Authors note: This a work of fiction. Any similarities to individuals mentioned herein is a pure coincidence.
For the many years during my childhood and youth when my family and I visited to upper Susquehanna valley, we stay at a small cabin in the deep rural valley near the village of Wyalusing. All found by chance and my father's ever present lure of adventure, the discovery of the Smith place at Homet ferry would change my life, and many that who my life has touched. I was just looking at the small water color drawings my mother made on such a trip. The pair in my modest harbour side living room here. They depict with a primitive and profound truth, in muted greens and tones of the earth our idyll along the river. My sister and I, her red hair and her artist heart peer out across the vista at the rocks, far above the river valley. Clear in the image is the large, kidney bean shaped island in the mist. Nearly 40 years later I would still canoe with friends and family around the island, always remembering to stay right for the channel, or pick the wrong side and portage in a few inches of water(or is it left?).
Great fish are found here that are almost legendary. In fact the name itself of Towanda, a nearby town and county seat, means loosely in Delaware. "place of many fishes." For a long time the travel to this place was to be for fishing in the river and many fine trout streams that begin in the rugged endless mountains and discharge into the still wild river. Usually, the real reason for my trips here after my father died were for solitude and recollection. After dad died, my mother really withdrew from the world but to care for us. My sister would remain home always, brilliant and disabled. Mostly from the stark cruelty of this world. I would very successfully go on into an engineering discipline, much as my father had desired. Mother would have preferred medical school. She was probably right.
So often armed with a pocket full of money, great gear, friends, later wives, and children along I would return to the places. Sometimes it would get a little rough with the locals on a Saturday. After a day of fishing and an evening of beers and twangy bluegrass music made by old and young folk from the surrounding hills the locals could get rowdy. I never had any real problems, as I could usually suggest that I buy a beer to stop the argument. Some places favoured a group of locals known as "Pooles". This term isn't really used openly anymore and considered an insult. The name derives from an early settler named Cyrus Van Der Poole. This Netherlander settled the area long ago and his descendants mixed with the natives, blacks, french and whomever else was going or coming. Later these people populated an area South of Towanda-or "South Towanda". That is explained to me to be anywhere south of the US 6 bridge over the river there. On a night out I have met these people. Some still with straight jet-black hair and an intolerance for alcohol. But some pretty, if not sometimes bawdy, girls.
Later losing my taste for camping , I would stay at the prominent local hotel there. It was a modest place in a basically poor town, that still had stately Victorian homes. All the last wealth of the lumber boom of the 1800's now gone. You see, the deforestation of the Appalachians provided all the lumber for the building of the eastern cities during the industrial revolution. Logs were ripped from the pristine old growth forest of ancient hardwoods and floated south. To places like Williamsport, or Harrisburg and shipped east by rail. The huge annual runs of American shad and other ocean fishes are almost gone. There is a huge power producing dam at Conowingo, Maryland. Efforts are being made to help the fish, but with the forest still 500 years from real maturity, the industry, and factors which may not be known, it will a long time until the Delaware's get there fishery back.
On one such trip I saw a pair of older guys pushing chess pieces in the lobby of the motel. Curious and my ears ringing from there mountain band playing in the basement bar (where I had been all night), I said hello. The one guy had a fishing license on his hat and was sucking on a corn cob pipe, unlit. The other was tall, gaunt, and somewhat cadaverous, cranky. I introduced myself and found out the fisherman was Phil. He lived in the retirement place nearby. Will was the owner of the motel. His black hat had a naval ship designation from WWII. I can't remember the ship name, but I think an Atlantic fleet cruiser.
Well over the course of this trip I played a few games of chess and got know the two men. They were no competition for me on the board, as I had been playing tournament chess since childhood and was a rated master. But we still had fun , and when the ego's went away I gave some chess lessons.
Phil was a very pleasant and cheerful old guy who could barely hear. He invited me to go fishing with him. I was solo that trip and welcomed some non-business or non-family company. He showed me a place south of town he called "The old gun club". We got there across the mountain from town, about 20 minutes. I was shocked to see that the place he had picked was the other side of the river from our childhood family summer cabin. The old ferry had brought the wagons across there and the road is still intact, but pretty rough. It was the exact spot that mom had painted, hanging forever in my living room. Fate is an odd and awesome thing.
