NOTE: This saga was recreated from a typescript found at the rear of the file cabinet in Herb Johnson's den. While there is no attribution of authorship, the style of writing and the time frame suggests that it was written by Ken Olskinski, then reporter for the Marshfield New-Herald.
It is included in this family history because of Herb Johnson's involvement in starting the club.

It is Marshfield's most exclusive and intriguing fraternity, probably because it has no obvious membership requirements and is totally without social significance. Each member is more or less peerless in the group, which has included shopkeepers and doctors, engineers and insurance peddlers, newsmen and other honest wage slaves, welders and lawyers, mail manipulators and judges, bookkeepers and bankers, door-to-door and electronic entrepreneur, administrators and pharmacists, bill collectors and pedants. 

The Side Saddle Conservation Club has no organization worth divulging. It is incorporated under the laws of Wisconsin, but there its physical structure ends and the metaphysical begins. In short, the Side Saddle is a state of mind frequently disturbed. 

As an example 15 members, an unusually large turnout, and their wives attended an annual dinner meeting at the Hotel Charles. Annual meetings, it should be noted, are held every two or three years. 

Members broke into loud applause when the master of ceremonies, confronted ,with the herculean task of explaining the organization to the ladies, lauded the Side Saddle as "a cheap outfit with no dues."; 

Later a lot of them went home with wallets in a shambles. An outstanding Side Saddler was presented with a gift for "exceptional service", a fine walnut enclosing a $1,000 bill which, if cashed, would promise a speedy ride to Leavenworth. 

No one can pinpoint the Side Saddler's date of birth. It just grew. However, shortly after World War II, a group of Marshfield's angling enthusiasts loaded themselves and gear into a buddy's oversize sedan and headed north for the opening of the season. Most of them were veterans enjoying their first trek into the Wisconsin outdoors since the late unpleasantness and the unsympathetic directives of sergeants and bosun's mates. 

The habit of rest and recuperation leaves was, however, still firmly ingrained, with the result that many R-N-R'S were taken between Marshfield and their objective, and the first day of the season was waning when they arrived. 

The eager fisherman disembarked while their car was still rolling, cresting the top of a hill which sloped down to the lake. Feeling lonely behind the wheel, the driver disembarked. The sedan, motor running and gears engaged, lumbered to the lake and submerged. 

Erstwhile anglers spent the weekend in salvage work, retrieving the auto from the depths and drying out the motor just in time for the long trek home. 

From this talented group of outdoorsmen came part of the Side Saddle's hard core. 

The name came some years later from a neophyte who ,was to emerge as the club's elder statesman. Encamped at a Fifield motel on a chill spring night, the gang was thawing, out before the hearth--convenient to the bar--after a hard day in the boats. Conversation ranged from amplified accounts of the day's feats of angling and the high praise for the morrow to prowess in sports far afield as the tales grew taller 

"Humph!" intoned the late John G. Pinion, then office manager of the News-Herald. "IF YOU CHARACTERS WENT HORSEBACK RIDING YOU"; ALL HAVE TO RIDE SIDE SADDLE." 

Pinion's avocation was fishing and a by-product was his column, "Fishing With Gus," which appeared with some degree of regularity in the News Herald over many years, His prime interest was the development of good fishing near home, and his column dwelt at length on fish planting and habitat improvement in area waters, with particular attention to the Big Eau Pleine Flowage. 

At one time the Wisconsin Development Company, which controls the flowage attempted to bar access to the waters below the dam, frequently the scene of excellent northern pike fishing. 

The firm had every right to invoke the ban, but Pinion and a Side Saddler who boasted an attorney-at-law bumper sticker, dipped into the statute book and came up with a prize catch: Anglers could come down the river, in this instance the flowage, by boat and the owner of the dam was required by law to furnish the manpower and gear necessary to portage the fisherman over the dam. 

A word to the wise was more than sufficient, and the area below the dam continues to be open to the cars and boats of fisherman. 

The generally amicable jousts between Pinion and the power development firm sparked mutual respect and friendship between the columnist and the late M.W. Kyler, manager of the development facility. As a result, Pinion was offered a lease--for 10 years with options for renewal--on 49 acres of flowage shorefront property at an annual rental of $1.00, plus real estate taxes then less than $35 a year. 

