On the Moraine Part X

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

One of my fond memories as a boy was fishing in our pond. It was a small pond, remnants of which are still visible.  

It is at the corner of the long lane to the farm buildings and McNary Road. Today, it is an unkempt mess of brush, grass and a bit of water, almost swamp-like.

In the 1950s and '60s, it was a nice rectangular pond full of small bluegills.

Late on a summer Saturday evening, my brother John and I walked up from the house and went fishing. We had Dad’s old tackle box (made of metal, not plastic), full of all sorts of lures. Mostly the bluegills would bite on lures that were bits of rubber with little rubber wings. They floated on the surface and mimicked the bugs they liked.

A couple of hours of fishing would yield a couple of dozen bluegills, each about three inches long. It would take as long to clean this mess as it took to catch it.

In the cool of the evening, Mother and Dad would often join us on this fishing expedition. I remember these evenings fondly.

One evening, I caught the grandaddy of all bluegills. It was about eight or nine inches long. Before he cleaned it, Dad took it into the kitchen and traced an outline of it on the wallpaper. That part of the house has fallen in now, but I wished I had cut that out and kept it.

There were many frogs in this pond as well. These were Dad’s expertise. After dark, he would take a flashlight and a coal shovel (here is a chance for you older readers to explain something to the kids who have never seen a coal shovel) and head to the pond. He would blind them with the flashlight and then bang them in the head. Highly illegal, but effective.

Sunday morning, we would have a mess of frog legs, which mother would fry in butter. If it was morel mushroom hunting season, she would throw some of them in for a delightful breakfast.

Once we almost killed the pond. We had had a goldfish in a bowl at home in Troy, and, as goldfish are wont to do, it died. There was a live green sprig in that goldfish bowl, and we decided to take it to the farm and throw it in the pond. Waste not, want not.

In about a year, that sprig had grown to the point it nearly filled the pond. One couldn’t fish in the pond any longer for the hook would get tangled up in the greenery. We finally took a log chain, twisted some pieces of No. 11 fence wire in it, making it mimic a piece of barbed wire, only heavier. Then, Dad and I stood on either side of the pond, dragging this log chain by walking in parallel down each side. We got most of the greenery out.

The pond was never quite the same, but I wasn’t either. I was getting older, and I was losing interest in the pond.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.