One of my earliest memories is sitting in the grass with my dad and grandpa beside a small farm pond during spring Saturday afternoons. I held a cane pole with a long piece of monofilament tied at the end, a red cork bobber, split shot and a tiny hook. Earthworms that Grandpa had dug up to use for bait wriggled in black dirt that half filled a shiny tin can he held in gnarled fingers.Nothing, it seemed, could be more exciting than watching that little cork tremble on the pond’s surface and disappear; I’d jerk the pole to see if I’d caught a fat bluegill or if the fish had won.
It was fun, and I felt I was helping provide a meal for the extended family. We ate what we caught, if it was a big-enough bream or bass. It was a lesson in basic imprinting.
Today my safety valve remains fishing.
Whenever stress starts to weigh heavily, I walk out my back door, go to my storage building, grab a fly rod and head for a pond.
After a couple hours of casting my bread (actually black-ant or cricket-imitator flies) upon the waters and playing quick-draw with bluegills, shellcrackers and small bass, worries of meeting deadlines and choosing words craftily or stupidly are slimmed to size.
If everybody could fly fish for bluegills, aspirin companies would be out of business. Fishing at farms ponds always has been an effective, enjoyable headache remedy for me.
Unlike the fairer sex, males are lucky that way. We usually aren’t trained to obsess about whether or not our clothes “match” (whatever that means), if we’ve got dirt under our fingernails, grass stains on the seat of our pants, or if we smell like we’ve slept in a fish box full of day-old croakers.
One of my other favorite pastimes ended not too long ago for this year — spring wild turkey hunting.
My father used to get me up so early the hoot owls were asleep. He’d fix me breakfast, then we’d drive to a turkey-rich area, trying to arrive 30 minutes before daylight (we usually did) so we could listen as an old tom woke up the world with an earth-shaking gobble. Then Dad would try to outsmart the wily bird with a wing-bone call and lure the turkey within range of my little 20 gauge.
Those last few minutes before a hunter knows if a gobbler’s coming to him — or has turned away — bring every sense the human male possesses to the surface of his skin. I swear I’ve heard ants crawling along the ground while waiting for a gobbler to appear. That’s a feeling you’re not likely to experience anywhere else unless you drink a pitcher of margaritas in an hour.
Guys are lucky if they grew up with a father who showed enough interest to take them fishing, baited their hooks, slapped them on the back and told them how proud they were when they caught a three-finger-wide sunfish. Or if their dad found time to teach them gun safety before taking them on their first hunt (in my case for squirrels with that little .20 gauge), brought them along for all-day walking quail hunts, and later for deer and turkey hunts.
Father’s Day is June 18.
Many guys will remember their fathers that day or be lucky enough to say “Happy Father’s Day” to their dads — but for reasons other than hunting and fishing. And that’s OK, too.
But I know why I’ll be hugging my Dad that Sunday.
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