Catching a little bass and a lot of hell

My family moved to “town” when I was 9. This town had 600 people in it. And I was the new kid, which for me meant one of two things, being really cool, or different. And you never want to be diferent. I was different.

For starters, I couldn’t ride a bike worth a nickle. Put me on a bike and I’d go flying, off the bike and onto the gravel or the asphalt. This experiment in terror all began because of my next older sister Jane. She climbed aboard an adult bike, our only bike, at age 4 and down the gravel lane she went, her “Scout”-like hair, freckles and smile challenging all dangers. So when I turned 4, it was my turn. It’s been 61 years and I still can see the gravel lane about to come into crashing contact. After the laughter, tears and shouts subsided, they’d put me back on it. It was no go.

All boys have mysteries about them when they turn 9. And I surely had mine. One that went undetected was I had vertigo, a motion sickness for which I had an embarrassingly low tolerance. If a rowboat could make me queasy, mounting a bike was terrifying. I had a hard time getting on and a worse time getting off. It was hard for me to stay on before building enough momentum to keep on. And it was the same when it came time to come to a stop and get off. All the other kids could pop wheelies and dart this way and that. I couldn’t. I was different.

Another thing that didn’t help matters was I couldn’t see very well. Nobody knew I couldn’t see very well. Even I didn’t know. On family outings, the rare airplane going by or an occasional odd bird would catch all of our attention. Everyone would look and point and I’d go “where?” This reaction had a cumulative effect on Jane, who at some point would grab my head, tilt it in the right direction and exclaim, “See it now? It’s right there, stupid!”

She didn’t say “stupid.” She didn’t have to. Her tone said it all. “Oh, yeah!” I’d say. “Sure, there it is.” I never could see it, but saying I could was better than getting my head yanked around again in the car. If I sensed another sighting, I’d pretend to be asleep. My mother would aim a pre-emptive strike toward my sister. “Don’t bother your brother. He’s asleep. We want to keep him that way.” She didn’t say the last part either, but like I said, she didn’t have to. I was the baby of the family. I learned to pick up on these things. Or wish I had.

My father was a mechanic and our cars were used and usually in need of some sort of repair. I tried to help. But I was the worst go-fer ever. My father, either sprawled across or laying beneath our car’s insides, would send me into the shed to fetch a tool he needed. Just which tool he meant I was never sure. Our shed was a dark and curious with all sorts of distractions. I could see well enought to make out what I was always on the lookout for, a woolley worm; maybe a spider with few unlucky bugs in its web would catch the light and I could see that; and usually a shiny bolt was on the ground. Eventually I’d come back to where my dad was working and always with the wrong thing. He’d cut me loose and I’d leave to to play baseball with whatever pals I could find.

So off I’d run. I ran everywhere. I’d run alongside my bike-riding friends. I could run just about as fast and almost as far. It was awkward at first but kind of nutty cool and in time accepted. “He doesn’t ride,” they’d say. “But it’s OK. He can keep up.”

We were baseball-playing fools, starting as soon as we could get a few kids together, and then find another kid who had a baseball and a bat. That was the trick. Our bats had been tacked back together and taped, and what few balls we had had been scalped by lawnmowers or chewed up by dogs. The kids that had the good stuff never played. That’s why theirs was the good stuff. They knew better than to do loan it out, too. Oh, but to have a shiny new baseball, and to show it off. There was no feeling like it.

How I could play centerfield every game and not be able to see was another mystery. I’d squint intensely in at the batter as the pitch was delivered. I learned that if his hip opened and his left shoulder raised, he’d hit the ball to left. If his hip and shoulder came at me, the ball was coming to center. If his hip and shoulder dipped to the right, he’d hit it to right. I could get a step or two on the play before the ball was ever hit. It’s called getting a jump on the ball. And I had it, especially after I finally got my glasses.

