In the meantime, the three of you visit this blog regularly--I mean the folks from Advance Publications in Manhattan, Westchester County government just north of the Bronx, and Sun Microsystems out in California--can enjoy this clip from Peter Bogdanovich's classic film, The Last Picture Show (1971). One of my favorite actors, the great cowboy Ben Johnson (whom I resemble a little), won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Sam the Lion, the aging patriarch of a dying small town in Texas. Sam, who acts as a father figure to some of the local high school kids who frequent his diner, pool hall, and little movie theater, takes two of them fishing. Although there's no fish to be caught in the "stock tank" (a reservoir used to water animals) where they go, Sam still goes there to enjoy the scenery and rekindle pleasant memories of a romance he had 20 years earlier. This is where he brought the woman (who was much younger and unhappily married). Those memories--and sharing them from time to time--keep Sam going and allow him to reconnect to a time when he wasn't "a decrepit, old bag of bones."
Although I usually go fishing by myself, this scene also brilliantly illustrates what Joe Pedulla once described to me as the "social aspect of fishing," talking to your companion(s) as you wait for the line to show some sign of life. One of the teens, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), listens intently as Sam reminisces.