Pinion tendered the lease to the Side Saddle, which incorporated and took the lease executed October 17, 1956. One proviso was "Said premises are to be used for recreation, including the use by Boy Scout Troops and the Eau Pleine Boat Club, with the understanding that the general public will at all times have access to the said property and the shoreline of the reservoir." 

Some aging Side Saddlers blame arthritic twinges and muscular malfunction on overnight campouts at the flowage to oversee and check out Boy Scouts with merit badge ambitions. Unhappily neither scouters nor Side Saddlers could stir up enough interest in the site to develop it. Late in 1958 the lease was transferred to another segment of outdoor enthusiasts, the Eau Pleine Boat Club. 

As a group, Side Saddlers are few in number. A math instructor, as currently qualified, should reasonably be expected to conduct a complete Side Saddle census on his on digits. An off-the-cuff derriere count some years ago found seven Side Saddlers sitting the city offices or serving on municipal committees. As many as four have served on the Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors at the same time. The Common Council had two at one time. 

At this writing, four of the doughty outdoorsman fill seats on the five member Fire and Police Commission, and there is a scattering on other municipal jobs and boards. At this writing, also, the Common Council is without the background, wide-ranging experience and wisdom of a single Side Saddler. Depending on the political point of view, this should spark concern or mind-boggling relief among the taxpayers. 

Side Saddlers have a penchant for levying funds for many and often exotic purposes, a genetic disorder passed on by what was a more or less legitimate ancestor of the Side Saddle, the Second Street Satellites, an organization limited to persons who practiced their professions and/or rackets in the 100 block of W. 2nd. Street. Back in the good old days, this Hell's kitchen was the lair of lawyers, new and used car salesman and mechanics, innkeepers and barkeeps, telegraphers and jewelers, purveyors of steamboat insurance, newspapermen and other hardworking wage slaves, sporting goods promoters, mirror resilverers and key-cutters, and others with more or less felony-proof means of survival. 

The denizens of the area subscribed to a credo, copies of which are still available on parchment and some day may yet rank with the Magna Carta and the Constitution, to wit: 

"A unique and genteel fellowship for the promotion and perception of thespian and terpsichorean perfectionism, music appreciation, astronomical observation, thunder and other cultural pursuits for the mature development Of kinesthetic and cerebral capacities to their absolute maximum." 

It was not spelled out in the manifesto, but went without saying, that SSSers were inherently generous. This disposition to part with their pelf, while never questioned, was encouraged by imaginative arm-twisting, particularly when abetted by elbow-bending. 

Still in the archives of the Side Saddle is a copy of an SSS letter which demonstrates the fine art of--gouging for a good cause the writer, on the fund raising committee of the Columbus Athletic Association, addressed this communication to a fellow SSSer, an alderman who earned his honest living as a bartender in a bistro two blocks west of City Hall: 

"In keeping with the dignity of your office, I believe it more fitting to suggest, rather than command. I do not believe in becoming vituperative, especially to an alderman....."; 

While many members have purchased two to ten of the special Award Certificates, a copy of which is enclosed for the special price of $10 to you only (please treat this confidential), it would be my suggestion that you purchase only one, as anything in excess of that might reflect on your judgment and integrity in governmental affairs--you know how people talk, especially at Varney's. (Ed. Note; The oasis was also known, among the honest and hardworking lower classes, as "The Press Club") 

"I would therefore suggest that you quietly, without fanfare, slip me 10 bucks, which will enable you to walk by the ticket-seller at all Columbus Sports Activities, looking him in the eye with your shoulders back. In this way, he will know you are the holder of a special Award Certificate. 

"After all, what is more embarrassing than to have to fumble around for the garden variety season pass, or money, when you are attending a game. Be recognized--be somebody--and all for only $10." 

The distribution of the letter, the recipient was advised, included copies to Father Lane, the president of the SSS, the Ticket Committee. The mayor & the Pope. There was also an urgent PS: You owe Varney 3 cents for a stamp" The benefactions which the SSS pursued, and which the Side Saddle has denigrated into a fine art, is demonstrated by another instance" 

An SSSer after a loud and explicit debate with his boss, quit. His concerned brothers on Second street immediately took steps to alleviate pain and suffering and mental anguish. They passed the hat, raised $15, bought $15 bucks worth of groceries (at a time when that outlay would fuel a Roman revel for a week) and had the CARE packages delivered to the temporarily jobless one's home. 

