Growing Up Southern: February 4, 2018

We had a small stock pond on our place when I was growing up. It wasn’t as big as a city block. They dug it to get fill dirt for a Jr. high school. There wasn’t much to it—the pond that is—but square foot for square foot, it furnished about as much enjoyment as any site you could find anywhere.

There were fish in it. Fish galore: bream, sunfish, catfish, and, later, bass. We never fished it out, but oh lord did we try. There were snakes and turtles, as well. We only swam in it once, and that was when no one was watching, My mother told the story about how, when I could barely walk, I had seen some people swimming in a pool, and, I reckon I was impressed because, alerted by our family dog “Bob,” she caught me next morning “just a high-steppin’ toward the pond.”

My Sainted grandmother would laugh and talk about how she had taken me there a little later and showed me how to bait a hook and toss it out. She created a monster, I guess, for she said all I wanted to do thereafter was to go and “pish” some more. I don’t know if kids have that much fun with their grandmothers these days.

There are so many lessons one can learn from a small, postage-stamp, place like that. For one, the cork from a bottle of Garrett Snuff makes an ideal “bobber.” Bouncing it up and down is supposed to attract fish. And something that Della Nathaniel taught me, you must spit on your bait if you want to catch the really good ones. Of course, she dipped snuff, so her spit was much more potent and effective than mine.

She sought, once, to even the playing field by offering me a dip. I tied, but decided I’d rather not catch fish than live through that ordeal again. Bless her heart, she moved to Oakland California later and found equality of sorts, I’m sure. I’ll bet she missed that old pond, though, from time to time.

Sometimes, when I was older, and the Hester boys lived close by the pond, we’d start out on Friday after school and fish until Saturday afternoon. Then the mothers who lived nearby would come over with the “fixin’s” and fry our catch for the whole neighborhood.

I still recall the day my dad and I went out one Sunday morning and cut a nice gum tree that we dragged into the pond for a fish refuge. I think the hooks I lost therein outnumbered the fish I caught from it, but since Sunday was his only day off, it most wonderful that we spent the time doing it.

Today, the average teenager has a cell phone that probably cost more than my father paid for that little spot where the pond was. I’ll match memories with any of them, though.

Ever notice how things
get less fun as they
get more elaborate?