Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
Voltaire
Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.
Garrison Keillor
However, there are those occasions where staunch belief and strength of conviction, or even denial, are not good medicine. I have a very large beer glass above my tying table that is a concrete testament to the downside of faith.
It's full of flies that failed the test. And failed miserably. They brought no interest from the trout I sought, and if kept them around long enough, nor did they in subsequent outings. In fact, to be honest, it's been emptied twice now, and that says a lot about how many flies have found their way into this dubious 'hall of shame', because it's a 64 oz. glass. Held a lot of awfully good beer in its time, now it is the final resting place, the morgue, the home of disenchantment, the mausoleum of faith. And this does not take into account the countless flies out there, too, returning slowly to organic dust, in nearly all of the places I have fished. To be accurate here, though, is to say that most of these OHWs did indeed register some modicum of success, which is, of course, the reason for the title of this offering.
I have, somewhere in the clutter of a basement somewhere, a rather large collection of late-60s through mid-70s rock and roll records, and this collection is also replete with many bands who failed, just as miserably, the test of time. They were purchased after the most superficial scrutiny, in the faith that indeed this band, on the basis of one song, was going places...
Just like the flies in the glass.
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