Trickle the rich guy sounded mighty excited when he woke me with a phone call at 6 a.m.

Everyone knows I don’t get up that early except to go fishing, so when I saw Trickle’s name on the phone screen the first thing I said was “Hi, Trickle. When and where?”

“Right now at Big Buck’s Big Box Bait & Tackle,” Trickle answered. “I’m here with Stoney Brokium, the poor guy. We’re shopping. Did you think we were going fishing? No way in this weather.”

Trickle fishes offshore on a 40-foot yacht that handles rough seas pretty well, but captains crazier than he had gone out already that morning and turned back. One called to tell him the day was a two-hander, meaning all hands needed both hands to hold onto something.

You can’t fish in those conditions. Well, you can but it won’t go well. Any time you’re in Big Buck’s Big Box and you see another customer limping, I’ll bet you that if he didn’t shoot himself in the foot with a hunting rifle he was injured while fishing on seas over five feet. Bonked his punkin head on the
T-top, fell on his butt, whatever. You shouldn’t take the bet.

Before I could ask Trickle why he was calling from Big Buck’s, he told me: “There’s stuff on sale here at prices you wouldn’t believe. You could save serious money, outfitting that new boat you’re getting.”

I said no, Headwind is the one getting a new boat. I fish with him, so I’m helping him look for bargains. I’d planned on sleeping late that day but as long as I was awake anyway I guessed I would go over to Big Buck’s.

Other than that, I wondered, why was Trickle the rich guy shopping for nickel-dime discount goods? He could buy Headwind a new boat with just the loose cash in his pocket.

“You don’t get to be the rich guy by wasting money,” he reminded me. That’s true, but I reminded him that he fishes with Stoney Brokium, who doesn’t waste money either.

“Stoney couldn’t throw money away if he wanted to. He hasn’t any,” Trickle said.

That’s true too. Just about every rod and reel that Stoney owns, as well as every hook, line and sinker, he found in Big Buck’s bargain bins or at some yard sale.

Not only is Stoney a pauper, Trickle says he even looks exactly like one. More truth there. He reminds me of a character in The Threepenny Opera, without a singing part. You know that show? The tickets are so cheap that even a beggar can afford it.

When Trickle called Stoney “the poor guy,” he didn’t mean something bad happened to him. That’s just Stoney’s objective description. It’s also his informal title in our fishing club, the Fish or Cut Bait Society.

“Once on the way home from fishing we were stopped for a red light at the bottom of an I-95 exit ramp,” Trickle said. “A beggar was working the spot. I gave him a dollar. He was walking around my truck to try the other lanes when he noticed Stoney in the passenger seat. He knocked on the window and gave the dollar to him.”

By the time I got to Big Buck’s that morning, Trickle and Stoney were sitting outside with bulging shopping bags. They told me to take whatever I thought Headwind would want for his new boat.

I fished out a dock line that looked new except for shopworn packaging, two fenders that would be just fine with a few puffs of air inside, a handful of thimbles, some splicing thread, an only slightly corroded marlin-spike and various other possibly useful marine objects.

Stoney helped me carry the stuff to my truck and asked if I had time to check out a yard sale. I said sure, let’s go.

When he has a little money — a little is the most he ever has — Stoney goes to yard sales, looking for boating and fishing stuff. He doesn’t own a car, so he coaxes friends in the Fish or Cut Bait Society into going with him.

We don’t mind because sometimes we find something we want too but forgot about. Everybody likes a bargain.

We had time for one spot, a yard sale that was advertised as having a lot of boat supplies.

“Almost everything will be rusty or obsolete,” Stoney warned me on the way. “Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don’t, like when they’ve sold the best stuff already — usually yesterday, when you would have gone if you’d known you could.”

The best stuff at this one was a Gheenoe Super 16, a skiff that Headwind would have liked and might have made an offer to buy. Stoney had called him about it but Headwind couldn’t get out that day, so he told Stoney to tell me.

We were the morning’s first customers. The woman running the sale was easy to spot: she was arranging stuff on the tables and was wearing one of those aprons with compartments. The only other person there was a man, her neighbor, who pointed us to her when we walked toward him.

“We’ve got to stop assuming that men are in charge of everything,” Stoney whispered.

“You’re right. At least let’s take off our hats,” I said.

“We’re not wearing hats,” he said.

We took off our sunglasses instead. You probably won’t see that advice in an etiquette book until I get around to writing one. Approaching a stranger with dark glasses on your face makes you look standoffish, unapproachable, even suspicious. If you have that habit, break it.

I noticed the boat wasn’t there. I asked the sale boss about it.

“It was my husband’s,” she said. “We only used it once. No engine. I sold it yesterday.”

So Stoney was right about that and also about what else to expect. The front yard was full of stuff we might have wanted when it was semi-new, 30 or 40 years ago.

“Some of this is so old, it’s marked ‘Made in the USA’,” Stoney said as we picked and shuffled the merchandise.

I did spot one good thing, an un-used trailer hitch mount with a 2-inch ball — no grease, no road dirt, chrome shining. I handed it to Stoney and let him handle the negotiations.

“How much you want for this?” he asked the seller.

“Twenty,” she said. I stifled a shout. Stoney smiled.

“How much will you take? Five?”

“The ball alone is worth 10,” she answered.

“But you’re trying to get rid of it,” Stoney said, offering it back to her.

“Okay, five,” she said and took his Lincoln.

“What will you do with that, without a boat?”

I asked him as we drove away.

“I’ll give it to Headwind as a boat-warming gift,” Stoney said.

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