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Steven Harowitz 00:12
Hello, Internet. It's been a little while. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I will be your host for this episode of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. In this episode, I have something extra special for you because we have stories to share from our return to in-person events. Our first event was the Welcome Back to the Campfire event, and our second was a Campfire Showcase. Both events featured storytellers who told their stories virtually due to COVID, so we invited them back to tell their stories in front of a live audience. Now this episode will highlight one of those storytellers. You can catch all the other storytellers by subscribing to The Campfire Storytelling Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Now, let's head to the Campfire to listen to Cindy's story from our live and in-person Campfire Showcase event.
Cindy Miller 01:11
Thank you for having me. It's kind of a thrill to be here. I’m telling my story in two parts. Chapter one. I use the aroma of Jim's coffee as my alarm clock. Each morning as I entered the kitchen, I'd find Jim mug of coffee in hand standing at the window assessing the neighborhood. I'd usually ask, “How's it look out there today?” His response was always the same. “It's a perfect day for fishing.” Mind you it could be sunny, rainy, snowy, breezy, icy. In Jimmy's world every day was the perfect day for fishing. Now he had a desire to turn me into an outdoorsy type of girl, but we worked a lot of mandatory overtime in those days, and we barely had time or energy to do anything but to prepare for the coming work week. As far as I knew Jim's only outdoor activity had been to mow the lawn. So imagine his excitement when we were able to schedule a Labor Day weekend together. Lake Wappapello would be the destination. Jim talked nonstop as he cleaned his equipment, checking reels, taking inventory of tackle boxes. “You are going to have so much fun,” he said. “I'll teach you everything you need to know.” And on he went confident that he could transform me, a cosmopolitan woman, in to a country babe in a day. We arrived at Wappapello early on Saturday morning with Jim's pronouncement, “It's a perfect day for fishing.” However, it was a weird weather day. It was unseasonably cool, the air was dead, and there was a thick fog that just covered the whole area. Jim said we needed to find our base camp. He drove slowly assessing different access points from his driver side window. What qualities he was looking for was never fully explained to me. “I have instincts,” he said. Turns out our perfect place the fish was a classic U-shaped cove. It had a rocky outcrop on the left, an arm of receding timber on the right, and the fog was this curtain drawn between the two wide points. Jim placed an artificial lure called Mr. Twister on my hook. Now, Mr. Twister, for those of you who don't know, is a white grub bait with a body like an earthworm, and it has a long tail that curlicues and then tapers to a translucent point. He set his rod the same as mine, and he demonstrated how the swimming action of the lure required we cast and reel in, cast and reel in. Jim moved about 25 feet away, and we commenced the cast and reel in together.
Cindy Miller 04:29
I don't know how much time went by. All I know is that after a certain point every time I looked in Jim's direction, he was repeating the same reassuring message. “It's a perfect day for fishing.” We had not had any strikes on lures. None. I was just fine with that. But Jim went into problem solving mode. “You're standing in the wrong spot.” And he pointed to where I should have been. I cast and reeled in from my new location. Shortly thereafter, he decided that he too had been in the wrong spot. Time went by. I was beginning to daydream. Jim woke me up when he said, “It's a perfect day for fishing, and we should have caught something by now. You have the wrong bait. I'll take care of it.” Jim replaced my Mr. Twister with a shiny metal spinnerbait. Now this lure worked off of a whirling motion. The glint and vibration of the spinning metal was meant to attract fish. I don't know what I had been fishing for before, but Jim said, “The bass will really like this.” I made more than a few passes with my new lure when Jim decided that he too had the wrong bait. He said he wanted something more aggressive, adding, “I'm gonna go look for some live bait.”
“Wait, I thought you said live bait was illegal in this lake.”
