Teach A Girl To Fish And She Can Eat Forever.

After The Attack Of The Killer Cute Deer, I asked the lady where I could buy a loaf of bread. She pointed me up the road to the village of Bayview. It is smaller than Cassadaga. I didn’t think it was possible, but it is. It has some prime Lake Erie fishing spots, which means it also has prime food-making and laptop-using spots. I’m discovering that they are one and the same.

I made some hot dogs on my propane stove - my first hot meal in three days - and took a walk by the water, where I smelled something awful. In this CSI-age, I thought it was a dead body. Guess what - it was! Now, before you freak out, it was the body of a huge, ginormus fish, probably a carp. It was decaying on the rocks and made the whole area somewhat unpleasant. I got back in the car and tried to find another spot. Eventually I stumbled on a tiny clearing right off of Rt. 6 between Bayview and Port Clinton, right on a backwater tributary of Lake Erie. I pulled my car in as far as it would go and busted out the computer, getting lost in writing.

I don’t know how much time had passed before a family in a white pick-up pulled in. There were two black guys, two black children, both boys, and a white woman, the girlfriend of one of the guys. I mention their races only because I think it’s awesome - I’ve seen more interracial couples in Ohio in the last four days than I have in New York City in four years. It’s so nice to know that my ex was wrong and not everyone outside of NYC is a racist. The guy driving, well-dressed in a collared shirt and jeans, called to me, "You’ve got the right idea! I think I may do that one of these days, just take the computer to the lake and work!" I laughed. "Are we gonna be in your way if we fish?" he asked.
"Oh, goodness, no, go ahead!"

They set up their poles and soon I was giggling, just listening to them banter back and forth. One of the men and one of the boys set up near me and the others were opposite a huge bush where there was more room. I couldn’t really see them from where I was, so it was just the three of us on our side of the shrub. The two of them, father and son, made me laugh as they took bets on who would catch more fish. The son, whose name was Christopher and was about 13, kept looking back over his shoulder at me and shaking his head every time his father tried to one-up him. Eventually my battery died so I just talked to them for awhile. The father, Earl, asked if I wanted to fish with their extra pole. How could I turn that down?

Christopher wandered over to the other side of the bush to fish with his uncle, which left Earl and I to talk while we fished. I answered a bunch of questions about my trip and then he asked why I wanted to interview Rev. Shuttlesworth. For some reason I always feel uncomfortable talking about my interest in the civil rights movement with black people; like I have no right to care because it wasn’t my plight, whereas they live it every day. It’s only then I feel like the outsider I am. When I’m alone, reading, studying, it’s a fight for human dignities that I feel so in tune with. But when I try to explain that to a black person, my voice is coming out of the body of the enemy.

Earl did get a slightly indistinguishable tone in his voice as he interrupted, saying, "Well, yeah, as a black man I’ve realized a few things. I’m graduated from Northwestern University, I was in the Army Special Forces for six years, and I have a good job. But I’ve had to work twice as hard to prove myself, just to overcome that ‘lazy and stupid’ stereotype. But it hasn’t been easy at all." He felt a tug on the line. "Gotcha!" he said as he started reeling in. I watched him pull a good-sized catfish out of the water as he continued his thought. "There’s kind of a glass ceiling for me just like for women. I work for a company that pulls in 30 billion dollars of revenue a year. (It’s a popular store but I won’t name names) But our percentage of minority management is less than three percent. It’s like, why is that? And it’s like that almost everywhere!" He deftly pulled the hook out of the fish’s mouth. "I’ll deal with it, it’s not like I have a choice. But it’s like treading water - I have to work twice as hard as everyone else to get and stay where I am."

Chris called over, shouting, "Dad, guess what Uncle Pre (pronounced "pray") caught!"
"What?"
"Seaweed!" a deep voice yelled, echoing across the lake. "More seaweed!"
"That’s what I caught the other day," I told Earl. He laughed.
"Chris seems like a really good kid," I said.
"Yeah, he is. He gets a little rowdy - he has ADHD, so he’s a special needs child. If he doesn’t take his medicine he doesn’t realize how loud he’s talking, and everything has an edge to it. It’s odd, I wanted to have a child but I didn’t want to go through the commitment process with a woman. It may sound bad but I adopted him and my girlfriend and I raised him. She and I broke up but he still calls her mom."

He continued, "We got him when was four. Trust me, whether or not I was married, it was an improvement for him. He was living in Florida. His mother was a drug addict and she would lock him and his sister in the closet all night while she went out and got high. He was still drinking from a bottle at four years old but we finally broke him of that after a few months. His teeth were rotted –"
"His baby teeth?"
"No, his adult teeth up inside his gums. We spent about three thousand dollars getting them fixed. But he’s my boy."

