Bullhead and Chalkline

About once every year a few of my siblings get together to spend a weekend reminiscing, raising hell, and just enjoying the company of other memebers of the pack. We've done this in a couple of different places, mostly based upon whose spouse is least likely to throw the crowd out after a day or so.  Not everyone attends these little get-togethers, and only a few of us have been to every one (I've missed several ufortunately) and some of us (myself included) have resisted formalizing them too much in the fear that they would become "gotta do's" versus "wanna do's."  With a few notable exceptions, most of our time is spent marvelling at two kinds of things: one, that we can all have led such separate lives and still remain so much connected, and two, that we were so close in our childhood experiences, and that we ended up in such different places.


Sometimes we try to relive childhood experiences, like last year in Kansas when fishing in Judy and Tom's ponds was the big treat.  I have to admit, seeing Joy get her big catfish brought me straight back to the times when she and I and Judy would visit Champlain and Papa would let us fish for crappies off the back of his little skiff.  (Seems like there was a story about Judy and the Ashline?/Castine? boys, but I simply can't remember it at this time.)   And seeing Joy struggling with a fouled line in Kansas, she looked just like the gangly teenager that I grew up with.  She's a smart educated person, and yes, she's two years older than me, but she'll always be my little sister.


But mostly, being who we are, we just sit around and talk.  The routine is that earlier in the evening we talk about who remembers what about whom...like "Was Aunt Tilley's son Georgio the gay priest or was he the one who played shortstop for the Brooklyn Zephyrs?" or "I still love cream treat gravy" (not me!). You get the drift.  At some later point someone will introduce the topic of the military (even one of the girls may do this innocently) and the boys rapidly dominate the conversation.  Usually at this point, one of the girls shuffles off to take a bath, one pops a nighty-night pill and curls up with a book, and one goes off to bed.  The boys have a tendency to stay up most of the night relating stories that may or may not have much to do with the military, but are always revelations of some sort.

One night last year we started talking about bullhead, night fishing, and catching eels, perch and even the odd walleyed pike on that little bend in the Chazy River just below Memiere and Papa's house.  By the time you get done one of these talking sessions, you feel utterly  immersed in and rejuvenated by the topic.  In this case, by the smell of the river, the wetness of the late evening grass, the brittleness of the dried sticks Dad used to build a little fire at the base of the great big oak tree that dominated the bend.  You can run your fingers over each other and actually feel the different textures of the bullhead and the perch, the slimeiness of the eel (should you be so unfortunate as to snag one) and the slickness of the chalk line as you cast it out onto the black water.  Even the smell of the Pall Mall cigarettes that Dad invariably pulled from the breast pocket of his shirt just before a cast comes back.  He flips open a silvery zippo lighter, and the sickly sweet smell of lighter fluid (the kind in the yellow can?)

briefly overwhelms all other senses.  But then he flicks the flint wheel in a practised motion and lights his smoke, squats and stares out onto the river, wispy curls of gray-white causing his face to scrunch up on one side in defense.  It's almost as though he's challenging the whiskered black bullhead to take the worm he's offering.

I'm not sure there's such a thing as collective memory, but there certainly is shared memory.  And every one of us share this memory in some way or another.  The beauty of these little get-togethers is that they help us reinforce the memories, and to revel in them along with others who share them.

Bullhead.  Chalkline.  Pall Mall's.  We can give you an entire night of memories if you start the conversation with just those three things.