Rudy

Rudy has tan skin that is badly wrinkled from the sun and elements. He has the skin color of a Native American Indian, who are common in the area. I know they’re common because a few years ago I noticed people with tan skin as I walked around town with my mom. Every time I saw someone I thought was an Indian, I excitedly asked my mom, “Hey mom, is that an Indian? Is that a real Indian?” She didn’t like to answer when the person was close to us and she tried to shush me but I needed to know so I’d ask louder and louder. “Mom! Hey Mom! Is that an Indian? That guy right there with the tan skin! Is he an Indian? Is he Mom?”

Her face turns all sorts of pretty colors and I wonder how she does that. Later, at home she said that they were Indians and that I didn’t need to ask her anymore. I was apparently an expert at identifying Indians and I liked seeing them. I wished I was an Indian but I also liked being a cowboy so either one was fine with me.

Rudy, my Mom and Dad love to fish together. We row the small boat into the lake in hopes that this will be the best place to catch something good. On her first cast Mom catches something unexpected; Rudy’s ear. Rudy immediately howls with pain, trying to remove the hook from his freshly pierced earlobe.

When Mom does something uncomfortably embarrassing, she breaks out into a fit of nervous laughter. Even though she feels bad, she can’t stop laughing. She must really feel terrible when she hooks Rudy’s ear because I haven’t seen her laugh this hard in a long time.  Not being able to help myself, I join in the laughter with Mom. Rudy doesn’t laugh. He’s howling and make strange faces as he continues to try and remove the hook from his ear.

I can’t help but notice his expressions of pain so I stop laughing until I hear my mom laughing even harder and decide it’s better to laugh than just sit and stare at a man with a painful hook stuck in his ear.

Even though Rudy only looks like an Indian but isn’t one, he seems to know their ways like their ancient secret of shocking worms from the ground. Rudy does this by sawing a baseball bat in half, sticking a steel rod into the middle of it and pushing the rod into the ground. He then attaches an electric cord to the shocker and plugs it in. Worms can't squirm to the surface fast enough and we have more than we'll ever use for fishing including several huge night crawlers.