AMERICANS DON'T KNOW ABOUT LEISURE

Two holidays put rigid bookends on summer. Setting aside history and intended observances, Memorial Day holds an advantage in popularity, coming as it does on the front end of purportedly carefree times. Labor Day, tribute to workers, proves a scolding school master and slaps us to our senses.

Labor Day comes to 1993 reminding me that another summer has departed, and I haven't gone fishing.

It is said that every hour spent fishing adds an hour to your life. Such a healthy perquisite should have endowed my father a longer time on this Earth, though I suppose chain-smoking while trolling for crappie tends to negate any credit you get for wisely administering leisure.

There was a time in my life when I received a fishing license as a present each birthday, a thoughtful springtime gift that would be stuffed in my wallet and hauled from lake to lake over the course of the next months.

Gradually, the license took its accustomed place in my wallet and the only watering hole it came close to had draft pitchers and took credit cards. So much for extending your life.

Summers came and summers went, as this one did, and I failed to go fishing, a shameful situation that would dismay my father. He was a man who believed Beatles appeared on plants and Monkees lived in the jungle but somehow innately knew about the spawning cycle of panfish.

There was no poetic/religious "River-Runs-Through-It" relationship as it related to my father and fishing. He caught them because they were in the water, would bite the minnows and worms and crickets and jigs that he cast forth, and were good to eat with hush puppies and sugary iced tea.

Leave philosophy to men who seek trout in mountain streams and commune with nature as though going to church. When he got the itch, which was often, my dad would wrestle a jon boat into the back of his pickup truck, haul it to Kentucky Lake and launch the chore of relaxing.

Ask him about the cosmic forces that connect him to creatures that school around near the base of a submerged tree stump, he would lift his cap and scratch his head in one motion, light another Winston, chew on the question a moment ... and ultimately wouldn't answer.

He would wonder: Why make it so complicated? It's fishing.

Everyone who knew my father marveled at the ease with which he fit into this world. It is talked about still, when his children get together or, regrettably, when a funeral is held for one of his contemporaries. His manner suited his pastime, and his approach to a friendly conversation mirrored the casual freedom he felt dropping a line into a glass-smooth cove and knowing somewhere a fish was looking for lunch.

On his way to these fishing locales, my father would stop at the same store, the type of place that used to exist more than now on two-lanes that led to recreation areas. Grocery and bait were sold downstairs, and the proprietors lived above. In the days before fast-food chains discovered even rural properties, you went to these places for a sandwich, which the owner prepared by running a slab of bologna through a slicer and directing you to a loaf of white bread and an open jar of mustard on a table beside the meat counter.

As the meal was arranged, my father would reconnoiter, quizzing the shopkeeper about what was biting and where. It struck me at the time he never made use of what he learned, instead just enjoying the distinct language of his avocation and amiable style of those close to it. Little seemed amiss in this orbit, inconsequential as it was in the grand scheme of things, and my father seemed comfortable beyond reason in its midst.

People say America is becoming a nation of couch potatoes, and that may be true. But Americans don't know diddly about leisure, on Labor Day or any other day. We find ourselves in a computer-driven age, but the machines that are meant to simplify our lives merely draw us into their web and confound us.

My dad slept well each night and dreamed of hauling in crappie quick as he could rebait. I sleep fitfully and wake up before the alarm, feeling behind before my feet hit the floor.

Mark Twain pointed out that fathers seem to get smarter the older their sons get. I can't argue with that. Many men know many things; my father knew fish. To my great discredit, I fail to follow in his footsteps.