Chris L's Adventure

When I tried to fish…

John Boykin was the photographer for a magazine I worked on. It was a magazine for employees of a well servicing operation out of Midland, Texas. I grew up and have lived all my life in suburban Philadelphia, so that job was an amazing experience. I was able to visit places it’s unlikely I’d have seen any other way. I also got to meet a lot of great people, and John is one of them. The best way I can describe John is to say that there may be very little worth doing he has not done. He’s had a lot of fascinating jobs, both in big cities and tiny towns all over the country. (I’ll let him recount some of that when he feels it’s appropriate.)

Anyway, he has always been very kind to this city kid who found himself in unfamiliar territory far from home. My favorite example of that is when my fragile stomach rejected a large quantity of steak fingers from Buddy’s Drive In of Andrews, TX. I lobbed those fingers back up while hanging out of John’s Tahoe driving from Midland to Dallas. I was fairly successful in stretching out the window to ruin only my sportcoat and kept the interior relatively finger-free. Even though this whole incident was immediately after the worst photo shoot ever, John was nothing but sympathetic.

So, when John suggested that we go float fishing, which I had never done, I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This entailed a substantial drive from Philadelphia to Arkansas. The first day, I drove from Philadelphia to Dayton, OH, stayed the night, and visited the Air Force Museum there. Upon leaving around 11 a.m., I called John and was informed that I should be there in about an hour. I thought we were planning to meet the next day, and in discussing it with him, I realized that he was 100% right and there was no way to reconcile what I thought the schedule was with any kind of reality. I did some quick calculations with a road atlas and my GPS and said I would drive straight through and get to Calico Rock by about 9 p.m.

This was where things started to fall apart. I looked at the map, and taking interstates most of the way looked like it was very indirect. So, I asked the GPS to calculate “shortest distance”—which would use any available road—to Calico Rock.

All went well until the GPS directed me to a ferry. The ferry had closed at 5 pm, and it was now around 7. I had put “no toll roads” into the GPS, but apparently a toll ferry is not a toll road.

So, I looked at my map. I was at Aker’s Ferry, at the racist corner of roads K and KK in Salem, MO. I put “detour” into my GPS to take me around the ferry and kept driving. The GPS was directing me down what appeared to be a fairly well-maintained road.
I continued about two miles, then reached a fork. (I should mention that the road has been getting progressively worse, and where the road was less clear, as I drove along.) Looking at the GPS, I decided I took the wrong fork. So, I backed up, and proceeded down what looked like the right way.
At this point, the road looked very unroadlike. And, at the most 50 feet down the path, I started to slide sideways down a sort of a ravine. I might have been doing 5 mph, at the very most. This is what went through my mind very quickly:

1. I am driving an Isuzu Trooper. This vehicle is not very stable when exposed to lateral forces of any sort, and flips easier than a toilet seat. It is now sliding sideways. If it rolls, I’m probably dead, and they’ll find me sometime in the Fred Thompson administration.

2. For some reason, I remembered very clearly a description from Car and Driver of Land Rover’s “Hill Descent Control” technology, which automates the process of descending a steep incline. It basically pumps the brakes and maintains a very slow speed without the driver being involved. The key thing that stuck in my mind was that the technology was designed to make sure that you didn’t lock up the brakes and just slide down the incline, and was designed to make sure that you didn’t roll down the hill so fast that the vehicle was uncontrollable. So, if you’re going downhill, that’s the behavior you want to mirror.

3. So, I steered into the inevitable trip down this ravine and pumped the brakes on the way down.

I turned around at the base of the ravine, put the 4WD into “low,” and tried to drive back up from whence I came. This simply didn’t work. The road surface was basically grass with ruts, and my passing over the “road” caused the right side of the road to collapse and slide off in a big dirt and mud chunk. To get out, I would have had to drive over this chunk, getting traction in wet mud to do so. This was not going to happen.

I was still fairly hopeful that this was no big deal. I whipped out my cell phone, and there was no coverage. There had to be a pay phone back at the canoe rental office at the anti-African-American intersection (K and KK), and that was probably 3 miles away. I’m in horrible shape, but I can still walk 3 miles. I’ll walk, call, and get a tow. So, I marked where the Trooper was in my GPS, and started walking.

When I got there, the phone didn’t work. I’m still thinking this is no big deal. It’s around 8 pm., I’ll walk back to the town I passed through on the way. A few GPS check indicated this town was something like 15 miles away.

Now, I’m starting to think this is a big deal. I debated going back to the truck, but decided I would walk towards the town. I made it about 4 miles in about an hour, all of it uphill. Then, a truck was coming the other way. The truck stopped, and I explained that I needed to get to a pay phone and that the one next to the ferry wasn’t working. The guy was very helpful, and his big black dog was very friendly. This is where I really screwed up.

We drive. We drive the four miles to the ferry/canoe office down at K&KK. We drive past the road down which the Trooper was stuck. We drive about another 3 miles to a series of cabins, and I try to use the pay phone there. It doesn’t work. The guy in the truck explains that there’s nowhere else to get a pay phone that’s less than 20 miles, and he doesn’t have time to drive 20 miles. I offer him some compensation for his time and gas. He still doesn’t have time. I offer some more compensation for time and gas. “I don’t have time.” Well, maybe he really doesn’t have time. OK. He asks me, “What are you going to do?” I say, “Damned if I know. I guess I’ll just sleep here.” What did he think I was going to do? Make a satellite phone out of my boots?

