Tragic Fishing Moments 



woman, it would be necessary to begin at the very be- 

 ginning. 



For weeks prior to the final hop-off I must have 

 raved considerably about the beauties of the lakes, the 

 smell of the pines, and that wonderful place, The Big 

 Outdoors, but through it all Friend Wife's interest 

 remained singularly tepid. She seemed to have some- 

 thing on her mind and would frequently break in on 

 a rhapsody to inquire about the totally irrelevant mat- 

 ter of hotel accommodations, or something else equally 

 beside the point. She even worried as to what she 

 should wear, and in many other ways convinced me that 

 her mind failed to grasp the main, the big idea fish. 



Now as to hotel accommodations (if you want to 

 call them that) I had been careful to pick out a not 

 too wild spot. Just a regular place, about four hun- 

 dred miles north, where the men go around in Boy 

 Scout uniforms and the women get photographed be- 

 hind a mess of fish, a boat house where they sell soft 

 drinks and are perpetually out of live bait, and where, 

 just across the lake, nestles a cute little colored-post- 

 card town and a Catholic church. This place did its 

 best to look wild, to hold the men, but not to be wild 

 enough to disturb the ladies. As a matter of fact, 

 the wildest thing about it was a flock of restless, romp- 

 ing rocking chairs on the porch. 



It soon developed that Friend Wife was timid of the 

 water, and stood in deadly fear of snakes and sunburn, 



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