Boys,
Out on my grandma’s land, there is a road that stretches from her house (now my cousin Karen’s house) down to my dad’s house. It’s about 1/2 mile long and at one time or another, my grandma, four of her six sons, and now three of my cousins all had lived there. There is, or was, an airstrip, full court basketball court, a creek that my dad and his brothers used to float down on intertubes, a riverbed where I shot my first gun, and trails through the woods where we’d squirrel and mushroom hunt. There was a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush (IYKYK).
There was also a cow pasture, a horse pasture, and a red barn with a bunch of horses and goats in it. There were hills for sledding and a drainage pipe big enough for a child to crawl through every Christmas until he was a teenager because it was tradition (your uncle JI upordan and my cousin Matt). There were dogs and cats who roamed the land but always had a warm place to sleep, fields on hills where we used to play football on Thanksgiving — how none of my uncles ever tore an ACL running up and down that hill I’ll never know. There is a sign that reads “Spring Meadow Farm” where my uncle ran his fencing business — I worked there for a few months during breaks in college. There used to be a tree farm, too.
The Family Pond
There was also a pond. It wasn’t big by any means, but it was another thing to do when I was growing up. In the winter, the pond would freeze over. When he was young, my uncle Carl was trying to show how sturdy the pond was by stomping on it, and he got frostbite when his foot eventually went through the ice and couldn’t get it back out quickly enough. Sometimes, we would get ice skates from my grandma’s basement and play broom-hockey on the pond.
Swimming and Fishing
When it got warm outside, we would swim in the pond. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite thing we did out there, but if it was hot and the energy was right, a group of us would jump off the dock and keep an eye out for snapping turtles and we would swim. I remember the feeling of my feet squelching in the bottom of the pond, and thinking every little thing under the murky water was going to attack me! I can still smell the sulpher in the water when we’d go back to my grandma’s and have to shower afterward — she had well water and it’s one of those smells that I can still pinpoint and it takes me back 35 years.
Sometimes, we would also fish in that pond. I was grossed out by putting the worm on a hook, and grossed out by touching a fish once I had him out of the water, but I loved to cast and I loved the feeling of catching the fish and reeling it in. My uncle Andy was a competitive fisherman at some point when I was growing up. He’d take a boat and a big tackle box somewhere and catch really big fish. That never interested me. I just wanted to be outside with a Coke on the dock, walking around the pond to see if I could spot a fish near enough in the shallow parts of the pond, ready to drop a line with a hook right on top of him and hope be’d bite.
When I grew up, I stopped fishing. Some people think of fishing like I think of golf. They could think of nothing better than sitting in a tiny boat with a line in the water from sun up to sun down. I’d rather watch a flushed five-iron sail directly at the pin on a par five, but if idling on the water on a warm day is your thing, well, that just might be two sides of the same heaven.
Rediscovering Fishing with Reagan
I’ll admit that I wasn’t thrilled about it when you decided you wanted to start fishing in the ponds around our house. My first thoughts came back to having to get dirty and touch gross things like worms and pond water. I mean, I’d fish some golf balls out of our ponds if you want, but actual fish… actual fish that were probably mutated from all the chemicals that work their way into the ponds from the golf course at that.
But do you know what? It was an excuse to get outside and to put my phone down for an hour. Don’t get me wrong, we’re going to take the golf cart and I’ll be picking the music (is there a better place for country music than that?!?).
So we bought the gear — the smallest tackle box Amazon could get us, a few hooks and bobbers, some fake neon worms that might have been more useful for my uncle Andy, and a few poles. We put a hot dog in a ziplock baggie and we tried out a few different ponds around our house.
The First Catch
The first fish you caught was in the pond near the 9th green at Kinsale. I wasn’t thrilled about having to take him off the hook, but you weren’t going to do it and I figured the fish wouldn’t want to live out his life with a hook in his mouth. I remembered how to hold a fish from having watched my dad — you make your hand into a “C” shape and kind of slide the fish through your hand so you smooth down it’s fins and spine. I don’t know if all fish have those pointy spine, but I assume they all do and I assume they all hurt if you touch them the wrong way.
Anyway, we get the hook out of the fish’s mouth and you decide you wanted to toss him back into the water. So I show you how I’ll get the fish into his hand and we pull it off, but I was slightly mortified when you turned to the pond, wound up like you were trying to get a gernade out of your foxhole, and threw the fish halfway across the pond. I mean, I’ve seen you throw other things and, no offense, you’re not going to go pro anytime soon. But if there was a fish-throwing olympics, you might have a future.
