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A Bend in the Truth

“Y’see, most men, they’ll tell a story straight through, it won’t be complicated, but it won’t be interesting either.” ~ Edward Bloom from Big Fish

Much of my free time when I was young was spent wandering the pine forest that bordered my hometown. The stand of white pines that fringed the St. Louis River isn’t very large by most wilderness standards, but to me it seemed to be the edge of the civilized world. It was no wider than a mile and in length spanned another two miles and provided secret places to explore and build hidden forts for me and my neighborhood gang. It also afforded a classroom for me and my friends to experience and learn the lessons that the natural world could offer.

As a boy, my thirst for knowledge about nature was insatiable. I wanted, no, I needed to know the reasons for the things that I encountered in my many forays in the forests. Why do certain tracks follow a straight line? Where do the fish go at night? Why do geese fly in a v-shape? What are the names of the animals and plants that I see? Does moss only grow on the north side of trees? Of course, this information could be gleaned from the pages of magazines or outdoor manuals, but that would mean time away from the woods and streams and, possibly, hours spent indoors reading!

Aside from my father, my two uncles were the most active teachers I had. They seemed to know everything there was about the forest and the animals that inhabited it, and were quick to share that knowledge with their neophyte nephew. Their answers to my many questions were answered quickly and in a serious manner. A smile or smirk was the indication their words might possibly be fabricated. To me they were incredible fonts of knowledge even though my father once described them as “being so full of crap the birds pecked on them.”

Their vast knowledge was truly amazing, their exploits in the woods and streams were what the heroes and legends of my youth were based on. They could tame wild animals and actually teach them to talk. My uncle Dennis had a pet crow that did just that.

According to my uncle it was a simple thing to do, it just involved some careful timing and a slight surgical procedure. In order to get a bird that was still impressionable you had to raid a crow’s nest in the springtime when the fledglings were still small and flightless. You would take one of the baby birds from the nest and raise it at home. Nurturing and feeding was the easy part, getting it to talk was more difficult. According to Dennis you had to split the birds tongue in order for it to be able to say words.

“Your tongue has a crease in the middle of it,” he told me, “and a crow’s tongue is smooth. So, you have to give it a crease so the bird can say words.”

“That’s the only difference?” I asked him.

“Yeah, that and the fact that a bird doesn’t have lips. That’s why all crows sound the same, no lips.”

“Wow. But doesn’t that hurt?” I asked feeling a bit sorry for the crow.

“Doesn’t what hurt?” my uncle replied.

“Splitting their tongue.”

“Not if you watch out for your fingers.”

My uncle had that crow for a little over a year and named him Jake. The bird lived outside and would fly to my uncle whenever he came out of his house. Jake would sit on his shoulder or arm for a bit, then fly off and roost in a nearby tree. However, that fall the bird flew away as other birds migrated through the area. That was the last time we saw Jake. My uncle told me that the bird probably stayed down south because he didn’t like the cold Minnesota weather. But, I knew Minnesota paid a bounty on crows and I thought Jake had probably met his demise at the hands of some hunter.

Seeing that crow for myself proved to me that teaching an animal to talk wasn’t a myth and helped elevate my uncle to legend status. I could ask him a question about literally anything to do with nature, and he always had an answer or a story to share. His prowess in the natural world was above everyone else that I knew of and I soaked up the wisdom and anecdotes he dispensed.

There are other tales though that, when recollected as an adult, don’t ring quite true. One has to do with fishing.

My uncles had taken me along on a fishing trip to Grand Lake. The lake was a popular place to fish for northern pike and walleyes. It was the largest of a three-lake chain which were all connected by either a small stream or a man-made channel. The lakes are named in sequence according to size: Baby Grand, Little Grand and Big Grand Lakes.

The three of us had finished a successful day of fishing and were packing up to head back to Cloquet. As we loaded the stringer of fish I commented on the fact that all of the fish, even the ones that we had kept in the bottom of the boat, were still alive and active.

“Not strange,” my uncle Donny said. “You can teach a fish to live outside of water.”

