SPEARFISHING (Long Ago, Far Away)
by Marion Cole
[This story takes place a couple miles South of here and helped me connect a bit better with the roots of the road-sliced, drained swampland that is my home turf. It has a couple surprise twists in it, too.–JP]
It’s early April. In North Carolina a layer of yellow pollen covers the car and porch. There is enough of the sluff in the air to give you a sneezing fit even if you aren’t allergic to it. It certainly doesn’t compare to April in Michigan with a layer snow dusting the fields and curbing the flow of sap in the sugar maple.
In early April, 1944, with the creek water still cold enough to be felt through a pair of rubber boots. it was time to go spear fishing. At thirteen I could usually wrangle an invitation to tag along with the neighbors or friends of my brother. My brother had been killed in the fall of 1942 flying for the Air Transport Command.
Our eighty acre farm was in Ingham county. It was a beautiful farm. surrounded on three sides by roads and with a ten acre woodland)- across the southern end, a great deal of which were sugar maples. Though we didn’t have a creek running through our farm, a number of streams ran through the neighboring farms where you could find trout, bass, perch and suckers. Though very few ever set out to purposely spear a sucker or a crawdad.
Spear fishing was done after dark. Trudging up the creek banks, with a long, pole with a forklike e spear attached to its end, we would look for schools of fish in the crystal clear waters. One person carried a Coleman lantern, the others took aim and thrust their spears at the biggest fish they could see, making sure it wasn’t a sucker or a crawdad. Don’t know if this is legal now, or was then, but that’s the way we spear fished.
One Saturday, just before dark, three of my brother’s friends drove in the yard armed with their spears. They donned rubber boots reaching to their knees and asked if I would like to tag along. We walked along under a star filled sky until we came to a place in the creek where we found two deep pools separated by a ten foot stretch of ripples.
It was decided the pool upstream had the most fish so that’s where the men gathered. I was on shore a few yards downstream watching, and trying to keep out of the way. A flurry of thrusting spears soon had the fish leaping out of the deep hole into the shallows, trying to make it to the pool of water downstream.
“Here they come! Drive them back this way!” Mac yelled at me. I quickly stepped into the ripples and could see there were an ever increasing number of swimmers heading straight toward me. Among them one huge trout that Mac had his eye on because he was running along the shore trying to get his spear in him. The trout kept out maneuvering him, angling back and forth, trying to pick up speed in the shallow water. I forgot all about the spear in my hand. My first instinct was to stop that fish anyway I could. I took aim — and kicked. The toe of my rubber boot connected with Mr. Trout and he flew threw the air with all eyes following his projectile until he landed on the bank. Everyone laughing so hard they almost missed getting one of their own spears into it before it made it back into the water.
I’ll never forget the surprised look in that fish’s eyes as it lay there flopping on the bank. Or the laughter of those men. I still feel a sense of pride at keeping that determined trout from making it over the ripples.
It was one evening the following spring when a neighbor came walking into the yard with his lantern and spear and asked if I would like to go with him. I expect I was invited so he’d have someone to hold the lantern for him. Mr. Miller and I tramped up and down the creeks where we usually went but the fish didn t seem to be running. I had a horse and rode over most of the area within a five mile radius of home. so I knew about a creek we hadn’t yet tried.
We drove the few miles to the farm 1 told him about. We parked and went to the house to ask permission of the owner s to fish their creek. No one was home, but I convinced Mr. Miller they wouldn’t mind if we fished there. I led the way as we walked behind the barn and across a field to the creek that lay at the edge of the woods. I remembered one of the boys that lived there had once told me there was quick sand on their property. I thought he was just trying to scare me because when I asked where it was he would never show me.
We found the quicksand. Or Mr. Miller did. He was in up to his thighs before he knew it. I tried my best to pull him free but didn t have the strength. I managed to pull a branch down from a tree for him to grab hold of to ease some of his weight off’ the mud. Then I set off at a run for the house, praying someone had come home. But the place was as vacant and quiet as it had been. I found a shovel in a shed and hurried back to where the neighbor by now had sunk in to his hips. I shoveled the mud away from his legs while he clawed at it frantically with his hands. When we could finally see his knees, I grabbed hold of him under his arms and pulled, he gripped the branch and tried to hoist himself up. Though now only calf deep, that thick gummy muck held him in a firm grip. After several tries we got him onto solid ground, one very frightened and thankful man.
Until then, I had visualized quicksand as a thin, soupy mud one sank into and out of sight very quickly. Instead, it was more like heavy cement that had started to harden. Once in it, it was like wearing cinder block; boots. I’ll never forget the terror on my neighbor’s face when he found himself trapped in it. From that night on I’ve had a new respect for the dangers of quicksand.
Last September I met a man I went to high school with who invited me to go salmon fishing in those same creeks. The beautiful farm no longer exists. The state cut it in two and built a highway through it. Then cut it in two again in the other direction for another highway. They bulldozed the buildings and then never built the highway. The only way that I can go home now is by way of pictures and memories. I go there often.
