Casting a Spell

Chapter One

Chapter 1
Wilderness with all the Comforts

My wife’s hometown, Stillwater, Oklahoma—population forty
thousand, home of the Oklahoma State University Cowboys and
the National Wrestling Hall of Fame—is not the kind of place, at
first blush, where you would expect a fly fisherman to have a lifechanging
experience. The old downtown is much like the core of a
lot of American towns whose original logic has been bypassed by
time and Wal-Mart. There are a few bars that cater to the student
clientele from OSU, a couple of banks, an upscale home-furnishing
franchise, a Christian bookstore or two, an ersatz Starbucks, some
boarded-up storefronts, and a multidealer antiques mall, the kind
you see these days in almost every town of comparable size.
The mall is much as you’d expect. Knickknacks and collectibles
of all sorts. The stuff Grandma left in her attic. Used books. Farm
tools, costume jewelry, fifty-cent ties, incomplete sets of glassware.
A room full of ticking wall clocks. Barbie dolls and Star Wars action
figures, as the cutoff line for the term “antiqueR ... read full excerpt from: Casting a Spell ebook