A WIDE brown dirt road lay straight out beyond the Thunder-chicken Ford hood ornament. Two young men
in the car had left their barracks on Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
They were traveling fast in the rising sun, casting for a few days of walleye
fishing. Andy and Bart drove across the prairie quickly toward Devil’s Lake.
The first hour had sprinted them in missile-like fashion across miles
of smooth, recently-scraped and firmly packed dirt road. They were almost
halfway to their destination.
Andy had a home-spun theory about traveling
fast on straight gravel roads. As he taught it, Bart.., a California boy, did not
argue the point. Not being from a Midwest prairie state, he did not fault his
friend’s prairie logic. Andy’s strategy seemed to work. The driver said, “When
you drive a dry prairie gravel road, you’ve got to play around until you find a
speed that won’t pick up stones.”
Andy’s strategy was well-planned. At too-low
speeds the car would fill with dust. So he said they needed to go a bit faster.
Then gravel started to bounce from the tires toward the floor board and
rockers, but the dust in the car lessened. As he increased speed, they heard fewer
“clinks” and “chinks” as gravel missed the bottom of Andy’s ’56 Ford hardtop.
Thus, varying speed a bit according to the
humidity and other natural wheat field factors that only Andy could talk about
at length, they sped up... and the noise stopped. On that morning at precisely
62 mph, Bart noted that relative quiet settled into what had been a
dust-raising drill. No longer was dirt coming in, but was seen curling up far
behind. He became very glad that there was no oncoming traffic. They would make
the two men slow enough to keep stones from hitting windshields.
Andy explained to Bart that the centrifugal
force of the tires overcame any “stickiness” of small pebbles clamped in the
tread. The ideal speed threshold was therefore detected only by the relative
quiet. With just a slight rumble of rolling wheels, they could then listen to
Hank Williams on the radio, and talk to one another at a normal fish-monger's
volume.
Once the two young men achieved that ideal
speed with the wide smooth gravel road still allowing safety, Andy maintained a
rate just a few mph above the “quiet” speed zone. This took a bit of
old-fashioned, astute mid-western throttle play that could make many modern,
electronic cruise control envious.
Andy had sought to get them right up to that
ideal speed quickly. He had just paid a body man big bucks to refinish the
lower panels of the Ford with the original salmon-like, coral color he liked so
much. After the paint restoration was so ably completed and dried for a time at
the base hobby shop, he’d attached small rubber mud flaps on the front wheel
wells. Andy topped off his work with a bug screen bought at the Western Auto.
The screen graced the front of the car to protect the grille. Though Bart had
not said so, he thought Andy’s bug catcher a bit much for the beautifully-kept
Ford hardtop. However, the bug screen was not just to protect the grill. The
screen helped to keep the radiator from being clogged by a bumper crop of
grasshoppers. While the overhead valve Ford V-8 did run clean and cool thanks
to the regularly washed screen.
On that day, Andy had more in mind. His
prairie practicalities were at work. You see, Andy hailed from South Dakota. He
was raised in Mobridge. In his youth he had learned to fish for pike
prairie-style. Given that history, he knew exactly what he was doing with his
bug screen. While Bart had wondered why they weren’t taking a paved road toward
the east that morning, Andy had acquiring bait in his mind.
Bart was to learn that almost every prairie
dusty road they traveled had wide ditches on both sides. In winter, drifted
snow would fill them. Those wide, shallow areas Andy used as a resource. Bart
discovered his strategy when they drew up to a lonely stop sign.
The two men sat there for a moment idling at a
prairie intersection. There was not a house or barn anywhere in sight. Andy
then drove slowly across the rural intersection, and went down the gradual
slope into the wide ditch paralleling the road. He started to drive slowly
along in the very bottom of the ditch. He picked up a little speed through the
still wet grass. Soon minor taps on the front of the car and the splats on the
windshield told the tale.
You see, Andy had picked the right road, the
right ditch, and had the right height to the rising sun. After a quarter mile
or so of ditch running, at the field’s next tractor access road, Andy pulled up
out of the ditch and stopped. He quickly jumped out with the keys in his hand.
He opened the trunk lid and handed Bart two big empty coffee cans and a pair of
gloves. They went to the front grill’s bug screen and started picking live
bait! Live, stunned and splattered grasshoppers, beetles, moths and bugs were
there! Some of those nasties Bart still can’t describe or identify. Andy grinned,
and said, “Now we’ve got bait!”
I remembered this scene described from Bart many
years ago as I strolled through a car show. The show was held next to a little
lake in the town where I now live. There I saw a Ford hardtop of the same color
as my friend’s former ride. The hardtop sparkled in the morning sun.
Beautifully preserved, the Ford Victoria lured both my attention and the focus
of my camera lens. I was not, however, the only person gathered by the sight.
Though it did not have the stone deflecting
mud flaps, nor a massive bug screen attached to its grille… the car was a
magnet. It worked quite like a bug zapper lit up at night. People gathered
around the car. Amid them was a man passing out Christian pamphlets.
As a minister, I wondered why I hadn’t thought
of that witness method. I thought of my Air Force buddies and those prairie
fishing methods. So I asked the man with the Christian gospel tracts, “What
kind of fishing bait did the disciples use?
He said, “Lord knows…”
Andy had taught me, “Find a ditch on a lightly
traveled road; move at just the right speed, and the bait gathered will be
right.”
Those words tapped into my mind like the bait
on his bug screen. I thought about them again as I later unfolded my lawn chair
next to the lake. I opened my fishing box after casting out a tasty bug as
bait. I looked at the tract the man had given.
The booklet he was passing to others told
about Jesus teaching folks down at the lakeshore. I read a few lessons taught
about faith.
Oddly, only now I remember that Andy had taken
that road for a reason. I remembered that I knew him after meeting him in a
Lutheran church in Mohall, ND. I realize now that those two young servicemen
carried on long conversations about fishing, faith and God’s love supplied. It
was three-hook bait given freely by God like bugs in a ditch, but far more
profound.
You see, during many
excursions in North Dakota for land-locked salmon, pike, muskies, pickerel and
more, Andy had been instrumental in laying the foundation for faith
understanding in many people. In quiet trips to Devil’s Lake my fisherman
friend shared his faith on more than one occasion, with Bart and others.
Andy, in somewhat
regular practice grown of his mid-western Norwegian Lutheran roots, showed that
he lived a baptized life of hooked Christian freedom every day. Whenever
possible, he’d gone about prayerfully fishing, hunting and harvesting…
gathering the sinful and un-nameable bugs that God had laid out before him.
They were like the manna bread given by God to the people of Israel in the
desert so long ago.
I do remember that conversations about Jesus
as Lord were spoken easily by Andy. They certainly became part of the day for
anyone who sat in a boat with him on a farm pond. The story of Jesus calming
the seas seemed fit to be laughed about as he would row hard to beat a rain
storm sweeping across the Garrison Reservoir. Through all his witness, Andy
would find that a fishing buddy would slowly be brought to know the grace of
God.
I wonder now, “What does the Holy Trinity have
in common with a treble hook?” Maybe very little, but it makes for great debate
as we might sit alongside each other on the banks of a cold Dakota lake. I
think of this after my many years in the pulpit. Andy taught me that it’s
amazing who you can catch just by driving slowly through the ditches of life...
trolling along... catching devilish bugs maimed… and using them as bait.
Here's a video for those who like to try fishing for people...
About Liking Fish!
