"I'm 'Shorty', least that's what everyone calls me."
"That's not a nickname just since the knee surgeries?"
"No, hell no. I always was short. But after the surgery I was an inch and three quarters shorter!"
He was maybe 5-3 or so, a stump of a man, with white but full hair for his age, a wide, round face that set the diameter all the way to the ground, coveralled, with black, collapsed shoes. He was 85, he said, "and I don't know how much more to come".
"Well, come along back. I laid all the stuff out on the table in the backyard. I got everything you can think of. I used to fish a lot, in the old days, when I was working for the railroad. But, you know, I'd always bring along my tyin' stuff. When I'd catch the first fish of the day, I'd cut it open and look in the
stomach, then I'd tie something just like what was there. Can't tie no more now, not with these." He turned and extended out his hands again with emphasis, ten fingertips pointing in ten different directions, knuckles indistinguishable under the wrinkles and leather.
He led the way around the house, past a garden browning with Fall, here and there a red tomato.
The table was set on saw horses. On it were three fly boxes laid open in the sun, a wicker creel, several coffee cans, and a couple of round, plastic containers.
"These here flies are all proven flies. Every one has caught a fish."
I looked in absolute amazement. Every fly looked exactly as though it had just come from a trout's stomach. Exactly as he said. I had a fly box just like it back home; rejects, leftovers, crushed, or just too old and too often dunked and rusted. There were no two alike, that was for sure, and not one I could recognize as a standard pattern.
"This here one's the best of the lot," Shorty went on, not missing a beat. He pulled one loose from the fly-glob with difficulty with his fingerstubs and held it up for inspection. "It's a killer. Best fly for the Deschutes, back when we used to fish at the Falls, what's their name, Sherar's Falls." It was a dirt and rust bucktail sort of streamer caddis. The rusty hook point looked like it might fall off just from gravity.
Scattered along the circumference of the boxes were several mangled, rotting plastic worms, rust covered; several spoons and a bass plug here or there; nothing of value or worthy of mention other than the quirky reality that HE thought they were priceless.
"Yup, I used to fish bass and other stuff too. Hell, we used to catch everything, whatever there was.