The reaction was mixed. The comfortably situated recipient, whose removal from Second street had an immediate impact on the area's income tax base, His wife, unfamiliar with this particular form of male mental derangement, was not happy. The fact that considerate SSSers had even thoughtfully included a box of dog food for a possible household pet, failed to lessen her trauma. 

A true Side Saddler is always delighted when a fellow SSer is guilty of some achievement, leaving some small lesion, if not a footprint, on the sands of time. The archives are littered with letters of congratulation, commendation and concern for colleagues thus tossed into the spotlight. 

For example, then Fire & Police Commissioner Tony Knott, on being elected commander of the American Legion post, was the beneficiary of this eulogium: 

"Dear Commander Knott" 

"It is with great pride and joy that we note that our dear friend Anthony Knott has assumed the title of "Commander", which of course bears no similarity to that of Commander Gatti. (Ed. Note" Gatti, the Italian explorer, had caused a measure of excitement in Marshfield about that time when he launched a new African expedition from Marshfield in a fleet of Rollohomes.) In fact any similarity in the title of 'commander' as it refers to Knott. and Gatti is purely coincidental and we do mean purely. 

"We assure you that in the future we will tip our hats, if any, to you and realize that 'commander' is a better title than 'commissioner.';" 

By tradition, announcements of Side Saddle soirees have been florid, as witness notice of an official meeting on the "Herbert Johnson Esq." farm" 

"By special permission of Mrs. Johnson a steak feed will be held at the farm. 'Bring your own potatoes and eating utensils. For Knott's benefit "utensils" mean knife fork and spoon. Not a shovel. This meeting includes the wives. All members can consider this an educational trip. Mr. Johnson will show the latest farming methods and how to get government subsidies for not producing anything. 

"Ken Pucker will appear for the first time in his handsome cook's outfit. He will look like a plate from Esquire Magazine."Drinks there will be a plenty. A cow milking contest will be held after dinner. Herbie will steal the cow: from the neighbors." 

Pucker, then municipal judge, was in charge of the club's commissary for many years, a duty that unfortunately came to an end with his death. As the SS belly-robber he represented a constantly moving but legitimate target for his buddies. 

For instance, in an announcement of an upcoming New Year's Eve party, the membership was informed that "Kenneth Pucker, temporary bachelor, will be in charge of noise and refreshments. He is a very refreshing character when it comes to refreshments. That story about him that he can say nothing but "Ten dollars and costs" is not true. He can also say "Come and get it. 

Ruefully, since Pucker also collected the shares to finance the various EXPEDITIONS and aberrations, it should be added that settling for a mere "Ten dollars and costs" would be a bargain. 

The club lost its first member in 1956. Resurrected from the Side Saddle's documentary midden is the letter to the then operator of the resort on Big Lake Chetec, where the bulk of the Side Saddle forays into the outdoors have been based. 

"Our executive secretary, Pretty Boy Pinion, alias Curly, alias the Eau Pleine Marvel had set the weekend of Sept. 21, 22, and 23 for our fall fishing trip, and it was assumed that you had been notified, as it would have been entirely within his authority to do so. SSCC gives him a free reign (sic), plenty of rope, that is but HE won't hang himself--not John! 

"We are having our first wake for a member, Dick Paul, on September 13, I956. He's moving to Illinois and that to any Side Saddler is almost the equivalent of dying." 

Being inducted into the Side Saddle is a complex business, simply because requirements are uncomplicated. A well-heeled man about town and a well traveled hunter and fisherman, halted a Side Saddler on Central avenue one day, 

"Hey! How do I get into that Side Saddle Club? he asked. With wide-eyed innocence, the SSer replied. "You get asked!" 

A letter to a prospective Side Saddler and his wife went like this: 
"Your names have been under consideration by our screening committee, and meeting after meeting has been held concerning your membership in our great and noble organization. 

We hope you will feel flattered in the favorable report the screening committee turned in, as we are pleased to invite you to our annual appeasement party, held especially for our wives before deer hunting season opens. The event will be held at the North Wood County Park on Wednesday night, November 7, 1956, and one of our cars will call for you at your home about 6 P. M. 

"This is not a request for membership, but merely an opportunity for you to look us over, and vice versa, etc. etc. There will be further meetings as to the actual membership, at which cribbage and maybe a little penny ante will also be discussed. 

"I personally doubt whether you will have another opportunity in your lifetime to join an outfit like this..." 

