I was five years old when I learned an important moral lesson in the red clay hills of the Arkansas Ozarks. That hot Sunday I learned the difference between rules and laws and their realization as mercy and justice. The lesson came not from the pulpit of the Sunday morning fire and brimstone preacher, but – as it should be – from the thoughtful interactions of two honest men. It was a different take on fishing for souls.
Warm, Powerful Warm
It was a sweltering southern Sunday afternoon. It was, as my grandpa Sidney Fraizer liked to say, “warm, powerful warm.” While the box fan roared vainly in the kitchen’s open door, blowing hot air into the even hotter house, outside, even the tree leaves hung limply, seeking respite from the heat.
As we sat in the shade, slowly marinating in our own sweat, watching condensation languidly trace a path down the side of our icy glasses of (sweet) tea and Kool-Aid, my dad suddenly announced we were going fishing. Mind you, it was Sunday afternoon, and the evening church services were just a few hours away.
Hard church pews beckoned, where elderly women would desperately and futilely wave funeral home fans in the stifling heat, while the preacher thundered about sin and the hope of redemption. (I later thought hell could not be much hotter than a southern tent revival meeting.)
That we were going fishing was a big surprise to both my mother and me; my dad was not one to fish or hunt. However, when his mind was made up, my dad was rarely dissuaded, and my mother knew better than to try. She just turned to the practical and important task, making sure we all had something cool to drink while he fished.
Having announced that we were going fishing, my dad walked next door to my grandpa Frazier’s house and soon returned with an old Folgers coffee can (the ones with the key winder) filled with dirt and red wigglers, both dug from my grandpa’s worm bed.
Unlike my dad, my grandpa Frazier was a fishing fiend, willing to drop a line in anything bigger than a mud puddle. In later years, he and I were inseparable, as he told me stories about life and we fished the nearby creeks and rivers of his own childhood. We caught crawdads in the shallow creeks, seined for minnows, tended a worm bed, and rolled balls of Wheaties, all for bait we used to fish for perch, bluegills, bass, catfish, and rainbow trout.
Along the way, we dangled from the railroad bridge trestle over Warm Fork, shivered in hip waders standing in Spring River, sat by the Baker and Lassiter fords, and cast lines from the Cold Springs bridge just off U.S. 63. These are among the best memories of my young life. (See What Really Matters.)
Worms, Cars, and Fishing Holes
Now provisioned with worms and pitchers of sweet tea and Kool-Aid, we got in our old car, though I cannot remember if it were the aging Dodge with the worn out engine, the one my mom said, “wouldn’t pull the hat off your head,” or the balky Chevy with the broken transmission that made each shift into drive an uncertain experience, as we waited expectantly and uncertainly to see if we would lurch in the direction of the headlights or the taillights.
The very phrase “old car” speaks to a certain Southern ethos and economic stratum, “old” being an unnecessary and superfluous adjective, occasionally explicit but most often implicit and unspoken. To cleave “old” from “car” would have been a grievous insult to an aging object that sat under our mulberry tree, gathering berry splatters and bird droppings.
With rare exceptions, all the poor, rural and urban alike, drive an old car, differing only in vintage, decrepitude, scrapes, dents, rust, and visible applications of duct tape. They know bright and visceral fears, ones unknown to those better off. Will the old car start and run? Will it break down unexpectedly, leaving the driver stranded with no practical or financial recourse? Last but not least, will the gas in the tank, as evinced by that dashboard needle, always edging ominously toward empty, last until the next far-too-limited paycheck?
Old cars create a life of quiet desperation among the poor, one my family knew all too well for multiple generations. Throughout my childhood, I never knew my dad to put more than $2 of gas in any of our old cars; a dollar in his pocket was always more valuable than a bit more gas in the tank. (See Livin’ Large on Three Cents a Bale.)
With the car windows down, we headed south from Mammoth Spring on Arkansas state road 289. I knew without asking that we were headed for a fishing hole my dad knew well – a shady spot near the Pilot Church on the Myatt – a creek that ran along the farm where he’d grown up, the son of a sharecropper.
To go fishing, my dad went home, to the place where he’d been born. (As a babe in arms, I’d cried for water during a long and hot Sunday sermon on water baptism at that same Pilot Church, but that is a story for another day.)
A Great Depression Childhood
Born in 1927, my dad often later said that rather than being raised, he’d been “jerked up,” more often working as free farm labor than being a child to be educated and nurtured. He received the equivalent of fifth grade education in a one room school house, and when his two older brothers went off to World War II, he was the oldest son left to help on the farm, before being drafted himself. (My dad is in the back left in this World War II family photograph.) My dad spent the rest of his life trying to make up for what he missed, always reading and learning, a passion he passed on to me. (See Libraries: Arms Too Short to Feed the Mind and My Balm in Gilead.)
All this was nobody’s fault, just the reality of difficult times. With six children – my dad was the fourth – a blind wife (my grandmother Nora), and the Great Depression, my grandpa Richard “Rich” Reed and his family, like so many others, struggled to survive, raising row crops for cash near the creek bottom, where small slivers of better soil were the meager exceptions to the surrounding red clay of the northern Arkansas hills. In such circumstances, sharecropping is at best a subsistence proposition, a few tens of acres, a mule drawn plow, and sunrise to sundown labor. Betwixt that, one grew garden edibles to feed the family. (See Low Hanging Fruit: Memories of Childhood.)
My dad often told a story, one now burned in my memory, of a rare childhood joy. On July 4th, his father would head into town, the thriving metropolis of Saddle, Arkansas. There, he would buy lemons, a bag of sugar, and fifty pounds of ice, before heading home to make lemonade. It was a small thing, but it was a rare joy in an otherwise difficult childhood.
