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Down at the Pond

Not all those who wander are lost

By Tom Bryant

“Fishing gives a man some time to think. It gives him some time to collect his thoughts and rearrange them kind of neat, in an orderly fashion.”
—Robert Ruark, The Old Man and the Boy

It had been one of those days when all the good intentions go astray. I had planned to do a bunch of yard work that had been delayed by one thing, then another, but I was diverted to the little Airstream when I started thinking about an upcoming trip to the beach. We weren’t going to take the travel trailer, but I wanted to get it in shape to travel when we got home. After the winter, the small unit needed some real TLC. But just as I got the hose ready to mix soap to wash her with, Linda came to the arbor door with my phone.

“Hey, Hon, your phone has been ringing off the hook, if it had a hook.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. Call ’em back. This is their third try.”

“OK. OK.”

I put the hose down and checked the number. Not recognizing it, I thought it was probably somebody wanting to sell me something.

“Cooter!” It was Bubba. “Where ya been? Why don’t you keep your phone with you?” He had bestowed the nickname Cooter on me when we first started hanging together, and it stuck.

“So I don’t have to talk to reprobates like you.”

Bubba and I go way back, having been hunting and fishing partners for years.

“I thought you were in Costa Rica fishing.”

“I was, but I caught some kind of bug and had to come home so the docs could fix it. The reason I’m calling, if you’ve got the time, I want you to ride up and check out the old store for me.”

Bubba had bought an ancient country store from a mutual friend, but it didn’t work out and now was closed. A farmhouse came with the deal and had been a fixture in the area for years.

“While you’re there, you can do some fishing in the pond behind the house. And if you catch a mess, bring ’em on over here and we’ll fry ’em up.”

“Bubba, I got tons to do around here and we’re getting ready to go to the beach. But I’ll try to get up there Wednesday. Your fishing idea sounds good.”

“Great, I owe you big time. Oh, by the way, I ran into Billy Flowers the other day and he was remembering when you guys started the newspaper. You remember him?”

“Nope, I sure don’t.”

“Never mind, we’ll talk about it when you get here.”

Wednesday came pretty fast, and I was on the road up to Bubba’s venerable old store early. I wanted to give the day enough time to catch some fish. It was a happy trip seeing a lot of things that I remembered from days past, and before I knew it, I pulled into the overgrown  parking lot of the store, parked and walked around.

It was a depressing kind of stroll. The wraparound porch had random holes in the floor where animals had found places to live. An old rocker, with the rockers missing, was situated close to the side door, and a board was missing high up on the wall. Peering through the front window, I could see where the rest of the rockers were stored. The ancient potbelly stove still perched royally in the center of the back part of the building. Considering everything, the timeworn structure had held up well, but it was disheartening to see the old place closed and in disrepair.

As I drove the dirt road back to Slim’s home, which was about a quarter-mile from the store, I noticed the new houses across the main road on what had been Johnson’s cattle farm. The farmstead had been developed into 5- and 10-acre mini-farms, yet another move toward paving every spare acre available in the move toward progress.

The house was in good shape but on the decline. Slim’s nephew, Leroy, had lived there after he inherited it and the store from Slim. Bubba bought the whole kit and kaboodle when Leroy couldn’t make it work.

What Bubba had in mind, I had no idea. But it required an impromptu visit to check things out.

About a hundred yards behind the house, the farm pond sat silent and lonely. Grass had grown high, and alders were beginning to encroach on the banks. I had brought just a few pieces of fishing gear, not planning on a heavy day of fishing, and gingerly walked to the water, watching for snakes along the way.

I baited with a couple of juicy worms I had acquired from our local fishing tackle shop the day before, then kicked back in the old folding chair I take everywhere and cast out about 40 yards.

I thought back to my conversation with Bubba, again thinking about what he had in mind for the store and house. And who was that guy he met who asked about the newspaper we started so many years ago?

Cumulus clouds began to stack up on the tree line on the far side of the pond, and I could hear the distant rumble of thunder. Gonna rain later, I thought.

I watched the red and white bobber I had on the line and remembered the days when fishing, pond fishing that is, was so simple. A cane pole, some fishing line, a hook and float and a few worms or crickets, and you were ready.

Several purple martins began diving about the pond catching bugs, and a pair of buzzards lazily circled and went on south away from the area hoping to chomp on some roadkill, I reckoned.

I reeled in to check my bait, and sure enough, something had stripped the hook. I added more bait and cast out to the same spot.

I wondered again, who was that guy bringing up the long-ago past of the newspaper and remembering those days?

It all began at a cocktail and social club party at the country club. Three of us were standing around talking, naturally close to the bar. We were discussing the latest local news shortfall of our monopoly daily newspaper.

Included in the discussion were my good friend and lawyer, John; another good friend, Jim, the special features editor at the Durham Morning Herald; and me, the ad director at our local daily newspaper, the paper we felt had lost its direction.

The daily had new leadership in the publisher’s role, and right off the bat things began to change, and we didn’t think for the better. So out of our impromptu conversation at that party came the idea of our own local weekly newspaper and the four advertising tabloid papers designed for outlet shoppers that came along later.

The Outlet Outlook was based in three states: North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Later, an art and features magazine was created, along with almost 20 years of hard work for yours truly. What a ride! Sometimes almost broke, wondering how I was going to make payroll, and then sometimes flush with a good cash flow, almost more money than Davy Crockett. Ups and downs, highs and lows. Those random thoughts of history long gone flowed through my mind and, like an early morning mist, were gone.

Coming out of a doze, I watched a red-tailed hawk wheel over the pond and then head south toward the nearby river. I caught a bunch of bream, several small bass that I released, and two huge catfish. I field-cleaned the bream and catfish at the side of the lake, washed them in the cool clear water and put them in the cooler I had iced before leaving home.

It took no time to load up the little Cruiser. I was in a hurry. I wanted to get to Bubba’s, give him my report, and find out what was on his mind about the old store, house and pond.

Bubba never ceases to amaze me. Wonder what that rascal is up to? I thought as I took one more look at the old store, eased out in the traffic and headed toward his house.

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A River Adventure

Snakes, snags and mosquitoes

By Tom Bryant

“The Lumbee is a winding stream that gradually increases in breadth as it becomes a noble river.”    — Mid-Winter Canoe Club

John Mills, the unofficial official historian of Pinebluff, recently sent me a clipping of an article published in The Pilot many years ago about a booklet with information about the Mid-Winter Canoe Club, a small canoeing organization with headquarters on Drowning Creek. The booklet, published in 1911, disowned the name of the creek, Drowning, indicating it was an offshoot of superstitions originating with the local population. The correct name of the waterway should be Lumbee, a reference to the Native American tribe that frequented the river and often lived close to the tributary.

“All rivers lead to the sea, but there is no water road to or from the ocean within easy reach of tourists in the sand hills or those who live in the great centers of life and industry along the Atlantic Seaboard, which can be reached so conveniently and traveled so freely in winter as the fascinating course offered by The Lumbee, The Little Pee Dee and The Great Pee Dee Rivers.”

