As long as I had worked with Linda, her sometimes ex-husband Greg had been bugging me to go fishing with him. I have no idea why he kept asking me, maybe some convoluted jealousy thing about a guy who worked day in and day out with his sometimes ex-wife, or maybe he just wanted to pump me for the latest gossip on her doings, but he kept on asking me, and I kept on finding reasons to say no.
Why? Here’s the reasons.
First off, when I first started working with Linda at the manufacturing plant in Phoenix, they weren’t the type of people I was used to hanging around with. I’d always worked in very white-collar office environments before then, and I inititally felt out of place with the blue-collar factory types of the factory, including Linda. And her sometimes ex-husband, Greg. But eventually I got over that.
Second, it was that strange relationship. Linda and Greg were divorced, long before I met them, but he still lived at her house, sometimes, finding more and more imaginative ways to talk his way into staying there, and spending Linda’s money. Linda worked her regular job and brought home a paycheck. Greg worked as a long-distance truck driver. Sometimes. It was not unusual for Linda to come into work and say things like “Gue-s-S-S WHA-aat?” (Rising glissando on the guess, descending two note what). “We own a big rig!”, she’d continue, her voice letting you know that she knew the truck was the latest in a long line of silly ventures in which Greg was involved, but that she was humoring him again, just a little, just this one more time.
Third, and most importantly, probably, was the fact that Greg was, well, different from most of my usual friends. He was a big, burly, wild, red-headed Irishman from the south side of Chicago, who drank, and fought, and womanized, and cursed, and all the other stuff your basic southside Chicago truck driver stereotype does. When a really good exploit was coming up in a story, Linda called him “Big Red” instead of Greg, and Big Red was a wild man. Big Red certainly didn’t sound like someone I was going to feel comfortable with, much less want to be be stuck with in a small boat in the middle of a large lake.
Eventually I relented, though. It took many months, but I did. The big rig had gone by the wayside several months before, then Greg had gone, then he was back, and then there was a beautiful bass boat in their driveway. Depth finder and everything.
And I missed fishing. Fishing for bass in a desert lake was totally unlike the stream fishing for trout I’d done while growing up, and I didn’t know where to start, and was clueless. Greg had a clue though; he told me all the time. Babe Winkelman had nothing on Greg.
Sure Greg, I’ll go fishing with you.
So we had us a Production. We’d leave Friday evening and drive out to Alamo Lake, the bass fishing capital of America. We’d camp out all weekend, just us two guys, buddies, fishin’ and drinkin’ and havin’ a great time, you betcha. Just me and Greg.
Uhhhh …
I finally managed to convince Greg that maybe just a day trip would do, like up to Bartlett Reservoir on the Verde, just north of Phoenix. Of course Greg was crushed, but he agreed. Agreed with a caveat: it would be a PROPER day trip, starting in fact at 9:00 pm Saturday so’s we be there in time on Sunday to start bright and early, including a stop below the dam on the way up to catch some midnight catfish.
Okay, Greg. I’ll go along with that.
I was a carefree swingin’ single guy in those days, freshly divorced, and had something going on with some young lady that day that kept me from getting to Greg and Linda’s until well after 9:00 p.m. Midnight in fact. As I walked into Linda’s house she was wearing a shit-eatin’ grin.
“I-i-i-T’S DRU-unk!”, she warned me, rising glissando on the it’s, descending two note drunk. And drunk was the key word.
“I’sh hurt”, shlurred Greg. “I’sh all ready t’ go camping wish you thish weekend, and then you don’ wan’ t’ go campin’, and then you don’ come to midnight, an’ …”
Hey Greg, you know, we can do this another weekend. Actually, I was laughing to myself. Greg was pretty funny.
“No. NO! We’re goin’!”
So goin’ we were. But Greg hadn’t bothered to get ready ahead of time, or anything. We had to load the boat up with the fishin’ stuff, and mount the motor, and hook the boat up to the truck, and the whole enchilada. Then a thought occurred to me.
Uh … Greg? You’re not planning to drive this thing, are you?
“Uhh … no. You drive!”
Well you know, Greg, I’ve never driven a stick before, and I’ve never driven pulling a trailer, and …
“Jush get in. I’ll teach ya. I’m a truck driver. Does Linda ever tell ya how good I can back a trailer into a loading dock? Does she ever talk about me?”
Yeah, she does talk about you. All the time.
So we got into the truck, me on the driver’s side, and Greg on the passenger’s. As Greg slid into his seat, I noticed him stuff a holster with a very large hogleg under the seat.
Uhhh … Greg? Why are we taking a gun fishing?
“S’in case we see any rattlesnakes. Now go!”
