The two primary criteria have been met so the summer season can officially begin in the Northwoods.
The public schools of Milwaukee and Chicago are done for the year, ejecting their juvenile spawn and family-packed minivans towards the north.
And bass fishing season has started.
This afternoon is hot, humid, and threatening rain - which causes two things to happen.
The mosquitoes get organized, circling in tight holding patterns, each waiting for an opening.
The minivans are circling downtown (all 6 blocks of it), each waiting for a parking spot to open up.
I'm parked inside in front of The Prince, our little window air-conditioner.
The Prince is small and cool, like that singer who temporarily had a name that couldn't be pronounced.
But The Prince is not big and cold.
I wish I could rename it The Yeti.
The Prince struggles on, the two strategically placed garage-sale fans circulating the air throughout the Little-House-On-The-Corner.
Their combined drone is as mesmerizing as that of the mosquitoes and tourists outside.
My mind slowly fixates on one of the primary criteria of summer.
Bass fishin'.
Ah. Bass.
Largemouth and Smallmouth.
An exciting, hard-fighting fish that can actually be eaten when deeply submerged in the proper condiments and coatings.
A pull of the Elixir of Knowledge brings up a name from the depths, rippling my memories.
Jon-Ro.
Huh.
Yeah. Figures. It's bass season.
My mind again replays the legend of "Jon-Ro and the Unseen Bass".
And it's a true story.
I was there.
Decades ago on a perfect summer day, Jon-Ro stopped by, his beat-up jon boat sticking out of what was left of the box on his little trusty, rusty Toyota pickup.
"C,mon, D. I hear bass callin'."
Jon-ro could hear anything with fins, feathers, or fur.
Some men have an ear for music.
Some for a poem or sonnet.
(Yet none of us can hear the wife telling us to take out the garbage. Strange, eh?)
And Jon-Ro, on this particular occasion, had the ear for bass.
An hour and a half later we were in the heart of the National Forest. We had survived a near-rollover on the 1st earth berm erected to stop folks from driving back into the forest. The 2nd one stopped us.
After a 1/2 mile "drag'n'carry",
(quick note: when you dream of traveling waterways, it's called a "portage". But when you actually have to do it, the whole "sweat/strain/bugs" thing washes the veneer off of it, reducing it to its essence: "drag'n'carry".),
we were standing on the only small open spot of shore on the little lake, the forest coming down to its edge.
There were remnants of previous visitors, the beer cans more or less confined to the little landing area. We put in and began to circumnavigate the lake.
Fifteen minutes later we had only gone about 20 yards and had already caught a dozen bass of varying sizes and temperaments. Another 10 yards and our meager supply of worms and minnows gave out.
We were fishing fake worms, crawdads, and minnows...and it didn't seem to matter.
It all worked.
Eventually we oared to the mouth of a narrow little bay no more than 25 yards in length. It was solid lilypads with two big mossy-backed logs dividing it into almost equal thirds.
Jon-Ro began to hook a mutant frog-thingie to his line. I looked back at the solid cover of green with its two walls of soggy wood.
"Whatcha doin', Jon-Ro?"
"Man, God's gotta a monster back in there, just waitin' for me. I just know it. Really."
"Why ya figure that?"
"Well, who in their right mind would try fishin' back there, eh?"
He flashed a big gap-toothed grin before going back to the lure.
Hard to argue with logic.
The amphibian abomination hurtled to the back of the cove, landing with a muffled splat on the solid carpet of green. I shook my head.
"And how are ya gonna get it back here if ya do catch anything?"
Jon-Ro gave a shrug.
"That we worry about later. I just know I gotta throw."
He gave the rod a twitch.
And that's when the cove exploded.
Rod bent down toward the water, Jon-Ro reefed back and reeled in, the drag singing as the line shot out. The fight was short-lived but intense.
Finally the line moved to the first log. A huge clump of lily pads and a glimpse of big tailfin slid over the 1st mossy log, plopping into more lily pads.
The line moved slowly through the lily pads, shearing them off and adding to the mass. Now only 8 yards away and at the 2nd log, the clump had doubled to the size of a basketball. The basketball made it 1/2 way up the backside of the log.
And that's when the fish got its 2nd wind.
That final piscine effort, along with the added weight of tangled chlorophyll, caused the very small "tink" sound of breaking line, a sound that has echoed in our memories for years.
We just sat there, bobbing slightly. Then Jon-Ro looked at me, his grin the widest I'd seen.
"Now, THAT was a fish!"
Yeah.
And every time I remember it, it gets bigger.
Fisherman's Memory, they call it.
Another pull on the Elixir brings one more fish story to mind.
This time it was a bunch of guys lake fishing.
Fished all night and had nothing to show for it, ready to call it quits, when a Voice called from shore.
"Try the other side of the boat."
Sure.
Why not.
We've done the smart things.
All night in deep water.
Who'd be dumb enough to fish this close to shore?
And in the morning.
Idiots and rookies do that.
Might as well.
And that was when the boat began to sink because of the weight of fish in the net.
Yeah.
I think in order to get fish, I might need to be an idiot.
An idiot that is foolish enough to believe what He says.
And then does it.
Even if it doesn't make a lotta sense in the eyes of the smart people.
There's plenty of pragmatic and sensible people in the world. People who are dutifully eating pre-processed hamburgers from little cardboard boxes.
And there's grinning idiots out there who are happily eating freshly-caught fish.
Well...I s'pose.
Got any tartar sauce?