by Bob Thompson
She told me much the same thing when I, a reluctant piano student of my mother, accurately but with poor tempo played a piece for her. Granny said, “Robert, you need to slow down. Remember, the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves.”
It seemed that the spaces between whatever I did were spent with Granny at the store. I caught the school bus at the store and got off there every afternoon. She and I watched our favorite shows on the community’s first black-and-white Sentinel television. There was no babysitter or day care, but Granny and the store were always open for me.
On summer mornings work crews assembled on the front porch for hauling hay, cutting tobacco, or building a barn, returning for lunch and at the end of the day. Fishing forays launched from the porch most of the year. In fall and winter, rabbit-, quail-, duck-, goose-, and squirrel-hunting adventures began and ended there, the results told and retold around the big stove, fueled with buckets of coal brought in from the pile out back, my one permanent chore.
I experimented and built things in the toolroom/shop on the back porch of the store and filled my car at Granny’s gas pumps before dates. In the summers between college semesters I came back to the store to recharge.
Granny made the longest trip of her life when she came to my college graduation in Lexington. Afterward she gave me a graduation present. By putting $20 a month into an envelope, she had saved up $1,200 “to get you started,” she said.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked, fully expecting me to purchase something tangible and sensible like an automobile. After a moment’s reflection, I blurted, “I want to spend the summer in Europe.” Her facial expression told me this was not an option she had considered, so, putting it in terms I thought she might understand, I said, “The timing is right, Granny.” I explained that I had completed a college education, was without wife, children, job, or other attachments, and there might not be another space in my life when I would be as unencumbered. The time was simply right for me to see the world. She understood.
I saw the world but not much of Granny after that, and Granny never got to see her great-grandchildren. She died suddenly on February 9, twenty-three years to the day after my grandfather’s untimely demise, her timing faithful.
Granny is in the spaces, between all the words of all my stories.
The first half of this book fills the spaces between Mom’s brief notes and Granny’s stitches, with rhythms from my own, less neutral perspective.
After a short transition from one generation and century to the next, the second half of the book provides context between the spaces of my own list of heartfelt items gleaned from travel receipts, photos, sporadic diaries, and ticket stubs from trains, airlines, and ferries. They are poignant memories flashing through the cloud of time: community, friends, family, pets with personalities, adventures, and the indignities of growing old.
The more numerous but shorter stories in these later chapters are no doubt representative of our society’s changing attention span, which closely matches the length of a song or music video, and in fact were produced for the Kentucky Homefront radio show where I metaphorically sit on the communal front porch again, inserting stories of travel, family, and friends between the equally homegrown songs of guest musicians.
Stories throughout the offering have their genesis in the tradition of Mom’s reporter’s notes and Granny’s stitches, documenting a sliver of time when a silent note struck inside, vibrating me to the core, but whose place and importance were not immediately identifiable. Like Mom perusing her archives, and Granny sorting through quilt pieces, I dug through these personal poignancies, peeling away the layers to expose the kernel of wisdom, beauty, or truth that first flashed the light of consciousness. Having mined a nugget, I stitched the excavated debris into a landscape, highlighting the treasure and laughing about the discovery.
It is left to the reader’s preference where to pause between sentences and story pieces, in search of treasures and lines of their own, not yet written.
Bunk’s Bull
The land and people of the Jackson Purchase Region of far western Kentucky are defined by its multiple rivers, a fisherman’s paradise of tributaries and oxbow lakes, restocked every year by the annual floods of early winter. In my youth there wasn’t a river, lake, creek, or farm pond within five miles of Ragland that I didn’t dip a hook into.
When I was ten, the aquatic environment revealed my first universal nugget of truth and wisdom, which counseled many later decisions: the pond with the biggest fish is always in a field guarded by the meanest bull.