Chris had wandered back over to our side of the bank as Earl was talking. "Yeah, my dad taught me everything I know! He taught me about fishing and football and history and science and all kinds of stuff! Did you catch anything? I haven’t catched anything yet! If you catch a fish before I do I’m gonna be mad! Last week I catched a fish but not this week!"
"Chris," his dad said.
"Yeah?"
"Did you take your pill today?"
"No."
"I can tell."

It was sweet to watch the two of them interact. Granted, Earl was sometimes a little too harsh on the boy, joking without countering it with enough encouraging words, but Chris had a good attitude about it, smiling at me and rolling his eyes as he fielded his father’s jabs. In trying to remember all the details of the two of them, I almost missed the tug on my line. I rushed to reel it in and there was an actual fish on the other end!!! I caught my first fish! It was a tiny blue gill that we threw back but it was so awesome! I never thought fishing could actually be fun but it is!

We talked some more about my trip and I gave him my website and phone number. At one point Earl asked me where I was staying and I looked behind me, surveying the little clearing we were in. "Eh, I’ll probably just pull the car further into the clearing and sleep right here," I answered.
"You’re kidding, right?" he said.
"No," I smiled. "I’m doing this on the cheap, y’know?"
"Uh, okaaaaaay," he said, laughing. "If that’s what you want, that’s fine, but if you want cheap you can just pull your car in our driveway and sleep there. Chris’ll even make you a TV dinner." We both giggled. "Actually, you’d probably get a better sleep there than here ‘cause I’m gonna be calling you every hour to make sure you’re not dead!" We were cracking up by this time.
"I’ll think about it," I said, catching my breath.

We fished for a long time, until it started to get dark and windy. A storm was building on the other side of the lake and heading for us fast. When the temperature dropped suddenly it was time to scramble and go. I still hadn’t made up my mind about staying with Earl and Chris but I said yes pretty quickly as a streak of lightning broke across the clouds. We piled all our stuff in our cars and Earl said, "Just follow me, I gotta drop Pre and Kelly off at their house first!"
"Dad, can I ride with Jessica?" Chris asked.
"No, boy, don’t bother her!"
"No, no, it’s cool!" I said. "He can come with me."

The Killers, compliments of John, were in my stereo and Chris quickly asked, "Uh, do you have any rap CD’s?" I didn’t, but I put in some Beenie Man reggae and soon we were tailing his dad’s truck and dancing in our seats. Chris turned to me. "You’re nice."
I blushed and struggled not to say, "AWWWWW!"
"Thanks, hon. You’re nice too."

We stopped for ice cream and ate it in the car. Later on, after following his dad on a few errands, Chris knocked my dish of melted ice cream on his pants and the passenger seat. "I’m sorry," he said in a heart-melting voice, just as I said the same thing, cursing myself for leaving it in a bad spot.
"Oh, sweetheart, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. Are you okay?" I asked.
"See, I know you’re nice ‘cause nice people don’t worry about their stuff, they just worry about other people," he said.
I was beet red.

When we were rounding a corner, he said, in the same tone, "I'm mad at you."
"Why?"
""Cause you sleep in your car and that's not good."
I paused.
"Well, honey, if I stayed in a hotel every night I wouldn't be able to do this. I wouldn't have made it two weeks on the road."
"Oh. Okay."

We got to their house and put on "Napoleon Dynamite" without delay - turns out it’s Chris’ favorite movie too! After awhile we ate some dinner and then Chris went to bed. Earl said, "Okay, he’s asleep, let’s go out for a beer!"
"Are you sure it’s cool to leave him alone like that?"
"Yeah, this is Ohio. I haven’t locked my door in seven years."

So out we went. It was cool; we got to talk about relationships and ambition and all that good stuff. Earl said, "You’ve got me thinking. I’m terribly jealous of you right now, just being able to go off and do whatever you want. That would be an awesome thing for Chris and I, too - and I’ve got five weeks of vacation coming up. Maybe he and I’ll just take off, no destination."

On attractive women: "I don’t really get into tight clothes. It defeats the purpose. See, men are voyeurs, so if a woman comes in a room with those hip-hugger jeans and a half-shirt, there’s nothing left to imagination. But if a woman comes in with a nice top, maybe two buttons unbuttoned, you know we’re gonna spend the whole night peekin’!"

On current events: "Can you f*ckin’ believe Michael Jackson got off?!"

It was nice to go out with a guy and not be hit on. For some reason, I wasn’t even worried about that, it was awesome. We went back to the house, which is being remodeled, and I took the couch, his usual spot since his bedroom is under construction and Earl pulled up a spot of floor. For as leery as I had been about staying with Earl and Chris, they made me feel right at home. It was a great day!