Fictional Friday
There was a hint of rain that late March day in nineteen hundred and seventy-three. I was fishing with my grandfather and the orange bobber that hung over glass water hardly moved. If this was a game they’d have called it on account of nothing happening. I was hoping for rain so we’d call it a day.
But Grandma was waiting at home to skin a few bluegills for dinner and she had corn on the cob waiting too, fresh from Kolstead’s market. We had to hold up our end of the bargain even though I told Papa that all she had to do was buy it from the market but we had to have the skill or luck to catch something. But he warn’t worried.
I stared at the orange blob and my mind would play tricks. I’d thought it moved when it hadn’t. I was trigger-happy, ready to reel something in, not patient at all and wanting to be too early rather than too late. Fishing was nerve-racking because you had to be alert every second.
Papa, who was drinking Budweiser beers, didn’t seem tense at all though.
“They ain’t bitin’” he said and I told him they sure warn’t. I didn’t know what made them bite one day and not the next. I told him that it maybe we wasn’t in the right spot but he said maybe we weren’t out early enough. I didn’t know what to make of that because it seemed like we got up at the crack of dawn.
“Maybe if we had those boots like real fishermen we’d catch something,” I said, pointing to the fellows who wore hip waders and weren’t limited to the bank like we landlubbers. I was jealous of fisherman who went in the water.
“Don’t yell, you’ll scare the fish,” he said, although I think he just said that to shut me up. I was always “scaring the fish”. Anything you’d do would scare the fish. Splash water or spit in it or yell or run up and down the bank, everything scared the fish. I thought the fish were scaredy-cats.
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