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wheel and balance them so they would move smoothly down the road.
Sometimes we’d skinny dip in the Buttahatchee and dive off of tree ropes that hung over the best swimming holes. Water moccasins didn’t bother us, I guess, because of all the commotion. I never knew of anyone getting bitten by one and never saw a regular swimming pool until my senior year, in Jack- son, Mississippi.
Other times we’d tie a hook and line to a branch, bait it, come back the next morning, and find catfish, suckers, turtles, and an occasional bass. Other times we’d make about a three-foot basket baited with food that big fish could get in but couldn’t get out. Or fish with the minnows we’d caught in smaller, wire screen baskets. Dad had a rod and reel. I only had a wood or cane pole.
One man said he caught a fish weigh- ing 190 pounds. The other man said he pulled up an old lantern that was 150 years old and still burning. The first fisherman said: “I’ll take off 100 pounds from that fish if you’ll blow out that lantern.”