Page 193 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

Clarence and I elected to spend our first week fishing, but since neither one of us really cared anything
about killing deer, we decided we would rent a car and simply tour both islands of New Zealand in that
remaining week, even though did fish one day out of that period, which I will tell about a little later. We
rented a car, and 1 soon learned to drive from the right hand side of the car, as they do in England, and
found the only difficult part of that was that I always felt I was on the wrong side of the road, and none
ofthe cars had automatic transmissions, so that I had to shift with my left hand. That seemed a little
awkward al first.

However, we traveled from place to place by driving all day and admiring the countryside and then
finding a town to stop at to spend the night. New Zealand is an extremely beautiful country, as much of
it looks like just one giant golf course.

The New Zealand farmers arrange their livestock where they have several pastures and they will run
their cattle through a pasture and after the cattle have grazed that pasture down they will move the cattle
into the next pasture and put their sheep on the pasture that the cattle have already nibbled on. The sheep
fare very well at subsisting on grass which is shorter, and the entire countryside is literally covered with
sheep. In fact the population of sheep in New Zealand greatly exceeds the population of people.

There is an area in the South Island of New Zealand, closer to Tasmania and Antarctica, where there is a
range of mountains known as the Southern Alps. These mountains exceed anything that I have seen in
the Rocky Mountains in the United States, and there is a famous hotel at the foot of the Southern Alps
known as the Hermitage. This is a world-wide known excellent hotel, and is used by many celebrities at
such time as they happen to be on the south island of New Zealand. Clarence and I stayed 2 or 3 days at
the hermitage and we noticed a stout man coming through the lobby ofthe hotel on several occasions,
whom we both thought looked a lot like the television actor William Conrad. He was the man that
played the part of Cannon on the TV series “Cannon”. We could not quite decide whether it actually
was “Cannon” or whether it was just a man that was built like him and looked a great deal like him. We
saw him coming in from the parking lot one day approaching the front doors of the hotel and Clarence
said “if I can hear him speak, 1 can tell if it is really him or not” so Clarence moved over to the front
door ofthe hotel and when the gentleman approached the hotel Clarence grandly opened the door for
him thinking the man would say “thank you” and he would get an opportunity to hear his voice, and thus
be able to indentify whether or not it was really William Conrad.

The portly gentleman accepted Clarence’s gesture of politeness, but instead of saying thank you, he
made a polite bow to Clarence and said nothing. So we still did not know if it was really William
Conrad or not.

The next day we had an opportunity to employ a guide to take us fishing on the river nearby which was
crystal clear water and looked just like the Ichetucknee River, except it was about 6 times wider and was
quite swift. Clarence Brown is the only man that I have ever seen that has mastered the knack of
catching fish in the Ichetucknee River, which is so crystal clear. Clarence was one ofthe few people
who had seemed to catch fish in such clear water, I suppose due to the fact that the fish could see the
fisherman and what he was doing.

Anyway when we met our guide for our fishing excursion that day, we introduced ourselves and he
asked us where we were from and we told him then he said “I seem to be getting a lot of American
fisherman lately. The last fella I took out was the American TV star William Conrad”.

Then of course we knew that the man had been seeing around the hotel was indeed William Conrad, and
without knowing it the fishing guide satisfied our huge curiosity.

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