is long distant calls again
A thought or hope persists that keeps me from my rod or house of sticks.

Voices that call of long past times but still the heart of mine
Alone, in the dark I pray of the joy of past times.
Your heart held in my heart.

No place, no shadow will be without your innocent smile
And pleasant questions all awhile
I think of the duties that call
That I must say goodbye after all.
A prisoner in love I remain.

Bonded friends in all the worlds games.
But I have been a master there, and you a student, as the crocus in flower.
When I return cannot be said
Each night I stay awake, looking at the sea.

My pier where coins are tossed means but naught
But to you and to me.

In strangers arms we have tried to hide
But it remains the always lie
That time itself will wait.

Until we are together at the appointed time.
No love to replace the pain, only the sea
Coast east or west, cold or warm
Time itself waits for the storm. Forever.





Then all will be right again
Sea foam treasures and empty shells lifeless on our place of beach,
Then we stand together alone
Along the places that only true love reaches

Comment on Photos and Notes

This BLOG is still under construction! There are more photos at the very BOTTOM of the text of the short stories. As more old photos become digitally available to me I will post. I may also post some family history stuff here at a later time. Anyone needing Manduke, Manduka, or Manduca family or military history info please contact me at joemanduke.gmail.com, or manduke1956@yahoo.com.

Wild Brown Trout from Clark's Creek!

Current Professional Resume

For those interested, my current resume from the defense logistics agency website www.dla.mil

JOSEPH MANDUKESSN:XXXXXXXXX67 Central Street
Summersde, PE C1N 3L2
902-436-1802

3937 Walnut StreetHarrisburg, PA 17109EMAIL:manduke1956@yahoo.comWORK EXPERIENCE:Typing: 20 words per minute

Self-employed
2005-until presentKleinfelderYuma, AZ12/06/2004 - 04/06//2005Operations Manager40 hours per weekArmando Ortega(480)763-1200Manage Yuma area office environmental and geotechnical services office and laboratory. Technical, marketing, personnel management, and budgetary responsibilityContracts include City of Yuma, ADOT, and US Army (Yuma proving ground-YPG), and US Navy/Marine-MCAS base services (environmental and geotechnical). Water supply, water treatment technology services, NPDES/SPCC, transportation, remediation, and site investigation services, NEPA, UXO, OB/OD, air quality survey. Resigned due to family heath emergency. Manduke & AssociatesPhoenix, AZ12/01/2001 - 12/01//2004Principal Hydrogeologist40 hours per weekJoseph Manduke(717) 545-5211Performed sub-contract work to US Army NEPA projects, EBS, site investigation services GPS/Infra-Structural Mapping Projects -DODPermitting/regulatory liaison-NPDES/SPCCEnvironmental Auditing/Compliance AssessmentCompleted base-wide EBS, 88th RRC Fort Snelling, and Minnesota-former NIKE command and control missile base with significant groundwater contamination from missile magazines.Victorville, California - former George AFB-EBS for 63 rd RRC USAR heliport (Apache) T&E issues-Burrowing Owl, UST/piping/washracks/infra-structure issuesNumerous EBS reports for property actions throughout 88th and 63rd RRC?s (Army reserve), (California, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota) OMS (Organizational Maintenance Shop) compliance inspections/RCRA TSD?s, IRP remediation, BRAC related issues, OB/OD site investigation and remediation with EOD/ADEQ oversight- US ARMY Ft. Huachuca and Luke AFB (Arizona). Industrial services to large cement plant including project design and management of remediation of a large mercury soil contamination plume. (Arizona)Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ)Phoenix, AZ03/01/1997 - 12/01//2001Hydrologist III40 hours per weekSteven Rose(623)930-8197Water Compliance Section. Petroleum contaminated soils (PCS) team manager, Solid Waste ProgramProject team meeting facilitator-USF&W (invited)Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy Owl (CAFO)Technical team moderator- ADEQ/Pima CountyCriminal Investigation TrainingIndependent ConsultantGlendale, AZ06/01/1994 - 03/01//1997Professional Geologist40 hours per weekJoseph E. Manduke(717) 545-5211Phased ESA’,sOSHA Training classes, lead based paint survey, soil testingExpert witness services-property contamination Site investigation /Remediation services/Groundwater/LUST/Asbestos/LeadReview/seal servicesHTS Environmental GroupColumbia, MD02/13/1988 - 06/30//1994Senior Hydrogeologist/Vice-President40 hours per weekJoseph E. Manduke, III(717) 545-5211Phased ESA, Chemistry laboratory, Drilling servicesOperated MWOB environmental firm with national client base of commercial, governmental, and industrial clients. Developed discrete Phase 1 due diligence scope of work (pre ASTM) for lendersATECColumbia, MD03/01/1986 - 02/12//1988President40 hours per weekGerry Mannno longer in businessEnvironmental Group Manager. Started environmental practice for major geo-technical firm, East Coast Operations. Site Assessment, Testing, Ground Water Monitoring and site remediation services. Managed staff of 12 engineers and scientists.Pennsylvania Department of Environmental ResourcesHarrisburg And Norristown, PA02/13/1981 - 02/01//1984Hydrogeologist/Regional Hydrogeologist40 hours per weekCarlyle Wesland R.G.deceasedHydrogeologist, Water Quality and Solid Waste ProgramsRegional Hydrogeologist, Norristown officeRegional permit review and enforcement of RCRA and PADER solid waste and water quality rules, expert witness, criminal environmental cases. Field enforcement with Federal agents, the Pennsylvania Fish commission and local entities.Dunn Geoscience CorporationMechanicsburg, PA02/01/1981 - 02/01//1984Regional Hydrogeologist40 hours per weekDr. Lane SchultzdeceasedWater Quality and Solid Waste ProgramsRegional Hydrogeologist, Norristown officeRegional permit review and enforcement of RCRA and PADER solid waste and water quality rules, expert witness, criminal environmental cases. Field enforcement with Federal agents, the Pennsylvania Fish commission and local entities.Pennsylvania Department of Environmental ResourcesHarrisburg And Norristown, PA02/13/1981 - 02/01//1984Hydrogeologist/Regional Hydrogeologist37 hours per weekCarlyle Wesland R.G.deceasedHydrogeologist, Water Quality and Solid Waste ProgramsRegional Hydrogeologist, Norristown officeRegional permit review and enforcement of RCRA and PADER solid waste and water quality rules, expert witness, criminal environmental cases. Field enforcement with Federal agents, the Pennsylvania Fish commission and local entities.EDUCATION:High School Graduate, 1974University Wisconsin-Madison,Major: Hydrogeology,Degree: continuing education,Sem: 12,GPA: 3.5 Temple University,Major: Geology,Minor: Biology,Degree: B.S., Geology, Biology; Environmental emphasis,Sem: 138,GPA: 3.5 SPECIALIZED TRAINING:03/2005; 24 Hr.; Military Environmental Symposium, Portland Oregon09/2004; 40 Hr.; Phoenix, AZ; HAZWOPER 11/2003 8 Hr.; Scottsdale, AZ - - Biological and Chemical Weapons Training for Facility Managers.06/2000 40 Hr.; American Petroleum Institute (API), New Orleans, LA, Inspection Certificate,06/2000 40 hours USEPA Human Health Based Risk Assessment RBCA (Risk Based Closure Assessment)06/2000 40 hours USEPA Ecological Based Risk Assessment RBCA 11/1999; 40 Hr.; Las Vegas, NV; FBI Criminal Investigative Training08/1999; 40 Hr.; Phoenix, AZ; UST Program Training09/1996 16 Hr.; Phoenix, AZ; Noise Pollution Certificate (NEHA)09/1996 16 Hr.; Phoenix, AZ; Radiation Certificate (NEHA)07/1995; 40 Hr.; Las Vegas, NV; Traffic Safety Certificate01/1992; 120 Hr.; OSHA Trainer, USEPA 01/1987 40 Hr.; Dale Carnegie Management Seminar 04/02 30 Hr.; Weapons training/personal/NRA

LICENSES/CERTIFICATES:(Current - Sacramento, CA) California REA, (Current - Carson City, NV) Nevada CEM, (Current - Phonenix, AZ)Registered/Licensed Geologist (Current - Juneau, AK) Registered/Licensed Geologist (Current - Madison, WS)Registered/Licensed Geologist Tabled licensure in NC, VA, IN, PA and TN.(Current- Phoenix, AZ Consealed Weapons PermitHONORS/AWARDS:11/1999 - State of AZ, DEQ, Managers Award (Petroleum Contaminated Soils Team Leader)06/1982 - PA Dept Environmental Resources Letter of Commendation for Criminal Enforcement04/77 Distinguished expert, Rifle, PistolOTHER INFORMATION:Adjunct Faculty Professor, Gateway Community College, Phoenix, Arizona (1999-2000)Professional meetings facilitatorTemple University Alumni AssociationAssociation of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers (AGWSE)American Institute of Professional Geologists(AIPG)