The writer of the booklet went on to describe the waterway as it looked at the turn of the century. “The timber growth along the river is semi-tropical, an unbroken wilderness that has never seen an axe except where the bluffs make into the river (once in six to 10 miles) and serve as landing places or camping grounds. Unusual bathing facilities are afforded on sandy points opposite these bluffs. Gum, cypress, juniper, pine and water oak are the prevailing woods. The green of winter is afforded by the ever-present holly trees, the pale green mistletoe, the bay bush and pine.”

Pinebluff, described as the station south of Pinehurst, served as the headquarters of the Mid-Winter Canoe Club. The president of the club was John Warren Achorn, M.D., who lived in Pinebluff during the winter and in Annisquam, Massachusetts, during the summer months. Levi Packard, of Pinebluff, served as secretary and treasurer. Directors were E.G. Gay, whose home was in Maine; Wayne McNeill, of Wagram; and Dr. Achorn.

It’s pretty clear that the good old boys who headed up the canoe club described the river in a promotional way to influence more folks to locate to the area and take advantage of the pleasures offered by the club. The ad guys at Pinehurst golf courses did the same thing in 1911, pretty successfully I might add, more so than the promoters of the Lumbee.

So that’s how it was in 1911. Later, in more modern times, three of us would have a little different experience on the river.

John Mills, Andy Alcroft and I had spent most of our childhood roaming the woods of the southern part of Moore County, but the swamps of Drowning Creek were off limits. In the early ’50s, Manly Wade Wellman, a good friend of Johnny Mills’ father, wrote a book, The Haunts of Drowning Creek. He even dedicated it to John’s dad. After reading Wellman’s novel, it was hard to keep us off the river.

One summer when all three of us were on break from college and home in Pinebluff, everything came together, and we had ample time to experience what we considered the adventure of a lifetime. The plan was to launch our skiff at the creek bridge between Aberdeen and Laurinburg, follow the creek south until it flowed into the Lumber River, then paddle on down to the Little Pee Dee, which would eventually merge with the Big Pee Dee and then on to our destination, Georgetown, South Carolina, and the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

Our most important tool for the trip was a little 14-foot skiff owned by our friend Cliff Blue. He was glad to lend us the boat and even agreed to pick us up at the end of the trip in Georgetown, but when we asked him to join us he said, “Man, there are things on that river that’ll kill you. You Pinebluff boys have always been a little strange.”

We allowed ourselves about two weeks to complete the trip, and we were cutting it close. Summer was coming to an end, and we would soon have to be back in school.

I remember we had quite an entourage when we shoved off at the bridge on Highway 501. John’s sister had a slumber party at his house the night we loaded all our gear, and the girls wanted to come to the bridge and watch us push off the next day. I was supposedly the expert on swamps and low country river traveling. My grandfather had a house and camp on the Little Pee Dee in South Carolina, and I had spent many summers fishing the sandbars of that river. The Lumbee River was about to teach me how little I knew about Drowning Creek.

We were all decked out in our jungle finery. We had pith helmets on our heads and Bowie knives strapped to our sides. Ernest Hemingway would’ve been proud. We left on a bright Sunday morning. The weather was perfect. We got the skiff off the trailer and launched it into the creek with only minor difficulty. When the boat was fully afloat, we saw there was little freeboard and we’d have to be careful when we hit the big rivers farther south. We pushed off and rounded the bend out of sight of our spectators on the bridge.

Thirty minutes later we came to our first obstacle. Three huge pines lay across the river. This makeshift bridge blocked our way. It was the first of many portages we would make. The boat had to be unloaded, hauled over the pines, and reloaded, a chore we would soon get used to.

Snakes were everywhere. As a matter of fact, they were so numerous we eventually lost our fear of them and adopted a laissez-faire attitude. There were about as many snakes as there were mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads. At one point we were all in the water lifting the boat over a downed tree when a cottonmouth swam right by us. I splashed him with water and he kept on swimming.

The trip was grueling. After sleeping in jungle hammocks, eating C-rations, boiling creek water to drink and about to run out of time, we decided to call a halt to this adventure at the next sign of civilization.

As the crow flies, we probably traveled only 50 or 60 miles, but taking into account the circuitous flow of the water — often we could look over the bank and see the same stretch of river we had just paddled — there’s no telling how far we actually traveled. That was our modern day experience on the Lumbee. I’ll continue calling it Drowning Creek. That name fits it better.

And Cliff Blue, bless his heart, was right when he said, “There are things on that river that’ll kill you.”

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The Gift of Time

Planning new adventures

“The best thing about hunting and  fishing, is that you don’t
have to actually do it to enjoy it. You can go to bed every night thinking about how much fun you had twenty years ago and it comes back clear as moonlight. It is a kind of immortality, because you’re doing it all over again.”   
— Robert Ruark’s Africa

By Tom Bryant

I had been thinking right regularly about mortality and immortality, having been recently diagnosed with cancer. The folks at Duke University performed their miracle, and on my latest scan and workup the cancer had disappeared. When I asked the doc about limits I might have, she replied, “Nothing, you can do whatever you were doing before all this came about.” Naturally Linda, my bride, and I rejoiced, and on the way home from Duke, I was like a kid the day before Christmas.

That night as I was relaxing by the fire reading some old columns I had written years before, I determined that the plan for the immediate future was to categorize things I wanted to do in the field, and things that Linda would enjoy doing with me. I grabbed a yellow legal pad from my desk, and I was off and running.

The musings I had made years before when I was in my prime, climbing over obstacles rather than going around them, got my list started with a flurry.

Ages ago, it seems like, I used to goose hunt, Canada geese, that is. It was before the geese that migrated every year realized they really didn’t have to do that. The ones that used to come down from the frosty North and set up camp in the sunny South would lounge around enjoying all that fresh grass recently planted on golf courses and the fields full of winter wheat just ripe for the picking. But then spring and a little warmer weather would roll around, and it would be time to pack up and wing it back north.

I don’t know how it happened, but I can imagine it went something like this: A couple or three geese were lolling about munching lunch on the 14th green when one of them said, “Well, it’s about time to hit the road back to the old homestead.”

Another of the geese, maybe one with a little more mileage on him, spoke up. “Boys, I’ve been making that trip more times than you are old, and I just made up my mind that I’m gonna stay here this summer. Why do all that flying and wandering about when we have everything we need, plus some, right here? Y’all have a nice trip and I’ll see you next winter.”

Thus it started. Wild Canada geese that were as skittish as bobcats overnight became residents and all but demanded their entitlement — fresh grass for everyone.

That’s what’s happening now. What I wrote about in those aged scribblings that dotted outdoor magazines and sporting pages in newspapers was when the noble Canada goose was a worthy game bird, worth all the notoriety given.