And we were off. Sort of. We needed gas. Greg directed me to a U-Totem convenience store that vended gas. As I filled up the gas tank, Greg relieved himself next to the gas pump.
“I’ll pay!”, volunteered Greg, and headed off into the interior.
I followed when I was finished, needing some gum. Greg had loaded up on quarts of beer, and was checking out at the register. He was engaged in a spirited conversation with the zaftig young lady behind the counter. Greg liked ’em zaftig.
“So yer from Chicago?”, he was asking. “What part?”
“Wrigleyville”, she answered, with a shy smile.
“Wrigleyville? That’s NORTH side! Yer a asshole!”.
Greg slapped down his money and stalked out. I handed the surprised looking young woman my 35 cents and beat a hasty retreat. Greg was already slugging down a quart in the truck.
“Okay now we gotta get us some bait”, he informed me, and we were on our way to the all night bait store, Greg directing, and me driving.
The all night bait store turned out to be two double wide trailers, somewhere off a side street out around 51st Ave. and Bell. One trailer was the bait store, and the other was where the owner guy lived. The deal was this: if you got there after hours, you had to ring the bell at the bait store door and wake up the owner, who’d get up and come over to the store to sell you some bait. What a great racket, I thought! How come I didn’t come up with this one – be your own boss: get woke up at 1:30 a.m. to sell $6 worth of bait to a drunk? I kept my thoughts about this sure-fire money-making scheme to myself.
So Greg rang the bell, and he rang it. The guy didn’t come right away, so he rang it some more. And some more. Finally a very grumpy looking proprietor stumbled out of his trailer in his bathrobe, and came over to the store trailer, opened the door with some under-his-breath grumbling, and let us in.
“We’ll take two nightcrawlers!”, Greg announced, brightly.
The owner was not amused.
“Hah hah. No really. We’ll take three dozen nightcrawlers and two dozen waterdogs and some stinkbait”, said Greg. About $6 worth of bait, and I had no idea what stinkbait was and I really didn’t want to know.
And we were off, after I managed to figure out how to back the truck and boat trailer out of the driveway of the all night bait shop.
Well, we were sort of off. “Go down here”, Greg directed.
Uhh … you know, Greg, Bartlett Lake is north of Phoenix, and you’re telling me to head southeast on Grand Ave. here.
“No – just pull in at this bar”.
So I did. Luckily, by then it was way past the normal bar closing time in Phoenix, and the place was totally deserted. I knew what the place was, though. It was the normal hangout for the guy Linda had been seeing during the last time Greg had been absent from his sometime ex-wife, and Greg was looking for a fight. At least. I thought of that hogleg under the seat. We took a spin through the bar’s parking lot and headed back out on Grand.
“Okay, go down here”, Greg directed at Peoria.
East, at last, and then soon north, and we’d be on our way. We’d be fishin’. So I thought.
“Go down this street. I want to see if Carl wants to go along with us.”
Huh?
“Just go down here.”
So down the side street we went, to Carl’s house.
Luckily for us and the neighbors, Carl and his family were home and still up at that hour. In fact, the whole family was sitting in the back of a pickup truck out front of their house, drinking beer. Seemingly, they had been thus engaged for some time. Greg felt right at home and joined them; I was somewhat unsure of myself, and hovered around our truck.
Apparently, Carl had had some experience with Greg in the state he was currently in, and declined to join our sojourn. This didn’t stop Greg, though, from trying to entice the somewhat zaftig daughter into joining our little expedition, with plenty of not-so-subtle sexual innuendo and cheap double entendres that Greg, Carl, Carl’s wife, and the daughter all found hilarious. Somewhat disappointingly for Greg, she too declined to join us, and Greg was perplexed as to the reason we were heading out alone, as heading out alone we were. But I was happy because we were once again on our way. Fishin’. This time for real.
As we travelled north up whatever Ave we were on by that time, Greg found his current quart of beer to be wanting. Empty, in fact. Time to toss it out on the nearest homeowner’s lawn. Just one problem: as he attempted to backhand it out the window, it caught on the window frame, and instead of sailing magnificently to the lawn some thirty feet to starboard, fell unceremoniously to the street right next to our truck.
SMAAAAAASSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH!
In the mirror, I could see the glass shards twinkling in the streetlights behind us. Out of the corner of my eye, I could also see the Phoenix Police cruiser stopped at the intersecting street’s stop sign 50 feet ahead.
I held my breath. I kept my speed constant. I did not stray one centimeter either way between the lane markers. And remarkably, no red lights came on behind us. Home free!
Okay Greg. Just exactly where is it we are going?
“You wanna head north on Cave Creek Road.”
Well, certainly, I knew how to get to Cave Creek Road. When when we got on it going north Greg would tell me where to turn, and so on. No problem. I drove on.
