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)
