the spotted tail

Thank you for reading this Getting Away post. I fished all of two hours this week, on a cold, windy Friday afternoon, armed with the Bang-O-Craft and an ultralight spin rod. The St. Johns gave up one each of a shad, a crappie, and a tilapia, all on crappie jigs.

I also wrote to Kelly Pinnell, asking his permission to reprint the story below, which appeared in the January issue of Fish Alaska magazine. If you’ve ever been a 12-year old boy, you ought to love it. Heck, you’ll probably love if you’ve been a 12-year old girl. It’s delightful.

Getting Away

By Kelly Pinnell (reprinted with author’s permission)

We have probably all used fishing as an excuse to get away from the problems and hassles that life occasionally throws our way. A temporary reprieve to someplace familiar with something less complicated. A place we can be alone, without interruptions. Well, okay, I hope for a few interruptions in the form of a bent rod, but you know what I mean. The tactic has been very helpful and has got me through some difficult times. I can still remember the first time that fishing got me out of an uncomfortable situation like it happened yesterday.

We had just finished unpacking the moving van and I was in my new bedroom trying to decide which boxes to open first. I was feeling more than a little despondent as we had moved without much notice and I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends. They would all be surprised when I didn’t show up for 7th grade at L. E. White Junior High the next school year. I’d be hundreds of miles away trying to fit in and make new friends in a completely alien environment.

The move from Pennsylvania to Arkansas was quite a shock as we had left a large suburb in Pittsburgh and ended up in a town of less than 300 people in the backwaters of the 25th state. I had lived in rural parts of Michigan for most of my life before the move to Pennsylvania so it was a pleasantly familiar change, but it still sucked.

But things changed quickly. Less than an hour after we had moved in, I heard my mom calling to me, “Get out here There are some kids here to see you.” Puzzled, I went slowly the front door. Waiting on the porch were three kids about my age, a seasoned dozen. The leader of the gang was a tall skinny kid with freckles and red hair who had a nervous tick that made him blink twice with every syllable he pronounced. It was kind of like stuttering with his eyes.

The other members of the group included a boy about my size with wild wavy black hair named Steve, and the cutest girl I had ever seen. Daisy was a true southern beauty with strawberry-blonde hair and eyes the color of polished jade. She was standing shyly behind the others and giving me a huge southern smile. I was smitten.

Blinky was holding a fishing pole and asked in a slow hillbilly drawl, “You wanna go fitchin’?” I jumped at the chance and impatiently waited the few minutes it took for my mother to find the boxes where the fishing gear was hiding before we were off. My heart lifted at the same speed we were running and skipped a beat when Daisy grabbed my hand to lead me toward the trail that would take us through the woods and to the fitchin’ hole.

Before long I could see the slow-moving water of the creek. The group wanted to make a quick stop in their waterfront-property fort before we got started. We huddled into the makeshift shelter made of old barn wood and sat in a tight circle on the ground. I couldn’t believe my luck. In less than an hour of living here I had two new friends, a fort, a place to go fishing, and a girlfriend. At least I thought Daisy was my girlfriend. I was still a little confused about how all of that stuff worked but she did hold my hand. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad here after all.

It was then that Blinky pulled out a can of chewing tobacco and placed a huge wad between his lower lip and gum. He handed the can to wild-haired Steve who followed suit. I was beginning to get nervous as I had never tried the stuff and didn’t really want to. While I was debating whether or not to give in to the peer pressure something happened that shocked me out of my newfound paradise. Steve handed the can to the new love of my life and I watched in abject horror as she placed a gob of the foul-smelling stuff into her mouth.

She then tried to hand the can to me and I could only weakly wave my hand in a silent refusal. They all sat there with bulging lips looking at me like I was from another planet. Blinky must have seen me staring at Daisy because his eyes spasmed into overdrive as he said, “Hey, you wanna… you wanna kiss my sister don’t cha?” Daisy smiled at the suggestion. I wish she hadn’t.

Her grin revealed a few bits of tobacco stuck to her teeth and I watched as a thin line of light-brown drool slowly descended down her chin.

I decided I wasn’t equipped to handle any of the thoughts running through my head at the moment and just stood up and walked out the door toward the creek. It was the only thing I could think to do. The others soon joined me and apologized in the way that kids who feel that they messed up, but aren’t sure how, can only do.

The rest of the afternoon was spent learning the fine art of backwoods catfishing with my newfound friends. I was able to take home a forked-branch stringer of plump golden- bellied catfish which were turned into a delicious fish fry that evening. I slept well that night, with a full belly and a smile on my face.

The smile came from the fact that Daisy had figured out that it was the chew that had put me off. She laughed at me, spit it out, rinsed her mouth out with some soda-pop, and lured me behind a big hickory tree. It was there I learned that cooties were not so bad.

Kelly Pinnell is a longtime Alaskan author. His books include The Dolly Made Me Do It, and The ABC’s of Reading Alaska’s Small Rivers and Streams. He enjoys standing in the water and waving sticks at fish.