SECOND
I direct my Personal Representative to lay my split bamboo fly rod, Hardy reel, all of my flies, my fly boxes and leaders, a good supply of #12 Mustad hooks, my Lefevre 20 ga. shotgun and a couple cases of 7 ½ chill shells next to me in the casket.
I realize this will make their burden much heavier so apologize to my pall bearers for me. Tell them why I made the request. Just in case I’m wrong and there is an after life, I want to be properly prepared.
ARTICLE THIRD
I’d better leave a thousand dollars to the Catch and Release Society of America. Reincarnation is a possibility and I may come back as a Brown Trout.
ARTICLE FOURTH
Paul Eckert has been a good and faithful friend of long standing. We’ve hunted and fished and told lies together for a lot of years. Give him whatever .32 caliber cartridges are left in that cigar box in the bottom dresser drawer. They’re kinda old and green but they’ll still fire. Paul is one of the few deer slayers who still uses a .32 Special.
Come to think of it, Paul has been such a good buddy I should leave him more than half a box of old cartridges. Paul always wanted a new .308 but, what with the costs of college and a wife with access to a credit card, he’s had to put the purchase of a deer rifle low on the family list of priorities. I know how badly he wants one. He told me he’d do absolutely anything to get one.
Since gold is selling for a pretty good price, knock out my teeth and give them to him. He can sell the gold fillings for enough to buy a good rifle. However, to be on the safe side, if I’m shot in the back and the Coroner digs out a .32 caliber slug, don’t give him a damned thing.
ARTICLE FIFTH
In the national interest, I leave my graphite/boron fly rod to the youngest U S Senator representing my state of residence. I recommend all other trout fishermen make similar provisions in their wills.
Over time, the old Senators will die off and then all members of the Senate will have fishing rods. If we’re lucky, they’ll start trout fishing. If they do and we’re very lucky, they’ll become fanatics and spend all of their time fishing. Since the well-being of the United States is inversely proportional to the amount of time Senators spend in Washington D.C., we will save the country.
ARTICLE SIXTH
Dave Otto’s major joy in life is chasing the canny Ruffed Grouse. He has never disclosed the location of his favorite hunting spot to me. I’ve never told him where my secret grouse covert is hidden. If I told him, I know he’d keep the information completely confidential. I certainly wouldn’t divulge the location of my spot during my lifetime.
Though Dave is trustworthy, I’m not going to tell him where it is after my death, either. This one goes to the grave with me. Who says you can’t take it with you?
ARTICLE SEVENTH
I was going to give my collection of duck and trout stamps to Rob Cowdery, but I’ve changed my mind. I just found out he kept putting slugs into my 12 ga. skeet gun when he challenged me to a clay pigeon shoot. That’s the kind of low trick one would expect from a conniving, crafty counterfeit.
I admire and respect him for it and wish I had thought of it myself, but I didn’t and he did and he won fifty dollars from me and that part hurts, so to hell with him.
On second thought, give him that five acres of swamp land I own up in Florence County and make sure he has to pay the accumulated back taxes. I took the property for a bad debt. It’s worthless. He’ll never be able to get rid of it. Put a big value on it, too. Then he’ll have to pay an inheritance tax.
ARTICLE EIGHTH
The rest, residue and remainder of my Estate, real and personal, wherever located, I devise and bequeath to the Internal Revenue Service. Sooner or later, they’re going to get it anyway.
ARTICLE NINTH
I nominate and appoint the Governor as my Personal Representative and direct that no bond be required of him. I require no bond not because I trust him to manage my Estate without getting his hand in the till. It’s because no insurance company would consider bonding him and I won’t ask the impossible.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have signed this Will this 20th day of September, 2011.
his
CARL X CARMICHAEL
mark
Silver Threads Among the Gold
When the class reunion is held and Mel Robertson, who nobody has seen for fifteen years, appears, he is apt to go unrecognized. There will be a lot of peering at his name card. By the end of the evening, his classmates will say: “Did you see Mel Robertson? Great Scott! He has turned gray and bald and fat.”
The chances are his classmates, their husbands and/or their wives have also turned gray and bald and fat, but they haven’t noticed it. Physical changes, we are told, are gradual. Aging is a slow process, like the oxbowing of a stream. Little by little and year by year the human being’s wiring, tubing and muscles wear down and begin to disintegrate.
That may be so, but it isn’t a complete explanation. There are a lot of exceptions. There are too many men who are old at age 40. They’ve lost their zip. They act like they’re over the hill - and they are. They awoke one morning and decided they weren’t young anymore. Thereafter, they were old.
On the other hand, we should be cautious about using only advanced age and gray hair as reasons to call a man “old”. I believe most of our ideas about “old” hunters are inaccurate. I believe they are a result of chicanery and deception, perpetrated by some of the world’s most experienced deceivers, impostors and liars.
Every camp contains at least one of those rogues. At 8:00 in the evening, the “old gentleman” says: “Gig, would you be so kind and bring me another scotch and water?” Gig looks at him, collapsed in the camp’s most comfortable easy chair after tramping around in a cedar swamp looking for a horned whitetail. Of course, Gig answers: “Sure, Ed.”
So Gig does it. It makes him feel noble. After all, the old timer may not be around for too many more seasons. Deer hunting must take a lot out of him. You have to admire him, at his age, out there hunting in the snow and cold. The least you can do is make him feel comfortable in camp.
Well, friends, if this has ever happened to you, and I know it has, you have been taken in by a consummate con artist. Go back over the day’s events. Who was up until 3:00 a.m. playing poker? Who was out of bed at the crack of dawn complaining about the coffee? Who was the first in line for the bacon and eggs? Who was on only one drive? It was less than a quarter mile long and mostly down hill. And who got out of both washing and drying the dishes?
Who will sit up until the wee hours, getting scotch and water served to him and telling stories, and who will be up at the crack of dawn complaining about the coffee? Old Ed, that’s who. If you think back, Old Ed has been getting his drinks brought to him and getting other preferential