In retrospect, I think my dad found little pleasure in hunting and fishing because it reminded him so much of his difficult childhood, when hunting squirrels and rabbits and catching fish were survival actions rather than recreation or organic produce. Nor was my mother’s family – my grandpa and grandma Frazier – in much better shape. Throughout their lives, money was scarce, and times were hard.
The Law Arrives
At the Myatt, we pulled the old car off the gravel road into the shade, grabbed the fishing pole, the red wigglers, and cold drinks from the back seat, and settled down by the bank of the creek. Seated next to my mother, who was wearing a faded cotton sun dress with a cloth belt, I knew my job was simple – keep quiet, stay out of trouble, and watch. Little did I know how quickly that was to become important.
No sooner had my dad cast his baited hook into the water and settled down on the ground, than another car eased off the road and pulled up next to ours. It was Orville, the local game warden, in his Arkansas Game and Fish Commission car. A rarity in town, the car was new and official looking, light green with a state logo on the side.
Seeing the car approach, my dad handed the fishing pole to me without a word. I looked at my mother with surprise; this was not part of the plan. However, I was nothing if not an obedient and thoughtful child, an adult in a small body. If you explained what you wanted me to do and why it was the right and rational thing to do, I would quietly and unhesitatingly comply. Knowing this, my mother simply told me the truth, “You dad does not have a fishing license. Hold the pole and be quiet.” With big eyes, I did as I was told, uncertain but fearful.
Orville slipped out of the car, put on his Smoky Bear hat, and walked over to us. This being a small town – a very small town of 825 according to the 1960 U.S. census – Orville knew both my mom and my dad, as well as our families. He and his wife lived just a few blocks from us, in a small house near main street in Mammoth Spring. His wife had been one of my mom’s school teachers, and a few years later she would be one of mine as well, kind and thoughtful.
Small talk ensued – how hot it was, how was the garden doing, were the fish biting. Gesturing to me, now holding the fishing pole tightly in both hands, my dad allowed that we had come out to the Myatt so he could teach me – the boy – how to fish. This was patently false, a polite fiction, one even I recognized as such. However, some story, any story, was necessary to justify us sitting on the creek bank with a fishing pole in the water. (For those of you who are city slickers, fishing and hunting licenses are not required for those younger than sixteen.)
Now, Orville knew my dad did not have a fishing license, and my dad knew Orville knew this. Orville knew several other things as well. Among them were the fact that my parents were in difficult financial straits. The ugly truth was simple. My dad was unemployed, he had been for months, and the paltry unemployment checks were now gone.
Like many others, we depended on our garden for fresh and preserved produce, and canning tomatoes, beans, okra, corn, pickles, polk greens was my mother’s hot summer job. We were also grateful for the occasional government commodity my grandpa Frazier passed along. (I was partial to the government cheese; the canned meat left a lot to be desired. Perhaps that’s why I have always detested Spam.)
Orville knew all this, and I knew it too, for I distinctly remember my parents’ furtive conversations about being down to their last five dollars. It is hard to hide the reality of being poor from a child; one learns certain things early, the most important of which is not to embarrass your parents by asking for things they cannot afford. (See A Taste of Sherbet.)
A Wise Decision
My dad was not an intentional scofflaw. He was an honest man, one I had already seen honor a promise, even when it was not in his best interests; a promise was a bond. The truth was, a fishing license was simply an expense that paled in importance to the weekly necessities, gasoline for the old car, and a few groceries to complement what we grew in our garden. We simply did not have money to spare, certainly not the small amount that a would be a $10 or $15 fine for fishing without a license. Orville knew this too.
Equally importantly, Orville knew my mother was the daughter of the only Justice of the Peace in town – the same Sidney Frazier who had given my dad the fishing worms, well aware that he had no fishing license. As Justice of the Peace, my grandpa Frazier adjudicated all petty crimes and misdemeanors, including all the hunting and fishing violations that were Orville’s responsibility.
My grandpa would not look kindly on having his hardworking and law abiding, albeit unemployed, son-in-law ticketed. It was even more unlikely that any conviction would ensue – there were no fish on the stringer. In the improbable event my grandpa sided with Orville, the $10 fine would be back in my dad’s pocket before Orville’s car disappeared from site of the hearing, my grandpa’s living room. My grandpa knew my parents needed the money more than the State of Arkansas.
Orville knew all this, my dad knew this, and my mom knew this too. Being respectful of small town realities – economic, social, and legal – and wisely understanding that the law, justice, and mercy were quite different things, Orville wished me good luck fishing, nodded to my parents, moseyed back to his car, and drove away.
After Orville disappeared, my dad sighed, then laughed, reclaimed the fishing pole, and asked my mom to pour him a sweet tea. He proceeded to drown the rest of the worms, with nary a bite.
Honest lawbreakers, we drove home empty handed, with no fish on the stringer. In addition to mercy and kindness, perhaps there was justice – at least cosmic justice – after all.
Coda
That hot Sunday afternoon, I learned an important lesson from two good men, each trying to do the right thing. During a difficult time, my dad sought comfort in fishing and the memories of his childhood home. Orville respected that, even if it did not exactly comport with the letter of the law. Even more importantly, he was wise enough not to embarrass a proud and honest man in front of his family.
What’s the moral? Laws are rules intended to ensure fairness and safety, albeit with context limited by history and generalizations. Justice and mercy are humane applications of those rules, tempered by specific circumstances and human wisdom.
Yes, the law matters, but compassion, wisdom, and justice matter even more. At five years old, I first learned this important truth, not from the Sunday preacher, but from two good men doing what was right.
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