Greg was getting just a tad tired, though. He laid back in his seat and put his feet out the window. Soon I heard snoring.
I drove on, though, pulling the fishing boat north into the dark desert on a road I did not know. The headlights lit the gravel of the road just ahead and the creosote bushes crowding in alongside, while the stars shone brightly in the black sky overhead.
“Greg? Hey Greg! Wake up!”
We’d arrived at a fork in the gravel road, and I had no idea which fork to take. Not a road sign in sight. I pulled the truck over to the side, and parked it.
“HEY GREG!”
I shook his shoulder so hard that his feet hanging out the passenger’s window shook as well, in an equal an opposite reaction, back and forth. Nothing but snores came in answer.
Well …. dogpoop. I had no idea which road I should take. It began to dawn on me that I was tired, it was late, I was lost in the desert in the middle of the night, and what had been a somewhat humorous adventure so far was slowly becoming a nightmare. I cursed Greg silently, and decided to stay on the more “major”, more traveled looking road. I’d find a sign sooner or later. I put the truck back in gear and kept on.
About seven miles later the headlights illuminated a sign in the darkness. It announced the distance to the Seven Springs Recreation Area, a popular hiking destination, where people hiked in and took off all their clothes and splashed around and had a great old time, and then came back to Phoenix and told all their friends. I’d heard about it, all right, and knew for sure where this road went – not to Bartlett Lake. Even the mental images of tanned, naked hikers did nothing to cheer me up. I cursed Greg again, not silently.
After struggling with the truck and boat trailer, turning the whole contraption around in the middle of a narrow gravel road, I made it back to the fork and took the road less traveled, hopefully this time to Bartlett Lake. Some two miles later Greg woke up, pulled his feet in from the window, and sat bolt upright in his seat.
“Stop it! Stop the truck!”, he ordered, excitedly.
“What’s the matter?” The tone of his voice and the wildness in his eyes had me worried. I began slowing the truck.
“STOP IT! I gotta piss!”
So stop it I did, and Greg tumbled out of the door and slipped around in the gravel, then swayed unsteadily by the side of the road while he took care of business. When finished, he clambered back in, immediately laid back in the seat, stuck his feet out the window again, and was snoring before I even had the truck up to speed. I decided right then that the midnight catfish expedition to below the dam was probably right out not to mention a waste of good stinkbait, but still held out hope for a “normal” fishing experience in the morning, a new day, when hopefully Greg would have sobered up. Hopefully. I kept driving.
I still wasn’t entirely sure I was on the right road. I hadn’t seen another vehicle since the fork, the road was rather narrow and what is optimistically termed “unimproved”, and the creosote bushes and palo verde trees crowded closer and closer in on the sides. I imagined the pale eyes of coyotes and the cold eyes of sidewinders watching me from the shadows, just waiting for the truck to break down or something, and for me to have to get out and step into the middle of them. Those rattlesnakes are a sneaky, evil lot, and the thought did not make me any happier. But the road was still headed east, or at least I was pretty sure, and the truck still had more than a half tank of gas, so I felt fairly confident we’d be okay, and hopefully were getting close. Hopefully, very hopefully. I was really tired by then, and felt my eyelids getting heavy.
As the road dipped down into a wash, and then back out, the gravel in front of me was suddenly black, then just as suddenly lighted again. I blinked hard. Whoa! I must be falling asleep here! I gotta be careful. The road dipped down into another wash, but before we came back out, the gravel was black again, and I felt like I was riding Space Mountain – the forward movement, the up, the down, the total blackness. I stomped on the brakes. The headlights of Greg’s truck had gone out.
Just as soon as I hit the brakes, the lights were back on. They stayed that way, too, with minor flickers, as the road wound the rest of the way to the lake, past the turnoff to where we would have gone catfishing, until finally, on a long downslope of the road, I could see dozens of other truck and boat trailer rigs, all parked patiently at the side, awaiting the new day, and Good Fishin’. I decided we’d made it, pulled over, and turned off the truck. Greg was still soundly snoring away in the passenger seat, to the point I couldn’t stand it, so I got out of the truck and lay down on one of the gunwales of the boat, to await the arrival of dawn.
I awoke to the sound of moving vehicles, straining engines, and tires crunching gravel. The eastern sky was pale gray, and all the other fishermen were launching their boats. I walked over to Greg’s feet and shook them. No response. He was still dead to the world. I decided to continue my morning nap, too.
An hour or so later Greg’s stirring woke me. He was struggling to get seated upright, and then get out of the truck. As he relieved himself next to the truck, he noticed something.
“Where’s my shoe?”, he asked loudly.
