First Trip to The Lake
My Dad was already a little leery of my intended new husband. After all, he was one those damn Yankees and if that wasn’t bad enough, he was also Irish. In fact, he told me flat out, if I married him and he didn’t treat me right, “he knew people.” Dad was old school Italian in a lot of ways. His father was born in Italy, and his mother’s family came to America when she was just a girl. When I was five, I remember visiting great Grandma who didn’t speak any English and ate meadowlarks. She gave me wine in a little juice glass and before I could sip the heady offering of Mogan David, it was scooped away. S
o now, for the first time, my Dad was taking the two of us, the Yankee fiancé and me, to the lake house for the weekend. Fishing was a way of life for my Dad and this was a test to see if he was going to be able to tolerate this foreigner. It would be a three hour drive in my Dad’s old brown Buick Skylark. I actually tried to recall years later why the hell I was in the back seat since I get dreadfully car sick—and then it hit me—they both smoked back then, so they were up front with the windows cracked and I was relegated to the back seat to serve as beer tender.
The lake house was situated in a dry county which meant if you wanted something to drink you better bring it with you. So, we settled in, just after 5:00 o’clock traffic thinned with three hours ahead of us.
Dad and the Yankee were up front and I was minding a cold case of Bud in the back. It is a historically important thing to know that no laws existed at that time against drinking and driving—for Pete’s sake, we didn’t even have seat belts much less any restrictions that might keep travelers from downing a cool one or two in transit to their destination just to beat the heat. After all, this was Texas.
The miles began to click away and the Buds began to dwindle. It wasn’t long before my Dad and the Yankee were swapping stories and laughing. I knew everything was going to work out fine when the case was almost gone and the need to stop along the roadside became critical. Me—I held it. I was not about to go behind some abandoned building in the dark in the bushes. However, the two of them disappeared and I could still hear them laughing and talking through the lizard draining process. And so began 30 years of trips to the lake with me and, what I am sure he came to feel was his second son where it was always 5:00 o’clock somewhere or my favorite—beer-thirty.
At the lake, my Dad was the supervisor of everything from repair projects to cooking; instructing me that you always have to add brown sugar to spaghetti sauce because that was grandma’s secret ingredient. Our two girls grew up knowing how to fish and the tiny house at the lake was often filled wall to wall with sleeping bags and air mattresses when my brother’s family and ours all converged at one time. Easter was always at the lake. We still laugh about the time my nephew Ian ended up having to sleep in the laundry room because that was the only available floor space.
There is always a great deal of excitement and anticipation going to the lake. As each girl in turn grew out of her car seat we would let her escape the seat belt to sit on the folddown middle arm in the back when we turned onto the bumpy road, a sliver of unpaved gravel that would wind down through the last bit of the piney woods that led to Dad and Peggy’s.
The trip to the lake has several landmarks like that—the Diboll cut where we turn off the Interstate, the bridge where we get our first glimpse of the lake—is it choppy, smooth, up, down, were people fishing; and then that abandoned building which I think is a real estate office now that marks the pit stop from that first trip.
The Yankee became famous for “one last cast” even if the boat was already underway to head back to the house. You would always hear my Dad chide him, “Shaun get your damn line in.” There were lots of fishing stories like the time we caught a catfish so big we had to nail it to the tree to skin it—and the time a raccoon stole all the fish out of the cooler. The alltime best story was when Shaun caught a “wallbanger” which is a trophy fish large enough to have mounted for your wall. This one still hangs in our living room. It was—typically—his “one last cast” as Dad pulled up the anchor. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. And then as if by magic, it hit; a 10-pound big mouth bass or so the story goes. As the hook set in his mouth it rose up like Moby Dick out of the water writhing back and forth, a motion the Yankee still imitates every time he tells the story. Everyone got deathly quiet and Dad started shouting instructions, “get the net, get the net, don’t put it in the water yet, you’ll scare him off. Shaun, go easy don’t jerk your line, keep the tension, let me see what your drag is set on. Give him a little play; you don’t want him to break the line, easy does it. Keep your rod tip up.” Shaun never said a word; the color had all but drained from his face. We all held our breath until the behemoth was safely lying in the bottom of the boat. My Dad and Shaun had caught the fish. If he had been accepted before, it was now official. Shaun was a legitimate member of the family, a true East Texas fisherman. It was a joyous occasion as we all let out a yell. There was much beer and cheer.
Being with my Dad is always a celebration. It’s just his nature. He can see the humor and the fun in almost any situation. All I know about loving and living life, courage, fortitude and spaghetti sauce I learned from him. It’s been a good lesson.
