The Clan
by Jeff Mishler
By keeping our steelheading clan small, we avoid tossing around the Tinted Window Treatment because we don’t really care if one of us knows where the other has been hiding out. What’s the tinted window treatment? Remember that time you were cruising down the freeway and noticed in your truck’s driver’s side mirror a nice sports car approaching. You could see through the windshield that the driver was a woman, a single, attractive woman, as well kept as her stunning sports car. At least in your mind she’s single cause she’s alone. In fact, she’s smoking hot beautiful, as far as you know. She’s still a ways off traveling over 60 miles per hour, but approaching fast and you can’t take your eyes off the mirror, because, well she’s beautiful. Then, when the car pulls alongside and passes your truck, you quickly glance that way, hoping to peek, for a moment, into her world but see only black tinted windows and the reflection of your dirty truck. The window tint is so dense you can’t distinguish a single shape inside let alone the truths of her beauty and your curiosity is squashed like those bugs smudging your windshield. You’ll never know the truth. That’s the Tinted Window Treatment; that’s what you get from us if you’re an outsider trying to look in, asking too many questions, too close to the bone. Nothing personal. We’re just trying to avoid insanely crowded situations in our favorite haunts so we don’t have to resort to booting up pen-raised pheasants for fun.