We all know the king of pop died. We weren’t big Jackson 5 fans in Bonedale in the early 70s, but I was a big fan of a recently transplanted Mormon girl who loved their locomotion. She had maroon bell-bottom pants and beret to prove it, and when I was actually in school, my time was spent admiring her high sense of fashion. I wasn’t in class often, because the area between the Crystal and Fork was much more alive. We didn’t have truant officers and the school’s main job was to fatten the calves so we could work the mines, or make more calves to work the fields. My buddies and I would ditch school and catch a can full of live hoppers and head to the river. I had an Eagle Claw fly-rod-spin combo that didn’t work well for either. It was dabble fishing, so you didn’t need much of a tool. You just reached over the bank and watched the trout smack it. A fly rod is a wicked tool for live bait. We fly fish for two reasons: one, it’s more fun; two, it works better. Take a kid out with a spinning rod and see how much more difficult it is to get the job done. My kids’ first fish were fly caught on the Colorado, and then we moved into spinning gear so they could appreciate the simplicity of a stick and line. You pick it up, you put it down. Women and children get fly-casting, where most men don’t. I think that’s because we’re compelled to work at it. Fly rods don’t respond well to sledgehammer, steroid personalities. That’s the other thing I like about fly rods and maroon velvet jumpsuits, they respond to touch.

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Kea C. Hause esq.