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The Slice: They caught a trout, but not the trout

With this summer being the 30th anniversary of “Jaws,” we’ve all got one question. What if that blockbuster movie had been set in the Inland Northwest?

Sounds crazy, I know. But think about it. A few changes in the backdrop and story line and it might have worked.

We’d just need a little script-tweaking.

1. Quint: “Y’all know me. Know how I earn a livin’. I’ll catch this bird for you, but it ain’t gonna be easy. Bad fish. Not like going down to the pond and chasing bluegills and tommycocks. This trout, swallow you whole.”

2. Mayor Vaughn: “You yell barracuda, everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell trout, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”

3. Ellen Brody (upon meeting Matt Hooper): “My husband tells me you’re in trout.”

4. Hooper: “This was no personal watercraft accident.”

5. Mayor Vaughn: “What kind of a trout did you say it was?”

Hooper: “Oncorhynchus mykiss. A rainbow.”

6. Hooper: “That’s a 15-incher.”

Quint: “Twenty. Sixteen pounds of him.”

7. Quint: “The thing about a trout, it’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes.”

8. Hooper: “What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, er…an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little trout.”

9. Quint: “What d’ya have there — a portable shower or a monkey cage?”

Hooper: “Anti-trout cage.”

10. Chief Brody: “You’re gonna need a smaller boat.”

“Something’s not quite right: Jack and Peggy Jensen own a body shop on East Broadway. Their business card says “Auto & Truck Body Repair & Painting.”

But they suspect that the bank recently trying to sign them up for a new credit card doesn’t really understand their business.

The mailed come-on included a mock-up showing how their new card would look. It said: “JENSEN TRUCK BODY REPAIR-PAIN.”

“Slice answers: Several readers insisted there aren’t many jerks at Hoopfest, so eliminating them wouldn’t significantly shrink the event.

Hmmm. Perhaps I should have defined my terms. I wasn’t asking about violent felons or drunken streakers.

The “jerks” I had in mind are the whiners, crybabies, bad losers and arrogant winners. And don’t forget the people who yell at the court monitors.

Anybody who has been to the event can tell you. There is no shortage of those folks.

“Today’s Slice question: We all know that great white sharks are not freshwater creatures. But does anyone who can remember back to 1975 recall swimmers acting a bit skittish in area lakes during the summer that “Jaws” came out?

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