You know, it isn’t always easy being a crossing guard for the kids. It especially isn’t easy when you’re an old crossing guard, and Martin is old. One of these days we’ll find out he discovered fire, I think. This isn’t meant as a slight, because there are few people around here who don’t treasure […]
The newly-formed love firm of Dewey Decker and Emily Stickles (she of the incredible cheekbones and watchful county eye) began yet another sensation here in the valley. Ever since Dewey told Emily he was actually in the manure business and not just enamored of the stuff itself, and ever since Emily admitted to Dewey that […]
Everyone has his own favorite spot on Lewis Creek, I guess. Some of us favor the swimming hole below Miller’s old place, with its rope swing and the kids who frolic there on hot summer days. For Doc and Dud, it’s the big race below the rocks where the huge lunker trout lives. All our efforts […]
Down at the sale barn Saturday, the think tank had coagulated there with coffees to go to celebrate spring. Doc and Dud had their dogs with them, while Bert and Dewey and Steve went stag. Dud tried to start a conversation, but the loudspeaker soon drove them outside, where they arrayed themselves on dropped tailgates and […]
It was the sun’s fault; that’s all we could figure out later. Well, that and the demise of Doc’s phantom squirrel. For a couple of days the sun had been warming our shoulders and making us smile. You know, whispering semi-forgotten things in our ears like “fly fishing … gardens … barbecue … swimming hole…” Normally, […]
The garden catalogs start coming when the snow is too deep to even find dirt. But we don’t care. This is a catalog time of year, a time for making plans and figuring out how to do something even better than we did last year. There in the fishing catalog is that new fly-tying vise. I […]
We hadn’t seen our pal, Steve the cowboy, at the philosophy counter at the Mule Barn truck stop for a while. After a week’s absence, he showed back up for his daily ration of caffeine, and it was obvious he’d lost some weight, if not attitude. “Hospital again,” he said. We nodded. Steve has internal […]
Slim Randles As you read this there are dozens of men and women and hundreds of dogs crossing a very cold Alaska: more than a thousand miles of it. It’s called the Iditarod by everyone who doesn’t drive a team in it. For those who have, it’s the Idiot Road. There are deadly serious mushers in […]