Wrinkle Peepers

by Captain Perry Wrinkle

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Shedders are starting to crawl in deep water. I always do best in October and November. I have heard the word “peepers” for a few years now, but I never really connected it.

I thought in some unconcerned way that the frogs were having a second cycle or something. I’m so busy I guess, and spend so little time on land that it never registered, one way or another. I went with my son a few days ago to get an engine for his boat. Boy did I get a wake-up call. I started asking why the highways, restaurants, gas stations, and all the back roads were so crowded this time of year. How come gas prices keep going up? Well, I got the same answers, peepers. Finally I asked it straight out. “What in the he** are peepers?” I got a variety of answers. Some said it was the bored and wealthy who take their vacations after the working class is safely back on the job. Others said it was the art world showing color appreciation. And some said it’s a bunch of camera nuts that have suicidal tendencies in their genes.

I finally figured it out that peepers are just people out to see a display of fall colors. Most have no regard for their safety or the safety of others. What they are is leaf peepers. We had to travel clear to upstate New York to get this engine my son wanted. It was like running your boat through a minefield, with every lobster buoy filled with high explosives.

There were a lot of fruit and vegetable stands beside the road. People would just lock brakes and turn into these places with no thought of a signal. Now, this was bad enough going down, but you can imagine it coming back, with the engine behind you in a pickup truck. I would rather haul my traps in a hurricane.

We had to make at least 10 stops to tighten the ropes on the boat engine. We came over a hill and there were two women in the road making a video of an oak tree. One woman was down on one knee on our side of the road. When the smoke cleared from the tires, and I had determined that the engine hadn’t killed us, I looked out the windshield expecting her feet to be sticking up over the hood. No such luck; my son had managed to stop in time. This old broad was glaring at us from 10 feet away. She was looking at us like we stole something, as much as to ask what we were even doing on her road. I wanted to jump out and snatch her bald-headed. My son said that was a no-no, but I let her know in multiple gestures that she was number one. I even screamed a few words out the window that I was ashamed of after I cooled down. Fear is a terrible thing.

We were rolling down a 4-lane road behind an 18-wheeler, and his stop lights came on. I looked ahead and there was a car stopped about halfway in the road. A man was resting a camera on the roof of his car and taking pictures of some wild turkeys beside the road. There was traffic in the outside lane and this guy had his rear door open. I was expecting to see him and the door attached to the side of this trailer truck. The truck driver yanked the air horn and this guy dove in the back seat of his car, camera and all. Somehow the truck missed his door, but we had to stop again to tighten the restraining ropes on the engine. The guy pulled his car off the road and went back to taking pictures. I walked back there and told him, “Don’t ever come to Maine. Maine is the roadkill capital of the world. Guys like you wouldn’t last ten minutes up there. We don’t even stop to see what the thump was.”

I was just trying to protect us all. We might have to go to another one of those stupid meetings in Augusta. Stay on the ocean where it’s safer, and beware the peepers.

Good Fishing.