My Friend

Have you ever had one of those special people in your life who has helped you in immeasurable and intangible ways to grow up? I have, and his name is Dillard Kilby. He was from the small north Georgia community of Persimmon, just outside of Clayton near Lake Burton. When I was a teenager singing Handel's Messiah for the first time, I had to stand on a stack of hymn books so I wouldn't appear as small as I really was next to Dillard. When the books began to slide (which they did because I can't stand still while singing) Dillard would reach over and grab a handful of my shirt or choir robe and slowly pull me back to the upright position.

His family was in the original Foxfire books (Wellborns and Kilbys), famous for such arcane things as inventing the FIRST steerable car headlights for the winding mountain roads. Tucker takes the credit, but Grandpa Wellborn did it. He also enjoyed making banjos out of most anything, most notably pie tins and cigar boxes.

Dillard spent a lot of time mentoring me through my teens. Dad always said he got me from puberty to adultery! He'd take me into the mountains to meet his family and eat copious amounts of food with them and drink homemade moonshine with them from worm buckets and Mason jars. He let Charlie and me hunt squirrels on his land, and he spent an inordinate amount of time and energy pushing his daughter towards me. Lucky for her it didn't take.

He moved his wife to North Carolina and built a log cabin for the both of them. He built it. By hand. Dillard was that kind of fella. And knowing him, it was built well enough to last for a very long time.

Well, my best old friend Charlie e-mailed me today to let me know Dillard had died. I wept. Not for any suffering that may have come Dillard's way, but for the times I could have had with him but didn't. There'd always be next week. Well, next week has come and gone, and all I have left of him are some Christmas cards, pictures and memories of a true friend who had nothing but my best interest at heart.

That's why I called Charlie. I just couldn't let that happen to us, so we made plans for me to go see him and fish for a while the week after Easter. It's only week-after-next, but it feels like forever away. That's cause I really need to see my old friend. For both our sakes.

Smellin' Fishes

Pretty, isn't it? Doesn't it look a picture that should hang in an art gallery or a private collection? Well, it does belong in a private collection -- mine. See? This is a molecular picture of cholesterol, the same kind that got my attention earlier this week. That's because I got to a point where I couldn't catch my breath after the mildest of exertions. No, there weren't any other of the classic heart attack symptoms: no pain radiating down my arm and jaw, nausea, pressure on my chest or chest pains. I just couldn't catch my breath.

So, I went to my doctor who is also my friend to 'see what condition my condition was in.' It was the first time we've fought, and it was over whether I could drive the two blocks to the hospital or ride the meat wagon. I drove, taking an envelope full of nasty things about the inside of my body to the admitting person. Turns out I know her niece, so we hit it off just fine (good thing this niece was in her good graces). In the meantime I let slip what I was doing, and the phone started to ring. A lot of folks were wishing me well, but my good friend, SC, spoke the important ones that helped me to get through the next day or so.

Others called my buddy, Elf, who had my phone. He kept the world informed, especially Bob. That was most important to me that Bob was kept apprised. When I called Fishing Buddy Charles, he asked if he should come to see me. I said 'No' pretty emphatically. I had just settled in to the room when he arrived with Dr. Fahrenheit (because she holds so many degrees) in tow. Since Elf was already there, the party fell into full swing. We laughed and made general horses behinds of ourselves until everybody's cheeks were hurting from smiling and laughing. They are all good, special friends.

But, that's not what I'm here to talk about. The heart cath found some blockage that, although small, was significant enough to affect my breathing. That's what got me to thinking. Not only is life short, it's fragile. There are so many things that can go wrong in a human body, it's a miracle we keep going at all. That's when I figured out a few truths:

• I don't have enough time on this earth to sweat the small stuff.
• I need to love hard the ones I love and cut the wannabees loose.
• I shouldn't have to put up with the life I'm living now.
• I need to slow down and smell the fishes.

