My Favorite Things by Doug Guadagnin

“My Favorite Things”

by

Doug Guadagnin

This little ditty was sent to me from my friend Gary Sitton. His friend Doug Guadagnin wrote it and it’s good humor.  Sing it to the melody “My Favorite Things” from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music.

 

Big cupped up greenies and bull sprig and suzies,

Limits of gadwall, and widgeon, no spoonies,

Big fluffy snow geese on long leather strings,

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Permits on crab flies and Bull Elk a buglin’,

Red Heads a plenty on wild wings a cruzin’,

Piranhas and peococks and tropical rains,

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Whitetails and mulies and slobber-noses drippen’,

Polar Bears and Grizzles, my heart rate is skippen’,

Red Stags a runnin’ on New Zealand plains,

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

When the bones creak, when the waders leak,

When the knees go bad,

I simply remember my favorite things,

And then I don’t feel so bad.

 

Kudus and Sables and Puff Adders Hissin’,

Zebras and Wart Hogs my sharp sticks not missin’,

Big sea run browns as my fly reel sings,

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Cigars and duck blinds and brandy in coffee,

Doug on his goose call and Nelly right by me,

Honkers a comin’ with big locked up wings,

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Back pain and bone spurs, my thin hair feels breezy,

A Rotator cuff tear, this doesn’t sound easy,

I once thought retirement would be such a cinch,

But now I know that it sure ain’t for wimps.

 

When the joints ache, When the foot breaks,

When the arthritis gets mad,

I simply remember the great life I’ve had,

And then I don’t feel so bad.

 

Gary Sitton with a Fly-caught Belize Permit

The Three “R’s”

Respect for self

Respect for others

Responsibility for all your actions

Make these three “r’s reality in your streamside mannerisms

“Do or Do not, There is no try!” – jedi Master Yoda

My friend Mark Luker, Fire Logistics Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service shared these wise words with me.  They are good words to live by…

pjp

The Men That Don’t Fit In by Robert Service

The Men That Don’t Fit In

by Robert Service

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.