Chris Maroldy
So when Helene came through and dumped a ton of water in western NC, I made a couple of jokes to some email friends and to a random customer service rep working a call center in Charlotte, before anyone knew how bad things were, at least from my perch in the Piedmont. One joke featured a western NC friend of mine my email pals “knew” but had never met (we’re all tied together by an internet connection focused on bow hunting) and the other was just some off-the-cuff jabber upon being told the geegaw I desperately needed had to come out of Asheville. (Aww … $#/+!!!)
Both of my jokes went over like lead fishing floats—I can still hear the crickets from each audience—so I quickly realized (at least) two things: a lot of folks are far more serious about stuff than I am, especially during natural disasters, and I need to pay more attention to Breaking News, because everyone else does.
This made me think about connections. I have that buddy up in the mountains. I wasn’t worried about him, but—conceivably—relative strangers might be. A girl in Customer Service in Charlotte might have kin with a creek suddenly appeared in their living room, but I didn’t think about that, at least on Day One.
I’ve been re-reading some Ed Zern. I’d guess that at least 70 percent of folks reading this don’t remember Ed Zern, or even recognize the name. He was a humorist and writer for Field & Stream for almost four decades, beginning in the late Fifties. His “Exit Laughing” column was and still is a classic. Thousands of people began reading the magazine every month at the back page, because that’s where Zern’s column was.
In his columns and in his books, you get a sense of the golden age of outdoor writing. More importantly, you get a feel for “why” it was the golden age. It was because it was focused on people—friends and characters—and not on gear, or cinematic grip-and-grins (a.k.a. hero shots).
When you read about his friends on a trout stream or at the bar of the lodge, or he relays some mischief done at some chapter of his storied Madison Avenue Rod, Gun, Bloody Mary & Labrador Retriever Benevolent Association, you realize how much of the “meat” in hunting and fishing is in the people and the relationships. The meat you eat is not what you were angling for!
It’s hard to comprehend how rich a life was made by the people Zern rubbed elbows with. The facts that he was from a different era, and that I discovered him when I was a teenager but didn’t fully appreciate him until much later probably factor in. I’ve had some good and some not so good hunting and fishing buddies over the years. The fullness of Ed Zern’s life afield?—Not even close.
I wonder why that is. Times have changed. That’s true. But I also ask myself: Would a guy born in 1910 soft-pedal a hurricane? Or its possible victims, even if they could have been—at one time—towel-snapping buddies?
Probably not.
But a guy like Ed Zern could get *some* kind of column out of it, which makes me feel not so bad.