OPINION

Back on Bull Shoals

The sun was setting as I pulled up to Ken Reeves' boathouse on Bull Shoals Lake. Running two hours late for our 22nd weekend spring reunion, I fully expected to be ragged about my delayed arrival for our three-day reunion in Ken's floating cottage.

Sure enough, he'd left this message stuck to the front door: "Reunion canceled due to lack of interest." So the annual event filled with enough conversatin', rememberin', and overeatin' had begun in good form.

Longtime readers over the years know Reeves, myself, Don Walker and Dr. Bill Dill decided in 1995 to gather at Ken's houseboat each year to celebrate lifelong friendships and remember our classmate and friend, the late Dr. William B. Hudson, who died earlier that year.

The topics of discussion ranged from public affairs to final affairs.

For instance, as we motored through the lake filled to capacity, Ken talked about how our need for clean water will become a steadily rising public and political issue in coming years. Sure enough, three days later, the newspaper reported that it won't be sustainable in years to come to replenish our state's diminishing groundwater. We aren't alone. The immense power of water district boards in the West already is well-known.

At the cottage, an obsessive red cardinal spent an entire day continually flying into the reflective chrome bumper on Don's truck. The Quixote cardinal grew so exhausted and dazed jousting the bumper that he often fluttered to the ground before resuming the crusade. At one point his struggle attracted two female cardinals who perched nearby. He probably imagined himself vying for their affections.

I recognized his comical battle as similar in many ways to what we humans resort to when taking out frustrations on illusory foes. After all, so much of whatever we decide to futilely struggle against is far more imaginary than based in reality.

We agreed that people often tend to embrace a reflection of what appears to be true then launch into attacking out of mostly ignorance about actual reality.

It's apparent from examining our annual reunion photographs how much we'd been changing year by year. In the mid-1990s, when we were darker-haired hunter-gatherers in our late 40s, the goal was to hit the lake and flog the waters until sunset. Then it was back in the boats at sun-up. Hey, that was the best time to catch bass feeding. Our pictures from those initial years depict strings of bass spread across the boathouse deck.

With each passing year, we've become increasingly content to sleep till 7:30 and generally stay closer to the houseboat. With the heavy downpours a week earlier and the lake at floodgate level, both days saw a lot of TV time. Rather than beating through waves looking for keepers, we were fine-lining up on the sofa like birds on a wire to watch Bill Dance reeling them in somewhere in warmer climes. Ken's big screen provided plenty of opportunity for watching movies and flipping through the news channels.

But the news soon became mind-numbingly repetitive to the point where Billy remarked, "don't these news people ever get tired of repeating themselves all day long?" Apparently not, especially if their paychecks reflect a talent and capacity for repetition.

Ken, since retiring as an attorney and being appointed to the state Game and Fish Commission a few years back, has been busy and pretty much all he'd hoped those challenges would be. The same seemed true for Billy, a member of the state's Board of Dental Examiners who is now the director of dental services at the Boston Mountain Rural Health Center. Don's still marketing poultry from his home office, and I continue trying hard not to become too predictable.

The high point of our 22nd year together was the meals and menu. Night one was barbecued ribs, night two saw grilled filets. The grand finale dinner was lobster with asparagus and au gratin potatoes with Bull Shoals eggs benedict for breakfast. With Ken as the host and cook all these years, we've become more than content to crown him the chefly king of cuisine.

With the other three about to join me as a septuagenarian, reflecting on the time we shared as 15-year-olds seemed so much more recent than the actual passage of more than a half-century. Past reunion conversations focused on teen girlfriends, athletics, fishing, hunting, creeks and the rowdier experiences of youths we somehow survived. This year we found ourselves talking about unusual birds we've seen and who has cemetery plots.

Turned out I was the only one who hadn't already arranged for a final resting place. They each for years have had plots in Harrison's magnificent Maplewood Cemetery overlooking the town.

"My best bet when the time comes might be to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the Buffalo National River," I offered.

"How utterly appropriate, Mikey, " Ken chimed in with a grin.

We snapped the group photo on Sunday and as suddenly as it started, another reunion was history. Our three days had zipped by as rapidly as the decades of our lives. In leaving, I glanced through the window a final time and saw Mr. Cardinal was still banging his noggin against the perceived reality of his own reflection.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 05/27/2017

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