Like most glasses-destined kids, once my grades started to suffer, it was discovered I couldn’t read what the teacher was writing on the chalkboard. I was in seventh grade when I finally got a pair and a whole new world opened up to me. After leaving the eye-doctor’s office, I looked across to where the movie marquis listed the movies and stars in black block letters. I read with some surprise what was playing there.

“Couldn’t you read that before?” my father asked. I took my glasses off to look again. “No, I guess not.”

Tears began to well in my father’s eyes. This bundle of emotions hitting all at once, doing your best to be a good man, tending to the needs of your wife, the farm, the older kids and yet wondering how could you miss something like this and for so long?

“C’mon Dad.” I remember saying. “It’s OK now.”

The glasses were dorky. Grayish frames that ran clear around the lenses. They’d make a kid look dorky and feel that way. They look cool somehow today but not then. That first day I walked through the front door of my school I instantly came across the most popular girl. Her name was Chris. “You don’t look so bad,” she pronounced.

I wasn’t sure what to think of that. Should I be hurt like a puppy? Or be on cloud nine, dreamily savoring the moment when the most popular girl in school actually noticed me and even spoke to me. I was the only kid in my class who wore them. And I had to take care not to break them, which wasn’t easy when playing tackle football, or basketball and there was always a bully, who could come at me from any angle anytime and represented sheer insanity. In any event, I knew my folks couldn’t afford another pair.

Fishing was my other love in those days. The “rocks, and the “mouth,” where two rivers converged and the south bridge were the popular and magic fishing spots. Venturing beyond the bridge wasn’t forbidden, but few people seemed to go beyond it. I was always tempted, and one winterish April morning I went to find out.

The spring rains had swollen the river to varying depths of 4–6 feet and the current was a lot swifter than usual. The footing could be steep in spots and tricky in others, with slippery rocks or fallen branches that could snag my clothing blocked the path. I pioneered my way along, sizing up what I thought might be a good fishing spot. I came across a place where an enormous rock split the current, forming a wake where the water was calm.

“Perfect,” I thought. And it was, too. After cIearing an area on the bank and settling in, I plunked my first cast. The bait slapped the top side of the boulder and slid right where I wanted it. BAM! A bass instantly grabbed the bait and the fight was on. I reeled in my catch, thrilled as it would leap out of the water in a fight for its life.

“Wow,” I said. I put my prize on a stringer, rebaited my hook and whizzzzzzz, the line again went right where I wanted. Except for one problem. The hook caught the right corner of my glasses. And plunk. Out they went into the current. And just like that the thrill was gone.

“What am I gonna do now?” I could wade out and maybe get lucky and find them. But the water was muddy and ice cold and besides, I couldn’t swim, but I knew my mom would kill me if I came home without my new glasses. I ventured out, one unsteady step after another, veering toward where I hoped the current carried my glasses. Reaching a depth where the cold water affects a boy most I stepped into a deep hole and the current carried me away. I flailed before coming to a shallow and regained my footing. I tried again from the same spot, and shaking from cold and fear, avoided the hole. I felt with my feet along the river bed, trying my best not to disturb the sediment. I try again, and again thinking to correct my angle each time. Darkness and despair began to settle in. And shaking so much from the cold. And then my feet touched something. I know it’s them. It just has to be them. It’s them. But how to reach them and not get swept away? I clutch them between me shoes, bring my feet to my chest and reach with my hand. The current grabs hold as well and down I go. But again onto the shallow. I get to my feet, make my way toward shore. I throw the fish back and head back the two miles for home, where my mom was waiting.

She had no interest in my tale of pioneering spirit or dogged perserverence. Not even my prized catch that I let go. She laid into me about going alone into that water when I couldn’t swim and maybe getting pneumonia for the effort. She went on for a while as I stripped off the clothes that had clung to me the entire walk back, a walk filled with schemes of how to avoid my mom and make my escape into my upstairs room and back down as if nothing at all had happened. As I warmed up, I tuned out the harrangue and went over just how I went wrong. There was a real lesson to be learned. Not about losing my glasses, but how I could have gotten around my mom.