two quotes and a story

"every man carries within himself a world made up of all he has seen and loved; it is to this world he returns, incessantly."

"we should know how the past molds us but also be concerned with how it might bind us."



[with thanks to alice connolly and jack giles]


we figured out the carp were eating most of the corn we used to bait the ducks at the beach when one of the kids threw a line off the gazebo and caught one of about five pounds.  from then on we filled an old gunney sack with kernels and a couple  of rocks to sink it on friday afternoon when we arrived.  by cocktail time the fish were fairly jumping at the chance to eat our number four hooks camouflaged with green giant [canned] corn and a lot of fun was had by all.  mary, our cook, asked that we keep every one for she knew a way to make them edible but she didn't persuade me and the ones i caught went back.  they were all strong fighters, though not spectacular, and on light tackle - four pound test line - worthy adversaries.  the biggest landed went over twenty pounds, but the volume - numbers - was what interested me.  if it worked at the beach it was bound to work in the brandywine river, just outside our back door, so we lugged fifty pound bags of corn down to its banks and into a softly swirling eddy chucked their contents.  behold the "brandywine salmon".  with no deep river to work in the fish ploughed across the stream in serious and credible imitation, thrashing and shaking heavily.  several years later i watched on televsion a show featuring lefty kreh and flip pallot casting leech flies to feeding carp in the susquehanna river.  the carp were turning over stones with their noses, the fish easily seen in the clear water.  fascinated i arranged a trip and for two days cast fruitlessly to the few fish i saw.  i called lefty when i got home.  "hawk," he said.  "it took us two weeks to make that half hour program.  you watched us catch four fish and i guarantee flip and i cast better than you do."  i'm going to the beach next weekend....i'll take a bag of corn and a light spinning rod.