I didn’t know what shoe he was talking about, but sure enough it was soon apparent that one of his was missing. He walked around the truck looking, and then around the boat, and then the whole general area, favoring the shoeless foot rather gingerly, as the sharp gravel poked through his thin sock. Then we searched the truck and the boat, noticing in the process that the container holding the waterdogs, which Greg had no doubt secured firmly in the boat the evening before, had somehow come loose from its restraint and spilled into the bottom of the boat, coating the floor with a thin film of water and not-so-thin dead waterdogs, which were even then beginning to ripen in the morning desert sun. The elusive shoe remained missing.
“That’s one lost shoe”, announced Greg, shaking his head sadly, slowly. “One Lost Shoe.”
One lost shoe was not enough to deter fishermen of our caliber, however. We decided to push on with the expedition, and get the boat launched. We climbed back in the truck, shut the doors, and I turned the key.
“RRRRRRrrrrrrr……”, said the truck, and then nothing. I turned the key again. No response whatsoever. The battery was dead.
“Goddammit!!!”, opined Greg. He opened the door and climbed out of the truck, then lifted the hood and fiddled with the battery cables.
“Try it again!”. I did. Nothing.
Greg opened the back of the truck, tossed the contents thereof about a bit, and emerged with a small box of tools. He fiddled with the battery cables some more. No good. He banged on the battery with a hammer. Uh-uh.
“Well shit!!”
Just then another fisherman was walking by the truck in the general direction of the lake, having already driven down to the lake, launched his boat, and taken his truck back up the road some distance from us to park it for the day. He was walking the quarter mile back to the lake to finally begin that Good Fishin’, and was already a good quarter mile from his own truck.
“Hey buddy! Can you give us a jump?”, queried Greg, sweet as pie, grinning a grin that showed off his two missing front teeth.
The man stopped and looked at the big, wild, gaptoothed, disheveled redhead with one missing shoe, me with my long hair, and Greg’s disreputable looking truck. Then he looked back up the road to his truck in the distance, then down to the lake where his buddies awaited in the boat, and answered.
“I … uhh … well … uhh, no. I can’t.” And he gestured weakly in the direction of his friends in the boat.
“Yeah, you can’t cause you’re a ASSHOLE!!!”, yelled Greg at the man’s departing back. “You hear me? You’re a ASSHOLE!!!”
The man scrunched his shoulders and quickened his pace a little. I could have told him not to worry, though. Greg wasn’t doing any running over gravel with One Lost Shoe.
We pondered the difficulty of our situation a few minutes, tried some more fiddling with the battery, and then finally hit on a brilliant idea: put the battery from the boat in the truck! I think this was one of mine, but I’m really not sure. Doesn’t matter, though. What matters is it moved from the idea stage to the drawing board to the actual doing of the thing in near-record time. In only an hour or so we had the boat battery in the truck. Probably would have taken less, except Greg kept cussing and fussing about the water and dead waterdogs he kept stepping in and on with his stocking foot. The big baby.
I jumped in the truck and turned the key. Success! The engine fired up with a roar. Greg slammed down the hood, threw the tools in the back, and climbed in the passenger seat.
I was a slow learner in those days. “So … are we still going fishing?”
Greg thought probably not, and before leaning back in the seat, sticking his feet out the window, and falling asleep, instructed me to turn the truck around and head on back to Phoenix. I took one last longing glance at the blue water sparkling in the bright Arizona sun, and could swear I saw bass leaping from the water into the other fishermen’s boats. But I turned the rig around, with some dexterity this time owing to my training of the previous night, and slowly started back to Phoenix. On the long quiet drive back to town, I kept a careful eye out on the sides of the road. When I finally saw what I was looking for, I stopped the truck, picked the thing up, and threw it in the truck on the passenger side floor. One Found Shoe.
As I passed the big, beautiful, carefully desert-landscaped homes of Cave Creek, driving the disreputable truck, with a pair of feet hanging out my passenger side window, one shod, and one not, and pulling a boat full of reeking, rotting waterdogs, I began to laugh. Pretty soon I was hysterical. It had been a pretty good fishing trip after all.
When I pulled in at Linda’s house, Greg immediately got out of the truck, went in the house, and went to bed. As I cleaned the fishing stuff out of the boat and hosed out the dead and stinkin’ waterdogs, Linda called to me to come into the house and look at something. I walked into the living room and she was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. She walked over to the living room door and swung it away from the wall. There, behind the door, leaning up against the wall, just where Greg had carefully stacked them the night before, were the fishing poles. Never even in the boat. Cracked me up again.
Big Red never asked me to go fishing after that. But the once was probably enough.
Author/Copyright: Tiger, of tigerwhip.com fame Date written: 03/09/1995