“Mark—or maybe it was Fuller—anyway one of those meatheads used to ask me, ‘What really goes on up there on that fishing trip?’ And I always told him he’d be surprised by two things: how little drinking there is, and how much swearing there is.”                                                                                           

–Uncle Barney

The call came in April of my senior year at Pomona College. It was the Geezer and he had just one question. Was I coming on the fishing trip?

I’d been vaguely aware of the annual fishing trip to northern Minnesota since early childhood, but I’d never been invited before. The Geezer, his brothers, and assorted friends and relatives had been making the trip every spring for the past several decades.

And that was all I knew about it. The particulars were shrouded in mystery. Where did they fish? What did they catch? Where did they stay? Who did the cooking? And most importantly, why? What was fun about a fishing trip? None of these things was ever discussed. I never heard any stories, never saw any pictures.

The only way to know… was to go. And I realized the phone call I’d just received was not so much an invitation as it was an order. It was time to add a whole new dimension to my education. I told the Geezer I’d be there.

Cast of Characters

“Put that pudding back on the shelf, goddamn it. The fellas don’t eat that butterscotch shit. The fellas like tapioca.”
–Uncle Earl

Graduation was just two days before the fishing trip, and there was no way I could afford to fly to Minnesota. I’d have to drive. So I invited my friend Amir to join me and split costs.

Amir was born in Egypt and had lived in California since he was 11. He didn’t know a fishing pole from a fly swatter. In fact, he had never been outside California since he arrived in the U.S. He came from a close-knit family and lived with his parents and three siblings in a small apartment in Hollywood. Doing a road trip to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and meeting the Boutelle family would definitely be an adventure for him.

Fifteen minutes after the graduation ceremony ended, we were barreling down I-10 in my dilapidated Mercury Marquis, diplomas and graduation gowns tossed into the back seat with the detritus of four years of college life: Frisbees, waffle iron, stereo, piles of unwashed clothing.

Naturally, Amir had been asking questions about what to expect on the fishing trip and I was embarrassed by how little I could tell him. I didn’t even have any advice about what to bring or what the weather might be like. But I thought the least I could do was tell him a little about the people he’d be meeting.

Uncle Barney was the easiest to describe. Short, grizzled and feisty, with an impish grin. He’ll chat up anyone who comes near him, flirt with any female, tell a dirty joke to the stranger in front of him in the check-out line. Physically, he was known for the deep folds and creases on the back of his neck (which earned him the nickname “Prune Neck” from Uncle Earl), and his strangely diminutive thumbs (which made him the butt of many jokes, such as “why doesn’t Uncle Barney hitch-hike?”).

I told Amir a couple of stories from the last time I’d seen Uncle Barney. Barney been visiting my parents in Wisconsin. We all went out for breakfast at a local coffee shop. The waitress came over to take our order—a stout, gruff-looking 50-something woman who looked like she’d already had a long day at 8:00 a.m. “Are you that sexy waitress everyone’s been talking about?” Barney asked, loudly enough for everyone in the place to hear. We all gulped. She gazed at him for an instant, sizing him up. “Sure am, honey,” she said. “Now are you gonna order something or did you just come to stare at me like I’m a piece of meat?”

Same coffee shop, ten minutes later. Big, strapping, muscle-bound guy walks in, shaved head, tattoos covering both arms, hunting knife on his belt, looks like he’s either just killed someone or is just about to. Uncle Barney waves him over like he’s an old friend. The guy glances over his shoulder, assuming Barney must be gesturing to someone else. “Hey you, come over here a second, I’ve got a question for you,” says Barney. The guy takes a couple of steps in our direction. “You talking to me?”

“Yeah, you,” says Barney. I’ve got a serious question for you.”

The guy takes a couple more steps closer, perplexed. “Yeah?”

“Tell me something,” says Barney, “Do you think you’ll ever amount to anything?”

