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Show fe iff ;3Ll !v?n3? Atif by Teri Gomes ! Getting hooked on fishin' It's been a busy week around our house. For five nights running we've been out in the evening, which is really quite a lot for two basic homebodies. Lest you think these I were all glamorous affairs, I would like to point out one evening included the school board meeting. It has yet to learn social graces and serve cocktails and canapes to guests. By Saturday night I was beat. Nonetheless we journeyed over to a friend's house on the golf course for an after-dinner drink. As the conversation turned to golf and my husband's inept game, our host suggested a simple means of improvement. "I've a video tape you can borrow which deals with how to improve your game. It really helped mine," he said. Then as an afterthought, he added, "You do have a VCR at home, don't you?" The other couple in the room politely stopped talking and waited J for us to answer. You could hear the Jj ice in the glass crack it was so quiet. I It seems an eternity before my I husband answered. I felt a temporary sense of horror and shame as if everyone had a hoola hoop arid we didn't, as if our privy was outdoors. Hubby just laughed and said, "Nope, not yet." Not yet? Does he know something I don't know? "Not yet" implies that we will soon. That we're thinking about it. That we might. I know our financial status intimately. It could best be described as nouveau solvant. And we're working hard at that. "Not yet" indeed. Sunday morning dawned with the intense need to do something mindless. Something relaxing. Something non-taxing. I decided to accompany my husband fishin'. For regular readers of this column, I'll say that I fish just about as often as I exercise. For infrequent readers, that is to say unless under duress I don't do it. It's not that I've not been lucky as a fisherperson. Oh no! The last time I went fishin' I caught 10 trout. Yep. In one sitting. I was six and my father had taken me to a trout farm to build my confidence, no doubt, as a fisherperson. But, well, Pop went into the lodge for a pop at the bar and came back after two hours to discover, to his wallet's horror, my great success. I got a real mixed reaction when I showed him my bounty. And something told me, even then, this would be hard to duplicate on my own. So I just never tried again. Agreeing to go along to Rockport only meant I could find my place in the sun for a few hours. And maybe I'd bring along a notebook and see if I could write anything that didn't have the same odor as my husband's tackle box. Before the drive over, I insisted we stop off at Alpha Beta for a few provisions bug spray, chocolate bars, pretzels, soft drinks, nuts.. .real important stuff. Judy Elkins was in line just ahead of me. She had all the makings for a picnic and said her family, too, was goin' fishin'. An idea whose time had come on Sunday afternoon. i Once out of the car at Rockport we walked right into the man who runs the concessions there Tony Mitchell. That's right-Dr. Tony Mitchell, superintendent of schools Mitchell, boatman and burger flipper Mitchell. Seems Tony and his brother took over the concessions there this year. , So Tony gave us the Cook's tour and then suggested we all take a spin on one of the Hobie Cats beached below us. For a brief moment I figured Tony wanted to get even with me for : a tough headline in the Trib, but we chose not to talk much about merit i pay for writers or administrators. We pushed off, caught a wind and ; before long we were half-way across the blue clear waters. We took turns at the helm and talked of the need to relax, unwind, let go. Once back to the dock, hubby and I ' rented a little fishing boat and putt- putted our way along the shore. He, : throwing out lines, me, trying hard ; to create them. And while the only ! thing he caught was a not-yet-fully- disposed disposable diaper, the ' afternoon was pleasant, warm and : relaxing. And it struck a vein with me this is -the second Sunday in a row I had spent in a restful way. I think maybe : Huck Finn had the right idea. Gone ; fishin' could become a permanent ' condition. |