Every January, for about eight or 10 years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, my good friend Tom Bobo and I would head to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the little town of Easton to goose hunt on the famous Plimhimmon plantation, located on the Tred Avon River close to Oxford, Maryland. The owner was a crusty old guy by the name of Bill Meyers. His land was about 400 acres with the river on one side and an estuary off the Chesapeake Bay on the other. It was as if it was made for goose hunting. We were in high cotton, so to speak, in those days, hunting with the likes of such notables as Bing Crosby, Ted Williams and Phil Harris.

So how can I follow up those ancient days of classic goose hunting in these modern times? Easy, first thing to do is head to Easton and get the lay of the land today. Then the plans will follow.

I made a few notes on my pad and moved on to the next adventure.

When I was a youngster growing up in Pinebluff, I had the best of all worlds as far as outdoor living was concerned. If not camping with the Scouts from old Troop 206, I was scouting on my own, finding likely places to explore. I would hook my Red Flyer wagon to my bicycle, loaded with camping gear, and head to the woods.

That was my first experience pulling a trailer, and I never forgot it. Decades later, the year I retired from my day job, Linda and I bought a little compact Airstream Bambi travel trailer, hooked it up to a Toyota FJ Cruiser, also new that year, and started the trip of a lifetime. Where to? North to Alaska, of course. We were on that special adventure for two months and drove over 11,000 miles.

Since that first epic experience, we have towed and camped in the Bambi several times across the country and to Florida during the winters. In Florida we would camp at a small scale campground on Chocoloskee Island, just south of Everglades City. Linda called it our fish camp.

In the summers we tried — and were usually successful — to camp at Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina one week out of every month.

I made a few more notes on my pad, put another log on the fire and thought about what it would take to get the little “Stream” back on the road. Not that much really. A detailed check at the Airstream place in Greensboro, maybe a new set of tires, then rig her for running sometime in the late spring.

Linda had gone on to bed and I was ready to hit the hay myself, so I banked the fire to be ready for the next morning and quietly moved down the hall to bed trying not to wake her. Lying there snug under the covers, I thought back over the last year-and-a-half.

Cancer puts a hold on everything. Every day during my experience with the disease we waited for the other shoe to drop, not knowing if it was going to be terminal or just debilitating. The waiting was the hard part.

But just like Robert Ruark said in his book on Africa, I’ve had a lot of experiences in our great outdoors, and thinking about them from 20 or more years ago and reliving them all over again is a kind of immortality.

Now, amazingly, the good Lord, along with the wonderful health professionals at Duke, have made it possible to continue my adventures, hopefully for a few more years. I put together a good start sitting by the fire.

I heard the ship’s clock in the den ding six bells, 11 o’clock. Time to sleep and dream good dreams. 

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Restoring the Soul

Pausing for a solitary side trip

By Tom Bryant

It’s ironic that three days before Thanksgiving in 2024, a time of celebration and great revelry, I was told that I almost died.

It all started in July of that year. Now I’m pretty much a healthy, in-good-shape guy. Always have been from early childhood to what is often laughingly referred to in today’s society as geezerhood. Played sports in high school and college, joined the Marines in a fit of finding myself. I found myself alright. The Marine Corps taught me in a short time to look after my body. I’ve fished and hunted and camped from Florida to Alaska always in good condition and good humor. I take a multivitamin and a 10-milligram Simvastatin daily, and that’s the extent of my pills.

So what happened? Coming home from the beach one Sunday morning, I noticed a recurring sharp pain in my lower abdomen. It went away and I thought no more about it. I had my annual physical coming up in a week or so, and I figured I’d tell the doctor about it then.

After several tests, my local physician referred me to the urology department at First Health. The results from an exploratory surgical operation weren’t that good. Linda, my bride, was there with me in the recovery room and she told me tearfully that I had cancer.

There. Those three magic words that will turn anyone’s world upside down. “You Have Cancer.”

I remember I was kind of dopey recovering from the anesthesia, and the first thing that entered my mind was, “This is gonna play hell with early fall fishing.”

Later, as the reality of the situation began to sink in, I was upset that not only was I in for a bad time, but Linda was going to have to suffer with me. I remembered some of the stages that a new cancer patient goes through: fear, anxiety, sadness, anger. Sure, I had some of those feelings but I made up my mind that just like many other adventures in my life, I was gonna consider this another hazardous occurrence, a learning experience, and play it to the hilt.

The folks at First Health referred me to the specialists at Duke, and I was off and running. Linda and I made appointments to meet with the recommended oncologist and surgeon bright and early on a Tuesday morning in August. I remember the day because we cancelled a beach trip scheduled for that week.

The people at Duke have a cancer center bigger than any health facility I’ve ever been in. The entire building, all five floors, is dedicated to cancer patients, and from the valet folks who park your car to the individuals in charge of information who point you in the right direction, we never felt out of place.

We met with the oncologist first, and she laid out a program of chemotherapy, about two months’ worth, that would take place before the surgery. We then met with the surgeon who explained the procedure and what I could expect during the recovery period. When I asked what would happen if I decided to let nature take its course, he simply replied, “You’ll have about nine months.”

We made arrangements and appointments, going along with all the recommendations from the experts, collected our car from valet parking and headed home.

“We’ve got a couple weeks before the chemo stuff starts. What say we go to the beach?” I asked Linda as I dodged in and out of the breakneck drivers who seem to hang around the high-speed highways.

“I vote for that,” she replied. I could tell that our recent experience with the doctors was a lot for her to take in. Me too.

The beach was wonderful. I didn’t even carry fishing equipment, and we left the little Airstream at home. All we did was hang out, reminisce about old times, and enjoy good seafood. We stayed at one of our favorite hotels right on the beach. We talked and talked and talked. Always in the back of our minds was the upcoming ordeal and the best way to handle it.

My brother had passed away two years before from lung cancer, so we were not entering our upcoming travail totally unprepared. We knew what could happen.

Our son, Tommy, was constantly in touch, not wanting to be too far from all the decisions. By now, the word was out about my health situation and the phone started ringing off the hook — not my phone, mostly Linda’s. Family and friends wanted to know what they could do to help. I was amazed at all the good wishes that came in from friends everywhere.

In September our ordeal began. Although I didn’t have a lot of side effects, chemotherapy exhausted me. I didn’t lose all my hair but I did lose a lot of weight. The folks at Duke were amazing. Never have I met such caring people.

I had to bail from chemo right before the last infusion. It seems that the chemicals in the stuff not only kill cancer but can also destroy hearing. The oncologist said enough’s enough. The surgery was in about two weeks.

The next day I decided to ride out to the old tobacco farm that my good friend Joe Rosy owns. He lets me have access to the farm to bird hunt. The part of the land I use is about 150 acres located close to Drowning Creek. It’s where I go to restore my soul and remember what living is all about.

Usually I’ll park the Cruiser and walk, but with my energy at ebb I rolled down the windows and, at crawl speed, drove around the familiar property. There was the cut in the pines that led to where a used up sawmill once stood. Mackie, my little yellow lab jumped a pair of quail every time we went to the spot. I never did shoot — just seeing them fly was enough.