The guy’s eyes pop open wide, his jaw goes slack. We all cringed, looking for the best escape route out of the restaurant.

But the guy grinned. “Yeah, you sound like my mom,” he said. “She keeps asking me the same thing.” Then Uncle Barney chatted with him for a few minutes. He’d just made another friend.

Uncle Earl was also a regular at the annual fishing trip, so I tried to describe him for Amir. Earl was sharp, sly, and devious—more reserved than his older brother Barney but capable of having every bit as much fun. He always had that cat-that-ate-the-canary look on his face. You got the sense that he had the goods on everyone in the room—and no one had the goods on him.

We learned about his secret life a few years back. Just days after his father passed away, he revealed to his brothers that he had a daughter living in Germany, whom he had been supporting for the past 27 years. She had two sons, and they’d all soon be moving to the U.S. to live near him. He was not only a father but a grandfather, and no one in the family had known.

To say that Earl was eccentric is like saying Warren Buffet is well off. He had one of the world’s last remaining 8-track tape players in his Cadillac and he used it to listen to recordings of train noises. He collected vinyl record albums and owned literally thousands of them, most of which he had never listened to or even unwrapped. He could sink a hundred grand into an investment he’d studied for all of five minutes, then spend an hour driving all over town looking for gas that’s two cents a gallon cheaper. He’d had a steady girlfriend for more than 30 years but liked to refer to himself as “the widow’s friend.”

Earl was also a creature of habit. He had played tennis every Wednesday night, at the same time, with the same group of guys, for 30 years. One night one of his tennis buddies called him and asked if they could play on Thursday this week, since his wife was having surgery on Wednesday. “God damn it,” Earl said, “You can’t go changing things all the time!”

Earl also used to take Polaroid photos of his bowel movements and hang them on the wall in his study, with captions such as “Grand Champion,” “Corn Cob,” and “Surprise!”

The brother who wouldn’t be at the fishing trip was Everett, who had come in years past but was no longer invited. No explanation was ever provided by the Geezer, but I knew Barney and Everett never got along. “He’s just plain mean,” Barney often said. He’d told me a story from his high school days: “I was head over heels in love with Doris,” Barney said. “One day, I got up my nerve and asked her to come with me to a party. She said yes. We got all gussied up, went to the party, and we were having a great time. Then I went to get her some punch and when I came back I couldn’t find her anywhere. Well she’d gone off with Everett. He stole her just to spite me. A couple months later they got married, can you imagine that? And they were divorced not long after that. Now every time I see her I have to ask, ‘How the hell could you put up with that guy?’ And she just shrugs.”

The Geezer was the youngest and most socially normal of the four Boutelle brothers. Amir had already met him, so I didn’t need to try and describe his idiosyncrasies. But I did note to Amir that I had never had the opportunity to see my dad, Earl and Barney all together at the same time. It would be interesting to observe the Geezer in the role of kid brother.

Barney’s two sons, Mark and Fuller, would also be fishing this year, as would my brother Dan. Amir already knew him because he’d come to visit in California a couple of years back. He’d been taking some time off from college to recover from a serious head injury. He was rock climbing with some friends—slipped and fell 60 feet. He’d landed in a dead tree which broke his fall, but then he fell another 10 feet and landed on his head, fracturing his skull. For a month Dan couldn’t speak English, only French. Amir asked me if Dan was feeling any lingering effects from the fall and I said no, not really. And I added, stealing a line from Uncle Barney, “If he hadn’t landed on his head he might have been seriously hurt.”

In addition to the Boutelle gang, a friend of Earl’s would also be making the trip this year: Ed Grutzner, whom Barney referred to as “that shyster lawyer.” Grutzner was a Harvard-educated, Stanford Law School grad who now specialized in personal injury lawsuits. Also known as ambulance chasing, as Barney often reminded him.

