North with Doc: Doc Acts Up

Whatever is driving the extreme weather around the globe is acutely felt by folks like us who enjoy the great outdoors. One year we’d fly out of Sioux Lookout into a Knobby’s outpost lake, and it would be 94 and dead calm. The next year we had to maintain a fire in the Franklin stove, and it would be windy as a senator’s stump speech.

“When you go way up there in Canada, what happens when it rains?” Aunt Lucy said.

A few of these annual trips ago, the rest of the guys were out scrounging firewood while Doc and I were bundled up at the cabin’s kitchen table, our feet stomping the plywood floor to keep the circulation going.

Doc said, “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

“Say what?”

“Now is the winter of our discontent.”

“In the first place, Doc, this is June,” I said. “And this isn’t just discontent. It’s more like we’re freezing our nether parts.”

“This is very midsummer madness,” Doc said.

I gave Doc a squinty-eyed stare. “Please don’t tell me you have once again slipped into a character you have no business slipping into.”

“The gentleman dost protest too much, methinks,” Doc said.

“Let me guess. Shakespeare?”

“Forsooth,” Doc said. “My grandkids are learning their lines for a high school play.”

“And you have learned along with them?”

“For six fortnights.”

“What?”

“Twelve weeks.”

“That’s three months!”

“Yea, verily,” Doc said.

The door slammed open and the attorney, policeman, banker, and kid stumbled inside with armloads of damp sticks and mossy logs.

“I beg thee, ruffians!” Doc said. “Render yon draft begone!”

The kid shut the door. He looked at Doc, and then at me. “Has Doc fallen down another rabbit hole?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

“Sounds to me like he is on a streetcar to Sillyville,” the attorney said.

“Or he took the London Tube to Stratford-upon-Avon,” the banker said.

“The Bard he ain’t, but he’s trying to be,” I said.

“The Bard?” the policeman said. “Doc is our very own Wild Bill Shakespeare?”

“One and the same,” I said.

“What brought this on?” the policeman said.

“Grandkids in a school play,” I said.

“So we are in for a bit of highbrow theater this week?” the kid said.

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” Doc said.

“Oh, boy. As with his previous obsessions with cowboys and pirates, Doc just needs to flush this out of his system,” I said. “We can survive that.”

“Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows,” Doc said.

“Or, then again,” I said, “maybe not.”

I don’t know if it was a front passing through, or what, but the cold snap subsided sometime during the night, and the temp was climbing fast. We bailed from our sleeping bags earlier than usual to take advantage.

Doc, in his Homer Simpson pajamas, stood in the cabin’s front window, a cup of coffee in hand, and said, “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun.”

“You got the direction right, Doc,” I said, “but it’s a Northwest Ontario sunrise, and Juliet is a figment of your imagination.”

“But ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished,” Doc said.

“Speaking of devout consummation, I once saw Aunt Lucy consume a dozen Krispy Creme donuts,” the banker said. “Does that count?”

“Ah, sweet, sweet Lucy,” Doc mused. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

“My temperate is in the danger zone,” the attorney said.

“Also, lovely and temperate are not terms I would associate with our dear aunt,” I said.

“I’m starving,” the banker said. “Who’s cooking today?”

“Not Doc,” the policeman said. “Yesterday he even burned the eggs.”

“I am one who cooked not wisely but too well,” Doc said.

“This goes on much longer,” the kid said, “I may have to exact a pound of flesh.”

The attorney and policeman were tasked with whipping up a huge breakfast so we could skip lunch to focus on the fishing we’d missed the day before. The attorney was slicing away when Doc said, “My eyes smell onions. I shall weep anon.”

“Doc,” the policeman said, “can’t you give it a rest, just for a little bit? Make yourself useful, and hand me the cheese. But wash your hands first.”

“’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers,” Doc said.

“Can you explain what that means?” the policeman said.

“I don’t write ‘em, I only recite ‘em,” Doc said.

There were a few quiet moments as the butter in the skillet began to bubble, and the attorney tossed in handfuls of russet chunks.

“Let the sky rain potatoes,” Doc said.

“Shakespeare said that?”

“Without a doubt,” Doc said.

“Hard to believe.”

“I know.”

The eggs were scrambled. The bacon was fried. The plates were filled.

“A fork, a fork! My kingdom for a fork!” Doc said.

We ate. We laughed. We cried. Actually, we only ate. Doc’s lame theatrics were starting to get to us.

