The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Contrary to what my wife Sue calls “selective hearing,” I really have lost the ability to hear songbirds of any kind. Even the screeching call of Red-tailed Hawks and the shrill whistle of Ferruginous Hawks till recently were only a memory.

Not anymore. A bunch of my dear friends all got together and helped me solve my hearing loss. This is the way it went:

One evening a while back I entered the lunchroom of Deschutes Pine Sales in Bend, and as I walked through the door there was a lot of cheering and applause from a whole bunch of old friends, but I didn’t know why. Jay Bowerman and his band were whooping it up and he gave me his usual big grin, but I still didn’t get it.

About half an hour after I was with all those wonderful people, it began to dawn on me that they were paying an awful lot of attention to me and wanted to hear what I was doing with my life. At first I thought I was dying, going on a trip or attending my retirement party, but I was still breathing, wasn’t going anywhere and I retired years ago, so what was going on?

It turned out that Jane and Bill Stevens, in cahoots with Jay and Theresa Bowerman — with the help of my wife, Sue — got all those Good-and-Dear-Friends together and decided I needed to hear again. They threw a party and tossed a bunch of money into the pot for new hearing equipment. I still can’t believe it…

Not only are these parties a great deal of fun and spontaneous entertainment (and in my case, financially rewarding as well — I got enough out of the party for one ear). They’re also a great time for catching up with old friends as well, like Gary Hayden, retired state game officer, a man with whom I haven’t sat by the fire for years.

He and I go way back to the ’70s when he made life miserable for miscreants killing protected animals and wildlife out of season, and equally disastrous for obnoxious visitors who cussed and complained about Oregonians, fishing, hunting, and our weather.

I know that to be a fact, as one day I was way out at the cattle guard on the China Hat Road near Cabin Lake Ranger Station and was stopped by an arm-waving tourist standing alongside a giant rolling megahome, towing (what looked like) a recreational battleship behind it.

When I pulled up he didn’t waste any time, his face was red and he blurted out, “I’ve been driving on this @#$%%^&*())_+! road for three hours,” he rattled on, “looking for a @#$%%^&*())_+! place called, ‘Cabin Lake.’”

When I asked him how he knew about Cabin Lake, he exclaimed, “I met a @#$%%^&*())_+! game warden up near Pringle Falls and was complaining about the lousy fishing and he said I should try my luck in Cabin Lake; said it was great for dry flies. But where in the h— is it?”

I didn’t have the nerve to tell him he could see Cabin Lake from where we were standing, but there was still no water in it. Then I found out that a “game warden” (whom I will not name) was allegedly not only sending obnoxious people to Cabin Lake, but also to the irrigation canal east of Bend and Benjamin Lakes, a desert playa out near Brothers — to fly fish for Chinook salmon…

And this does have a great deal to do with my hearing instruments. They not only allow me to hear robins and other songbirds again — they also help with person-to-person conversation (so I can send obnoxious tourists to fish in Benjamin Lakes). They also have a telephone mode, movie theater mode and a channel that’s for the birds.