KylieHarley's Journal

I've been formulating this for months and am finally starting to write it down.  Would love some feedback on what you all think! 

Fish Stories:  How to hook the big one.

The rain poured down on the SUV in the parking lot of the concert that August Sunday afternoon at Merriweather Post Pavilion.  The sister and I sat inside listening to the Steelers game on Sirius radio, smoking cigarettes and drinking a beer.  The concert didn’t start for at least another hour so we decided to wait it out in the truck until the brief summer shower went by.  Summer storms were a common occurrence on the east coast and usually were over within thirty minutes.

I wish I could remember but I simply just don’t recall how the conversation started.  But little did I know that one statement; one phrase would change my life that Sunday.  All I remember is the defining moment when I said “Oh god, I LOVE to fish.”  The sister’s eyes lit up and said “REALLY!?  We’ve got a fishing trip planned for my birthday in October.  Do you want to go?” And the next thing I knew, “Count me in” was rolling off my tongue.

***

Chapter 1 – My first flounder

My earliest memory of catching a fish was at Solomon’s Island, Maryland in the mid 70’s.  My step-grandfather, Gus was retired U.S. Coast Guard and he and my step-grandmother, Gerry bought an Airstream trailer and traveled the U.S. going from campground to campground.  At the time, I thought this was a splendid idea – I was 6 – what the hell did I know?  I also thought all those kitschy crafty things she would make out of old bleach bottles and paint that caught the wind in their makeshift yard were wildly cool as well. 

Gus loved to set crab pots out off the long fishing pier.  We would spend long summer afternoons tying chicken necks and other disposable chicken parts to crab pots and tossing them into the Chesapeake Bay.  We’d often go for a bike ride, a walk, a game of bowling and come back periodically through the day to check on the pots. 

One bright Thursday afternoon, Gus instructed me to pull up the pots we had set down along a low boat dock near the restrooms on the campsite.  When I pulled up the first pot, I could feel the tug and tumble of something unusual.  Hand over hand, my small fingers wrapped around and fought the pot to the surface and onto the little dock.  Once I set it down, I was face to face with my very first fish:  a 12” flounder was flopping inside of the crab pot gasping for air and eager to make an escape.  I was thrilled and wanted to immediately take it home and eat it.  Gus had other plans.

After he wrestled the fish from the crab pot, he pulled out his measuring tape off of his belt buckle and placed the tip at the fish’s lips and pulled the tape down to the end of its tail: all the while trying to keep the fish from flopping back into the water.  My flounder was a feisty little son of a bitch.  Gus shook his head and said “Sorry honey, he’s too small” and with a quick flip of the wrist, threw my fish back into the water. 

Hot, salty tears sprung to my eyes.  My 6 year old mind didn’t understand fishing regulations and the need for the fish to get back into the water quickly.  My 6 year old mind wanted to take my flounder home, cook it in a frying pan and eat it for dinner.  My 6 year old mind wanted to touch it and feel its slippery surface.  Having been denied such pleasures, my 6 year old mind wanted to now throw a temper tantrum.  And so it ensued.  I cried and screamed that I hated Gus, and how dare he throw my fish back in the water.  I stomped off the dock, up through the playground and into the Airstream Trailer where Gerry was making another craft projects out of clothespins.  Where had I gone wrong?  I was convinced these people where idiots.  Even as a small child, I had a flare for the dramatic.

I threw myself down on the convertible love seat and sobbed.  Gerry barely looked up from her vodka and craft project to acknowledge me.  I knew then I would catch a fish one day soon.  A big fish.  And no one would be able to throw it back in the water.  My 6 year old mind made that solemn vow that day in Solomon’s Island.

Chapter Two – My first “fishing” trip.

It would be almost 7 more years before I actually held a fishing rod in my hands.  I was 13 years old and had been reunited with my biological father for the first time since I was 5 years old.  It was the summer of 1980 and I was spending the month of August with my father and his new wife in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Olympics took place that year in Moscow but the U.S. boycotted them so there was little interest in what was actually taking place on the other side of the planet.  The big talk around town was who had shot J.R. Ewing and how could music legend John Lennon be assassinated by the hand of Mark David Chapman?  Brook Shields was daring men, young and old alike, to come between her and her Calvins. But most importantly, the hostages would come home from Iraq.

In the 7 years since I had seen my father, he had remarried to my stepmother who was only 11 years older than me.  At 24, Mary was 6’1 and part Cherokee Indian.  She was long and lean with sleek black hair and dark black eyes that she meticulously outlined with black eyeliner every morning in front of the mirror while the Today show blared in the background.  I watched her every move – admiring her wit, sarcasm, style and never-ending ‘coolness’.  I wanted to be just like her.  I wanted to shed my awkward 13 year old skin and blossom into a 6’1 jaguar like Mary.  I wanted to have handsome men turn their heads at me when I walked in a room.  I wanted to throw my head back and laugh boisterously with confidence and finesse at my own jokes or even at my own idiocy.  I wanted to do everything she did, and I wanted to abandon my youth in order to obtain such status. 

Mary always treated me like an adult.  She never spoke down to me, patronized me or made me feel like I was an intrusion.  She included me in everything without exception – even down to having a small sip of wine with dinner.  Being around her made my junior high life back at home seem a distant memory.  When I was with Mary, we ate exotic food.  We put our napkins in our laps – even at McDonald’s.  We shopped at boutiques instead of big mall stores.  We took road trips all over Virginia:  Richmond, Blacksburg, Virginia Beach, Harrisburg for her work.

And of course, Mary had the very coolest of friends.  Friends that lived in the Farmington Country Club.  Friends that ran with the “in the know” people of Charlottesville.  Friends that drove expensive convertibles and lunched at Boars Head.  One set of such said friends had a small boat dock on Lake Anna in Mineral, Virginia with a small Sunfish catamaran.  My father was determined to teach me how to sail that boat that summer so every weekend, we made the 45 minute drive out to the Lake and pulled the little cat into the water.  Every weekend, I managed to capsize the boat and lose someone’s Ray Bans.  Finally, the last weekend of our summer month together, Mary brought a small fishing rod for her and one for me.  The two of us sat on the dock with our feet dangling just above the green lake water with our fishing rods poised into the murkiness.  She sprayed my legs and arms with Off and handed me my rod with a big bloodworm wriggling on the end .  She and I laughed and talked, sipping on Crush Orange soda and eating handfuls of Doritos. 

We watched my father effortlessly glide the small cat throughout the lake and continued to dangle our feet off the pier.  We talked about Mary’s first high school love.  She told me about her first car.  She described in detail to me the first time she ever ate an oyster raw – she almost threw it up all over the dinner table at a fancy restaurant.  Mary was from the west coast, and I had never met anyone from California before her.  I dreamt of the day where I too would move out to Sausalito, shop at Nordstroms and eat avocados.  This west coast lifestyle seemed more like a fairy tale than a reality. 

We talked throughout the afternoon – ok, she talked and I held onto every word like it was the “magic ticket”.  I inhaled her experiences as if they were my own.  My 13 year old mind was in a whirlwind of things to come.  My 13 year old mind was already living in a coolly decorated Victorian in Sausalito.  My 13 year old mind almost dropped the rod into the cloudy waters or Lake Anna and that’s when reality snapped me back to the Summer of 1980 sitting on the dock in Mineral, Virginia.

I wasn’t Mary.  I didn’t live on the west coast.  I wasn’t cool.  I was a geeky honor student at a lame ass junior high school in Manassas Virginia with bad hair and an ugly comb in my back pocket.  And worse yet, I hadn’t caught a fish all damn day.