Most of the regulars on the front porch of Granny’s country grocery had been fishing buddies of my grandfather, and not a warm-weather day went by without a fishing expedition launching from its confines. The store provided a meet-up place for anglers itching to “go try ’em” and an appreciative audience to applaud the results of a good day on the water. If the day’s catch was of any note—bluegill, crappie, bass, catfish, or the occasional novelty of an alligator gar—it would be on display in the bed of a pickup truck.
Until their last days, old men waiting, having slowly and cruelly been weaned off life’s other pleasures, could still be propped on a chair or boat seat with pole in hand, to stare out across hopeful waters, shed life’s cares, and be relevant again. Especially if they brought home supper.
I wanted to be relevant, but absent a sponsoring adult for boat fishing, I was confined to angling from the bank at nearby lakes, creeks, or farm ponds. My home pond belonged to our next-door neighbor, Raymond Long. The little barnyard impoundment was a football field or so north of the store, at the corner where Vaughn Road intersected Odgen Landing. After a few chaperoned outings with my dad, I was allowed to go alone, if I told family of my intended whereabouts. It was at this sanctuary of boyhood that I caught my first fish, not minding that it was slightly smaller than the wooden bobber I’d chosen from my grandfather’s tacklebox.
Gaining experience, my best buddy and closest boyhood neighbor “Crockett” (because his name was David) and I would meet at Raymond’s other pond, across a hay field near Crockett’s house, or later still, I could walk through Humpy Morehead’s cow pasture to his new pond. Finally, I graduated to riding my bicycle to the pond of Bunk Carneal, my school bus driver and husband of my third-grade teacher Vernona, which was a half mile down toward Monkey’s Eyebrow.
Bunk’s pond had some of the biggest fish a person could imagine, and I was welcome there anytime as long as I stopped at the house and asked him or Vernona (also my first cousin twice removed) for permission. On the store porch Bunk had bragged about crappie in his pond that weighed three or four pounds, bluegill as large as his hand (he had big hands), and catfish the size of a man’s leg! The only dark cloud on the otherwise sunny scenario was Bunk’s big and not-so-friendly Hereford bull, who held firmly to the opinion that the entire field, including the pond, was his private domain and took a dim view of trespassers.
The bull’s possessive attitude presented one of my earliest conundrums, making me think hard about possible remedies. In scouting forays on my bicycle, I began to observe the big bovine’s habits closely, and after a while began noticing a pattern in the old bull’s daily routine. The big persimmon tree toward the back of the field, which had a thick patch of clover growing around it, was a favorite spot for the grouchy old bovine to spend sunbaked afternoons lounging in its shade and rubbing himself against its bark. I discovered that if I left my bicycle parked in Bunk’s yard and quietly sneaked along the road ditch to where the pond bank blocked the view from the back of the field, I could crawl under the barbed-wire fence unobserved and have full access to the pond. I could get in three or four hours of good fishing and be gone before the bull came for his afternoon drink. Utilizing this method, I caught many notable fish, but none bigger than the monster I hooked into on the afternoon of my twelfth birthday.
After a successful clandestine trip to get in position, I arranged my
gear and threaded a fat nightcrawler on the hook, tossing it out to the center of the pond, bottom fishing for catfish without a cork. Only then did I take time to admire the brand-new rod and reel presented to me that morning for my birthday. It was a pleasingly green Johnson reel with more buttons, bells, and knobs than I knew how to operate; and because I was always more of a hands-on learner, I had not bothered to read the manual. From general fishing knowledge and a cursory reading of its box, I knew that somewhere on the reel was a drag or line-slippage adjustment to vary the relationship between the crank lever and the tension it exerted on the nylon monofilament fishing line. If the fish was pulling harder on the line than the current slippage setting, any amount of cranking on the reel would have little effect in bringing the fish to the bank. To warn of this undesirable occurrence, a “drag clicker option” was available to alert the angler. I wasn’t sure which of the several buttons or knobs controlled that feature, but I was proud of all its myriad capabilities, whatever they were. The orange Shakespeare fiberglass rod had seven or eight increasingly smaller eyelets that guided the line out to the tip end and a cork handle that was supposed to allow it to float safely if it fell in the water.
