......From "Fishing with my son"

Excerpts from the short story “Fishing with my son”

Joseph Manduke
Spring 2008

That summer of 1965 we packed up most of the pets, my above-mentioned cousin Dave (who was a pure city boy) and we wound our way to the place on dad’s fishing map was labeled “Wild River”, near Towanda, and a place then called Wyalusing Rocks in Bradford County.

It was late June, school out, and very balmy. The area where the river flowed was farmland. Once, Marie Antoinette had been scheduled to relocate here to avoid the issues of the French Revolution. She didn’t make it, but plenty of other French settled here, including one Charles Homet. He is important here as we asked a local farmer, an ancient Mr. Smith with a still out back where we might rent a summer cabin and maybe a rowboat. Well he happened to have a tiny yellow cabin with a big antique wooden radio and a wood-burning stove at the old Homet’s Ferry crossing.

The back road ended there at the river, but the road obviously continued along the other side. So while my mom and sister painted the mountains, round-pebbled beaches we would, my cousin, dad, and I fish the river.

The river was swift and clean with 2 islands just above the old ferry road. Downstream, the river turned sharply east, moved by an ancient Appalachian mountain I have come to call Joe’s mountain, for all the Joe’s of this tale.

My cousin Dave was a skinny, blond boy of 12. This was his first trip to the country and he was staying close to dad, his own father driven off by his greedy and downright nasty mother. I had rowed the little aluminum boat that went with our cabin out and shoved the bow onto an island.

Moments later, in the late morning sunlight, I heard my cousin yell in a nasal, shrill voice “Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe! A muskellunge-the first I had ever seen had taken Dave’s red and white Daredevil spoon and rocketed straight out of the river not 30 feet from me It dwarfed tiny Dave, shaking its head to disgorge the dangling spoon, its dark vertical bars on a greenish background. I had never seen a fish that large. One splash, silent, line broken.

From that day forward, even at that time with 5 years of fishing under my little belt, I was a fisherman. And this spot at Homet’s Ferry is a sacred place of real spirits, ghosts of dad and that fish, that summer of fresh wood-stove cooked walleyes, the smell of manure from the dairy farm, and the smell of a clean, fished filled rural paradise.

We also drove around the area in our green and white rambler wagon looking for other fishing spots. We left the ladies to drive to Terrytown on the other side of the river. The fishing map did show roads along the river course there. We found a spot with a steep bank and caught an almost incredible number and variety of fish. Mostly on the small side, bass, pike, and walleyes, a member of the perch family. We had dinner for sure. Mom would clean, roll in cornmeal and fry them up in nice smelly bacon fat. Imagine these days living thru that to tell about it.


We were getting ready to leave Terrytown to cross back to the cabin when someone drove by in an old truck and yelled. I didn’t hear it, still elated with our catch, but dad said “short pants”. Dad usually wore shorts fishing on warm summer days. Apparently this was a taboo in Appalachia, and the two farmers in the pick up had yelled, “faxxot, short pants “, at dad. This was unwise of them. Very calmly, saying nothing dad took off with Dave and me in the Rambler. He reached under the seat and pulled out a metal hand axe that we used for camp wood, at least we had. Dad, driving madly in the passing lane, left hand draped on the wheel, his right chopping with the axe yelled, “you lousy bastards, I am gonna hack your f’ing faces to bits”. There was abject terror on the farmer’s faces, who went off the road into the ditch. My heart was pounding. Dad put his axe away quietly and we calmly went back to the Homet Ferry cabin and ate a fish dinner.

Another odd thing occurred that trip. My mom’s parakeet “Peekie” had developed some sort of a bird “cold”. Mom sent me to the chicken farm up the hill from the river with two missions, buy a little fresh vegetable to go with our pike and see if they had any bird medicine. Peekie had been an important part of my life as long as I remembered. I would feed him bits of egg and bread at breakfast in the morning, and he would cheerily chirp. Well on approaching the farm I saw a very gaunt elderly man stiffly standing with a rusty hoe. He was wearing striped bib overalls and a cap, like a painting. He was tending yellow wax beans. I asked him how much for the beans, and he gave me a big paper sack full of fresh yellow wax beans for a quarter. Quarters were silver then. As for medicine, he gave me a small bag of red powder and said follow the instructions. He seemed overjoyed to talk with a young person on the subjects of birds and beans. Well our parakeet survived many more years along with my dog Ticky and our cats Mildred and Herman, the other pets that came with us on that trip to the little yellow cabin.

There are three surviving watercolors my mom painted on that trip. One is of the fishing spot at the ferry crossing-near the axe incident. The other is the Homet Ferry store, which still stands but is no longer a store, a short walk from the old cabin. Mom painted another watercolor of me and my sister sitting along route 6 at the Wyalusing Rocks overlook. The river and islands are seen down below in the summer-green valley mists. The distant view of the islands and watercourse where I have fished, canoed, and camped for nearly 40 years still looks the same. There are photos of nearly everyone important in my life sitting in one of the stone gazebos, contemplating the valley below.

The old route 6 cart way is the driveway now, soon to be near a Delaware Nations Nature/interpretive center. I have volunteered to be the geologic/environmental consultant for the project. How my close friends and family react to the beauty of the river valley here, and the nostalgia of Yellow Breeches, speaks of their character.
These are the places that define who I am. If I do go back this spring, it will be with my son and daughter if she wishes.

