The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories

by Patrick F. McManus

  Presently, we arrived at our fishing spot. It wasn’t the fishing spot I had planned on but a different one, because I had gotten distracted over all the problems with tires. Finally, we got the canoe launched on this unknown section of the Clark Fork River. It was then that I discovered we had forgotten the paddles. I say “we” because Dave is supposed to remind me of the paddles, because I almost always forget them. He has one responsibility, and he forgets it. I told the producer that this wasn’t a serious problem, because Dave and I often used pieces of driftwood for paddles. The producer jumped up and down and pulled at his hair, while the crew got out the cameras and started shooting footage of Dave and me paddling around with two pieces of driftwood. After a while we caught a fish. It was about seven inches long. An hour or so later, we caught another fish but it was small. So far the fishing trip had been pretty much routine for Dave and me, but I could tell the producer hadn’t had much experience with the art of angling. Dave and I regard fishing as a relaxing activity, but it was clear the producer wasn’t enjoying himself nearly as much as we and his crew were.

  Several weeks later, the TV station sent me copies of the feature, and it was wonderful, particularly in its realistic capture of fishing as a sport. After the first segment, the announcer on the show said to its producer, “I understand, John, this is the first time you’ve ever gone fishing.” The producer said, “Yes, Fred, it is. But never again!”

  So, it was just as I had suspected.

  The Brown Pelican

  I

  was just sitting here on the sixth-floor balcony of a resort hotel (borrr-ing!) in Florida, 3,000 miles from my home in the Pacific Northwest, when a brown pelican flew by. It’s the first time I have seen a brown pelican. For that matter, it’s the first time a brown pelican has ever seen me. I seem to be the only one of the two of us who was impressed. The pelican, by all appearances, couldn’t have cared less.

  I have been doing a lot of reading about brown pelicans lately. Well, not really. Any reading at all about brown pelicans probably seems like a lot. There isn’t that much written about brown pelicans, or any other color of pelicans, for that matter. Nevertheless, I have been reading a hotel pamphlet about them. To me, they are much more interesting than, say, Wall Street raiders, Donald Thump, Porter Sims, or Zsa Zsa McShane, who right now are all the rage with the news magazines and newspapers. On the other hand, you could probably read all the publications on a supermarket magazine rack for a year and not come across a single word about brown pelicans.

  One of the interesting things I’ve learned about pelicans— the brown ones, at least—is that when they dive into the water, they turn over on their backs a split second before impact. Supposedly, they do this to keep from breaking their necks. I wonder how pelicans discovered this. I can imagine a long history of pelicans in neck braces, before one of them accidentally flipped over on his back before striking the water—“Hey, guys, I think I’ve got it!”

  My literature on brown pelicans reveals that they strike the water with such force that the target fish is stunned, and then the pelican gobbles it up. There seems to be some similarity here with the way Wall Street raiders strike their victims—a different kind of fish, of course. Perhaps the raiders have studied the pelican’s fishing techniques. It would be interesting to know if they flip over on their backs just before the hit. I don’t know that much about Wall Street raiders.

  I regret to report that the brown pelican, unlike the Wall Street raider, is a threatened species. This may strike you as sad and even tragic, as it does me. I withheld the news from the brown pelican that just flew by, because I didn’t want to ruin his day. I don’t think there’s anything he could do about his being threatened anyway. I suspect he’s pretty ignorant about the whole business of extinction. Maybe one of the brown pelican’s children asked him, “Daddy, what does ‘extinct’ mean?” And he tells the kid, “Don’t bother me with your stupid questions, Jason. Go catch a fish! And remember to turn over on your back!”

  The brown pelican appears to me to be another innocent bystander who’s about to become a victim to the great environmental disaster known as the Twentieth Century. Every year, dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands, of species become extinct. I’m sure no one knows exactly how many— or when. There might be a few tough old individuals of a species hiding out in a swamp or on a mountain somewhere, awaiting their chance to stage a comeback. Or maybe they don’t even know their kind is about to be extinct. They might just wonder why none of their friends or relatives visit any more. He thinks, “Maybe I have bad breath. Maybe it’s my unsightly dandruff.” You wouldn’t want to tell him, “No, you idiot, your species is going extinct!”