I daydreamed about how this was the sort of rig, if properly cleaned and oiled after every use, would last for years and years. My grandkids might even use this outfit, just as I had used my grandfather’s old open-faced rod and reel before I got this one.
While I was in the midst of presenting my prized possession to my grandkid, there was a sharp tug at the end of the rod. As I pulled back hard to set the hook, the pole was nearly jerked out of my hand. I pulled back again, this time cranking on the handle to spool the line in, but the new contraption was making a loud clicking noise and the fish was going in the opposite direction across the pond. No matter how fast I rotated the handle, the line was whizzing out faster than I could crank it back in and making that alarmingly loud noise. Fearing that through some knob-setting oversight the inner gears were being stripped to shreds, I regretted not paying more attention to the manual. I pulled back and tried to fiddle with some of those gizmos and switches to tighten the drag control and shut off that maddening noise. I tried to remember what size test-line the reel had come with and seemed to remember it was no more than six-pound line. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I tried to pull and crank at less than six pounds as the line zigzagged back and forth across the surface of the pond. What in the world had I hooked into?
I must have fought for five minutes before it finally broke water in the center of the pond. Lord, it was a catfish a foot wide across his head. I had never seen a fish that big except for the picture in my mom’s family picture album. In that picture, my grandfather was holding a catfish by the gills at belt level and the fish’s tail was dragging the ground. This was a fish to equal that and it was tiring, I could tell, putting up less resistance. It was rolling up no more than six or seven feet out from the bank.
How was I going to get this thing home? As Mark Twain once said, “Nobody with a full stringer of fish goes home by the way of the back alley.” I couldn’t hang him from a stringer on my handlebars and ride my bicycle. I’d have to lay him across the handlebars and push my bike home from Bunk’s. Cars would slow down to get a good look and toot their horns, and some would even stop to ogle this monster. Then I would come around the corner at the store and all the old fellows sitting out there would oooh and ahh as I covered the last distance up to the front porch. I’d have to explain how much a fight he’d put up and that I was only using six-pound line, or maybe it was only four-pound line. Then we would all go in the store for the official weighing-in ceremony on scales in Granny’s store and take a picture of the readout for submission to Field and Stream and the Paducah Sun-Democrat newspaper. We would put wax paper on the scales and lay the fish on the weighing machine that was annually certified by the state and there wouldn’t be any arguments about his size. Then Mom would take a picture of me and the fish with her Kodak and I would take my rightful place beside my grandfather in the family picture album for generations to marvel at.
As the generations were marveling, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye over toward the pond levee. Momentarily diverting my attention from the epic battle already joined, a serious new complication in the form of that damned old bull reared its huge ugly head. Pausing briefly to survey the situation, he picked up speed, coming straight toward me. I took inventory of my vulnerable situation. There were several distance and time variables to consider: first, the bull’s approximate speed and his distance from me; second, how far the fish was from the bank and how quickly I might expect to land him; and finally, the distance between me and the fence. All systems told me that if things stayed constant there was a small but narrow window for keeping my dreams intact. As the seconds passed and the massive bull loomed larger and closer, the fish and the fence seemed to grow farther and farther away, but there was still hope because the fish was weaker and fighting less. He was within two feet of the bank when the bull, not thirty feet away, shifted from a fast walk to a trot and the control console in my head started flashing red: Abort! Abort!
Commencing evacuation procedures, I threw my rod into a patch of cattails at the edge of the pond, hoping it would somehow become entangled, tossed my tackle box over the fence, and dove for the narrow space below the last strand of barbed-wire fence. I hit the ground rolling and popped to my feet in the ditch on the other side of the wire barrier just as the bull skidded to a halt in the field. I wasn’t focused on how close I was to the angry bull; I was trying to see around him to watch what was going on with that fish and my new equipment. There was a knot in my stomach as I watched the cork handle sticking out of the water, bobbing at an angle as it left the cattails, making a V-shaped wake as it slid to the center of the pond, then pointing straight up before disappearing like a submarine periscope.
