Money man, money fan

PHOENIX, Ariz.  – So we’re sitting in the Phoenix airport.  Our plane to home leaves within an hour.  The University of Kansas men’s basketball team is playing Northern Iowa in the Big Dance.

It’s not going well.

We hunch over my laptop, Cindy to my left, Zach to my right. The video broadcast is intermittent, so we switch to just audio.  And we listen as KU, the alleged No. 1 team in the country, loses.  Badly.

I sensed as we were driving in to the airport that things would not go well.  It’s hard to carry the banner of “No. 1” most of the season without believing it is destiny.  But when Northern Iowa immediately bottled up KU’s vaunted offense, I knew it was trouble.

But what disturbs me now was the nature of my partisanship.   You see, Zach is a K-State student, but I was rooting for K-State’s nemesis, KU.   Why?  Because back in 2008, when KU won the national championship, we sold a lot of championship merchandise at my job.

Yeah, I publish books.  But I also sell stuff.  I was counting on KU to go all the way to another national championship.  Heck, nearly every bracket out there expected the same. It wasn't too much to expect, was it?

The truth is, I’m no longer a fan when I watch these games.  I’m a calculating money machine.

Sad.

In fact, when KU finally lost, I was so wound up, so upset, I couldn’t see the planes on the tarmac through the window straight ahead. My hands were shaking.  “I need to take a walk!” I pronounced, and off I stalked.

I don’t think Zach could believe my reaction.  Rooting for KU wasn’t necessarily the problem.  We live in Kansas, after all.  But getting so wrapped up in the necessity of a victory for financial reasons … that was the problem. I apologized to him later. 

I won’t get on a high horse about how money, driven by athletics, pollutes higher education.  But there’s little disputing it.  And now the NCAA wants to expand the Big Dance to 96 teams so it can make even more money – even though virtually every noted observer of college basketball says it’s a dumb idea.

KU is certainly “a playah” when it comes to making money. Just yesterday, I read in The Kansas City Star that Lew Perkins, athletic director of the University of Kansas, received compensation of $4.4 million in 2009 – much of it from performance bonuses – making him the highest paid state employee in Kansas.

I bet ol' Lew was really peeved when KU lost.

Sorry, Lew.  No sympathy.

And sure, I’m not above cashing in on KU’s success, because that’s my job.

But it’s not healthy.  And I think I’ve now tempered myself a bit.

You see, once KU got knocked out, K-State had its shot.  The Wildcats moved on to the Elite Eight and needed only to get by Butler University’s Bulldogs last night to arrive at the Final Four for the first time since 1964.

I had Final Four t-shirts on order; we were ready to start selling on our web store as soon as the last buzzer sounded.

But like KU, K-State faltered … and lost.  Too tired, perhaps, from the incredible double-overtime victory against Xavier in the Sweet Sixteen.

I was cool, calm when the last seconds faded away. Sad for Zach, of course, but circumspect about the loss. I didn’t rant … didn’t need a walk around the block. I had changed.

Somehow I’d let business become too personal – and too important.  It's a cliche but true: Life’s way too short for that.

It's best not to expect too much from your teams. 

Eh, which reminds me ... how about them Royals?

Atop the ice, Part 2

LITTLE GLEN LAKE, Mich. – The minnows are the key.

We had met at 6:45 a.m. to grab bucketsful.  They swam by the thousands in underwater compartments inside a marina shed.

Annette and I carefully walked a narrow pier to reach them. It’s the first thing done when she sets out to ice fish. The buckets then go into the back of the truck, and it’s off to find the Ski-Doo atop the shore at Little Glen.

We’re in the shanty now, and the fishing lesson begins. You expect to be handed a fishing pole, but it’s also obvious that a traditional pole would poke the eye of the person across from you.

And yes, Annette has some short poles available. But the preferred method uses a thin, flat piece of wood, maybe a foot long, with “v’s” notched into each end. The fishing line is then wrapped the length of the wood piece, between the notches.

