Randy Spencer: The Maine Guide

Squeaky wheel

Has this happened to you? In looking over a recent invoice from an Internet service provider, I noticed that there were two charges for $1 each that seemed to have nothing to do with the actual service. One was called “paper invoice” and the other “non-automated payment.” I happened to be in just the right mood to call the 1-800 customer service number, suffer the “please listen carefully as our menu options have changed” routine, and then be connected to a call center in India. You’re on hold just long enough to contemplate what the unemployment figures might be if the American company you're calling about hadn’t exported these jobs to India.

It was 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time in Maine, so it was 6:15 p.m. in India. After an exchange of pleasantries including, “How is your day going so far, sir?” designed to defuse whatever phone rage is about to be unleashed, she and I eventually got down to business. My business was to ask whether the two $1 charges on my bill were what they appeared to be: attempts to pass on to me the cost of sending me an invoice. And they were.

Rather than unleash a rant that would unfairly funnel many of life’s other pent-up frustrations into the ear of a customer-service innocent, I simply said, “That’s ridiculous,” and as soon as I said that, she said those fees would be removed from my bill. There was no argument, no discussion, just, “OK,” and now I don’t have to pay it. When I also said that, if in the future, those fees again showed up on my bills I still had no intention of paying them, the answer  was, “OK, that portion of your bill will be removed, sir.” 

So, the squeaky wheel does in fact get the grease. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other companies are charging me for the cost of sending me a bill and getting away with it. Pouring over the minutia on any invoice is low-quality time, but that’s exactly how they get away with the brazen act of charging you for charging you. I looked back over some past bills only to find that I had been paying this punitive fee (which punishes me for bringing my business to them) for months. One phone call ended the madness.

Like mother, like son

When Eric and Tae arrived with their daughter Lilly, barely a year old, they only had the word of Eric’s mother, Christine, to go on. She’s been coming to Grand Lake Stream for years and she undboubtedly has sung its praises to them. I remember when Christine used to struggle with fly fishing, determined not to give up or give in. Now she fly- casts better than many men I know.

This year, she was ready to share her special vacation haven with her family. And just to make the occasion more memorable, our first day of fishing coincided with the arrival in eastern Maine of Earl, the former hurricane now downgraded to a tropical storm. That downgrading did nothing to discourage Earl from delivering enough rain to sack any fishing trip, so I was prepared for Eric to cancel for the day right when we met at breakfast. I was impressed to find him instead asking to borrow a pair of rain pants. As we walked out the lodge door, Christine said, “Eric, I’d like to eat some pickerel for lunch if possible.” 

En route to a place somewhat protected from high winds, I tried to discover what Eric’s fishing history had been.  “I think I may have fished a little at summer camp in Oxford, Maine, when I was growing up,” he said. So, it looked as if we’d be starting from virtual scratch.

The skies opened up on us even as we launched the Grand Laker. Within minutes, I was into a syncopated routine of taking a paddle stroke, then bailing with a #10 Maxwell House coffee can. I did a quick casting demo, talked about likely targets like brush piles and overhanging hemlock limbs, then handed a rod over to Eric. He pulled his rain-jacket hood up over his head and hunkered down in the torrents to a steady rhythm of spin-casting.

Thirty minutes later, Eric’s casting mojo appeared just around the second bend in the river we were fishing. I found myself yelling out an involuntary “Wow!” when he landed a topwater lure inches away from a target he was identifying on his own. He was already good enough to go to subsurface lures, which can be more trouble to the novice simply because they sink as soon as they hit the water. Topwater was a good place to start, but the rain was so violent, no fish could discern a lure from the rest of the mayhem occurring on the surface. 

Around the third bend in the river, several pines hung their thickly needled limbs well out over the river. To my open-mouthed dismay, Eric sidearmed a subsurface lure up under the first limb within casting reach. Instantly, a fish struck and then released itself. I J-stroked the canoe to turn the bow into the current in order to give Eric another shot.  Again he sidearmed, skittering a cast back under the same limb. His quickly acquired skills were requieted this time.  A two-foot pickerel doubled his rod and thrashed up beside the canoe. “Christine’s got her pickerel,” was all I could say as I netted the impressive freshwater “gator.”

The afternoon brought the first signs of the next day’s weather: high pressure and wind! It didn’t matter, since Eric’s fishing mojo was already whetted. It didn’t faze Christine either, when she joined us on day two. She grew up fishing for trout in northwestern New Jersey and that was evident the second she picked up a rod. It was a sunny day with a stiff wind, but even that seemed like a reprieve compared to fishing in Earl. All that’s left, on some future trip, is to transfer that contagious mojo to Lilly. My guess is, with a fly-fisher grandmom and parents who’ve rediscovered the joys of fishing, the girl’s got a good shot.