When I looked back, the old bull had not taken his eye off me, standing there mean and ugly and proud of it. There wasn’t anything proud about me. I was hopping mad. Retrieving what was left of my fishing gear, I turned and started back toward my bike. The closer I got to Bunk’s yard the angrier I got. There weren’t going to be any cars stopping and tooting their horns. There wasn’t going to be any weighing-in ceremony at the store and I’d never have my picture in the family picture album beside my grandfather; besides that, I’d have to explain to all the old fellows on the front porch what had happened to my brand-new fishing outfit.
I zoomed around the corner in full view of the store’s front porch, its bench nearly full of locals, and didn’t slow down or look their way. Instead, I headed up the gravel driveway beside the store and slid to a stop at the back porch. Leaving my bike on its kickstand, I headed into the side room of the back porch to get my Daisy Model 25 pump BB gun and, still avoiding all human contact, walked around the other side of the store, crossed the parking lot and road, and hopped over the fence.
I was headed across the field toward the rear corner of Bunk’s field where the back corner of his property ran up against James Long’s woodlot. The corner post of the boundary fence was an aged beech tree, and along the entire edge of the woods several generations of fences had been encased into large oak and hickory trees. The year before I had helped Bunk put the latest layer of woven wire over the rusty remnants of the previous fencing, now deeply and forever embedded into solid wood. It was a thick tangled steel web that I felt sure could not be easily penetrated by even the most determined bull.
When I arrived at the woods I didn’t try to keep my presence a secret. I started shuffling leaves, shouting, and firing my BB gun at hickory nuts, birds, squirrels, and whatever else had the misfortune to present itself before my foul mood.
As I hoped, it wasn’t long before my nemesis heard the commotion and came to investigate. Standing with my back to the fence and glancing over my shoulder, I pretended not to notice as he approached. Keeping my back to him, I persisted in shooting, shuf
fling, and cussing till he decided to get my attention.
He let out a low, long moooooo to announce his presence. I slowly turned toward him, lowered my head, and through the matted fencing matched his moooooo and, shaking my head, raised him a loud snort: phubbbbbbbb. Surprised, he backed off a step, then came back with a snort, lowering his head. Now breathing heavily, pawing the ground, and sending huge chunks of dirt flying up over his back, he looked ready to lunge into the fence at any second.
I had to admit that a two-thousand-pound bull, five foot tall at his shoulders and two foot wide across his head, standing three feet away, breathing heavily and pawing the ground, looked pretty frightening and invincible.
But every country boy knows that no matter what his size, every seemingly invincible bull has, dangling beneath him, a point of obvious vulnerability. I quickly stepped to one side and sent a Crosman Copperhead BB directly into that vulnerable area.
The bull’s head jerked up and his eyes got big. Most men are familiar with that momentary time lag between the intellectual realization of a blow to the sensitive area and when nerve cells confirm the painful reality as sweat breaks out on the forehead.
His eyes narrowed, and his head went down again. He was bellowing so loud and fierce that I froze for a moment as he smashed into the tangle of rusty metal directly in front of me. I instinctively leapt sideways for cover behind the hickory tree and quickly pumped my gun before jumping out from my cover to send another BB to its target from the other flank. Again I took refuge behind the tree as he backed off and slammed his broad head directly into the tree with a thud, sending hickory nuts, dead limbs, and a frightened squirrel crashing down. The last charge and impact addled him a bit as I stepped from behind the tree and started yelling, “How does it feel now, asshole? Make me lose my birthday present and look like a fool! Mess with me and see what you get. Asshole!”