Copies, purportedly, were distributed to "all members", including Pinion; Wisconsin Conservation Commission; Federal Fish & Wild Life Commission (and) E.L. Meress, Conservation Warden." 

Side Saddle communication habitually is by misdirection, often leaving bent needles or broken baseball bats in its wake. On the occasion of a fire in the News-Herald plant, Pinion telephoned the insurance agent and fellow SSer. The protection pondered was out of the office, which didn't deter Pinion from telling his secretary: We've got a fire. Tell Tony he'd better send in our premiums." 

There was a time--for months when Pinion was trying to wheedle a few cartons of advertising bookmatches out of the aforesaid insurance entrepreneur without success. Until one summer day... 

Pinion had brought his fishing car to work a huge boxcar of an old Buick with more nooks and crannies than a haunted outhouse. Later when he opened the door of the black mausoleum the surplus matches began to fall out. The were scattered every conceivable portion of the vehicle anatomy, hundreds and hundreds of match books. 

Fleeing the potential fire hazard, Pinion headed for the nearest telephone and called the donor of the gifts. "Boy!" he exclaimed, "I'm glad I didn't ask for horse manure!" (Ed. Note: The zinger in the preceding sentence has been laundered.) 

When a Side Saddler called for a mid-winter meeting of the club in his basement recreation room, he made the mistake of asking his compadres for gifts of wood to keep the rec room's Franklin stove glowing during the plenary session. 

When the faithful arrived at the host's home on the designated evening, the gleefully negotiated a frontyard obstacle course of windfall tree branches cut and split firewood, sawdust, old railroad ties and a sturdy utility pole which by some unexplained means had disappeared from the Marshfield Electric & Water Department's storage lot. A few months later another soon-to-be recipient of Side Saddle largess, planning the menu for the upcoming spring fishing fore-announced that he was going to prepare a take-along stew as soon as he could lay in a supply of onions: He had again rubbed the Side Saddle's magic lamp. Bags of onions--but all bagless--appeared in and on all parts of his office. meanwhile, the SSer who had pulled his finger out of the onion dike, mimeographed and mailed out the following broadside: "ONIONS, WHOLESALE AND RETAIL."; 

"Seeing a need for new industries in Marshfield, I have decided to go into the onion business, catering to the grocery and restaurant trade in the Central Wisconsin area. "At present I have a stock of large sweet Spanish onions, large red hamburger onions, large Red Globe onions, large Yellow Globe onions, large white Bermuda onions, Lisbon white bunching onions, white Portugal bunching onions, & silver skin onions. "For prices and fast delivery service call day or night..." 

Naturally, the ad was distributed under the letterhead of the recipient of the fragrant windfall. This illustrates another SS virtue--the willingness to relieve their associates of any embarrassment of riches no matter what the cost and. particularly at poker sessions. 

SSer Pinion, possessor of a devious mind by years of preparing corporate income tax returns, had a penchant for practical and frequently elaborate jokes. Sometime they backfired. 

Fishing one weekend with a trusted colleague (unfortunately another Side Saddler the day ended catchless except for the last minute bagging of a northern one-half inch over the legal 18-inch minimum. Disgustedly, Pinion stuck the northern into his minnow bucket. Later at the Pinion home the fish, still chipper, was dumped into the ample minnow tank in the basement, where it throve in coming weeks among the school of less happy mud minnows and suckers. 

For sometime Varney, sommelier at the Press Club, had been making snide. remarks about the pair's fishing ability, their many fishing trips and their invisible results. 

"I've got an idea," Pinion announced to his colleague one morning, "I'll stick the northern in the car. After work we'll go into Varney's. he'll make nasty remarks about our fishing, we'll get the fish and toss it flopping onto the backbar. It should really make a helluva mess of the place and shut up Varney. " 

His colleague, after dutifully expressing awe and admiration for Pinion's genius and comparing him to Machiavelli (Machiavelli ran a poor second) enthusiastically agreed. Then, now turned Benedict Arnold, he enlisted one of the other devious types at News-Herald, an adman. As planned, a smug Pinion brought the northern in a pail to the parking lot that afternoon where the adman, also no mean artist with the editorial scissors, reshaped the northern's tail, making it an inch shorter. Then he alerted Varney and the Game Warden. 