I learned Phil was very poor. He lived on 300 bucks a month. He lived to fish and pursue his radio hobby. There was real joy in him as he spoke of these hobbies. More than hobbies, his center of meaning. He was an excellent fisherman and a true angler. This was evidenced by his refusal to buy bait (he was not a fly fisherman!). He worked hard for about an hour turning over rocks for nasty "clippers". I had not heard that term before. He meant Hellgrammites. These are up to 3 inches long, black with nasty pincher's and a poor attitude. These are the larva of the dobsonfly, a stately, shockingly scary large insect that is completely harmless as an adult. Bass love Clippers. Nearly as soon as the bait hit the water, a small mouth was on. And sometimes big ones. These are among the strongest and fighting est fish in fresh water. Here to were big pike and huge channel catfish, Phil's specialty. He had picture back at his tiny apartment of a 50 pounder he recently caught by the bridge.
My new friend who lived in poverty by any standards was one of the happiest people I have met. As long as he was fishing, or taking apart an old radio, he was in heaven.
Between fishing and listening to twangy music, I would run into Will in the motel. He was grey. But he seemed lonely and intelligent. We would chat while he lost his chess game, or he would buy me a beer at his own bar in the motel. Later, I was told that was unheard of. I learned he had been an IRS agent and then a business consultant. He had purchased some small companies in Tax trouble and resold them for a small fortune. Over the years, he had married and had children. They were distant, but he owned most of this small town, and a lot of some small town in Florida.
I could talk to Will about business. I had lost as much or more as he now owned only a few years before. I was pretty low. He suggested I was too hard on myself. I should just go to Atlantic City and think. About how to reinvent my life and my fortune. I also learned that he had inoperable cancer.
Now the pallor and attitude made some sense. I didn't return to the area for almost 6 months. On a crisp early October day, I flew back to the east coast and drove to the river. The road from Harrisburg follows the main branch of the boulder strewn turbulent river almost all along the way.
I was anxious to visit with Phil. I was a bit concerned about his "pal" Will. Will had an odd relationship with poor Phil. Phil lived in complete but blissful poverty. Will seemed to have no other friends and was a millionaire several times over. As far as I could tell, he wouldn't even buy Phil a cup of coffee.
That evening, my phone rang in my room, number 12. It was Will. The desk clerk told him I was back and he needed help. He lived on site in an ordinary room on the other side of the motel, by the forever empty pool. I knocked on the door and a weak voice told me to enter. Will was long and thin on the messy bed. The room smelled of death. Cancer has a certain smell. I know. He asked me if I would re bandage his foot. His right foot was a festering purple malodorous bob. With my semi-medical background, or at least having some training, I applied antiseptic and wrapped it with fresh gauze bandage. "You need to have this professionally handled", I suggested. He told me he had, not much could be done, and he was just waiting.
He managed to get up and he took me down to the basement bar for a drink. It was a quiet Sunday, no Pooles, factory workers-no mountain band. "You know, I just looked at stock I bought in 1960 I paid 10,000 dollars for". "Oh, I replied". Well today it just hit, after 39 years, a million dollars". And this was one of only many of such "deals" he had made long ago as a savvy businessman. Apparently he had purchased an interest in a small bank in Harrisburg, and it had grown and blossomed over the years to a major banking institution.
I asked him what he was going to do as we sipped good scotch. "Well if I sell I have a tax problem", he said". The man is weeks or months away from death from cancer and he has a tax problem.
"Will, maybe you should donate it, build something for the community, or found a charity," I suggested.
"What the hell good is that going to do me" was the answer. I had no reply to that statement. Too, I had been rich, greedy arrogant only a few years before our last meeting. But I was queasy at this revelation. I tried to explain that when we have an opportunity to do good we should take it, if we can, an often when we really can't or don't want to.
As far as I know, Will left all of his money to one of several children. The assets were distributed. There is no "Will Johnson" foundation. Phil still lives in abject blissful poverty all these years later, fishing and now enthralled with a new hobby, the Internet. To the town Will owned he is barely even remembered but by we few. Phil mentions him to me by email around the date of his death each year, otherwise his name in not spoken. I had suggested to Will he at least give a few dollars to his best friend Phil. I would have loved to have the motel to run, and I told him, half joking, being just a working man at that last time when we met.
I am not sure Phil even went to the funeral that cold late fall day, a few weeks after I went back to California.