Amir Wets a Line

“That’s Dorgan, D-O-R-G-A-N, not Dorkman, you asshole.”     
–Uncle Barney

I’m not sure why, but I think Amir was starting to get a little tense about meeting all of these Boutelles. He asked me to stop telling stories about them so he could sleep. I continued driving in silence through the monotony of eastern Wyoming and into Nebraska, into the evening and well past midnight. The hours slipped by, but by 4:00 a.m. I needed a break. I woke Amir up to take over the driving duties.

At first, he declined. He just didn’t want to drive. And he didn’t want to drive because he didn’t want anything bad to happen. Amir’s bad luck was legendary. His general pessimism led him to assume that this trip would end horribly somehow.

“Amir, just drive for a while, damn it,” I said. “I need some sleep. We can stop at McDonald’s for breakfast when they open in a couple of hours.” Grudgingly he agreed and we changed places.

It only took about five minutes before Amir was pulled over by the state patrol. He got a ticket for driving too slowly in the left lane. He’d been going about 45, trying to avoid getting pulled over for speeding. The officer thought he must be drunk and also gave him a field sobriety test: walk the line, finger to the nose, count backward from 100, the whole deal. When the Breathalyzer came back at 0.000 the officer let us continue on our way. The ticket was $80, which the officer demanded we pay in cash, on the spot (I know, I know). Fortunately, we had the $80. Unfortunately, that left us with a total of $1.87 between the two of us, along with a gas station credit card.

Amir and I switched places again after the officer drove away. “So much for the Egg McMuffins,” I said. “I hope there’s a Mobil at the next exit, and I hope you like microwaved burritos.” He said shut up and drive.

By late afternoon we were in northern Minnesota—near the Boundary Waters. The endless backdrops of wheat fields, barns, cows, and water towers had given way to marshes, pine forests, and the occasional glimmer of a lake. God’s Country.

Amir stared morosely out the window. “Must be a shitload of mosquitoes up here,” he said.

An hour later we were driving down the Fernberg, a narrow, windy road that led to the cabin where we’d be staying. The cabin was on Lake One, just a few miles south of the Canadian border. Outside was true wilderness now. Dense forest, impenetrable-looking undergrowth strewn with mossy boulders, swampy marshes with beaver huts, and sudden open expanses of water dotted with tiny islands, mostly outcroppings of black slate with a couple of trees. We hadn’t seen another car in miles and I drove slowly, half expecting a bear or even a moose to come trotting across the road at any moment.

We anticipated arriving well after the other guys, but when we pulled up to the cabin we realized we were the first. I said to Amir, “Grab your pole; you can get some practice casting before they get here.”

We didn’t bother to unpack anything; we just extracted our fishing poles from the trunk, found the tackle box, and trudged down to the dock.

I tied a nice new wire leader onto each line and selected a couple of half-ounce Silver Minnows for lures. We walked out to the far end of the dock for a practice session.

Amir was not a natural at casting. On his first effort the lure splatted into the water at his feet, showering him with droplets. On his next attempt he sent the lure zinging high into the air, but far off to the side. It landed in a tree and dangled.

“You caught your first tree bass,” I said.

Amir was still practicing without success half an hour later. Splat!! “Shit!” Zzzzzzzzz…. Splat!! “Shit!” Splat!!

Suddenly we heard footsteps behind us on the dock. We both wheeled around. It was Uncle Barney, shuffling toward us with a quizzical look on his face.

“John, tell me something,” he said. “Who is your friend here?”

“This is Amir,” I said. “Amir, meet my uncle Barney.”

“Ay-meer, you dumb shit, don’t you know how to cast?”

Not the kind of introduction Amir was accustomed to with his traditional Egyptian upbringing. He stood there flummoxed. “Uh, I’m just learning,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Looks to me like you’re a slow learner,” said Barney. “All right, you fellas carry on. We’ve got to unload.”

I looked past Barney and saw that Earl’s silver Cadillac had pulled up to the cabin and disgorged Mark and Fuller, who were carrying grocery bags into the cabin.

