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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...

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