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    How to Hook Your Spouse
    How to Hook Your Spouse
    How to Hook Your Spouse
    Ebook143 pages2 hours

    How to Hook Your Spouse

    By Georgene S. Dreishpoon

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Nothing challenges priority more than a compulsion for sports. How to Hook Your Spouse is part autobiography and part guidebook for sustaining a marriage. Humorous stories illustrate the life-cycle of bonding with a sports-obsessive using fishing as central metaphor.

    Georgene Simon Drieshpoon is married to a retired physician who claims in his next life he wants to come back as a fishing guide. He chases the fish. She chases him. She's been chasing him for forty-nine years.

    The author says, "We joke about compulsions. The term 'fishing widow" says it all. The fishermen were not dead, just caught up in their priority. Parenthood changed my priority. It was during this period that my husband and I had our best fights. I was determined not to be a 'fishing widow.'"

    While the author fished with her husband, she says, "I'm more like his pocket edition." Together they have explored the aura of fishing in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, the Bahamas, and Africa. She's heard fishermen grumble that "women just don't understand." She says, "The same can be said for the other side." This book is an attempt to humorously enlighten both genders.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateSep 30, 2000
    ISBN9780595720385
    How to Hook Your Spouse
    Author

    Georgene S. Dreishpoon

    Georgene S. Dreishpoon was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her essays have appeared in Medical Economics, Trout, THE FLYFISHER, Hudson Valley Magazine, Doctors' Wives by Cynthia S. Smith, and The New York Times. She and her husband reside in Boynton Beach, Florida and summer in Dutchess County, New York.

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      Book preview

      How to Hook Your Spouse - Georgene S. Dreishpoon

      All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Georgene Simon Dreishpoon

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

      Writer’s Showcase

      presented by Writer’s Digest

      an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.T

      For information address:

      iUniverse.com, Inc.

      620 North 48th Street

      Suite 201

      Lincoln, NE 68504-3467

      www.iuniverse.com

      ISBN: 0-595-00480-6

      ISBN: 978-0-5957-2038-5 (e)

      CONTENTS

      Preface

      Acknowledgments

      The Jealous Mistress

      Do We Have To Be One Of The Boys? I Don’t Want To Be!

      Doctor, You And This Lady Are Under Arrest

      Would You Believe A 130-Pounder Caught On A Fly Rod?

      The Children’s Hour

      The Day My Husband Wished He Had Left Me Home

      How To Hook Your Own Spouse

      The Fly-Fishing Aura

      Love In A Camper

      The Delaware River Trout

      In Search Of The Bahamian Bonefish

      Spontaneous Combustion On The Flat

      My Husband Says I’m A Squirrel

      The Schmoozer

      Passing The Test For Island Living

      Mother’s Day Trout

      When We Feel The Need To Run Away

      The Age Of Maturity

      The Feminine Network

      Make New Friends, But Keep The Old One Is Silver, The Other Is Gold.

      About The Author

      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH LOVE

      AND DEVOTION TO MY HUSBAND, IRVING,

      WITHOUT WHOM THE STORIES COULD NOT HAVE BEEN

      WRITTEN. ALONG THE STREAM OF LIFE WE

      TURNED LOOSE LINES INTO TIGHT LINES

      AND HARVESTED HAPPINESS.

      Doctor, You And This Lady Are Under Arrest

      MEDICAL ECONOMICS, June 8, 1970

      Would You Believe A 130 Pounder Caught On A Fly Rod?

      MEDICAL ECONOMICS, OCTOBER 27, 1975

      REFLECTIONS OF A FISHERMAN’S WIFE

      TROUT, Summer 1980

      The Day My Husband Wished He Had Left Me Home

      HUDSON VALLEY MAGAZINE, September 1980

      How To Hook Your Own Spouse

      The New York Times, April 18, 1982

      THE FLYFISHER, Fall 1983

      PREFACE

      IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR ROMANCE, ADVENTURE AND INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION, YOU WILL FIND ALL OF THESE AND MORE IN A FISHING COMPANIONSHIP. SPRINKLE GENEROUSLY WITH HUMOR, AND ALLOW THE MATURITY OF YEARS TO REVEAL THAT YOUR LOVE MAY NOT GUARANTEE FISH, BUT IT WILL ENSURE TIGHT LINES!

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      The Author would like to thank Nelson Bryant, retired fishing editor of The New York Times, for his support and encouragement in the publishing of this book.

      THE JEALOUS MISTRESS

      Priority is a potent word in most relationships. Nothing challenges priority more than a sports compulsion; in our family it was fishing.

      We joke about compulsions, but the term fishing widow says it all. The fishermen weren’t dead, just caught up in their priority. I empathize with the sports compulsive. I was there as a single and as a wife. What changed my priority was parenthood. It was during the parenting period that my husband and I had our best fights; I was determined I would not be a fishing widow. What follows is the essence of a fishing marriage, rated PG.

      I was a fishergirl who became a fisherwoman, then a fisherwife. For the sake of documentation, there’s forty-nine years of mileage on the wife. At the age of ten I was introduced to fishing by an angling Uncle Jack, a jovial, bespectacled dentist whose love for children shone behind his glasses. Uncle wanted someone to row him around the local ponds in quest of bass, perch and bluegills; I was just old enough to be trained for the task.

      On our first outing he tutored me in the art of rowing. He said I should treat rowing as an intellectual challenge and gave me the impression the fish had the intelligence of Einstein and the sensitivity of a radar trap. Obediently, I rowed his boat and with calculated effort attempted to glide it slowly and quietly through the water. I was sure that the fish had ears turned toward the patterned ripples we discharged.