“Come on, let’s go meet the other guys,” I said to Amir. We set our poles down and headed up to the cabin.

Earl was coming out to grab another sack of groceries. When he saw me, he stopped in his tracks and stared. “Jesus Christ, how much do you weigh?” he asked. No hello, no how’ve you been, nothing. I ignored the question.

“Earl, this is my friend Amir.”

“Well husk my cob,” he said. “Glad you brought someone to haul the canoes.”

“Hello Mr. Boutelle,” said Amir, extending his hand.

Earl shook his hand. “I see Amir has excellent manners,” he said. “Those aren’t worth a shit up here. Grab a couple of bags from the car.”

We complied. There were still plenty of sacks of food in the car, along with gallon jugs of milk and cases of beer. I took a quick inventory of the grocery bags and discovered a common theme: cookies, Snickers, potato chips, onion dip, peanut butter, dozens of individual containers of tapioca pudding…

“Hey Earl,” I asked. “What’s the matter, couldn’t you find any Cheese Whiz?”

He looked at me liked I’d called his mother a whore. “The fellas don’t eat that Cheese Whiz shit.”

“But I see you do eat a whole lot of tapioca pudding. Why isn’t there any chocolate or butterscotch?”

“The fellas prefer tapioca.”

“The fellas like this, the fellas don’t like that,” I said. “How come you seem to be the one who decides what the fellas like?”

“It’s my highly refined palate.”

“And what’s with all this summer sausage?”

“That’s not summer sausage.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“That’s DD.”

“What’s DD?”

“Ask your old man when he gets here.”

Supper’s On

“Earl, I’ve got to be totally honest. This so-called hamburger you cooked tastes like a cross between squirrel intestines and moose sausage…. But good!!”     
–Brother Dan

The Geezer showed up a couple of hours later, accompanied by my brother Dan, Grutzner the Shyster Lawyer, and another friend of Earl’s, Jerry Elliott. Amir and I were playing poker with Mark and Fuller when they arrived.

“Clyde!” yelled Barney from the kitchen. “Are you the one who invited these meatheads?” He was clearly referring to Amir and me. “I didn’t think our standards could go any lower.”

“Well I haven’t met John’s friend, but he’s got to be an improvement over that asshole you brought last year,” said the Geezer.

I was stunned, not by the comment—I didn’t even know which asshole he was referring to—but by the fact that he had used the word “asshole.” My father is an ex-Marine and college athlete, but growing up I had never heard him use anything stronger than “damn,” and that only two or three times, ever. If you heard profanity from my father, you knew you were in serious trouble. It was time to run for it. To hear him toss out a casual “asshole” was astounding.

“Ay-meer doesn’t know his plunker from his jointed pikey minnow,” said Barney, shaking his head sadly. “Ay-meer, let me ask you a serious question. Do you think you’ll ever amount to anything?”

Amir had no idea how to respond to that, so he simply shrugged. We continued playing cards while listening to scraps of the conversations taking place around us. I have to admit I was a bit distracted from the game because these dialogues were not like anything I’d ever heard before from my relatives.

“Hey Dickhead, why’d you get so fucking much onion dip?”

“Because you assholes ate it all the first night last year.”

“Why isn’t there any chocolate pudding?”

“Get back in your box.”

The sonic boom of a gaseous emission from Earl reverberated through the cabin. “Ahhhh,” said Earl. “Now I have room for that pie.”

“Jesus Christ, open a window.”

“Mark! Come and help your old man find his plunker.”

“Get that waitress from this morning to help you find your plunker.”

“Ay-meer, tell me something, do you ever disrespect your parents that way?

“My dad never asked me to help him find his plunker,” said Amir.

Earl let loose with a rolling, ponderous, thundering belch.  “Oh Christ, I’m going to have to change my shirt after that one,” he said, beaming proudly.

