And if I ever lose my eyes
If my colours all run dry
Yes, if I ever lose my eyes
Oh I won’t have to cry no more
– Cat Stevens from “Moon Shadow”
Here’s the deal. A few short hours ago, I had outpatient surgery on my left eye to remove a cataract. Oh, the delights of advanced age. The procedure went well. A slight complication occurred whereby my dazzling blue iris began to bulge a bit and a couple stitches were required. Let me put that in another way — I HAD STITCHES IN MY EYEBALL.
OK, ha-ha, it wasn’t really a big deal. I hardly noticed and I’m told they will soon dissolve. The point I’m attempting to make is, my deadline for this column is fast approaching and I feel ill-equipped to meet it. I received a local anesthetic with the procedure but perhaps more importantly, I was given a sedative so I wouldn’t freak out when they PUT STITCHES IN MY EYEBALL.
Frankly, ever since my college days, I’ve been a big fan of sedatives but that being said, I really feel like a long nap is in my immediate best-interest, so . . . in order to fulfill my journalistic duty for this week, I am submitting a chapter from my biography of my father, “A Very Fine Wing-Shot.” from 2016. To wit:
Chapter Eleven: The Setup
Among the men of Clan Negi, at least those who count my father as their progenitor, trout-fishing occupies a position in life usually reserved for religion. I still have his threadbare fly-vest and his old fishing jacket, stained with the blood of many an ancient salmonid. Both are ensconced on a small altar in the corner of my bedroom, before which I periodically mumble incantations and burn joss sticks.
As chronicled in chapter eight, my father’s zeal to spawn his own fishing partner (no pun intended), drove him to take me out on the stream before my fourth birthday. While I did factually land a fish on one of his expert casts, I was much more interested in digging up colored stones and chucking them in the water than in fishing per se, not to mention getting lost in the tall summer vegetation. Following that adventure, common sense prevailed and our next fishing excursion was postponed until I grew up a little. Until then, I honed my skills catching scores of perch, blue-gills and rock-bass from the dock at my grandfather’s camp in DeRuyter.
One morning when I was 8, my father came into my room before sunup and woke me with a terse, “Let’s go fishing.” I was up, dressed and sitting shotgun in our ’57 Bellaire inside of seven minutes.
“What say we get you set-up, pal,” my father announced as we drove through the early morning light. A short time later we pulled up in front of a sporting goods emporium that appeared to have its origins some time in the late Pleistocene. The wooden floor was stained black from countless boots and the air was a rich mélange of pipe and cigar smoke. The establishment was chock-a-block with fishing tackle and hunting gear. Needless to say, it was a manly room.
Today, we live in more enlightened times and many women hunt and fish. In those days, however, I sincerely doubt any creature lacking a Y-chromosome, ever trod its well-oiled boards. I was enthralled. In the space of an hour, my father saw to it that I was well and truly “set-up,” with an olive-green Shakespeare “Wonder Rod,” a Pflueger Medalist fly-reel, hip-boots, a fly-vest, a twig-woven basket creel, a bent-wood landing net and, to my boundless joy, a 5-inch sheath-knife for cleaning my catch. Other boys I knew had puny jackknives, mine was a real, by God, man’s-knife.
Thus equipped, my father and I fished Onondaga Creek all that live-long day. As I recall, he caught four browns, each around 14-inches, while I landed two 12-inch browns and a fat, 13-inch “brookie.” Back then, there was no “catch-and-release.” It was catch and Mommy cook.
It was a day of pure magic.
And so it went.
Email:dhughnegus@gmail.com
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