(draft 1)A Gentleman Must Sometimes eat Fish

I thought I seen everything possible on vacations until the tire blew out near Rio Vista and the tow trucker driver said that the rim of the wheel had been so demolished that he would have to drive into Lodi and buy a new wheel “or a new SET of wheels” if I was stuck on the manufacturer’s sizes. This man told me to go ahead an enjoy the splendor of the town and he would be back just as soon as possible. 

It didn’t seem strange that he would not drive me back to the major corridors of towns and traffic and I left a message with my dad, “I got stuck in Rio. I’ll try to make it for dinner.” The car remained at a local garage and I looked all around wondering what people do without major chains or even a hospital. I asked the owner of the garage, “What do you guys do here for fun?” and he pointed me to the closest path for the river. 

My understanding is that the ocean comes in from San Francisco and Rio Vista is around half way to Sacramento. That the water becomes a mix of different salenities, Salmon stop to unclog their gills and they have to prepare for the strenuous trip uphill to find lady salmon to make their young. These young gentlemen of salmon stop to buy roses and chocolates, and then they put on their best salmon colognes and stop to read poetry and learn elocution. 

“So this is when you catch them? When they are struggling with self-hatred and only want to get married?” 

The man who was teaching me might have been the sole proprietor of Skeeter’s Race Bait because I couldn’t imagine they were profitable enough to have a large staff, seeing that the governor wanted everyone to have health insurance. All’s i know is that my local guide had a fishnet cap cocked at an angle that had nothing to do with the sun. He also enjoyed a beer and mostly talked in single sentences, “Yup.” 

“Why don’t you catch them after the spawning, after their salmon wives have taken to menopause and hate spawning? They leave their homes in the mountains and return to the deep blue sea to die.” 

Skeeter pointed to the deck that hung over the river. He showed me how to wait until a young Salmon came up after taking his last breath of salt water and wanted to wash off in the trucker’s shower. Normally this cost around eighteen dollars in the Love’s and the T&A major resorts going east. Skeeter showed me how one has only to use a net to pluck out a marvelous salmon bachelor with good breeding. 

“You have to sponsor a lad. It is the EPA ‘regalations’.” 

Oh. That made sense. I think Pluto wrote something about old men teaching the young the ways of love on page 86 of The Republic. 

Skeeter held out his hand for twenty dollars right after I plucked my first bachelor from the river. He didn’t make change because gratuities are natural among neighbors. 

I looked at my squirmy orphan of a fish, a young gun squirming with hope and potential about becoming a good father up the river. I bent down and whispered, “Don’t join the PTA” before dipping him into a solution of 1 percent salinity. Skeeter had several dipping stations to avoid shocking the young men with the understanding that women fish like their sex habitats very clean and sterile. 

“Hey Skeeter, why do you call it a race if you try help everyone?” 

Skeeter soured and checked his watch. It was nearly two in the noon and the man walked back to his shack and loaded up a shotgun by two barrels. Then he walked over to the river, which must have been around twenty foot wide in that part of the town, and he closed his eyes and he shot at the schools teaming to get past the brack. Soon after, a few bodies floated to the surface and I looked down the current and saw a green net some up to catch their joyless bodies.

It was very traumatizing because I thought fishing was a playful game of attracting dinner to a hook. I don’t actually eat fish myself but completely understand it is a past-time of intimate bonding by children to their fathers. Old men talk about fishing for years and have such joy in their stories you might think they survived a war without any knicks or harsh feelings. 

This was nature. 

The raw and sudiferous truth that not all boys get to go upstream. 

Some are not meant for mating. They are caught by the buckshot of life, the harbinger of wrong place at 2 in the human day. How the gremlins must also have a clock, the gnomes of the shoemaker wait til midnight, the Cinderella loses her shoe, the werewolf molts and has to eat his first human flesh. We were standing there reflecting on the randomness of life when an officer in brown came up behind us with a pad. 

“Hey Skeeter. I need to check the size of your fish so I’m gonna go down to the net and check.” 

Skeeter froze. 

The man had randomly shot whoever was close enough to the surface of the river. Buckshot can’t penetrate the water very far and I didn’t see that Skeeter had any favorites when he thinned out the fish. 

Unfortunately, this was an officer for Diversity-Equity-Inclusion as noted by the gold DEI logo on the officer’s shoulder. I bit my tongue because California is very militant about keeping their headwaters stocked with a balanced ecosystem so that Tahoe doesn’t get any more eurtrification. In fact, I recalled that a very boisterous lad called The Asian Carp had been such a great romancer that he alone was responsible for the conquering of New Malones, Hogan Reservoir and the nervous tributary of June Lake over the mountain. It was just like Genghis Khan fathering over four percent of the population and I could not say if bully fish were any better than guppy fish because I have never studied these groups for very long. 

