The Putnam Sportsman

The great picture of a fellow Oasis Sportsmen club member’s wife holding a nice weakfish in last week’s column gave the name of the angler as Milly Bennett, wife of George Bennett, from Mahopac. George Bennett did organize the charter boat trip to take 312 Mahopac area kids on the fishing trip of a lifetime, but George’s wife is named Camille. He invited Mike Montesora and his Wife Milly, along on the trip to help keep the kids’ lines in the water and get fish unhooked and into burlap bags, coolers, or buckets. It was Milly Montesora in the photo last week, the pretty wife of Mike, who brought the big sea trout to a mate’s gaff or net. George had given me the picture at a week-ago-Monday night’s Oasis meeting and I hand-wrote a caption and had Diana up at the Carmel Courier Office e-mail it over to Joe Lindsey, my Editor, and the picture is still up there. Milly’s name is written on the back of it, so I hope I got it right and we don’t make two mistakes with the same big weakfish (sea trout).

I’ve been in the Oasis Sportsmen’s Club since 1977 and can’t even find a recent membership list to make sure I got Mike and Milly’s last name spelled right and can’t find it in the phone book. I think it might have been Milly’s best catch of her life, (other than her husband!) I’m not going to let an oversight deter from the credit she deserves.

I think I might have had a “senior moment” trying to sort out all the tags I got either when I bought my “Lifetime” Sportsman’s license for 50 bucks at Kent Town Hall, or those that came in the mail from NYDEC. Finally getting a chance to go through them all today, I find that I only have one buck tag, 2 antler-less deer tags, 2 fall and 2 spring turkey tags, and one black bear tag. I’m pretty sure I wrote last week that I had received 2 buck tags and 4 doe tags. I can’t imagine writing that without checking first, and I’m surprised a local DEC game warden didn’t show up to retrieve all those erroneous tags that were obviously a figment of my imagination. Maybe I better go get a brain scan to see if that “common sense” part of it has somehow slipped away in my old age. I will have enough problems dragging deer out of the woods when the deer gunning season arrives on November 21 (Southern Zone), and processing them and getting all that venison in the freezer. I think I must have had a bad dream about hitting the venison lottery.

I’ve been thinking of late, about things that I miss, including old friends that I’ve know over a lifetime. I miss working at the old Carmel Fire Department Annual Carnivals on the shore of Lake Gleneida in the falls. I miss the annual Strawberry Festival that the late Dr. Garrett Vink (who delivered me at home on a hot July 4th in 1937) and used to have at their home on Gleneida Avenue (where the Carmel Fire House is now located), with his wife Betty, every June. I miss the sound of a train whistle coming and going on the old railroad tracks that used to go from Brewster, all the way to Mahopac. I miss the old hills around Carmel that now appear to look like Monopoly games in progress, with another one probably slipping away sooner than later.

I miss a lot of family and close friends who slipped away much too soon, and wonder why God has left me here to carry on. I’ve decided not too mention even one, because I will only get upset, and now it’s nearly 7:30am and I’m not going to let this day start feeling depressed. I live here secure in the house that I was born in. I’ve been lucky enough to have a woman who has been willing to put up with me, night on to forever, it seems, a dog and cat that I know love me and count on me too, and more good friends around me than I can count. I have enough guns and ammunition to get through all the rest of the hunting seasons I may have left in this lifetime, and enough fishing stuff to get me through the fresh and salt water fishing seasons left in my life. That includes ice fishing stuff if we get good ice to fish on this coming winter; which reminds me, I really need to get out on Lake Gleneida today and see if my handtied creations can catch the fish I’ve only been dreaming about. And Mama does love fresh fish, as I do.