Attribution: Ziga, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, is cooperating with the keeper to refine his dial-a-dream technology on the heels of waking up from a lengthy session on the Wolf River with the likes of companions John Lawton, Carl Lee and Art Jensen, and Claude from the garage in Lily.
John, a pseudo father figure who advised it is okay to pee in your waders when they are already full of water from your having fallen down.
Carl, who tied flies all afternoon and then threw them all in the stove with a disgusted “no good” pronouncement.
Art, who remodeled John’s station-wagon fishing car with an axe to convert it into a pickup for driving into the Oxbow, and who also confiscated the keeper’s rod case to make a usable outlet for the spring over across the river.
Claude, who knocked the oil pan off his old wrecker on a rock in a futile attempt to retrieve stuck vehicles on the trail into John’s cabin.
The keeper’s dial-a-dream device will ideally be adjustable to include later Wolf River occasions with sons and grandsons; and then maybe it will also one night reproduce the scene of a younger adventurous John Lawton going down Slough Gundy rapids while standing up in a canoe.
Sometimes when he is in the prone dream posture, the keeper can see the bloody handprints on the Wolf cabin roof boards where the tough “Kentuck” carpenter had refused to stop work over a little thing like a nearly severed finger.
So the dial-a-dream thing works even when the keeper is not sleeping.
What a deal!
Photo by Bill Stokes