When I was growing up, my family lived out in the country. My grandparents lived nearby and owned a lot of the property all around where we lived. Summers were spent roaming the woods and pastures picking blackberries, playing fort or explorers, wiling the days away, catching June bugs by day and lightening bugs at night. Most summers there were several cousins staying with the grandparents, so between my two brothers and visiting cousins, there were always plenty of play mates.
I remember one summer in particular that was a lot of fun. I was probably about 10 years old. For some reason or other, my older brother Kenneth and I had become keenly interested in fishing. We had dug out two or three old fishing rods from Granddaddy's tool shed that hadn't been used in years. We cleaned them up and got them in working order. We even found an old tool box that we used as a tackle box. Then we had to convince our parents to give us money for hooks, floats, line, artificial lures and various and sundry items imperative to our new hobby.
And, so, we became fishermen. Every morning, fairly early, the two of us would set off for the pond for a full day of fishing. If memory serves, I don't think I caught more than 3 fish all summer, and those were too small to keep. But, I was just so thrilled that Ken was including me and so happy to be spending time with my big brother that I didn't even really care if I caught anything or not. Well, I cared a little. Ken actually became pretty good at it and usually caught something. He even caught enough occasionally for Grandmother to fry up for dinner.
We had been absorbed in our new interest for about a month when two of our cousins came to stay for the rest of the summer. Gwen was 14 and Steve was about 12. We quickly got them interested in fishing too and after finding a couple more rods and reels in the tool shed, we set down for some serious fishing the rest of the summer.
I suppose I should give a short description of the pond where we spent so much of our time. It was a good size man-made pond, stocked with bass and bream. There were some old trailers off to one side where some people had lived once but had since left them deserted. The pond was filled by a branch flowing into it. At the spot where the branch flowed in, there was a make-shift bridge over the gap so you could walk all the way around the pond without getting your feet wet. The bridge was a strange sort of contraption. It consisted of two long metal poles laid across the gap with board planks placed at uneven intervals across it to step on. You had to take pretty big steps to make it from plank to plank, and a lot of times folks ended up with more than wet feet if their steps weren't big enough…or their balance wasn't good enough. There was no hand rail of any kind. Well, like I said, the bridge was a little tricky to cross it you weren't careful. None of us seemed to have problems with it except for Stevie. It seemed like every time the poor boy tried to cross that bridge he fell in! Hardly a fishing day passed without him getting at least one foot, if not his whole body, wet from slipping on the bridge.
One day we were all fishing, as usual, but that day we were all frustrated because it was the third or fourth day in a row that nobody had caught a single fish. And before that, we had all been on a run of catching only bream too small to keep. On this particular day, everybody had sat down in various spots around the pond and we were just lazily casting off and reeling in, not really expecting a bite. Gwen and I had each pulled a concrete block up to the edge of the water to sit on. Kenneth was sitting on an overturned cooler near the little bridge. And Steve, wonder of wonders, had crawled out to the center of the bridge, without getting wet, and lounged out there with his line in the water.
The day was hot and muggy. It was quiet except for the normal sounds of flies buzzing, cicadas chirping and bull frogs croaking. We had been sitting that way, nearly dozing, for a couple of hours when suddenly Steve jumped up, began pulling and reeling in his line, and dancing around on the bridge that he usually couldn't even walk on. We all got up and ran over to where he was to see what the commotion was all about. He was pulling in a largemouth bass nearly big enough to pull him in! All this time, he had been pulling and jumping, with his mouth hanging open, too shocked and excited to say anything. When he finally saw the size of the fish coming up out of the water on the end of his line, the only speech he could even manage was to shout over and over, "Dad-gum, it's a bass! Dad-gum it's a bass!"
For a long time after that, any time the four of us were together, somebody would tell that story. And for years, it became kind of a tag line in our family. If there was a lull in conversation, somebody would yell, "Dad-gum, it's a bass!" We would all laugh and see, once again, little Stevie jumping up and down on that bridge and try to recapture, just for a moment, some of the magic of that summer.
I remember one summer in particular that was a lot of fun. I was probably about 10 years old. For some reason or other, my older brother Kenneth and I had become keenly interested in fishing. We had dug out two or three old fishing rods from Granddaddy's tool shed that hadn't been used in years. We cleaned them up and got them in working order. We even found an old tool box that we used as a tackle box. Then we had to convince our parents to give us money for hooks, floats, line, artificial lures and various and sundry items imperative to our new hobby.
And, so, we became fishermen. Every morning, fairly early, the two of us would set off for the pond for a full day of fishing. If memory serves, I don't think I caught more than 3 fish all summer, and those were too small to keep. But, I was just so thrilled that Ken was including me and so happy to be spending time with my big brother that I didn't even really care if I caught anything or not. Well, I cared a little. Ken actually became pretty good at it and usually caught something. He even caught enough occasionally for Grandmother to fry up for dinner.
We had been absorbed in our new interest for about a month when two of our cousins came to stay for the rest of the summer. Gwen was 14 and Steve was about 12. We quickly got them interested in fishing too and after finding a couple more rods and reels in the tool shed, we set down for some serious fishing the rest of the summer.
I suppose I should give a short description of the pond where we spent so much of our time. It was a good size man-made pond, stocked with bass and bream. There were some old trailers off to one side where some people had lived once but had since left them deserted. The pond was filled by a branch flowing into it. At the spot where the branch flowed in, there was a make-shift bridge over the gap so you could walk all the way around the pond without getting your feet wet. The bridge was a strange sort of contraption. It consisted of two long metal poles laid across the gap with board planks placed at uneven intervals across it to step on. You had to take pretty big steps to make it from plank to plank, and a lot of times folks ended up with more than wet feet if their steps weren't big enough…or their balance wasn't good enough. There was no hand rail of any kind. Well, like I said, the bridge was a little tricky to cross it you weren't careful. None of us seemed to have problems with it except for Stevie. It seemed like every time the poor boy tried to cross that bridge he fell in! Hardly a fishing day passed without him getting at least one foot, if not his whole body, wet from slipping on the bridge.
One day we were all fishing, as usual, but that day we were all frustrated because it was the third or fourth day in a row that nobody had caught a single fish. And before that, we had all been on a run of catching only bream too small to keep. On this particular day, everybody had sat down in various spots around the pond and we were just lazily casting off and reeling in, not really expecting a bite. Gwen and I had each pulled a concrete block up to the edge of the water to sit on. Kenneth was sitting on an overturned cooler near the little bridge. And Steve, wonder of wonders, had crawled out to the center of the bridge, without getting wet, and lounged out there with his line in the water.
The day was hot and muggy. It was quiet except for the normal sounds of flies buzzing, cicadas chirping and bull frogs croaking. We had been sitting that way, nearly dozing, for a couple of hours when suddenly Steve jumped up, began pulling and reeling in his line, and dancing around on the bridge that he usually couldn't even walk on. We all got up and ran over to where he was to see what the commotion was all about. He was pulling in a largemouth bass nearly big enough to pull him in! All this time, he had been pulling and jumping, with his mouth hanging open, too shocked and excited to say anything. When he finally saw the size of the fish coming up out of the water on the end of his line, the only speech he could even manage was to shout over and over, "Dad-gum, it's a bass! Dad-gum it's a bass!"
For a long time after that, any time the four of us were together, somebody would tell that story. And for years, it became kind of a tag line in our family. If there was a lull in conversation, somebody would yell, "Dad-gum, it's a bass!" We would all laugh and see, once again, little Stevie jumping up and down on that bridge and try to recapture, just for a moment, some of the magic of that summer.
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