getting there is half the fun

I was born in upstate New York, at the foothills of both the mighty Adirondacks and the legendary Catskills.
I learned to fish as a very young boy. My dad used to take me all over God's creation known as central New York to every trout stream and bass hole in front of and behind barbed-wire fencing, and in these parts, there are more cows as people, so you work out the problem.
We've never been shot at, but more than a couple of farmers have gave us a piece of their mind.
Blame it on the insurance companies and slick lawyers. If I tripped in a pile of cow shit and sprained my knee, it's my own damn fault. I'm not going to sue the farmer, and I'm sure as hell not going to go after the cow.
Regardless, most farmers will let you on to their property for the asking, and maybe even the promise of a cleaned largemouth or rainbow should the taking be good.
Dad liked to fish as much as the next blue-collar guy. And I'm glad for that. Although he never fished with a fly, at least since I've known him, he fished when he could. Which meant just about every Saturday that he could convince my mom that she'd be better off without us in her hair all morning.
Now, I don't know a lot of dad's favorite streams or ponds; I often wonder if he did. Usually getting there was half the fun. And it should be. Put it this way: I get lost when I'm driving around for no good reason except I want to. That's a gift from Dad. Getting lost is the best way to learn about your environment and the geography — the lay of the land, so to speak. Not that he was planning on it anytime in his life, but if Dad was ever kidnapped, blindfolded and stuffed in the back of a Cadillac, driven around endlessly for hours and dumped off on the side of a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere, not only would he know where he was when he managed to slip the blindfold off, but he'd know where the nearest farm was as well as the name of the farmer.
We'd drive through the most tobacco road of places. I remember one place we passed in the countryside named Poverty Flats. Another was Yosts. Then there was Stacy Basin. At some point in my twenties, the county decided to erect a new sign that said "Stacy's Basin." That screwed everyone up for some time.
There was Constableville, Northern, Booneville, and Turin, along with a host of Indian names that not only can I not spell, but I can't pronounce too well, either. Kayaderosseras, for one. At least I think that's Indian. May be Greek. Anyhow, there was never a shortage of fishing.
On a map, most of these rivers and ponds are named. New York is an old state, and there isn't an square foot, even up here, that hasn't been scoured by geographers and cartographers, let alone developers and farmers. And Indians, I suppose.
So it's no surprise that if there's a river, there's a road nearby. Or an old grist mill or former lumber yard. Be that as it may, Dad didn't like the main roads. Like a moonshiner on a sunny afternoon, Dad preferred the back roads to the highways, or even the paved ones.
He'd somehow recall once we were in the car that "there's this great little diner that serves the best breakfast," and that was the stop either before or after the fish were caught, depending when we got out of bed or convinced mom to let us out of the house.
In most cases, there were a few dead flies under the glass of the donut covers on the counter, the cook looked like he just broke out of prison the night before and the waitress, like a woman who didn't give a rat's ass whether or not you were paying for service. Come to think of it, she didn't.
In short, the place was perfect.
Generally, there were no menus. "How do want your eggs?"
It was assumed you'd get toast, home fries, bacon and strong coffee whether or not you wanted it or were old enough to drink it.
But Dad wouldn't let me drink it, and I didn't put up a battle. He would, however, let me bypass the OJ or milk for a morning and go with Coke or Mountain Dew (the true breakfast soda).
Wait, it just came to me: Jet Diner. That was the place. Don't sue me. I loved the bacon-cheeseburger with the egg on top.
Dad also didn't care much to listen to the radio while driving, and for the love of Pete, I have no idea what we used to talk about. I was 5 or 9 or 14. I do remember that I'd roll my eyes a lot, stupid, but abundantly normal, kid that I was, as he would tell me "legends," as he called them.
Now, with Dad, you never really knew what was fact and what was fiction. He'd make up stories about fighting tigers in Borneo or being held prisoner in Saskatoon. On fishing trips, he'd tell me about great Indian battles that happened right over that hill there. Of braves who fought the Englishmen with nothing but bows, arrows or their bare hands. At some point, inevitably, while on the river bank, he'd reach down and grab a piece of slate in the shape of an arrowhead and tell me, as if I was going to have an epiphany, that, see! There were Indians here.
For all I know, there might have been, and the dozens of arrowheads I collected as a young boy, then, a little older, tied to long, thin sticks and launched with a homemade bow at the neighborhood squirrels and crows, might have been, as he would have said, for real.
There were tomahawks, too, by the way.
By the time we had gotten to the river bank or pond, however, we lost half the morning. I can remember only a few mornings that it was early enough to see the fog burn off the surface. But there were a few. We'd fish for a few hours, and generally catch stuff — bass, sunfish, trout, walleye pike..., eat some sort of wild black- or blueberries at the river bank, and then head back on the road.
As the crow flies, we might have been an hour away from home. But as Dad drove, it was usually three times that. Of course, there was lunch with which to contend.
Now, the thing you've got to know about Dad was that his favorite sandwich in the whole wide world was the Western egg sandwich. With coffee. Nothing else came close. Except a hot dog, but then again, that's not really a sandwich, is it? So, being that McDonald's or Burger King doesn't make this brand of lunch, it was back to another greasy spoon. So now that I think about it, the river was certainly the destination, but the routes to and from (never the same, mind you), were taken because of their blue-collar cuisine.
Dad was pretty much a child of the Great Depression, but worse: His father was a penny pincher, God rest his soul. So the fare set out on his dinner table was bread and oleo. Sometimes there would be potatoes, other times anchovies on pasta. This tasted good to him. So it stands to reason that hot dogs, Western egg sandwiches and a vile weed he called "roppies" were sort of delicacies.
I never quite got it, but it didn't bother him too much. Army food must have felt like down-home...
Me? Well, to this day, I can't eat a Western egg sandwich, let alone an omelet, without thinking of Dad. Heaven forbid if Mom went out and left us two at home at lunchtime. He'd whip up his "famous" sandwiches. Onions, peppers and eggs on Italian bread.
By the time we made it home, half the day would be gone, and it would take another hour or so to gut the fish and clean off the picnic table. In hindsight, I figured Mom was a sport, so long as Dad and I kept out part of the bargain and cut the grass and trimmed the hedges afterward.
When I think back on those lazy Saturday fishing jaunts, it's funny that I don't remember the fish; I remember the company.