“I chucked that fish!”
“Yea I saw that, bud. That’s not really how we do that.”
I think you said something about him being evil or giving you a look, I don’t really remember, but it was funny enough to settle me down and I just mentioned that wasn’t really kind to the fish and future catches should go back into the water with a touch more care. Still, you loved telling your friends about “chucking the fish” and it was one of those things that I wasn’t going to get to worked up over.
That was last year. This year, we’ve gone fishing a few times. The first time it was too cold, and I asked my AI if it was too cold to catch fish — surely there was a reason we weren’t getting any bites. Then we went again and you caught a few tiny, tiny bluegill. I only know that because I sent a picture to my dad. We went again last night with your friend, Nash.
When I floated the idea out (your mom’s idea, actually — she wanted to get outside for the nice weather for an hour), you and Nash were in the playroom. You both got excited. Now Nash is kind of built for fishing because he already has the “the fish was this big” gene in his DNA.
“My brother Mike caught a largemouth bass that could eat this whole thing,” he said pointing to a Matchbox car carwash in the playroom.
“You have a brother Mike?!?” I said with excited curiosity.
“Uh, no. My, uh, cousin is Mike.”
I later found out he was talking about his grandma’s partner. She and Mike live together and there is a big pond near their house where he and Nash caught some fish earlier in the year.
“I’m probably gonna catch a largemouth bass today, Reagan,” he continued.
“I don’t know if there are any largemouth bass in these ponds, Nash,” I said. “I think there are just some bluegill.”
“No. There are largemouth bass. I’m gonna catch one and we can cook it for dinner.”
We’d already eaten dinner.
“Tell you what,” I said. “If you catch a largemouth bass, I’ll cook it up for dinner.”
So off we go as a family of five — me, Reagan and Nash, mom, and Koen (who’d been complaining about his belly hurting ever since he got home from a matinee movie earlier that day. I learned he’d eaten a whole bag of gummy bears and a whole bag of M&M’s.
So we take the golf cart over to one of the ponds not on the golf course since people are now that it’s warm enough to golf again. As I’m digging for worms, mom calls out that Koen had an accident (not your fault buddy, it was the movie theater’s fault for selling you too much candy. Should be held accountable like a bartender who overserves someone and lets them drive hom). Anyway, you guys take off and Nash catches the first fish.
It was a tiny bluegill just like the one’s we’d caught earlier in the year. “I thought it was a largemouth bass,” he said. I find it best to nod along and “uh huh” the conversation because it’s not a battle I’m likely to win.
But then it happened. Not two minutes after I throw junior back into the pond and go digging for another worm, I hear commotion from Reagan and Nash a little ways down the pond. From where I stood, I could see this was a full-sized fish. And I’ll be damned if he didn’t pull a largemouth bass out of that pond.
I didn’t have words, but I was immediately reminded on my promise to cook it up for dinner. I feel like if this happened in college, I would have been forced to cook it and eat it for pride’s sake. Thankfully, I am not so proud to admit defeat in my old age, and I showered NAsh in “you were right’s” for the rest of the time we were out there. Way to go, Nash!
After an hour, we’d had enough. And by that, I mean me, your mom, and Koen had had enough. Nash’s mom and dad stopped by in their golf cart to celebrate his big catch, and they took off because Nash was having a sleepover at our house that night.
I always looked back at the time I spent at The Farm and will still tell people it’s where I get my country side. Most of my childhood was playing baseball and video games in the neighborhood. I like to think I can fit in both worlds. So it makes me smile to think about how we took our golf carts fishing because it feels a little bit of two worlds coming together for you.
Your farm will be Tutu’s land, I think. You’ll be able to go there and fish, build fires, swim, forge paths and build forts. Their land might also come with some fancier toys than what I had growing up, but I love that you’ll get to have a little piece of “that side” of things.
This post was supposed to be about fishing, so here is how I’ll end things: maybe I’d rather be on a golf course than a pond at this point in my life, but if thinking about fishing brings back all those memories of a place I find really really special, then maybe there is more there beneath the surface.
I love the joy and excitement it brings you, Reagan, and I don’t mind getting my hands dirty and touching gross things quite like I used to — something about being a parent will do that to you. Anyway, I am glad you found something you love doing and if you stick with it, then I’ll fish with you anytime (as long as we can sprinkle in some golf along the way).
Love you, son. And Koen, even if the only mention you got in this post was about you having an accident because of the gummy bears, I still love you too. You get a lot of “just for you” posts, too!
Love,
Dad
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