When I was nine years old, my Uncle Joe and Aunt Doris gave me a fly tying kit for Christmas. It was boxed and wrapped and tied off with a big shiny red ribbon, and I opened it at the Tanner family Christmas party, which, if memory serves, was held the weekend before the actual holiday. This particular celebration was at Joe’s home (we rotated every Christmas; one year at our house, the next year at Uncle Jim’s, the next at Uncle Austin’s, and so on) and I don’t think I was ever so excited as when I pulled off that wrapping paper and saw the treasure I’d just received.

Buddy Bishop, the man who owned the Racine, was about as un-Buddylike as it’s possible to be. You tend to think of Buddys as ruddy-cheeked back-slappers, the kind of guys who organize softball games at company picnics and spend the rest of the afternoon flipping burgers, tonging hot dogs into buns, and drinking foamy beer from plastic cups.