Chapter
Thirty-one
KINNICONICK:
WE GO
A-FISHIN’
Photo by Sharmon Davidson
The year was 1934 or 1935. On one particular summer day an old scow
drifted on Pine Eddy. On board were two
fathers and two sons. The fathers were
exceptional men. They spent time with
their boys, teaching them to love nature and fishing with them on a clear-water
stream; and the sons, four or five years of age, learned about the good things
in life while they watched the bobbers strung from their cane poles, and waited
for the fish to bite.
One of Dad’s best friends was Doc
Harshbarger, a Cincinnati dentist, and his only son was William. As I remember that day, I want to blame Billy
for being too competitive when fishing, but perhaps I was just as guilty, and
the two of us were determined to claim the biggest fish of the day. We caught a string of panfish, bluegills and
sunfish, rock bass and calicos. For the
rest of the trip we argued about the big one in our catch, perhaps an eight
inch monster, and over the years we joked about who had caught him.
Billy and I shared a few more
trips with our Dads but then gradually lost touch. When we did see one another again, I was
amazed at how he had changed. Billy had
grown into a handsome, articulate, considerate young man. He was a natural leader and was destined for
great things. Needless to say, his
parents, Doc and Lena, were extremely proud.
One summer in the forties, when Billy was 17 or 18, Doc arranged a
fishing trip into some part of the Canadian wilderness and the two of them set off
on a grand adventure.
When Dad got the news that Doc and
Billy had suddenly returned from the trip because Billy had become ill, we had
no reason to think that the illness was serious. But then Billy was in the hospital. And then Billy was fighting for his life. At last, in a few short months, he lost his
battle with cancer. Back then, a kid my
age was often naïve, not aware of life and death issues, and when Billy died I
confronted the fact that we were mortal, that even Billy and I had no guarantee
of a long life. From that day I
developed a strong intuitive notion that I would not live to old age.
So much for intuition. I’m still alive at 87, but my friend was gone
at seventeen. So little time on earth
for Billy, so few days of wonder. So
many years for me, so many memories. When
Thoreau sat by a little stream at Walden Pond years ago, he wrote:
“Time is but the
stream I go a-fishing in.
I drink at it; but
while I drink I see the sandy bottom
and detect how
shallow it is.
Its thin current
slides away, but eternity remains.”
Soon there will be no one with
memories of Kinniconick, as Billy and I knew it. The stream is two million years old, but will
it last forever? Will the human race
succumb to wars and environmental disasters?
Will our planet remain in its orbit?
Will the universe reinvent itself?
Is eternity inevitable? My hope
is that some of Billy’s last moments were dreams of the old scow on Pine Eddy,
of his Dad baiting the hook and of his bobber moving in the current. And
then, perhaps, he felt the tug of life ending and Billy was fishing in the sky.
“I would drink
deeper;
fish in the sky,
whose bottom is
pebbly with stars.”
RIP Billy. Fishing the Kinney provides peace and contentment,and pleasant memories for the future. Time waits for no one.
ReplyDeleteI recently took a dear friend who happens to be 94 fishing on the Kinney. An avid fisherman for 90-plus years he had never caught a musky before. He so enjoyed my stories of adventures on the Kinney that he requested to go. We had a great day on the water. Caught several species of fish, and spotted several large muskies. We have such a limited time in this life to make friends and share experiences. It is never too late to make new friends or to reconnect with old ones....
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