Lecture, United Nations invited speaker, " Environmental enforcement and fine structure", Moscow, Feb 1990.Presentations to US Bankers nationwide-"Lenders responsibilities under SARA", Nationwide:1988-92

US Fish and Wildlife Service-Technical team meeting facilitator, Threatened and Endangered species, Tucson , AZ 1999-2001

Active in local Boy Scouts of America troop

DOD Contractor Security Clearance, Yuma Proving Ground

Are you a U.S. Citizen? (YES)

Letter from a friend

This is a note that I recently got from a good highschool fishing buddy. He is the Joe mentioned in the blog regarding fishing at the Kinzua reservoir, not to be confused with my father Joe or my son Joe! Too many Joe's! Enjoy

JM



Well it was about this time of year during the first oil embargo 74-75 that almost 33 years ago my friend when you and I headed out up the northeast extension of the Pennsylvania turnpike on a cold Sunday morning to do some Ice fishing in the Pocono mountains.. Well if my memory serves we had two military gas cans filled with petrol in the back seat and you had a pint or so of blackberry brandy and a few sixers in the trunk. Well we were almost alone on the highway that weekend as I remember because nobody in their right mind would be out burning precious fuel when no stations were open in the whole state..Well we cruised without stopping all the way to the lake..Needless to say you could count the number of cars we passed on one of Gums hands. We were riding in the mustang with the 289 cobra that was known in some circles to have once been equipped with a high performance resonator. I remember getting to the lake chopping a few holes in the Ice but finding it just too cold and windy to stand out on the Ice and ply our craft¦.I don't think that we even caught a perch ,¦maybe we did but I just don't remember..I don'tthink that we thought it better to hit the beer and brandy back at the car then to freeze out culdunes off out on the windswept ice. Well you polished off the brandy in classic Manduka style and I drank what was unfrozen in the beer cans which turned out to be mostly alcohol.With a good buzz-on we regaled ourselves with stories of trout streams and Delaware river smallmouths until the inevitable Yellow Breeches opening day stories kicked in¦Who could not laugh at Kevin and Fullcolly flopping around in the dank canvass tent. Or the campfire with pots boiling with beans, potatoes and trout sizzling filled the air with the scent of what I recognize today as the smell of true freedom. I suppose that the freedom we experienced during those special times could have only been fully understood by people our age and alas we were at the same time to young to understand the significance and importance of those moments. Ah youth is wasted on the young. To this day the smell of damp canvass brings a rush of memories so thick that I have to brush them away before I can regain any degree in clarity of thought. Of course how can you forget the time that we went from Yellow breeches to that little stream in Buckingham and you remember the one that the state put a few hapless trout in..Was it willow creek?...I don't remember but it was out toward Lahaska. Anyoooooo we walked the banks with huge breeches lunkers strapped to our sides just to taunt and freak out the locals. And we did, as I remember, telling a few passers by that we missed even bigger ones just downstream. What a scream. And do you remember the drive home from that Pocono outing¦...We ran out of gas on a lonely back road where you proceeded to put gas in the tank using some flimsy flashlight to warn oncoming traffic that you were stopped in the middle of the lane. No sooner then you started toward the back of the car when a tractor trailer came rumbling down the road baring down on your position and there you were waving that tiny light to warn him that the your car was directly in its path. Well by that time I was on some locals front lawn screaming at the top of my lungs for you to get the hell out of the way and forget about the car..But there you were ass against the trunk waving that tiny light. The car had ten gallons of gas in the back seat and for all practical purposes you were sitting on a time bomb waiting for the semi to slam you into oblivion. Of course as luck would have it the truck swerved with little room to spare and missed you without ever slowing down….you were nuts- only a lunatic would have held his ground but you did and lived to talk about it. And your only comment was come on It's a cobra. These are some of the stories of your life ..celebrate.

Joseph Manduke in Alaska

On the Travels….
Joseph Manduke
Alaska

You will never know how small you truly are on this world until you visit and really tour Alaska. I am not talking about a posh cruise to southeast out of Vancouver or Seattle; sipping wine and watching the glaciers melt away. I mean the interior. Fly-in fishing, camping off the trail. The real wilderness.

Just before I graduated from Temple University’s Geology program in 1980, a few of the seniors had a chance for exotic field camps. Our standard field geology class was, that summer, to be coastal New England and maritime Canada. The Canadian portion was like a trip back in time for me, having been a traveler there in the 1950’s with my family.

Well my friend Kate had a departmental scholarship as I did and we got to pick her choice of field camps. She picked the University of Alaska’s class and we were all envious. I decided just to go to Canada, not wanting to be away from family that long.
It was 3 years later, after I had found my dream environmental job with the state of Pennsylvania, and my high school sweetheart had taken off with a good friend, that I needed a serious fishing trip. I called Kate and her boyfriend, who lived just North of Fairbanks in Fox, and said I wanted to visit.

I landed in Fairbanks, after a plane change in Anchorage, on June 20, 1983 at midnight in the bright glow of the low summer sun. Kate worked for the environmental chemistry lab in Fairbanks and her boyfriend was starting a motorcycle rental business for tourists. He had bought a used BMW enduro, which, along with an old stake body truck, were mine to use for my 2-week visit. I would ride the BMW up the pipeline haul road towards the Arctic Circle and chicken out. With the old truck I ground its non-synchronous transmission and just looked around locally.

Kate lived in a log cabin in the woods with no running water or other facilities. The mosquitoes in the outhouse were as thick as dust in a sandstorm. It was very cold at night even with the fire going. Kate was mad that a cow moose had eaten most of her cabbages. I was an arctic neophyte and had never seen a cabbage that huge. The never setting sun grows some HUGE vegetables.
I found Fairbanks to be a rough town. I was still young, and then a bit squeamish. Some places were just best avoided. The pipeline boom had really changed the town I was told. There were new millionaires everywhere to be met. Folks from New England who opened pizza shops, or tool rental places, or brothels..Oh yes, real brothels, at least so I was told. We went into town to take our showers at the YMCA and had dinner at the Chena Pump House, a good then nouveaux local eatery.

There were a lot of young people there with a lot of money. Pipeline boomers. As a lowly and young state geologist, I felt a little put out of place. I remember that everyone was using 100-dollar bills there. Back home, this was rarely seen then. I mentioned it, and a haughty (and pretty) young lady just said if I couldn’t afford it here, just go back where you are from.
I found similar attitude years later in Arizona. First moving there, the summer heat can be truly shocking in the low desert. Later you learn to enjoy it, as tourists complain, not knowing that they are but 2 hours from a ski slope and the cool mountains.

The Chena River there was mostly glacial silt, so I didn’t do any fishing there.

A high point for the motorhead in me was a drag race in town. In those days, the Al-Can, or Alaska Highway that runs thru and to Fairbanks was closed down on a Saturday for drag races. A corvette rolled and there were serious injuries. The race wasn’t held again. What an amazing thing to witness that would never happen today with insurances, torts, and lawyers.
So went my first short introduction to Fairbanks and that area of Alaska. After leaving Fox and saying farewell to my friends, I had a few days with the rental car and I wanted to drive back to Anchorage and fly back to Philadelphia after seeing the Kenai Peninsula.
Then, the Steese highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage was a muddy, torn-up disaster in many areas. Otherwise it was a good road.

The weather had been amazingly clear, and Denali, or Mt. McKinley jutted up above the rest of the Alaska Range like giant white triangle. I would learn only later that just to see "the mountain" is often a rare privilege. I would come here many times over the next decade, with friends and family, never seeing Denali out of its clouded top.
You see, the mountain is just so damn tall that it creates its own weather systems. It becomes cloud enshrouded for days and even weeks in mid-summer. It takes luck to the "Great one". (Denali’s translation) People die climbing it often. Flying out of Talkeetna, a rustic tourist town to the East, in an attempt to succeed in one of the most dangerous climbs on earth.

