Fishing with Fat Jack - Installment #1

On one of my many fly fishing trips to Wyoming, my buddies and I happened to land ourselves in Hyattville, WY. It is not what you would call a big city, maybe not even a city. It is perhaps two blocks long and one block wide. There is a post office, a church, a school, 2 or 3 drinking establishments and a couple of civic buildings.

It was a cool, crisp October morning. The only place in town that was open was a small café and saloon across the street from the elementary school. The name on its shingle was “Fat Jack's”.

A slight breeze was blowing and there was the feeling that snow was about to fall. An old barn door, falling off its hinges and held open a bit with a 2x4 greeted us. There was the sound of a sawzall and a poorly tuned radio spewing mostly static and some hard to make out country music coming from inside. A cat skittered off the street into the old barn and my buddies and I followed.

We were looking for somebody who could give us direction on where we might go fishing. I'm not sure that we should have ever asked.

Inside was a very large man cutting a hole in the wall with the sawzall and next to him was this really big old hound dog. The man seemed a little annoyed at our appearance but stopped working to see what we wanted.

We introduced ourselves, “Hi, I’m Loren and this is John and Michael.” We told him that we were from out-of-state. I am sure that there was not a need for the "out-of-state" comment as we were standing there in what my wife likes to call our "spandex" fishing undergarments.

I thought the guy was going to choke to death as he tried to clear his throat enough to get out the words, “Howdy, what ya’ll fellas want?”

We quickly asked if he knew where we might go fishing. “Hey, now that seems like a right fine thing to do on a day like to day, with the snow ‘n all. Hmmm, my names Fat Jack and I own this here place.”

“Ain’t no one around that can take ya’ll that I know, jus look around, the town’s almost boarded up, sep’n us and the Hitch’n Post down the street. Besides, I got a git this door hung ta’day or the Misses is gon’a tan my hide.”

John said, “You go ask your wife and we will make sure the door is hung.”

“Huh?” said Fat Jack. “Yeah,” said John, “we’ll hang the door for you.” And, off he went to negotiate with the Misses.

All we heard was voices getting louder and louder. Soon the rattle and banging of pans from the kitchen drowned out the voices and the hound dog moved across the room.

It wasn’t long and Fat Jack was back. He was sweating a little and looked a little nervous. “If ya’ll are sure ya’ll can hang that door ya better git to it!” He said.

John grabbed the sawzall and started to finish cutting where Fat Jack had left off. He just pushed the blade all the way through cutting both sides of the wall at the same time. Before long the cut-out was loose and it fell away from us into the room on the other side.

“What the …” screamed a startled elderly woman. The local Women’s Club’s Tuesday morning meeting was in progress at Fat Jacks Café. We were face to face with 10 very startled old lady’s gazing at us through a cloud of drywall dust and sawdust.

Fat Jack neglected to pass on some very vital important information. His head poked around the corner and he had a smile that went from ear to ear.