Chapter 13: A Big Fish Story

It would be another hour before the sun began to peek up over the horizon in the east and I had already rolled out of bed, slipped into my overalls and shirt and hurried outside to dig the worms needed for one of my favorite days of the year, Fish Day.

All of the boys and some of the girls in our church looked forward to this day for months. This was the day when all the kids who had their ninth birthdays in the previous twelve months would be baptized into the church and we all got a chance to go fishing.

No one seemed to know how the custom got started exactly, and we kids really weren't much concerned about when it began. The annual church picnic was held every year somewhere on the banks of Cut Across Creek. The nine year olds got baptized and we all got to go fishing as soon as the "Dippin' and Dunkin'" was done. Pa claimed I'd rather fish than eat.

I grabbed a sharp spade out of the tool shed and hurried over behind the henhouse to dig up thirty or so worms. I never wanted to run short of bait, ever. The worms were placed in a bed of cornmeal inside a flat old Prince Albert can I found somewhere. The can went in my shirt pocket.

I cleaned the shovel off and hung it upside down on its pegs in the tool shed, then I ran to get the cows. I herded them in to the barn and rationed out their grain. I had three of them milked by the time Pa came out and grabbed the other milk stool and started on the next cow.

"What's the hurry, Davy? Does a church picnic mean so much to you? I never knew you to be this religious before." My cousin Sam grinned at me. She knew what I was so anxious about. I looked forward to an afternoon with a fishing pole in my hand. Although Pa had sold his wheat crop early enough to get a fair price, the following months had been filled with days of hard work for him and me.

Pa seemed to have the uncanny ability to almost to see the future. Instead of banking the proceeds from the grain sale, he took payment in cash and buried everything in three safe places in and around the house, under the hearth in the fireplace, in a hole in the cellar under the house and in glass jars under the front porch.

Years earlier, he had already taken all the money we had in the bank and brought it home. We had money when many of our neighbors had none. This made both my parents sad. But the signs were there for any who would see and not be blinded by greed.

We had fifteen milk cows by then and a large flock of chickens. Pa had started to talk about whether or not to hire a married couple to help us on the farm. Even with Sam's help there was just too much to do.

"Sam, I am going to catch the biggest fish ever today," I told her solemnly, as we walked toward the house to eat breakfast. It turned out I could be a little prophetic myself.

Right then she snorted and I opened the door for her to enter first. "Your black eye has rattled your brains, Davy." She touched the area around the eye and said in a low voice, "You're special, Davy, real special." She and I had grown very close since she came to become a part of our family. I needed a sister and she needed a brother.

Pa had installed a sink and a drain on our covered back porch and tied it into the shower drain. The few people who heard of it considered our shower a bit of a novelty. I never realized just how well we lived in comparison to most of our neighbors. Sam washed her hands and face and dried on the big towel then I did the same. We trooped in to breakfast and sat across the table from each other.

"Son, no matter how fast you get the chores done, you are not going to get to drop your line in the water one second sooner. Your ma still has six chickens to fry up and Samantha has made a big bowl of potato salad. There are Lord only knows how many deviled eggs and at least enough bread to feed an army. It all has to be finished and packed before we move one step away from this place.

"Why?" I started to ask Ma why she was making up so much food and then I shut up. I knew why. There would be some families at the church picnic who would not be able to bring much more than just themselves. Ma planned to make certain no one went hungry. She would be so quiet about it few would even notice what she was about as she gave food to those who were without.

Pa looked at her with a lot of love. "I am just now beginning to appreciate the little girl I married such a short time ago. Your ma is a rare woman, Davy." Unable to speak, I nodded my agreement.

Sam and I went to pick the vegetables needed to make a big tossed green salad. Sweet Bermuda onions were pulled out of the garden soil, collard greens were taken from the field to the north of the house and tender young dandelion leaves were added to the collection. It was topped with a dozen big, rich beefsteak tomatoes. The lettuce, what little came up was not ready yet so we used natural greens for our leafy vegetables.

I went outside and fidgeted as I waited for the food to be prepared and brought out to the truck. The cats came up to me to be petted. They were really looking for Sam. I would pet them a little bit but she really made over them. I teased her about it and call her the "cat girl." She smiled and laughed and kept on petting. I really liked my new cousin Sam.

At last we were ready to go. Ma sat in the middle, Samantha sat on the outside and Pa drove us away from the house and toward Cut Across Creek. I perched on the utility box Pa had bolted up front to the bed of the truck. My precious fishing pole and hook, line and sinker were stowed and I kept my eye on the three big boxes of food to make sure they didn't slip and slide around much.

It was eight in the morning on the most beautiful Sunday we had seen since early spring. Missing were the angry dust clouds we usually saw, as they hung menacing in the air until they swooped down. Then they buried us in dirt blown up our way from Texas or down our way from Kansas. This dirt filled air caused poultry to literally drown in dust as their fragile lungs were filled with the awful stuff.

Right then, the sky was as blue as cobalt paint. The light cotton candy clouds hung in the sky and resembled all sorts of outlandish creatures. I sat in the back of the truck and let my imagination run wild as I imagined I could see the shapes of snowmen, elephants and all other sorts of animals. But inside I was anxious to get to Cut Across Creek and the anticipated fishing.

