The Fishing Story

Here is the infamous fishing story that I tell every once and a while. I think I may have been nine or ten at the time. Some details are a little fuzzy but the important parts are all there. Enjoy! It happened on a weekend in the dead of summer. My brother, a year younger than me, had slowly turned into a fishing fanatic. Fishing had always been a part of our youth. When we were really young and lived in Gill, we’d walk across the street to the river and setup our poles. Also, our Putt-Putt was into fly-fishing and whenever we visited our grandparents, he’d have us tie a fly or two. Sometimes he’d take us fishing, too but we usually went with our father. On this weekend, my brother had convinced our father to take him night fishing and some how I was dragged along. The first stop of the trip was to Highland Pond in Greenfield. I don’t remember exactly if the stop was to grab some minnows for bait or just fish for a while as we waited for night to fall. That pond is pretty trashy now, but back in the day the town actually took care of it and it was a nice place to fish. We’d often go fishing here; you’d always catch a fish – even if it were just a pumpkinseed. Since we fished here so often, this might not have happened on this trip but once my father hooked something he thought was a huge fish. It was pretty exciting because more often than not you’d catch a pumpkinseed. After a long struggle, he finally pulled his prize from the pond and we all had a good laugh – it was not a boot, like you may be expecting but a large snapping turtle! It didn’t take long for my brother to get a knot in his line. He tried to fix it himself but his high-test monophiliment was really tangled, so he brought it over to our father to fix. I, on the other hand, just sat back and caught some more pumpkinseeds. My brother was pestering our father pretty good as he attempted to work the knot and tangles out. The next thing I knew, my father stands up and tossed my brother’s rod into the pond! My father then yelled, “Goddamn it!” Apparently, my father was using something on his key chain to pry the knot apart. When he threw my brother’s rod, he also tossed his keys – the keys to our house and to the car, the ONLY set for his car! Our father proceeded to strip off his boots and shirt – maybe his pants, too. He then walked into the pond. It was much deeper than it looked, it was clear up to his underarms. He waded out to where the pole was partially submerged and tossed it to shore. My brother grabbed it up and started again to work on the knot. I don’t know how long he spent in that pond trying to find those keys but it was all in vain. They were never found and the odds are that they never will be. If you ever happen find a set of keys for a 1979 Chrysler LeBaron at Highland Pond, you know who they belong to! Now let me ask you, when you think you’ve locked your keys in the car, how long does it take before the idea to break a window pops into your head? Me? My foot is through the glass before I even check the handle. How about when you’ve lost the only keys to your car, how long before you consider busting out the ignition and hot wiring the car? My father? It’s the next logical step. On this day, I learned an important life lesson – you cannot efficiently smash out an ignition with just a buck knife, a tire iron and a hammer. After about an hour of banging, I guess one of the surrounding houses called the police and a Greenfield police officer showed up. He asked my father what his story was, my father explained the situation and they exchanged a chuckle or two. “I don’t know how people can do this in only a few minutes!” He told the officer. It was another thirty minutes to an hour before he got the car running again. Even with all that drama, those guys still wanted to go night fishing! There was still daylight to burn, so we packed up at the pond and drove over to another area. I’m not exactly sure where we were. My brother and I waded out into the water with a large net trying to catch minnows for bait – or dinner, if our luck stayed the course. I think we caught maybe two or three. We then drove to our final destination. Again, I’m not exactly sure where we were but it was under a bridge and most likely we were going to be fishing in the Connecticut River. We unloaded our poles from the trunk of the car – the lock to the truck had previously been removed and was opened by using the tire iron, hence the reason the tire iron was available for the ignition smashing. There was a path we walked down from the road to the river. We then setup our poles. I used a bobber and worm so I could just toss it out and not have to pay total attention to it while I was walking along the beachy area. I’m sure one of us must have caught something while we were there but nothing stands out in my mind. As I was screwing around on the beach, I tripped and fell into some bushes. My hands started burning and then exploded with tiny blisters, I ran to the water and dunked them in. I don’t know what hell I touched, could have been poison ivy or could have been something else. The water must have done the trick, as my hands weren’t burning anymore but the blisters were still there. While I was going through my situation with my hands, a police officer yelled down from atop the hill we had just walked down. “Hey, this your car?” he yelled down. Again, my father had to explain the situation. This second run in with the law pretty much ended that fishing trip. The fishing trip also marked the end of my father’s car. Over the next six months to a year, his car was broken into several times. It was also stolen a few times before it eventually was totaled after a theft. He then bought a Chevy Celebrity but that’s another story. Fin.

I took my boat for a car I took that car for a ride I was trying to get somewhere But now I'm following the traces of your fingernails That run along the windshield on the boat of car ~ They Might Be Giants