That was about 10 years ago now as I sit here along the sea. Its a warming June afternoon, and I am about to meet a friend for dinner at a seaside cottage. Right now I live a very modest life. Sometimes I fish, talk with the family or my few friends, and watch the tides. As I get older now and my children go on into their futures and my solitude grows I think of my two old friends from northern Appalachia. It sure wasn't Will's fault he had cancer and died, no more than my father's or anyone else's for the most part. At least those kinds of the awful disease, which has claimed so many who were loved. I am not sure Will ever knew love. I know he knew and had money. He was lifeless and nearly soulless. I say this with all respect, as he was my friend. Maybe only one of two, and we were only just beyond acquaintances.
I think of old Phil who is now saving pennies to buy gas for his old car to go fishing. He is always happy for his free lunch at the retirement apartments where he lives, he reported to me by email today. Next he is over joyed at the senior discount he gets at breakfast time at the Wendy's across the street. "Its 2 bucks for french toast and a glass of water,S/D", he says. I guess S/D is "senior discount". He hopes I will visit him and fish again as its been almost 3 years since my last trip to there, at least when having enough time to stay a while and visit. You see I haven't had much money either.
As time moves forward I think about these two people that were put in my path. The happy Phil, fishing into the future with his tiny pension among the mountains and the river he loves. The place he has lived his entire 70 years. With health issues now, he has asked me to be his executor and help him to divest his assets at that time. He asked me to have a flea market there and donate the proceeds to charity. Phil is disabled and rejected by nearly everyone as a madman. He has an old computer, a chair, table, and a broken TV. A failure at the end of his harsh and bitter life as this world looks upon him, and passes judgement.
I am pretty sure I'll end this life with a few more "assets" than Phil. But nothing is sure but the single moment we exist in, this tiny part of our only grasp on eternity. This moment-the now. May or maybe not I may accummulate "things" all over again. There is a boldly truthful futility to that pursuit. Joy and peace, as my mother professed are the most important. . But I assure you that I will not go out, if I am given that time for reflection, like Will. To be very sure, I will truly be sorry the day Phil is buried. I will be at the funeral, and later cast a line for him at the place he first took me, and then I took my my children. The place my mother sketched while my father and I fished the upper river, just below the old ferry crossing 40 years ago.
For the many years during my childhood and youth when my family and I visited to upper Susquehanna valley, we stay at a small cabin in the deep rural valley near the village of Wyalusing. All found by chance and my father's ever present lure of adventure, the discovery of the Smith place at Homet ferry would change my life, and many that who my life has touched. I was just looking at the small water color drawings my mother made on such a trip. The pair in my modest harbour side living room here. They depict with a primitive and profound truth, in muted greens and tones of the earth our idyll along the river. My sister and I, her red hair and her artist heart peer out across the vista at the rocks, far above the river valley. Clear in the image is the large, kidney bean shaped island in the mist. Nearly 40 years later I would still canoe with friends and family around the island, always remembering to stay right for the channel, or pick the wrong side and portage in a few inches of water(or is it left?).
Great fish are found here that are almost legendary. In fact the name itself of Towanda, a nearby town and county seat, means loosely in Delaware. "place of many fishes." For a long time the travel to this place was to be for fishing in the river and many fine trout streams that begin in the rugged endless mountains and discharge into the still wild river. Usually, the real reason for my trips here after my father died were for solitude and recollection. After dad died, my mother really withdrew from the world but to care for us. My sister would remain home always, brilliant and disabled. Mostly from the stark cruelty of this world. I would very successfully go on into an engineering discipline, much as my father had desired. Mother would have preferred medical school. She was probably right.
So often armed with a pocket full of money, great gear, friends, later wives, and children along I would return to the places. Sometimes it would get a little rough with the locals on a Saturday. After a day of fishing and an evening of beers and twangy bluegrass music made by old and young folk from the surrounding hills the locals could get rowdy. I never had any real problems, as I could usually suggest that I buy a beer to stop the argument. Some places favoured a group of locals known as "Pooles". This term isn't really used openly anymore and considered an insult. The name derives from an early settler named Cyrus Van Der Poole. This Netherlander settled the area long ago and his descendants mixed with the natives, blacks, french and whomever else was going or coming. Later these people populated an area South of Towanda-or "South Towanda". That is explained to me to be anywhere south of the US 6 bridge over the river there. On a night out I have met these people. Some still with straight jet-black hair and an intolerance for alcohol. But some pretty, if not sometimes bawdy, girls.
