Post Traumatic Fishing Disorder, by Craig Johnson:

(View entire post here)

I was doing an interview with The Big Wild, a syndicated radio program out of Madison, Wisconsin, and pretty much thought I'd gotten through unscathed until Big Red and Gundy asked if I hunted and/or fished and would I care to relate a story or two. I'm afraid I went all Oprah on them and confessed to being a victim of PTFD, or Post Traumatic Fishing Disorder. Yes, I am a victim of PTFD but, with treatment and the support of loved ones, I have partially overcome my symptoms, reduced the painful memories, and moved on with my life.

To help explain this anxiety disorder I have to tell you about my traumatic childhood and a father who, if you sat a water-filled, five-gallon bucket out on the ranch road, would have a bobber in it within twenty minutes. The weekends of my tender and impressionable youth were abused by a chronically compulsive and obviously obsessive fisherman who would crack open my bedroom door, and my brother's, well before dawn and deliver the curt, "All right, let's go." Whereupon we would be expected to spend the next twelve hours standing on the bank of some stream or lake to watch a red-and-white bobber in hopes that it might move-or that lightning would strike us and put us out of our misery. You weren't allowed to talk (scares the fish), you didn't eat (we never brought anything because we were going to catch fish), and you couldn't have anybody along (they were all too sane and at home in bed).

My father seemed to be the only one who caught fish, which he said was because you had to have the right mind-set, which I still haven't achieved, by the way; however, I did develop a defense mechanism early on-in fact, my mother remarked upon it when she saw a picture of the two of us fishing in the Bighorn Mountains near the ranch. She studied the photograph, "Where's your book?" I pointed at the copy of John Casey's Spartina under my arm, and she nodded. "Good to know some things never change."

I really don't blame my father; he is just a victim of our ancestry. They originally left Sweden in the Viking boats-I assume to rape and pillage, but I'm pretty sure my forefather was the one in the back with a hand on his battleaxe and a toe in the water in order to lure the sharks in a little closer. These Johnsons were in search of better fishing, which they found in Scotland, then Ireland, and finally America; all these DNA codes and aquatic sensibilities produced my father-the penultimate fisherman.

When my brother and I were finally driven from our ancestral home and my father had no children to abuse, he bought a fishing cabin down in Florida where he could pursue his passion on another level-he also bought a blue and silver metal flake bass boat with live-wells, sonar, a refrigerator, a fish finder, and a sixteen-speaker stereo system so that he could listen to Johnny Cash (evidently, fish south of the Mason-Dixon Line are unfazed by music about momma, trains, prisons, and rings of fire). My brother pointed out the two one-hundred-and-fifty horsepower Mercury outboard motors hanging off the back and asked if that wasn't a bit much. My father's response was that when some of those storms come in on the big lakes down in Florida you have to be able to outrun them. My brother confided that when a storm exceeds more than seventy-miles-an-hour on the surface of water-it has, clinically, according to whether its north or south of the equator, become a hurricane or typhoon. My father said, "Well, Jesus H. Christ, you still have to outrun the damn things, no matter what the hell they're called." (My father still does not know where I got the character of ex-Absaroka County Sheriff Lucian Connally.)

My wife says fish is good for me and I eat it, but I don't like it (except for brook trout). She also says salmon reduces wrinkles-she is, of course, insane. My father took her fishing two summers ago, and between them they caught more than fifty bluegills. While they fished, I explored my thoughts and opinions about my trauma, worked through my feelings of guilt, self-blame and mistrust, learned to cope with my intrusive memories-and read a good book.

I'm celebrating National Library Week at the Belle Fourche Library in South Dakota, Tuesday the 15^th of this month at 7:00pm, and am at the Jim Gatchell Museum in Buffalo, Saturday the 19^th for their Spring open house at noon, which is always wonderful since it's the model for Walt's office-kind of a homecoming for me and the sheriff. I'll be presenting at the Edgar Awards in New York City on Thursday, May 1st, and will be the one at the table with all the good-looking women, my wife Judy, my step-daughter Jessica (regretfully sans Lola), my publisher Kathryn Court, my editor Alexis ‘Axe' Washam, and my publicist Sonya Cheuse. Evidently, none of them trust me to be out on my own; and I talk about Walt's pride of lionesses.

I hope they don't serve fish.

Yours in PTFD,

Craig

PS: Big tour coming up for Another Man's Moccasins in May... and June... and July... But more on that later; if you are curious, however, check out the new covers for all the novels-they are on my website www.craigallenjohnson.com. Let me know what you think.

View more information on Craig Johnson's Kindness Goes Unpunished.

Craig Johnson

Kindness Goes Unpunished

Sherriff Walt Longmire

western

parades

New York City

St. Patrick's Day

Penguin Books

books