Found this old gem while looking in my files

The Water Magnet

As an outdoorsman who enjoys hunting and fishing and trapping, I have gotten wet on more than a few occasions. I have gone over my hip boots when the water was just a bit deeper than I had anticipated, and been caught out in frog strangling rain than left me sodden to the bone.

However, there has only been one person I have known who attracted water like a dead horse draws flies. And, that was my brother Matthew. Pop & Mom Mom (my grandparents) used to say “Water just jumps up on him!”

I can remember one rainy day getting out of elementary school, and on my way to the car I walked around a large puddle in the parking lot. Matthew though decided to stomp right through the middle of the puddle, and then he turned around and marched back through the puddle again. My mother was yelling at him “Matthew stop that, get over here!” He acted as if he had been suddenly and inexplicably stuck deaf and continued splashing, until Mom pulled the “you’re in big trouble card”. “Matthew Charles DiSalvo get in this car now!” His hearing magically returned and he dejectedly trudged over and got in the car.

Unfortunately for me his attraction to water caused me to get in trouble more times than I can remember. As young kids (8-10 years old) my friend Amy Stufflet and I would often go down to the crick to catch crayfish and as my younger brother Matthew would invariably tag along. However just about every time he went with us he fell in the crick. How in God’s green earth he managed to get wet up to his ears in a knee deep section of crick I have never been able to figure out. Upon returning home with a dripping wet little brother I would get a spanking for as Dad used to say “Not watching him close enough.” (I did make the monumental mistake of one time telling my Dad “Well then don’t make me take him with me”. Needless to say that was a big mistake, and I was not allowed to go down the crick for several weeks.)

Matthew could even get wet, muddy and dirty in a drought. He should have been used by well drillers rather than divining rods to find water. If I ever lost track of him I knew all I had to do was look in the nearest mud puddle and he’d be standing in the middle of it happy as clam. One day Mrs. Faulkner Amy’s neighbor called out to Amy and I “Who do you have with you today?” I told her that it was my little brother Matthew. “Oh I didn’t recognize him when he’s clean and dry” she remarked with a smile. To be fair he did bear a striking resemblance to the Peanuts character Pigpen some days, oh ok most days.

Several years later Matthew and I used to go down to my friend Rob Preston’s house nearly every day during the summer, as Rob lived right next to the crick. We used to keep our fishing rod under Robs porch for safe keeping when not in use. To get to our favored fishing spot we had to hop rocks from the bank out to the middle of the creek. Now some of the rocks were small, others wobbled and not a few had snot slick algae on them. In the beginning of summer all of us slipped of the rocks and fell in to some degree, but after a week Rob and I rarely got damp let alone wet. Matthew however from the first day to the last day of summer again usually managed to end up looking as though he had just been taking scuba lessons.

Turn the clock forward to us both being in our early 20’s. Matthew and I were fishing down the crick, while our friend Charlie Bowers was along as a spectator. We were both wearing our hip boots and had each caught a few trout. I had tripped and nearly fallen face first in the crick, and had warned Matthew about it. He however being his usual self got cocky when he caught another trout before I did, and the tripped on the very rock I had warned him about. Both Charlie and I have remarked how he held his flyrod over his head in one hand, and was wind milling the other arm like Wiley Coyote trying to regain his balance. His water magnetism proved his undoing as he toppled over and into the icy crick up to his neck of course. He came up gasping for air and cussing a blue streak, and likely expecting Charlie or I to help him. However we were laughing so hard that we were lucky to stay on our feet. I swear Charlie had tears rolling down his cheeks. (I did end up giving Matthew my warm dry flannel after he managed to stagger to shore. We also stayed long enough to finish catching our limits before heading home; priorities after all.)

Now you would think fishing in a boat would keep you fairly dry and you would be right UNLESS you were my brother. We were in Virginia and out fishing in the bay with our cousin Debi’s husband Butch, and having a pretty good day. Butch was manning the tiller while I sat in the middle and Matthew was sitting in the front seat as we idly drifted along hoping for the flounder to bite. Matthew got bored and decided to sit on the very bow of the boat with his long spider like legs up on the side gunnels. I said to him “You better watch yourself, if a decent wave or bow wake comes along you’re going overboard”. He laughed off my concerns and lit a cigarette. No sooner had he done that then a fast boat blew by us and created a huge wake. I turned to look at him and there were about 2 feet of empty air between his posterior and the bow, then he dropped out of sight with his cigarette still hanging in midair. All we saw was the tip of his fishing rod slowly sliding below the surface of the water like a periscope. He came up sputtering, gasping, and looking for help. Butch and I were too busy trying to catch our breath from laughing so hard, that it took us a minute to fish Matthew out of the drink (he was more upset about his pack of cigarettes being ruined than he was about falling in).

My bothers ability to attract water was so great I used it many times as a joke. I would say “If I were ever stuck in the middle of the Sahara Desert I would want Matthew with me rather than anyone else.” Friends would ask me why him rather than a survival expert or a nomadic Bushman. “Easy” I’d reply. “While I would be busy trying to think of what to do, or how to survive, and get the (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) out of there, Matthew would get bored and start screwing around. While doing so he would as sure as God made little green apples trip over his own feet, fall over backwards and land in a puddle. After I pulled him out of the puddle, I am sure I’d see a plume of dust coming over the nearest dune. The plume of dust would be the Old Man driving a Land Rover and loosening his belt to give me a spanking for not watching Matthew close enough.