Fishing

Momma and Daddy took up fishing for a time. It seemed an enjoyable activity, and being thrifty people, they liked their recreation to provide food as well as fun. We never had much in the way of equipment. Daddy brought home a rack for the roof of the car by which to transport fishing poles, which were tied on with binder twine. Were it not for binder twine and baling wire, we would have been severely handicapped in creating efficient means of securing things. He also bought fishing line, hooks in several sizes, sinkers, and bobbers. He was optimistic enough to get a stringer on which to collect large hauls of fish. He bought himself and Momma “rods and reels”, which contributed to our knowledge of the horrors of casting and backlash. The point was that one could wind up the reel and deliver the fish to right before your eyes to be removed from the hook and attached to the stringer. Neither of them took the time to practice with these reels, and did not learn to cast nor land a fish, but Momma did have the entire week to sit in her spare time in a lawn chair and attempt to untangle the backlash in those ruined reels.

On Saturdays that summer, Momma would tell us to go get a good big can of fish worms, and Bonnie and I would go out behind the hen house to the moist soil and did. We put the lavender wrigglers in the dirt we collected, and once in a while we had to go to the sewer outlet to get good ones. I have always wondered what kind of terrible pollution we added to our food supply with sewer worms! Momma made special bait out of cornmeal and cotton balls that she was certain would attract catfish. Someone told her that chicken livers were also good bait. I don’t think we ever put this to the test. However, grasshoppers were plentiful and we were not above catching a Mason jar full.

Off we’d go on a Sunday with a picnic basket among our fishing stuff. The only fishing waters near by were supplied by the Missouri River and the Nishna backwaters. There was a “lake” over by the Missouri called Forney’s Lake where the farms surrounding had supplied fish and fishing facilities. It was nearly covered with water lilies and they were blooming this day in a fairy land of sweet smelling big white flowers and huge lily pads and loud bullfrogs and millions of dragon flies. We found a place with a clear bank to unload our poles and worms and set right to work baiting our hooks. (Ewwwwew!) Then we each selected a spot that we were certain was the optimum place to catch a monster!

Everyone started to whisper now so the fish would not be scared. We tiptoed around on the bank as running would surely scare them as well. And we waited and waited. The ripples rippled and rippled and the birds sang and the frogs shouted, and we watched our bobber riding the ripples until my eyes got funny and I felt quite dizzy, and ultimately bored. Then Daddy hollered. His bobber had wiggled and nearly sunk. Momma whispered, “Let the fish really take hold, and wait until it has. Don’t reel in before he is really hooked!” So we waited and waited some more. Finally Daddy pulled in an empty hook dangling in the sunshine. But this meant of course, that there really were fish here and they sure were biting! So again we waited and waited and waited. I whispered my complaint that I was sick of fishing and there were no fish on my stretch of bank and could I come over and fish by Daddy where he got that bite? And he had put his newly baited hook right in the very spot he had experienced the BITE! My line tangled with his and it took a half hour to untangle the mess and he ordered me away. I was upset anyway because I’d already noted I was sick of the activity.

Daddy ultimately caught a fish, again warned by Momma that you must wait until the fish was really hooked—and he prematurely jerked out a tiny little silvery fish, that Momma and Daddy said was either a sunfish or a nice bullhead. It was kinda small to tell. For several minutes the whispered conversation was just where the line was when this fish “HIT” and how it fought being reeled in, and what a lively specimen it was—which might have been hyper dramatic, seeing the fish was upwards of three ounces at best. I had laid down my pole and was poking in the mud with a stick when my bobber sank, and my pole started sliding down the bank into the water. I grabbed the pole and ran backwards with it dragging the line, now taut, and the pole, now trembling behind me. And there it was! A whale lay on the bank. It was a silver scaly carp nearly 12 inches long! The biggest fish in the pond! It flapped about and Daddy and Momma told me I was the real fisherman of the outfit. I accepted praise and congratulations and was terribly excited and eager to get on with fishing now.

But the sun shone hot, and the ripples rippled, and I again became frantically uneasy. I went to the picnic basket and took out the blanket and momma helped me spread the blanket on a level spot and we set out the picnic. We washed with a soapy wet towel Momma had included, and opened cans of pork and beans, and ripe olives. We had boiled eggs, and Velveeta and minced ham on white bread sandwiches, and some bananas, and individual pieces of chocolate cake. The big jug was filled with Kool-Aid and ice and was heavenly. And then we were all sleepy, so Daddy suggested we go get a boat and go out to look at the water lilies. Bonnie and I were amazed that Daddy might suggest a recreational activity, so we were overeager to get at this before he changed his mind. We got our first taste of walking on an unsteady boat floor where the boat rocked and trembled under our feet. We got seated at last and Daddy started rowing. He had been warned that the lily pads were all matted together by their stems just under the water, and a boat stuck in those would be hard to get out again. I trailed my hand in water and flipped it on Bonnie and she got all prim and said to quit being a brat, so I had to do it some more times, and this time Momma got stern. I asked Daddy if I could row and he laughed and said it was too hard for little girls and now I insisted, of course!

With a great deal of stumbling and rocking and falling against the other passengers, I made my way to the middle bench and took the oars—far heavier than I had thought. I reached both back as I’d seen Daddy do, and pulled as hard as I could. We shot forward in a terrible lurch that nearly unseated me and both oars broke the water and splashed everyone thoroughly. After a couple more of these swoops, I determined my arms were awfully tired, and if I used one arm at a time, it would be easier. It was. Except now the boat lurched left and right and right and right and whirled a bit, and churned the water and then I could lift neither oar. We were stuck in the lily pads. Momma was shouting about my stopping the boat, and Bonnie was trying to hit me, and Daddy was laughing. Momma leaned over and threw up into the lake. I didn’t know she was sick. She had been well just moments ago. Now I saw the end of us all marooned in this lily pond for the night and forever. Daddy took the oars and with much maneuvering and some profanity, got the oars freed and the boat to shore. Momma staggered to the car without congratulating me on my fun boat ride. We drove home in silence. Once there, Momma went directly to the sofa where she flung herself down and demanded a cold washcloth for her eyes.

“But, Momma, who is going to cook our fish? We have all these fish and they need to be cleaned and cooked!”

It was full dark before those fish got to the table. Momma finally fried them in cornmeal batter and lard, and I ate the breading that fell off in the skillet. I didn’t like fish nor the smell of them, but the fried cornmeal was O.K. I filled my plate with the picnic leavings, and when Momma saw that I was eating ripe olives and chocolate cake she again had to go to the sofa.

In my kind sympathetic manner, I sat down beside her and commiserated that she felt sick. I told her next time we went boating, I would be far more experienced and she would enjoy her day so much more.

Momma said, “Dear. Please go away!”

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