Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Child of God and of Summer Afternoons
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
-Thoreau
In an early episode of Gunsmoke Marshal Dillon
reads in the newspaper that passenger trains will soon be traveling at 25 miles
per hour. Chester says something to the effect of, “Mr. Dillon, I just don’t
think that God meant for people to travel that fast.”
I’m kinda with Chester on that.
Sadly there is very little travel at all just now except
for GossipNet influencers and the hyper-wealthy who from their leaky old Sears
& Roebuck john-boats anchored in Cannes proclaim their love for the rest of
us.
I miss john-boats with their childhood association of
paddling about in the creek or pond. The cover story was fishing, and maybe a
perch or two would find its end with a Odysseus-and-the-Sirens earthworm, but that
was just an excuse for escaping parental control for a summer afternoon, splashing
about just off a sandbar in the shady shallows, and enjoying the un-air-conditioned
life before having to go get the cows up for the evening milking.
John-boats in illo tempore were flat-bottomed, made
of wood, 12 or 14 feet long, with a broad flat nose for slipping onto a sandbar
or into the reeds. As perfect shallow-draft vessels for wetlands their American
Indian and ‘Cajun ancestries were obvious.
You could fit a little Evinrude to a john-boat if you
wanted, but that would have missed the point, like putting a carburetor on a
fishing pole.
A john-boat’s technology was limited to the entertainment
system, a transistor radio for listening to The Big Bopper from Beaumont.
(Beaumont had traffic lights, or so someone said.)
There was no depth-finder unless you sank the boat; then
you had to sort out the depth for yourself.
Do you remember lying on the grassy bank on a summer
afternoon, holding very still to watch the minnows only inches from your eyes?
And the earthy smell of the amber-colored water?
How many moments in your adult life have been as good as
that?
-30-
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