So, that's what this is all about. Life should be about watching bobbers getting pulled under water. Life should be about a fly hitting the water before its line and totally fooling a bass. Life should be about lazy hours in a boat on the water, whether a fish is caught or not. Life should be about making red wrigglers live up to their name while impaled on a hook. Life should be about a trout, lightly breaded with cornmeal, sharing a plate with wild rice and asparagus. Life should be about sparkling eyes that hold all the promise in the world that can still be seen when two cheeks are touching.

That's what life should be. It should not be all the crap and drama that we live with daily. There oughta be a law that everybody has to fish at least two hours a day. That same law should make it a crime to give up the location of a sweet spot, and the fisherman shouldn't be allowed to tell the truth about how many he caught.

And everybody needs to have the time to stop and smell the fishes. Thanks, Charles for teaching me that.

Why I Don't Hunt

Back in the 1950s every boy in south Georgia pretended he could shoot like The Rifleman. My across-the-street-neighbor, Bobby, and I were no exceptions. We rode our 'horses' made of a stick and string for reins all over the neighborhood 'shooting' each other with stick guns and worn out toy rifles. In the back of our minds we knew our dads would someday teach us how to do the real thing.

Most of us started out our real gun experience with BB guns, mine being a Daisy pump model. Bobby had a Daisy that was a replica of a cocking repeating rifle. In the movies and on our TV, that had only one station with all three networks on it, I always saw guns that looked like Bobby's. Nobody had a pump action model whether he wore a white hat or not. So, I felt a little slighted. That is until I found out I could hit targets farther away than Bobby's gun could reach. Dad knew what he was doing.

But, I shot a .22 before I was big enough to handle a BB gun, and this is how it happened. One day Bobby's dad took us out to his business that we always called 'The Place.' It had a real and legal name, but we didn't bother with that. In any other venue it would have been called an abbotoir; In south Georgia it was a slaughterhouse. That day we had a cow to kill.

Bobby's dad called me over to where he was squatting, holding his .22 rifle. He held it while I aimed and pulled the trigger. All that hamburger on the hoof never knew what hit it. I was so proud of myself. As a reward, Bobby's dad told me I could go watch the hog butchering. What a treat!

If you've never seen a hog butchered, you're in for quite a show. I wasn't so interested in the blood and guts as I was the machine that removes the hair or bristle from the hog. The workers first dip the dead hog in scalding water. Using a hoist, they pick it up from its bath and drop it on a machine that constantly rolls the hog. When its legs came around the hog 'jumps' into the air and is caught by the machine accompanied by the squeals of delight from a 5-year old boy. Pleasures were simple for me over 50 years ago...

But that's not what this story is about. While I was growing up Dad would tell me stories of the Winchester Man, a travelling salesman for the Winchester Rifle Company, coming to town when Dad was my age. Once he'd gathered a crowd he'd toss steel lug nuts into the air and shoot them. Dad could hear the shot and the bullet ricochet off the nut. When he did miss, the Winchester Man would say, "I must have shot through the center!" Who was going to argue with a proven good shot?

I wanted to shoot like that, and in my boy's mind I thought I could learn it in an afternoon. Dad took me to a secluded spot and taught me to hold the stock tightly against my shoulder, position the bead on the end of the barrel into the 'V' of the sight, to let my breath out slowly and to squeeze the trigger. That was also the day I found out it takes boxes and boxes of shells just to get up to mediocre status.

The real fun came when Dad introduced me to shotguns. Because they shoot multiple pellets that spread out as they leave the barrel, shotguns resemble today's cameras: point and shoot. If the gun is aimed in the general direction of the target at least a pellet or two will find its mark. I had found my weapon of choice -- a single shot breakaway 410 gauge. I was an official hunter now.

I begged Dad to take me quail hunting. Now, those of you who remember your first quail hunt know what's coming. Did I mention we didn't have a pointer (bird dog) or access to one? The only thing I noticed different about our hunt from what other boys had told me was Dad didn't bring his shotgun. When I asked him about this he replied, "It's your hunt." He knew what I didn't.

We walked, stomped and shuffled through the woods that one of Dad's friends owned. The palmettos were about two-thirds my height, and there was plenty of underbrush for me to fight and for quail to use as cover. We were stomping around when all of a sudden I stepped into the middle of a covey. They came up all around me, feeling almost like they were flying up my pants legs!