  It’s hard to get worked up about the extinction of a species you never knew existed in the first place. Species come and species go, you say. The problem is that, during my lifetime, a few thousand species have gone, and I haven’t heard of a single one coming back. We’re running a deficit on species. We have a species-flow problem. Of course, maybe some species have come online that I haven’t heard about. I don’t get around all that much, and people don’t make a habit of calling me to report new species. Maybe where you live, new species are popping up all over the place. I hope that’s the case. I also hope none of these new species are flying snakes or that sort of thing. Flying cows would be bad, too. (“We interrupt this broadcast to report a low-flying-cow alert for the Denver area. Stay tuned for further details.”)

  Extinction, in my opinion, is not totally bad, as long as it’s happening to the other guy, of course. I doubt if people would get too worked up to read the following news story: “Tragedy struck Thursday in Two Dot, Montana, when Molly, the world’s last surviving mosquito, escaped from her cage and landed on the neck of a passing cowboy, who. . . .”

  And how about pterodactyls, those vicious giant flying reptiles that lived back in dinosaur days, one of the least popular times for picnics? Suppose pterodactyls didn’t become extinct. Suppose right now you’re sitting in your duck blind and a flock of pterodactyls come flapping in over your decoys. (“Hush, Sport, hush!”) You see what I mean? Extinction isn’t all bad.

  Speaking of pterodactyls, does anyone know for sure what happened to them? Did they just suddenly die off, to the resounding cheers of the other creatures then extant, or did they slowly blend into another species, such as our own? Impossible, you say, but then you probably never saw my Uncle Shamus. Talk about your weird coincidences—my Uncle Shamus is also extinct now. So how do you figure that? As my mother used to be fond of saying, it just goes to show.

  I hope the preceding thoughts and reflections give you some idea of just how boring it is to be sitting here on a tiny sixth-floor balcony in a Florida resort hotel. The only thing of interest to happen in the last hour was that a plump lady walked by the pool in a bikini so tight she looked as if she was about to be shot out of it. Oh, yes, and a brown pelican flew by. Well, the brown pelican hasn’t come by again. I hope he hasn’t gone and done something stupid, like become extinct. You know how it is, forget just one time to flip over on your back when you dive for a fish and, whop, you’re history.

  Canoodled

  A

  ll my life, I have loved canoes. I like anything that floats: inner tubes, float tubes, my boat-in-a-bag, rubber rafts, kayaks, rowboats, yachts, and even ships, although nothing larger than a light cruiser. (Battleships and aircraft carriers are too hard to turn.) But it’s only canoes I love. Otherwise, I’m fairly normal.

  Kayaks are fine, except I have trouble putting them on and taking them off. Yachts are great, too, but if the motor won’t start and you become the sole source of power, they’re awfully hard to row. Also, they’re difficult to store in your garage. You can shove a canoe up into the rafters, but let’s see you try that with a yacht. There’s an old saying, “If you can afford a yacht, you can afford to moor it.” (Actually, the saying isn’t that old. I made it up just five seconds ago).

  One of the great hards
hips of my life is that I have never owned a jetboat. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but there you go. Sometimes you simply become too distracted by work and other absurdities to focus on the important things in life. If reincarnation exists, I will definitely buy a jetboat my next time around, even if it means observers might shout out, “Look! A squirrel driving a jetboat.” There are certain risks to consider in regard to both jetboats and reincarnation.

  I once wrote a book titled They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They? For nearly forty years, canoe enthusiasts have bought that book like crazy. They actually think the book is about canoes! Ha! I haven’t gone back and read the book in about forty years, so I’m not sure what it’s about. It may even contain the story about how I came to marry my wife. Then again, maybe not.

