Down here the mining companies built the towns. Everyone owed
their living to the minerals coming from the belly of the earth.
Even if they didn't swing a pick in the dark, they worked at one of the
rooming houses, shops, or saloons that the miners needed. As things
will, the shaft mining dried up. The bosses brought in giant electric
shovels for strip mining and most of the miners, no longer needed,
left to find work on farms or in factories. The big shovels tore
wounds in the earth. to get to the coal, nickel and Galena hidden
below. Those giant ruts stayed and eventually the sky filled them and
they became lakes that would outlast the companies responsible for
them. Around here they call them strip pits. Some of the pits were fed
by streams and with the rains came the fish. They grew in abundant
variety and every young man was expected to make his first catch in one
of those pits. The giant shovels, abandoned, were left to rot where
they stood; not unlike the miners that predated them.
When I was five my dad took me on my first real fishing trip. He
would have gotten to it earlier, but he had spent most of my life on
the road building a pipeline to move natural gas across the country.
We took his little flat bottomed row boat out to County Pit 23 and
shoved off into the water. He rowed while I looked around at the oak and
elm trees that lined the banks. I was trying to spot a sassafras tree
so we could dig up some root and make tea that night. My best
memories of my dad up to then were of boiling the root, straining it
then adding just enough sugar before we huddled together on the couch
and watched whatever mindless thing the
TV had to offer.
Dad found a good spot and handed me my rod. It was a trusty Zebco 33.
His was fancier. We were after catfish and flatheads so we used
chicken liver as bait. Chicken liver is great for catfish. When it hits
the water the blood spreads and swirls and the smell moves out like a
signal. Catfish are drawn like sharks from hundreds of yards away.
Shad works well too, but you can never get the stink off your hands.
Dad popped the to
p on a can of Pabst and cast his line. Something
hit almost immediately. He struggled a bit, then pulled in a small
cat. It was too little, so he tossed it back.
“Grow some more, little man,” he said to the fish as he let it slither back into the murk.
Two hours of that and dad had hooked three good sized cats. All I had
managed to catch was a baby drum, which I badly wanted to keep.
“No, son,” the old man said, “we’ll come back and catch him when he’s all grown up.”
I asked for help rebaiting my hook. Dad linked the liver over my
hook then I cast into a shady spot near the bank and waited. Minutes
passed. I kept watching the bank, wanting something to happen. Then
my line went tight. Something big. I thought that I had the daddy of
all catfish on the end of that line. The thing wanted to pull me into
the water as badly as I wanted to pull it out.
Dad grabbed my arms and helped steady me while I fought. When the
thing cleared the water I was terrified. The thing looked like a
legless crocodile with fins. It was part monster, part dinosaur and
part fish and I knew that it wanted me. Its dead eyes spoke of
reptilian hunger and prehistoric rage. This was that creatures’
planet and he wanted it back.
I took hold of the rough thing and tried to work the hook out of its
razor jaw. My fingers went too deep and I felt the fire as the sharp
teeth sipped through my flesh. Blood seemed to be everywhere and dad
moved so fast that the boat almost overbalanced. He tore the thing
from my hands and cut the line with his pocket knife. The monster
slithered back into the murky water with tangles of my skin still
hanging from its teeth.
I watched the gar until it vanished into the mud and knew that I would never swim in that pit again.
First appeared in
Fried Chicken and Coffee