Fairbanks is a long day drive from Anchorage. I pressed on down south of the biggest city and found a campground along a little stream called Portage Creek. It was a rugged camp spot, not far from the highway. The valley between Portage glacier and the WWII base and town of Whittier is a wall of waterfalls. This is the best sound to fall asleep to, under the midnight sun and smell of pines and bogs.

A car carrying rail line connects the road at Portage to Whittier and the Ferry to Valdez, across Prince William Sound.

My out of state fishing license was very expensive, and I was anxious about my first real life encounter with a salmon. I had grown up with a coffee table book called "The Treasury of Angling". It was a book club item, filled with pictures of exotic things to a 10 year old. I memorized this book. Things about King salmon and Arctic Grayling. Well thanks to God, and a good education and friends, here I was. The best fishing on the planet.

I took a drive up the dirt road about half a mile to a better pullout and stream access. The stream looked just like any eastern trout stream, but with one difference. There were huge fish lined up taking turns, it seemed, at swimming up the riffle there. A few ladies, native American, were doing their always-excellent job of snagging salmon. So too were the Black bears ponderously loping along, just like us, but picking at dead fish. I also the learned that Eagles, such a big deal back home, were just the crows here. Flocked together at fish carcasses like and as numerous as crows, our national symbol is just another simple scavenger here.
Intentionally snagging a fish would have been illegal for me as a non-native fisherperson. (Most of the natives fishing here were women and girls) But since the Pinks, which were now the run in the stream, I had to try and convince a strike with a big nasty spinner.

Well, a 5 poundish fish, a big hook-jawed male seemed to attack my lure, at least it was in his mouth and I with great difficulty netted the salmon that almost broke my light spinning rod. I know Alaskans and other experienced fisherman now balk at Pink salmon, sometimes called erroneously "Dog salmon"’ as it is and was sled dog food. The same is true of the Grayling, which my Alaskan friends have considered the Carp of the north.
Well it was my first trip and I cooked that salmon with oil and a cornmeal coating and ate about 3 pound s of it. It was great.

Of course, then, I hadn’t had fresh King or even better Red or Sockeye, nor Grayling.
I didn’t return to Alaska after that two-week trip until 1985. My wife to be, who was not an "outdoorsy" woman, came with me to fish and camp, her first time doing those things. Wow-what a great place to start in those pursuits. Unfortunately, she was terrified to sleep in our tent, as there were bear warning signs all around. She did manage to catch her first, and close to only ever fish. I met a guy named Jeff King who was a Kenai River guide. We chartered a day out with him in the combat zone, at the town of Kenai.

My lady caught and released a nice 45-pound female King salmon that July. We finished our visit with some touring and stays at Anchorage’s nicer hotels. She would return with me a few more times, but usually stayed at the hotel while I was out fishing or camping alone.
She did take a beautiful long hike with me into the Kenai Mountains. We went about 10 miles off the road in the rainforest and found a small lake. It was brimming with Grayling and I caught my first of many Grayling there. We made a small campfire and shared the cooked fish. It is one of my fondest memories of that relationship with the mother of my two beautiful children.

By the way, the Grayling isn’t so bad. Its scientific name, Thymallus, refers to the thyme-like scent of its flesh, which is soft, white, and sweet. Its better that any stocked eastern trout, I assure you, a beautiful and exotic creature. Later, I would find them again at the highest elevations, stocked precariously in little known places on Arizona’s eastern rim.
Later I would bring my father in law, friends, and my second wife on a trip that I had down like a tour guide. We would fly into Anchorage and rent a car. I usually planned our arrival on June 21, the longest day in the Northern hemisphere. That means no night at this latitude.

Then we drive North to Denali park. Inside the park I had found a mining camp that had rooms and all the comforts deep in the national park near Denali and Wonder Lake. Wonder lake is a jewel-like place often seen on postcards. The Snow capped mountain reflected into the mirror of this pristine lake is one of the most beautiful experiences and witnesses of my life. The entire road back into Kantishna, along the park access road is almost 100 miles of incredible scenery. One shirks and seems to fall away into nothing while viewing distant braided rivers at Polychrome Pass. There is a visitor center at Eielson, the last civilization, at least back then, until Kantishna.

Kantishna is was a gold mining camp. I befriended Roberta, the owner, shortly after she broke up with her gold miner husband to start a tourist accommodation, the "Kantishna Roadhouse". I would return every summer here as the camp grew and Roberta prospered. Eventually it seemed that only Japanese were visiting, so I stopped going there. Not because of the foreign tourists-it had just become too commercial, and very expensive.

A new dining hall and motel were built, the bears and moose, caribous, marmots, eagles (of course), foxes were all there. But not me nor but not me. Nor my tour group.
When I took that very first trip too Kantishna with my first wife, it required a special travel permit to leave the main park road. It got you away from the ubiquitous buses of summer photo seekers, who were often approaching and getting mauled by angry grizzly bears. It was a wild ride then, and I miss that Kantishna.

The next stop was Homer. It is a town on the Western coast of the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage. This incredible place is perhaps the most beautiful town on earth. At least if you drive up the hill behind Homer, and view its fishhook like peninsula over the Cook Inlet. Here we would always charter a trip for Halibut. This was a great opportunity to get seasick on the usually cold, rough, rainy inlet and catch a truly giant flounder. My biggest was only 108 pounds. It really was carnage back then I would have been happy with a 10 pounder for a nice big fillet dinner, but we all had to stay on the boat until the limit was caught. We fished at a spot called "Magic Mountain". This underwater feature was the hot spot then. I can assure you bringing up a 100 pound plus fish from 300 feet was like towing a Volkswagen beetle with a coat hanger. My arms like rubber bands and forearms numbed.

But it along with the rest of the catch butchered, packed, and Fedexed back home was fish for an extended family for a year. I don’t eat halibut anymore. I haven’t since I gave away the freezer I especially bought topo hold Alaska fish at my home in Mechanicsburg, PA. I gave away the freezer and fish, and my entirely used and experienced collection of halibut cookbooks before I moved to Arizona in 1994.

The breath-taking ferry ride from Whittier to Valdez is better than the over priced cruises. The 10 hours or so as I recall then was a start at a warm, nice little port with cars loaded on. The food was fist class then at first, but that changed over time.
I was always amused later as the ship progressed that the be-shorted and be-tee-shirted neophytes would soon be scrambling inside as we approached the glaciers and icebergs. I always brought my parka so I could stay out on deck and watch for whales and seals aplenty.

As great as that ferry ride is, the drive out and UP from Valdez (pronounced VAL-DEEZ) and the oil terminal is truly awesome. Writing about this, one truly runs out of dramatic adjectives. None really do it-language fails, go there and see it for yourself.
I remember taking this drive out of Valdez with my second wife for the first time. She is outdoorsier than wife one (not a lot). In the cool morning fog, she shrieked at seeing the absolute wall of snowy rock we were driving towards away from the pipeline terminal. It had no top in the fog, and we crossed across beautiful pond-pocked tundra and down my next traditional accommodation at Copper Center.

This rustic little motel was always my stop over place. It was quiet and comfortable and great to stop after a sleepless night on the ferry and the drive over the huge mountains.
The Denali highway goes east to west from the area just north of Copper Center back to Denali Park. This completes the round trip back to the park and back to our starting point, Anchorage. Along this dirt road, the Denali highway traverses amazingly interesting glacial terrain. Geology buffs, like me, get to ride on eskers, top kames, and see all kinds of moraines. Also, along her are a plethora of "ditches" containing vast quantities of Grayling and Dolly Varden trout. "Dollies" as they are called, are held in the same "esteem" as grayling are by Alaskans. But for those of us from "outside", as they say, Dollies may be another new species to catch. The mid-point for me along the Denali highway was a place called "Denali". Then, it was a support camp for the adjacent gold mine. They had small rooms and a restaurant in a small metal Quonset hut. The food was ample and hearty-the miners were good company for a geologist. It would have been better on those trips to leave the wives home. In the "Sluice Box" café, there are dollar bills everywhere with names of visitors, as well as any other paper currency you can think of. Telling the assembled miners I was an Alaska licensed geologist, the miners offered me 5 ounces of gold to fly up in the chopper with them for a day and look at their placer mining and make suggestions. I couldn’t go along, not wanting to leave my wife alone nor be late for our return flight to Baltimore.

On my last trip to the Kenai River, at Kenai, my wife and I both caught 50-pound class July Kenai Kings. I had an old friend along who hadn’t fished too much. He asked me, "Joe, how will I know when I have a fish?" Back trolling on the wild rushing river is a heavy feeling to the rod. I said, "You’ll know". It was about then he hooked a rocket of a 45-pound doe, tail walking and I think almost scaring my urbanite friend out of our boat. Jeff, our guide, started to call me Jonah Joe.