On the corner of the pine stand that Joe uses to harvest pine straw was a tall longleaf that I would sit under, waiting for the evening flight of dove. I drove on around the harvested soybeans and took the minuscule path that serves as a road between the two barns. At the end of the road, surrounded by pines, is a small field of maybe 10 acres. I got my first turkey there, hunkered down at the tree line. He was a big one, 21 pounds.

I pulled the truck up under a big white oak, took a water bottle from the cooler. I always carry a portable folding chair in the back of the Cruiser, and I decided to sit for a spell. Several years ago, I sat in this same spot on the day I carried Mackie to the vet to have her put down. She was past help, in her old age, hips gone and suffering. The vet said it was time. My dogs have always been family and that special, sad time was locked in my memory. On that day there had been a big red-tailed hawk circling the woods down close to the pond and, as I sat there kicked back, sipping water, I saw a red-tail flying in exactly the same location. Wonder if that’s the same bird, I thought. Naw, too long ago. Could be an offspring though.

In a little while, watching and taking in the peacefulness of the little farm, I became worried that Linda might be concerned, and I decided to head on back home. The big cancer operation was scheduled and our hands would be full.

As I eased out to the main road and got out to close the gate, I could still see the hawk. He was wheeling about, out over the fields now, climbing higher and higher. I watched until he was almost out of sight, then I got in the Cruiser and headed down the road toward home.

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Moonstruck

Kicking back at Mattamuskeet

By Tom Bryant

It was as if the good Lord heard we were going to get together for a weekend and decided to make it easy on a pair of outdoor geezers who sometimes, at the ripe old age they’re enduring, bite off a little more than they can chew. It was a duck hunting trip for early migrating teal that drew old friends together for the first time in a while.

We booked a hunt at our favorite waterfowl hunting spot, Mattamuskeet, where when the weather is right and the fall flight is at its peak, the blue wing teal will knock your hat off if you aren’t careful and are leaning just right.

We go back a ways, Bubba and me. We started hunting — duck hunting, that is — when we were still frisky and would climb over any obstacle rather than walk around it just to prove something. Neither of us can remember what we were trying to prove, and besides, who would even care? Experience and age educate, but sometimes they’re harsh teachers.

As usual, I got to the lodge first. Just as I was finishing up hauling groceries to the kitchen, my cellphone began its annoying chirping. It took me a bit to find it, as I had stored the blame thing in a bag between the crunchy bread and tonic water.

“Hey Bubba, where are you?”

“I’m just leaving Little Washington. Should be there a little past dark, if I can keep this thing on the road. I’ve got good news and bad news. Whatcha wanna hear first?”

“Give me whatever first. Most of the time your good news is bad news anyway.”

“I threw my back out this morning hauling a blasted flooded canoe out of the pond. I had to take three or four Advil just so I could drive. There ain’t no way I’m gonna be able to hunt tomorrow. You need to call Willard and tell him. You can hunt. There’s nothing wrong with your back.”

Willard and his father had long been guides on the Pamlico, and we’ve been hunting and fishing with him for years.

“No, man. I’m not gonna hunt without you. Who would listen to my wonderful stories?”

“Yeah, I know. Last time Willard threatened to leave us in the blind after hearing your stories for the 97th time.”

“I’ll call him. You need to come on. I picked up some Rose Bay oysters. I’m gonna start steaming them as soon as I take care of Willard.”

“Hey, now, don’t you eat all of ’em. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Willard was his usual gracious self and said that he would just move our deposit to a later date in the season and not charge us extra. He wanted to go fishing anyway. The blues were running, and if there’s anything Willard likes better than duck hunting, it’s fishing.

We were supposed to have a full moon that evening. “Not good for duck hunting,” Willard would say. “The ducks will move and feed with the light of the moon. You might as well stay home.”

I finished unloading all the groceries and decided to fire up the grill to be ready when Bubba arrived. There’s a swing on the deck under the living area. That’s where the grill is located so everything’s handy. I turned on my battery-powered lantern, lit a couple of candles and put them on the table beside the grill. Then I got the oysters ready to steam when Bubba arrived.

The moon was just beginning to rise from the Pamlico. As usual, it was a spectacular sight. I turned off the lantern, blew out the candles and kicked back in the swing. I’ve never seen two moon rises exactly the same. Each one seems to have its own character. For whatever reason, the most memorable I’ve had the great good fortune to witness have occurred over water.

There was an evening nightfall show I witnessed on Hyco Lake after a day duck hunting. Paddle, my little yellow Lab, and I were in my minuscule duck skiff skimming across the lake at full throttle. We were in a hurry, hoping to get back to the landing before black dark. As I skittered out of the small opening where we had been hunting and turned west, I was staring right into a dazzling sunset. But even more breathtaking was a sensational full moon rising in the east right behind us. Paddle and I were caught between sunset and moonrise, a sight I’ve only witnessed once and may never see again.

I’ve noticed in all my travels across this great country of ours that the moon seems to be different in certain regions. On our first big camping trip, we pulled our compact 19-foot Airstream from Southern Pines to Fairbanks, Alaska. We were gone a little over two months and drove 11,000 miles taking in the scenery, and sunrises and moonrises, along the way. Since we were in Alaska during June and July, when it hardly even gets dark, the moon we saw was just a sliver of a waning moon a time or two, and that was it.

Just the opposite in Montana. They call it the Big Sky Country for a reason. Camped at a little parking lot of a campground right outside Shelby, preparing to enter Canada the next morning, we witnessed a brilliant golden, luminescent moonrise over the horizon. It was so big and seemed so close to the ground, it was as if it we could touch it. I had the strangest feeling that I was witnessing one of God’s great undertakings that was put there just for Linda and me.

I could see the headlights of Bubba’s truck as he wheeled in off the main road and headed down the long drive to the cabin. When he pulled up right behind the lodge, I walked out to help him unload. He was slow getting out of his truck.

“Hey Bubba, how you moving?”

“Slow, son. Mighty slow. My back is giving me a fit. But I plan on fixing it with a good slug of Scotch and some of those oysters you’ve got laid out on that table. Some moon, huh?”

“Yep, a real harvest moon. Come on, I’ll help you unload and we’ll have some libation.”

In no time, we stowed all of Bubba’s gear in the second bedroom, fixed ourselves drinks, and steamed a bunch of oysters, saving some for the second night. Bubba had brought along a couple of deer tenderloin steaks but, full of oysters, we were in no hurry to cook.

We relaxed on the deck under the cabin, Bubba in the swing and me kicked back in a cushioned Adirondack chair. As usual, when we get together, stories and remember-whens dominate the conversation. This night was no different.

“That mule deer hunt we had in Utah featured a moon about like this one, don’t you think?” Bubba pointed up to our bright rising moon that was well into the sky.

“You know, Tom,” he continued softly as if the bright moon discouraged loud noises, “sort of like when we’re duck hunting — you and I have really had some adventures.”