“Is he always like this?” I asked the Geezer, somewhat taken aback by the new side of Earl. In my encounters with Uncle Earl as a kid, he’d always been so pleasant and polite, always smiling, even somewhat shy.

He shook his head. “Only up here… On second thought, yeah, he’s always like this.”

“What’s DD?”

“Ask Uncle Barney.”

Barney was busy telling a story to Grutzner the Shyster Lawyer. “And there we are, out fishing on Wood Lake about noon, and those two asshole brothers of mine say ‘Let’s go into town and get some Rocky Road.’ So we paddled all the way to the portage, hauled all our gear back to the car, and drove 35 miles to get an ice cream cone. Then it’s right back out to the lake. Can you believe that?”

“That’s fucking fascinating, Barney. Do you have any other stories you want to share?”

“Did I ever tell you the story about Pete the pirate?”

“Oh shit, not…”

“It was a dark and stormy night on the coast of New Caledonia,” said Barney in a theatrical tone, “and all the pirates were gathered around the campfire. One of the pirates said ‘Pete, tell us a story.’ So Pete started in. ‘It was a dark and stormy night on the coast of New Caledonia, and all the pirates were gathered around the campfire. One of the pirates…’”

“Hey Uncle Barnabus,” I interrupted. “What’s DD?”

“What the hell do you mean what’s DD?”

“Earl said summer sausage isn’t summer sausage, it’s DD.”

“Donkey dick. That’s what you get for lunch. DD and cheese with some spicy mustard.”

“Hmm, sounds great. What are the other choices?”

He looked at me like I was from Mars. “What do you mean choices? That’s what the fellas eat. You get a DD and cheese and a penis butter and jelly and a tapioca pudding.”

“Every day?”

“John, you’re even dumber than you look. Tell me something, what exactly do they teach you at that college you go to?”

“To respect my elders.”

“Well, maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

I went to bed early that night, anxious to go fishing the next morning. Amir found space on a bunk bed upstairs, but my “bed” was an antiquated two-seater sofa on the screened-in porch, stained grayish brown from the greasy overalls of generations of fishermen who sat there after a long day of fishing, drinking their beers, and telling their stories. My pillow was a pile of the unwashed clothing from the back of my car. The difficulty in falling asleep was not the 37-degree temperature of the porch or the lumpiness of the sofa or even the infuriating whine of a mosquito every few minutes; it was the constant banter that continued well into the night:

“Barney! Come and see this!” yelled Uncle Earl from a back room. “I didn’t flush. It looks like some kinda small animal. You’ll want to get a picture to show Ruth.”

This remark was drowned out by the cacophony of other conversations.

“Who bought the pudding? Why isn’t there any butterscotch?”

“Barney you asshole, where’d you put my fuckin’ longhandles?”

“Mother always called me Sweetie.”

“Can we go into town for breakfast tomorrow?”

“…so the guy says ‘you sound like my mom—she keeps asking me the same thing.’ I can’t believe he didn’t get punched.”

 “Mark! Did you remember to bring your plunker?” 

“Go to bed.”

“Dan, tell me something. Can you imagine what a horseshit life you must have if this is what you look forward to all year long?”

The Fellas Hit the Lake

“I’ll never forget the time… we’re out fishin’ on Wood Lake having one heckuva good day. I look over at the island and what do I see but two lard-asses—probably John and Clyde–taking a nap on the rock. Can you imagine that? Sleeping on a perfectly good fishing day.”     
–Uncle Barney

The next morning I pulled myself out of my sleeping bag and went inside the cabin, where most of the fellas were already up and eating breakfast.

“Hey Geezer, what’s the biggest Northern anyone’s caught up here?” I asked.

“Gotta be at least 15 pounds, probably more,” said Earl. “Caught by yours truly.”

“He’s talking about fish, not that sewer pickle you left in the toilet this morning,” said Jerry Elliott.

“They were both champion-caliber specimens,” said Earl proudly.

