Lisa Fletcher's Pajama Party, Miss Shayla moves to Lake Isabella and I catch a giant catfish

First up was Lisa Fletcher deciding to rent a hotel room in Fort Bragg. She bought several pair of brand new pajamas and intended for me and Jeanette Antoine to wear them while we drank and caroused about the town. The hitch came when Jeanette declared that they didn't fit her and she wouldn't be wearing them. 

I said, no problem, you can have mine, to her chagrin. She really just didn't want to be seen wearing these cheap gray-striped pj's in public. I tried on the ones that were intended for her. She had tried them on already so they couldn't be returned. I found they fit quite nicely except for the pants were a bit short around the ankles. 

"No problem," I proclaimed, "I'll just sag them. That's still a thing, right?" Probably as much of a thing as wearing pajamas out in public, at any rate. 

So off we went for our day trip to town, sporting PJs, Jeanette tagging along in street clothes. We decided to do some fishing, since we were in a fishing village. I had some nice spots in mind, garnered in a previous dream. We didn't wind up going there but settled for a pier where people were both fishing and swimming and generally milling about. Not the most fishing appropriate, but I was in it to win it. 

I cast out my little yellow jig with the rubbery fake worm/fish dangly thing and reeled it in with my signature jerks which pretty much guaranteed me some action. Sure enough, I started getting bites. Then, without warning my line starts getting pulled off the spool in classic Jaws fashion. 

My uncle was there and perked up. "Looks like you got a big one," he acknowledged contrary to his usual pessimistic prognostication. "Careful you don't get it hung up." There it was. 

Anyway, I followed it around some trees that were growing in the water next to the pier and around a group of swimmers, waders and other people fishing. They all looked quite amazed as the line was being fed out, then slowly tightening, then reversing direction as I reeled and reeled. It was coming my way. 

I got the damn thing landed amidst gasps and cheers and behold, it was a giant catfish. Like four feet long kind of giant. It was old and beat up and its tail was missing, having been bitten off by a shark. His mouth was deformed from many battles with the hook and his fins were pulling away from his skeleton, revealing his sharp, poisonous spines. 

"Yep, it's a catfish," I announced, "His spines are poking me in the hand." 

He looked smaller now, not the four foot behemoth, but a more realistic foot or two. No matter, it was still the same giant fish to the crowd. 

I chided them all, "Don't make fun of the rubber worm! This thing has caught me just about every kind of fish you can imagine. It always works." No one argued with me.

 

 

Somewhere else in the world, Miss Shayla Sullivan, a local equestrian and animal rescuer, bought some land and was busy cleaning up her candy apple red Camaro in the front yard. 

I say yard, but it was more of a dirt patch. I recognized the place from my childhood. It was Gracie and Bill's property in Lake Isabella. The structures were all there, the house the trailer, the garage and the fish house, plus a few of Shayla's things thrown in the mix. The place looked a bit small for her and she wasn't all that thrilled with it, property-wise. I talked to her as she cleaned out her car. 

"So, you have this brand new car and you let animals of all kinds ride in it?" I asked.

She obviously cared more for the animals than for the car, though her cleaning it meticulously afterward said that both were things she cared about. 

"People give me lots of attention for this car," she stated to me. "When they see this car, it is an icon they recognize." 

I disagreed and told her that she was the icon, the car was just window dressing. She demured, but the compliment wasn't lost on her. She knew it, but was just playing the role of the innocent, "Who me? Pretty? Shucks." type of girl. Part of her charm. 

Her dog, Lucky Penny (deceased in real life) ran about sprinting like a filly. She was so exuberant that she actually looked like a little paint horse. The coloration was such that she was brown on one side and white on the other, so when she ran one direction you'd see a white dog/horse and when she'd turn and run the other way she was all brown. I noted that she looked happy and free, not at all like the shaggy rescue that Shayla had taken in. I guess that's what love will do to a critter. 

She showed me around the property and I informed her of my childhood connection to it. I wanted to see the inside of the fish hut/man shed that Bill had built to keep his drinking and nasty magazine collection from Gracie. It had been converted into a bathroom at some point so there was no fish sink or Playboy centerfolds to be seen. 

I tried to snap a picture of the inside of the fish hut, but my camera was set to video and all I got was this weird few seconds of a red scene in the center of a photo aperature slowly opening, like a James Bond title sequence. It was creepy, but I kept it for posterity. 

Next she showed me the inside of the trailer where she had stored an entire inventory of cowgirl show shirts with a variety of prints, some cheesy, some flashy, reflecting decade upon decade of horse shows and the history of horse show fashion. It turned out that a friend of hers had owned an equestrian clothing store which had gone out of business, so she got the show shirts. But probably, as in real life, she was the proud wearer of most of those shirts during some show or another spanning decades. We exited the trailer and it was time for me to leave.

"If you're gonna leave, you'd best get going. Traffic, you know. Gotta move," Shayla admonished me. 

My car had been parked in the driveway which they were grading. A giant pile of gravel was nearly burying my red Toyota Corolla SR5 (yep, the one I owned in the '80s). I brushed the gravel and it fell away easily and my car became unstuck in a minute. I thanked Shayla again and was on my way. 

The trip through town was a twisty turny affair, and there was indeed a bit of holiday traffic. Or it could have been commuting to the great employer of the region, Disneyland. Everyone worked there, so it was quite a cluster fuck on the highways. I made it down to Huntington Beach or somewhere in OC without much thought. 

I found myself in an alley going up to a main street with people riding bicycles and such. I decided to take my pants off and sit hunched over with my knees pulled up to my chest. I just wanted to see if anyone would notice. 

Sure enough, soon a girl riding a bike circled back around and started talking to me. Ignoring the elephant in the room, she questioned me about something she'd heard on the radio recently, asking if it was me doing the broadcast. I could sense that it would have been to my advantage to have claim that it was, though I had no idea what she was talking about. I denied any knowledge of it and she went on to describe some racy sounding DJ patter, which I'd have gladly owned, but alas, I was going to be honest. 

"I don't even have the equipment to broadcast," I explained. And with that she pedaled away. 

Damn. I looked down to note whether or not my junk had been visible during our entire conversation. Sure enough, my butthole was hanging out and my balls dangled freely for the world to see. Surprised the girl had maintained a straight face throughout our conversation.

Next I decided to put some pants on and get a move on. I began walking past some unfinished cul-de-sac construction. Someone had laid out some green plastic army men and accessory buildings, also made of the typical dark green plastic. I picked up one of the buildings and Godzilla-like, smashed it on the ground and kept walking. Take that, you stupid, tiny war machine. 

I was spotted, however and some mall cop style security men in a golf cart started following me. I took a turn and began doing some clever cliff climbing maneuvers on a brick wall behind the cul-de-sac. They had to follow on foot, but seeing my impressive moves decided not to hassle me and instead complimented me on my agility. I was hanging one-handed and flipping back to front, front to back alternately as I switched hands to advance, traversing the wall at about the same speed as a person walking would. 

"I used to do that," the guy noted. "It's really good exercise." 

Yeah, it was, I agreed, though it was entirely unnecessary, since you could just as easily have walked on the sidewalk a few feet below. It didn't provide me with any special powers of evasion, either, since the guy was following along and talking to me the whole time. 

That's about it folks. Woke up, had to write this down while it was still fresh. I think I got all the major parts and didn't conflabulate too much in the process. Until next time.