My First Fish

My First Fish

Robert seldom took time away from farming chores to go to the creek. After he acquired two ponds on his farm, he still didn’t have time to fish. It is ironic that Tom and I have memories of fishing with him.

The Sand Banks of Cohay Creek.
Photograph by David Dees

“Can we do it now?” I shook the shoulders of the two sleeping bodies. 

           “Go back to bed, sweetheart.”  Mama read the alarm clock. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

          We went on a camping trip when I was a tiny girl, no more than four. I can remember myself with two ponytails, rosy cheeks, and freckles. This was the only time my father went camping during my childhood. 

          After carefully rigging our equipment–poles, lines, sinkers, hooks, and corks–we joined the group. Several friends, neighbors, and uncles loaded their families into trucks.  Everyone took cane poles, earthworms, wieners, Nehis®, sardines, cold fried chicken, blankets, and pillows down along the gentle rolling hills of the Powells’ place. We were invited to camp out on the sandy banks of the curved creek that flowed through Old Man Powell’s land before emptying into Cohay Creek.

They set up camp in a clearing where the sandy banks dropped low and the water ran gently. After a half day of delight, I turned into a restless, sunburned, chigger-bitten whiner. My cousins and I walked from one group of fisher-persons to another.

“Come here, Littlun’.” Pa couldn’t suppress his twisted grin.  “I’ll help you catch your first fish.”
Even though I could feel the pole moving and see the line going all over the little pool of water, I played along with him because I wanted to believe him.

“Be careful, Littlun’.” My father placed his hands firmly on the cane pole.  “Look at that bobber. It went all the way under. Now come on and pull your fish out. Pull hard! No, not too hard. Gentle.”
It was the most beautiful fish in the world–a huge bream with red-orange sides. 

Pa strung him onto a forked stick for her.

“Stay away from people who are being quiet and still, Baby. Don’t upset any serious fishermen. The fish can tell when you’re walking on the bank,” Mama said.

Careful not to go too close to the grouches the rest of the day, I carried my fish around and showed him to the people who were laughing and talking. Periodically I dipped him into the water to get a drink, but eventually he became stiff. I did not comprehend or accept the fact that my fish was dead.

That night Mama put my older sister Ruth and me, along with two of our cousins, to bed in a pickup truck with sides on it. She strolled away holding hands with Pa to a secluded spot where he had parked. Mama would sleep with him after dancing horizontally in the back of their flat-bedded 1937 Chevrolet truck.

The world was a wonderful place. As I lay in the truck bed and waited to go to the land of Nod, I found three things amazing:

(1)   The scratchy brown-striped blanket under us that my Pa’s mother, who claimed Native American ancestry, made using a spinning wheel, loom, and black walnut-shell dye to fashion the fleece she sheared from her own sheep into wool

(2)   The endless stars telling secret stories from above as they all talked at once

(3)    And most of all my magnificent fish, the biggest bream anyone had ever caught, lying on the running board of the pickup truck.

The next morning the fish was gone. 

Pa said, “The bream started missing his mommy during the night.  I took him back to her.”

Travelers in Painted Wagons on Cohay Creek