This one of my favourite biblical tales, but that is not why he called me that. There were many years I spent good money to combat fish the Kenai without catching anything. The fish my young wife caught was obtained while I was sleeping, fished-out and being out too long the night before with friends at Charlie’s place in Kenai. Charlie’s was a lot like the Pine Tree Tavern was in my youth in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. Except the owner honoured the entertainment needs of the salmon fishing season and had a uniquely entertaining place. Maybe it’s burned down too in the years I have been away, like the Pine Tree Tavern did near the Yellow Breeches..
A freshly cut steak from just behind the head of such a catch is divine, Mesquite grilled with a good bottle of wine, moose in view by a little cabin on the river is where I want to be-right now.
Oh, I like the Jona or Jonas story because for me it meant there is no way to hide from God or to avoid a divine journey. And when your done, you might just be angry, and get into an argument with God and destiny. This is an argument you shall ultimately lose.

I had promised my son a trip there for his graduation from high school. We will have to wait and see. As time has passed, and my priorities have changed, the trips are less frequent. But we will go again. I still have one of my earliest credential in Geology-A state of Alaska geology license. I only ever did one project there, in Juneau around 1993. It was an underground tank removal. Juneau was a neat town, but a bit touristy. There were salmon in abundance there and a nice glacier. It is a unique capital, as you can’t drive there its on an island. I know about living on an Island.

Joseph Manduke Outdoors and Fishing

Joey at the Delaware Canal, Bucks County, PA Dad at Skowhegan, Maine May 2007 Fall 2006




Joey and Alexis at the Delaware River Fall 2006

Alexis at Pinchot Park, York, PA

One man’s life…
—Biographical paragraphs at random- from an autobiography in progress।

Summer comes none too soon when you are a teenager armed with a drivers license and a badly abused 1965 Mustang coupe। Vivid still the images, soul- echoes, sounds, and youthful freedom still are a longing in my now distant joy। That first summer I was 16 defined the next 20 years of my life, perhaps all of it. I was fortunate that my surviving parent, my mother, felt that total freedoms so that a child’s imagination and soul could soar were much more important than mindless autocratic discipline. I know now, she had been powerfully changed by my father’s death. Maybe it tugged hard as her Philadelphia politician congressman and Hatfield feud surviving father had left the family years before in a bitter marital conflict. Dad was 44.


We all watched, my mom, sister, and I as dad, a strapping WWII Army air corps veteran of the Philippines wasted away from terminal cancer। Mom stood by, tending to him, taking him diligently and always heroically to downtown Philadelphia’s Jefferson medical center for treatment. Only now do I know that I was destined to lead my life as if I would shortly die, at 1000 percent every moment, without abandon, because my dad died so young, and I was sure to follow. Not to miss a thing.

That experience made mom a soldier for us, my sister and me, mom insistently aiding me through college, buying me my first motorcycle and the mustang out of dad’s small life insurance payoff।

It was as if to say, here’s a car, go explore, be careful but don’t be so cautious that you miss life। It has been my code, the way I have lived since I can remember.

The mustang was well worn and we were poor। I had to learn from the corner mechanic, who had been robbing my mother in the repairs to my dad’s rambler, how to “do it myself”. So over time I became quite the expert in keeping a basket case running, eventually painting, rebuilding, and racing my V8 ‘stang. But that was later.

This summer of my junior year was meant for grabbing the old fishing map and a few dollars for gas and finding a stream, lake, river, or pond that could hold fish.
The fishing map had been my father’s.

The gas stations put out different theme maps। Dad found a Pennsylvania fishing map at the Chalfont Atlantic station in 1966 and it became almost an item of worship. This map was used for Dad to conjure various trips for our fishing and family road trips. Not that Dad was much of a fisherman. He grew up in south Philly, and only got to fish rarely as far as I know. He had a boat in Barnegat at the Jersey shore with an Uncle where they fished the bay and drank beer, but there was an argument when I was little and it ended.

The fishing map was used to find Yellow Breeches Creek and the North Branch of the Susquehanna River। Both became Mecca’s to us then and still today. Islands in the river are named for my children at Homet Ferry, and the Yellow Breeches at Huntsdale have hosted my friends and family during traditional trout and bass seasons for almost 40 years.

So we headed out from Doylestown in the leaky mustang on a mission of pure exploration। My fishing pal and high school buddy Joe riding shotgun. I had installed a tape player in my pony and we had one tape. It was an early Beatles tape, and as I write these words I can still hear odes to the Norwegian woods and the familiar voices of Paul and John.

My thrill was to explore extreme northwestern Pennsylvania। The map claimed big fish in wild sounding places like Kinzua, The Allegheny River, and the Clarion River. Wide areas were delineated as native brook trout country, and home of the Pike and Muskellunge, their fierce cousins up to 4 feet long, and both bristling with teeth.

When dad was alive, the annual trek to the Yellow Breeches south of Carlisle was our big trip.
That and a summer trip to Bradford County (Wyalusing) on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River। All year, months before these trips, I would clean and organize tackle, study the maps, dream of trout at the Breeches or sultry summer evenings along the then wild Susquehanna with a stringer of walleyes and smallmouth, to be carefully cleaned and cooked by my mother, either Breeches trout or Susquehanna fish were a sacred meal.

On our summer trips in high school, the few we took, or the many I took alone, I slept behind summer quiet schools on the bus loading platforms Sleeping bag on still warm summer concrete। I caught and ate fish, and begged and borrowed for gas money.

In my fishing-dream- heart I studied and memorized the special map dad brought home years before। Pennsylvania’s route 6 traverses the most Northern part of the state from the New York state line near Port Jervis, all the way to odd sounding places named Kane, Warren, Corry, Westline…or Tionesta. Images on the map showed trout and toothy pike, tiny towns were I imagined Indians still netted fish and carried babies on their backs.

My fishing friend and fellow high school junior Joe and I were now on the road. Joe was a big athletic blonde kid who the girls liked. In fact I was secretly in love with his cheerleader girl and my neighbour Leslie. I think she thought of me as a combination motor head and nerd.
I had just started to get serious with Carol, my neighbour and first serious girlfriend that summer of 1973 (and oh how serious it is at 17!) . Joe simply said, “I don’t want to hear about that chick on this trip, we are fishing.” I had already been ridiculed for taking Carol to a dance.
Our destination, revealed by the sacred fishing map was the Allegheny reservoir। It was to be by way of route 6, that magical path I had only dreamed about. Real rugged trout country. As the Beatles groaned, we finally made it to Renovo on route 120. A dark nearly abandoned railroad town, where people were playing baseball in the main street at 3 AM. It was an odd scene. Out of bravado we drove up over the top of our world on route 144. I hadn’t known the state was this remote, wild. Finally we arrived at route 6 and went west.

The parking area by the reservoir and Kinzua dam was a wild place। They had flooded the corn planter Indian reservation to make the lake, and it made me feel sad. The loud spillway and leaking gas from the mustang’s rusty gas tank kept us up most of the night. By sunrise, a few sleepy fishermen emerged. Out of one truck a bewhiskered scrawny old man emerged.

While busy at this early hour boiling camp coffee and breakfast of fried walleyes, we asked about the fishing। We became friends with old Bill, and he told us of Kinzua fish and fisherman. He said to go back into town across the old iron river bridge and make the first right. This would take us to the deep hole on the other side of the dam. We slowly drove up the road, as it became rough, boulder strewn. I swerved to avoid a rock and the right edge gave way and there we hung precariously above the trees and the roaring Allegheny below.

Joe said he noticed an old jeep parked at a shack back down the hill। We walked back and found a gray tarpaper shack with half a door, the place moonshine was made and bad things happened to “out a towners”. Joe knocked on the door and appeared a wizened old man, unshaven. He looked to be 100 years old and was in fact, quite toothless. We explained our plight and he yelled to someone in the shack (we thought he was alone) a filthy little boy appeared and was instructed by the old man to “go get the rope yea big around as your xxxxxx”. In only a few moments the boy appeared and the antique jeep pulled my mustang right back onto the “road”. Joe gave gums, as he has been later called, a dollar and the old man jumped for joy, -kicked up his heels. I had never seen someone kick up heels before. We felt as far from home as Mars, or even Arizona.

