Every fisherman has a story. Most of them are “fish tales” and as the story is told, the real fish that was caught grows into a whopper.
Not so for my middle sister…the snarky one.
One summer day, we were traveling from Syracuse, N.Y., to Atlanta to visit family, when we had our own fish story.
My mother knew that visiting family wasn’t a kid’s idea of a great vacation, so she always tried to make stops along the way to interest or educate us. Mom was big on instilling knowledge and teaching us things, sometimes much to dad’s irritation. He just wanted to drive straight from point A to point B…no stops. But mom had her way in this and had a good argument…it was all about education.
So we found ourselves visiting historical landmarks, forts, tourist attractions or national parks along the way, year after year. Since I got car sick, I was grateful for every stop and wanted to bow down and kiss her feet for the reprieve.
She even would pack breakfast and lunch in a cooler, and as we left Syracuse, Buffalo, or Pennsylvania at 4 a.m., we would stop at a roadside picnic table to eat. I became an expert at eating cereal out of a single serving box of Corn Pops that was slit open with milk added and a plastic spoon stuck in.
But on this particular day, we were heading back home from Atlanta. My baby sister had been eating Ritz Crackers in the front seat of the Pontiac Bonneville, while my sister and I were fighting in the back seat. I think my mom reached her car imprisonment limit. Seeing a sign for a lake, she demanded that dad pull over and drive to the lake.
Huffing and puffing, my dad fussed that we would be after dark getting home…blah, blah, blah, but he did what she said.
We found ourselves by this beautiful lake, surrounded by trees and dotted with small sandy beaches. Every so often, you could see a fisherman casting out and reeling back in. As we walked by, dad chatted with some of the men, asking if they were catching anything.
Every answer was the same.
“No, they aren’t biting today.”
One man said that he had fished there for many years, and this was the first time he hadn’t caught anything.
Still another said that the fish weren’t hungry; they were too busy eating lightning bugs.
Now, my middle sister, who used to be shy and quiet before she became snarky, suddenly spoke up.
“Mommy, I want to fish.”
My mother looked at her, rather dumbfounded. We had no rods, no cane poles, no bait, and no reels. Nothing.
Of course, dad tried to shut her up.
“No, Robin, you can’t fish. We don’t have the equipment.”
But my ingenious mother stood there thinking.
She reached in her purse and found a safety pin. Then she pulled out her sewing kit and grabbed a wad of thread. She cut some thread, attached the pin at the end, then tied it to a skinny tree limb she found on the ground.
Impaling a piece of Ritz Cracker on the end, she handed the whole thing over to my sister who proudly took her “fishing pole” to the water.
The chuckling started.
The fishermen were laughing at my mother’s contraption. They started with the wise cracks about how maybe they should trade in their expensive rods and reels for a tree limb and a safety pin.
But the laughing stopped seconds later.
Literally…seconds.
My sister started shouting, and running to her, we watched her pull a five -pound bass out of the lake. I kid you not.
At seven years old, my sister had accomplished what no one else on the lake could…she caught a fish. And not just any fish…a whopper.
With a look of utter superiority, my mom calmly walked over to one of the fishermen and asked if he would be so kind as to take the fish off the safety pin. (Note: she said SAFETY PIN and not HOOK, on purpose).
We all learned a lot that day: about how smart my mom was, about foolish a bunch of fishermen could be, about how much fishing meant to my sister, and about how dumb fish really are. But mostly, we learned to think and give something a try before laughing and dismissing it as unworthy.
