Chapter 1

My company recently switched to a revised work schedule where we received every other Monday or Friday off, in return for adding an extra hour to each normal workday. Most of the employees, well just about everyone other than management, loved this idea, especially since we were all working mostly ten to twelve hours a day anyway. This was a decree from our CEO, from his ivory tower far above us, in response to an edict from the Mayor who wanted to lower the city's traffic and pollution issues. The cynical side of me said that this token agreement with the Mayor was actually part of a quid-pro-quo; we'd reduce our carbon footprint in return for the city's legal office dropping its objection to the new monstrous eyesore of a parking garage our company had wanted to construct, on a parcel of land previous zoned as residential use only.

Cynicism or not, I was feeling quite overworked enough that the idea of enjoying an extra day off every two weeks suited me just fine. In fact, I knew exactly how I wanted to spend this bonus freedom time ... fishing!

Before I got married a few years ago, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time and money fishing; all very well spent in my opinion. I didn't actually catch a whole lot, but I got a little exercise, too much sun, and just the right amount of relaxation and 'play' to keep my nerves wonderfully distressed. I never should have quit.

Wanda, my rather grouchy wife, hates anything sport related with a passion, and considers even ten minutes of holding a fishing rod and reel to be valuable time forever wasted. She never quite comes out and says it, but I could tell she thinks all fisherman are wastrels, prone to sloth and laziness. This reaction is probably due to her father, who also loved to fish. Just on principle and to be contrary, Wanda hates anything her father loved. He's long dead now, but the loathing continues.

It's very hard sometimes living with my wife ... she's definitely has a few issues that need to be worked out.

My wife Wanda and I both work for a huge insurance mega corporation that in turn owns and controls a gazillion other insurance companies and other marginally related subsidiaries. We each technically work for 'different companies' and our offices are in completely separate buildings at opposite ends of the big corporate campus so we hardly ever saw each other at work. Once in a very great while I'll see her at our main cafeteria, but most of the time she eats at her desk. We even drive in to work separately in our own cars, as we both had very fluid schedules.

I work as a regional Sales Manager for one of the smaller minnow companies our corporate overlords owned and controlled, and I work a fairly weird schedule, where I would often suddenly have to go out on the road for a week or two straight, but then I could be 'home' for the next month or so. My direct boss supervised a group of nearly a dozen other sales managers with territories just as profitable as or even better than mine. At least half of my peers were highly aggressive and ultra-competitive go-getters that gave at least 110% effort and battled for every dollar they could add to their regions bottom line. I took my work seriously, but adding another $100k of revenue into my region didn't add a single penny onto my paycheck. Accordingly my effort stopped at about exactly 100%.

My chances for promotion could be measured on two fingers - slim and none, but I didn't particularly much care. The salary was ok, my boss wasn't too insane and had a fairly liberal comp-time policy, and now with the new corporate 'eco-friendly' work program, I could now enjoy an additional two Friday's a month to start fishing once again. Life ought to have been pretty good for me, but somehow it wasn't.

Wanda supervised a Claims Department for a slightly more profitable division with lots of top executive micro-management, and unlike me she was on the 'fast-track' for promotion. She worked 12 hour days even before the big work schedule change, and most weekends also. Often now she would work on Sunday's as well, which used to be 'our day' together to do fun things. The thoughts of more money and higher promotion were driving her, and she failed to see why I could not enjoy similar success in my own department, the facts of reality notwithstanding.

The very cynical side of me was also rather perturbed that she seemed to be unusually close to her boss and I sometimes strongly suspected that if she was not already having an affair it would just be a matter of time.

Frankly, it was no surprise at all to find that Wanda had elected to take the Monday's off option. I don't know if she did it on purpose just to be contrary, of if she thought that the prospect of an occasional three-day weekend at home with her husband was just too terrible to be contemplated. Her official reasoning was that Friday was just too much of a busy workday for her, filled with constant meetings where her presence was critical. I didn't quite buy that story, but had the good sense to let the matter quickly drop. It went without saying that she was going to continue to work her normal full work schedule, regardless of any scheduled days off.