After breakfast and an hour or two on the water, we’d caught and released dozens more fish than the previous bone chilling day. We were dressed comfortably in jeans and flannel shirts, but without long underwear, and even our jackets would soon be shed.

The boys in the other two boats motored off to do their thing, while Doc and I followed a strong current through a narrows connecting two lakes, and came alongside a monstrous rock wall towering almost 30 feet from the surface. The depth finder read 26 feet, so we rigged jigs with chartreuse twister tails, tipped them with salted minnows, and let them coast to the bottom before pumping retrieves. After having to free a couple stuck lures, we discovered a six count was just about right to get near the bottom, but not hung up on it.

The hits began about 20 drops later, and we pulled in one walleye after another. They weren’t huge, but a perfect size for eating.

A few minutes into the frenzy, Doc was working on what he thought was a snag when it started to swim away. When he finally pulled it close enough for the net, it turned out to be the biggest pike of the trip, so far. He held up the stunning swaybacked specimen for my digital camera, and I said, “Don’t you find it strange that we always jig for walleyes and troll for pike, but the biggest walleyes are caught while trolling, and the biggest pike while jigging?”

“To jig or not to jig. That is the question,” Doc said.

“Please don’t.”

“I will try to limit the eloquence of my responses,” Doc said.

“Eloquence? Is that what you call it?”

“After all,” Doc said, “brevity is the soul of wit.”

“I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed,” I said.

“So you know some Shakespeare, too,” Doc said.

“But not enough to be obnoxious,” I said.

The bite tapered off, then stopped. We reeled in, and moved on down the huge lake. I decided to drag a copper-on-silver spoon across a wide, shallow bay. Doc lit a cigar the size of a summer sausage to show his displeasure with me. Its bouquet reminded me of a porta potty at a NASCAR race.

New reed growth was just breaking the surface. A dozen or so two-footers managed to get themselves caught and released.

There was a lull in the action, and I said. “Remember when we first came up here, Doc? We Iowans called pike northerns.”

“What’s in a name?” Doc said. “A pike by any other name would smell as sweet.”

I fought my baser instincts, and ignored yet another of Doc’s distortions of a well-worn phrase. I idled down the shoreline, casting into rocky points and waterlogged trees. We’d had at least four or five double hookups, even one with walleyes, and I said, “Can you believe this? Not only has the weather turned amazing, the fish are biting everything we toss. Wouldn’t it be great to do this forever?”

Doc said, “Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.”

“I need a new boat partner,” I said.

Back at the cabin many productive hours later, the day had warmed to the extent that biting bugs arrived in swarms. Doc and I had fish cleaning duty, and we were preparing to do just that.

I was taking six fat walleyes off the safety pin stringer when Doc picked up a can of bug spray, and said, “Is it nobler in the mind to suffer mosquitoes and black flies, or to take Deet and, by opposing, end them?”

“Just use it,” I said. “Deliver your soliloquy later.”

“Sorry,” Doc said. “It seemed appropriate.”

I filled a plastic dishpan with rinse water and brought it to the cleaning table where Doc prepared to filet the first fish. He said, “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?”

“Give me the knife, Doc,” I said. “Go mix yourself a generous tankard of strong drink.” And he did.

I made quick work of the fish, and the kid took the guts out to a rock a couple hundred yards off shore. Before he even tied up the boat back at the dock, a dozen gulls had arrived from all points of the compass to feast on the mess. No matter how many times we witnessed it, we wondered where they came from, and how in the world they could react so quickly.

The walleye fry was superb. The side dishes were spectacular.

As we sat satisfied after a wonderful day of both catching and eating, the kid said, “How about some cookies for dessert?”

Doc said, “Oreo, Oreo! Wherefore art thou, Oreo?”

It was all I could do to stop the banker from jumping across the table to render Doc unconscious.

As the evening dwindled to a quiet reflection of our magnificent time on the water, Doc took a final sip of his magnum martini, and exhaled as if he finally was emptied of Shakespearean references.

“You done with your playacting?” I said.

“I think so,” Doc said.

“I have to admit there were some entertaining moments.”

“My grandkids did a good job in the play.”

“Because you helped them memorize their lines.”

Doc thought a few seconds, then said, “All’s well that ends well.”

His comedy of errors over at last, I heaved a sigh of relief, and said, “Thanks, Doc.”

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North with Doc columnist Greg Knowles lives in Green Valley, Arizona. A 5-­volume set of the first 20 years of North with Doc is available in e-reader form at amazon.com.

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