“It is but it's a perfect day for fishing and I'm not gonna let some law ruin it for me.” Jim walked past his three tackle boxes full of jigs, weights, floats, hooks, stuff, and more stuff. He placed his rod at the edge of the undergrowth, and he slowly disappeared into the woods overturning rocks as he went. Once out of sight for a few minutes, I heard him yell. “I've given up looking for earthworms. I'm looking for bag worms instead.” Given that information, I was still a little startled to see the wispy top of a cedar tree shudder in the distance. Was Jim in an argument with tree? I didn't want to know. Jim returned from the woods sweaty and irritated. It may have been a perfect day for fishing, but it had not been a good day to find bait. As he approached, he gave me a critical look. Not understanding where that had come from, I returned to casting and reeling in and pretended not to notice. He stood a little distant from me as he lit a cigarette, but I could sense he was judging my every move. I couldn't help but wonder, “Was he upset because he hadn't caught a fish?” Well, that question was quickly answered when he flicked his cigarette to the ground, took two steps towards me, and said, “You are bad luck and jinxing my day.” Sorry. “I'm going out there where the luck will be better,” and he pointed to the far end of the rocks. Now as bad as this may sound, I wasn't going to take this personally. “You call me if you need me. I'll come running back.” And with
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that he placed his pole on his shoulder like Huck Finn, leaving me to mid fish the Mighty Mississip. He didn't get very far though before he stopped, turned around, and look back at me. As much as I would like to report I saw apology in his eyes, I did not. What I saw was pain. All of a sudden, it was I who felt apologetic. With all of his emphasis on me, I had forgotten about him. Of course, he wanted to fish. It had been years, and I had been treating this whole thing as a joke. I broke his gaze. I looked out across the water. I wondered how I was going to smooth this over. Could I catch a fish? Would that make any difference? Not knowing what else to do, I turn back to Jim, gave him a nod and a reassuring smile. he trecked on. I was afraid he might slip and fall on the rocks, but he did just fine navigating the odd boulders and the small crevices. When he reached lands end, that fog was a flat face cloud right in front of him. He took that line and cast it into the unknown and reeled in. Jim decided I wasn't a jinx, and he returned. We stood next to one another making small talk and taking turns throwing our lines in the water. As Jim reeled in, we noticed something odd at the end of his lure. There was a small black elliptical mass hanging from the tip of Mr. Twister’s tail. Jim brought up his catch, where we could get a closer look. There, ferocious and fighting, was this teensy tiny fish. We looked at that thing and at each other, and we just laughed. The fish, not happy in our company, let loose its grip and dropped to the water's edge. I thought, “How does anything that small survive in the lake as large as Wappapello. It has to eat something smaller than itself, and how many things would be on that list?” But then again, Mr. Twister hadn't been on that list, and that hadn't stopped this stubborn little thing from gorging on two molecules of plastic lure. The fish winnowed into the lake and disappeared. Jim said, “There goes my bait.”
“Are we fishing for guppies now?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
We didn't catch another fish that day. Our shared joke about the experience is that we could have stayed home, dropped our line in any home aquarium, and come home with a catch larger than we had that day. But why would we have done that when, after all, it had been a perfect day for fishing? Thank you, and here's Chapter Two.
Steven Harowitz 12:40
That is a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our return to in-person events by subscribing to The Campfire Storytelling Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review. It helps others find our podcast, support our students, and prove to the Internet that we are legit and not a rando podcast out in the interwebs. We'd love to have you come out for an event or even take a class. You can visit cmpf.com. That's cmpfr.com for all the details. Whether you live in St. Louis or nowhere nearby, there are ways to attend our events virtually. You can also find out more about that at cmpfr.com. That is cmpfr.com. As always, a big thank you to the Campfire team, our Podcast Producer Jeff Allen, and everyone who attends these live events. Tonight’s stories were recorded live at the High Low, one of the wonderful venues that the Kranzberg Arts Foundation runs here in St. Louis, Missouri. Thank you for listening to The Campfire Storytelling Podcast. I've been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.