Did I mention Dad knew something I didn't? It was just as he envisioned it:

• The quail went one way.
• I went the other way.
• My shotgun went yet another way.

Dad's job that day was to catch my gun before it hit the ground. He did it perfectly, sat down and started to laugh. It wasn't a derisive laugh (like I get from my wife), but it was infectious. Duly chastised I finally began to laugh with him. But the day was not a total loss, as we finished the day with a pocketful of birds because I got lucky a few times and a handful of stories.

Dad's gone now; he died at 94. Whenever I think of him (which is often and daily) I remember some of the lessons he taught me that helped me to become a man. Not the least of these was, "Never go quail hunting without a dog!"

Thanks, Dad. I'll stick to fishing.

Hammerheads and Oysters

Like I said last week, fishing with Uncle Lester was a real trip. On one of our trips to see them Dad and Unc went out alone while Ron introduced me to the game of golf (and I've not forgiven him yet). They repeated the rituals of the day before and of procuring bait. I don't know if Unc took his 'extra bucket' along, and I surely didn't ask. They added something different this time by taking along a couple of oyster rakes.

Dad said they settled into fishing and chumming (throwing chunks of fish overboard to attract predatory fish) while talking and having a good time together. One topic led to another, and soon they were swapping fishing lies, making each other laugh and generally enjoying each other's company. Such was their relationship.

While all this was going on they were catching fish. They pulled in a couple of mackerel that they tied with a rope to the gunwale. Their heads were in the water with most of their bodies high and dry. They were at the mouth of the St. Johns, so they had a shot at passing ocean fish as well as fish in the river. Those were the days when you didn't have to go offshore to find game fish like mackerel. But now, they were in a groove; they caught a lot and kept some. If the fish weren't big enough to feed at least four adults, they released them, so what was left was of pretty good size.

Here's where the story gets a bit muddled. It seems as though after they had three or four good-sized keepers tied to the gunwale, the blood in the water caught the attention of a hammerhead shark cruising nearby. Pretty soon it shot past the boat, taking a hunk of mackerel with it. Dad and Unc were stunned. They went to trying desperately to untie the fish from the cleats on the side of the boat before the shark came back for another round of sushi.

They weren't fast enough, though. The shark came back and took hold of one of their fish and, instead of biting off a chunk, it started diving with its mouth full. This caused the boat to nearly flip over (Did I mention Dad said this shark was nearly as long as our 1961 Chevrolet Impala?). Unc did the only thing he could do. He grabbed the hatchet he carried (for whacking sharks he'd caught on the head) and cut the line, leaving a big gouge in the side of the boat. The shark left with his meal, rope trailing behind, and the boat righted itself so violently both men had to hold on to keep from getting thrown overboard. Neither of them wanted to be in the water with that shark so close.

Shaken, they called it quits for the day, as they had been able to salvage a couple of their catch to take home. Unc was upset about the damage to the boat while Dad was just glad they were still alive. But on their way back they passed Unc's favorite oyster bed. Determined to make a good day out of this, they stopped and raked a croaker sack full of oysters. Now their spirits were higher.

On they came home where we were treated to multiple tellings (and versions) of the shark story. But we helped clean the fish and got the charcoal going. Soon the neighbors started showing up, and a full-on party was under way. They brought out the oysters to the delight of almost everyone (Ron and I thought that anything that looked like it belonged in our noses didn't belong on our plates.). That's when the real Unc showed up.

He went up to one of his neighbors with a fresh oyster and bet him $5.00 he couldn't eat it and keep it down for three minutes. Now, this guy had already knocked back almost a dozen of the slimy critters, so he took the bet, and down the hatch it went. Unc stood there and watched the man. The neighbor watched Unc. Finally, Unc said OK, you win, 'cause you're the third man that's eaten that oyster today. Uuurrpp!! Up came the oyster, and Unc got his five bucks.

At least that's the way Dad and Uncle Lester always told it.....