Green showed all along the rutted roads leading from our farm to the Cut Across Creek meeting place. Where we all met the stream made a sharp bend and the water was a little over three feet deep right there.

Grass grew right up to the water's edge and the old cottonwood tree had seen its share of broken arms from daring young lads egging each other on to climb higher and higher or swing from one limb to another.

The other farm families, some traveling from as far away as thirty miles, began to arrive soon after we got there. We were usually among the first to arrive. Some people came in old horse drawn wagons from the nearby farms where they couldn't afford eight cents a gallon for gas.

Others came in Chevrolet trucks, Dodge touring cars, a scattering of Model A and Model B Fords and even a couple of old chain driven Reo trucks and others of various vintages and sizes. There was even one brand new Chevrolet sedan driven by a local grain buyer who was made the rounds, glad handing the farmers, making over the latest baby and generally being as phony as the breed usually is.

One family of four even arrived on two old plow horses. The father had their ten-year-old son ride behind him and the mother held their five-year-old daughter in front of her, as she held onto the mane, while a protective arm held her in place.

In those days, people just generally "made do" with what they had. In our part of the country, we had no time for fancy airs. It was hard enough work to just get by. Since the wheat glut the previous year, hard times were steadily getting harder. Pa was one of the few who got even close to a decent price for his wheat.

The hymns were all old standards since we didn't have our hymnals with us. "The Old Rugged Cross" was first, "The Church In The Vale" was next and "A Beautiful Life" ended the first three hymns. Brother Moore preached for about an hour and a half in lieu of Sunday school. Then the invitation was given for any present to come to Christ or to rededicate his life to the Lord.

Then, as we sang, "Meeting At The River" and the few baptisms were performed. I always wondered what would have happened if, when the preacher asked, "Do you accept Jesus as your savior," the young person being baptized said, "Nope." I never heard that it happened at any time, but I still wondered a few times. I always kept this thought to myself. Ma would not have been too pleased to hear me ask a question impious.

The final prayer seemed way too long. I echoed "Amen," with the rest of the congregants, young and old, and hurried to get my fishing pole and bait. Pa got a small campfire going, using the cut up wood he brought along. He had the deadfall from the hickory tree branches blown down after every heavy wind.

A person needed thick gloves to handle those branches because of the thorns, but they made a good, hot, slow burning fires. As with everything else he did, Pa's fires had to be perfect. He hated sloppiness.

1933 was a dark year indeed, with beautiful days at a premium. The whole of the state was plagued with one dust storm after another. So the beautiful day of the picnic was a day we all cherished.

The people came wearing their "Sunday Best" clothes. For some, it meant their ragged overalls were clean, or nearly so and their wives wore dresses made out of flour sacks not too stained with cow manure and grease and lye splats from the lye barrel a fresh slaughtered hog had been dropped into and pulled out again to have the hide scraped free of the hair.

My shiner gave me a distinguished look, so I thought. A few different people who had heard of the trouble with the Bradleys the previous day mentioned it kidding. I tried to walk like a conquering hero. But it didn't work. I was barefooted and had to keep stepping over and around obstacles like sharp rocks and other dangers to bare feet.

I carried my can of worms in my shirt pocket and my pole in my left hand and waved at friends and acquaintances with the other. Wilbur and Norton Barnes dropped in alongside me. "Goin' fishin'?" Wilbur asked. He was a year older than me, but I was bigger. He stopped growing fast and I didn't.

"Yup," I answered and kept walking.

"Think you'll catch anything?" Norton asked in a doubting tone of voice. He was my age and the perennial pessimist. It was said many times if you gave him a new dollar bill, he'd probably ask, "Will it spend?"

"Heck yes, and I'm goin' to catch some fish, too." I answered him, continuing, "And you just keep your trap shut and don't go jinxin' me." Every boy knew in those days how doubtful thoughts could jinx anything. Many a fight had started over whether one boy jinxed another with negative thoughts or words.

We were all barefoot, so we kept a wary eye out for sharp stones and other objects ready to penetrate our toughened and well callused feet if we weren't careful. Almost without thought, we would step around and over suspect objects with an alert wariness born of long experience and past bad gashes or just stubbed toes.

As soon as we got down to the riverbank, I set down the pole and extracted a nice, big, blood red night crawler and carefully placed it on the hook in such a way it was secured firmly, and still able wiggle and undulate the way a "free" worm would do. There was quite an art to "baiting a hook."

Boys had developed many techniques of their own. But it all boiled down to placing the worm on the hook in a way to hopefully entice fish. All boys were self-proclaimed "experts" on the art of hook baiting. My big, fat, juicy blood red specimen was wriggling furiously trying to escape the hook piercing it. Perfect.

I dropped the hook in the water and almost immediately got a bite. It was a nice, pan sized, sunfish. A sunfish was nothing more than a type of perch. So much for Norton's "jinxing me." This one eyed medium sized flat as a pancake fish made great eating; there was just so little of him, though.

The worm had just gotten upgraded from "bait" to "lucky worm." Since he still showed signs of life, I dropped him and the attendant hook back in the water and waited.

I pulled my "Okie creel" out of a hip pocket and used it to secure my catch before dropping him back in the water to stay fresh and alive. An Okie creel is nothing more than two looped pieces of ten-gage or heavier wire bent to resemble a long hand written "letter e." They are joined by a short length of heavy cord, tied through the loop of each piece of wire at each end.