As a 10 year old living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whose fishing exploits then, excited trips with dad to the Delaware Canal, river or Cooks Creek in Upper Bucks County, such places were odd and exotic as the Grand Canyon, or even the Desert and Cactus, or salmon streams in Atlantic Canada or Alaska.

So armed with my car and some gas, that old rusty camping stove I inherited from mom reluctantly (she still used it when the power was off), I ventured next out by myself to Huntsdale, where I had fished with dad since the spring of 1966.
This obscure little town, a right beautiful place as we” Canadians” say, is situated just below South Mountain, in a valley of limestone springs। The old map claimed, “Could be in old Scotland”.

I had no idea about that, but I now know, as with Cape Breton that single Scottish reference may have been enough to move dad to make the Yellow Breeches our private fishing and family place for the generations। Here was a trout hatchery where the pilgrimage is still made. I actually received a letter from the fish commission stating that my family had been signing the guest book at the Huntsdale fish cultural station longer than any other. This is devotion, a living tribute to a place and time past, still resurrected in real life, at a place of powerful genetic and visceral memories.

Perhaps dad loved the stream and South Mountain area for a different reason beyond a Scottish map reference. It may have been genetic. Dad would take us as kids to battlefield re-enactments at Antietam and Gettysburg. Later, this military interest would not only change my life, but also cause my young wife fits, hating my long periods away from home being of service to the nation.
I never knew then and neither did dad that our ancestor fought in these hills with the 17th New York Infantry, after getting here from fighting as a British officer in the Crimean War (2nd British Foreign Cavalry) It is very tough to live down the past, especially when among your ancestors, on both sides of the family are heroes, pioneers, or actual biographical historical figures. Perhaps I can use that as an excuse for my behaviours, but I doubt it.
In high school, after dad’s death, we, that is my high school crowd, and later the entourage I engendered as a successful businessman, ritualistically put our tent here, and fished the long fish, in hopes of touching the prior, the infinite।

This field of tradition just south of the hatchery my son has called since being very small the “thorn spot”. The connotation is obvious. But in this field, it was where my dad and I first drowned bait in the mid-१९६ओ's

Arriving back alone, years later, always puts a fist in my chest। Those days so long past, but not really. The sights, scents. Feelings-even trees now bigger but still where they belong belie the time past but still frozen. Waiting for that first cast, the first fish, the drive home to a familiar place, but still less important than the stream, the friends, and the father.

There is a curve along Pine Road where there was an old farm and an old dam. Probably a colonial mill dam, it was said to me once by a seedy from over the mountain that huge trout lay under the banks along that curve. Year’s prior, in High school, on a trip to pilgrimage here, my friend had said of the spot “I could eat that log”. Only a trout fisherman in love with small streams could fully gather that.
Beyond the bend in the stream are the railroad tracks. They are in the wood by a small tributary to the Yellow Breeches. I always imagined as a child huge trout that lay there, at the mouth of the spring-stream, under the railroad bridge, waiting for the life giving food and oxygen that the new water brings, cold, new, fresh. I have never fished there.
The road west was curvy, flat. I always anticipated my sign; it said “Bridle path”, by the horse farm just below the thorn spot.
There would be no camp this year. Camping was no longer permitted here on fish commission property. Just I, alone now years later in my rented car, Arizona and business long behind this day, mind full with fish and memories.
The sign marking the town of Huntsdale on the Eastern side is now long gone। Perhaps accident, flood or -just time. I parked in the same spot as 30 years ago, my big old tree still leaning, but without surrender, towards the creek.

The path to my spot of tradition was always wet. This is a valley of pure limestone springs. The stream literally pops out of the ground here, where rock and water meet, the upward pressure makes a spring, the springs the stream, and the home of trout and frog, and of the dreamers. Years ago, spring peepers cried and then would abruptly silence at the first step down my path. In those years the parking lot was full with campers, both over nighters and day-trippers. We all grew to know each other. After dad died in 1972, I came every year as a religion, a pilgrimage and introduced the stream and camping to everyone who was then, or later important in my life.
There were years that I came by myself। It seemed although my rituals stayed intact, at least as far as the fishing ritual, other people changed, and stopped the traditions of their youth. One spring I was camping along there at the spot on Pine Road, just below the hatchery. Most of the Friday night before opening day was spent drinking. Not so much by me, I usually had a case of traditional rolling rock (my dad’s brew, and the official brew of Pennsylvania‘s State related universities), and a small bottle of blackberry brandy. This was my mother’s primary cure-all, for all ailments. And who was I to argue, as my mom was both an Ivy League grad and a medical professional.

It brings to mind a bottle I found on the farm, in the barn in 1965. It was a liniment bottle, which I later found out was from the 1880’s. It still had contents, that smelled like pine tar (probably from Westline, read on), and the label listed that it would cure anything.” For man or beast”. I think my sister still has some of my bottles-this was my mother’s mantra, the brandy would cure anything, but if it didn’t at least you would feel better about it.
In the old days, one group of Yellow Breeches campers was lead by a fishing sage named Mr। Hamnell. He bellowed incoherently most of the April night. If it was raining, after drinking most of a case of Iron City, he would shout all night “come on rain”. I was never sure why. There had been plenty of opening days in a cold, pouring rain. It kept the shirkers away, and left the sacred breeches to her true followers, the real acolytes and sextons, and the holy men of the place. The Hamnels had asked me to eat with them in the camper that was always there, as long as I remembered, on opening weekend. We drank Iron City and ate venison. I love personally shot game-real food as God intended. I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink a little and won’t enjoy a fresh trout or deer chop. It’s unmanly, disrespectful. After eating the trout, venison and swilling big returnable bottles of Pittsburgh’s finest beer, Mr. Hamnel’s countenance turned somber. We had talked that I worked for the State’s environmental program, then new. So did many in his family also work for the keystone state, the Fish Commission of all places.

They each had a fishing license numbered in the single digits-that’s clout। I can come off a little educated and pompous, I didn’t swear then, and was an intellectual. But Mr. Hamnel looked right at me. He was round, his face drawn and bright red from drink, slurring, he lectured. “Boy, I have been xxx’d and xxx’d every way you can imagine and many, boy that you can’t. You better do it while you can, Boy, because the day gonna come when you can’t no more and you will be sorry. You will be sorry you didn’t do it while you had the chance, boy”.

This is profound. Life Orders-my nature, my very proof of existence. Perry county wisdom spoken in Cumberland. Wisdom for a lifetime.
The following day afternoon, after a long cool morning of successful fishing, I was sitting in my truck daydreaming. A bunch of girls pulled up, beers open, in a green 1968 Chevy that looked like it was just towed out of a field. It was a pretty good night…caught some trout too.
The streams contact with my waders was cold. The sunset was now low above the trees and a few ducks left for the pond on the hatchery property just upstream. I was left only to hear the crystal flow of pure limestone water. The waters of my youthful soul. Now with a cast alongside my own island-yes, I had named islands in all my private places for my family, never for myself.
There were Joey and Alexis islands for my children in the Susquehanna, at the Homet Ferry crossing। Here there was dad’s island. Maybe it was mine now too as a dad. I had started fishing here that second Saturday of April for over 40 years. Only in recent years have I missed this sacred appointment. Being away in the West, all over the place with the military, or just too poor or love smitten with my young wife to clearly remember the importance of tradition, and of being a free man. Perhaps its time to return to important things, traditions that define a life and a family, its joys and tears, its love.

Here, each insect on the water, silent sound of riffle and play of heart that raises even the first trout and means to tell me that I am still alive। I am not a purest or snobby neophyte fly-fisherman; I fish what works, bait early and deep in murky water to bring up old, noble brown trout of this stream.

I’ll spin artificials later and the flicker of a simple gold or silver spinner will fool an aggressive rainbow, placed here and so far from its western mountain home. My cast of the dry fly, a match for what is emerging from the stream and falling to breed and when summer spinners, or mayflies, and all the field bugs become trout food. And I don’t release all my fish. We cook as ritual along the bank our fish. Only what is needed as food for the empty place in the soul. My son and I will cut the first trout of a trip, remove its heart, cut the small organ in two, and share it. In this way we are men, bonded to fish, each, and God. No wimps in my world, never again.
Walking down to the stream across the field is always a walk of time। With each step I walk with my dad, his agonies of death, and my friends and son, along on their individual separations from this place. The stream is shallow, the bottom created from the perfect round pebbles of pale quartz-rock, eroded from the surrounding hills.

