NOVEMBER 18, 2024 – Blogger’s note: At the end of my post on October 9, 2019, the second part of a story about a trip to the ER up at the lake, I wrote,
In the lobby, my wife was chatting away with three guys in camouflage. These cheerful musketeers were awaiting care of their D’Artagnan. With self-effacing jokes, I joined their banter. They’d been musky fishing. D’Artagnan had been accidentally hooked by a lure intended for a 50-pound musky. That sounded far more valorous than, “I ran into a rock.” [At a stop in a state park on our way up to the lake, I’d stumbled into a large rock and lacerated my knee.]
The musky hook reminded me of the (funny, as it turned out) story a friend of mine told about his kid brother who’d been snagged by a fish hook in the eyelid. But that story is for another post.
Here now, is that story—a little over five years later.
* * *
(Cont.) The fish(hook) tale arose out of my friend’s childhood way back when. He grew up in a small farming community in southern Minnesota. As was the custom in those days, everyone attended church on Sundays. On one particular summer Sunday, however, my friend’s mother did not go to church. I don’t remember the exact circumstances of her non-attendance. She might’ve been ill or tied up somehow, but whatever it was, she had a legitimate reason for not joining her husband and their two sons—my friend and his younger brother—in church.
She rightly assumed that even without her, right after breakfast her husband and boys would drive straight to church. The dad, however, made a different assumption: that his wife wouldn’t find out if instead of attending church he and the sons went fishing at their favorite spot along a lazy stream outside of town. As he and his sons headed for the garage, he asked what they thought of the idea. The kids, of course, thought it was a capital idea. They grabbed their fishing gear out of the garage and slipped rods and tackle boxes into the car. Still in their Sunday best, dad and sons headed out of town for a morning of clandestine angling.
The first few minutes beside the stream were filled with pure pleasure tinctured with guilt. The Lord alone knew what heavenly punishment would be imposed for violation of the Fourth Commandment. The dad and sons were about to find out.
While my friend and his dad were at the water’s edge casting away, the kid brother was seated on the grass behind my friend, tying on a lure. The brother’s exact location, it turned out, was the wrong place at the wrong time. To initiate another cast, my friend held his fishing rod back over his shoulder, with lure dangling off the end of the line. He then whipped the rod forward, aiming to cast the lure into the middle of the stream. Except . . .
The barbed hook on the end of the lure snagged the brother’s . . . eyelid.
The fishing expedition ended abruptly, as the medical emergency went into full play. Pressing his handkerchief to his son’s bloody eye, the dad rushed both boys back to the car. He drove like a maniac to a small hospital in the next town. The staff said they were ill-equipped for such an emergency and directed the fishing crew to a bigger hospital in a bigger town (Mankato? – I don’t remember), which was 45 minutes away.
Eventually, the poor kid was patched up. Fortunately, the hook had caught only the eyelid, which was repaired, and left his eyeball untouched.
All this excitement consumed the best hours of the day, and the dad and kids didn’t return home until close to suppertime. The mom was damned near out of her mind with worry. This was long before cell phones, of course, and even when the renegades had reached the first little hospital and even the big hospital, the dad was too distracted—and too scared to call the mom.
I know that sounds ridiculous, pressing the bounds of credulity. But I can believe it. Once my dad and I were driving up to the lake early one Friday evening to join my mother and one of my sisters, who had made the trip earlier in the week. After about 45 minutes up I-35 our car broke down—right on the exit for U.S. Highway 8 just north of Forest Lake. We walked into town and found a mechanic’s garage. The place was still open but no work could be done until the next morning. Dad decided we should stay at a nearby motel overnight, then get the car fixed first thing in the morning, so we could continue to the cabin.
Back in those pre-cell phone days, we didn’t even have a land line at the cabin—nor did the nearest neighbors. Mother and my sister had no idea what had happened to us and feared the worst. When we pulled up to the cabin the next day at around 1:00 p.m., the womenfolk got to hear the menfolk tell all about the latter-folk’s adventure. The menfolk then got to hear the womenfolk restate their extreme worry coupled with a reprimand, which the head of the menfolk treated as a slight overreaction.
All of which leads to an inescapable conclusion: We men are dumb. If we weren’t so dumb, long ago we’d have helped elect a woman as President of the United States. But no, we’re too hooked on self-reliance to know what’s best for ourselves, let alone for America.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