“Where’d you catch it?”

“Fellas Point on Hula. About 10, maybe 11 years ago.”

“Hula is the name of a lake? I thought they were all Moose Lake or Blue Lake.”

Uncle Barney emerged from the bathroom, still in the process of brushing his teeth. “Earl,” he said through a mouthful of foam, “Do you mind if I borrow your toothbrush?”

“That’s fine Barney,” said Earl calmly. “That’s my spare. That’s the one I use to clean my sore toe.”

Barney spat into the kitchen sink.

“John! Ay-meer!” yelled Barney. “What are you lunkheads doing here? Go get the canoes ready.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” said Amir.

“Oh, bullshit. Where are those meathead sons of mine?”

“Mark’s been up making sandwiches since 5:00,” said the Geezer.

“Well where’s the other one? What’s his name—Fuller.” He bellowed to the upstairs dorm room: “Fuller! Drop your cock and grab your socks. It’s time to go fishin’.”

Groan.

“Show these boys how to haul a canoe. Make your old man proud.”

“Fuck off.”

Barney shook his head sadly. “Ay-meer, can you imagine saying something like that to your old man? That’s what you call a poor attitude.”

“If I said that to my father I’d be out on the street,” said Amir.

“John, let me ask you a serious question…” said Barney.

“I know, I know… do I think I’ll ever amount to anything. I just hope one day my accomplishments in this life will be held in the same high regard as yours.”

“Good answer, laddy. Now go get those fucking canoes ready.”

The canoes were waiting for us at the trailhead to Wood Lake, where they’d been dropped off the night before. Our job was to drive to the trailhead and portage the canoes to the lake.

I soon discovered why the privilege of portaging the canoes fell to the new recruits. An aluminum canoe weighs about 80 pounds, and you carry it by tipping it upside down, raising one end above your head, positioning a couple of harness pads between your shoulders, and marching down the trail like an armor-plated turtle. For the first 200 yards it’s no big deal, but pretty soon you start to feel the burn. You start to perspire. You start to notice the mosquitoes. You bump a tree and scrape the skin off your knuckles. You step into a puddle and the mud sucks your shoe right off. And pretty soon you just want to dump that fucking thing, go back to the cabin and play some cards.

The portage to Wood Lake was about a mile long. By the end I had already resigned myself to the misery of hauling the canoe and was thinking about other things. Why did these guys do this every year? Most of them were pretty well off; they could go on cruises or do some bike riding in Europe or go sailing in the Caribbean. Hell, if they wanted to fish, they could charter a boat in Florida and catch something fun and interesting, like Marlin or tuna or sharks.

Why did they return, every year, to that dump of a cabin, haul canoes for miles, and fish for stinking northern pike on some dinky, weed-infested, wind-blown lakes in Minnesota? I had already started developing a few theories.

Theory Number One was that for guys who had been married a long time, anything was better than staying at home. The fact that there were no women and children wasn’t a side benefit, it was the whole point. This theory could also explain ice fishing, quail hunting, and a large percentage of business travel.

But on closer examination, the theory didn’t really hold water. Some of these guys weren’t married and didn’t have kids. No one had anything disparaging to say about their wives or girlfriends, despite having nothing but complaints about everything else. My brother Dan was recently married and had called his wife twice already since he’d arrived at the cabin. And Jerry Elliott and Grutzner the Shyster Lawyer wouldn’t shut up about their kids’ accomplishments and exploits.

Theory Number Two was that it was a get-back-to-nature kind of thing. It was a once-a-year chance to experience true wilderness, breathe the crisp clean air, be one with the environment.

That theory didn’t last long.

I was paired with Barney for the first few hours of fishing. We were the first to load our stuff into one of the canoes and paddle out onto Wood Lake. There was no trace of human presence anywhere. There was no sound other than our paddles dipping into the crystal-clear water and the gentle breeze whispering through the nearby pines. The sun was glimmering off the ripples on the water. A lone bald eagle soared overhead. I held my paddle out of the water for a few moments to fully absorb the scene. And I said to Barney, “Sure is beautiful up here, isn’t it?”

