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Show Stan found gold at the j end of the rainbow Hammond, Ind. I haven't visited Hammond in the summer for more than 15 years. Summers in Utah are too good to leave especially when summer in Utah spans only 12 weeks. It has been much easier to get back home around Christmas, to break up Park City's normal nine-month winter. . Last week I took a drive out to the Indiana Dunes, past Chesterton. Since the expressway was under repair and ' choked with bumper-to-bumper semi-trailer rigs fuming the air with diesel exhaust, I took the longer route, south around Gary on the old Lincoln Highway, U.S. 30. When I was a kid the pavement used to stretch 25 miles from the 41 and 30 intersection in Schererville to Valparaise through farmland and oak-covered sand hills. Now it is a straight shot of truck stops, car showrooms and housing tracts. Where the Interstate crosses on its way from Gary to Indianapolis is an expanse of blacktop and shopping plazas that spreads out farther than any single farm did 25 years ago. Somewhere under all that is where I caught my first trout. I was 10 years old and it was my birthday and my dad knew from my babbling about articles in the outdoor magazines that I would like nothing better than on my birthday to hook into a real prize like a trout. There had been dozens of bass, bluegill, perch and pike that had succumbed to my angling persistance, but a trout. Now that was a challenge! When you are ten years old you don't get many chances at trout when any fishery within bicycle range is the temperature of a hot tub and is so tainted that the fish swim with their heads out of the water. So it was with bright-eyed eagerness that we unloaded the tackle at Stan's Shadyside Trout Paradise (or some other enticing come-along), a one-pond operation that relied on filters and aerators to keep the nine-inch rainbows alive long enough to be yanked out by city suckers like myself on the weekend. Chances are good that the fish truck rolled in on Saturday morning, Stan praying that the trout could survive until after the crowds left on Sunday. This was a classic 'fish by the inch' deal. Yep, there they were, darkening the bottom by the thousands it seemed. A few poor creatures had taken the wrong turn away from the aerator and were already belly-up at the far end. "A good sign," I remember thinking. "They're rising!" Now I must add that this was not strictly a father-and-son outing. We had taken along my 13-year-old cousin who at the time was progressing nicely from the boys-will-be-boys stage into pubescent delinquency. 01' Tom was quite an outdoorsman, occasionally mixing in turtle fishing (he loved to retrieve his hook using the heads-must-roll method) with his favorite pursuits of knife making and throwing, archery : (strictly pigeons off window sills), toad bashing and, in : the wintertime, snowball throwing (at passing cars). We started fishing with worms, but the darn trout weren't rising to worms, a fact instantly spotted by Helpful Stan who sold us packages of com for a buck ; apiece. Trout were picky, I knew, but com? Now that was ' exotic! My dad grumbled something about religion and the price of com and put on a huge pike lure almost as big as the trout. As if by magic Tom and I began to take some fish. I was in paradise, just like Stan's sign said, playing the wiley game-fighting trout like Ted Trueblood out in Montana. Each fish took at least 30 seconds to gasp through its limited supply of oxygen before it came to the net. Tom was somewhat more practical; I'd turn when he said he caught one to see a silvery form rocket fifteen feet behind him onto the bank. My dad began to grow a little anxious, pacing and smoking and glancing at the growing collection of fish on the stringer and then over at Stan's rates printed on the side of the pump-house. I heard him mutter something about the White Sox game on TV. We had about an hour of gleeful action (during which time Stan unloaded four more packages of com) and suddenly the fish stopped feeding, crowding up by the bubbling air supply like a pack of thirsty rugby players to the beer keg. I was pitifully stymied but that is when cousin Tom's vast sporting background came into play: I heard a splash to my left and there was Tom with another fish flopping on the bank. Funny thing, though, there wasn't a hook, line or sinker attached; his pole was high and dry, leaning against a tree. "Don't say a word or I'll kill ya," he hissed. For the next hour and a half I kept casting, hopelessly, while Tom circled the pond looking for half-dead trout finning paralytically in the shallows. Splash! The bear would strike, I would whine (we had a side bet), Tom would rub it in, my dad would grouse and check his wallet and Stan was out in back, no doubt chuckling. When I finally relented to the idea of birthday cake, Tom had me solidly whipped, sixteen fish to eight. I'm sure my dad was broke, but he had triggered trout fever in me that has never gone away. Tom lives in Minneapolis now with a golden retriever that dives in after shore-lying fish and saves him wet feet. Stan has probably moved to Florida after selling his Trout Paradise for a parking lot. My dad said the other day, "At least they cleaned the damn things for you." |