Spencer...Fishing Remembered

Spencer’s favorite pastime was fishing. He grew up fishing with his mother and besides the fact that they put food on the table, it carried an emotional bond with his mother that remained until his death. I realized early in our relationship that if I wanted to spend quantity time with my husband, I would learn to fish.

Finding the perfect fishing holes was both challenge and enjoyment for Spencer. I remember four places in particular that we revisited time and time again. If you were to drive the Natchez Trace outside of Jackson, you would most likely notice the beautiful countryside and the historical markers and sites that frequented this well-known highway. Leave it to Spencer to find a small body of water, not even big enough to be called a pond, and not noticeable from the road. I’m not sure how he found it—maybe a tip from a fellow fisherman. I can recall late afternoon trips down this historical road, blanket, snacks and toddler in tow, to fish for a couple of hours. I could never recognize the spot; the trees and kudzu all looked the same. Johnathan and I would join Spencer for a while, but we soon tired of the bugs and mud and tangled fishing lines, and we would spread a blanket on the ground and eat crackers and apples and drink Kool-Aid. As darkness would be begin to fall, Johnathan and I would move to the car, and I would begin suggesting that it was time to go. Invariably, the suggestions became pleas, and Spencer would reluctantly join us in the car to head for home.

As Johnathan grew older, it was not unusual for Spencer to leave work and find his son and head down the Natchez Trace for a few hours of evening fishing. When Jubilee was 4 or 5, she was sometimes invited along, much to her delight. Learning to fish was a given for our children. And they took to it, well, like a fish to water. They learned to bait their hooks, take fish off the hook, dig out a swallowed hook, cut off heads, and scrape off scales. Spencer would patiently untangle lines that caught in tree branches during the days of learning to cast. While I enjoyed the camaraderie and time with the family, I wasn’t a fish eater, so the whole process did not call out to me. I was content to bring a good book and a chair and make all the appropriate comments and exclamations at the right times. And I never did bait a hook. While Spencer would not put worms on hooks for the children, once he showed them how to do it, he always did mine. He really wanted me to like fishing.

Which brings me to the topic of bait. Finding worms—the right kind and size, was an art and a science to Spencer. We kept a pile of leaves and grass clippings behind the house, and in preparation for fishing, the children would take a large bucket and go out to the pile and begin to push aside the top layer. If worms gross you out, you would have hated the sight. Huge, I mean huge, wiggling night crawlers everywhere. The children would pick them up by the handfuls. This was all part of the we’re going fishing excitement, and I can still see Jubilee, hands filthy with worm dirt, wiping sweat off of her face leaving dirty streaks of, yes, worm dirt, grinning from ear to ear as the bucket filled up with the huge worms. More about worms in a bit.

A second fishing location favorite was in a state park in north Mississippi near the town of Holly Springs. We rented a cabin for a week at Waldoxy State Park every fall and Spencer and the children fished in the huge lake every day. As April was small, she and I would spend part of the day by the lake, playing in the water at the edge. Sometimes Johnathan would climb on the roof of the small boathouse and tell his dad where to cast, as he could see the big blue gills from his perch above the lake. While this was a beautiful park with picnic and hiking in addition to fishing, it always came with an edge of fear for me. It was very dark at night, and because it was off-season, there were no other campers around. I felt like we were very vulnerable as an interracial family in the rural south. It was an affordable vacation for us, though, and we went every year for 6 or 7 years.

My good friend, Lisa Ware, and her husband Cobby, lived outside of Jackson beside a big lake. As our friendship deepened, Lisa invited us to come to their house, even if they weren’t home, to fish off their dock. It was a lovely place and we enjoyed many hours as a family, visiting with the Ware’s when they were home, and fishing and relaxing on the patio if they were gone. This was not without cost to them, as, once again, an interracial family raised the eyebrows and ire of many southerners. Once when Lisa and Cobby weren’t home, the neighbor approached Spencer and said he was not allowed to fish in the lake. We packed up and left, hurt and humiliated by the insulting racism of regular folks. Cobby and Lisa bent over backwards to make us feel welcomed and loved, and we continued to go and fish when they were home.

Spencer’s favorite place on earth was the cabin—an old rustic two-story house in rural western Pennsylvania owned by my sister’s family—where we went for a week every summer. Here’s the rest of the worm story. We actually packed up worms—each summer the system was perfected a bit more—and took them to Pennsylvania. Spencer declared that worms in Pennsylvania were not as big, and did not wiggle as vigorously as Mississippi night crawlers. When we stayed overnight in a motel on the trip to PA, the worms spent the night in the air-conditioned bathroom so as not to get to warm and distressed. This is not an exaggeration.

Members of my extended family often joined us at the cabin. Spencer patiently worked with the nieces and nephews to perfect their fishing skills. It was important to him that each child reeled in a fish, and not just a blue gill, one of the giant catfish that lived in the bottom of the pond. Toward evening he would pull out his pipe and push back his hat and fill up the stringer with fish to cook for dinner. We have a video that was made at the cabin the summer before Spencer died. April, our youngest child, too little to cast a line, is standing by his chair, playing in the bucket of worms. For April, this scene is especially poignant, as she was denied this rite of passage, learning how to fish, by her dad’s untimely death.

Some of our best family memories are from our times at the cabin. On Memorial Day weekend in 1999, our whole extended family gathered at the cabin and built a bridge from the bank of the pond to the small island. Once the bridge was completed, we placed a big rock on which was affixed a plaque bearing Spencer’s name, with the epitaph, He loved this place like no other. We stood around and across the bridge and shared memories and sang Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Spencer’s favorite song. We still go to the cabin each Memorial Day Weekend with my sister and her family, and although now grown, Johnathan and Jubilee still have fishing competitions and we all reminisce about Spencer’s love of fishing at the cabin.

-Nancy Perkins (9/29/12)