CityView Magazine

14 April 2021 MCFADYEN'S MUSINGS Fishing with Brett BY BILL MCFADYEN I n reflecting on our lives together in this town, it is not surprising that at First Presbyterian Church, Brett Ciccone and I had fairly regular interaction over the last 10 years or so. Brett had grown up in that church, and stayed in the pews with his wife, Serriah, and child, Elizabeth, as had I. His mom and dad were regulars from at least the time I got back to Fayetteville in 1985, and they were involved at all levels. So it was given that when Mama Terry and I were looking though pictures of Brett one night recently, there was one of him walking down the aisle in his little choir collar, maybe waving a palm branch or holding a candle. With little kids in that context, they are either smiling or crying. Brett was smiling. Our gap in ages is two decades. It is funny how that age gap becomes less of a barrier the older a man gets. (Women too, I suppose, but I am speaking only of what I have experienced, and I have never been anything but a man.) I guess when we start recognizing that the light we see at the tunnel's end is actually our mortality, then we on the older side crave those younger ones, hedging against the day when we cannot climb into our own deer stand or tie our own knots in the eyes of fishhooks. Once a man; twice a child. ose younger want detail on all those things we older ones were whispering and giggling about when they were kids, I suppose. Could be that they believe what my dad said about another man's wisdom being cheaper than your own experience. So they roach up next to us despite our pungency, the deafness and old coffee stains on our clothes in hopes of gleaning a little knowledge. So it was with Brett and me at church. At Select Bank, every so oen. Or maybe even at some social event where we both understood that his wife and mine were happier to be out that night than we were. Having researched Brett intently since March 17, 2021, I find that of all things not related to being a family man, fishing was his other first love. So what did surprise me greatly was realizing that we never ended up together on a boat or a dock or even a beach. Brett fished a lot with the MacKethans and the Singletons and lots of others where our lives intersected. e odds of Brett and I finding ourselves obeying orders on the same boat were high over the last 20 years. It was not to be. Brett's fishing was best enjoyed if, in the truck ride to the water, somewhere along the way someone played Lynyrd Skynryd's "Simple Man." A cooler full of beer was not required, so long as there were cans of Sun Drop in the ice. I have seen pictures of Brett cradling giant sow drum from the Pamlico Sound, and I have seen him in his much-lauded kiss-and-release pictures with 8-ounce crappie and palm-sized bluegill. In all the pictures, even the ones from October 2020, when the treatments for his lung cancer had stopped gaining any appreciable ground, there was that same little-boy-in-the-choir-collar grin. In those photos, preserved and shared by his wife and his mother and his myriad swell pals, Brett was a consistently smiling guy. A simple man. I emcee a little Sunday School class at Brett's and my church, where we take headline news and turn it into a Sunday School lesson. Last December, we read a transcript from a monologue Rush Limbaugh delivered a couple of months before he died. In Brett's fishing was best enjoyed if, in the truck ride to the water, somewhere along the way someone played Lynyrd Skynryd's "Simple Man."

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