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We hadn't planned on going fishing and swimming in the pond. It just kind of happened.
A question from Bob opened the door.
"Grandpa, after we cover pumpkins can we go fishing?" he said.
Somebody else said, "We ought to go swimming, too." It might have been me. Honestly I don't know. We were all hot and itchy from stepping among the pumpkin vines.
The pond wasn't in my mind when I recruited the grandsons to help cover pumpkins on a steamy hot August afternoon in hopes of hiding them from the deer. (The pumpkins, not the grandsons.) Darned deer have already ruined a dozen or more 25-pounders. They take a few bites and the pumpkin usually rots.
We spent 30 minutes wading through the patch, covering the big ones with newspapers, old towels, rag-bag T-shirts, even weeds - anything to hide them or make it more difficult for the deer. Most were already turned orange early because of the hot summer.
BOB HAD MISSED out when I took the three younger grandsons fishing at the pond earlier in the week. The Favorite, Lamppost Head and The 747 each caught three or four hand-sized bluegill on that first outing, all on long bamboo poles and bobbins except for The Favorite, who insisted on using a casting rod. We threw the fish into a bucket of water where they swam frantically in circles. One or two jumped out and flopped their way off the dock and back into the pond.
"We want to have them for breakfast tomorrow," said Lamppost Head. "Can we?"
"I'll cook them but only if you help clean them," I replied.
"Can we use real knives? Before when we cleaned fish they made us use table knives," said The 747.
When I said yes, they cheered. The three young boys, ages8, 9 and 10, have only recently been allowed their first pocket knives, so that Rubicon has been crossed.
Back home with the fish, I covered a small table out on the porch with newspapers and fetched cutting boards and a selection of large, sharp knives from the kitchen.
"Don't cut off any fingers or you'll get me in a lot of trouble," I cautioned.
I showed them how to cut off the heads first, then take out the guts and cut off the fins.
"Leave the tail, because it gives you something to hold onto when you scrape off the scales," I explained.
By and large the boys did a good job cleaning our little panfish, though toward the end The 747 got preoccupied with taking out eyes, and was also the only one to cut himself, just a little. I put them in the freezer because of busy summer scheduling, with a promise of fish for breakfast soon.
I LOADED POLES and tackle in the truck while the boys hunted up old shorts or trunks to swim in. A couple didn't have any, so they swam in their underwear, which look like tight shorts anyhow, the fashion being light years away from the tighty whiteys Grandpa still wears.
We dug our worms in the moist bottom of the manure pile. The Favorite balked at sorting through squishy manure with his hands, but we called him a weenie and other names until he helped a little. The worms were very small, but then our fish are very small.
After an hour everyone had caught fish except Bob.
"Your pole is cursed. Here, try mine," I said, trading poles with Bob.
"I'll probably catch one in five seconds now," Bob said, and he did.
Suddenly there was Shark to pick up her boys and we hadn't swum yet, so we begged off and she went up to visit with Honey for awhile.
I was the first one in, creating a wave that blasted a hole in the duckweed, the tiny green plant that covers the pond this time of year. We hadn't much time so we acted like it, jumping or diving in and clambering out without pause.
When we drained our pond 30 years ago (has it really been that long?) I used extra-long locust posts at the end of the dock when I built it. I nailed a board between them and set up a ladder, making a high dive 12 feet above the surface of the water.
I told the boys that when Worshrag was little, he would promise to jump if I went with him, but on the count of three I would jump and he would let go my hand, then with a whoop jump on top of me when I came up.
What a lucky man am I to still be jumping off our pond high dive, now with grandsons.
The fish fry is planned for Monday breakfast, by the way.