The afterwork crowd in the bar was augmented by all available Side Saddle members that afternoon. The first page of the script was followed exactly. Varney made snide remarks, Pinion answered in kind, left the bar room anc returned with the fish, which made a satisfactory mess. 

After suitable four-letter expressions of shock, indignation and dismay, Varney retrieved the fish from the barroom floor and snorted: "Looks undersized to me!" Pinion, always prepared, fished a rule from his pocket, triumphantly measured the northern--and deflated. That's when Conservation Warden Meress shouldered his way through the crowd. 

To foul things up good, even organizations like the Side Saddle must have a slate of officers. Sadism largely influences the SS selection, Oddly, masochistic tendencies surface among the victims when terms expire--the bosses are reluctant to leave office. Minutes of a 1968 business meeting will illustrate 

The election of new officers was a surprisingly short, disrupted procedure. Trying every dodge and drive in his nefarious bag of tricks, Koepke refused to call the meeting to order. Dictator Knott assumed the chair. A motion to elect Pucker was met by a bull-like charge of refusal from the nominee. After gagging him, slipping on a straitjacket and leading him back to his chair, the meeting proceeded over Koepke's feeble protests (and) almost dead body. Pucker was elected by acclamation. When he promised to behave, Pucker was released. 

"A strange metamorphosis took place. Pucker brusquely announced"
"1. He didn't need any more officers.
"2. Get your damn $5 dues to him right away.
"3. He (Pucker) was taking over the cooking. 

Koepke was ordered to turn over to Pucker all the assortments of his office. No one could stand to see a grown man cry, and it was agreed that he might retain his distinct and unique uniform as part of the memorabilia of his reign..." 

Months earlier, the retiring president had been even more vehemently unwilling to don his regalia, resulting in one of the more interesting incidents at that year's Central Wisconsin State Fair. A pitchman at the exposition was doing an active business spray-painting sleazy sweatshirts in custom design. Side Saddlers, pooling resources, ordered the construction of a thing of considerable beauty, highlighted by the insignia of office across the chest. The man handling the air-brush, obviously the successful graduate of an office of Economic Opportunity program, mildly objected to perpetrating the word "President", but the flutter of greenbacks in the autumn breeze relieved his ethical qualms. 

More difficult was the task of encouraging the prexy to don the garb of office. He was then at work in the nearby Legion stand, and the presentation involved a certain amount of disrobing and recovering with a Jock Joseph's coat of many colors, all before a throng of several hundred bemused but interested fair goers. 

It has been said (here) that one can learn to love the thing he hates, and the retiring leader proved the rule. Reportedly, he has worn the now agin and gamey garment to weddings, christenings, bingo parties, and similar affairs: a report that he has donned it as a pallbearer, however, is purely apocryphal. 

Side Saddle foreplay sometimes wets innocent bystanders. A pair of secretaries for a legal firm, which gives no publicity to the fact that a member is a SSer, preferring to hide that crack in his professional wall, goaded into serving a cease and desist notice: 

"Please be advised," they wrote the SSinner, "that your consistent picking on our employer is causing him to become very moody and unfair with us as secretaries, forcing us to experience undue and uncalled-for mental and physical anguish. "Please be further advised that unless this consistent picking on him shall cease on or before the 25th day of September, 1961, we shall be forced to take the following steps:
(1) We will refrain from ordering your tea from Pucker's for you. "
(2) We shall discontinue our low photocopy rates.
(3) We shall accept no further bribes from you, such as candy." 
There was a P.S. "We might consider bribes, but the rates will be double. It will now be two boxes of candy." 

A Side Saddler in trouble can count on unsolicited advice if not assistance from fellow SSers or even their relatives. A Side Saddler who had a tree removal problem got the following communication from one who is suspected of being the illegitimate father of one, possibly two, Side Saddlers. He identifies himself as Prof. Wolfgang von Krackernuts, Firtzwasser in Tupf Firstwsser, western Deutschland. 

" It vos mit pleasure I read your letter of interest in mein article "Holzcrawler Krackernutz zum Tree Todtmachen" that I write for das magazine Furtzwasser and Holtz Anschowen. "Das H. Krackernutz is interasant beetle--so I send you supply. It is very difficult to see so I gif instructions for use-ja? Each hard piece is beetle. You take beetle and let stand 3 wochen in urine that you giff in morning. Dis makes for strong smell and shiny vite coating on beetle. Den mit toothpick or similar instrument you punch holes in bark of tree around and around. Put Krackernutz beetle in hole--bark turn pale--den green & finally tree fall--gaplunk. "Now yet we don't know if tree fall from sharp teeth bite of beetle or strong smell. More research yet come. "Important warning--Do not use if you have wooden leg. "Please write after you try--no? We collect records." 

