It was September, and my dad told me he wanted to take me out fishing on Lake McMurray. I was ten at the time. It was a Tuesday evening, and because Dad didn’t have to plow the fields on this Wednesday, he decided we would go the next day. I told Dad that I’d be ready to fish, and I ran upstairs to find my fishing gear.
Dad had taken me fishing last week too, but that was on the tinier Round Lake, where the catch wasn’t close to anything what Lake McMurray would give us. As I dug through my closet to find my tackle, I thought about what Timmy O’Hara had gotten on Lake McMurray earlier that month; a real live 10 inch yellow bullhead catfish. Timmy O’Hara claimed that this was the furthest north anyone could find a yellow bullhead, and he bragged about it a great deal last Thursday. I was pretty envious of him, because catfish were some of my favorite dinners.
I retrieved my tackle from my closet soon enough and put it on the counter for my father to inspect tomorrow morning. I then put on my pajamas and went straight to bed. My mother came in for a moment to tuck me in and lay out some of my clothes for tomorrow. My nice overalls, my favorite Vikings T-Shirt, and my wool socks that Grandma had knit me for Christmas the past year were all musts for this trip. As I was thinking of myself catching a fish twice the size of Timmy’s, I fell sound asleep.
We woke up two hours earlier than usual, 4:30, but it was because my dad wanted to get a “fresh start.” My dad loved waking up early, because he liked having more time to do more things. On some days my mom would want to sleep in later until like 8 o’clock or even later than that, and Dad would always get annoyed with her. Dad got up pretty quick and fried a couple eggs for a quick breakfast. He stuffed a loaf of bread, jam, and peanut butter in a mini cooler, and after we gobbled down our eggs we fired up the truck and began driving north.
My dad usually didn’t have much to say when he was at home, but when we went on our fishing trips, he always liked introducing the land that we were travelling on to me. I think it was because his dad had done the same with him, going on fishing trips and teaching about the local hills, ponds, and other landmarks. He would always click off the radio station before he would say something about a landmark, and I was always keen to listen to what he had to say. He let me sit in the front seat and liked pointing at each landmark as they passed. He knew the county probably better than anyone did. He had lived there for 40 years and never really left, except for school for a few years.
Within the first ten minutes of our drive up to Lake McMurray, the sun still hiding behind the eastern horizon, he clicked off the radio (currently playing Neil Diamond’s new album) and pointed out the window. “See that bluff over there?” I did see it. It looked like an old dirt bluff, made up of old dirt. A tree sat on the peak of the bluff. I didn’t think much of it, and soon our pickup flew past it, leaving the bluff to my memories. My dad then said “that bluff is where I first broke my leg. My bicycle chain got entangled with my foot, and I fell pretty hard.” He paused for a moment.
I thought back to that bluff, and how it seemed so plain. Was this memory so momentous? My father continued. “I learned a valuable lesson that day, Corey - sometimes, life gets in the way of things. But you’ve just got to deal with the problems you get as they come along.” He stopped again, apparently done with his lesson.
I wanted to believe that this bluff had some sort of value to my life, but it just didn’t make much sense to me. What did getting his bike chain screwed up have to do with us going fishing? And what about that lesson at the end? It was a bit much for me to grasp at the time. I couldn’t see the landmarks we passed as any sort of lesson or having any other meaning.
A scant five minutes later and we were at the old Goettler Mill, which stood at the mouth of the Kilarney River. The river flowed south through my town, but the source of the river was the lake. We parked the pickup on the gravel road leading up to the mill and grabbed our gear out of the back. Light had just begun it’s creep across the Minnesota morning, glistening through the trees and barely gracing the water. We walked for about 20 minutes along the lake, to find the best dock to fish. Along the way, my father tried explaining about the first time that his father had taken him up to Lake McMurray, but I was too busy day dreaming.
We arrived at the dock and began the tedious and never ending process of attaching the worm to the hook, the hook to the lines, the lines to the rod. My dad was the first one to cast his line, and I followed a few minutes later. He let me do mine myself, because last time I went fishing with him he had showed me the whole process.
We were waiting for about ten minutes until we heard a small plop from the lake. My dad began reeling in his line, until we noticed that it had in fact been my line which was caught.
“Well, what’re you doing bud - Reel it in!” my dad said. I shook my head furiously, and began tugging on my rod and reeling in the line. I soon realized that this fish was much bigger than I could possibly manage, and within a matter of seconds after I tried bringing in the fish, the fish had thrown my ten year old body off the dock.
The water was ice cold, and it stung my body like fire. At this point, I had lost the rod entirely to the depths beneath me. It felt like icicles were piercing my skull. I flailed in the cold murk for what seemed like years, until I felt a massive hand grab my overall loop and swing me back up from the water. I remember getting out of the water, my body beginning to adjust to the rush of warmth before passing out entirely.
I awoke in the back of the pickup, covered head to toe in whatever blankets my dad could find from the inside of the truck. He had hot tea for me somehow, and I drank it graciously. He looked at me for a long time. I was still shivering when he said plainly, “Now you’ll have your own memory when you take your son up here to fish.”
No comments:
Post a Comment