He contemplated. “It would be kind of pretty, if it weren’t for all those fucking trees,” he said. “Now are you going to talk or fish?” And with that he clanked open his tackle box and rustled around looking for his plunker.

Suddenly I noticed movement from what I thought was a tree stump on the island a hundred yards ahead. “Shit! Look at that!” I rasped, “Over there. I think it’s a moose!”

“Where?” said Barney. As I pointed to it, the moose froze and stared at us.

“Shhh…” I said. “Don’t move. He’s checking us out.”

Barney stood up in the canoe. “Shoo moose!” he yelled. “Go on, git!!”

The moose startled, clomped into the water, and began swimming frantically toward the far shore.

“Go on, shoo! Git!” yelled Barney again.

“Are you crazy?” I barked at him. “What’d you do that for? How often do you get to see a moose up here?”

“He’ll scare the fish,” said Barney. “Now remember, it’s five bucks for the first fish, five bucks for the biggest, and five bucks for the most. What are you using for bait?”

I watched the moose swimming, his antlers sticking up like a piece of driftwood as he made his way to the shore. Barney was head-down, re-tying his leader. So much for the “one with nature” hypothesis. Barney the environmentalist.

“Barnabus, let me ask you something,” I said. “Why do you guys keep coming up here every year?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“Why here? Why always the same place, to do the same stuff?”

He stared at me in disbelief. “Well why do the loons come back here every year? Why do the fucking swallows fly back to wherever it is they fly back to every year, in California?”

I was confused. “Ummm,” I stammered.

“All right, let me ask you this,” he said. “Why does Earl only play tennis on Wednesdays? Why does your meathead brother always ask the waitress what kind of pie they have, and then after she lists off 32 different kinds he always orders the blueberry pie with ice cream?”

Now I was really flummoxed.

“Because that’s what they fucking do,” he said.

“It’s what they do…” I echoed, trying to absorb this.

“John, I can see you’re one of the slower ones in your class. How did you ever get a diploma from that college of yours?”

“So this trip is not about getting away from women, not about spending time with friends and relatives, not even about catching fish? It’s just what we do…?”

“Damn right. And twenty years from now this will be the one thing you look forward to more than anything else.”

“Don’t say that. I still have hopes and dreams.”

Barney launched a perfect cast that landed a foot from a big slab of shale. “Just mark my words, meathead.”

“How come Uncle Everett never comes fishing anymore, if this is what Boutelles do?” I asked.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Bowsie cooked the ham up here?”

“Who’s Bowsie?”

“Your Uncle Everett. Anyway…” and he started in on the long, meandering tale of how Bowsie got drunk and burned the ham and never got invited back on the fishing trip.

And I was only half listening while he told the story—partly because I knew I’d hear it again soon enough, and partly because I was still watching the moose as it clambered up on the rocks and into the woods.

LFDs and Choo Choos

“Did you know that when I was the quarterback of the Whitewater
football team I once threw two touchdowns in one game? The final
score of the game was seven to six. You figure it out.”

                              –Uncle Barney

We had pretty good luck fishing that year. I caught a total of about twenty Northern and got the five bucks for catching the first fish. Mark got five bucks for biggest and Barney got five for most.

