January 15, 2025
By Lani Waller
Every angler knows you aren’t supposed to kill baby fish. Exactly why Elliott Givens did such a thing remained hidden somewhere in the back of his mind for years, but over time, he understood at last why he had just done that. And there the image remained for decades, swimming around and around his brain in an endless circle of remorse and guilt, three very small steelhead trout less than 6 months old. He could still see them, small and innocent, swimming carefully in the brave new world they had been born into.
The small creek these particular steelhead had been hatched in ran quietly along a major suburban residential road. And you know what that can mean. In this case, it meant that human waste and garbage flew out of the rolled down windows of the morning commute and again in the evening down into San Anselmo Creek. People also parked in the parking lot of an adjacent grocery store late at night to get drunk, and the remains of their meetings and parties lay scattered on the black asphalt, everything from condoms to beer cans and broken glass. The rest ended up in the creek.
Elliott himself didn’t have a car then, just his thumb, so he hitchhiked to the upscale towns and communities. When he turned the corner one morning and crossed the bridge to his home, he looked down and saw the three small trout for the first time. He wondered if they could feel the commuter traffic each morning and then again in the evening, shaking the bridge over their home. That was bad enough, but what really angered Elliott was the fact that these fingerlings had to share their minuscule pool with a half-buried chrome shopping cart, three ragged tires, a tangled-up piece of fencing wire, and so many tin cans that you had to look hard to find the real creek bottom, the stones and gravel small trout need to survive. A few aquatic insects somehow managed to live in the stony bottom of the creek, and the baby trout needed to feed on them.
Elliott thought about feeding them himself with ground-up hamburger, bread crumbs, and fish food from the pet store every morning on his way to work and then again in the evening, but it seemed futile. Perhaps it would have been. On the other hand, he could have been their savior and guardian, but when you are 20 years old, some things haven’t rooted yet. In the end, Elliott walked away from that idea and mostly thought about other things, including finding a way to get Barbara to go to bed with him.
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Barbara liked artists and Elliott lived in his studio, which was only three blocks away from the creek where the three trout lived. Barbara usually arrived unannounced, with her low cut blouse and tight Levis, a cold six-pack of beer and enough marijuana to choke an elephant.
Sometimes it was worse than that. Sometimes she would just call him and tell him that she had “some really good stuff” and that she wasn’t wearing any underwear and she just wanted to come over for a friendly talk about art, especially Pablo Picasso. “He’s my favorite... except for you of course…” she always said. To make matters worse, Barbara was born in Mississippi and she had a southern drawl that ran out of her mouth like warm honey.
Elliott always asked himself how in the hell could he resist such an offer, and the truth is, he never could. How could he? He was a serious angler and everyone knows that these kinds of people are different and have a harder time than ordinary folks do when it comes to telling the truth or hearing it. Especially from a beautiful girl who never wore any underwear.
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So, on this particular day in June of 1968, Elliott caved in and mumbled that it would be nice if Barbara came over to a private party consisting of soon to be famous artists, philosophers, poets, and writers. “There will be lots of beer and wine,” he said. “And anything else you might like to try. You might need it,” he added, “because one of my guests, a woman, is going to give a reading from her very first book a book on the atomic nature of thought.”
“Whaaat?” Barbara answered. “What in the hell is that? How can thought be atomic?”
“Who knows?” Elliott responded. “But I don’t give a damn. Her husband has more money than God, and he is thinking about purchasing one of my sculptures. He’s the first possibility I’ve had in five years. And maybe if you wear a short skirt, it might help. Especially after enough wine or maybe something else... I don’t care.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Elliott,” Barbara replied. “For God’s sake. OK... OK... but if he’s that kind of guy, I will definitely be wearing underwear.”
Elliott drew in a very large breath, then exhaled and replied. “OK, it’s a deal. But that skirt better be on the short side and if you’re not wearing a bra that will be a big help. I haven’t paid my rent in three months and all I have to eat is a bowl of Cheerios in the morning and another for dinner. With just a little sugar and some watered down milk.”
