We could have parked there, of course. Right next to the bridge on K highway, that cool crisp September evening in Ripley county Missouri. But that would have given a passing game warden a reason to check for a fishing license and we simply couldn’t be bothered with such trifling details. We had bigger fish to fry that night.
You see, earlier that evening we had fired up that old 67 international Scout and hooked it up to a 2 wheeled farm trailer and threw the 12 foot aluminum boat onto the trailer. I grabbed the fishing gig from under the eaves of the lean-to. Now the gig was a 12 foot wooden pole with a sharp series of barbs of on the end and I threw that in the boat along with the spotlight ,a Coleman lantern , cooler and the last, most important detail, we had to “borrow” the new interstate battery out of dad’s 74 dodge flatbed truck so we waited until cover of darkness and then popped the hood and in about 30 seconds we had that battery out and safely stowed in the back of the scout and we roared into the night down Highway 21.
Just before we got to junction b, we could see Freeman’s pallet shop on the left. We knew the front door was never locked and it was a great place to stop on your way home from Prayer meeting of a Wednesday night. You would open that creaky metal door and the sweet smell of fresh sawdust would sweep out to meet you , if went into the tiny office on the left there was an old round front Frigidaire chock full of 16 ounce glass bottles of ice cold Mt Dew And Pepsi. An old coffee lid on top of the fridge had a slot cut in it and crudely written in magic marker, “Pop 25 cents” As far as I know Freeman never got robbed either. But tonight we were in a hurry and we drove right by the shop and turned left on B highway, right there by Tipton’s Café. The first drive on the left was the Byler house and we pulled in to pick up Lloyd. You see all driveways in Carter county had regular old brown creek gravel on them , but Freeman found a place that had white limestone gravel and he did his driveway in that, even put a couple glass balls out at the end of his drive, until a concerned brother driving by rebuked him for having pride and the balls were removed , just in time for communion if I remember correctly.
Freeman had a lot of outbuildings crammed floor to ceiling with treasures he had bought at auctions over the years and as a kids , we spent hours looking through it and trying to figure out what the old tools and parts were from.
Lloyd came out carrying several 2 liters of soda and we set off again, down the long hill past the church and school, And then right on K until we got to a little unmarked dirt road and we turned off to the right. We jumped out and locked the hubs in 4 x 4 and then back inside again as we slogged along going through mud holes so deep that the trailer scattered across the mud. We found a little turn off to the left that went through an abandoned farm field with 20 foot high brush and parked there beside the Little Black river that dark moonless night in 1982.
Our love for gigging had started a week before on the current river with an 18 foot wooden Jon boat. The miller boys showed up, and Linford heard the fish were so easy to gig that he brought a pitchfork along. We wisely made him leave it behind We are observed a couple of other fellers gigging on the river and where they had a series of spot lights mounted on a bar connected to a generator, we had a single 12 V battery and a hand-held spotlight. We pushed the boat off from Porter’s dock and headed up stream.
Now the current river flows rather swiftly so the key was to just barely move along upstream , with outboard motor barely at an idle , which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, but Somehow we managed to get 6 or 8 fish that night. But the competition was heavy and the fish in short supply . So we decided to hit the smaller Little Black the next time
The Hindall boys showed up and we loaded up the boat with our gear and pushed off. The night sounds of tree frogs and cicadas mingled with the rippling of the clear cold water and the murmur of the paddle as we pushed along. Glen started out with the gig. And for some reason maybe because I was the youngest, I was the paddle man. “Stop, I see one ” Glen would yell. I stopped paddling. “Back up dammit” he yelled possibly scaring any fish within 5or 6 miles into hiding . “Ever heard of inertia?” I yelled back “if you want me to stop let me know ahead of time “. Steve and Nate seemed to get a kick out of our pleasant banter.
We must have gotten our rhythm synchronized at some point, because fish started piling up in the old galvanized bucket, Suckers we called them. They had a suction like mouth and tasted just fine, once momma breaded them and fried them up in the old cast iron skillet. We tried many times without success to gig a pickerel pike , but they were too fast . Horse Conner said you had to aim a foot in front of them to account for their lighting fast reflexes. But we never had any luck. Every now and then an illegal rock bass made its way into the bucket. Always the feller holding the gig at the moment would loudly declare that he was unable to tell the difference , “Too dark” , or “water too rippling” were some common defenses.
Steve sat at the rear of the boat and cleaned the fish and proclaimed with a chuckle that the Hindal’s always got stuck with the dirty work . We never heard that boy complain, and his laugh would have put a smile on Bernie Sanders face I do believe. Their daddy never came to church except on Sunday evenings when we had hymn singing . Then his tenor voice would ring out in that old church house along B highway. You see they had a piano in their house, and Music was forbidden in our church so he was not welcome as a member. “
Well along about 2 am we had about 40 fish and were making our way upstream back to the Scout The shouting had died down and the moon had slipped behind a cloud, when an explosion shook the boat and everything went dark. Lloyd yelled out that he had been shot, but once we found a flashlight it turned out that were all ok except for ringing in the ears. Apparently, having a battery hooked to a spotlight right next to a gas Coleman lantern is a bad idea. It blew the top half of that battery clear out of the boat. The worse part was that it happened to be Dads (Borrowed) battery and it had passed on to its reward. Steve was sitting next to it and got some acid on his clothes and worse than that, it ruined a couple of fish .
We pulled up to the bank of the little black and Lloyd built a fire so we could dry off. Glen and I assessed the repercussions of fessing up to dad about the battery and voted in favor of avoiding that fire and brimstone. Nate overheard us and mentioned that he had an identical interstate battery in his car that he would gladly unload for $40. We agreed that that was a bargain in comparison to the alternative and we pooled our limited resources and handed over the cash Upon returning home, we eased that replacement battery back in the Dodge , put our share of the fish in the old round front refrigerator on the front porch and shuffled off to bed . The Little Black had taken back her fair share of what she had given up that night. But we would be back
