Baker's Branch

  “Get the net. Get the net. Good fish.”  My brother, Vernon Vollertsen, up for the day from Edmond to visit and fish, was indeed into a good fish of some sort, his rod bent into a deep bow, drag screeching line from the reel. Whatever it was, was going deep. We had been tossing jigs towards the shoreline back up in the Mud Creek Arm of Lake Keystone. All reports and history for this time of the year indicated that’s where the crappie should be, but they weren’t. Almost two hours of throwing variously colored jigs had proven that they weren’t.  This spring’s fishing season has been a roller coaster ride of frontal passages, moving the fish in and out, in and out, and anybody’s guess as to where to find them from day to day. And now, after the rains have come, after four years of drought, the water is rising, and becoming murkier than it has been in four years.  Even the hardest headed German can be hammered into shape by the events of the day. A change was in order, and I had opted for

  Before you answer that, you better go to the window and look. They HAVE been showing up around here in peoples' backyards lately, whether yours or not. I was put to thinking about backyard lions recently at the conclusion of a delivery I gave to the Sunset Rotary Club which holds meetings at the Tulsa Boys' Home. The topic requested for my attention was hunting and fishing opportunities along the wild Arkansas River, which, in case you haven't noticed, is getting wilder by the day. Well, sorta'.  I'm getting too old for curveballs, and was relieved to see a slow "fat one" headed my way. I felt I handled the requested topic well. I know a little about the hunting and fishing around here until I got to the Q&A session at the end. Jim Eardley, longtime resident of Prattville, wanted to know what was the closest I had ever been to a mountain lion. Well, he had me there. In all of my rambles I have been places wild, hundreds of miles from the nearest road

  It's time to eat. Enough already of all this "how-to", "where-to", and "who with" stuff. It's time to belly-up to the table, and take a bite.  I hate more than anything the way frozen packages of fish pile up in the freezer. It's a pet peeve of mine. Frozen fish has a way of working its way to the bottom of a freezer, and not re-appearing again for months, even years, later. Eat it now, or suffer the "burned" consequences later. God did not intend for people to eat freezer-burned fish, but it happens.  There must be fifty ways to fry a fish, or lose your lover, but in the end they're both fried. Don't get me wrong, I love "fried," but towards the end of the season I am susceptible to alternative suggestions. How about "Crappie Florentine", for example? Until about a week ago it did not exist; it does now. My mother was one of the five best domestic cooks I have ever known. It was a surprising fact on seve

  Snowed in last week, remember? Today there’s a fine drizzle coming down out here on Baker’s Branch, just enough to settle the dust, nothing more. Not nearly enough to fill the dry ponds scattered about this country. Truth is, our state continues to wither dry going into the fifth year (my count) of a classic dry country drought. Yes, this is a traditionally dry country; always has been. Droughts here do not surprise the natives.  When I was a boy, homesick for Oklahoma while living in Rhode Island (oh, yes, plenty of water in a state with the word “island” in it) a teacher sensed my melancholy, asked me the source of it, and the next day handed me a book entitled “The Grapes of Wrath” saying, “Here, I think you will find some people in this book you know.”   Indeed I did. Steinbeck’s Ma Joad was my own grandmother. Her son “Tom” was one of my uncles, minus the stretch in prison, but I definitely knew where “Mac Alester Pen” was. It was just down the road about thirty miles, and