Fishing as June ends

Yes now it almost Canada Day which is July 1. It is a Canadian version of the US 4Th of July. There will be fireworks and a big party down at the bay walk (boardwalk) and beach 1 block from where I pen this. Perhaps this year it will be a bit warmer and there will be less mosquito's.

I went fishing with my friend Dave Elliot on Saturday (yesterday). First I managed to get lost trying to take the back roads to Coleman, about 30 miles West of Summerside. I had an appointment to meet and look at a small house there which I thought would make a nice fishing camp.It was pretty rough. My pal Dave is a master builder and carpenter and thought it was not a good idea, so we went to the legion in O'Leary. O'Leary is a nearly dead potato producing and processing town there that used to be a busy place. Both Dave and my friend Glen grew up there.

It is quaint as towns on the West Virginia panhandle. There is even a old store, closed, that has the old merchandise still in the window. A quaint old building with apartments above. Mary was quite upset that I would make such bold decisions without her approval, and we have been distant since Saturday night. She has not returned my phone calls and she went to the club last night and I stayed at the wing. It may be simple miscommunication or as Dave says, I am just a "bugger". The punishments aside, it was a great sunny weekend with big tides and a full moon. The fish seem to respond to that. I caught 4 nice trout near Coleman and just ate them with coleslaw and potato salad. Fishing and cooking these wild brook trout, I miss my son and the mountains streams of Pennsylvania (and Arizona) catching and cooking these amazing natural jewels.

Sundays always bring some sadness to me. Things close early and alone I am left to recollect, write here, and consider a future where it may be.

Its hard to beat a place to live on a great beach, wild trout, and eager young ladies. But I miss my older girl and during my revelries and travels, I miss Shel. Mostly I miss my kids. I speak to my daughter almost daily. She is directed and well balanced. Joey is very busy and lives a hectic life of some trepidation like his mother. I think they will both be well.

I am not so sure about me. But a summer of sun burn and fishing looms ahead. Just about 2 months before the weather turns back to the pre-autumn chill and rains leading to a sub-arctic winter that has to be felt to really know. As always to stay or go. At least for now I shall remain.
After all over staying a welcome is my speciality, and I now have a real social circle, flawed, but real acceptance among my little towns community.

It cannot continue forever and i am awful at endings. But sun and trout....I have seen much worse.

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First Day of Summer in a Prescribed Paradise

So summer arrived at 8 something here on the coast of North America that's sees it first. So be it. My evening was listening to blue grass music as its called here at our legion. I feel there among the seniors (I am close to the youngest participant) that I am among my Hatfield family, long lost, along some holla on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy in West Virginia. Know that I only visited Williamson once, to visit the family cemetery. There Anse Hatfield, a hero of the Confederacy stands tall in marble along Mate Creek. Yes, Matewan fame. He was either my GGGrandad or Uncle depending on who slept with whom. In any case I was born dead-eyed shooting a revolver, so maybe there is something to the DNA thing.

My mom, Aunt and grand mom only talked in their hidden language among us....they would use certain letters to create whole words, for example "Fuff A Cause EE". Which meant face "face". Later I learned that during the feud they had to be careful about what they said. I think that secret way of talk among the Hatfield clan has never been said before...but I won't say it all...

Here the spring peepers of my youth on the streams are still singing. At this latitude it has just broken dark and its almost 10PM.

The trout fishing here on the island is pretty good. There are decent sea-run brook trout of the same type I caught with my father and son in the streams of Pennsylvania. When they go into the sea hey grow fatter and take on a silver tone. The little bright dots of blue-ringed red gone and bellies fat from a time in the salt. They are profound.

Here, I am completely "islandized". I am a member of the social clubs and accepted by nearly all the folks that considered me an off-lander and even a "Yankee". Its a gentle strain of people who crave the world across the ferry or the bridge but just can't go. Many have left for work in the Alberta tar sands or even the states. Those that remain lust for the annual Florida or Las Vegas vacation. My former and lovely young wife has either been deported for working without a visa or simply disappeared.

A fishing friend or mine, who has shown me great great trout streams (Up West-meaning anywhere West of our little town) works at the potato plant. He tells me that his job is to use water jets and flumes to get the crop into the hoppers. He works second shift sorting potatoes in a stark warehouse here. His name is Glen. His life is also an abject tradgedy but he is one of the few lucky enough to have a job, and looks forward to our fishing trips to his home town up West near O'Leary. There are some serious sea-trout to be caught.

My relationship with my island girl continues. She is stoic from a truly horrible childhood of parental loss, no running water, and struggling here in the 1950's. I am talking incest, physical attack, and rural horror.