“What?” I said. “That’s impossible.”

“Nope, you can do it if you’re patient. Right Den?”

“Yup,” my uncle Dennis answered.

“You guys are nuts,” I retorted.

“Tell him about Lester Naganub Den,” Donny said as he finished stowing some gear.

I turned to face my other uncle. Dennis got that smirk on his face and said, “I suppose. Get in the car and I’ll tell yah about it on the way home.”

I jumped into my spot in the middle of the front seat of Donny’s car and was followed by my uncles. We began our trip back towards town and Dennis launched into his story.

“You know that old shack down by the river? Just above the dam? Well there was a guy named Lester Naganub who used to live in that little shack.”

“Year round?” I asked.

“Yup all year round. Pretty cold in the winter I’m betting. He was a sort of odd guy, but he knew a lot about the animals and the woods. Well, he had a pet trout. He named him Speck and kept him in a big old wooden barrel. Over the years the trout got pretty big and had to have the water changed more and more often to keep him alive. Lester got tired of doing that, so he thought he would teach the trout to live out of water.

“So that’s what he did. He started by taking Speck out of the barrel for a few minutes at a time but he did it frequently. A little later he started to take him out more often and kept him out longer. By and by Speck got so he could stay out a long time if he was in the wet grass. Time went by and Lester found he could leave ‘ol Speck in the wet grass all night with no problem. Well it wasn’t long before that trout could live in the shade any time of day whether the grass was wet or not.

“Another thing was that by that time Speck had gotten pretty tame too. He used to follow Lester around a good deal. When Lester would go out and dig worms for him, Speck would go along and actually pick up the worms for himself.

Lester thought everything of that fish. When Speck got so he didn’t need any water at all, but could go anywhere, even down the dusty road and stay all day out in the hot sun, well you never saw Lester without his trout.

“Some people from a traveling roadshow wanted to buy Speck, but Lester said he wouldn’t sell a fish like that for any money. It became common to see him coming to town with Speck following along in the road behind, just like a dog; only of course the trout traveled a good deal like a snake, and almost as fast.

“Well, it was pretty sad the way Lester lost his trout, and it was weird, too. He had started for town one day with Speck coming along behind, as usual. There was a bridge in the road to town that spanned a medium sized stream. When Lester came to the bridge he saw there was a plank missing. But that was nothing he was concerned about and he stepped over the hole and continued on his way to town.

“As he approached the city limits he looked around for Speck, but he wasn’t there. Lester walked back a ways and called, but he couldn’t see anything of his pet. He continued backtracking and calling for Speck. Soon he came to the bridge and saw the hole from the missing plank. Well, Lester thought right away that maybe his trout fallen through that opening. So he went to the hole in the bridge and looked down. What he saw almost broke his heart. There was Speck, floating on the water, bottom-side up. He’d tumbled through the hole, into the stream and drowned.”

I remember the silence in the vehicle as my uncles let the story sink in. All I could say was, “Really?”

“Yup, that’s what I was told. You could go ask Lester I suppose, but he really doesn’t like to talk about it. He still hasn’t gotten over old Speck.”

“Yeah,” Donny chimed in. “And that fish could sure sing.”

“What?” I said. “He lived on dry land and could sing too?”

“That’s right. But, he always sang off key. That bugged Lester because he knew you can’t tuna fish.”

With that the interior of the car erupted into adult laughter. I knew I had been snookered.

In my youth my uncles told me many stories, and I continue to tell those stories today. While the tales may not be entirely fact based, there is always truth in there somewhere. My uncles were good at telling those stories because they always enhanced them. The truth was altered a bit to make the story more entertaining or some facts may have been exaggerated to make the tale seem more incredible or unbelievable. But one thing that is true, my uncles told and retold those tales so much that they became the stories. That is their immortality.

Rudy Senarighi’s Bio: I began writing in January of 2003. Since then I have had three books published and am currently working on my fourth. My last book, Tales From The Creel, was honored with a silver medal at the 2011 Northeast Minnesota Book Awards.