Feuds and Fishing

I've talked a bit about our house in East Kermit before, and there were several events there that stuck in my mind.  The houses were brick, and all identical to each other.  We had the first house in the row of four, and our next door neighbors were the Web family.  They had two boys, but they were both a bunch older than all of us. The youngest of the two was Butch, and he had one brown eye and one yellow eye.  The yellow eye was almost identical in color to the eyes of their pet cat.

We moved to East Kermit from Lando Mines when I was still three - almost four, and my sister Margaret was born.  The house at Lando wasn't big enough for us all any more.  Me and Ed shared one bedroom, and Ingrid and Margaret another.  We had a huge garden out back, plus a chicken coop with about 10 hens and one rooster.  I loved gathering the eggs from the nests everyday...sometimes they were still warm from the hens sitting on them.  The coop had an nice earthy, straw smell that I can still remember today.

Down the hill from our house was the Tug river.  Actually it was officially the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, which was way too many words.  On the other side of the river was Kentucky.  The river was kind of famous in those parts because it separated the Hatfields from the McCoys...the families that had one of the most notorious family feuds in US history.  Our family was on the side of the Hatfields, and our great uncle Willis Hatfield was the last surviving person from the feud.  He'd been a boy of six when his dad, Devil Anse Hatfield had led his family in the shooting war with the McCoys.  You can see Willis in the picture below...he's standing on the far right, with a .45 revolver in his hand and his dad Devil Anse is to the left with the rifle.   He loved to tell us stories about the feud, and as he got older, the stories got wilder and wilder.  When he was in his 80s, National Geographic featured him in a story about the famous feud.  The feud began in 1863 and ended in 1891.

The Hatfield Family

Sometimes when I'd go down by the river, I'd pretend I was shooting at McCoys on the other side.  In reality, at least one McCoy had actually been killed there on the banks of the Tug.  I was only allowed to go down to river with my dad, and that wasn't very often.  Usually we'd fish and talk quietly, catching the occasional catfish or two.  Catfish don't have scales like other fish, and my dad showed me how to skin them.  We would make a cut in a circle all the way around the base of the head and then use pliers to pull the skin off.  You had to be very careful of the sharp barbells that stuck out of their face like whiskers.  I got stuck once, and it stung like a bee, and took a long time to heal.

I loved fishing there, and just never got to go often enough.  So, I decided to solve that problem.  Me and Ed's bedroom had a window that opened to the rear of the house.  I made a plan to sneak out after bedtime and go fishing on my own.  I figured that now that I was four, I was all grown up and could do my own fishing.  So, I put all my fishing gear at the base of the window outside one evening, and then went back in the house.  We all went to bed soon after it got dark, and I just acted like usual that evening.  When Ed was sound asleep, I got up and went to the window.  It slid up easily, and I swung my leg up on the sill, and pulled myself up.  Next I held on the sill with both hands, and hung down as far as I could outside the house.  My feet didn't reach the ground, and I got scared that maybe I'd have to fall a long way.

It was too late to change my mind, because I wasn't able to pull myself back up....so I finally just let go.  I didn't think things through very well, and I landed on top of all my fishing gear, making quite a racket.  I held my breath, and waited for someone to come running out of the house...but nothing happened.  I got up, and dusted myself off.  Now another poor bit of planning became evident...it was so dark I could barely see.  I felt around on the ground, found my pole, and then the little tackle box that dad had given me.  Picking up both, I started moving slowly down the way toward the river.

As some point the clouds parted and some moonlight came through, making navigating the path a whole lot easier.  When I got to the muddy bank, I was feeling the excitement of the night air, and the anticipation of maybe catching my first fish on my own.  I baited up and threw my line out into the slow current.  Then I squatted down to wait.  No bites for a long time, so I reeled in and saw my bait was gone.  So, I repeated the cycle, and this time dragged up a piece of drift wood to sit on.  I had just sat down when I got a nice bite, and I yanked the rod hard.  I had a fish on!  I got really excited and started laughing as I reeled that fish in.  It was a small carp...not a fish you could eat, but it was the very first fish I had ever caught alone.  I shook it off the hook, and started to bait up again.

I heard the rain coming before I felt it.  It was blowing in up the river towards me...not a downpour, but raining plenty hard enough to get me wet.  I decided that it was time to head for home, and picked up everything and started up the bank.  With the fresh rain, it was slick and I fell - smearing mud all over my hands and pants.  Ugh!  I wiped my hands on the grass and got going again.  As the rain came down even harder, I picked up my pace to almost a run.  With the clouds back over the moon, I couldn't see much, but knew the way by memory.

