Chapter 2 How a Wife Can Learn to Fish, Part 1 Fish Out Of Water

Pickle In The Jelly Chapter 2

How a Wife Can Learn to Fish

Part 1 Fish Out Of Water

He was born, or it might have been hatched on the first day of Spring, under the Pisces sign of the Zodiac just before the moon was full, which is the best time for hatching or catching fish. His father looked him over and said, “We got somethin’ here I can’t figger out. Our first ones looked like human babies, but this ‘un, I don’t know. Look here, are these things ears or gills? Still, I don’t see any scales. If it had waited a few days it mighta developed whiskers and been a catfish. Let’s find a bent pin and put it on a string and see if it’ll bits. Whatt you say we throw this thing in the creek to see if it’s gonna swim or not? Well, it is breathing, so we’ll keep it for a few days and find out whether to keep it in the cradle or a washtub. Be sure to keep a tub under the rainspout so it’ll be ready in case we hafter toss this into it.”

They had trouble with his formula and he cried a great deal until they fed him some raw cornmeal balls they were using for dogfish bait. As he grew older these cornballs had to be cooked, he stopped crying and that’s how hushpuppies got started. He would not leave the goldfish bowl alone until at the age of six months his father gave him a fishing pole. He kept his little knees and toes worn to the bones crawling to and from the fishing hole. When he learned to fish, he stood such long hours that to this day he has to wear steel arch supports in his orthopedic shoes. The other night while we were out riding he showed me their old fishing hole. He added that this was where he eventually learned to swim. But he was really born swimming.

When we first met, he was working at a large dam on a river in Tennessee. He stayed on that job only eight weeks, and though he said he left it so he could be near me, I still strongly suspect he was discharged because he spent too much time fishing during working hours. Even yet it is miraculous how I, a mere woman, held his attention long enough to get him married to me. It could be that it was Spring again and he mistakenly took his natural Pisces cycle and the just-before-the-full-moon-when-fishing-is-best-feeling of love. Or possibly, he was sad and lonely because he had not caught any fish in several weeks and I caught him on the backlash.

It is a well-known fact that in Spring, normally a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, but when someone mentioned Spring in his presence, all it meant was a hole of water that might have a fish in it, and thither not only his thoughts but his footsteps turned. Well, I had his attention for a while, but it took only a short while to learn that a wife can be widowed by water; that most wives can hold their own against anything as insignificant and unimportant as a beautiful face, a perfect thirty-six figure, undulating underpinning and glamorous gams; but against gasping gills, flapping fins, elongated eyeballs and twisting tails, she might as well make up her mind to get with it, resign herself to becoming a fish-widow or resort to becoming a fishwife.

Too, there is always the possibility of getting to be a real widow unless she gets further hooked by becoming aware of the fact she must go with him sometimes. Or he will go alone if he can’t persuade any of the boys to go. Everyone knows the first rule of safety is never to go fishing alone. A wife doesn’t want to become a widow by her husband becoming a statistic in the files of the Game and Fish Commission. So she might as well come to the conclusion that at least she tried to keep him from coming to a conclusion. She has to take it in stride, and even if her legs aren’t as long as his, she darned well manages to keep up with him.

Some men fish as a hobby. With my husband, it’s a hobsession, and far from a magnificent one. Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea with all his perseverance and determination in bringing in the ONE fish was an infinitesimal anemic amoeba when compared to my old man. I often wonder if Hemingway’s Old Man had an Old Woman and if she waited on shore for that shrimp’s boat to come in.

This Old Woman’s Old Man has more power than an atomic submarine in staying in, on, around, under, on top of, or above water trying to catch a fish. It makes no difference whether the fish are edible – just so they are something out of water. He will be happy with anything that swims, from bass to barracuda, minnows to marlin, shiners to sharks, tadpoles to tarpon, whiting to whales, or guppies to gar. He was the originator of the college craze for gulping goldfish. He is convinced that nuclear fission is some kind of new development relating to his favorite pastime.

One of his ways of influencing people is to win fins. He never took Dale Carnegie’s course, but he can win more friends with fins, and influence more people with plates of pan-fried perch and potatoes than with anything out of a book. When there’s nobody to impress but me, we have beef patties and Bonanza or weenies and Welk.