I paused in answering, looking up at the moon.

“Yeah Bubba, that’s the truth, for sure, and I hope we have a few more ahead of us.”

He laughed and said, “Let’s start by grilling those steaks.”

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Beating the Heat

A conversation in the shade

By Tom Bryant

The sun seemed to be stuck, hanging right at the top of the tree line as if to say, “You think it’s hot now? Wait, there’s another three hours of daylight, and I’m gonna make it a smoker.”

Shadows had moved away from my shady spot at the edge of the pines, so I decided to truck it to the barn for some libation and conversation. I could see from a distance I was not alone in escaping the heat.

It was Labor Day and the opening of dove season. The usual group was invited for the festivities: a barbecue, good company and a dove shoot that opened the season for a bird hunter.

We seem to forget that early September in North Carolina sometimes rivals the middle of July in heat. But you get used to it. I remembered other dove shoot occasions when the heat was bearing down and the doves didn’t fly until that persistent sun settled a little lower behind the trees.

The boys from Slim’s put the hunt together. Boys meaning longtime customers who used Slim’s country store as a meeting spot to catch up with news from around the neighborhood.

We were hunting a field I was familiar with. Many years before, our Ducks Unlimited group had used the same acreage for our annual hunt after all the festivities celebrating DU the weekend before. The field remained basically the same, about a hundred acres of cut-over corn, maybe too big for our little group to cover, but most of us were there for the camaraderie, not necessarily to shoot doves, though we were convinced that doves were the best eating in the bird wild game repertoire.

I stopped by the truck on the way up to the barn, unloaded my shotgun, stuck it in the back and pulled out the old camp chair I keep in the rear cargo area with my cooler.

“Well, just ask Bryant,” Johnson said.

I picked out a shady spot under the tin overhang of the old tobacco barn, leaned back against the ancient log walls and said, “Ask Bryant what, old friend? You know I will reply even if I don’t know the answer. But with my plethora of knowledge, it’ll be good.”

The good old boys had a chuckle, and Johnson followed up with, “You were in the newspaper business forever, even owning one. How come they’re vanishing like ripe persimmons in the middle of possum country?”

If anything, Johnson had a way with words.

“It’s simple,” I replied. “Check out that smartphone you’ve got in your back pocket.”

“It’s in the truck. I don’t carry that fool thing with me everywhere I go.”

“Good for you, Johnson. But let’s see how many of us have that ‘fool thing’ on our person.”

Five out of the seven of us had phones. I was like Johnson. Mine was in the truck.

“Well, they’s good in emergencies, like if old Andy over there . . . ” and he pointed at Andy, who was dozing, his head lolling a bit. Andy perked up, saying, “What are y’all talking about?”

“Like I was saying,” Johnson replied. “If that old geezer over there went out to the far end of the dove field, tripped and shot himself in the foot, he could use his phone to call for help.”

“Speak for yourself,” Andy said, “And I ain’t a geezer. I’m just a little older than you, as I recall.”

“Technology,” I said, reaching in the cooler for a bottle of water. “That was the final nail in the old coffin. Your phones, your computers, and above all else, the internet ushered in the demise of newspapers as we once knew them. But . . . ” I paused for effect, “there was one other thing that shut the industry down, including the big boys. Newspapers you would have thought would be here forever. Gone. And the reason?” I stood up and grabbed a ham biscuit from the communal cooler that Johnson had put together the evening before.

“What?” Andy said. “What?”

“Money, greed and the unalterable knowledge that the business has been here forever and that’s where it will remain.”

Johnson said, “You’ve been in the newspaper business a long time. What’s your reasoning the industry failed so fast?”

“Hey, guys,” I said, “we here to shoot birds or talk about newspapers?”

“It’s still too hot. The birds aren’t gonna fly until almost sundown. Give us your opinion, Tom. I’ve been reading the N&O for nigh on 40 years, and now they don’t even publish it anymore.”

“OK, OK. Here’s what I think, the short version. I started in the business right out of the Marine Corps, just married and a student at Elon. I worked part time catching the press, then moved into the circulation department, then the advertising section as an ad executive. After a while they made me the advertising director. The years I spent doing those jobs convinced me that a medium-sized monopoly newspaper in a small metropolitan area almost has a license to print money. They were extremely successful.”

“If they were a money-making machine, why did they fall so fast?” Johnson asked.

“Just because they were so good at what they did. The big boys came in and bought them all, and then promptly killed the goose that was laying all those golden eggs. They called it economy of scale or something like that. They consolidated all the ancillary efforts to their home base, fired all the old-timers, the folks who had been working at the papers for a long time and had built up a good base of pay, and put the squeeze on expenses, so much so that to get a few more pencils or note paper, a multitude of requisitions had to be filled out in duplicate. They didn’t realize that their cost-cutting was cutting them right out of business.”

I got up, stretched and checked out the spot on the field where I would hunt. It was still a scorching afternoon although the sun was slowly dropping behind the pines. The boys were unusually quiet as I stood there looking to the tree line.

Even I was surprised that I was so depressingly down on the business I had dedicated my life to. But there was one redeeming piece of information I felt compelled to relay to the good old boys. I turned and stood there like a schoolmaster preaching to his wards.

“Boys, there is one great promising revelation I’m gonna tell you about. For the last 10 years of my career, as y’all well know, I worked for a group of people who were not afraid to spend a little money to revise the way we did business. It was led by a young fellow who worked hard and smart. He created a business plan that is now the envy of the industry. This gentleman saw exactly where newspapers were heading and decided to get off the train that was rapidly approaching the destroyed bridge. I can hear him right now saying, ‘If anyone in our community wants local news, they will come to us.’ Now, with the newspaper doing well, with four magazines in major markets and a statewide business magazine, he doesn’t rest on his laurels. He’s always planning.”

I folded up the old camp chair.

“OK, enough of the lecture. I see birds moving, and I’m gonna make for my corner. Y’all be careful, and Andy, make sure you take your phone in case you shoot yourself in the foot.”

The boys laughed and headed out in the field.

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When Tobacco Was King

And the days were hard, hot and dirty

By Tom Bryant

“Hey, you guys. Did y’all see that special last night on tobacco barns? I think it was on PBS.” Bill Burger was holding forth. As the leader of our church men’s breakfast club that meets twice monthly at the venerable Sizzlin’ Steak or Eggs restaurant, he always has a good question to bring the conversation to the forefront, with everybody usually joining in.

The everybody includes seven or eight guys, or geezers if you will, with most of us in our 80s pushing forward, hoping to hit 90.

My ears perked up at Bill’s question because tobacco played a huge part in my formative years.

My grandfather was a big tobacco farmer in the early days. Early meaning when tobacco was king on most farms in the South. In my pre-teen years, I would spend a lot of each summer on the farm in South Carolina. Then, everything rotated around the tobacco crop. A labor-intensive cultivation, when planting time came, it was all hands on deck.

