The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1909-05-15
GOING FISHING
The Only Backward Road from Man
hood to Boyhood

be on this week suggests few
thoughts. Most of them old ones, but
everything connected with trout fish
ing is forever new, writes j. e. Harris
in the Hardwick Gazette. The same
old story, with fresh variations Will
be retold the same experiences will
be gone through. Old men frequent
ly tell in a hopeless and reminiscent
way of being a boy again" but moth
ing under the blue dome of the limit
less either will actually accomplish it
except a day on a trout brook. Then
the man of any age goes back into
boyhood.
Trout fising is not a recreation nor
a sport in the sense that other things
are. 1t is something in the nature
of a hypnotic trance, transformation
a dream. When the brook is reach
ed, time is at an end. The world with
it's cares and worries reeds and fades
away. 1t is as a tale that is told.
Time ends and eternity begins.
How hardly earned and longed for
and infrequent were the half days on
in those far gone years when the boy
was at last permitted to 90 fishing!
The final little jobs and chores were
done in a hurry. the bait was hastily
dug out behind the barn, and with
cheap cotton line, couple of treas
ured hooks and a roll OF sheet lead
for "sinkers" a bee line was made for
the nearest brook. Not a step was
taken to the right or left and not
moment was wasted. Every second
not spent in fishing was time worse
than lost. Arriving at the bank OF
the paradise regained for only such
little while pole was hastily cut
from the nearest clump of alders or
other suitable growth, the line was at
tached, hooks tied on, small sec
ton of the lead foil wrapped around
the line near the hook to steady 1t,
and an obstinately wriggling worm
was impatiently impaled Then the
boy entered into dreamland.
With good luck, poor luck or no
luck at all, he fished. The minutes
and the hours .fioated by until the boy
suddenly dMdhtIlcu " a dithis SNh'N
of the realities of life The sun was
sinking and home was long way OF.
With a sigh of throbbing regret he
cut off the pole just below the wound
string, showed the relic into his peck
ct and tried to get home in time to
help do the chores, as he had prom
Used. On the issue of the fulfilment
of that promise depended his being al
lowed to go again during the entire
season.
Forty years after the same boy goes
again TO the same brook. There is no
father then TO remind him of chore
time, there is no mother to watch him
nurrying away across the fields. The
old farm house is gone or changed.
Some woods are cut off and some are
grown up on the old place, and the
boy looks about him with the sense
of a great void somewhere. Although
there is no father and mother to CON
troll his hours, although he has a nice
new fishpole now, there seems TO be a
something indefinable which is brok-
en- or out of joint or lost out of his
life. The world has grown old and
unsympathetic and chilly. and just
over there where he remembers so
wildly of once seeing beautiful
rainbow is now only a bank of cold
and gloomy clouds.
But he knows well where that
brook is. and the nearest way to It.
And he takes the same old once fam
| liar way to the brookside. He looks
at it and listens to it, and the weight
of the years begins to slip from his
shoulders. The brook whispers and
| gurgles TO him that it has never for
| gotten him, that it has been watch
ing and waiting for him all these
years, remaining faithful to the early
friendship and waiting while the shad-
| ows longer grow. The boy again
thrills with the infinite charm of the
old days as he hurriedly prepares his
| outfit and begins.
| The hours come and go, while the
dream is on him. Two score years
are as a watch in the night while the
course of time has run backward by
the mighty compelling force of mem
DRY. He is in the land where 1t is
always afternoon, where thoughts out
run the ages. Along the ripping
brookside he wanders, heart and eyes
and soul intent only on the ripplinl
waters. The only concession to the
influence of earthly things is to ligh
the pipe as an antidote to the too nu
merous familiarity of the mosquitoes
Slowly the sun sinks toward and be
hind the treetops, and the deepening
shadows at last bring the awakening
The weight of years has returned
The little boy has vanished into tn
backward years, and slowly and wear
; lily the man plods back to the oil,
house on the hillside. For momen
the thought comes to him that h
must be home in time to go after tn
cows and bring in the wood for nigh
but it is only the echo of a dream
There are no cows any more, an
father and mother are over there 4
the churchyard But he has been
boy again, in spirit and in truth an
by the only means which can accom-
plish that mighty magic. He ha
been fishing.
Thus the boy vanishes and the ma
again takes up the burden of tn
years. Lest we forget" let us pus
II l.