What Michael Copperman’s Fishing Lessons Reveal About Life Will Surprise You
Mist hung over the green-blue water of the McKenzie, hiding the boat-ramp from the island of rocks near the bank where my eight-year-old brother and ten-year-old self cast our spinners into the pool. My aunt was upstream throwing long spools of line into the current where the willow-roots unfurled in a tangle, and her boyfriend Bill, who we’d only met the week before when we picked them up from the airport, stood watching us and smoking a Marlboro Red, his pole leaned against a tree. He’d cast and cast, complained about the fish not biting, and now seemed resigned to watching us boys try. He was not interested in pursuits that seemed doomed—which perhaps he should have considered before he tried dating my aunt.
