When I was a kid, I spent my summers in magical places or so I thought. In reality they were my Grandmother’s fishing camp in Many, LA and my Aunt & Uncle’s home in Haughton, LA. My favorite thing to do was nothing, literally nothing. Each year once we were both at the camp, we would run down the hill, around the green boathouse, across the foot path that followed the lake to the dock, weaving around trees, and jump into the lake shoes and all to start the summer, it was a ritual that got us both in trouble every time because we hiked back up to the houses and tracked water inside and always left a pile of wet clothes on the floor in the bathroom.
I spent days walking the dirt road to Bronson’s landing with Jason, whose family had the camp next door. We would make the mile and a half trip to go see boats lined up for fuel, witness someone’s big catch, buy a big cookie and a coke for a whole fifty cents, and spent time talking to strangers who always had a great story.
We spent loads of time on Wideman’s dock, laying in the sun telling ghost stories, fishing for brim, laughing and being stupid or swimming. Sometimes we hiked around the cove just to see houseboats and spy on neighbors, or we hiked to the neighbor’s home on the far side and sat on their front porch swing just because they were not home. Jason was my first best friend and my first boyfriend. He and his brothers taught me to fish, gave me my first boat ride and taught me to steer and start a boat motor, they also taught me to shoot a 22. It was Jason’s dad who taught me that fresh caught bass cooked immediately after cleaning on a hot grill was the best way in the world to cook fish.
Jason’s mom had 5 annoying toy poodles that yapped and followed us everywhere, Pepper was the loud one, he yapped at his yapping, but she loved them, and we were expected to be nice. I can remember throwing popcorn at the yapping dogs from the top bunk of Jason’s bunk beds in their cabin, and those yapping poodles thinking we were giving them treats. When one of them got lost in the woods, we spent the best part of a day pretending to search but what we really did was catch an alligator gar and release it into the septic pool. That gar became our loch nest monster and was the source of all sorts of made-up stories. In our mind, it grew to 50 feet in length, came onto the bank at night and hunted little kids, it was our favorite story to scare little kids with.
Nothing was always fun. It was a smokin’ hot summer day and we were bored; nothing was feeling like nothing that day and we were miserable. I was casting my white jig, half fishing, half nothing, tugging a little as it sunk like I was taught when I got stuck. Jason was fussing because I was going to break the line and lose yet another jig, I was frustrated because I just knew it was going to pop back and smack me in the head. After a good five minutes of tugging, it broke free and almost yanked my butt off the pier into the water. It ran.
Turns out I had snagged me a 13 lb big mouth bass with a lot of energy and it was smart enough to know that it should stay deep and go under snags. Jason was hooting and hollering and coaching me and my pole was bending to the water, we just knew it would snap or the darn fish would yank my butt into the water. After a good 10 minutes we had it dockside ready for net. Like everyone does, I had to have my photo taken of me holding that heavy flopping fish while wearing a big goofy grin. My grandmother took that fish to a taxidermist for mounting but I never saw it again, I’m still not sure what happened but she was the story of that particular summer. In my version the fight was much bigger than the real version and in Jason’s version, the fish was bigger.
We did nothing every year and it was pretty great. Each year there were walks to the marina, boat rides, hikes in the woods and of course some freaky way to get hurt or into trouble.
One year, we were walking the road to Bronson’s and we stopped dead in our tracks. Three deer were standing in the roadway, 2 large bucks and a doe. They were racking pretty hard both trying to win her over with their testerone crashes but when we walked onto the scene, one was staring at us pretty hard and the other ran off with his new girl. This ticked old buck off, and he started stomping, snorting, and decided we were worthy of a chase, and forward he charged! We of course ran! Jason’s big idea was to climb up to get away, so we did. The problem with up was that the closest tree to me was fairly small and the branches were not very large, but up I went. And Mr. Buck, well he decided that racking that tree over and over until my branch broke was a good idea and within a few minutes, I was on the ground, and Mr. Buck was dicing my left leg with his points. After he stopped and took off, Jason ran to his brother Tony, yelling She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s definitely dead this time!!! He just shook his head like what now and started the walk to me but that walk changed to a run when he saw blood.
I wasn’t but I did get boated to the emergency room in Texas and I had a fabulous story to tell my friends. Even now, when outside in the sun, you can see the lines that scarred on my left thigh and it reminds me of that summer, so sometimes scars are a good thing.
When I was 7 Jason and I went with my grandmother to the town of Many to get the mail and grocery shop, something that happened every 3 weeks. It was during this trip to Piggly Wiggly that he spent a whole summer’s worth of chores earnings on a little gold ring with a tiny opal in the setting. In the cookie isle, he laughed and said here, wear this, we’re married, you now have to do anything I say, so I said, fine but you have to buy me a cheeseburger and chocolate shake. My grandmother took us to Sonics where we giggled at servers on skates and laughed over things, we said married couples do, she kept giving us those rolling eyes which made us laugh even more. I still have that ring, it is a little tight, but it still fits only on a different finger, but I love it.
I won’t get into the weeds of why I stopped being allowed to go to the camp, but I will say that we had so many fun summers. We survived fishhooks, snake bites, cuts, bruises, deer, bug bites, slaps, falls, eddys, overturned boats, screams, and endless sunburns. Jason died shortly before my 16th birthday but in my memory, I see him often, laughing like a nut job, sunburnt and goofy. Perfect.
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