We fished one day in the cold rain, one day in the hot sun, and a couple of days with a strong wind that blew us all over the lake. Other than that every day was similar. We’d get up and argue about whether to eat at the cabin or go into town for breakfast. We’d be on the lake fishing by about 10:00, to the bitter complaints of Mark and Barney, who were always ready to go by 6:00. We’d eat lunch at Fellas Point, a small peninsula on Hula. It was always DD and cheese, penis butter and jelly, a tapioca pudding, and some chocolate milk—always prepared early in the morning by Mark. We’d fish for a couple more hours, then paddle back to the portage (with complaints from Barney and Mark, who would have stayed out until midnight). Back at the cabin we’d all have an “LFD” (leisurely fucking drink), play cards, eat dinner, play more cards, eat hot fudge sundaes, play more cards. Grutzner the Shyster Lawyer would call Barney an asshole; Barney would call Earl a shithead; Earl would belch and tell Barney he’s still mother’s favorite; Mark would do the dishes; Dan would sneak out late and go for a swim in the frigid lake; Barney would tell the story about Miss Frontier Days or the time he was a buck-ass private in Uncle Sam’s army making thirty-seven dollars a month; and in the middle of the night Fuller would shake the rafters with his snoring.

On the last night Amir and I played a little prank on Earl. At 2:00 a.m. we took his car keys, rolled down the windows of his Cadillac, inserted his 8-track tape of train noises into the player, and turned it up full blast. The tranquil woods of northern Minnesota were suddenly transformed into a train depot, with the chug-chugging of an approaching locomotive replacing the calls of the loons. Everyone in the cabin was awake in seconds.

Dressed only in his skivvies, Earl scuttled out to the car to extract the tape, his angry breath condensing in white puffs in the frosty air. “Fucking assholes…!”

“Hey Earl, will you read us a story now that you’re awake?” said Fuller.

Earl ignored the comment and was suddenly staring into the night sky. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “Hey, come and look at this.”

“What?” said Mark.

“Just come out here. All you assholes. Right now. You’ve gotta see this.”

One by one we filed out, gazing skyward. The heavens were filled not with stars but with ghostly green blobs, morphing like amoebas as they scudded across the dome of the night sky.

“What the hell is that?” said Grutzner the Shyster Lawyer.

“It must be Northern Lights,” said Mark.

“Son of a bitch,” said Earl, staring.

“Who turned on the fucking train tape?” asked the Geezer, rubbing his eyes.

“Meathead here and his meathead friend,” said Barney as we all gazed skyward. “John… Ay-meer… You done good.”

Last Words

“John, or Dan, or whatever the hell your name is, are you aware that most people die in bed?”

–Uncle Barney

Almost thirty years have passed since my first fishing trip. I’ve been back to the Boundary Waters every year since then, with just two exceptions: once when your mother and I took a year off to travel, and once when your sister had the lack of strategic foresight to be born during the fishing trip. That old fart Barnabus was right. It’s the thing I look forward to the most every year, although I still cannot articulate why.

Ay-meer came back only once, and no one had to ask why he wasn’t a regular. He clearly had a good head on his shoulders. He caught only two fish that first year—really only one, technically. He was reeling in a small Northern (known to the fellas as a “snake”), when a second Northern chomped into that fish, right around the middle, and wouldn’t let go, not even while a startled and thrilled Ay-meer pulled both fish into the boat.

Over the years, Ay-meer and I visited Uncle Barney at his home in Florida several times, and Barney and Ay-meer eventually became good buddies. “Tell me when you’re planning on coming next time, so I can hasten to make other arrangements,” Barney would always say when Ay-meer showed up.

Recently, the ranks of the fellas have been dwindling. Uncle Earl died of lung cancer almost ten years ago. I thought he only had a few friends, but more than 200 people packed the small chapel for his memorial service. Grutzner the Shyster Lawyer and Jerry Elliott stopped coming due to various physical ailments. And Uncle Barney died (in bed) at 88, surpassing the family record of 85 set by his Grampa Dan.

I wasn’t on hand to hear Barney’s last words, but I have a pretty good idea what they were. I talked to him on Thanksgiving, just a few weeks before he died, and after he told me the story about the summer he’d spent stringing tennis rackets and then the one about being a buck-ass private in Uncle Sam’s army, he’d paused and said, “John, it’s been a good old life.”

And then he said he had a very serious question for me.