      Uncle’s strategy was to keep the girl quiet so he could indulge in the meditation prompted by a secluded pond on a clear summer day. I can still remember the evergreens surrounding us, and the distant island that broke the pond’s surface. Suddenly a shriek shattered our silent pursuit. Fish! I’ve got him, he’s on, Uncle shouted. FISH, FISH, FISH, echoed around us. He scared the peace right out of me. Most of that day, I perched on the edge of my seat anxiously awaiting his next outburst. I sensed, at that young age, that fishing was a deceptive game.

      He rewarded me later in the day by transferring his rod to me and patiently giving me casting instructions. He said the fish were just waiting to be caught; all I had to do was to cast the plug to the right spot. I cast and cast and cast. Nothing happened. I learned then that arousing one’s expectations is fundamental to this sport. He was priming me for my future role as a fisherwife.

      There are fishermen and then there are fishermen. Uncle was a boatman who came equipped with plugs and live bait; how he fished depended on how the spirit moved him. He was a go-for-the-limit man. I loved him and thought this was wonderful fishing. I didn’t find out until much later that there is a hierarchy in the fishing world and Uncle’s methods put him somewhere near the bottom. My revelation came at age twenty when I met a young fishing-doctor. He was an emerging fly fisherman, probably at the nymph stage, and determined to climb to the top. Fishermen know what that means. For those in doubt, I’ll tell you in one sentence. He was possessed!

      My first clue was when he casually mentioned that he had first checked out our local trout streams, found them excellent and then thought it made good sense to hatch a match with a local woman. He was raised as a city sportsman with the accompanying restrictions. Now he was looking for a country community that would welcome a young obstetrician and provide doorside fishing. When he explored the Hudson Valley, he found me. I was the farmer’s daughter, and the farmer conveniently owned a private, well-stocked lake.

      With his first cast in my direction he expressed his desire to practice medicine where trout streams radiate from hospital centers. With the verbal casts that followed he exhibited an ability to lure. Then came a cast with a very fine leader. He asked me if I would like to inspect the neck of a jungle cock. His father had passed it down to him, he told me enthusiastically, and it was now on the endangered list. How could I resist? We went through his collection of special feathers. I was impressed. Also, the more I saw of him the more he reminded me of the actor Gene Kelly—minus the dancing feet. I was hooked!

      Now it was my turn to use some seductive bait. I love fishing was a good tempter, Will you teach me to fly fish? even better, and I can appreciate your need to get away from it all on a stream, my treble hook.

      My husband, Irving, and I have always been sports enthusiasts with triple choices for each season. He had attended college on a basketball scholarship before he discovered fishing and hunting. I hit every team my high school offered and added a few more in college. My picture in the high school yearbook sprouted a caption in bold letters amazon, and I’m only five foot three inches. Until the late l950s, femininity was considered incompatible with athletics. I figured most women just didn’t know what they were missing.

      Even Amazons have difficulty dashing off to a stream when the spirit moves them, especially when one has three children within four years and they are clamoring for attention. Irving and I often locked horns over his determination to spend his limited free time fishing. For many years fishing controlled him like a jealous mistress. I felt I could have competed more successfully with another woman, but how do you compete with a fish?

      I tried. I trained the kids to suck in their cheeks and pucker their lips; we would line up together like guppies and bargain for his time. I strained for family participation, but the logistics with children made it difficult. We couldn’t always go fishing when Dad wanted to go fishing. Winter wasn’t even a reprieve. There was ice-fishing.

      We had our share of go-arounds over fishing, while fishing and when planning fishing. When the dust settled, I found these confrontations had provided fertile compost for humor. One day there was a fishing incident that affected his professional life and brought us both insight and a spirit of compromise.

      It was April l, the opening of trout season. The day was bitter, cold and damp, and the sky threatened snow. Irving and a fishing buddy, the local district attorney, decided they had to grab a few hours of fishing even though they were both on call. My husband asked me to monitor the phone with instructions to call a colleague in the event of an emergency. The district attorney’s wife, also struggling with the fishing widow syndrome, was in the same boat. The men were fortunate our inclination was to Aquasports and not Whalers.

      They were gone just one hour when the answering service called. A patient was in labor and it was her fifth child. For the medically uninformed, this means her baby was about to be stocked into the world like a dun becoming a spinner. I was contemplating my next move when my phone rang again. It was the district attorney’s wife. There had been a murder in a local bar and they needed her husband before they could remove the corpse from the barroom floor. She and I commiserated. We agreed we should call the state troopers to locate our husbands who were somewhere along the Beaverkill. They were found with four trout in their creels and ice in their guides. The corpse waited. The baby didn’t.

      Everyone needs to get away on a stream sometime, especially people with intense work pressures. A solo obstetrical practice is probably as intense a job as you can find. We compromised: 51 percent for him, 49 percent for me. I felt he was entitled to the extra percentage. His extra percentage was designated as a week to go fishing on his own with his fishing buddies. I had no idea when we made this plan how constructive this week would be to our relationship. I was still under thirty, he had a five-year advantage, but we both had much learning ahead.

      Irving and his friends planned and planned that first May trip. Their excitement was contagious. Those of us classified as homebodies salivated at visions of landlocked salmon and brook trout filling our freezers. We women agreed that this culinary promise provided some justification for their indulgence. The destination was Moosehead Lake, Maine. They left the Hudson Valley at 5:00 a.m. like a group of bandits, leaving four wives, ten kids, and

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