Last Wednesday I watched the inauguration on television. Afterwards I went fishing. In other words, I waited four years for a change in presidents, and then when Biden was finally sworn in, I went about my day as if not much had happened. During the drive to my fishing spot on the backwaters of the Mississippi River, I pondered my casual attitude. I thought back and tried to remember how many other inaugurations I actually watched in real time. Biden’s was the first one since I retired, so maybe I’d always been at work before. I did recall watching Obama’s first inauguration, but I was living in Asia in 2009. Work would not have been a problem, as 11am in Washington was midnight in Taiwan.
In trying to understand why I took Biden’s inauguration so much in stride, I mostly came up with platitudes like “the peaceful transition of power” and “the democratic process prevailed.” Had the inauguration not gone smoothly, I would have gone crazy and spent the day figuring out what to do next. Because everything happened as peaceably as I hoped it would, I was able to watch the ceremony and the odd collection of politicians on the steps of the Capitol – and then go outside to play until dark. While Biden was signing executive orders, I hovered over a hole in the ice and twitched a tiny waxworm for bluegills and perch. The weather did not warm up as predicted, and I did not catch a single fish big enough to keep, but still it was a very good fishing day, in one way the best I’ve ever had.
I wrote this blog on the Friday after the inauguration. When I finished writing the first draft, I took a break, refilled my coffee cup, and checked CNN online. There I saw that Henry Aaron had died. My hands shook, and it was a little hard to type after that. As a kid in Green Bay, I had two sports heroes. Scratch the word “sports.” As a kid, I had two heroes. They were Bart Starr and Henry Aaron. When Bart Starr died, I knew he’d been sick for a while, and I was ready for it. Henry Aaron’s death came as a surprise, and I was crushed.
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