  I must confess that when I was young I was very particular about the women I dated. They had to be smart, beautiful, unmarried, and employed. A girl with the nickname of Bun had all those qualifications, and so one day I took her out for the final test—a canoe cruise down the North Fork of the Clearwater River in Idaho. At one point, the canoe swamped in rapids and Bun floated away in her life jacket, occasionally popping up through the whitewater on top of a towering wave. It was then that I noticed she was gathering up various flotsam of gear that had recently in the bottom of the canoe. Although I don’t regard it as an essential, I do appreciate tidiness in a spouse. At that very moment, I said, “Bun’s the woman for me!”

  On our honeymoon, I took Bun on a river float trip in the rain. As she confessed later, it was then she had her first doubts about the institution of marriage. Rafting or canoeing rivers is a wonderful test for a spouse. Bun says so herself.

  But enough about romance.

  At one point in my life, I owned three canoes. Being poor, I could not afford more. We lived next to a river at the time, so it was necessary to have a minimum of three canoes. One of the three was a thirteen-footer made of Kevlar. The ad for it claimed it could be dropped off the top of a ten-story building and survive unharmed. If you are not familiar with canoeing, you may not realize how often on a river you come upon something resembling a ten-story building; the sighting is usually announced by the lead canoeist shouting, “Holy bleep!” or a similar expression. That is a technical term often employed in canoeing.

  Once a couple of my daughters took the thirteen-footer upriver and a wind storm arose, so they pulled the canoe up on a bank, tied it down, and walked home. If they are not particularly thoughtful of their father, they are at least sensible. Because it is quite easy for the wind to blow an empty canoe into the next state, I went up to get it and was soon paddling back home. When you paddle a thirteen-foot canoe alone, however, the whole front half tends to rise out of the water. This is especially bad in a strong wind. Despite my best efforts, the canoe soon began spinning like a top. I drifted downriver in this undignified fashion, the canoe totally out of control. As I spun past my house, I noticed Bun standing on the dock, hair blowing, hands on hips. She shouted, “Are you crazy! Stop fooling around out there and paddle in here!”

  So you can see canoes aren’t foolproof when it comes to selecting a spouse.

  Another of my canoes was an eighteen-foot Old Town wood-and-canvas job. It was ancient but still gorgeous. Its one problem was that the previous owner had covered the canvas with fiberglass. This atrocity became apparent when you had to snap the canoe up the last quarter inch or so onto a cartop carrier all by yourself. If you weren’t careful, you could easily hook the canoe on your eyeballs. Besides, the neighbors started complaining that my groans and grunts were scaring their pets. The time had come to sell the canoe, and I eventually found a young man appropriately appreciative of this superb craft. I helped him load it on his cartop carrier. As I watched the canoe disappearing down my driveway, I gave it a sad little wave. Then I shouted to the young man one last little canoeing tip: “Watch out for your eyeballs!”

  I am now reduced to a single canoe, a seventeen-foot thin-skinned aluminum Grumman. It’s a bit battered but otherwise in excellent shape, and I can pop it onto the cartop carrier with ease. The two of us, the canoe and I, have shared many an excellent adventure. Once on a hunting trip, my friend Retch Sweeney and I paddled it across a major Idaho lake during a late-November blizzard. The whole canoe was covered with frost—or maybe it was ice, I’m not sure now. As the bow paddler, I kept hearing this weird clicking sound, not especially unusual in a car but strange in a canoe. It turned out to be the chattering of Retch’s teeth. Not all of our canoe outings were so much fun, though.

  I first fell in love with canoes at about age ten. I was fishing along the creek that ran through the back of our farm when I suddenly came upon a canoe tied up to some brush in such a way that one might suppose its owner had attempted to hide it. Right away I guessed that it must belong to a teenaged ruffian by the name of Buster. Despite his frequent threats to eradicate me from his life, I realized that Buster must be attempting amends, by leaving such a fine canoe tied up on my side of the creek.