The guests started arriving around 1 pm. Elliott had the place all fixed up with samples of his sculptures sitting next to overstuffed chairs with springs sticking out of them in all directions. The lights were low, the room was illuminated by a warm afternoon sun, and the candles Elliott would sneak out of the local Catholic Church prayer room. Elliott always told of himself that God wouldn’t care because Elliott was a starving artist and the local priest seemed to be a good guy.
As each guest entered the studio of Elliott’s abode, he welcomed them, took their heavy coats, and hung them wherever he could find a place for them. That meant some of them ended up in the kitchen draped over the oven handle, and others were laid carefully in the white porcelain bathtub in the bathroom.
Everyone seemed to be in a good mood, and the guests wandered around the studio, examining Elliott’s latest works. His favorite kind of sculpture was called “Assemblage,” a French term for art made from found objects. Most were a little on the grotesque side and Elliott liked that kind of expression because all the famous artists who worked in that venue also liked that kind of blunt presentation. Elliott didn’t know why. Maybe it was a sign of the times.
Around 4 pm, someone noticed some fishing rods sitting in the corner of the studio. These were no ordinary fishing rods. They were fly rods–Elliott had been a fly fisherman since he was a young boy. “Hey Givens,” someone said as they exhaled a thick cloud of Elliott’s best pot. “What in God’s good name can you catch with those things?”
Elliott looked him in the eye. “Lots of things,” he replied. “But trout are my favorite.”
“Oh yeah?” the guy answered. “Well, there aren’t any trout around here, so why in the hell do you have them? And you don’t have a car, so you can’t drive to a trout stream and who in the hell would pick up a guy who looks like you do, carrying a bunch of fishing poles. And... I’ll also say this–my Daddy alwus told me that fly fishermen were sissies who just like to go around waving them damn things in the air and they never catch nuthin’.”
Then, at exactly that moment in time and space, Barbara, braless and wiggling like a dancehall girl, walked up to the guy and looked him straight in the eye as he looked back at her heaving bosom pushing up against a very fragile see-through silk blouse. She looked him directly in the eye, and her voice rose to a decibel level close to a wildcat’s howling screech, “listen up smart-ass,” she hissed. “Elliott can catch fish anywhere in the world. Anytime he wants. Even here. Even in that little creek outside just a few feet away from here.” It was a tense moment, to say the least. Everyone seemed frozen. Except for the girl who was working on her atomic thought book. She just nodded and kept on writing.
The fat man snuck a quick look at Barbara’s chest and said, “Oh no... You lissen up, honey. I bet you 500 he can’t catch anything. I’ll do more than that. I’ve got a thousand that says he can’t catch a damn thing in that little creek outside. And even if there was something in that creek, he couldn’t catch it with that stuff. Everyone knows that trout only eat worms and canned corn.”
The entire room froze. All eyes turned toward the three. A few were looking at the fat man, some were looking at Elliott, but most were looking at Barbara’s heavy bosom and angry eyes. Then suddenly, it all broke loose in Elliott’s mind. “You’re on,” he says, looking at the fat man. “I’ve got 5,000 that says I can catch a wild steelhead trout in that little creek, and you can stand there and watch me do it.”
Silence. More silence. Then, as Elliott went to the corner of his studio, there they were. His fly rods. Right next to his favorite sculpture- an anti-war sculpture, made out of an old wheelchair, a huge picture frame, a jumbled pile of withered cow bones, and a white plastic dishwashing tray full of fake innards. He picked up a rod and motioned to the fat man and Barbara to follow him out to the creek.
Most of the details of that next 30 minutes were lost forever to angling history, but what happened was nothing more or less than this: Elliott crept up to his casting position and put the number sixteen Grey Hackle Peacock dry fly over one of the steelhead. The take was instant, and Elliott hoisted up the trout into his hand and gave it to Barbara. The next cast was also perfect, and the second trout succumbed. Then the third. Then it was over. All over. Elliott had him. The fat man’s eyes were wide open, and his pink mouth was sagging as his jaw dropped five inches.