This officer, Officer Hyposcene came back with three small fish and two midsized fish which had given up the ghost. She asked if Skeeter’s customer was going to sponsor the state to replace one of the two larger fish, a ‘Rainbow Trout.’ I asked what a trout was doing so close to a river which turned into the ocean. I had never heard of a Rainbow Trout leaving the district around Markleysville or the upper sierra. 

Officer Hyposcene said that Rainbow Trout were expected to represent their kind in all of the navigable waters of the state. That she has personally thrown them into Smith Canal, the Mormon Slough, had made single trips to the tertiary water chambers on Highway 4 and had seen them make new friends in the rolling delta. It sounded interesting but I had no reason to sponsor any fish since it wasn’t part of my lifestyle to fish. I was just waiting for the local garage to fit my flat tire. 

That’s when she got in my face and Skeeter wasn’t even going to protect his customer because he was probably on the bill if I wasn’t going to take it. Officer Hyposcene said, “Do you know what happens when Rainbow Trout can’t get to the big water??” 

I did not. 

She explained that they culminate in the puddles and streams, that stray birds drop their row in foreign waters and children are born without anyone to love them at all. “Would you like that?” 

I admitted that it sounded terrible. 

Officer Hyposcene explained that it was the purpose of good stewards of the steam and field to make sure the correct biological diversity was available in all puddles great and small. I wanted to hold up my hand and ask about the Argentine Ant which had walked over eight thousand miles to own Torrey Pines park in San Diego. I mean were they protected or… ?

We were going to have to hear about the majestic two headed squaw which was recently discovered cohabitating in the Darron Ridge with the California Condor. “Their numbers are increasing in the past ten years and so now we know that 3 heads are better than 2.” 

Officer Hyposcene smiled but I didn’t understand. I heard the two headed squaw came from a bird who ate human garbage and had slipped a genetic marker during breeding. There were many obvious food elements to consider but I still liked corporate beef in a plastic bag and couldn’t tell you how the Malengo Fly made larger grass in arid environments to propagate hybrid cows which had large yields for milking and butchering. Give me a hotdog and I’ll stew on it for a time. 

Skeeter finally admitted that he had run out of copper shot and that she didn’t have to take the fish for an autopsy. The current NPR theory is that copper resists spores mold and fungi and now many hospitals are seeking to spray their hallway walls with a copper mist. How much greater is it to make sure fish are shot with non-contaminated copper instead of transporting the grime of steel balls which are not food grade and are not meant to contaminate a river. 

Officer Hyposcene smiled and said she already knew. “The copper fish bleed with a tinge of green.” 

She handed him over a few cartridges of copper shot. 

An idea suddenly came to me, “Hold on, are you saying that you can get Red Snapper in Monterey Bay if I fill out your forms and show we have a lack of red snapper?” I really like this fish for some reason when I was stuck in another country for a year and the price of cow was outrageous. Also, a gentleman must sometimes find himself in situations where eating fish is necessary. 

Officer Hyposcene cocked her head, “You’re saying you have NO red snapper in Monterey Bay?”

I told her that I was very confused when I went to the actual fish markets right by the boats and they said they only caught octopai, sardine and some Tilapia. “Why can’t I get fresh Red Snapper? I don’t want to pay import tariffs, I don’t want that fish farm stuff from Vancouver (they live in their own swill) and I don’t want a fish so tired from traveling that it doesn’t even seem perky on the plate.” 

This was obviously a very good question. 

Officer Hyperscene got on the walkie talkie on her shoulder, the military was called to take over the Panama Canal, an underwater sluice was created a million miles long, the plexiglass pipe had small holes so that small varieties could escape, a DEI sorter and order was positioned somewhere near Hawaii and another one in the Caribbean. Red Snapper fish were lovingly ushered into the Monterey Bay. I rushed home after hugging my dad and making sure he wasn’t going to die from hip surgery. 

I told him to drive over when his new robotic hip was no longer gathering the neighbor’s blue tooth signal. I rented a small boat in Moss Landing and took out the fishing rods (not poles), some Lagunitas beer from Chico, and cast out my line to see a local beauty. 

Unfortunately, the Red Snapper were not happy and simply chose to kill themselves before making it to my table. The great white sharks that used to sleep beneath the Golden Gate Bridge to dine on suicides made the hundred mile journey, they munched on my Red Snapper and burped, and ducked down to see what might be hiding in the kelp forest. I mean the SCUBA divers were not prepared to be a dessert but the military came on high alert because there was rumor that enemy nations had developed unmanned submarines which mimicked sharks. The old Blair horns were activated, the streets were cleared by the local police. The schools were closed for War Day which made the children curious because the weather never changes and the school district is very cheap since they became underfunded after a lawsuit. The schools have to stay open after a lawsuit. And so we were all texted to drive our children back but I was still on my rented boat, waiting, hoping, wondering when the red snapper would grace my plate.