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Our Family Fishing Trips
One of my fondest memories of the Coney family is of the fishing trips
to the South Sulphur River. (We called it a "creek.") Several times a
year the men--my Grandad and his sons Lowell (my dad), Buster, Dave, and
Edgar--would go fishing, then bring back the fish to be cooked at home.
These fish were always a welcome change to our diets. Then two or three
times a year they would take all of their families along. What a treat!
We lived in the country about five miles southeast of Ladonia , and the
trip from home to the river took about an hour and a half. That by
itself was exciting. We rode in the back of pickups, or on the running
boards of the cars, hooting and hollering all the way. Our mothers,
dads, the babies, and our necessary cooking items were inside the cars.
At the creek, we kids would travel along the banks finding all sorts of
treasures, looking for frogs, unusual bugs, even snakes, playing
hide-and-go-seek, climbing trees, or swinging on vines from those trees
over the creek, Tarzan-fashion. Once the older (not necessarily wiser)
kids devised a new game. The bigger kids pulled over a sapling's top
till it almost touched the ground. Then one of them put my sister, Gwen,
on the top branches. Almost too late, I realized what was happening and
yelled, "Hang on tight, Gwennie!" Just then the bigger kids let the top
of the sapling go--and had she NOT been "hanging on tight," she would
have been slung into the middle of next week. The mothers and dads
stopped that game right away, thank goodness.
We took a ball along, and would look for the best tree limb we could
find to use for a bat, then played baseball.
The men picked their
spot in the creek very carefully. They had been going to this same area
for several years and knew where the big fish preferred to live. It was
usually in a wide, deep part of the creek that gradually tapered to a
narrow, shallower "neck." They carried a big seine along. It was placed
at the wide entry to the fishing hole to prevent the fish from swimming
back upstream. Then some of the men got into the water, side by side,
and with their arms swinging back and forth in the water, they edged
forward slowly toward the narrow neck, "herding" the fish in front of
them. Two of the men were positioned at this spot, and as the fish tried
to get past them, they would catch the fish and toss them up onto the
creek bank. Of course they never caught all of the fish. They only took
as many fish as were needed to feed the families that were there, then
left some of them to grow and produce more fish for the next year. The
location of these "fishing holes" was a family secret, since they did
not want others to "fish out" their "holes."
Although our mothers always seemed happy to go on those fishing trips,
I'm sure that sometimes they were not as happy as they appeared to be.
The had to cook over open fires, and since it was always warm (?)
weather when we went on those jaunts, their faces were always red as
beets and streaked with perspiration. They took a big cast-iron wash pot
in which to cook the fish and a large coffeepot to make coffee. Desserts
were made at home and carried with us. One luxury food was the loaves of
bread bought at the store. And that was what we had! Fried fish, "light"
bread, coffee, and desserts! Oh, boy! What a feast! But the pots and
pans were blackened with smoke at the end of the day. Cleaning those
items the next day was a chore, as was washing our dirty clothes.
Of course the kids always wanted to go swimming. The dads let us swim
after they had "fished out" the swimming hole and checked it for snakes.
With our dads telling us the water was safe, we fully believed it and
had the time of our lives. We didn't have swimming suits, we just wore
some of our old clothes. Our dads were always close by in case we got
into trouble.
Late in the afternoon, we would head for home,
sunburned, mud-caked, covered with chigger bites, full of fresh-caught
catfish--and quite sure that NO ONE ever had as much fun as the Coney
clan. Those were the days!
Lowell McCormack
Gainesville, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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