  Even after all these years, I possess a vivid image of that canoe. Clearly, Buster had built it himself, probably in no more than a thousand hours in high school shop class. The delicate wooden framework was covered in canvas, which the young builder had painted blue, apparently with house paint. Nevertheless, you could see the skeleton of the craft right through its taut skin. It was lovely.

  Buster had been thoughtful enough even to the extent that he had left a paddle for me to use. Glancing about to make sure there were no immediate threats to my life—bears occasionally passed through our area—I slid down the bank and into the canoe. I quickly cleared away the brush that covered it, wondering all the while why Buster would be so careless with his property. I soon found the canoe much easier to paddle downstream than upstream, I don’t know why. After a test float of a few hundred yards, and finding it extremely difficult to paddle back to the craft’s original berth, I steered over to the bank and parked. Being a particularly thoughtful boy, I tied up the canoe in a place where Buster would have no trouble finding it. Then I went off home.

  Later I thought maybe I should have wiped the canoe clean of my fingerprints, just in case Buster might be upset by someone’s borrowing it. I was right, too. My fingerprints gave me away, no doubt about it, because Buster immediately zeroed in on me as his number one suspect. Boy, what I wouldn’t have given for a witness protection program back in those days, the days I first fell in love with canoes.

  Christmas Over Easy

  O

  ne day my rich friend Fenton Quagmire said to me, “I’m sick of all this electronic gadgetry that kids want for Christmas nowadays. I wish we could go back to times when Christmas was simple, when kids made tree decorations by stringing popcorn and cranberries and making chains out of strips of colored paper.”

  I said, “I was a child in simple times and I remember that our Christmases were . . .”

  “Stop!” cried Quagmire. “I never again want to hear about your simple times!”

  But I would not be deterred, even though Quagmire pretended to cover his ears with his hands. He probably would have jumped up and left if I hadn’t been driving him down the freeway at seventy miles an hour.

  Back then, as I told Quagmire, my family lived far back in the mountains and we survived mostly on deer my father shot and fish he caught. There were no hunting and fishing seasons to abide by back then. There were game wardens, of course, but they lived in town and never came out of their houses unless disguised as real estate agents.

  I went to first grade in our leaky old log cabin heated only by a barrel stove. The teacher, my Mom, chopped the firewood and dipped our drinking water out of a creek with a bucket. One day, a glowing coal shot out of a hole burned in the side of the barrel stove and set fire to the floor. Mom bounded across the room and stomped out the fire. Later she said she wished she had been wearing shoes. Teachers received very little pay in those simple days when hardly anyone bothered to pay taxes and people were
happy.

  “Stop!” cried Quagmire. “I can‘t breathe!”

  As Christmas vacation approached, Mom put on a Christmas pageant for all the parents and neighbors. We kids sang carols and performed in a Christmas play Mom had written in her spare time. All the mothers enjoyed the pageant while the fathers gathered outside the school and passed around a bottle of something they referred to as “Christmas cheer.”

  Suddenly, Santa Claus himself, all dressed in red and adorned with his flowing white beard, bounded through the door and roared out, “Ho ho ho!” I almost had a heart attack. I’d always thought of Santa Claus as a figment of my father’s imagination. But here was Santa in person! He went around the room and asked each pupil what he or she wanted for Christmas. He also gave each of us a candy cane slightly bigger than a newspaper question mark. When he bent over me to hear my request for a present, I was still shaken up by his abrupt appearance and couldn’t think of anything I wanted. Then he was gone! But I did get one surprise—Santa drank whiskey! I could smell it on his breath!

  A short while later, my mother said to my father, “I think we should spend Christmas at the farm.” Yes, we did own a small farm, and because life was simple in those days we grew much of our own food. My father understood that when my mother used the phrase “I think,” it was actually an order, as when she said to me, “I think you should go bring in some firewood.”