Being the democratic (or lack of) organization it is, SS membership cuts across all socio-economic-cultural lines, ranging from glorified ribbin clerk to medical men. These last have been among the club's most interesting fauna. 

The first to enlist, a dedicated internist, loaded his car trunk with medical journals when he headed north on his first SS date with destiny. His plan to catch up on professional reading over the long--for him--weekend. 

He was quietly told, within earshot of SSers out on the lake, that the Side Saddle equates reading on club outings with cunnilingus or lagelate, usually a no-no, and bowed to the wishes of the majority. 

A neurologist who strayed and would up a Side Saddler brought a special talent to the group--gourmet cookery which he proved was fit for clods as well as kings. 

A third was a psychiatrist, a specialist badly needed by his kinky associates in pursuing the contemplative man's recreation. An SSer who interviewed him for a biography when the psychiatrist made his bow in Marshfield, likes to recall how, in reviewing the note's with the reporter, the doc found he'd omitted a more or less vital step in his odyssey the first time around. He became pensive there in the newsroom. "Now why," he psychoanalyzed himself, "did I forget that?" 

Side Saddlers also like to repeat his comment when he and a son, after buying a used couch in the neighborhood, were toting it home via sidewalk. The interest of passing motorists in this curious cavalcade prompted the psychiatrist to grumble, "I hope they don't think I'm making housecalls." 

With all that medical talent in the SS, it was natural that freeloading buddies would seek medical advice. The Files include a copy of the reply to one such applicant: "After reviewing your case carefully, we are happy to inform you there is hope for you--a little, but not much. However, always bear in mind, there is nothing so bad that it couldn't be worse. We have passed on cases much worse than yours, and unfortunately some of these have passed on. "But getting back to your case, it is regrettable that we didn't have a case on hand, but fortunately did have two bottles left. 

"NOW HEAR THIS--Don't take bottle #1 without washing it down with #2. #1 will kill:, without #2. If you take #2 only, you have wasted our money and time and will be shown no further consideration by this Clinic. "Your case being a little bit different than anything we've ever encountered, we will treat as an experiment and there will be no charge. Our consultant: (a veterinarian), will go along with us on this too, we hope." 

Side Saddlers, it has been said, are human too. Lending credence to this liberal if not pinko view is that the weaker members have proved susceptible to avarice, greed and get rich quick schemes on occasion. On one occasion several of them invested tidy bundles in a new born camper manufacturing firm. Eager to pyramid dividends, the wheeler dealers broached the subject of Side Saddle purchase of such a rambling lean-to at a club cookout. For $40 shares the SSers would own the device and the investment would be amortized from rentals to club members. Then the club would have a permanent source of income to fund club eleemosynary and other unlikely activities. 

The subject was broached after the charcoal grills had long cooled and most of the remaining ice had melted, with the result that the purchase price was quickly subscribed. The acquisition as ignored by all but a few dedicated campers with the result that on March 20, 1969, the Executive Committee committed an historic act. They sold the camper to two of the most avid outdoorsmen for a price which, with accrued rentals, made it possible to redeem all the $40 notes outstanding. It marked the first and thus only time an SSer has obtained a rebate, and created a minor tizzy among more practical and conservative Side Saddlers who viewed the redemption of a promise to pay as un-American. 

Side Saddlers, when temporarily detached from the clubs umbilical cord, are compulsive travelers. All 50 states and the tundras and deserts of Canada and Mexico, in that order, are within their purview. No national monument, no tourist trap, no park or museum, no dingy bar in a red light district has escaped their inspection and patronage. Communication with the stay at homes is always maintained, regardless of rigorous travel schedules. But, since 600-miles per-day commitments, including walking tours, are the norm, communications must necessarily be brief and to the point. 

The resourceful SSer relies on the postcard, often featuring maxims or epithets of an educational nature which point to flaws in the recipient's character, to wit: "Two heads are thicker than one and, Boy! have You got two heads!" and the searching "If you're so damn smart why aren't you rich?" 