I grab one and unwrap the line, careful not to snag myself on the hook. Annette then instructs me to shove the wood piece under me, so that I’m sitting on it.

I figure this precaution is to prepare for landing “the big one” – a fish so big and mighty that it would rip the line from my hands. Mainly, though, in a space without much elbow room, it keeps the device out of the way.

Annette grabs the line, then attaches a minnow to the hook. The hook goes through the minnow’s eye socket. The goal is to not kill the minnow … you want it to swim for you below, to lure the fish.

And sure enough, when lowered, the minnow does its duty, swimming in circles.

Within seconds, perch begin to investigate. They approach the minnow; perhaps even nibble a bit. It takes some practice, though, to know when a nibble becomes a bite.

When the fish bite, it’s important to jerk your hand up, to land the hook. And that’s what I did … with some regularity, I might add. 

Okay, it’s not like I was a veteran on some Saturday-morning TV fishing program. But I was fishing, damn it, and catching some, too.

Everyone has her or his own technique, says Annette, who’s been fishing this way for 10 years. And some folks do seem to fish better than others.

Ken, a friend of Annette and Don’s, is considered the Pied Piper of the perch, pike and other species that wander the lake, Annette says.

And it’s true: Just when the fish seem to be avoiding Annette’s shanty, Ken stops by to suggest I try out one of his shanties. I hop on his snowmobile and off we go. (There we are, in the photo, approaching his shanty.) Unlike Annette’s, this shanty was bare-bones basic – a heater, a hole and two benches.

But lots of fish. I caught them by the minute, it seemed.

While fishing, Ken and I got acquainted. Retired now, he worked through some jobs in the telephone business. But his most striking memories seemed to be of when he served as a gunner in a Vietnam War helicopter.

It was after that tough experience, Ken said, that he vowed to live each day to its fullest … to celebrate what he had, to not take anything for granted, to give back. He’s on the local school board, for example.

No one knows why Ken is such a master at fishing – he denies knowing anything special. But he succeeds.

I have a theory. I suggest the fish go to Ken because he’s earned them. I’m sure Ken would say no.

Though the typical shanty seems a place where isolation reigns, in fact visitors seem frequent.

The quiet is broken gradually: You hear the hum of an approaching snowmobile, then the clomp of boots on ice. Then the door pops open, letting in the sharp sun. It takes a second for the eyes to adjust.

The visitor leans through the door, and everyone then catches up on the latest. "How are they bitin'?Any luck? Me, not so much."

Annette values the quiet. But it’s clear she appreciates the occasional neighborly hellos. Folks also tend to help the other by trading favors.  Annette asked Ken if he’d clean my fish … I’d never done it. He agreed without hesitation. Not sure what was owed in return.

She and I talked about what it was like to live year-round by the lake, and what the locals think of the summer visitors.

Not surprisingly, the visitors are welcome, in no small part because of the dollars they bring. But Annette says everyone relaxes a lot more when out-of-towners head back home.

We paused mid-day to go have lunch at Art’s Tavern. Annette bought fried smelt to share. Countless local residents, it seemed, stopped by our booth to bid Annette hello. Pretty much everyone knows everyone else in and around Glen Arbor, Annette says.

A lot of people might not like that constant closeness. But here, at Art’s, it seems a very good thing.

* * *

Last week, Annette emailed me.

“Ken stopped by today with fresh honey … lots of trading going on in and around those shanties of his!" she wrote.

But the news wasn't just about the barter economy.

"Ken had moved his shanty closer to the Narrows," she added, "and I heard that he and his fishing partners caught like crazy!

"Those are the really exciting days – we’ve been lucky enough to have them a few times ourselves."

Then she shared word of another season now past:

"We took our shanty off the ice Monday. No fish, and the weather was to change."

She sent me a photo of the hut on a trailer, being hauled away.

“Time to filet," she said. 

"Makes me tired thinking about it!”

To see all of the photos from the fishing trip, click here.