Later losing my taste for camping , I would stay at the prominent local hotel there. It was a modest place in a basically poor town, that still had stately Victorian homes. All the last wealth of the lumber boom of the 1800's now gone. You see, the deforestation of the Appalachians provided all the lumber for the building of the eastern cities during the industrial revolution. Logs were ripped from the pristine old growth forest of ancient hardwoods and floated south. To places like Williamsport, or Harrisburg and shipped east by rail. The huge annual runs of American shad and other ocean fishes are almost gone. There is a huge power producing dam at Conowingo, Maryland. Efforts are being made to help the fish, but with the forest still 500 years from real maturity, the industry, and factors which may not be known, it will a long time until the Delaware's get there fishery back.
On one such trip I saw a pair of older guys pushing chess pieces in the lobby of the motel. Curious and my ears ringing from there mountain band playing in the basement bar (where I had been all night), I said hello. The one guy had a fishing license on his hat and was sucking on a corn cob pipe, unlit. The other was tall, gaunt, and somewhat cadaverous, cranky. I introduced myself and found out the fisherman was Phil. He lived in the retirement place nearby. Will was the owner of the motel. His black hat had a naval ship designation from WWII. I can't remember the ship name, but I think an Atlantic fleet cruiser.
Well over the course of this trip I played a few games of chess and got know the two men. They were no competition for me on the board, as I had been playing tournament chess since childhood and was a rated master. But we still had fun , and when the ego's went away I gave some chess lessons.
Phil was a very pleasant and cheerful old guy who could barely hear. He invited me to go fishing with him. I was solo that trip and welcomed some non-business or non-family company. He showed me a place south of town he called "The old gun club". We got there across the mountain from town, about 20 minutes. I was shocked to see that the place he had picked was the other side of the river from our childhood family summer cabin. The old ferry had brought the wagons across there and the road is still intact, but pretty rough. It was the exact spot that mom had painted, hanging forever in my living room. Fate is an odd and awesome thing.
I learned Phil was very poor. He lived on 300 bucks a month. He lived to fish and pursue his radio hobby. There was real joy in him as he spoke of these hobbies. More than hobbies, his center of meaning. He was an excellent fisherman and a true angler. This was evidenced by his refusal to buy bait (he was not a fly fisherman!). He worked hard for about an hour turning over rocks for nasty "clippers". I had not heard that term before. He meant Hellgrammites. These are up to 3 inches long, black with nasty pincher's and a poor attitude. These are the larva of the dobsonfly, a stately, shockingly scary large insect that is completely harmless as an adult. Bass love Clippers. Nearly as soon as the bait hit the water, a small mouth was on. And sometimes big ones. These are among the strongest and fighting est fish in fresh water. Here to were big pike and huge channel catfish, Phil's specialty. He had picture back at his tiny apartment of a 50 pounder he recently caught by the bridge.
My new friend who lived in poverty by any standards was one of the happiest people I have met. As long as he was fishing, or taking apart an old radio, he was in heaven.
Between fishing and listening to twangy music, I would run into Will in the motel. He was grey. But he seemed lonely and intelligent. We would chat while he lost his chess game, or he would buy me a beer at his own bar in the motel. Later, I was told that was unheard of. I learned he had been an IRS agent and then a business consultant. He had purchased some small companies in Tax trouble and resold them for a small fortune. Over the years, he had married and had children. They were distant, but he owned most of this small town, and a lot of some small town in Florida.
I could talk to Will about business. I had lost as much or more as he now owned only a few years before. I was pretty low. He suggested I was too hard on myself. I should just go to Atlantic City and think. About how to reinvent my life and my fortune. I also learned that he had inoperable cancer.
Now the pallor and attitude made some sense. I didn't return to the area for almost 6 months. On a crisp early October day, I flew back to the east coast and drove to the river. The road from Harrisburg follows the main branch of the boulder strewn turbulent river almost all along the way.
I was anxious to visit with Phil. I was a bit concerned about his "pal" Will. Will had an odd relationship with poor Phil. Phil lived in complete but blissful poverty. Will seemed to have no other friends and was a millionaire several times over. As far as I could tell, he wouldn't even buy Phil a cup of coffee.
