LAKE COWDRY MYSTERY SOLVED

I just knew there had to be a reason why someone posted all those antisocial signs along West Lake Cowdry Road.

I was considering some of the alternatives: love affair gone sour, constipation, dog died, wife left, truck broke down . . . all the usual bad luck, gloom and doom reasons you hear on your local country western station.

Normal people just don't have that many stay-out-of-my-business and keep-on-moving signs in a stretch of road that short. There had to be more to the story.

Today when I hiked West Lake Cowdry Road again, I saw it. Like an epiphany. A bolt from the blue. I had missed it before because I was fixating on a sign across the road from it. But today, there it was--the simple explanation for all that hostility and ill will:

Duh! Of course! It all makes perfect sense now. I live with this every day. I'm married to a fisherman, for cripes sake. If the fish bite, happy days are here again. If the fish don't bite, Mr. Pessimistic comes home to commiserate.

Except in the case of the Lake Cowdry depressed fisherman, he doesn't just sigh. He puts up signs. "Stay out. Leave me alone. Don't park here. Don't loiter here. Don't fish here. Don't hunt here. Don't walk here."

I should have been a detective. Elementary, my dear Watson.