I sat quietly on the rickety wooden dock in front of the house in the after-midnight darkness. The light from my folks' cigarettes glowed from inside the screened-in front porch. The mosquitoes buzzed incessantly, drowned out periodically by the late summer hum of cicadas. The odor of mosquito repellent hung around me like a shroud.
When the fish hit this ten-year-old's line, she thought she was being pulled in the water. As fast as it hit, the fish leaped into the air directly in front of me. When it surfaced, its head was actually above mine, its tail still submerged. The mammoth animal disappeared below the surface and ran.
"Daddy, Daddy, help!" I yelled frantically, as the water from the murky canal ran off me, down the dock, and back to its source.
My dad came running out the front door and down the steps. Meanwhile, that fish was stripping line off my reel like there was no drag whatsoever. My dad covered the few steps to the waterfront just in time to see the end of my line reflected in the moonlight as it went under the wooden walking bridge 100 yards up the canal. When the line came to the knot on the reel, the line snapped off and the monster was gone.
"Must have been one of those big old German browns," my dad opined.
I fished, therefore I was. In fact, I don't remember when I was not. I suppose it was natural, given my early days growing up in a tiny house situated on a canal that flowed into Cass Lake in southeastern Michigan. I began by fishing from the dock. My sister Debra and I both had old casting rods with black string tied to the ends. We used everything imaginable for bait: crawlers, minnows, bacon, bread, hot dogs, even cheese. We caught gills, bullheads, perch, and once even a walleye (which was a major neighborhood event).
Debra and I were two of the early tournament anglers. We always had a summer-long fishing contest with Lou Ashbeck, our next-door neighbor. It was a mission every summer. That is probably one reason I was still out fishing after midnight. We never lost. Lou went down to defeat by at least a thousand fish each year. Of course, he rarely put a line in the water. We fished continuously, never certain we would win until the summer ended with the start of school.
Debra never really did that much fishing, because she did not like to bait the hook or take off the fish. I would have done it for her, and probably did, but I am sure that our father, Ken Zube, would not. So, first born that I was and willing to do the dirty work, I became the only son. The fishing companion. The rabid Detroit Tiger fan. Fishing in the morning and evening, baseball in the afternoon. Bass and batting averages.
It is a funny thing, actually, that interests that were initially sparked as a way of relating to my father ended up to be greater passions for me than for him.
Take baseball, for instance. At age six I was often asked to umpire baseball games at recess. The reason? I knew the rules better than anyone else. Eventually I knew the rules better than my dad. There were many things like that. We would argue.
"That kid would rather be right than president," my dad would say of me when I insisted on the facts I had tried so hard to learn because he was interested in the subject.
He was right about me. It is sad actually. When the student outdistanced the professor, distance came into the relationship. I never did learn to keep my mouth shut and just let him be right. What real difference could it have made in the end?
By high school I was listening to every game on the radio that was not televised. I was in love with Denny McLain. I dreamed of being a baseball announcer, thinking foolishly that it was just slightly more plausible than actually being a professional player or owning a professional team.
It seems strange to me that my dad never took me to a game. When I was thirteen years old, Walter Poe, the eighth-grade history teacher, offered to take the top student from each class to a Detroit Tiger game. I set out to win. The last week of the contest found Jack Short and me tied for first place. Poe posed a tie-breaking trivia question. We hit the library with a vengeance. Whoever delivered the answer first, after the last bell of the day, was the winner.
We both had the correct answer. We both had the same last class. The running distance was equal, but short, pudgy Christine could never outrun short, skinny Jack. She would have to outsmart him.
The bell rang. Jack ran up the sidewalk and down the hall. I cut across the courtyard and yelled the answer in the open window. I won. Jack punched me in the arm, leaving a nasty bruise. Mr. Poe took both of us to the game.
What I remember most about the game was the vivid green color of the field, the bright uniforms, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, and the sound of the vendors. It is only recently that I figured out why the game looked so vivid. It was because we had a black-and-white television. It was the first game that I ever saw in color.
Somewhere along the line, Dad bought me my first spinning rod and reel. The reel was a handsome metallic green. It said, "Mark something or other" on it. I remember him showing me how to hold the rod with the stem of the reel between my middle fingers. "That way it won't get away from you," he counseled. I still hold my fishing rod that way today, whether trolling, casting, or still-fishing. I always think of him when I assume that grip.
Our Saturday and Sunday routine of strikes on and off the diamond worked well enough when I was smaller. But little girls become bigger girls, and bigger girls get bigger ideas. I decided I would like to fish on weekdays as well. This would require boat privileges. We had a small Starcraft aluminum boat with a three-and-a-half-horsepower Johnson Seahorse motor. Why do I remember those details? Some years later I bought a boat and motor for my husband, Stan, and cannot remember the make of either component.
But in Ken Zube's eyes boat privileges were a rite of passage and therefore required a test. The test was swimming halfway across the lake at its widest point. I can't tell you the distance, but it was WIDE.
I practiced all the first part of that summer. I was probably about eleven years old, because I remember achieving the level of Yellow Cap in swimming at Camp Sherwood Girl Scout Camp in Lapeer. Surely that level of expertise would equip me with the strength to make the swim. When I arrived home from camp, I announced my intention to "take the test."
The following Saturday morning, early, before water skiers and wind, we headed out onto the lake. My dad ran the boat and I shivered nervously in my bathing suit. The water was steel gray, a reflection of the overcast sky. The atmosphere was heavy and smelled of outboard fuel mixed faintly with dead fish. When we reached the mid-point in the widest part of the lake, I plunged over the gunwale and began swimming. He rowed alongside.
It seemed to me that the water was a great deal colder out there in the middle. Surely the imagined snapping turtles beneath me must be the size of hula hoops. At least that was what Lou Ashbeck (the fishing tournament loser) used to say. He used to tell stories about a water skier who went down on the lake and was eaten by giant turtles. I don't know how many martinis it took to fuel that story, but it didn't take any to believe it.
I flunked the test. Somewhere past the mid-point, the cold, exhaustion, and fear got hold of me and my dad had to haul me in. Disappointment does not begin to describe how I felt as I sat in the bow and cried as we motored toward home.
Some tears may fall along the outdoor trail, as they may fall along any path where striving is required. I recently saw a woman quoted as being contemptuous of women who cry. Of course almost everyone in our society is contemptuous of men who cry, as though experiencing the range of your feelings as a living, breathing person is inherently bad. We have moved our physical and psychological selves indoors to a more comfortable climate and along the way have lost important elements of who we are. There is no sin in feeling or expressing disappointment. The sin is in wallowing in it.
So the practicing continued. I went to the beach daily. I swam out to the diving raft and back, over and over. I finally passed the test. Why don't I remember that day?
What I do remember is taking the boat out by myself that first time. It was early on a weekday morning. My dad went to work. I headed out on the lake. It was like glass. I put a silver-and-black Rapala, a lure about three inches long that looks like a minnow, on my line and trolled the edge of a weed bed that I had often admired but that we had rarely fished. I hadn't made one pass and I had a strike. It felt like a whale. It dragged out line. I horsed it back. It came leaping out of the water. I am sure I whooped and hollered (most of my fishing companions do not like this characteristic). Miraculously, everything held together. I landed about a sixteen-inch smallmouth. What a trophy! In those days, we did catch-and-release, but there was nothing altruistic in the gesture. I think my dad did not want to bother with cleaning the fish. We did have a stringer in the tackle box, however. I could not release this one until my dad got home. That poor fish must have spent a very long day. He did swim away after he was shown off in the late afternoon.
