Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1915 — SOME FISH STORY WITHOUT ANY FISH [ARTICLE]

SOME FISH STORY WITHOUT ANY FISH

Trials or Three Nimrods Result Following Deception of the Wife of One of Them. This fish story comes to us from such reliable sources that we do not hesitate to print it for the gospel truth. Hurley Beam and wife, of Chicago, are visiting here and their visit is the cause of the story. arranged for a fishing trip Monday with Joe Long and Sam Stevens. Sounds like a big mess of fish, doesn’t it? Hurley’s wife arranged for him to do a little tile ditching at her mother’s home, correcting a faulty drain. Hurley was in a bad fix, soda speak. He said he could not dig the ditch without a regular ditching spade. He knew Sam Stevens had one. Reluctantly he was permitted to go after the spade. When he joined Sam and Joe and told about the ditching spade, Sam’s mind got busy and for an old bachelor he put up about the best falsehood that was ever employed to deceive a confiding wife. He suggested to Hurley that he tell his wife that the spade was at Newland and that they would haye to go there aftef it. Hurley shook his head but Joe Long dangled a fishing pole in front of him and Sam began to run his fingers through the plump minnows in the bait pail. Hurley called his wife over the telephone. He talked like an old timer and finally Mrs. Beam consented. A half hour later the three men were seen enroute to the Hoover slough in a buggy, with minnow pail, poles and lunches all ready for action. When they arrived at what seemed the best place to leave the horse, some four miles southwest, Hurley said that he would give the horse the Chicago “loop” tie. The animal was unhitched from the buggy and Hurley tied it to a tree. Then the fishing in the big slough started. Two carp and a small cat fish were landed and then Hurley thought he saw a bass fishing place across stream and he started to wade over, but soon steped off the bank and went in over his head. With a big “gurgle” he set out for the shore while the fishing pble and pail of bait went floating down the stream. He soon regained control of himsajf and rescued the fishing equipment. Soon they started back to where the horse had been tied and much to their surprise found that the animal had broken loose and was no place’ to be seen. They started homeward with the buggy, alternating in the game of pull and push. When they arrived at the Joe Putts farm, southwest of town, they found that Mrs. Putts had seen the horse and had tied it up. Up to this time they had been dragging along while Hurley sang dolefully, “It’s a Long, Long Way to -Tipperary,” but after the horse was found and hitched up and the three tired fishermen leaned back- into the buggy and said “giddap" to the horse, Hurley sang a stanza and the chorus of “This Is the End of a Peaceful Day”, but suddenly he stopped singing and looking his companions straight in the eye said, “By George, I wish I had that ditching spade.”