Such a run from my personal background. When we go out she makes her face and hair flawless, trying to achieve a recognition for beauty that she has never known. She is Mary, the lady I see here. She is as far from Shel or a desert sunrise as a human could be, but she is my Mary.


Here as a retiree the days come and go. The tourists are starting to arrive and the hopeless little shops are opening. A place of real beauty-but one has to stay here to find it. Cape Breton is more rugged and prettier. Nova Scotia has Halifax and the great Eastern shore and the Annapolis Valley. New Brunswick, our "drive through province" has the Bay of Fundy and the Miramachi. And don't consider the awful "Magnetic Hill".

I have few complaints but I do miss my family and my desert-oddly enough. But the sun shines and my skin tans under a maritime sun by my abode alone along the beach.

Its what I wanted. No real financial worries, no relationship issues and a place to fish...a truck that will take me anywhere. I can see the point lighthouse from my home.

Still...I feel a missing..a longing..is this it?

My mom used to ask me during my business and consulting days-"What am I running from".

Maybe I can get out of block and finally write the story. Now that most of the pain is settling, and I actually have something to say.

OK-Maybe not totally "islandized". My gorgeous French-speaking dental hygienist said to me at the end of picking my teeth last week..."Your from the states!" Accent. I am working on it. Its easier to learn Canadian inflection than Russian when I went there so long ago on a UN mission.

She also said that she has rarely seen anyone my age here that HAD all of his original teeth...ok, I have one gold crown.

Old Stew and Cats

So we move into a modest rainy summer on my island. Yes old stew. I just had a hankering (spelling) for the stew my mom made. I found an old soup bone, ripe with good island beef at our co-op. Yes, a turnip, island potato and whatever else I had in my larder. But its not MOMS stew-close, as she said when I was but a boy put the tomatoes in last-and her little basket of Herb's that I have so much trouble duplicating here.

It reminds me so much of her teachings about cooking and using fresh herbs in the pot. Also of Arizona, among the garden that was just beyond my home. All the fine food that I made with long lost wife.

Cats came tonight...my neighbour Betty in a panic. The local tabby had kittens in the pouring cold rain by my humble abode, outside by a pile of sticks. She had been in here, looking, gravid, but I turned he away. Well my neighbour Betty found the kittens and the are safe and warm, nursing in my humble place by the ocean. Tonight.

So the mom kitty and hers stay with me tonight.

A chance meeting

That afternoon I had just left my office in Norristown, Pennsylvania. It was the fall of 1984. My pal and I always went to work out at the nautilus club on route 202 near the office. Then we would roll up old US route 202 to a place called Alphafa's. There would we have a beer maybe some snacks and my forever girlless friend Phil wait hopefully to meet the woman he wanted to meet.

There was a tall lady, dressed well sitting at the end of the bar. She was a bit loud but had a nice curly doo and was very friendly. As my friend shunk into his his seat (as usual) I asked the lady what she she did as we did back in the 80's. She said said that she was a computer type who worked at a bank. After a time she said she was waiting for a girlfriend, who was a veterinarian.After a time she offered to buy us a a snack. I was well moneyed and a bit amused, but we accepted.

At that time I had just broken up with my high school girl Carol, and was looking for a business oriented attractive girl to carry on with my dreams of HTS, my own environmental consulting practice.

Well the evening was over and I followed her out of the restaurant. she resisted, so I opened the door of her Audi turbo and offered my phone number. It was NO no no

But a week later I got a call and we went on a date to see the movie Ghost busters..she laughed so hard that the whole movie crowd was laughing at her not the movie

We were married a year later...there would be no Joey or Alexis...Shelly would not have her new marriage to ...something to consider Paul Perry, and I would not not be waiting on Prince Edward Island without that chance meeting so long ago....the moral being that chance meetings may not be anything but fate

So comes on the spring. Much time has passed since the entry of the blue moon. The kids seem fine and I slowly recover from my ordeal of hospitals and health. In no way will I recount the experience of near death and all the usual BS that goes along with that.

The good news is I am breathing and I have been fishing. Fishing for fine fresh trout in the nearby streams. It loses something without my son and other disconnections but it is still beautiful and life-giving. (perhaps not for the fish)

The full moon of late May has waned to gibbous as June arrives mostly with a chilly rain. My habitation is not the charming place I was in up until this past winter, but it is warm and close to the beach.

I continue to miss family, both genetic and legally bound prior. My mission now is wholeness, a completion of the short story compendium and my own sanity.

It has been said by a famous person that the madness is only temporary-we shall see or sea.

Will I stay in this place of beaches of migrate to past fondness remains to be seen.

But after 6 months I have finally made a journal entry. There shall be more.