PROLOGUE
Graduation night in Washington County, Oregon is usually followed shortly after by a trip to the Wilson River where the most drunken and courageous diploma holders jump off the Jordan Creek Bridge. Depending on the time of the year the surface of the river can be low enough where you can fall anywhere from 45 to 55 feet. It's far enough to have two or three regrets race through your head as you descend. You have to keep your arms and legs tight to your body and your entry pretty straight or you will thrash around under the water like you're in a washing machine spin cycle. It is hard to do when your belly is full of OC Henry's Warm Rhubarb Wine and your heart is filled with youth and false bravado.
"Smokin" Jimmy Johnson graduated High School in 1966, and had a class ring to prove it. Not a lot of guys could afford a class ring in those days, what with the strawberry picking jobs on the wain cause of some guy by the name of Mark Hatfield down at the Oregon State Capital in Salem. "Smoken" Jimmy had his ring though. He worked all summer at the gas station, there in Hillsboro, and saved up for it. He was planning to wear it proudly on the next coming Monday to his induction into the armed services.
It was the time of the Vietnam war. If you didn't have the conviction to find a way out of the war altogether you were going to be drafted into a grunt infantryman's job. The best thing you could do, in that awful circumstance, to save yourself, and the enemy from you was to volunteer. Everybody figured if you volunteered, the Army would know you were probably a pretty smart guy who could be trained for a technical job somewhere in Europe or maybe even Germany. There you could work a full 8 hour shift then go drink that dark beer they have over there.
Well, Jimmy fell for it. Just like falling off a bridge he unexpectedly landed straight from the Wilson River Jordan Creek bridge through a Coors Light and Henry's Rhubarb hangover and found himself on the ground in Vietnam.
Graduation night in Washington County, Oregon is usually followed shortly after by a trip to the Wilson River where the most drunken and courageous diploma holders jump off the Jordan Creek Bridge. Depending on the time of the year the surface of the river can be low enough where you can fall anywhere from 45 to 55 feet. It's far enough to have two or three regrets race through your head as you descend. You have to keep your arms and legs tight to your body and your entry pretty straight or you will thrash around under the water like you're in a washing machine spin cycle. It is hard to do when your belly is full of OC Henry's Warm Rhubarb Wine and your heart is filled with youth and false bravado.
"Smokin" Jimmy Johnson graduated High School in 1966, and had a class ring to prove it. Not a lot of guys could afford a class ring in those days, what with the strawberry picking jobs on the wain cause of some guy by the name of Mark Hatfield down at the Oregon State Capital in Salem. "Smoken" Jimmy had his ring though. He worked all summer at the gas station, there in Hillsboro, and saved up for it. He was planning to wear it proudly on the next coming Monday to his induction into the armed services.
It was the time of the Vietnam war. If you didn't have the conviction to find a way out of the war altogether you were going to be drafted into a grunt infantryman's job. The best thing you could do, in that awful circumstance, to save yourself, and the enemy from you was to volunteer. Everybody figured if you volunteered, the Army would know you were probably a pretty smart guy who could be trained for a technical job somewhere in Europe or maybe even Germany. There you could work a full 8 hour shift then go drink that dark beer they have over there.
Well, Jimmy fell for it. Just like falling off a bridge he unexpectedly landed straight from the Wilson River Jordan Creek bridge through a Coors Light and Henry's Rhubarb hangover and found himself on the ground in Vietnam.
"Well the hills were a burning and the bullets were a whirling and it looked like the fourth of July." The battle was churning and he was just a learning that he was probably soon going to die.
Jimmy raised up his hand to protect himself as he ran out from the bush into the open to get away. Just as he did, he saw a piece of a slow moving bullet cut off his ring finger right at the base. His finger spun in slow motion about itself while his brain, operating at light speed, wondered if the ring that he lost graduation night would have deflected this stray bullet that was about to enter his brain through his right eye.
EPILOGUE
Four years later almost to the day Joe was invited by some of his graduation buddies to go fishing down at the Wilson. Some one had made a little fishing dock where you could fish if you had a handicap of some kind. Lots of guys needed that kind of help after the war.
Four years later almost to the day Joe was invited by some of his graduation buddies to go fishing down at the Wilson. Some one had made a little fishing dock where you could fish if you had a handicap of some kind. Lots of guys needed that kind of help after the war.
Jimmy let out a pretty fair cast with his brand new 9' Fenwick rod and his level wind Abu Garcia 5001C left hand drive Ambassador reel. The thing about a level wind reel is you have more control over the line than you do with the spinning reel your Dad taught you to fish with. More like the casting reels your Grandpa fished with but a whole lot better. Besides a one eyed short fingered Vietnam veteran fisherman deserved all the best you could buy.
The water was full of fresh ocean going rainbow trout; up there in Washington County they call them "Steelhead".
Jimmy nailed one on his fourth cast with a purple rooster tail and put him on the sandy beach just up river from the bridge. The bridge he has jumped off from so many times before, in his youth-------- just four years ago.
His high school buddies helped clean the fish to make it ready for an Indian tepee smoker made out of alder branches when somebody noticed a bright golden glint in the fishes gut.
They found a graduation ring in there with the letters "JJ" on one side of the big ruby red center stone and the numbers "66" on the other!
This summer please be sure to throw a case of GENERAL CHOW into your instant camp set up. It isn't exactly first class living with out it!
2 comments:
Your stories make me smile...(and want to hear the middle of this one!) I vaguely remember Joe in those days and a little of this story - and it sounds all pretty likely to me.
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