Those stones were boulders on a long past sandy beach। In no where near time, my very bones would be the finest dust, fairy dust, on the wind when the ground I am buried in becomes dust of air at a time and place as real as the present, but as sad as the past.

Trout in this stream are either native or placed here। Long ago, all fish were native here. But time, farming, and ugliness have made some fine middle-Atlantic trout streams mediocre. I have to say that my Yellow Breeches, of my own father’s fame, is no longer my favourite stream of my youth. I fish around my island where long ago I hooked a brown too strong to hold. Or the long strait riffle where dad and I caught trout and suckers, just below the place of camping with my high school pals.

You see, dad and I never camped here. It was just a drive (2 hours from Doylestown) at first to that place on the fishing map that stated, “Could be in old Scotland, unbelievably beautiful trout”. And it even said “Huntsdale”. It became ritual; the polishing of hooks and plans for each spring. To actually transfer that feeling to total strangers later was amazing to me. Even before I founded my business and abandoned many of my youthful true passions, I had taken friends to Huntsdale in memoriam to my father and our trips there. And good were and are those that remain of the trout and the place of all
Somehow the catch was always far less important than the feelings involved, and the sights, the sound of peepers. Dad found a bar on the hill above the stream It was called the Pine Tree Tavern. It was on top of the hill and I had a root beer while dad drank rolling rock and contemplated life.
I understand now. Dad was a mechanical engineer and died an unrealized millionaire, with which even the best recordable tragedy of this family fails to compare. Much later, my young son, still new to fishing at his “thorn spot”, the spot of my youth, would drink root beer while I had rolling rock and shots of JD. My son still refers to the old tavern as the “root beer store”. Many years later, on a business trip, I diverted to have a burger and beer at the Pine Tree.
Well, all that was there was burned rubble. An icon of my youth, a place of dad and the Hamnels, my high school buddies-beer, booze, girls, lies and fish tales-a place of the fall hunter’s nudity ball.
The owner would bring Baltimore “ladies” up before antlered deer season, a de facto state holiday here, and have a party for the hunters. I asked him once why he didn’t do it on trout opener, and never got a good answer. Heck. It’s the same crowd.
My bar and place of worship was no more. I sat along the side of the mountain and cried. A sign stated here, in the 1930’s, “Were found 3 babes in the woods”. I cried with them. Life is all about loss. Everyone has heard that expression, about babes in the woods, but I never found out about the 3 babes, and the sign is long gone too. It chilled me thinking the water the flowed past their tiny abandoned bodies nourished the trout I had caught and consumed. The truth is that we all feed on death, even vegetarians. A new municipal building now disguises the place of the mountain tavern. It’s barren and meaningless.
I was really lucky that summer in 1980, before my first job with the state. The field camp in Canada was great, and I had a job before graduation in the so stated non-existent environmental field. Even then my peers hated me, as I would have worked for nothing. Mapping and visiting trout streams. My dream job. I would have worked for free. I could have made 60 grand on a North Sea drilling platform (a lot in 1980 for a fresh grad). I was in paradise with 8 bucks an hour and living weekdays at the Harrisburg YMCA, studying long familiar maps of my childhood; my fishing map was now my job. Wow.
I had an interview that summer of 1980 before the field course that we geologists must take, mine to be in Canada, not far from where I am writing this. On the state of Pennsylvania’s geologist trainee list a full year before, I had great grades in my major, so came up the list as people were hired off it. I was number one when I got my first, timely interview. This old guy in Harrisburg, with thick glasses named Carlisle. The staff made fun of him, as he had to exercise his weak eyes. He had been the state oil and gas geologist, and he was my first and biggest supporter.
Without Carlisle, and his staff fishing parties to his York farm to catch pan fish and deplete his farm pond of fecund bluegills, my life would be much different! As a young trainee in Harrisburg, Carlisle made me feel at home by suggesting I go fishing behind the old fire hall on route 15 at Perdix. I still fish there with my children today. As with everywhere, my son has named the Perdix fishing spot. He calls it the “mud spot”. The connotation, again, is obvious.
Off route US 6 if you happen to have an old Atlantic Fishing map is a place called Westline. There is the Westline Inn, a rustic motel and bar with a pretty good restaurant. Many years ago it was the office of a chemical company that made things like turpentine and medicines from Pine tar. The stream there, Kinzua creek was hopelessly polluted by the Pennsylvania oil industry, by salt brine and grease. Over the decades, the stream has been saved and the trout returned,
This is a place of my odd and extreme past, as long ago; I had attended a small car show here after a huge drive around with my high school girl, Carol in1973. Long after, in 1981, I took the job with the state as an environmental geologist. The only business trip we took in 1981, as part of the program I was in, involved a long trip to Bradford, PA and a dinner at Westline Inn- a meeting with oil industry officials who wanted to kill our program. -Bradford was where my boss and fellow fisherman Carlisle had worked in the oil patch, as we geologists say.
Years later, and by surprise, Kinzua Creek and fishing was good again here। Maybe we environmentalists had done some good after all. My son and I call a small tributary stream, behind the actual town of Westline, Thundershower Run, a tributary of Kinzua Creek or the “camping spot,” a special place. In Bradford I met those oil officials in 1981. Long ago I was here, this place is now home of my son’s fishing spot, or the camping spot.

It is sometimes called a convergence, that this out of the way place has been an unlikely center for so many disparate, good and bad, grand and sad events. A friend once told me that I created a “cone of coincidence” that everyone in my world got caught in. So my early years seemed. Now, sitting quietly on the sea here, I wish to start a new whirlwind.
My father had lost his defense contractor job in New Jersey with General Electric two years before। The house he had built for us in the jersey suburbs was his dream after growing up in a working class family in south Philly, going off to war, and then to Drexel to become an engineer. This had prepared dad to marry, raise kids, and pursue the new American dream of the 1950’s. It was not to last long, and I still think his disappointment eventually killed him.

Our New Jersey home was one of the first built in Kingston estates; it provided me with then wild surroundings, now unimaginable in that part of south jersey. As a small boy, I would wander the woods with my ever-pregnant dog ticky in search of frogs, fish, dead snakes to take home and study. There was soon much construction including the new interstate highway, I-295. The road ran only a mile from my home, thru the woods I wandered.
Much of it was marshy, and it was an ugly sight of environmental destruction, long before any rules। I still can see a small group of translucent fresh water clams violently trying to breath in a disappearing muddy puddle. So that part of my youth was transformed into a concrete horror, forever in my mind and heart.

One afternoon I simply walked away from my first grade class and went to the stream by my house। I found a dead black racer snake and dragged it home. Mom, unabashed and well rooted in science, showed me how to skin and salt the snakeskin, which I had for years. In fact it was draped on my ancestor’s sailing ship wheel that has bedecked my bedroom dresser for decades and still does.

Nothing was said as to my absence from school, which would be a lifetime of education with my parents। They thought little of public education, and preferred I study at home, just regurgitating enough 50’s B.S. to graduate and go to college. To them college was also suspect, but required for the entry into any job worth having. And make no mistake; I was to be a mechanical engineer like my dad, or a medical professional like mom. It was from my mother I learned about nature and animals, from my dad about fishing and later hunting and guns. Oh yes, lots of guns.

We had moved to the Bucks County farm that fall of 1965. It was October and I recall it well as I started writing in my first diary then. I kept that tradition for almost 35 years, rarely missing a day. I think after our summer experience at the cabin, we were all sick of the city. I had pneumonia several times and the air was awful. I did enjoy walking to the sporting goods store and buying fishing tackle. And I had friends in 4th grade. One, my first or second girlfriend depending on who is asked was one tall brunette, Anastasia Ott. She openly wept on my last day of school. It was a friendly place. But once again we were on the move to a new horizon.
Our place in Bucks County was a real farm, with acres and a pond, a barn and a fruit orchard and a stream। It was a colonial manor far from the city. The road was partially dirt, and I could have as many pets as I wanted. I opted for a calf, a goat and geese. My mom wanted chickens and cats. My sister grew pumpkins she sold at a little farm market in the nearest town Chalfont; we picked out my Shepard collie, Ollie from the animal shelter.

He was to become my best friend। I would soon first shoot the guns and hunt the farm for Thanksgiving pheasant. Ollie would be my hunting dog and the most loyal friend I ever had, other than my own parents.

This is about stone end farm on Curley Mill Road। This is about the best years of life of my family, and how issues and man and the environment, then poorly defined and hazy set my path in life.

