It's another father-and-son thing, one more. You'll build character blah blah blah. It is not that I actually resent this, because I cannot but appreciate the old geezer's loving care. It's the predictability of it. I just saw him park in front of my lawn the 14-ton piece of smoking junk he calls a vehicle, open the side trunk and unload the messy tangle of rods and chains and tubing and explosives that make up his fishing tackle. He steps upon my carefully tended flower beds and shouts out, Come on, Calvin, let's do manly things, you're a grown-up now. He still doesn't realise that I've been an adult for a couple of centuries and that he's only twenty years older than me. Anyway, I love the guy who sired me, even if that means standing for a whole week in the cold and damp, waiting for some dumb animals, usually of the fanged persuasion, to get trapped or hooked or speared or blasted, so that we can eat them raw or bring them back to some disgusted family I know.

So I kiss good-bye to the said family and help him transfer his priceless paraphernalia into my own station wagon, since he's too sentimental about his timeworn jalopy to take it into such a risky business as an outdoor excursion. I have to bring the airtight suits, too, because his are so patched up that it's a miracle he's still alive. The first trial is the trip itself. He'll rant and rave for days about the last time we were here (remember that big mother, Sonny, it was a real close shave, it was, a few inches higher and no more legs for you, or even no more Sonny for me, but I was here, I was, and I saved your ungrateful hide), about the wild centenarian he just met (she's so cute and plump, Sonny, real vintage stuff, not like my daughter-in-law, that poor skinny thing you married), about the