Bad Cop; No Donuts!
The meeting was called to order at 7:30 sharp by the President of the Ostrich Society. It took several strokes of the make shift gavel (a half full bottle of Bass Ale) to quiet the members and get their attention for the preliminaries that needed to be addressed.
John made a motion to dispense with the preliminaries and get right to the important stuff. It was seconded by Bill. The President called the question and all answered in the affirmative.
The agenda moved along to the item Fishing Reports which generated questions of “Who, where and how”. There was no hesitation by members to share fishing conditions on various rivers the membership fishes. Bill began by giving a report about conditions on Big Creek saying terrestrials were the ticket for brookies and an occasional brown. He declined to elaborate on which terrestrial or where on Big Creek the action was taking place. After a few “boos”, he sat down and poured two more fingers of bourbon.
Alf opined next about the lack of fish on the North Branch and was met with “Who sez?” by a voice in the back of the room. Harold stood and reported he caught several nice brookies and, after dark, landed a nice 20 inch brown on a mouse on the North Branch and said the only people who think there is a lack of fish on the river are those who tie their own flies…enough said. Laughs erupted as Alfred flashed but sat down as Bill handed him another two-fingers-of-bourbon..
Bruno, Alf’s black lab who was lying under the table, got up to see what all the commotion was about. Bill scratched him behind his ears and said, “Don’t worry boy, your master isn’t being hurt; his feathers are getting a little wet though.” Bruno’s tail wagged and he turned to reclaim his spot under the table.
Alf was still smarting about the insult hurled at him by Harold but decided to let it go mostly because he didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to bring up an old mishap he took plenty of ribbing for last year. Alf was fishing for steelhead on the Clinton River by Yates Dam across from the cider mill that sells donuts. Since Alf can’t pass a bakery or anywhere fresh baked donuts, cookies or rolls are baked and sold, he bought a half dozen and ate a couple while checking out the river for signs of fish. When the fish are in, you can see one jump the spillway every now and then. They were in.
Alf ate four of the donuts and decided to begin fishing. He put the remaining two in his chest pouch on his waders, strung up his line and entered the river. He fished with heavy tippet and tied on an egg pattern cluster. He cast the eggs upstream and across and let it drift downstream over a rocky section of bottom. After several casts, he remembered the donuts in his chest pouch and took one out. “Man”, he thought, “these fry cakes are really good.” As he chomped away at the fry cake, suddenly his rod nearly pulled from his one handed grip. Donut still in his mouth, he grabbed the rod with both hands and began to work the fish eventually getting it within sight, then to net. As he bent over to net the fish, the half donut still in his mouth, suddenly dropped and washed away in the current. From shore a voice yelled, “nice fish”. Alf turned to see a County Parks Officer watching him. Al, still holding the fish, leaned down to release it after letting it regain it’s strength, when the last donut dropped from his chest pouch and it too was swept downstream with the current. By the time Alf got to shore, sensing the officer wanted to talk to him, he noticed the officer was writing something on what looked like a pocket pad. When Al finally climbed out of the river, the officer handed him a ticket for littering.
“What’s this for?” Alf asked.
“For littering,” said the officer. “I was going to let the first donut you threw into the river go, but when you threw the second one in, I decided I had to cite you for littering. I figured you were chumming with the donuts for suckers and landed the steelhead by mistake.”
Alf made the mistake of complaining to the Society at a meeting about this stupid park officer, but after he was done, instead of support, he became a legend and gained the reputation of the club’s token sucker fisherman – soon the fisherman part was dropped. The reason Alf couldn’t get any sympathy from the membership was, he was a cop before he retired and everything just seemed to fit… Bad cop; no donuts.
The meeting continued with the usual bantering about this and that. Seamus went from table to table looking for handouts and after the bourbon went dry, the meeting was motioned adjourned by Herald; seconded by Alf.
Meeting adjourned at 9:45.
The preceding is the Truth, Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth……give or take a lie or two.
TD