More than anything is my memory of my times exploring our 88 acres with Ollie and/or my sister। The rear of the farm was an open field of green lawn, flowers and dogwoods and cherry trees. Beyond was a 20-acre cornfield rented to our dairy farmer neighbour, Mr. Lewis. Beyond that were swampy woods, more fields and ancient colonial structures begging for investigation. Across the road was the rest of our place. A swampy field, a, stream that had small fish and a dense thicket of a wood, brimming with black raspberries, black berries and stickers that coated Ollie and us.

Far in the Northwestern corner of the land was a pond. It had been excavated long ago. The original part of our home had been a colonial mill and icehouse. The pond was dug and the house built when Bucks County was still a British colony. Spring fed and loaded with clear water, colourful water plants and lots of salamanders, frogs, spring peepers and toads, I had my first laboratory. I read every book on pond life and amphibians, and plants that I could.
Dad and I also hunted almost each weekend and I went out each nice day with Ollie in the fall after school. We had pheasants and deer all around; we would shoot pheasants and have spectacular meals mom would prepare of the finest stuffed and roasted bird. The brightly coloured feathers as well as those of my bantam roosters I used in fly tying.
Ollie would always gently bring the bird to us, that wonderful mutt, often embarrassing some neighbours who hunted with us with purebred spaniels that were dumber than bait। Sometimes we had rabbit too. Mom disapproved of hurting the animals, but knew how to make hasenpfeffer.

We never took any big game on our place। Dad and I would suit up and go to Broad Mountain in Carbon County for opening Monday of antlered deer it is always the Monday after Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, and almost no one outside Philly goes to school or work, for days. Trout season, the second Saturday in April as it was in those days is similar, a de facto state holiday. My birthday is November 25 and I was born the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1956. We could always hunt and celebrate my birthday.

Years after dad died, I would go on pretty rugged winter deer season campouts with some of the same high school buddies from trout season। Except Joe of Kinzua and Gums fame who didn’t approve of hunting.

। Dad bought me a model 94 Winchester for my twelfth birthday that I inexplicably later put a scope on. I loved that powerful 32 special lever action gun. Those trips with dad hunting in the Pocono’s, our breakfasts at Steve’s diner in Jim Thorpe, the cold, the camaraderie. Are the he best memories of my life along with the fishing trips. But I turned 12 in 1968, the age to be legal to hunt off our land. And I already had been fishing for years with dad (and mom and my sister, who went and watched only or painted). Dad died 4 years after he bought me my Winchester, and being too sick to go in the fall of 1971, we really only went deer hunting to the Pocono’s a few times, maybe 4 in all over just two seasons. I have only been hunting with my son once, at the Monroeton house in 2003 before the divorce. That’s 5 years counting this coming season. He has asked to go hunting time and again, as he has the family guns now.

It’s been too long since that snowy Bradford County at the house soon to be our hunting and fishing place। I had a Browning 7 MM Remington magnum A-bolt then. I had bought the canon for Arizona Elk hunting that never materialized due to illness and divorce in 2004. Some guns survived packed away in storage for me when I returned the next fall.

That summer of 1965 we packed up most of the pets, my cousin Dave (who was a pure city boy) and we wound our way to the place on dad’s fishing map was labeled “Wild River”, near Towanda, and a place then called Wyalusing Rocks in Bradford County।

It was late June, school out, and very balmy. The area where the river flowed was farmland. Once, Marie Antoinette had been scheduled to relocate here to avoid the issues of the French Revolution. She didn’t make it, but plenty of other French settled here, including one Charles Homet. He is important here as we asked a local farmer, an ancient Mr. Smith with a still out back where we might rent a summer cabin and maybe a rowboat. Well he happened to have a tiny yellow cabin with a big antique wooden radio and a wood-burning stove at the old Homet’s Ferry crossing,
The back road ended there at the river, but the road obviously continued along the other side. So while my mom and sister painted the mountains, round-pebbled beaches we would, my cousin, dad, and I fish the river.
The river was swift and clean with 2 islands just above the old ferry road. Downstream, the river turned sharply east, moved by an ancient Appalachian mountain I have come to call Joe’s mountain, for all the Joe’s of this tale.
My cousin Dave was a skinny, blonde, tall boy of 12. This was his first trip to the country and he was staying close to dad, his own father driven off by his greedy and downright nasty mother. I had rowed the little aluminum boat that went with our cabin out and shoved the bow onto an island.
Moments later, in the late morning sunlight, I heard my cousin yell in a nasal, shrill voice “Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe! A muskellunge-the first I had ever seen had taken Dave’s red and white spoon and rocketed straight out of the river not 30 feet from me It dwarfed tiny Dave, shaking its head to disgorge the dangling spoon, its dark vertical bars on a greenish background. I had never seen a fish that large. One splash, silent, line broken.
From that day forward, even at that time with 5 years of fishing under my little belt, I was a fisherman. And this spot at Homet’s Ferry is a sacred place of real spirits, ghosts of dad and that fish, that summer of fresh wood-stove cooked walleyes, the smell of manure from the dairy farm, and the smell of a clean, fished filled rural paradise.
We also drove around the area in our green and white rambler wagon looking for other fishing spots. We left the ladies to drive to Terrytown on the other side of the river. The fishing map did show roads along the river course there. We found a spot with a steep bank and caught an almost incredible number and variety of fish. Mostly on the small side, bass, pike, and walleyes, a member of the perch family. We had dinner for sure. Mom would clean, roll in cornmeal and fry them up in nice smelly bacon fat. Imagine these days living thru that to tell about it.
We were getting ready to leave Terrytown to cross back to the cabin when someone drove by in an old truck and yelled. I didn’t hear it, still elated with our catch, but dad said “short pants”. Dad usually wore shorts fishing on warm summer days. Apparently this was a taboo in Appalachia, and the two farmers in the pick up had yelled, “faggot, short pants “, at dad. This was unwise of them.
Very calmly, saying nothing dad took off with Dave and me in the rambler. He reached under the seat and pulled out a metal hand axe that we used for camp wood, at least we had. Dad, driving madly in the passing lane, left hand draped on the wheel, his right chopping with the axe yelled, “you lousy bastards, I am gonna hack your f’ing faces to bits”. There was abject terror on the farmer’s faces, who went off the road into the ditch. My heart was pounding. Dad put his axe away quietly and we calmly went back to the Homet Ferry cabin and ate a fish dinner.
Another odd thing occurred that trip। My mom’s parakeet “Peekie” had developed some sort of a bird “cold”. Mom sent me to the chicken farm up the hill from the river with two missions, buy a little fresh vegetable to go with our pike and see if they had any bird medicine. Peekie had been an important part of my life as long as I remembered. I would feed him bits of egg and bread at breakfast in the morning, and he would cheerily chirp. Well on approaching the farm I saw a very gaunt elderly man stiffly standing with a rusty hoe.

He was wearing striped bib overalls and a cap, like a painting। He was tending yellow wax beans. I asked him how much for the beans, and he gave me a big paper sack full of fresh yellow wax beans for a quarter. Quarters were silver then. As for medicine, he gave me a small bag of red powder and said follow the instructions. He seemed overjoyed to talk with a young person on the subjects of birds and beans. Well our parakeet survived many more years along with my dog Ticky and our cats Mildred and Herman, the other pets that came with us on that trip to the little yellow cabin.

There are three surviving watercolors my mom painted on that trip। One is of the fishing spot at the ferry crossing-near the axe incident। The other is the Homet Ferry store, which still stands but is no longer a store, a short walk from the old cabin। Mom painted another watercolor of me and my sister sitting along route 6 at the Wyalusing Rocks overlook. The river and islands are seen down below in the summer-green valley mists. I go there when I am sad for my son, dad, mom, or my sister who was my first teacher of reading and math. I shall return and maybe stake a claim here again with my children, Shel (second wife) has also been here, as with everyone else important in my life. How they react to the beauty of the river valley here, nostalgia of Yellow Breeches, speaks of their character. These are the places that define who I am.


River Thoughts
So I wanted to tell of a time still vivid of a Pennsylvania river.
It’s not that good of a place to go but it is a fishing story. A time when I caught my mother.
The clean waters of the Juniata are legend among anyone who has fished in the East. My memory is of Mexico and Matawana, places along this river. These are places that my dad had found on the fishing map, places where my daughter caught her first fish and the place I had first seen a wild small mouth bass.
This river, which finds its outlet to the Susquehanna at Clarks Ferry, derives from truly wonderful mountain trout streams west and North of the places I have named। My dad, always with the fishing map in tow, led us here long ago, in the 1960’s. We came the first time in the old rambler to find a place different and yet rural…a place we could visit in a single day out, unlike Wyalusing and Homet ferry. Here, there was a wild river too. The banks here and there were dotted with small campsites and plenty of river access. It was only the old map that suggested a place for bass.

