Lighting Up

I must have been four or five years old the first time I tried to “light up” using the cigarette lighter in his 1960 Ford Fairlane. I pushed in the button and waited patiently -- ”pop.” I took the red, hot lighter and slowly, deliberately touched it to the end of my tongue. When I told my daddy what I had done, he showed me how to curl my tongue so that when I blew out, with my tongue sticking out, the air would be forced through a sort of tunnel that lead to the tip of my sore tongue.

He took me to Moose Head for a coke. Moose Head was a fish camp on Lake Apopka about a half a mile from our house. I can’t remember the real name of this camp. All the fishermen called it Moose Head because there was a moose head mounted on the wall of the little convenience store that was part of the camp. My daddy was a commercial catfisherman who fished the fresh water lakes of central Florida. He was always working. This is the only time I can remember him taking me to the store for a coke. It didn’t occur to me then, but he must have cared a lot about my sore tongue. I know my daddy loved me. I don’t remember him ever saying, “I love you,” to me or to anyone. I do remember playing in his lap, combing his hair, and hugging him. I remember putting my face against his, and moving my face against the grain of those rough whiskers. I love my daddy. He was the best person I have ever known.

 

My First Summer Job

The summer between second and third grade I finally got to rack a trotline. My daddy had a special line for me. This line had grown shorter with age. It was only about 400 hooks long. Sometimes lines will get tangled and broken by alligators, large turtles or garfish. Occasionally lines get caught under a large rock or some other heavy object on the bottom of the lake and the only way to get them loose is to cut the line. In order to maintain the full 500 hooks, the missing pieces would be replaced. But as lines get older and near the end of their usefulness, you start letting them go. So, this old line and I would get to know each other well as its fishing days were just about over and mine we just beginning.

The first day I got to rack that line I could hardly wait to get started. Daddy helped me get set up. I used an old field crate that was intended for use in the orange grove, and a foot tub. The field crate was turned on its side so the openings that were usually up were facing out toward my feet. The crate lay lengthwise on the ground. I sat on one end and the racks sat on the other. An empty foot tub was turned up side down in front of me. The line was on the foot tub in front of me in another foot tub that Daddy had just put it in that morning. My racks looked different than the others. They were old like my line. They had been painted a few times with different colors of paint each time. Daddy was using red paint on the new racks. Mine were mostly silver with a little blue and green showing through some worn spots. Instead of twenty-five hook rows, mine were twenty. Each rack had eighty hooks. There were five racks and a total of 400 hooks.

I started racking my line that morning as soon as Daddy got home form taking up. There was a loop in each end of the line that was used to connect the lines together while putting out. Daddy had put the end of the line around the bale of the foot tub. I found the loop at the end of the line, and put it in the first notch. Then I put the three feet of line inside the racks on the tray. When I came to the first drop, I carefully pulled it up over the rest of the pile of line. I found the hook at the end of the drop, and carefully removed it from the pile with my left hand. I put the drop inside the racks with the main line, and left only the hook and a couple inches of line outside the racks. I gently pulled the drop into the notch to secure the hook in place. I was racking.

It wasn’t long before I pulled up a tangle. Sometimes the lines would get tangled in the lake. I had caused this one by pulling the hooks up too high away from the pile before unhooking them. Sometimes a hook would lie on top of the pile and all you had to do was pull the line up and the hook would separate form the pile. Hooks have a way of hooking themselves to everything. Most hooks had to be separated from the pile before you pulled the line and the drop with the hook away from the pile. If you pulled the right amount of line out of the foot tub to get to the hook, you could then remove the hook from the pile and continue to pull the line out. If you pulled a little too much line before removing the hook, you caused a slight tangling that was no problem for an experienced racker. I had a problem. I had about a five-hook tangle. Daddy came to my rescue. He quickly straightened things out, showing me how to avoid the problem of tangling the line and how to untangle when necessary. A few minutes later I had the same problem, only worse. I tried to do what Daddy had done earlier, but the tangle just got bigger. This time there were about twenty hooks in the tangle. I was still on the first rack.

Daddy was busy with the fish. Every time I got a tangle, I would go to the skinning bench that was under two large oak trees to ask for his help. Then I would return to my line and wait. I soon discovered this waiting time was not all bad. I could use this time to build little communities. I had used small blocks of wood that were left over from the rack building to make roads in the sand. After the roads were done I used the blocks for houses, gas stations, cars and trucks. Soon I was pulling tangles intentionally.

Daddy delegated the job of teaching me to rack to my brothers and sisters. Racking was fun for about the first hour. The rest of the summer, it was my job.