DATELINE: OCTOBER 20, 2024 – RURAL SOUTHERN INDIANA
ALERT – IF YOU READ JUST FOR THE FISH, SCROLL 2/3 OF THE WAY DOWN. THIS ONE DEFINITELY WANDERS.
It was a dark and stormy 3am at Steve Ramsey’s house in Indianapolis. He looked at me sternly. “I know you were two states away when it happened. And I know you were with me the whole time.” Lightning flashed outside for dramatic effect. “But I know you had something to do with this.”
I put on my most innocent face and smiled wanly. It had been the perfect crime.
Steve’s living room ceiling fan has a long and storied history. It was original equipment with the house, and Steve seemed to run it every time I had a fishing rod in the house. I constantly turned it on by accident, because the switch is right next to the living room lights.
One especially bad day a few years ago, Steve returned to his home and found one of the fan blades sitting on the floor. It had simply fallen off. (Or had it? There were traces of chihuahua fur found on the broken blade, and some who believe that the vicious dog spirit of Little Bit flew by and smashed it.)
The fan being out of service didn’t stop me from hitting the switch, so Steve finally put tape over that. But he never replaced the fan.
And he seemed oddly proud of this.
This became a topic every time we had dinner with Ron and Carol, but Steve steadfastly refused to get a new fan. His excuses were many and varied, and it is his house after all. But while I don’t judge, Carol does, and it was determined to be just plain wrong that Steve had a non-working ceiling fan, and hence, we were empowered to act.
Besides, it was getting to be Halloween season, the appropriate time of the year for vicious pranks. This is one of Steve’s neighbors, sometime in mid-September.
That catches us up to October of 2024. I had been planning an overdue trip back to the Midwest to visit one of the most important shrines in my sporting universe – Little Caesar’s Arena, home of my beloved Red Wings. You may think that Indianapolis is a little far for a Detroit road trip, especially in one day, but I would question your dedication. It’s only five hours each way, and there are White Castle and Skyline restaurants conveniently spaced along the route.
Of course, we had to invite Sean Biggs, one of the few living witnesses to my first hat trick. (Spring of 1978 in a 4-1 playoff victory against Berkeley, which is a town in Michigan, not to be confused with the communist disaster in California.) Two of the goals were cleaning up rebounds from Sean’s legendary slap shot. Sean has been going through the ups and downs of Red Wing fandom longer than I have (I only became a hockey fan at age nine,) and we have seen games together at the old Olympia and Joe Louis Arena.
I flew into Indianapolis one October evening and headed straight to Skyline with Steve. The next morning, we rose at the crack of 10am and got ready for our road trip, and by 11, we were on I-69 heading north.
With a quick stop at Skyline, of course.
This departure set a chain of events in motion. Sinister forces, or Ron and Carol, I forget which, found their way into Steve’s house with a new ceiling fan and a qualified electrician. By 4pm, the damage had been done. Or repaired. Depending on your point of view. Or some Amish broke in and installed a ceiling fan. Take your pick.
Blissful in plausible deniability, I drove us north. We met Sean at Olga’s Kitchen, another beloved culinary institution from my childhood.
The Red Wings are in a rebuilding phase, but for you Sharks fans who seem to love picking on the Wings recent lack of success, I always say my favorite Sharks season was the one where the won the Stanley Cup. Oh, wait … they didn’t. This means you, Cole.
Outside the sacred site.
The Rangers had a good team, which made the night a disappointment, but it was still great to be surrounded by Red Wings hockey history. We sat next to the family of a Ranger’s rookie player, and he actually scored his first NHL goal. I pretended to be happy for them, but I’d trade the kid’s career for one more Detroit Stanley Cup.
That’s Dylan Larkin on the right, the last guy on the roster who played with members of the 2008 Stanley Cup team. And the 2009 team that was unfairly deprived of a Cup because Gary Bettman worships Cindy Crosby.
The gang sitting rinkside.
Steve and I hit the road around 9:30pm, which would put us back at his house around 3am, allowing for a White Castle stop in Anderson. The time went quickly, mostly because I was driving, but also because we were busy discussing the rest of the weekend, which included an IU and a Colts football game. The IU game would be especially important, as it would be the 50th anniversary of his graduation there, and he and other sports alums would be honored on the field at halftime.
We made good time and got home around 2:50am.
The stop at White Castle. I am pointing at the onion chips, which any decent human will share.
My strategy was to remain poker-faced and wait for the fun. Steve noticed it immediately, but he refused to say anything. This led to about 10 minutes of staring back and forth, each of us waiting for the other one to comment.
