Gone Fishing

Road Trippin’… Write a story about someone getting lost, but discovering something they didn’t expect along the way.

Gone Fishing

They said their farewells and hopped into the burgundy ’75 Camaro on a beautiful sunny day in the summer of 1976, young lovers and best friends who had married a couple of years earlier and were visiting family in Peoria. They had just finished Sunday brunch and expected to be back at their apartment in Chicago within a few hours.

But they were in no hurry. Both were salaried workers who spent long hours at their jobs, and they were enjoying the weekend getaway, knowing that their bosses would want them to take their time and make the most of it, to return Monday morning fully rested and recharged for the workplace battles that would lie ahead.

He slid behind the wheel and said, “What say we forget expressways and let the sun be our guide? We can take backroads north/northeast, look at the passing country, and maybe find a nice place enroute to have dinner?”

“Fine with me,” she said, “Tell you what, let’s spice it up with a little competition… I’ll count the cows, you count the horses, and we’ll see whether the city girl can beat the hayseed at his own game.”

They drove up along the Illinois river, counting livestock and spotting occasional barges floating cargoes past small towns along the way. Not surprisingly, the cows were far outnumbering the horses, but he didn’t mind getting hustled by a city slicker so cute.

On the drive down from Chicago Saturday morning, they had taken the main highways and had seen mostly long straight stretches of asphalt, farmland, and billboards. The sharp contrast of the return trip delighted them with winding roads, forests and ravines that eventually brought them to the vicinity of Bureau, IL, where a rustic wooden sign for “The Ranch House- Vacancy” beckoned passers-by to dining and lodging.

“Look,” she said, “That’s the place Sue mentioned… said they had great prime rib there.”

They had been creeping up the winding hill, so it was easy for him to turn into the tiny entrance road, and they were soon sitting near a window in the dining room, with a view of the woods and a few small log cabins tucked into the surrounding forest.

Two hours later, the waiter had cleared their empty plates, the prime rib they split having lived up to Susie’s description. A side of linguini with fava beans, in a slightly spicy sauce of parm and fresh dill, rounded out a perfect entree, and they were sharing a last bite of homemade raspberry pie when he said, “Boy, that was good. I’m glad we stopped here.”

“Yeah, me too,” she agreed. “Oh, wow, it’s 8:30 and almost dark already, and we’re kind of in the middle of a beautiful nowhere, with still a long way to go. Do we really want to abandon our exploration, find some interstate highway and charge back through the darkness, to arrive home weary, in the wee small hours of the morning?”

He saw that unmistakable hint of mischief cross her eyes, and said with a smile, “Hmm, come to think of it, we’ve both got tons of unused vacation days. Jeff’s always nagging you to at least take a long weekend now and then, and Al has been chiding me that all work and no play could make me a dull boy."

"That settles it,” she laughed," I won't risk sleeping with a dull boy for even another single night, Mister. That was definitely a 'Vacancy' sign that we saw when we pulled in here, and that cute little cottage across the way looks awfully vacant to me."

They were soon snuggling by a crackling fire as the evening chill settled over their cozy log cabin, and by 10 am Monday morning, they were back at the same table for breakfast… famished. Shortly after 11 am, they were winding their way up the hill again, with all day ahead of them to enjoy their zig-zagging drive home.

Ultimately, the sun told them that they would have to move east from the river, and as they did so, the terrain flattened out, the livestock count picked up, and with the sighting of a dozen cows, her lead widened. They stuck to country roads and weaved northeast, by 1 pm reaching their first commercial encounter of the new day, a Corning glass facility in who knows where, and then at the only adjacent street, a gas station on one corner and “Red’s Bar and Grill” on the other.

They weren’t really hungry for lunch yet but couldn’t resist the thought of a cold beer on a hot summer day, and as soon as they entered, they knew it would be yet another good day, indeed... the first thing that greeted them as they walked in being the excitement of a bowling machine, its back rising against the bar's front window. On the window ledge stood a canister of ground wax bits, and on the shiny surface of the hardwood lane sat an oh-so-familiar disc... that seemed to call their names.

Among their favorite pastimes after work in Chicago was stopping by Eddie and Mike’s, a no-frills working-class bar on Jackson St. between Union Station and the Post Office, that had been the venue of their first date and ever since, their favorite hangout. The bar’s main drawing cards were their diverse crowd of oddly close-knit ‘regulars’, proximity to their work, and the bar’s central focus… its bowling machine, where they had honed their considerable skills. He had long been one of those 'regulars', and it didn't take long for her to be widely regarded there as 'queen of the hill'.

They would generally have the machine to themselves for a while on weeknights, before the other 'regulars' drifted in, and many a pair of young commuters would wander in to grab a beer while awaiting a train to the suburbs. Being cocky young males, they would assume their superiority to a guy and his girlfriend, but they would be unfailingly wrong in that assumption, and they would rarely return.

So, when that same guy and his girlfriend stepped up to the machine at Red’s, it was with a warm feeling of old friends reunited, combined with the involuntary pique of their competitive instincts. They had ordered two PBRs, noting that the only other people in the place seemed to be the redheaded bartender... presumably Red... and a single patron, a white-haired guy sitting at the bar with his back to the nearby bowling machine.

It took the couple a few frames to become comfortable with the machine's unique 'touch', the particular feel of the disc and the waxed hardwood, but they finished with ok first-game scores, hers just slightly higher than his.

"Yesterday, you clobber me with cows, today you blast me at bowling," he laughed.

"How true, my friend," she smiled, "but you're definitely not a dull boy."

They hadn’t been aware that Red and his patron had turned their attention to the bowlers, and the patron’s comment to Red, “I smell fish”, didn’t immediately register with them.

As the game ended, the patron left his stool and introduced himself, saying “Hi, folks, I’m Whitey, and the bartender there is Red, the owner of this fine establishment. You’re not from around here, are you?”

The visitors smiled, and she said “Hi, I’m Chris, and this is my husband, John. We’re from Chicago, on our way home from Peoria, where we were visiting John's family.”

“Welcome,” Red boomed out from behind the bar, “Glad you stopped in”.

Whitey followed with, “How about Red and me team up and play you guys for a beer?”

It was now obvious to the visitors that they were the fish, the hustle was on, and they were taking the bait. “Sure,” she said, delighted with anticipation", we’re game.”

And that they were. They had paid for those first two beers when they walked in, but they didn’t pay for another as the afternoon wore on and had turned into evening, many hours and umpteen games later.

Fortunately, Red had a good cook in his kitchen, who coaxed a few bucks out of the visitors as the day passed. After one game ended in late afternoon, John grabbed a menu and said, "Hey, Red, how about two orders of the fried perch? We heard Whitey mention something about fish to you earlier, soon after we got here, and those sound great."

Red gave Whitey a brief glare, and then called the order into the kitchen, chuckling to himself. The delicious perch did help sop up the alcohol, but by early evening when they left their humbled hosts, the couple knew that driving all the way back to Chicago would be out of the question.

It suddenly occurred to them that they had forgotten to call Jeff and Al about not making it in on Monday. “Oh well,” she laughed, “This will prove whether they really love us, I guess.”

Their good luck continued, as they were able to find a motel within a few miles of leaving Red’s. They got a solid night’s sleep, waking well-rested on Tuesday but this time deciding that they couldn’t trust themselves to continue their meandering backroad exploration homeward… they would have to take the expressways, so as to not push their bosses’ patience too far. And once again they didn’t call in… this time intentionally, figuring why face the music both days.

But they did agree on a common explanation for when they returned to work bright and early Wednesday morning… they’d gone fishing on the way home. Jeff and Al were just glad to have them back.