Magic Saturdays

As I may have said before, Saturdays were always special with us kids about this time of year. I would give my brother the “secret” nod after we finished breakfast. Then we would slip out the kitchen door while he and Sainted Mother attended the early morning rush in our little country grocery. They “waited on” folks headed to work at the farms, the Cotton Belt shops, Ben Pearson’s bow and arrow factory, or at a wartime facility we just called “The Arsenal.” Those workers would return that evening with hands yellowed from some chemical, unknown to them or the general public. I guess they used it for making bombs.

Meantime, we were “outa there,” as long as our sister didn’t notice and tell on us. As soon as the rush cleared, Daddy could think up all sorts of things for us to do, especially if we aggravated him by asking for a Coke or candy bar. There was grass to be mowed, a garden to be watered, and truck loads of sawed-up slab wood to be unloaded. Come fall, Roedock Tiggins and I would haul it to Pine Bluff for five dollars a pickup load, him driving and me finding the way to customers that had been buying from us for years.

But back to Saturdays. Having escaped, brother and I would grab fishing equipment and head for our stock pond. The Hester boys, Robert and Bobby Joe, might already be there. If not, it wouldn’t be long. They had no interfering father, just a 52 year-old mother who, at the time, was keeping company with an 18 year-old boy in the neighborhood who had a car. That’s a different story for another day, though.

We kept a bucket of minnows tied to a tree at the edge of the pond. We dug worms in a shallow flat where the cows drank. On good days, we had part of a package of “ready-mades” stashed away in our secret place. On other days, we resorted to Bull Durham or Prince Albert. A stand of willows provided a shield from our parents for when we needed a smoke. That wasn’t too often, as smoking tended to make us sick. We couldn’t quite understand what the grownups saw in the practice, but if it was good enough for John Wayne, it was good enough for us.

And don’t ask me about the time we found a third of a bottle of Old Yellowstone and decided really to play cowboys. Yuck!

That little pond … that little pond. On a square-foot basis, it surely provided more pure entertainment than any Disney project ever built. At least we thought so.

On Saturdays when the fish were biting, one of the neighbors provided an ice chest, and Daddy left us to our own adventures, we would save fish all day. Come evening, Fred Flynn’s wife would haul out a homemade fish fryer. Other women would bring things for a little party on the banks of our little body of water.

 This was before the day that Mr. Flynn’s wife ran off, left him with their boys, and hung out at a bar on Harding Avenue—living in some way Daddy wouldn’t tell us about—until they found her dead in an alley one morning. These days, she would bring her boys and we might teach them some of the secrets of fishing. We all had fun, even that woman before the demons took her and she dragged her anchor. All I can say about her then was that she could sure cook fish.

Those were the days. On good ones we would end the day with a fine meal and good fellowship. Later, the oldest Hester boy, Robert and Bobby Joe’s brother Wesley, would join the Army and bring home, four years later, a German wife. Sadly, she died not long after coming to America.

That was years later, though. On the magic Saturdays I remember, there is only image of a catfish pulling on a line while the grease popped, the women gossiped, and the young kids frolicked around the banks of that old stock pond.

Sundays were torture,
but Saturdays were magic.