That evening, my phone rang in my room, number 12. It was Will. The desk clerk told him I was back and he needed help. He lived on site in an ordinary room on the other side of the motel, by the forever empty pool. I knocked on the door and a weak voice told me to enter. Will was long and thin on the messy bed. The room smelled of death. Cancer has a certain smell. I know. He asked me if I would re bandage his foot. His right foot was a festering purple malodorous bob. With my semi-medical background, or at least having some training, I applied antiseptic and wrapped it with fresh gauze bandage. "You need to have this professionally handled", I suggested. He told me he had, not much could be done, and he was just waiting.
He managed to get up and he took me down to the basement bar for a drink. It was a quiet Sunday, no Pooles, factory workers-no mountain band. "You know, I just looked at stock I bought in 1960 I paid 10,000 dollars for". "Oh, I replied". Well today it just hit, after 39 years, a million dollars". And this was one of only many of such "deals" he had made long ago as a savvy businessman. Apparently he had purchased an interest in a small bank in Harrisburg, and it had grown and blossomed over the years to a major banking institution.
I asked him what he was going to do as we sipped good scotch. "Well if I sell I have a tax problem", he said". The man is weeks or months away from death from cancer and he has a tax problem.
"Will, maybe you should donate it, build something for the community, or found a charity," I suggested.
"What the hell good is that going to do me" was the answer. I had no reply to that statement. Too, I had been rich, greedy arrogant only a few years before our last meeting. But I was queasy at this revelation. I tried to explain that when we have an opportunity to do good we should take it, if we can, an often when we really can't or don't want to.
As far as I know, Will left all of his money to one of several children. The assets were distributed. There is no "Will Johnson" foundation. Phil still lives in abject blissful poverty all these years later, fishing and now enthralled with a new hobby, the Internet. To the town Will owned he is barely even remembered but by we few. Phil mentions him to me by email around the date of his death each year, otherwise his name in not spoken. I had suggested to Will he at least give a few dollars to his best friend Phil. I would have loved to have the motel to run, and I told him, half joking, being just a working man at that last time when we met.
I am not sure Phil even went to the funeral that cold late fall day, a few weeks after I went back to California.
That was about 10 years ago now as I sit here along the sea. Its a warming June afternoon, and I am about to meet a friend for dinner at a seaside cottage. Right now I live a very modest life. Sometimes I fish, talk with the family or my few friends, and watch the tides. As I get older now and my children go on into their futures and my solitude grows I think of my two old friends from northern Appalachia. It sure wasn't Will's fault he had cancer and died, no more than my father's or anyone else's for the most part. At least those kinds of the awful disease, which has claimed so many who were loved. I am not sure Will ever knew love. I know he knew and had money. He was lifeless and nearly soulless. I say this with all respect, as he was my friend. Maybe only one of two, and we were only just beyond acquaintances.
I think of old Phil who is now saving pennies to buy gas for his old car to go fishing. He is always happy for his free lunch at the retirement apartments where he lives, he reported to me by email today. Next he is over joyed at the senior discount he gets at breakfast time at the Wendy's across the street. "Its 2 bucks for french toast and a glass of water,S/D", he says. I guess S/D is "senior discount". He hopes I will visit him and fish again as its been almost 3 years since my last trip to there, at least when having enough time to stay a while and visit. You see I haven't had much money either.
As time moves forward I think about these two people that were put in my path. The happy Phil, fishing into the future with his tiny pension among the mountains and the river he loves. The place he has lived his entire 70 years. With health issues now, he has asked me to be his executor and help him to divest his assets at that time. He asked me to have a flea market there and donate the proceeds to charity. Phil is disabled and rejected by nearly everyone as a madman. He has an old computer, a chair, table, and a broken TV. A failure at the end of his harsh and bitter life as this world looks upon him, and passes judgement.
I am pretty sure I'll end this life with a few more "assets" than Phil. But nothing is sure but the single moment we exist in, this tiny part of our only grasp on eternity. This moment-the now. May or maybe not I may accummulate "things" all over again. There is a boldly truthful futility to that pursuit. Joy and peace, as my mother professed are the most important. . But I assure you that I will not go out, if I am given that time for reflection, like Will. To be very sure, I will truly be sorry the day Phil is buried. I will be at the funeral, and later cast a line for him at the place he first took me, and then I took my my children. The place my mother sketched while my father and I fished the upper river, just below the old ferry crossing 40 years ago.
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