Old Roads
Something Fishy
When I was a young man I moved to the Missouri Ozarks with my young bride. It was 1974 B.C. (Before Children). Wonderful place, the Ozarks. Full of winding old roads flanked by deep woodlands. We used to love getting in that old Chevy of ours and following some of those roads. Never knew where they were gonna take us, what we’d see along the way. That was the pleasure of them.
This month, as I celebrate my diamond jubilee on this earth, I find I’ve been down a lot of roads, seen what was there at the end of them, took in what was along the way. Not all roads were smooth or pleasant, but all of them were good because they’ve become the fabric of my life.
So, that’s what I want to attempt here — to explore old roads. This offering will be my first. My intent is not to amaze you with wisdom (not my long suit), but rather just lay down some stories about where those old roads have taken me, what I’ve taken from them. Some may be true, some I may make up. Gotta allow me that, I’m a fiction writer.
Now, I know content like this goes for less than a dime a dozen and I have no reason to suspect this one would fetch a better price. But I do hope to entice you to join me on these journeys to places, people, and events. Maybe you’ll have a little fun reading them. I promise there’ll be nothing too serious.
Here’s the inaugural journey. This old road started out about eight years ago when my oldest grandson was just a tadpole.
Something Fishy
I call myself an avid indoorsman. So, when my seven-year-old grandson asked me to take him fishing, I scowled at him and made excuses.
“It’s too hot,” I said. “Fish aren’t biting.” And “Fishing ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. You have to sit still and be quiet for extended periods.”
I figured that last one would quell his enthusiasm. Still and quiet were things he’d not yet mastered. To be honest, I don’t think he was giving them much effort. One of Jamison’s super powers is turning into a human tennis ball and bouncing off walls. Another is persistence. Used simultaneously, these gifts can wear you down.
So, I called a friend. Larry and I have known each other since we were fourteen. I lived in town, Larry lived in the country. He grew up learning the great outdoors, gaining skills in hunting and fishing. I grew up watching Andy take Opie fishing on TV. After half a century, nothing much has changed in that regard between Larry and me. I knew he’d be a good guide for us, would succeed in showing my grandson the skills and pleasures of fishing where I would fail. A surrogate, he could be the grampa I wanted to be, and I’d still get credit for taking the boy fishing. Win-win.
We set a date. I told Jamison we’d rise early to set out. Not a problem for him. You would’ve thought it was Christmas morning. He jumped on my bed at 4:30 a.m. “Get up, Gramp,” he said. “Let’s go.”
On Fishing Eve the boy and I made a trip to WalMart to provision up. We got a six-pack of soda pop, some chips, some cookies, some energy bars, some peanut butter filled crackers, some kind of sour apple drink he spotted, some bottled water. Oh, and some cheese and ham for sandwich makings. We had enough to backpack the entire Appalachian Trail.
We made our rendezvous with Larry and rode forty minutes in his pickup through the hills of eastern Oklahoma. Larry said he knew a spot. The road dipped and rose, curving sharply through the deep backwoods. I got more apprehensive the further we drove, started whistling “Dueling Banjos.”
“Ah, here it is,” he said, sliding to a dust-cloud halt on the shoulder of the narrow road. The time was a little past eight in the morning. The spot lay below a bridge which crossed the finger of a small lake. At a bend in the finger, the waters of a rocky brook emptied swiftly into it, the sound of its rapids babbling in its cascade. A well-timbered bluff cast shade across the waters of the pool at the finger bend and the mouth of the brook. A thirty-foot wide gravel bar presented a beachfront from which to cast. If fish awaited us in those waters, it would be a perfect spot.
We headed for the fishing hole down a path winding through a field of poison ivy. I could recognize the plant, a residual memory of my long gone Boy Scout days. I passed that lore on to my grandson, my one contribution to his learning the outdoors.
First thing off the bat, not five minutes into casting out his line, the boy hooks a fish. “Reel it in! Reel it in!” Larry and I shout, and the kid takes off running backwards dragging the fish to dry land. It’s a channel cat, about a pound (Larry tells us).
Shoot this fishing thing’s easy, Jamison decides. He snags seven perch in the next hour, then the rapids of the creek become too enticing.
Wise to what a kid would want to do, Larry had brought a child-sized float vest. He strapped it on Jamison, and the two of them rode the rapids of the brook out into the deep pool of the bend. I’m a little nervous, Larry’s in perfect control, in his element. The grandboy sloshes back up the creek, far into the woods, and floats down to the mouth butt first. And then again. And again. He spends more time doing that than fishing. When the sun tops the trees above the bluff drawing back our shade, Larry and I decide to pack it in. Time for lunch. The kid voices his displeasure with the decision, sorry he was in league with old men.
On the way home the grandboy wants to know when we’ll go fishing again, says he’s already itching to go back. I tell him it’s probably the poison ivy.
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