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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
FISHIN’ WITH FRANK TAUGHT ME A LOT ABOUT LIFE
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
NOTE: I wrote the following story a year or so ago and I hesitated publishing it because I thought it was a bit self-indulgent and a trifle “sappy”; however, much to my surprise, after it appeared, I received many positive comments from a variety of sources. Most of them included the phrase “it made me cry”. Although that was not the intention, I understand. After a number of requests, here it is once more.His name was Frank. He had a 1954 greenish Chevrolet. He lived on Brush Street in Detroit and for a few years in the 1950s and early 1960s he had an impact upon an impressionable young lad sadly lacking in sophistication and any form of worldliness.
In my youth, I spent quite a bit of time at my grandparents’ place on the River Road in Dover. The bedroom that I slept in at that time had an upstairs window that faced the Thames River. In fact, the bed was on the same level as the window.
On sweet smelling, spring and summer nights I would fall asleep looking and listening to the river as it drifted by in no particular rush. In the morning, I would awake to the sound of cars, voices and laughter emanating from the river banks.
There was a small parcel of land near the river that, from early April to late October, played host, each weekend, to at least half a dozen cars all bearing Michigan license plates. I would rush down stairs, sleep still haunting my eyes, gulp down a quick breakfast, grab my old fishing rod, my dog and head for the river.
Although my primary mission was fishin’, I had a job to perform before I could slip into the fishing mode. I had to collect money from those parking down on our property. It was sort of an admission fee. I had a regular (and totally uninspired!) line that I would repeat to each new customer parked on our lot. I would say (I can still remember those memorable lines so well!); “I am here to collect the 25 cents per car plus 10 cents per person”. Thank goodness most would have their money out before I could utter my lines. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why they were always so quick to pay. Maybe they didn’t want to hear that robot-like line coming from my lips one more time!
My maternal grandmother was the “brains” behind this and countless other money-making schemes. As I heard her say on more than one occasion, “I didn’t go to Duncan McLachlan’s Business School to make meals and hoe in the garden all my life!”
My grandmother sold coffee, chickens, eggs, wood, and fishing worms (which she franchised out to me when I was old enough) and anything else that she could think of. In fact, there were times, when I was a bit mischievious, that I feared that I may have been on the auction block! She would come up with the ideas to supplement the family income and my genial grandfather, who was loved by one and all, would be the wonderfully effective low pressure salesman. So amiable, warm and welcoming was this man that he was given a “Canadian Good Will Ambassador Award” after some of the “fishermen down at the river” placed his name in nomination with the Canadian Government. Different times, eh?
In time, my grandmother used my sweet- faced smile and innocent looks to good use as the “Collector of the Fees” After all, who could deny a bit of loose change to a bare footed, freckled, farm boy? I must have conjured up images of a poor man’s Huck Finn of the Thames!
Of all “the fishermen” (we called them all that whether they were men or women) there was one man who took a particular interest in me. Frank taught me all he knew about fishing but more importantly he informed me of life as he knew it less than an hour away, from the tranquil banks of the Thames and the River Road, but so very far away in so many other ways.
It was the time of racial unrest in the United States and the race riots in Detroit were only a few years away. He told me once that if this were in Detroit there was no way that I would be allowed to fish with him. Wide-eyed and puzzled I stared in disbelief and asked “Why couldn’t I fish with you?”
Frank, in mock disbelief, said, “Don’t you know anything, boy? I’m black and you’re white”. In my innocence, I responded “But...what difference does that make? Why wouldn’t you want to fish with me in Detroit?”
“Oh, Jimmy, my boy, you have so much to learn but… I hope that you never do.”
We would, as the Thames lazily flowed by and as fish feasted on our bait, talk for hours on any number of subjects. Some things I understood while other concepts I did not understand for a few years and I suppose there are things I still don’t understand.
Frank told me about his life, his family, his hopes, his dreams and his frustrations. He told me, one dark day as the river roiled and dark ominous clouds moved in, that he feared a riot was coming in Detroit and that it would not be good but that it was inevitable.
“You can’t keep puttin’ people down and not expect them to push back”.
I learned a lot from Frank about a million different things but, as I got older, I had other things to occupy me on lazy summer afternoons that were no longer so carefree. I had outside jobs, places to go, friends to see and dates to go on. In short, I became a self-possessed, vacant teenager.
I saw less and less of Frank although he kept regular weekend appointments on the river. Our relationship soon evolved into quick waves, abbreviated conversations and a common theme in his greeting to me, “When you all comin’ back to the river to fish with me agin, Jimmy?” I always promised that I would do so very soon….once I finished whatever I was working on. But you know, as he did, that I never would.
Life, as it always seems to do, soon held me prisoner, and I rarely was at my grandparents’ place. I had a job, a wife, a child and taking time to fish was not even on my radar.
It was not until years later and after both my grandparents and my aunt had passed on that I got a call one early Saturday morning from the people renting my grandparents’ house. “There’s an old black man here who says that he knows you and wants permission to park and fish. He says that he’s “… still willing to pay Jimmy 25 cents for his car and ten cents for the right to fish for one person.”
The renters were skeptical and apologized for phoning me so early for such a ridiculous and, to them, strange request from a complete stranger. I told them that he was” no stranger” but a dear old friend and that he could park anywhere he wanted, anytime that he wanted and that, “ Jimmy would permanently waive the admission fee”.
It was, after all, the least I could do for a man who had taken the time and had the patience to teach a shallow lad so much about…fishin’.
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
