THE FISHING HOLE

As a child I spent most weekends with Pa and my grandmother. It was my refuge. While we did not fish every weekend, we did fish many weekends. It would be fishing the small mountain streams of North Carolina where I would learn the value of having a grandfather who believed nothing on this earth, was more important than our moment.

Such a moment began early one spring morning as I was awaken to the smell of eggs scrambled with cheese, chip beef gravy and drop biscuits. While this menu may never have appeared in Martha Stewart Living it was the breakfast of champions for a young fisherman.

After breakfast we loaded the car and pulled out of the drive way. Our goal was to be standing in the fishing hole just before the sun peeked over the treetops. Until that morning this fishing hole had no name. That would soon change.

We were after the trout Pa had been trying to catch for a while. It was the big one that kept getting away. Standing in the current at dawn, cold water running over our boots, we were ever so quiet. Though I was only ten years old the memory of that morning is as clear as water cascading from a mountain.

Pa was in his element as he pulled the line from his reel, gracefully casting just above the spot where the big one was holding. Morning had broken but on the dark side of the mountain the sun had not yet shone its face.

It was the perfect presentation. His line was drifting in the current over the rocks and just as it approached the area where the water gets a little deeper and moves a little slower, Splash!

However, the splash was not in front of Pa. It was behind him. It was not the rainbow taking the bait it was the grandson taking the plunge. I slipped on a rock and fell. The rainbow would live to fight another day, but I came up from the water wet and cold. I knew I had blown our chance at the big one. Looking to Pa I asked, “Can we go to the car?”

With a chuckle he nodded his head and offered his hand. To Pa the boy was more important than the fish. While the big one eluded our catch that morning the fishing hole earned its name. It would be, “the hole where Bi'no fell in”.


I have a picture, which sits on a nightstand in our bedroom. In the photo I am sitting between my father and grandfather on a sofa. Pa is holding his first great grandson. Looking at the snap shot of a special day in our family I have often wondered, “What’s he thinking?”


Something in my soul sees what he sees. He is looking ahead a few years when the two of them will be standing in the cold current of a mountain stream somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Chances are they are fishing the hole where Bi'no fell in and more than likely Pa has already told Brandon the story.