Just Angling for February 24, 2005

By Donald Millus

Rick McIver Caught Catfish By Telephone

The recent death of 92-year-old Rick McIver came as a bit of a shock to his friends and admirers in Conway. We all thought, or at least hoped, that we would find him shuffling about McIver-Shaw Lumber, tracking down a piece of cornice that could be found nowhere else in the Carolinas or cutting cedar siding to order, until he reached age 100.

After locating exactly that wood needed to repair a seventy-year-old house he’d write out a bill for $1.65 and ask if that would be cash or charge. Then, before you left, Rick would provide some wonderful stories of days gone by, perhaps with unsolicited comments on politicians living and dead.

I asked his son, Ricky, about fishing stories, but he said that his dad was not much of a fisherman, at least by normal methods. On his rare trips on the rivers, Rick and a good friend, now also long gone, used a crank telephone to lure catfish to the boat. Of course, this was not a method approved by the International Game Fish Association nor by the South Carolina wildlife department. Incidentally, it was also dangerous for the “fishermen” using a small wooden boat. Rick wisely concentrated on tennis.

Rick’s younger son, Edwin, noted that his father played tennis in his World War II combat boots. The sound of those boots coming to the net was unforgettable, Edwin told me. Rick even inspired a poem, “McIver Shaw Lumber,” which appeared in the pages of this newspaper a few years ago. (Copies are available at no charge, for those with a sense of history and humor. Just send a stamped self-addressed envelope to “Just Angling,” care of the Horry Independent.)

I noted with pleasure the 2005 debut of crocuses, daffodils, snowdrops, and our tulip tree this past weekend. This after Dick Singleton and I were almost frozen at Pelican Field watching Coastal come from behind to beat Clemson 3-2 in a magnificent baseball game. (Note to a local reporter: the game-winning hit went to right field, not left, and Mike Costanzo went hitless, not 4 for 5 with four rbi’s for Coastal. He did, however, drive in the tying run and it would have been nice to mention that he struck out the side in relief with a man on second and Clemson threatening to add to its lead in the eighth inning. Nothing like accuracy!)

Mr. Barker is on my back to get my boat repaired so that he can sell me some more of his gasoline. Seems sales have slowed since I took my boat in for some welding repairs at Dunn’s. Larry at Duroboat in Washington State says that parts are on the way. Flounder should be biting as soon as we get a tad of a warming trend.

I am writing this on President’s Day, which replaced Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays as holidays for banks and post offices but not for my students at Coastal. Up North, the holiday that fishermen looked forward to was St. Patrick’s Day which marked the opening of flounder season in weather usually better suited to sipping Irish whiskey in a room with a roaring fire. Anyone who has ever marched in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade knows whereof I speak. Anyway, here’s to Herbert Hoover and Dwight David Eisenhower and the other presidents who fly-fished fished for trout, even George Bush I who cast with his spinning reel on top of the rod.