Before entering this column, readers should be alert to two advisories: 1. No fish were harmed in the production of this column. 2. Women readers should exercise discretion, because the subject matter concerns men behaving badly.
This is a tale about going back to an era when men were men and women, being women, laughed at them. Perhaps things haven't changed much.
You will understand this tale better if the words "fish camp" hold special meaning for you. For years now, those two words have tantalized my imagination.
In the beginning, a band of men left Pittsburgh and drove up to the northern woods of Pennsylvania for a few days of manly adventures. They did this every year, and I came to envy them.
And why would any man not envy them? Their activities were said to include eating (ravenously), drinking (excessively), laughing (outrageously), scratching (immodestly), boasting (prodigiously) and singing (off key-ly). Also, smoking cigars, telling dubious jokes, making impolite noises, ribbing fellow fish campers and shooting firearms ("Only when entirely sober, Your Honor").
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Oh, and fishing. While the term fish camp may suggest fish putting up little tents on the bed of a river and singing campfire songs underwater, only men stay in fish camp. From time to time they put on waders and attempt to fly-fish for trout -- "attempt" being the operative word because the trout remain pretty safe.
This year, I was invited to join the manly company of fish campers, standards not being what they once were. Was it my talent for dubious jokes that won the campers over? My ability to make impolite noises? Whatever the reason, last weekend my dream came true and I became part of a long tradition. I went to a fish camp established in 1921 along Kettle Creek in Potter County.
They call this part of Pennsylvania "God's Country," and they are not far wrong. The Almighty did a wonderful job when he last vacationed here. It is a wild and beautiful place, and only a little more than a four-hour drive north and east from Pittsburgh.
There I fished amid the ghosts of scratching and laughing men of generations past, men who surely sang the fish camp song ("Men, men, men, men, men (low notes) ... Men! (high note) Wonderful men!").
Fish camp is just like you might imagine. It is in the middle of nowhere, far down a dirt road from civilization. Set in a valley amid wooded mountains, with a creek babbling nearby, fish camp is a modest bungalow big enough to hold six babbling men.
There is a small kitchen, a living room of sorts with a coyote skin hung over one beam to make the place feel homely, and a bunkhouse attached at the back.
Steaks were cooked on a small grill outside. Every few minutes someone would come by and put the lid up and someone else would then come by and demand the lid be down. In this way, the steaks were fanned to perfection by the lid going up and down.
One of our campers was a notorious snorer -- let us call him Joe -- and he was required to sleep in the living room because it was feared that his snoring might attract bears looking for mates.
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This seemed unfair. The bunkhouse sounded like the bears had already moved in and were cuddling my fellow campers, with the bunkhouse swaying on its foundations with every titanic snort. Meanwhile, in the next room, Joe quietly slept the sleep of the smugly innocent.
For those who cannot stand the din, an old-fashioned outhouse can be visited out back with old-fashioned reading material for those planning to sit a spell. You don't even have to bring your own spiders; they are supplied free. Fish campers think of everything.
Of course I had a wonderful time. It was a complete break, far from politics, far from the usual disputes, far even from cellphone communication. My only temptation was to pick up my dead cellphone and talk to myself about all the fish I didn't catch. Not a one.
I was dressed in all my fly-fishing gear -- the rubber pants that gave me a frog-like air, the little jacket hung with flies and other equipment never needed -- and yet the trout remained totally uncooperative. And was I sorry? No, because where else can a man stand up to his chest in water amid breathtaking scenery? I have found a new hobby. And when I tire of eating, drinking and singing ("Men, men, men, men . . .", etc.) I am going to take up fly-fishing. I cast for trout, but I hooked contentment.
Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