So, I decided to sit for a while and hope for a car to drive by. No deal. Then, I decide to try to walk back to the town, which is at least 20 miles now. In retrospect, this is clearly when my judgment was starting to fade from fatigue.

Before I could get back to the new center of my universe (K&KK), my feet started to bleed so badly that I couldn’t walk any more. By now, it’s about 1:30, and I decide to sleep by the ferry/canoe office. The next 5 hours are spent sitting on a plastic lawn chair and fading in and out of consciousness. The office was scheduled to open at 7.

Around 6:30, a park ranger drove by and was able to call a tow on his two-way radio. By 9:15, I was in the office and was able to call John and quickly told him the situation. I also called my wife, who had apparently spoken with John that morning.

By 9:30, the tow guy was there. We were able to find the Trooper fairly quickly, thanks to the GPS. His technique was pretty amazing. He had an about 1990 Chevy pickup. He navigated through the mud basically by hooking a winch line to the nearest tree and pulling his truck from place to place. In about an hour, I was out. The only problem was that the driver’s side of the rear bumper cover was pulled off its mounts in the extraction. I temporarily attached it with two bungee cords running up to the roof rack.

Another hour is spent following the tow guy back to his garage so he can run my credit card, which puts me about a half-hour out of the way to Calico Rock.

From there, I am finally driving towards Calico Rock. I passed the Lum and Abner museum, which is dedicated to an old radio program. It was closed, and apparently had been for quite a while. I also passed the “Clinton Lie-brary,” which looked open, but I lacked the time to soak that in.

I arrive at the Jenkins Motel in Calico Rock and see John’s truck and canoe. I move my stuff into the room, take a shower, and put some gauze on my feet to cushion the blisters and soak up some blood. Teena was very helpful in bringing things out of the car.

I felt incredibly guilty that I screwed up the schedule in the first place, then cost another day with the stranding. So, I insisted that we get on the river ASAP. We run up to the fish and game office for the license I would need to make my inevitable fish haul legal, then drive down to the river.

At this point, I realize that I am completely useless. I’m in pain from my feet, and am unbelievably tired. I was fighting nausea, and it was kind of hot. John had done a great deal of preparation for me, and had everything I would need to fish ready to go. I really appreciated all the work he had put in. He was asking me to tie/untie ropes that were holding things in the canoe, and I could barely do it. Part of this was fatigue; part of this unfamiliarity with knots. I’ve never even been a Cub Scout. (I refuse to join any organization where the promotional path entails participating in something called “weeblo.”)

We finally, with no help from me, get the canoe in the water. John gets in, and I have a hell of a time throwing myself in the boat. I have zero experience with these things, but it seemed like we didn’t have enough clearance between the water line on the side of the boat and the top of the edge of the boat. At this point, I feel like I need to hold the sides of the boat and actively tack against any forces that might try to move it off center even slightly. John interpreted this as panic. It was that, too.

At this point, John fires up the motor and starts to drive the boat upriver.

The thrust provided by the boat starts splashing water over the front of the boat. I assumed that John has to see this, and not knowing any better, I think it’s normal.

It reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. There is a scene where a guy who charters planes to Mecca describes a bunch of distant desert dwellers in a plane crash. The plane catches a wing on the ground as it lands, and spins around. Everybody calmly picks up their goat and gets off the plane. “That’s how they think it’s supposed to go.”

I’m thinking that taking on a little water may be the way it’s supposed to go.

John asks, “Are we taking on water.”

I say, “Yeah.”

John says, “What.”

I say, “Yes, we’re taking on water.”

John says, “OK, we’re done.”

So, we give up and head back to the dock.

We chatted with some folks while putting the canoe back on the trailer. The guy who runs a fishing service in town grew up where I live in Paoli, PA. We had an interesting discussion about how rural the area was when he went there in the ‘70’s versus today. A couple who run a B&B in town chatted us up and described their establishment. They came back again describing individual rooms with pricing, as if they really, really needed some revenue.

John and I went to a supermarket and bought some bread to go with the cold cuts he had brought. (He’s very well prepared, again.) Around 8 p.m, I collapse and sleep straight through the night, which is pretty rare for me.

The next morning, we decide to drive around the area. The roads were very curvy and would have been a lot of fun to drive. I think John enjoyed the roads, even with the canoe and trailer on the back. We would up at Gaston’s, which is a well-known trout fishing resort. They had a large grass landing strip for planes, with a few small prop craft parked right by the door.

We had lunch there, and it was very cool. I had smoked trout, which I had not had before. I’m unlikely to have it again: I’m sure it was the ne plus ultra of smoked trout, but it was not my deal. They had several collections of everything on the walls: bicycles, old radios, gas station signs. It was visually amazing.

At this point, we go back to the hotel to pick up my vehicle. We both chat with Teena for a while, and depart.

It was definitely an unforgettable experience, and I hope that John and I can get together and do it again. Properly, this time.