It was fun listening to the guys around the breakfast table talk about their experiences with tobacco. Bill Dixon, a retired Air Force colonel, said, “What about tobacco barns? I grew up near Wilson, the tobacco capital of the country. I know tobacco farms and barns.”

“Well,” Berger replied, “the TV report said that a lot of folks are remodeling the old barns into new houses. But since tobacco farming has gone away, there are not many barns left.”

It got me thinking about tobacco, my Grandad’s farm, and my education as a hunter and fisherman. All began right there in the swamps and Lowcountry of South Carolina. First, it was the acres of green tobacco, the money crop, special to the South, which brought wealth back to farms and enabled my outdoor learning.

Most folks who have hands-on experience with the harvesting of tobacco agree on one thing: It’s a hard, hot, dirty, intensive period of farming that requires constant attention. In those days, there was no room for error or slackness.

Bill Hamel, sitting right across from me, said, “Man, when harvest time came, it was everybody working, even the women and children. Nobody could sit at home. The ladies did the tying of the tobacco to the sticks, and then the sticks were hung in the barn where the curing took place.”

“Yeah,” Dixon said. “Once the fire was started, constant care was required to keep heat at a certain temperature necessary for curing. Many barns went up in smoke because of a fire stoker falling asleep.”

I was more an observer than a worker during harvest season, although Granddad did let me get dirty, literally, trying different jobs involved with bringing in the tobacco. A day of priming tobacco will make a person wonder if he will ever get clean again. Priming the stalks means breaking the leaves off the bottom of the stalk, leaving the rest to ripen further. There’s a real art to it, and after a day of back-breaking, dirty work, I decided I needed to do something else to help lighten the load. So, I asked if I could drive the sled pulled by Peanut, one of the farm mules.

Now a tobacco sled is about 16 feet long and 3 feet wide, with high sides and runners underneath. The sled fits perfectly in the tobacco row and holds all the leaves put there by the primers. When full, the sled is pulled to the barn by the mule, under the direction of the handler. Then the leaves are ready to be tied on tobacco sticks and hung in the rafters to cure.

When I asked Granddad about driving one of the sleds, he hesitated but then said, “OK, you can handle Peanut, but get one of the boys to make a couple of runs with you to make sure Peanut is doing right.”

One of the boys was Beau-weevil, the son of one of the tenant farmers who lived on the farm. I don’t know how he got his nickname, but he lived up to it. He was excited about showing me the ropes of mule driving because it got him away from priming for a bit. I also think Beau-weevil had a little evil in his heart. When I asked him about any peculiar traits ol’ Peanut might have, he said, “Naw man, he’s as reliable as an old dog. You just tell him what to do.”

He failed to tell me that you had better be on the way to the barn when sundown came, because Peanut was gonna go that way, like it or not. And worse than that, if it meant crossing a few rows of tobacco, so be it. Peanut knew when it was quitting time.

As a result, I ruined a few stalks of tobacco, but not enough to bother Grandad. He did say a few words to Beau after the fact, and I relished that.

My favorite time of tobacco season was July. The crop was in the ground and as Grandad said, “There’s not much more for us to do around here, son. We’ll leave the growing to the good Lord and let’s us go fishing. You run down to the tobacco patch right across from the barn and pick us a mess of tobacco worms. I’ll check out the catalpa trees and get some worms off them.”

Tobacco and catalpa worms were great fish lures. My Uncle Tom showed me how to turn a tobacco worm inside out to make it more attractive to a big bream. I’ll admit I really didn’t use that bit of advice, especially after eating a sardine sandwich. I was a straight worm-to-hook guy. And there’s no telling how many redbreast fish I hauled out of that fast flowing river using the worms for bait. “We’ll get Grandma to rustle us up some groceries, and we’ll be to the river by nightfall,” he said.

Now Granddad had a river cabin on the Little Pee Dee River. Not much as a cabin goes, just one room with bunk beds on one side and a corner, more or less, dedicated as a kitchen. An ancient sink dumped directly outside the cabin. And whatever water we had for washing dishes and ourselves we hauled from the artesian well located close to the river. The boats were pulled up on shore and chained to cypress trees to keep them away from wandering thieves and summertime floods after thunderstorm downpours.

We would usually be there for about a week, then Grandad would get a little antsy about seeing how the crops
were doing.

“Get a good night’s sleep, son. It’s back to the real world tomorrow,” he’d say. “We got to leave some fish in this old river for the next time.”

I was reading an article recently in SC Farming, a magazine put out by the South Carolina Farm Bureau, and a statistic in the story caught my attention: in 1987 there were 90,000 tobacco farms in the country; in 2022 the number had dropped to 3,000.

Tobacco farming has gone away, especially the way my grandfather did it, but it’s as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. Peanut, the mule, my nemesis, has long been dead and buried close to the fields where he toiled for so many years. I haven’t touched a cigarette in over 40 years, can’t even stand to smell them. But they were part of my life experiences.

I can still remember going to sleep on the cot in the screened-in sleeping porch of the ancient farmhouse after a blistering hot day in the fields, listening to the night sounds as a barred owl called down close to the barn where Peanut rested. And I would think about the river and the big bass that got away and wonder what tomorrow would bring and if it could possibly get any better.

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Treasured Memories

Old companions can be the best medicine

By Tom Bryant

“The storehouse of our memories is like an unused room in which lay aside the odds and ends of many treasured things.”
— Roland Clark, Gunner’s Dawn

For the last several months a debilitating illness seemed to dominate all my thinking. It felt as if it had been an interminable time since I had roamed the woods and streams hunting and fishing. The calendar that Linda, my bride, kept of assorted obligations was filled with doctor appointments. My life was centered around pills and stethoscopes.

It was a depressing time. So what to do?

“Quit whining,” I told myself. “Head to the woods. That’ll make things better, or at least improve your outlook.”

I hollered to Linda, who was in the laundry room putting on a load of wash, “Hey, Babe, I’m gonna ride down to the farm and check things out.”

It had been several months since I had been to “the farm,” as I call the old tobacco workings to which my friend Joe Rosy lets me have access. It’s a wonderful corner of the Drowning Creek swamp area, teeming with deer, doves and turkeys. Back toward the swamp, there’s a beaver dam, and wood ducks live, nest and enjoy a habitat that is hard to find in our so-called modern world.

“You be careful,” Linda responded. “Take your phone.”

“OK,” I replied. “I’ll be back a little after dark.”

I grabbed my hunting bag, a battered old Orvis pack that I’ve had forever. I keep it stuffed with items I’ve learned over the years would, in a rush, come in handy — everything from a Swiss Army knife to shotgun loads of all gauges from 28 to 12. Depending on the gun I happen to be using, I’ll not run out of ammunition.

It’s a short ride down to the farm, and I usually take a little detour through Pinebluff, where I spent many happy years growing up. The old house where we lived is still there. After my father died, Mother sold it and moved to the farm in South Carolina that’s been in the family for years.

