Memories of John Fulmer

Memories of John Fulmer
By
Michael R. Peck


I’m not much for extemporaneous speaking, so bear with me as I read. My name is Michael Peck, and I would like to take a little time to share a few recollections of John, provided my memory hasn’t failed me. Consequently, names, places, and dates may be a little muddled in historical accuracy.
Looking back, I must have met John in the mid-seventies while working at Boise Cascade in Bellevue. He and Dick Windham were associates in the remodeling business. I would attempt to help out with door and millwork design and selection, and they would proceed to show mercy on the greenhorn college kid who didn’t understand the business end of a hammer, let alone a nail gun!
Over the years, John and Dick remained loyal customers as Boise Cascade evolved into BMC West and their remodeling business transformed into separate companies. Subsequently, Skylights West grew and prospered under John’s direction, and I even learned a few more things about building materials and construction. John said that even a pig finds an acorn once in a while! High praise, don’t you think?
As I probed John’s background, my nosy nature discovered that Susan’s sister Margie was married to Jay Patterson, a fraternity brother with whom I attended college. We didn’t learn anything, ate the erasers off our pencils, focused on meeting girls, and partied a fair amount. What a coincidence!
As time passed, John and I learned more about one another’s families and hobbies. It was clear to me that John was very proud of his children and their mother Susan. Whenever he stopped by the business, I always asked about the kids; what they were up to; their challenges and accomplishments. He always obliged me with interesting stories. Often times, however, our conversations drifted to other important things in our lives like hunting and fishing! This doesn’t necessarily equate to killing and catching, considering my skills with a shotgun and fly rod! I can’t say the same was true of John. His outdoor yarns always surpassed mine. To me he was the local king of “whack’em and stack’em” in the Snoqualmie Valley. He was also known for “rippin’ lips” in nearby lakes and the Yakima River.
For somebody running his own business and raising a family of 5, how did he manage to outpace me in outdoor adventures? His secret was fishing and hunting the “hood”-- that’s the neighborhood for those of us that are over fifty! If it wasn’t within 30 to 45 minutes driving time from his house, it some how dropped off his radar screen. His nearby haunts were the Snoqualmie Valley for ducks and crows, the south shore of Rattlesnake Lake for rainbow trout, and even Jay’s dock on Lake Sammamish for smallmouth bass.
A long time ago, John shared a story with me about attending a Snoqualmie Valley Grange meeting in order to become better acquainted with area farmers. At one point in the meeting each farmer was asked to speak to those in attendance about their personal profile of their family farm. When it was John’s turn to speak, he had to confess that he had no farm but only knew a couple of farmers who had given him permission to hunt crows. Whispers and conversation ensued… An unfamiliar farmer chimed in with, “You must be the Crow Man! So and so told me about you.” Well, needless to say, John secured permission to hunt several more farms that evening. The farmers were only too eager to develop a relationship with the “crow exterminator”. Crow “pest and damage control” was high on their agenda. And guess what? When Fall and Winter rolled around, you knew only too well who had permission to hunt local and migrating ducks on these same farms! I visualized trips where Joel and his dad, and I think Gene as well, would go mucking through a farmer’s partially flooded field to set up a sack full of decoys and await the morning or evening flight. Now that’s what I call hunting the “hood”.
On other occasions a number of years ago, I remember getting some lessons on fishing Rattlesnake Lake, near North Bend, yet another destination in the hood. His favorite fly for this lake was the Six-Pack, a muted yellow and black number that imitated a dragon or damsel fly nymph. We fished the shallow stumped-choked drop offs on the south end of the lake. Whether in a float tube or wading from shore, he seemed to always out-fish me.
John introduced the Yakima River to me and my wife and taught us the art of upstream, tight bank fly fishing on water a stone’s throw from I-90 at Cle Elum. Elk hair caddis flies, short backhand casting into the wind along side and underneath the brush that hugged the shore: that was some fun! When the sun went down after the evening hatch, we would find the best restaurant in town and treat ourselves to a steak dinner. This wasn’t quite like fishing the “neighborhood”; it was advancing to the “suburbs”!
From there it snowballed, and we made a couple of trips to Lakes Lenice and Nunnally near Vantage for big trout fishing. John had fished these waters in his youth, and so had my wife Lynda and I. His favorite “high calorie” fly was the Nyergis Nymph-a fairly large pattern fished off the bottom erratically to imitate a dragon fly nymph. He killed’em with this! I convinced him to try subsurface fishing with very small chironamid nymphs and pupae on a floating line, kind of like eating small hor’oeuvres. These imitated midge nymphs in their aquatic stage. Needless to say, we “ripped a few lips.”
Around this same time frame, I took him to some puddles just off I-90 at the “Gorge Amphitheatre” exit on the old two-lane Vantage highway. We fished a couple of very small spring- fed lakes called Horseshoe and Spence. We caught some big, fat trout that had a steady diet of very, large dragonfly nymphs. The added bonus was to tote along our shotguns and shoot rock pigeons that roosted in the surrounding columnar basalt rock plateaus near the Columbia River.
The ultimate memory for me was when I convinced John to make a long distance trip to my home town Spokane to hunt doves and fish the crick of my youth in late summer around Labor Day. It was not in John’s nature at all to travel this kind of distance for outdoor adventure, but I think he was glad he did. We shot limits of doves near Rock Lake, south of Cheney about 30 miles, and caught a couple limits of Brook trout on Marshall Creek only 15 miles from Spokane over that weekend. He met and hunted with my very good friend, Dr. Howard Lander, 85 years young at the time but still a crack shot.
John shot very well, a ten bird limit with maybe 15 shells, same with Doc. I was lucky if I could shoot a limit with 25 shells! It was great fun, especially when we were hunting over a small, shallow, water hole and Doc dumped 3 birds with 2 shots from his Charles Daley over-and-under. One bird landed right in the middle of the puddle. They both goaded me into wading in to retrieve it after futile attempts at rock throwing to create a series of waves to push it ashore. I was glad I was wearing my nearly worn out leather Chukka boots! The boots never quite looked or smelled the same after that incident.
Doc Lander is now 95 years old, and we talk about John once in a while. Doc was the most prominent neurosurgeon in Spokane during his practice, and he took quite an interest in John’s first brain surgery. He was pretty impressed with John’s results. When I told him John was in the hospital for a second brain tumor, he wished him all the best. When I had to tell him subsequently a couple of weeks later that John had passed away, he was sad. He paid John a high compliment at that time – Doc said that he was a “shooter”. You see, Doc valued outdoor experiences more than the countless successes he had had in helping people through his medical practice. Doc and John both seemed to live to hunt and fish, and that’s not bad. It’s a lot like religion for us. When you’re outdoors, you have a lot of time to think about God, life, and family. I’d like to share a small passage from Norman MacLean’s book, A River Runs Through It. Many of you have probably seen Robert Redford’s movie adaptation. At the end of the story, the main character reflects on life and conversation he had with his father in the past.
“I understood even my father, whom I felt closer to than an other man I have ever known. ‘You like to tell true stories, don’t you?’ he asked, and I answered, ‘Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.’
Then he asked, ‘After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?
‘Only then will you understand what happened and why.
‘It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.’
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.”