Another favorite card, a triumph of trick photography, features the oversize fish. Since a true Side Saddler views any fish attaining the minimum legal size limit as being oversize, these works of art are eagerly awaited. It should be noted that the annual spring fishing trip is zeroed in mainly on the lairs of the brave little bluegill and the cavorting crappie. Accurate body counts are maintained with the weeklong total for the dozen or so anglers being 505, 656, 883, etc., totals which become impressive when simply labeled "fish." Suffice it to say that the surgical skill of the club's medics has saved many a filet in fishhouse emergencies. 

A percentage of the bags on Field and Stream are often reserved for the occasional annual dinners. At such a function in the Hotel Charles, SS diners were impressed by the excellence of the tiny shrimp on the buffet. Compliment to the chef evoked only indignation in the kitchen where it was explained that the delectable tidbits were bluegill filets. 

Side Saddlers have an ingrained interest in the arts, including architecture and design Thus many postcards feature unique examples of the builders genius, primarily outhouses. But most popular postcard of all, when SSers are on the road, tends toward the undraped female figure, usually one of obviously loose morals and similar physical attributes. To save time--and ink--these cards are customarily dispatched anonymously. 

SS files indicate that a member's penchant for this type of art form provoked a suit in the morality branch of County Court: 

The citizens for Decent Moral Behavior by Touring Public Servants Committee, being duly sworn on oath, says that--Kenneth A. Pucker did conspire, and did in fact, without solicitation, feloniously send through the mails of these United States of America certain postcards depicting females in obscene, immoral, indecent and pornographic manners designed to excite, pervert and arouse the prurient desires of the innocent receivers of said mail, contrary to Sec. 18.1461 of the United States Code Annotated, but which in fact excited only the righteous indignation of the recipients. And further that said Pucker on information and belief must have conspired with the several females on said postcards to pose, set and model their persons indecently and to send the resulting photographs through the mail. 

"Wherefore, the court demands that said (defendant) be arrested and dealt with according to law; to appear before this court...to defend himself and give bond, and account, and further to divulge, give up, and set forth the names, addresses, and frequents of said co-conspirators that speedy justice can be had. 

Side Saddlers despite advancing years remain volatile, an emotional state which explains civil suits between members, records on which riddle the pool and in no recorded instance has an SS plaintiff won or an SS defendant lost a case. This somewhat bland fact troubles Side Saddlers who tend to seek legal aid outside the organization when fixing parking tickets. 

The Big House on Big Lake Chetec has been headquarters for the springtime expedition for almost as many years as the Side Saddle has existed, not because of its luxurious appointments but because the square, two-story frame building, circa 1910, is the only building for miles around capable of bunching the SS. On at least one occasion the safari has been encamped in adjacent in smaller cottages which caused logistical problems, not the least being a sanitation crisis created when the cook attempted to flush the day's residue of boiled potatoes. Only quick action by a SSer who risked lavatory hands avoided a deluge. Unfortunately, this act of heroism has gone unrewarded to this day recalled only in snide jibes. 

From the sunporch of the Big House, an exhausted Side Saddler konked out on the chaise lounge, circa 1776, can gaze a half mile across the lake into a small cove, known variously as Dehn's Bay and Koepke's Folly. When the fish are spawning, this is where the action is. Trees overhang the rock-ribbed shore and 30 feet overhead telephone wires span the sparkling blue waters. In attempts by certain Side Saddlers to salvage baits obtained in "50 lures for $1.98" surprise packages, the sylvan shoreline is now guarded by broken, twisted, crippled trees. And due to the penchant by others to flycast with both hands on the rod handle, the utility wires are festooned with broken lines as thick as Spanish moss. At twilight, a once lovely shelter has become a Dismal Swamp. 

On this somber note ends the first volume of the saga. Unless enjoined, Volume II will explore Side Saddle ice-fishing ventures and pioneering exploits in snowmobiling. Volume III will reveal the truth about pheasant and mule deer hunting expeditions and the incidents which solidified the militancy of environmentalists in South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. A chapter will detail the facts behind the torching of a new but despised station wagon in the Dakota Territory, a Conflagration which was blamed on sagebrush accumulating around a hot muffler. Really! Delayed for a year or two" awaiting the accumulation of data, is Volume IV, which will faithfully report Side Saddle hi-jinks in the Marshfield Convalescent Center, including marshmallow roasts, wheelchair racing, prune juice bashes and denture swapping. And so, sic transit gloria mundi, but that's another story.