Father’s Day has slowly become about me as the years have gone by, a fact that I’ve been slow to recognize as I obviously still strongly connect the holiday to my father. We celebrated this year a day early with a great summer meal and a Saturday afternoon luncheon. My daughters got me two new fishing reels because they’re tired of me losing parts off my old ones while we’re in the middle of casting or reeling in.
I’ve bought three new reels in my life. Otherwise, I use what I pick up at garage sales or on my antique picks. Sometimes vintage stuff, sometimes newish, but all used. Sometimes the handles come loose, the bales break, the cast triggers shatter. I’ve had thumbknob handles disintegrate their rubber as I reeled in. I suppose this has been a long-time clue that quality matters.
The three new reels I bought were in the spring of 1996 just before the Minnesota fishing opener. One spinning reel for Jen and one for me, plus a baitcasting reel to share. We wore the spinning reels out and because I tended to birdnest up the braided line on the baitcaster, it is still in pretty good, but knotted up condition.
I rarely am able to offer suggestions for things I might want for gifts, because the things that I want the most I cannot describe. I find them or rather, they find me and it is almost always more about the hunt than it is the thing itself. Either that or I’d like something that reminds me of my childhood, reminds me of dad or something that belonged to him.
I’m sure mom is tired of me repeating this when I’m asked about birthdays, Father’s Day and Christmas. I’m also sure that now that so much time has gone by that even though I really only refer to the smallest of objects that may trigger a memory or instill with me the sentimental nostalgia that I really seek, she’s running low on objects and ideas. But… that’s what you get when you ask, I guess.
I don’t need socks, ties (who does in Ely?), shirts, pants, shorts, coats (have too many). I need vintage patches, pocket knives, old coins, doo dads, trinkets, arrowheads, watch fobs or tools. Old coffee cans, tobacco tins, fish decoys or lures. Well, I don’t really, but I like them.
I like rusty signs that point me to old memories and “the good ole days” and point me back to a day by a muddy creek with a cane pole. Something, anything, that may have been left over from dad’s pockets and stuffed in a drawer.
Not unlike the drawer that used to hold all the mechanical and otherwise pencils and pens that he came home with from his desk job when I was a little kid and we lived at the farm house on Daysville Road. Pens from trucking companies, little screw drivers, stray bolts or a bit of string or a promotional pocket knife with tiny blades.
Mom still has that cupboard. Back then the drawer was deep and full of interesting treasures that weren’t worth anything then and even though it has long since been cleaned out, are worth less now whatever landfill they might be decomposing in. I’m sure it probably held one or more handles that’d fit nicely on my fishing reels. I’m also sure the worthiness of the contents would be much higher in my personal estimation than anyone else’s.
I was happily surprised this year when mom gifted me the last rod and reel that my dad kept around and used to go out fishing with. A silver and black Zebco spincaster on a South Bend Black Beauty rod. I was going to ask her for my go-to default. J.B. Weld which I can never seem to have enough of and also reminds me of dad.
Instead, as she brought it into the room, I was brought back in time to the last time I went fishing with Dad. There was the smallest of bobbers hung near the tip. The same one that he put on when we went up the Dead River to Twin Lakes for an afternoon picnic around a fire at one of the far campsites. It may have been this time of year, the lily pads were thick with bluegill and while he fished with the kids and me for a while, he mostly poked at the fire with a stick.
I didn’t know at the time that it was the last time. I didn’t know a lot of things, but I suspected. I felt a need to somehow make the boat trip a success in all ways. Then, I noticed him concentrating on the fire and whatever the embers and flames were speaking to him about and I just sat down with him and put some more dry wood on. He had a handle on things. I was the one who was missing mine.
As always, some things change and some things remain the same.
