Articles - by Jim Larsen
MY DAD
We lived on a farm in Northern Wisconsin. The Flambeau River skirted our place. Only the garden and small bit of pasture kept us from stepping out the back door and into the water. Set like diamonds, little ponds punctuated our 440 acres...a perfect wild world for trapping muskrats and mink and angling for walleyed pike and bullheads. I was Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. But I dreaded the day when the world would hear of our paradise, wooded and watered. Any day now we would be overrun with folk from Chicago who would also want the simple life. They'd go out and buy up a bunch of mink traps and squirrel guns and my little heaven would evaporate. Didn't quite happen that way. Our family moved to Nevada and I eventually had a dream fufilled when Karen and I married and moved our family to Oregon. Now I close my eyes and picture the home place and the paths that led to the squirrel woods and ponds where muskrats and mink were pursued. But my heart is here...90 miles from the Pacific and minutes from canoe waters that call my name most every day.
I am eager to get my father, Norm, into a drift boat or to a river bank with rod in hand. Yesterday I was talking to him about his upcoming visit to Oregon. I think he had the speaker phone on and I was driving through the Cascade Mountains with my Motorola cell phone up to my good ear. We talked about fly fishing and the possibilities that lay in store for us when he gets here in October. I'm so jazzed about it. I'v always been one to exaggerate a bit so he may feel the need to tone down my words of enthusiasm. But he can't know that I feel like a little kid. Santa is coming to town. And we're going fishing together.
Sarah, recently graduated to Glory. They had been married for 31 years. Mom had passed away back in January of 1975. He had told me then that he'd never marry again and put somebody through the ordeal of separation by death. But that Thanksgiving I was the preacher who helped Dad and Sarah tie the knot. Both marriages had been great. Last month I joined sisters Dottie, Kathy and Marlene in Las Vegas where Sarah's first service was conducted. I slept in Dad's bed with him. When we flew together to Illinois for Sarah's other funeral we shared another bed. Talk about a wonderful experience. I thought it was great and intimate a few years back when I cut his hair with his dozen cowlicks. But to be there in the same space when he was sleeping. Oh...that was great. Sort of hard to explain, so I won't.
My favorite picture of the two of us hangs on the wall on my side of the bed these days. Dad is standing there holding a 48 or 50 inch Sturgeon. I'm there next to him, shirtless but in little bib overalls. I'm looking up at him and holding the rod he used to land that big fish. He's 28 and I'm 3. I've been looking up to him ever since.