Working at Sportsman’s Warehouse is a lot of fun!  There I’m the resident expert on all things fly fishing and fly tying, and customers are promptly directed to me for all their mystic fly fishing needs.  My co-workers know next to nothing about it.  I feel important, and I like that!

It is said you can’t have joy without adversity, so it goes without saying that there is certainly a flip side to that coin.  I don’t know a whole heckuva lot about the other kinds of fishing.  I get by, but mostly, folks come in asking for this or that lure, and I have to have them explain exactly what “that” is and what it looks like.  I get my humble pie on a daily basis, but that’s good because it keeps my head unswollen.

Recently I’ve heard many folks saying they’ve just gotten laid off, or lost their job.  So where do they go when their financial future looks like the testing grounds for vigilante banks?  Why, of course they run out and buy a bunch of fishing stuff!  Duh!  I guess it’s more about feeling good, the anticipation of a fast-approaching season, getting away from troubles for awhile and immersing oneself in the magic of water and the excitement of piscatorial possibilities.

We all love this sport, fly fishers, bait fishers, spin fishermen.  That’s what makes working in a place like that so great.  People want to be there, they love to be there.  They wander wide-eyed and mouth agape at aisles of gear, and they dream.  It’s not like other stores where they have to be there, fighting crowds and cringing at prices that seem to be rolling the wrong direction, wondering when the smile is gonna get turned upside down.

One old-timer today said  ”You know, we’re fishing right now.”

“We are?” I pressed amicably (for all I knew he was seeing things).

“Yeah, everything we do here, checking out the lures, getting new gear, talking with you boys and where we’re gonna go and what to do… it all gets us ready for when the moment arrives.  That’s experience.  So, really, we’re fishing right now.”

I love wise elders.

I love the eccentric ones too.

An elderly women asked if I could help her and the old man find a bait.  “Well, of course! Whatcha lookin’ for?”  She just pointed to her partner of x number of years.

The gentleman was hunched over and squinting at the immense wall of soft plastics.  “What can I help you with?”  I asked.

Now, I pause here to relay some interesting info.  A company called Reaction Innovation makes some soft plastics with very provocative names and decorates the package with images of scantily-clad women.  Some of their products, or more accurately, the names, have landed them in trouble from time to time.  For example: The Flirt, Big Unit, Boom Boom.  These colorful names combined with the package imaging… well, you get the idea.

Back to the old man, a big burly gent whose gruff years hung on him like an old flannel shirt.  “I’m looking for a Sweet Beaver,” he boomed authoritatively.

I looked briefly to his wife standing beside me and felt a little embarassed.  She squinted at the wall in like fashion as her husband.  Oh boy, gotta do it.

So I directed them to the right section, catchy black packages with bikini-clad, buxom women on the front.  “Those are here,” I said.  We looked a bit.  “Looks like we’re sold out, but here’s these that are similar.”

The wife pipes up in a sweet grandmotherly voice, “I don’t see any Sweet Beavers, Harold.”  Now this was really getting wierd.  She said “You’ll have to help him, his eyes aren’t so good.”

He struggled to read the package I pointed out, and picked it up to examine it.  “Hm, Double Wide Beavers.”  And as he fondled the package: “seem to be a little too big.”

The wife:  “Does anyone else have a Sweet Beaver?”  Now here obviously was a man who was king of his castle.  I could never go looking for stuff like that with my wife.

A quick “Nope” and I made a bee-line for the other side of the department where my convulsive attempts to supress spasms of laughter would not be suspect.

After wiping the tears, I helped a sweet old lady find some 25# test line so she could hang Easter decorations.  She was quite direct.  “Now look, this better work.  I’m 72 years old and I walked all the way to the back of this store, and I’m gonna walk all the way to the front.  This better be worth the trip for these old bones!”  I liked her instantly.

Just another day on the job!