I guess there is still a great deal
of the kid left in this aging body. The excitement of opening
Xmas presents is still with me.
The excitement on opening one particular Christmas
present is still palpable over 40 years later. The muted glow
of the oiled and varnished split cane fly rod, as I pulled it
from cloth rod bag, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,
barring perhaps Imogene’s red hair. The shy, stumbling, ineffective
pursuit of Imogene, was placed on hold, as I concentrated on learning
to ease the magic out of this wand.
"Uncle" Norms patient tutoring, had built
my skills to the point where I could cast a reasonable length
line, sufficient to fish the smallish water around Canterbury.
Until now I fished with gear borrowed from Norm, but borrowed
gear has none of the charm of gear that is your own. Constantly
using your own rod allows you to become acutely familiar with
its characteristics, and the best ways to elicit the responses
you require.
Over the next three years, the rod and me were constant
companions on the rivers. Most often I was on my own, cycling
or busing, to the rivers near Christchurch, in th eSouth Island of New Zealand. Occasionally, Norm
or my parents were persuaded to take me further afield, to the
Waimakariri Gorge, or the Waitaki.
Over time, I began to regularly catch fish. Simple
laws of mathematics, accounted for most. If you spent as much
time as I did fishing, the chances of eventually placing the lure
in front of a fish, increased dramatically. Throughout this period,
I fished with this one rod. It was my most treasured possession.
Every year under Norm’s close guidance, the rod
was stripped of its varnish, lightly oiled, allowed to dry, and
then re-varnished. The cork handles were lightly sanded, and pits
and holes filled with a paste made from the cork dust and varnish.
By now I had learned to use a matte-finish varnish, so the rod
did not flash in the sun and alert fish to my presence. The brass
guides were removed and soaked overnight in cold tea, to turn
them a dull, non – reflective, brown. The guides were rebound
with a dull brown thread. We spent a lot of time making the rod
a dull denial of the bright gleaming rod that had been pulled
from its bag that Xmas day.
At age seventeen, the family moved to Auckland,
and the rod moved to the back of my closet. New school, rugby,
surf lifesaving, surfing, diving, and the lack of easily reached
trout fishing water, left the rod languishing in the dark, behind
my clothes.
A burgeoning career in advertising and marketing,
marriage, children and a rapidly increasing number and size of mortgages,
left the rod in the closet. Even a two year stint in England did
not encourage me to take the rod. Mind you, the closed shop fishing
scene I discovered to be the norm in England, did nothing to encourage
me to try fishing in England. Paying to fish, was an anathema
to this angler, used to roaming free on the New Zealand rivers.
Back in New Zealand, and finally settled into a
new home, fishing took a back seat to the mammoth task of returning
a walled garden to much more than its former glory. Under my wife’s
firm guidance the ‘Roseraie’ was borne, and the first planting
of what became many hundreds of roses began. My rod ended up on
a rack in the garage.
At the time, our most effective blackmail weapon
to gain some semblance of compliance with reasonable requests
made of our three boys, was whether they could watch Zorro on
television. The sword fighting skills of Zorro, held my boys in
awe. My oldest son, then aged around ten, seemed particularly
taken with Zorro’s skill.
One day, in mid – November, toward home time, I
received a tearful phone call from my then wife. "You won’t believe
what your son Mark has done," she wailed.
As a brief aside, it has been a constant source
of mystery to me, that whenever the kids are in trouble, the kids
became mine, not ours.
"What on earth has he done this time,"
I asked.
"I am too upset to talk about it, you can deal
with it, he’s your son, you can sort it out……"
Further discussion seemed pointless so I hurried
the one or two miles home. What had been done, was all too obvious
the moment I turned the car down the driveway. The driveway was
littered with the flower heads of roses. It got worse. As I turned
the corner into the garden proper, the evidence of the carnage
increased. Flower heads littered the garden. Branches of the rose
bushes and other plants were bent, battered and broken.
Maryan was pacing up and down, staccato outbursts
of, "How could you…. why… what got into you….my beautiful
roses….." and the like, were directed at my cowering son.
It was only then I noticed the two items in Maryan’s
hands. In one was the tip section, in the other the butt section,
of my rod. The ends flayed out.
Young Mark’s affection and admiration of Zorro had
defeated all reason. My rod had become the sword, the flowers
and rose bushes the enemy. With a skill borne of too much time
spent in front of TV, slashing havoc descended on the garden.
The garden, and my rod had borne full brunt of Zorro’s skill.
It took newly found levels of self control, not
to apply what remained of my rod to Mark’s nether regions. I feared
that the ferocity of Zorro’s attack on the roses, would have been
well and truly outdone by my attack on his bum.
I cannot now remember much of what immediately followed,
but I do know that Mark’s interest in Zorro dropped to zero, and
to this day he has little interest in fishing, or gardening. I
also know that even now, the sight of a split cane fly rod evokes
in me a mixture of emotions, mostly sad.