Becoming the Blues

It was a perfect day in every way. Ten-year-old Josh Barber was not thinking about perfection, he was living it. He had two wheels under him, spinning without conscious effort down a sun-and-shade dappled lane that seemed to whisper his name as if he owned the road, the sunshine, and all the airy tree limbs flecked with light and swaying with joy. He was full—full of time stretching out ahead of him toward a far horizon and full of the clean satisfaction of a loyal knight who has successfully battled a fiery dragon to save the kingdom. Instead of a dragon’s head, however, he was carrying a huge fish.

Josh had spent the afternoon fishing, as he often did. Today he was fishing in salt water. Just yesterday, he had spent the morning at one of the small fresh-water ponds on the island. Fishing was just one degree removed from breathing and moving, and at least two degrees higher priority than eating. Sometimes it felt to him that he was a kind of water creature who lived just temporarily on land. He knew he had what others called luck with catching fish. In his mind, it was not luck; it was a kind of affinity. The fish seemed to want to get close to him and vice versa. If they weren’t exactly jumping on shore to get to him, they did seem to choose his hook and line over any others and also over living out their lives without him.

As he pedaled with his lopsided cargo—looking and feeling quite as remarkable as a knight carrying a dragon’s severed head—Josh was considering how to tell today’s story. He could approach the house quietly and shush his little sister Maggie, who was sure to shout if she saw the huge fish before noticing her brother’s signal to be quiet. If he recruited Maggie to be part of a surprise presentation, he would have the double reward of another notch in her adoration plus the astonishment of his parents at the size of his catch. If he were to put his unarticulated feelings into words, Josh would admit that he didn’t find Maggie at all annoying. She was the best audience a ten-year-old could want; she always looked up to him and not just because she was shorter. In Maggie’s eyes, Josh felt like the strongest, smartest, funniest boy who ever lived. He included her in just about everything, except fishing. Maggie didn’t really enjoy fishing.

Maybe Maggie just never had the chance to learn fishing the way he did as the first son and first grandson of two great fishermen, his father John and his father’s father Charlie, or Poppy, as the grandchildren called him. Josh had felt central to the universe with a pole in his hand, casting and reeling in since he was about four years old. Three generations of Barber men would line up along the Yantic River and nearby ponds in Norwich, Connecticut, and with varying levels of skill, angling to catch freshwater fish, trout, catfish, and bass. Little Josh was incredibly focused on developing the skills he observed carefully in his father and grandfather. He couldn’t seem to get enough of it and would ask repeatedly to go fishing, perhaps even more than appealed to the dedicated older fishermen in the family.

Fish Stories

When they moved to Rhode Island, Josh’s passion for fishing was smoothly relocated from fresh water to the salt water bays, marshes, and open ocean within constant view of their Jamestown home. The boy was virtually defined by his fishing and the stories about his fishing that became family legends—like the one about the eight-pound bass he caught to win the Memorial Day tournament when he was just five years old.

Every year, both Darla’s and John’s families would gather in Maine for the Memorial Day weekend. John and his dad had been revving up Darla’s family in the fishing department. The family had started a tournament a few years earlier, and by now, there was a whole ritual around the activities, including a plaque with winners’ names and quite a bit of competition among the men, women, and boys. There were probably three or four small groups fishing in separate boats spread out around Kezar Lake in favorite, lucky spots. John and his father had Josh in the boat with them. It was toward the end of the three-day weekend and at the most unfavorable time of day for catching fish. John felt there was nothing happening for them in the spot where they had been for the past hour. “Let’s pull up and move,” he said. Everything about the lake seemed asleep—the fish, the fishermen, and even the bait.

Josh and his Poppy were fishing with rubber worm lures, and John, idly contemplating what strategy to try next, decided to relieve himself in the lake. Not two minutes later, Josh was jerked forward as his pole bent over from a vigorous pull on the line. This was no little tug or nibble; this was a huge fish hooked securely at the opposite end of the pole from a five-year old!  “Dad! Poppy! I got one!”

There was a good bit of shouting and rocking of the boat as the two men resisted the impulse to grab the pole from the little boy, all the while keeping their strong hands on both him and the pole. They coached Josh and kept a close watch to be sure he wasn’t pulled out of the boat in the struggle. He was tough. After what seemed to be forever, he reeled in an eight-pound bass from the lake that had given up, at most, four pounds to every other tournament winner. John’s brothers-in-law claimed that he “chummed in” the big fish with his bio-waste, and that got the biggest laugh of the day.

Mostly, everyone was in complete awe at the unheard-of feat achieved by a boy who hadn’t even started school yet. There was a big buzz of comments:

“You’ve got to keep him!  What a trophy!”  “Yeah, don’t release that one. He’s a keeper!”John’s seemed to be the only voice counseling the opposite. “No, we should let him go.”

Despite his certainty of the right course of action, he wanted his son to make the decision, so he attached a chain to the fish and anchored it to the dock so that it could swim in the water while they debated.

Over the next hour, adults were distracted by cooking chores and embellishing the story over a few beers, while Josh stayed a while to watch his fish, and then went off to play with his cousins. Sometime later, John went out to check on the fish. He pulled on the chain and up came only half a fish!  The turtles had enjoyed a free meal!  John made sure that the remaining front half of the fish was cleaned and mounted in a very dramatic posture, coming straight out of the mounting board with mouth wide open as if still jumping for the rubber worm. It hung in Josh’s room for his entire childhood and adolescence.

Josh loved to recall the moment when he felt that big fish tug on his line! It made him feel like some kind of superhero, the ordinary kid that everyone was watching to see him transform into a bolt of lightning, stop a speeding train, or land a humongous fish. Every new fish brought it back, and he aimed higher and higher to get the same reaction from his parents. Now, riding home with yet another big fish, he pondered how to make the most of today’s fine catch.