The Pinebluff house is a little worse for wear, but every time I drive by, memories come flooding back. Ironically, on this particular day, my first in weeks out of the house, just as I got to the corner, a black dog came bursting out of the pines and ran right in front of the truck.

“Smut,” I thought for a quick second of my old canine friend. But no, this dog was more like a pointer than a retriever, just with a black coat. Smut was my first dog, a curly-coated retriever, black as the ace of spades. Dad got him for me when I was in the third grade, and he became my constant companion until I went off to college. Smut was not a champion hunting dog by any means, but he had a natural instinct that helped him overcome his lack of obedience. Not his fault, more mine and my lack of knowledge about training a working dog. Our timing was perfect, though. We were both untamed when it came to the woods, and we spent many a day and night roaming that Pinebluff area of the Sandhills looking for adventure.

When Mother protested the little pup coming to live with us, complaining that she would be the one responsible for him, my father said, “A boy and a dog should grow up together.” In looking back, I can see how she loved the impish, tiny puppy almost as much as I did.

I continued on down Pinebluff Lake Road and decided to pull into the small gravel parking lot and maybe eat a snack from my gunning bag. It was good to have an appetite again. Food hadn’t meant a lot lately. I grabbed a pack of nabs and walked to the pier of the little lake where many years before I had learned to swim.

As a youngster before the town outlawed dogs in the lake, Smut and I would swim from the pier to the dam. He was more at home in the water than I was. As a matter of fact, he roamed Pinebluff and the lake area as if it was his domain, to be enjoyed at his leisure.

It was a quiet morning, and I watched a sheriff deputy’s car roll around the near curve and head toward town, and I decided to meander on to the farm. Remembering Smut brought to mind another furry best friend that lived with me during my early years of hunting — Paddle, a little female yellow Lab. I learned more about training a dog, or more to the point, acquiring the knowledge of how to train a dog, from the best teacher, Paddle herself. She was amazing and accomplished more afield in unusual situations than any animal I’ve ever known.

I thought back to a cold morning at a beaver dam. Paddle and I hoped to catch wood ducks as they came off the roost. The beaver dam was located in a little bottom about a hundred yards down a small rise. We had scouted the area the evening before when we noticed ducks winging their way back into the swamp. We pretty much had the lay of the land the next morning when we silently drove the Bronco, lights off so as to not disturb roosting ducks, down a little dirt fire break and parked under a giant white oak tree.

Frost on the broom straw crunched underfoot as I eased through the outer rings of the swamp to the beaver dam where we would set up for the hunt. Paddle, walking at heel, was anxious to go.

The swamp turned gray with early dawn as we hunkered down awaiting the morning flight. We heard the ducks as they came off the roost, and that was about it. They had flown in the opposite direction from where we were hiding.

I decided to give it 30 more minutes before heading home and to work. Just as I stood up on the narrow edge of the beaver dam, a lone wood duck came whistling over at the edge of the range of my gun. I snapped off a shot anyway, and the duck hit its after-burner and sailed on out of sight. Paddle took off after the bird and I whistled her back to heel.

“No bird, Paddle.”

She looked up at me expectantly as if I needed a good excuse for missing the duck. “It was out of range. We’ll get the next one.”

But there wasn’t another one, and after 30 more minutes, I decided to head up the hill to the truck. Just as we stepped off the beaver dam, Paddle tore off, racing toward the edge of the swamp with me shouting and whistling to get her back.

“Now where is that crazy dog going?” I thought as I hustled in the direction she had taken, concerned that we would be delayed getting home. Just as I stepped out of the tree line bordering the swamp, here came Paddle over the rise with the wood duck in her mouth, the same wood duck that I had shot at and thought I had missed. She knew somehow that I hadn’t.

It was a great morning in the woods at the farm, and my impromptu visit to Pinebluff and remembrances of the wonderful dogs that have accompanied me through life was therapeutic. I felt as if I had another lease on the days to come.

As Dick Coleman, my good friend and hunting buddy, so eloquently put it shortly after his big, rangy black Lab, Honcho, had died, “Do dogs go to heaven? Well, if they don’t, I don’t want to go either.”

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For the Record

A stack of journals and a chilly day

By Tom Bryant

It was one of those cold, gray, wet late winter days that reinforced the groundhog’s prediction of six more weeks of bad weather. I was up in the roost, the little apartment over our garage where I go to write or go through damp duck hunting gear in preparation for storing it until next season. It’s also a great place to make plans for hunting, fishing or camping trips. On this day, though, I was just sorting through some old journals that I began many years ago.

There was a little female cardinal huddled on a dogwood branch right outside the window next to my desk. If the window had been open, I could have reached out and touched the little bird. Her feathers were puffed up as if she had on a fluffy down vest. She looked in at me with one eye closed as if to say, “Man, it’s cold out here.” I watched for a couple of minutes until she flew away, and then I picked up one of my journals.

I started keeping hunting diaries, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, back in the late ’70s. It was the same time I started a newspaper, and during the unpropitious years of the Carter recession, I was constantly trying to generate enough revenue in advertising to pay the folks working for me. One of the first journals I started was right in the middle of those tumultuous times when every work week was a struggle. One entry reads: “January 20, George came by and wanted to know how business was doing. I told him to keep his fingers crossed that I would have the bank payment next week.” George was my banker at Wachovia, before they were taken over by Wells Fargo during their own hard times. The loan was on money I had borrowed to help start the paper. Interest, 8 percent, floating. Before the loan was settled, I was paying 21 percent to my good friend George and Wachovia Bank.

I chuckled to myself. “Reminder, never borrow money to start a newspaper.” The newspaper remained viable, along with other ancillary businesses, for 17 years before it was sold and I escaped the responsibility of a weekly payroll.

The journals I started during that period mostly pertained to hunting, fishing and camping experiences, dates, weather and other observations. Brief and to the point.

The missives are stacked in the bookcase in no particular order, so I glanced briefly at the year and moved on. One thing I discovered was that my years always started in March, not January. The seasons for hunting, fishing and camping described my yearly doings. A good example: March was the planning month, a time to put away hunting gear and get ready for fishing. Spring would be turkey hunting and camping, hiking and more fishing. In the summer, July and August brought along more laid-back camping and fishing. September, October, November, December, January and February were for bird hunting, duck hunting and late fall surf fishing. Then comes March and the cycle starts again.

Some of the journals have more entries than others, and some are right eloquent in describing the events of the day, such as “Shot three Canada geese while Bryan was parking the truck.” Or, “Bryan stepped in over his waders in the marsh at Hester’s. As he was falling, he hollered, ‘I’m going in.’” Hester’s duck hunting club at Mattamuskeet is one of the finest in the country. We hunted there numerous times and got a lot of fun out of Bryan Pennington, a good hunting buddy.

Another entry was set in motion by my good friend and sidekick John Vernon. It read, “When we paddled up the river to the location of the Haw River blind, it was gone.” Off and on the summer before the fall duck season, John and I had built the finest duck blind on the lake. A major rainstorm, right before legal duck shooting, washed the blind downriver and we never saw it again. We still laugh about that, vowing never to waste time on a permanent blind again.

