The Case of the Missing Gunny

It all started a couple of weeks ago. Our hero decided he was fed up with low-cost fly fishing reels, so he decided to sell off all of his old Berkleys and Daiwas and other reels, and put the money towards something of a little higher quality. He found a man in California who was selling his entire collection of well-used but well-loved Ross Gunnisons, so he made a deal with the man to buy one of his Gunnison G-2's, in order to fill the hole in his reel bag left from the Berkleys and Daiwas. The man in California was happy to make the sale, and soon sent the chosen G-2 off to its new home, our hero's home, via the United States Postal Service.

Being a man of many pursuits, and many offspring, our hero went on with his life, not noticing that his new Gunny was not arriving at the time that the USPS promised it would. After several days he decided to check the tracking history via the USPS website. There he found that his new G-2 was stuck in some kind of Postal Service limbo, not having been scanned since the day it was dropped off by the man from California. By this time it was already several days late, so our hero made a call.

As our hero fully expected, the nice lady he talked to on the phone was from parts unknown, and she was not able to give him any answers as to the whereabouts of his new Gunny. What was fully unexpected by our hero was that within an hour, another nice Postal Service person, this time a man from the next town over, called with a plan to find the missing Gunny. He didn't have any answers either, but his confidence was boiling over. The made our hero feel good about the prospects of finding his Gunny...

That very night, as if by magic, our hero's newly acquired reel showed up at the USPS hub in St. Paul, less than 15 miles from its final destination, our hero's reel bag. Surely it would arrive safe and sound the next day. Surely our hero would be able to put new line on it and hear it purr within the next 24 hours. Surely he put way too much faith into the United States Postal Service...

For it took three more days, and several more phone calls, for it to finally reach our hero's grubby little paws. Where had it been? Why had it gotten lost both in California and in Minnesota? Had it gotten smashed somewhere along the way? Were the USPS people just waiting to reveal its crumpled form? Were they postponing our hero's inevitable rage when finding out that his new Gunny would never purr like he hoped it would? Some of these questions would never be answered, but some would, when our hero finally was able to put knife to tape and open up the box, which was in surprisingly good shape, by the way.

And so were the box's contents! Our hero's new Gunnison was in very good, well-used but well-loved condition. And did it ever purr! He quickly forgot about all of the conflict that had occurred. His Gunny was home, and all was well with the world. At least until he switched his focus back to the other parts of his life...

THE BIG REVEAL