As I got near the house I slowed down, and looked.  No lights on, and dead silence.  I walked over to the open window, and my heart dropped into my stomach.  I looked way up at the window sill, and realized that there was no way in the world that I could climb back up there.  I looked around for something to drag over and climb up on, and saw an old bucket.  I turned it over, and stepped on top of it.  I could just barely reach the window's edge with both hands.  I jumped up a bit, and grabbed on hard.  I tried to pull myself up, and used my feet against the wall to help.  But they were slick with mud, and kept sliding off.  I finally got tired and let go - dropping back to the ground.

Now I knew I was in real trouble.  It was still raining, and my warm, safe bed was a world away from me.  I thought about going to my mom and dad's window and yelling for help, but knew that would lead to even more trouble if I got caught outside alone.  So, I walked to the back porch and sat down with my head in my hands to think.  Nothing brilliant came to me, so eventually I got up and tried the handle on the back door.  To my surprise the handle turned and the door opened.  I was saved!  I stepped into the kitchen quietly, and paused to listen.  Not a sound from anywhere.  I sneaked down the hall, opened the door to my room, and slipped inside.  I'd never been so happy to be in my room in my life.  I pulled off the wet clothes and shoes, and climbed into bed.  It was only a matter of seconds before I fell into a deep sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I looked down at the muddy mess of clothes and shoes on the floor, and tried to think of what to do.  I scrambled out of bed, and scooped them up and put them in the clothes hamper.  That would have to do for now.  I got back in bed, and waited until I heard my mom up and moving around in the kitchen.  Then I got up again and rubbing my sleepy eyes walked out of the room.  I was trying hard to look innocent and calm, but when I got to the kitchen my mom had both hands on her hips and was giving me "the look".  You know that look that only mom's have when their eyes are like x-ray machines, and they can look directly into you heart and mind, and see every little thing you've ever done wrong.

Mom started tapping her foot, and said "Henry?  Is there something you'd like to tell me?".  I thought hard about what to say, and tried to figure out if my mom knew about my midnight fishing trip, or was it something else.  I for sure didn't want to start explaining how I sneaked out, if that wasn't what she was wound up about.  When I didn't say anything right away, she pointed with the spatula in her hand at the floor.  There on the floor, clear as could be, were a set of muddy footprints coming in from the back door.  I knew it was useless to pretend ignorance, and said I'm sorry mom.  She looked at me closely, and asked "When did you go outside?"  I gulped and didn't say anything.  She asked me the same thing again a little louder.  I was really scared by now, and so stammered a bit, and then told my mom "Last night".  She looked surprised at first, and then narrowed her eyes, and said "Ok...tell me everything".

So, I did.  The whole story from beginning to end.  At first, she seemed to doubt what I was saying, and so took me outside to look at my window, and the side of the house had a bunch of mud smeared under the window, and the bucket lay there on it's side.  Mom's face got pale as she realized that I really had sneaked out and gone down to the river in the middle of the night all alone.  She said I could have drowned, and as she talked her face went from pale to red.  Now her voice got loud, and she "You know better than do a fool thing like that!  You could have drowned, and we'd have never known what happened to you!".

She was still holding the spatula in her right hand, and now she grabbed me with her left hand, and I knew I was going to get spanked with the "egg turner".  My mom would always say "Do I have to get my egg turner?" when we were getting rowdy...and we'd all settle down right away.  But she'd never actually used it on us before.  I knew I deserved what was coming, but wasn't going to go down easy.  As she pulled it back to whack my bum, I ran forward.  Her swing missed me, and so I kept running.  I was running in a circle around and around her as she kept swinging and kept missing me.  At first she was mad, but the whole thing was so darn silly, that her anger turned to laughter.  She stopped trying to hit me, and just let my arm go.  She stood there laughing a little more, and then got tears in her eyes.  She bent down and pulled me to her, and held me really tight.  She was crying now, and so was I.  She said "Please don't ever do anything like that again....you scared me so much.".  I think I finally understood just how much of a risk I had taken, and how lucky I was that nothing bad had happened.  I felt so bad that I'd made my mom cry.  So, I hugged her back as hard as I could and promised that I'd never do it again.

Lessons Learned:  If you are going to do something stupid and dangerous, then at least plan ahead well.  There really is no place like home, and a loving hug from mom.