I continued to browse, and remembering the recent snow, pulled out the one from January 2000. That was the month of what became known as the great blizzard. According to the notes I made, over 28 inches of snow fell. And that led to the first ever bulldog edition of The Pilot.

Moore County was a disaster. The snow started early that afternoon, forecast to be only 4 to 5 inches. Publisher David Woronoff and I met at lunch when the snow first started falling, and he decided to let the employees go home early before it got too deep. Little did we know that the weather people had totally missed it. That night we were smothered in sleet, ice and snow.

The writing in the journal continued, “Pine trees down everywhere, had a hard time getting to the office.” I was the only one at the paper who had a four-wheel drive vehicle, and after trying different routes, I found one that wasn’t blocked by fallen trees. David also made it, along with a few other much-needed employees. He decided to put out a bulldog edition (old newspaper jargon meaning a rare and very infrequent publication, usually before the regular printing). It detailed the disastrous results of the storm.

Our carriers couldn’t deliver the paper, so we split up the county. Dennis, our circulation director, took the area toward Pinehurst. David, Southern Pines and nearby hotels and motels. I did the same toward Aberdeen, and we hand-delivered the four-page section. I ended that episode of the journal, “No power for 6 days.”

The journals rolled right along until last year. My grandfather always told me there were no bad times in life. It just depended on how you interpreted them. I believed that until 2024. For me, there is no redeeming factor in that annum.

One bad time after another followed me that year. First, a knee replacement. A good call in the end, but recovery time was longer than I anticipated. My brother passed away after a lingering deadly disease, then I was diagnosed in late summer with a debilitating aliment that would lay me low for several months and put a crimp in my lifestyle.

It turns out that my granddad was right, though. After I changed my attitude about my sickness and began looking at it like an adventure, things started to fall in place.

I met wonderful folks, health care professionals and patients. The health care industry deserves a feature all its own, and someday I plan to write that story. The patients, what can I say? Never before have I run across such optimism and value of life.

A great example was the afternoon we were leaving after an appointment. Linda was outside the hospital getting the car from valet parking, and I was sitting on a bench inside the lobby. A wheelchair rolled up beside me with a shrunken old man holding on with some apprehension. He and I talked. He was from New Zealand and was getting ready to head home on a morning plane. He had a wonderful smile, and after a short conversation, he and his caregiver headed for the sliding door. I wished him well.

“No worries,” he said. “Me and Jesus be mates.”

On the last page at the end of the empty journal I had designated for 2024, I added the caption. “To Be Continued.”

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A Sad Sign

Reeling in an omen

By Tom Bryant

Linda and I were camped in our little Airstream at our favorite Florida winter destination, Chokoloskee Island, right below Everglades City. It had been a hectic trip. Usually we try to take our time on the adventure south, trying to avoid other snowbirds who are in a bigger hurry to escape the winter cold. But on this trip, it seemed that the migration had doubled. Camper trailers and motor homes were elbow-to-elbow at the campgrounds, and we were lucky to find sites at the transient encampments along the route.

We always stopped along the South Carolina coast to enjoy special landmarks and good seafood, especially at Pawleys Island, Georgetown, Charleston and Edisto Beach. But on this trip, like the campgrounds, the restaurants were packed and had waiting lines. It was shaping up to be a different kind of winter sojourn.

The managers of the campground and marina we call home for a couple of weeks in Chokoloskee had caught the snowballing of the snowbirds, and they had increased the number of parking sites. The problem with that was each site was smaller, or it seemed so. With the park being slam full, maybe the sites just seemed tiny. We were determined to make the best of it, though, and just enjoy the surroundings and camaraderie of the many friendly people there.

Everything was perking along nicely. We were getting used to the tight surroundings, catching a few fish, and enjoying the warm weather. We had about four days left before heading back home, so I decided to try fishing from the causeway that connected the compact island with Everglades City.

Early the next morning I decided to walk the nearly 2-mile hike to where I wanted to try my luck. Later, Linda was going into town to get a few groceries and said that she would pick me up if I was ready. The walk was uneventful. I only saw three or four cars on the causeway and thought most folks must be sleeping in.

I found a good spot under several alders that had been trimmed for shade and threw out a hooked shrimp on my bait casting rig and sorta hoped nothing would bite. The plan was to kinda kick back and use this morning to remember days gone by when I fished the bay with my grandfather. Back then, Chokoloskee was a true island, accessible only by water.

A soft warm wind was blowing out of the southwest, and ripples splashed gently on the bank. It was a contemplative time. It was like my mom told me years ago when I was in a hurry to get some chore or another finished. “Slow down, son,” she said. “Build memories, because when you reach old age they will be a pleasure to you.”

About a hundred yards out in the bay I saw a couple of porpoise dive and roll as if they were playing. I had seen them before from my canoe. They would approach the boat like friends, surf across the bow a time or two, then dive, and I wouldn’t see them again. They became a welcome diversion, and I was glad to have their company on one of my last days of fishing.

Early boaters were heading out to the gulf while the tide was in. The bay gets almost impassable to bigger boats when the tide is out, thus the value of fishing from a canoe. I used to haul my Grumman on our winter trips but found it was easier to rent from the marina and save all that lifting and toting.

It was a wonderful morning. Cumulus clouds floated like cotton puffs, moving slowly across the beautiful blue sky. I had an optimistic feeling that nature would remain the same for years to come. But then, here came empty plastic water bottles all attached to the holder that kept them together, floating in on the high tide.

I remembered what John MacDonald recorded in his Travis McGee book about all the garbage barges dumping their loads off the shores of Miami Beach. The same thing is happening in New York City. I’ve seen, with my own eyes, refuse barges being towed down the Hudson River out into the Atlantic to be dumped.

The older I get, the more I realize that this wonderful planet is gradually being used up. In my hometown, trees that we took for granted are mowed down to allow more and more construction. In my youth I hunted the swamps of Black Creek in South Carolina, not far from the family home place. Now a golf course in the gated community of The Country Club of South Carolina takes the place of giant cypress trees where I used to roam at will. Black Creek is no more than a fast water flowing ditch, a natural hazard for golfers.

One of the finest natural wild game habitat farms I had the privilege of using later in my duck hunting years was located in Alamance County, North Carolina, just 30 minutes from my house. That land has been sold and developed into 5- and 10-acre so called mini-farms. Wild game that used to frequent the acreage has dispersed or become semi-tame pests accustomed to the easy life of living next to humans.

I once declared that I would never, in my observations of outdoor life, exclaim noisily: “Things aren’t like, nor nearly as good, as they were when I was a boy.” That sad thing which I haven’t proclaimed until today is unfortunately now a fact.

I used my fishing rig to cast out and hook the floating water bottles. I reeled them in and stowed them in my fishing bag for proper disposal later. I decided to call it a day for fishing. Time to hike back to camp and begin the chore of getting the rig ready to head back north.