Baiting the Hook
by Ashley Wright 

As I slid the glass door open and stepped outside onto the patio, my vision blurred slightly by the early morning fog, which had yet to recede from the grounds of the family farm; and the gentle wind greeted my nose to the smell of pine trees. The day had finally arrived. I guess I was around the age of six, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes, while my grandfather was in his mid-sixties with his silver hair, a trademark of the Thomas family. The occasion for this early morning excursion remained simple.

Within a few hours, my grandfather and I sat on a rowboat in the middle of the pond waiting to catch “the big one.” The quarter of a mile walk from my grandparents’ house through the woods to the pond instantly became filled with an abundance of questions for my grandfather to answer: “Why did we have to get up so early?” “What kinda fish are we going to catch?” “There aren’t snakes out here, are there?” “You’re not going to make me touch the worms, are you?” “What are we going to do wit the fish after we catch them?” The numerous questions continuously streamed out of my mouth in a way only accomplishable by a six-year-old child. Each question answered with understanding, and patience in the type of simplistic wisdom that I was too young to understand.

All that mattered to me at that precise moment in time consisted of knowing that I would not be baiting my hook with one of those slimy, greasy, dirty, little creepy-crawlers; my granddaddy volunteered to tackle that task. As we pushed the small, old, wooden boat off from the low-lying bank of the pond, a fish jumping up to snatch a dragonfly interrupted the stillness of the water. The fog burnt off by the time my grandfather started baiting the hooks of our cane poles. After we each landed the perfect cast, he began telling me stories of his youth. He spoke proudly of his father choosing him, out of twelve children, to journey with him to the Troy cotton gin, vividly describing hooking up the mule wagon to take the twenty mile trip. He explained his role in the Navy during the end of World War II. Whether flying off to exotic places like Cuba, Brazil and some Middle East county that I cannot pronounce to this day, searching for survivors of a sunken ship, or finally, transporting the soldiers home after the war, my grandfather was there.

He fondly narrated about the good times had at the Victoria Schoolhouse where Hank Williams played. As the shadows from the never-ending pines that touched the sun vanished, we returned home with a mess of fish and received a hero’s welcome. As the years passed, I began to frequent the farm less often; however, an invitation remains open for many more simple fishing excursions with my grandfather with the understanding that my friend, my fishing buddy, my grandfather will willingly bait the hook.