So I will play with my kids in the sun, God willing when I leave my now nice little place here on the island. But it’s a loveless place, too far from that set of memories. Lifetime grows short and I have to make peace with my infinite truths, introduce the children to them, and decide where I will be. I can only hope that our memories will forge the desires and meanings my family has given me. Time is so short-so much wasted on sad discord, useless empty dreams and greed of them. Take me and mine to where the fishes leap and the osprey flies, and I can today in the summer, wear shorts along the Susquehanna.

Copyright 2008 Joseph Manduke All Rights Reserved

From the short story, "Kinzua Gums"

Excerpt from the fishing short story: “Kinzua Gums”
by:

Joseph Manduke



So we headed out from Doylestown in the leaky mustang on a mission of pure exploration. My fishing pal and high school buddy Joe riding shotgun. I had installed a tape player in my pony and we had one tape. It was an early Beatles tape, and as I write these words I can still hear odes to the Norwegian woods and the familiar voices of Paul and John.

My thrill was to explore extreme northwestern Pennsylvania. The map claimed big fish in wild sounding places like Kinzua, The Allegheny River, and the Clarion River. Wide areas were delineated as native brook trout country, and home of the Pike and Muskellunge, their fierce cousins up to 4 feet long, and both bristling with teeth.
When dad was alive, the annual trek to the Yellow Breeches south of Carlisle was our big trip. That and a summer trip to Bradford County (Wyalusing) on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. All year, months before these trips, I would clean and organize tackle, study the maps, dream of trout at the Breeches or sultry summer evenings along the then wild Susquehanna with a stringer of walleyes and smallmouth, to be carefully cleaned and cooked by my mother. Either Breeches trout or Susquehanna fish were a sacred meal.

On our summer trips in high school, the few we took, or the many I took alone, I slept behind summer quiet schools on the bus loading platforms, sleeping bag on still warm summer concrete. I caught and ate fish, and begged and borrowed for gas money.

In my fishing-dream- heart I studied and memorized the special map dad brought home years before. Pennsylvania’s route 6 traverses the most Northern part of the state from the New York state line near Port Jervis, all the way to odd sounding places named Kane, Warren, Corry, Westline…or Tionesta. Images on the map showed trout and toothy pike, tiny towns were I imagined Indians still netted fish and carried babies on their backs.

My fishing friend and fellow high school junior Joe and I were now on the road. Joe was a big athletic blonde kid who the girls liked. In fact I was secretly in love with his cheerleader girl and my neighbour Leslie. I think she thought of me as a combination motor head and nerd.

I had just started to get serious with Carol that summer of 1973. Joe simply said, “I don’t want to hear about that chick on this trip, we are fishing.” I had already been ridiculed for taking Carol to a dance.

Our destination, revealed by the sacred fishing map was the Allegheny reservoir. It was to be by way of route 6, that magical path I had only dreamed about. Real rugged trout country. As the Beatles groaned, we finally made it to Renovo on route 120. A dark nearly abandoned railroad town, where people were playing baseball in the main street at 3 AM. It was an odd scene. Out of bravado we drove up over the top of our world on route 144. I hadn’t known the state was this remote, wild. Finally we arrived at route 6 and went west.

The parking area by the reservoir and Kinzua dam is a wild place. They had flooded the corn planter Indian reservation to make the lake, and it made me feel sad. The loud spillway and leaking gas from the mustang’s rusty gas tank kept us up most of the night. By sunrise, a few sleepy fishermen emerged- out of one truck a bewhiskered scrawny old man. While busy at this early hour boiling camp coffee and breakfast of fried walleyes, we asked about the fishing. We became friends with old Bill, and he told us of Kinzua fish and fisherman. He said to go back into town across the old iron river bridge and make the first right. This would take us to the deep hole on the other side of the dam. We slowly drove up the road, as it became rough, boulder strewn. I swerved to avoid a rock and the right edge gave way and there we hung precariously above the trees and the roaring Allegheny below. Joe said he noticed an old jeep parked at a shack back down the hill. We walked back and found a gray tarpaper shack with half a door, the place moonshine was made and bad things happened to out a towners.

Joe knocked on the door and appeared a wizened old man, unshaven. He looked to be 100 years old and was in fact, quite toothless. We explained our plight and he yelled to someone in the shack (we thought he was alone) a filthy little boy appeared and was instructed by the old man to “go get the rope yea big around as your pxxxr”. In only a few moments the boy appeared and the antique jeep pulled my mustang right back onto the “road”. Joe gave “Gums”, as he has been later called, a dollar and the old man jumped for joy, -kicked up his heels. I had never seen someone kick up heels before. We felt as far from home as Mars, or even Arizona.

As a 10 year old living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whose fishing exploits then, excited trips with dad to the Delaware Canal, river or Cooks Creek in Upper Bucks County, such places were odd and exotic as the Grand Canyon, or even the Desert and Cactus, or salmon streams in Atlantic Canada or Alaska.

So armed with my car and some gas, that old rusty stove I inherited from mom reluctantly (she still used it when the power was off), I ventured next out by myself to Huntsdale, where I had fished with dad since the spring of 1966………………


Copyright Joseph Manduke 2008 All rights reserved