It was about this point that my cynical side managed to convince the more rational and easy-going part of my nature that something was very seriously wrong with our marriage.

For my first free Friday of fishing freedom, I went down to Galveston to discover that the big fishing pier I used to fish at was now closed. It had been damaged as the result of a tropical storm last year and had not been repaired or rebuilt. Undaunted, I started to drive down the coast towards San Luis Pass, a place I often used to fish when I was younger. This pier had closed as well. Shore erosion and a change of current had turned this section of beach into a shallow tidal flat of pretty much barren sand, and no new pier had taken its place.

In the end, I spent the late afternoon trying my luck at the small public pier in Port Lavaca. I had never caught anything here before and today's luck was no exception. Dejected and without any fish, I returned home.

Two weeks later I started all over again, this time starting my search from Port Lavaca and heading further south. Other than surf fishing locations, I really didn't find any suitable piers, jetties or even old boat landing suitable for an afternoon's fishing. By the time I reached the end of the coastal road, where it intersected a small county road leading to a small town called Lovett, I was about out of ideas and ambition. Fortunately, the view was spectacular enough that I stopped the car for awhile to appreciate what I was seeing. Apparently, this stretch of coastline was a designated nude beach, and there were a few rather attractive young women out enjoying the sun, sans clothing. Nice scenery, but I eventually had to remind myself that I was in fact a married man, albeit a not terribly happy one at the moment.

The first young college aged couple that I asked directions from were also visitors here as well, but they suggested that I take the rather poor county coastal road that paralleled the beach for about a mile or so until I came to an open grass covered tiki bar drink shack under construction in the dunes on the left. The guy there should be able to help me, they thought. And he in fact could.

The guy building the drink shack, Phil, was a fairly surly sort of gent in his mid-thirties who oozed annoyance and misery out of nearly every pore of his body. My first thought was that Phil had decided to save time and have his mid-life crisis a little early and be done with it. He was relatively new to the area as well, but suggested that I keep going straight down this road for another few miles until it curved to the right at the edge of Lovett Bay and then down for another mile or so until I reached the Marsh-King's shack. I couldn't miss it, he said.

Well I did. Somehow I ended up on another tiny dirt lane somewhere out in the middle of the coastal marshlands. In one of the shallow road dips, my car got somewhat stuck into a muddy sinkhole, but nothing that a few good solid rocks or a stiff wooden board under the tire wouldn't fix, to allow me to drive out of it.

I got out of the car, gave the stuck tire a kick and looked around a bit but didn't see or hear anything or anyone nearby. No immediate help here I thought. I gave the tire another kick and proceeded to walk back down the road towards the bay. It wasn't all that far away, I thought, and would be the best place to find rocks, driftwood, or even the elusive Marsh-King.

Just a few hundred yards down the road, I came to a fairly large clearing in the marsh, where the coastal grass and other tall swamp plants didn't block the view from the road as much, and my brooding thoughts gave way to other more immediate concerns.

I thought I was well and truly mired in my own problems when I saw a young lady trapped in far worse trouble. She seemed to be stuck in an especially deep salt marsh pool up to near her neck, and the tide was starting to come in from the bay! I hollered over to her to ask her if she did indeed need help.

"Certainly not!" She retorted. "I often come here to get myself stuck into the mud up to my tits for over two hours. It's the 'in thing' this season at all of the ritziest spas and salons, and lucky me I have all the mud I could ever need for as far as the eye can see."

She continued.

"A proper gentleman would also have already come into the water to assist me, but if you're here as I think you are to net your own bait mud minnows then I don't want your help anyway, as you're stealing food from off of our family's table."

She then gave me as good of a sulk as a woman stuck up to her chin immobile could manage. Her face was very expressive and I had to give the lower lip pout extra bonus points as well. She actually didn't seem particularly annoyed, and her attitude was really probably more 'playful' than anything else.

I decided to play right back. My father was very jovial man who knew over a thousand silly songs and ballads from the dim hoary past, and I inherited his humor and a joy of senseless silliness. I decided it was time to brighten her day a little bit.