They took the three small trout back to the studio, and as the guests gathered around, Elliott didn’t bother to clean them, he just cooked them in a little cornmeal and gave one to Barbara. As the guests watched incredulously, Elliott delivered the final blow... Barbara opened her mouth and stuck her tongue out as Elliott put one of the trout in her red lipstick mouth as she looked into the fat man’s eyes. She kissed the trout, sucked on it for just a second, then shoveled it down her throat as she swallowed. It was all over. The fat man leaned forward as he saw the trout going down Barbara’s mouth, he fainted.
As it turned out, the studio opening did all right. Elliott actually sold three sculptures–the one denouncing the Vietnam War, the one made out of an old violin attached to a pair of crutches, and a child’s tombstone sitting in a box of flowers.
When the guests asked for the meaning of the crutches attached to the violin Elliott said that he believed the child healed himself by dancing the best he could, even if he had to wear crutches and that the child had eventually healed. As far as the other sculpture was concerned, he told them to look at the inscription on the stone marker. And there it was: A baby died prematurely and the carved inscription on the tombstone simply and sadly read, “Died on Earth, to Bloom Forever in Heaven.” By this time, Elliott was tired and simply looked at all of them in the eye and added that he believed in God and in heaven and that the young child was indeed safely there. Forever. No one said a thing and you could have heard a pin drop.
Not long after that epic gathering of wealthy patrons of the arts at Elliott’s San Anselmo studio, things changed, and Elliott decided to turn over a new leaf. It was more than that. He turned over the entire tree. He left San Anselmo and wandered around much of planet earth traveling through Central America down into South America, then over to Europe.
He returned to San Anselmo six years later and decided to open a fly fishing store in a nearby city called San Rafael. The store was an immediate success, and soon Elliott was giving out reams of angling information and telling fishing stories to anyone who would listen.
But the incident of San Anselmo Creek and his behavior that night at his party remain lodged in that part of the human brain reserved for honorable decisions and honorable thinking. Then, one afternoon, an executive from the national headquarters of Trout Unlimited stopped by and asked Elliott what he knew about a small local creek called San Anselmo Creek, and if it was true that “the little creek had a small run of winter steelhead?”
Elliott blinked four times, swallowed three times, and replied, “Yes, sir, it does have a small run of winter-run fish, but they live a difficult life. The creek is stuffed with trash and pollutants, and it’s a shame that no one will do anything about it.”
“Show me the creek,” the Trout Unlimited executive said. “My car is outside, and it’s six o’clock. It must be time for you to close up.”
“Yessir,” Elliott replied. “Yes, it is.” So the two of them took off and drove along San Anselmo Avenue, which bordered the creek for several miles.
To make a long story short, the Trout Unlimited executive said that it would be possible to help the small run of steelhead by putting in several fish ladders at critical points to help the fish migrate up to their spawning grounds. “Don’t you agree, Elliott?”
To be blunt, Elliott almost wet his pants as he emphatically nodded his head up and down so fast his glasses fell off his nose. So, there it was. Right in front of him. His shot at divine forgiveness for the steelhead dinner he had at his studio all those years earlier. Work began immediately and they say that although everyone worked hard, Elliott was a maniac. His shovel and pickaxe were nothing but a blur as he single-handedly dug the foundations for all of the San Anselmo Creek fish ladders. He even dug on Sundays, his birthday, Christmas Eve, and Easter. And there they were at last–seven of the most carefully constructed fish ladders in the history of all mankind.
Even the pyramids of Egypt were no better fashioned than “Givens’ Ladders” as they came to be called. And wouldn’t you know? Two years later, the steelhead run of San Anselmo Creek numbered over 500.
And none of them had to live inside the chrome-plated cage of a half-buried stainless steel shopping cart.
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