Spider Sniffin

CW FISHER My wife's Uncle Quentin was in his early eighties when we called to say we were coming to the family reunion in Old Appleton, Missouri. He said fine, you'll stay at my house. We said no, we were part of a caravan of about 20 people. He said fine, you'll all stay at my house. Our kids were all young. We were too, come to think of it. Not Quentin though. Quentin Klaus'es house is very small, but motel-staying was never part of the Klaus tradition. There was not a kid or adult who was happy about it, but we each had plenty of time on the long trip south through Illinois to kiss goodbye all the sweet memories we'd been anticipating, especially the kids, who were already missing the pool they never swam in at the motel. It came out that Quentin didn't have air conditioning, let alone a pool, he did have a horse but it was too old to ride, his yard had chiggers so you had to wear knee socks, and he might be a bit slowed down because he had prostate cancer. Most of us had never met Quentin, but we'd heard the stories. His sister said he was a real cowboy, which came in handy when I explained why he didn't have cable. We arrived in mid-afternoon, stepped from our ice-cold vans into a hot, hostile, alien atmosphere. We could smell the ultraviolet, see the rays hit the white gravel and light up the undersides of our slippery chins. Standing perfectly still was the natural thing to do. Our shadows made crackling sounds. Otherwise it was quiet. Birds leaned on tree limbs in a stupored silence. Dogs ignored mailmen. A chicken bone lay blanching but antless--they weren't stupid. We were. For we had come here on purpose in a day when the Weather Channel was a very big deal, and we had no idea how to survive. Then Uncle Quentin, dressed head to toe in cowboy--hat to boots and all the getup inbetween--stepped out of the back of his tiny white house and sang out Howdy! We spent the rest of the day drinking iced tea, marveling how we never had to urinate, and taking turns in front of the fan. And the only weird part was the half hour break for Quentin's fishing show he insisted we all watch. It starred a friend of his, but he couldn't get good reception. The kids never heard of that. Quentin never heard of kids that never heard of that. He thought kids today were raised on television, but they weren't, and that impressed him he said. But as the show wore on, his visitors from Chicago began to reveal their more sarcastic sides; some may have taken to imitating the grizzled old fisherman in the rowboat on the mosquito pond with the handrolled cigarette stuck to his lip, especially his colorful views on catch-and-release, which he regarded as a kind of bulemia. By late afternoon the humidity had risen to towering thunderheads that planned to haul every last drop of Missouri's water across the State line to Illinois, but as the sun dropped, so did the temperatures, and by the time it was dark it was cool and dry. Immediately we found our energy, put up the tents, rolled out the sleeping bags, and wondered what now. "Anybody feel like spider sniffin?" Quentin asked. Spider sniffing? The art of sniffin a spider is accomplished with a small flashlight, a penlight is fine, held close to the side of the head, or, if it's small enough, right betweeen the eyes. The head-on angle allows you to see the eyes of the spider--actually their retinas--which are two bright diamonds, no four the same. It was a remarkable discovery, and we all shared it with the people we knew back home. Years later I was sitting around a friend's pond late at night and I told him about spider sniffin. We tried it and it still worked all those years later. Funny how in all that time I never wondered if it might work on other creatures. Such as fish. It does. Put the flashlight next to and behind your eye and you'll see every fish that's down there. Move the light an inch away from your head and they're gone. Quentin's gone, but the gift he gave us remains. I'm passing it on to you now. Some hot day when you're old, your descendents may descend on you, and you won't have any of the amenities they're used to, nor will you speak their language. And though your hearing may not be what it was, you can always hear the children asking why old people smell like that. They will want to be somewhere else like Great America and they will sulk as the evening settles over them like depression, and you'll smile and ask if anybody wants to go spider sniffin. And when they get bored with that, try Froggin--same equipment but add a spear--and you'll have frog legs for breakfast, which will serve the spoiled children of the future right.