The shore fishing near Matawana was unknown to us, untested। Then to a small boy, it seemed liked a raging torrent, muddy and wide, in the mountains, a great accompaniment to the upper Susquehanna, but closer to home.

As a child, I did not know that the backcast could be dangerous.
I cast back and caught my mother, who was sketching, in the face. There was no harang, my dad, the always battlefield soldier packed my mom off to the hospital in Lewistown, some 20 mile distant. I recall this in great detail. Not for that moment so much, but when I caught a big salmon years later south of Anchorage, Alaska, when a hook flew out of a snagged pink or “humpy” salmon, among the natives and scavenging bears, I found a treble in my face and was taken to the hospital. The hook missed my eyeball by only fractions as it had with mom. The laughing doctor said welcome to Alaska, and removed the hook It was 1983, and 1966 all again.
So trout season 2008 has come and past here both on the Island and in Pennsylvania। Not able to go fishing, I noticed the season here because the local radio said fishing was on, and although not the big day it once was, many older folk still kept the tradition. For me, an off-islander, it came and went only as a thought of my times past with dad and later friends at the yellow breeches.

Here, April 15 is set in stone as opening day, as the second Saturday in April of my youth। But here, mid-April sun is hollowed by a cold, ice-driven sea breeze. I picture sluggish trout of the sea as reluctant as I am to wander to a place to call a fishing spot. The sea run trout, both brook and browns really don’t start moving until next month.

There is the Lilac run, and the Strawberry run of sea trout into the Dunk River। The Atlantic salmon are there too. Last year a Potato farmer spread pesticides just before a big rain and there was a massive fish kill. You want to cry? Go see dead 3-5 pound sea run trout and salmon. Fishing is open for catch and release in the Dunk this year-Ill go when it gets above freezing and the ice is out.

I saw old folk, at a town hall I cannot name, meeting ritualistically at a time and place accorded, to eat a meal prior to casting a line, now alone। No young ones were there. This is the traditional pre season breakfast, which goes on all night before trout season here. It reminded me of a retirement home social event.

It was as if an old tradition, slowly dying was being played out. It was on the local TV. It made me feel sad, as if this day I should have been at yellow breeches with my children. Even then the fishing would not be as good, and there would be no way to tell anyone why it was different. Here a cold, icy, ocean breeze swept across the street by my home.

is only a few miles to where the old stalwart fisherman, only a few years ahead of me, cast the line on this opening day. I bet each one at the traditional opening breakfast had more memories in their hearts that cannot be told and that of lost friends, fish, and loves. But they really wanted to go out cold and face the sunrise. Memories and stiff, old joints do that. But the warm glow of memory, even on the cast or dreams made for long lost memories will push to the stream banks.
Dad was so excited। Here, along the muddy bank at the Juniata, my father caught his first small mouth, It seemed we could do nothing wrong. He cast a small plug, a rocky junior I think, and in seconds caught an angry small mouth right along the bank of the snow-melted high river. The fish was golden yellow bronze, and about 2 pounds. I asked dad if we could keep him, as I also hooked a smaller fish at the same time. We felt the sacred connection to take the fish and make a meal as in Wyalusing, but the season was closed.

My dad was strict on rules, and in a lonely place where only we were, we released our catches until the law and God allowed another encounter. Perhaps until that time I never knew how honourable my father was. On his deathbed, I recounted this. He was weak and pale from cancer, the day before the end. He said, “Luke, I am a fighter. But I may not make it.” I was at his bedside. “Take care of your mother and sister”. I told him that if I were half the man he was I would be a success.
The next day they took his withered wan form out in a black bag। My sister had announced, “He’s dead”. I was 10 feet across the hall. My mom said she saw a thin black smoke arise, the angel of death.

I was 15. I grew up that day. It was the second day of the New Year, 1972.
The past is history। The future has not happened, All we have is the present-the present is our only eternity. To recount life through fishing is a vision that you may not appreciate. But fishing, or the thoughts of fishing are the vehicle, which makes meaning for me. What makes meaning in the chaos for you is your own affair. It’s totally personal. Perhaps, in this, you may find your own meaning….

Arizona
Moving to Phoenix in 1994 was good. It’s actually Glendale, just west of 43rd Avenue. A tough mixed place, but we had a community pool and later I would be VP of our condo association. These were the best of years. This is an idyll. My children are east, only later as we will discuss did my son visit my Arizona home and the rim with me for many summers, and we would take trout by bucketfuls at places like Big Lake, Luna Lake, and in the Utah Dixie.
Arizona has some of the finest high country trout fishing in the states; the exotic Gila and Golden trout are beautiful and plentiful now. But a long hike or a horse is needed for the best places. There we were with the Elk, Lion, Eagles and Bear. At nearly almost 10000 feet above sea level, Big Lake near Alpine is easily accessible and has a very reasonable boat rental. The lake is loaded with nice stocked rainbows-it was where my son first got excited about fishing. We always had a blast.
Luna Lake on the New Mexico border just east of Alpine is great fishing when the snow melts। (Yes, Virginia, it can snow a lot in Arizona’s high country). The San Francisco River runs southeast into New Mexico. It is a tough hike as nearly all is remote mountain wilderness with great fly-fishing water and wild rainbows and Gila trout. The little motel in Alpine called the “Sportsman’s Lodge” is reasonable and friendly. It is run by Frank and Phyllis Barnes, dear old friends of mine.

Unlike my eastern homes, our home in Glendale was a simple two-story town home. But,
Arizona was to me paradise-a new life with my girl, a new start. There were the palm trees, and we had a pool out back-but most of all, I was with my girl. My wife, constantly decorating the place, made it paradise.
We would Sunday’s go to the West of Glendale together romantically to seek the orchards। It was much, now, as I think, a bit like grave robbing. But then I didn’t know what I know now. We drove out to the end of the paved roads in West valley , east on Bethany Home। If you are from Arizona, you know where the roads stop, and farm land starts-cotton, broccoli, cut flowers-and citrus of every kind.

The access road was partially blocked by equipment, a big front-end loader and dump trucks। As a military ordnance contractor, I had been on the area before to secure the former air base areas and to make way for the new stadium. That was how I found the orchards. I remember cleaning and offering various 50 caliber rounds to local officials after digging up the unexploded chain gun ammunition that was used on the P-51 Mustangs that flew 1000’s of training missions here at the Luke AFB auxiliary airfields.

These are clearly seen on topographic maps of the area as triangles in the desert.
The military would pack-up old ammo and put it on wooden pallets in a pit dug in the ground। This is called in my trade OB/OD, or ordnance burn, ordnance disposal. Then it was doused with fuel and set on fire, then run like hell. I can picture the young army air corps guys, soon off to fight the Japs in the pacific, burning old ammo then sitting at a bar Dad would have worn the same uniform as those kids-but he never trained at Luke. He was in Mississippi and Utah before shipping out to the pacific just after the bomb was dropped.

When I worked for the Army we would just go, as I said all was to be demo’ed, to get oranges and grapefruits before the trees would be cut to make way for the endless ticky-tacky homes and malls, sports complexes, and never ending golf courses that sucked the life out of the place। In the midst of it would be the out of place ranch house, usually 1920’s or 30’s vintage, sometimes older. Our little townhouse development had been a pecan ranch up until 1960. The ranch house was small and out of place on 43rd Avenue, now an office, swallowed now by 40 years of building the swelling city. But the pecan trees were still here, several kinds. I would pick buckets full and Shel would make cookies in the fall.

Our trips to the farmland in the west valley were best on Sunday’s। There was less construction traffic and we could watch the jets at Luke AFB. Most all of the farmland now was being cleared for development except a few patches, islands of proud old fruit trees ready to be sacrificed, to provide glorious fresh food no more. In most places beyond the loop 101, they had cut off the water and 70-year-old citrus trees were dying for a drink.

My wife and I took a few bushels of fruits and filled our little pick-up truck with what was fresh There were navel oranges, juice oranges, white and red grapefruits, and lemons. I never realized how dead and tasteless store-bought fruit back east was until I had a freshly picked grapefruits or oranges. We would eat them as we picked. Sometimes I would turn the irrigation valve on and sometimes water would flow. This, I thought would give us maybe another weekend or two of fruit picking before the place was demolished.