At this stage, I should probably reveal that it wasn’t just any ceiling fan that was installed. Steve is obviously a huge IU fan, and his house is a sports memorabilia shrine to his alma mater and related Indiana teams. Naturally, one would expect a fan with IU-themed blade covers. But what fun would that be? According to anonymous sources, Michigan blade covers were on sale that week, and that was what Steve spotted the moment he walked through the door.
Shocking.
After what seemed like an endless staring contest, right at 3am, he finally broke down and said it. “I know you were two states away when it happened. And I know you were with me the whole time. But I know you had something to do with this.”
It’s always fascinating to watch a fundamentally good person confronted by pure evil. Steve was pretty sure the fan didn’t get there by itself, but he could not bring himself to believe that so many people were involved in the conspiracy. He wants to believe that people, especially his friends, are basically good, and this shook his belief system to the core. With quiet defiance, he did mention that the Michigan fan blade covers could be removed and replaced with the IU version. I hoped out loud that whoever had put the covers on didn’t shellac them there. And that’s where we left the matter, although, for the remainder of the time I was there, he kept trying to work out how the whole thing happened.
Still, we were too busy to explore it much further. Saturday morning, we were up early to head down to IU. Steve normally likes to get to games 8-10 hours ahead of time, to “get the feel of the place,” but this was a truly big event – the 50th anniversary of his graduation, a milestone when the Lettermen are brought on the field and honored at halftime.
Steve and his credentials. He always has credentials.
The gang gets seated in the Alum section. I am not an IU grad, but I own the jersey, so they let me in.
For dramatic effect, let’s say this is when they introduced Steve.
I’m always astonished by how many people Steve knows. There he is with Tim McVay, IU defensive back in the 1970s and father of Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay. When I met Tim, it was a lot less stressful for Steve than when I met Lee Corso.
That’s John Cougar Mellencamp on the field. Luckily, he was not the halftime show.
The following day, we attended a Colts game, a thoroughly entertaining win against the Miami Dolphins and whatever concussion-prone QB they were trotting out that day. Not that the Colts have much better luck on injuries, but at least our guy protects his head.
A rare photo of Anthony Richardson upright.
At halftime, the Colts inducted tight end Dallas Clark into their Ring of Honor.
A great and worthy tight end – and the only Dallas that’s been in a Super Bowl for over 30 years.
Steve and Steve celebrate the victory.
You’re probably wondering why you read this far with no fish, but luckily, that’s about to change. I had been in touch with Ron Anderson of “Ron and Jarrett” fame, and he and I had plans for the evening. As soon as the Colts won, I rushed Steve home and headed south to pick up Ron and take another shot at a pirate perch, which has become something of a freshwater spearfish for me. We stopped first in a murky ditch under some freeway, and we did actually see one, but it was so buried in the weeds we couldn’t even present to it. We then drove another hour to a creek near Santa Claus, Indiana, which Ron and Jarret swear is jammed with pirate perch. This would be my third visit, and to be fair, the other two were bad weather days.
We waded up the waterway, and the place looked disturbingly sterile. The water had clearly spiked up and dropped over the past week, and every step kicked up a cloud of silt, so we headed upstream and looked at every little structure. Remember, this is the place where they have seen dozens of pirate perch out in the open, so I was a bit traumatized.
After about half an hour, as I was peering under some leaves, Ron suddenly hissed “STEVE!” He was 20 feet away, looking into another small snag, and he clearly saw something. He waved me over to his right side and quietly pointed to a small opening in an underwater leaf pile. There were two glowing eyes staring back at me. I took a breath and eased the bait down, and before I could even exhale, Ron shouted “YOU GOT HIM YOU GOT HIM YOU GOT HIM!” which, in professional fishing circles, is a subtle signal to set the hook. I lifted up, and there was a pirate perch in midair. Ron snatched it with his steady glove hand, I covered his hand with mine, and we shuffled to the bank for photos.
I had finally gotten one of the little bastards.
The triumphant anglers.
Once we were done with photos, we turned back, facing a long ride home. It was almost midnight by that stage, and, as we moved down the creek, the Fish Gods had a chuckle at my expense. Just as we got out of the water, I looked across the creek, and every little pit in the creekbed contained – a pirate perch. Dozens of them had come out, just as Ron and Jarrett said they would. So I caught a few more, just for fun.
And the REALLY good news is that scientists have now split the pirate perch into five species, so I have four more to frustrate the hell out of me on future trips.
Steve
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