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The FÜLODOG
- University of Wisconsin Press
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96 The FÜLODOG My name’s Cooper. I men tion that at the out set be cause I’m the only one of our four some with out a nick name, un less “Coop” qual ifies as such. The way we met is one of those bi zarre sce nar ios that hap pen in life about as often as win ning the lot tery. For the four of us were—re main—as out wardly un matched and ill suited to com pat ibil ity as any four American males of ap prox i mately the same mid dle age could be. Flash is a jew eler. Crawler cleans sep tic tanks. Martini’s a ten ured pro fes sor of clas sics at the local U. And me? Just say I’m a guy whose work rés umé has enough list ings it re quires extra post age to mail. And yet there we were, a pot luck four some of total strang ers, tee ing it up to gether at our local muni on the most glo ri ous April morn ing any of us could re call. It was the kind of day when you wake up after an end less win ter and know at once you have to do some thing—have to get out. If we’d done the first thing that stirred in our blood—the thing each of us, un be knownst to each other, wanted des per ately to do—we’d have gone trout fish ing. But that com mon bond was one of the last things we dis cov ered about each other. Which is some kind of warped cos mic irony, for that glo ri ous Sat ur day hap pened to be the opener of the trout sea son, and much as we longed to be out, we’d all pri vately sworn years ear lier never again to join the stream-clogging hordes on open ing day. As a re sult, each of us ar rived alone at the mangy lit tle mu nic i pal course, tot ing our ill-matched, even man gier sets of golf clubs. None of us had ever played more than a couple of times a year. The starter rolled 97 The FÜLODOG his eyes and put us to gether, no doubt in the faint hope of con sol i dat ing the dam age to the fair ways and greens. None of us took the game se ri ously. Maybe be cause of this near-equal in ep ti tude, we agreed after the round to play again a few days later, and have hacked our way around the course to gether a couple of times a month ever since. But fish ing for trout is a dif fer ent story. Though, as I men tioned, it wasn’t until our third or fourth round to gether that this mu tual pas sion came to light. As I re call, it hap pened on the fif teenth tee when Crawler hit one of his skulled hooks and Flash barked some thing across the fair way about “an other worm killer.” To which Crawler drawled in re sponse “Damn straight, I’ll use ’em out on Crooked Creek to mor row after noon.” From that point on, in that post-match hour when most golf ers sit in the club house bar re hash ing their rounds, the four of us in var i ably hunched over our drinks ar guing about trout fish ing. And it was in those heated ex changes—a kind of cul mi na tion of them, I sup pose it’s fair to say—that the FÜLODOG con test was born. From the be gin ning, the heart of our end less squab bling was the ques tion of how best to fish for trout. “Best” as in most ef fec tive, most en joy able, most ef fi cient, most etc., etc. You name it, we argued over it, with about as much chance of res o lu tion as there is that any of us will ever break a 100 on the links. Flash fishes spin ners. Crawler is a gar den hackle pur ist. And Martini’s nick name is Mar tini be cause his loy alty to dry flies ex ceeds even that to his post-round li ba tion, which he un fail ingly...