Good to the Last Drop

 Pictured is "Pa Crain," Carl C. Crain, my paternal grandfather. 

My dad was probably too nervous to spend time sitting around a South Carolina fishing pond when I was a boy. He served with the U.S. 84th Infantry in Germany during World War II and returned to my mother, who birthed me in 1947 as part of a post-WWII “baby boom.” Dad’s army service changed him, some said – or maybe he just thought fishing was a foolish way to fritter away God-given time on Saturdays. I’m not sure.

As a young man, my paternal grandfather, a carpenter, worked as a sharecropper until he bought a small farm. He made Fred, my dad’s younger brother, and Dad follow in his footsteps when they were boys. They worked all week and had to put in a half-day’s work each Saturday on their parents’ “place.” When I was a child, however, my grandfather – I called him “Pa” – enjoyed fishing on Saturdays during summer months. I started going fishing with him when I was five years old, and he hooked me on catching catfish in what folk called “pay lakes.”

For one dollar per person per day, one could fish all day, usually with no limit on the number of fish caught. Lake owners bought catfish to stock what we called “lakes” (usually those “lakes” were just ponds of varying sizes). We often drove down dirt roads and through cow pastures to get to fishing paradises that enticed us to spend hours staring at lines and corks while waiting for fish “to bite.”

Pa and I fished many Saturdays at Groces Fishing Lake on State Park Road near Traveler’s Rest, S.C. We’d arrive early – maybe around 7:00 a.m. – and begin “wetting lines.” Sometimes we’d beat the lake owner to the site. When the owner arrived and opened his small canteen, Pa would send me around the lake to get “fishing permits,” receipts we kept with us for the duration of the time we spent “drowning worms” or bating with shrimp to try to catch some “cats.”

The owner of Groces Lake had a nice concession stand with a wide opened and propped-up window that he closed and locked when he went home. While purchasing permits, I’d look into the stand and see candy bars, cheese crackers, packages of “tater chips” and cups of earthworms. He also kept cold soft drinks in his stash.

Pa fished with two rods and reels (two was the limit at pay lakes). I sat and watched the cork attached to the line on my cane pole and feel the morning sun bear down. The straw hat my mother made me wear didn’t do much to keep me from sweating. Often, the fish seemed slow to wake up.

“Got any bites,” I’d ask Pa around 8:00 a.m.

“Naw, not yet,” he’d say.

I’d get dryer and dryer and start wishing Pa would shell out some cash for soft drinks. Sometimes he’d wait until 10 a.m. before he’d say, “Get us a Pepsi.”

He really meant two Pepsis.

He’d give me money, and I’d almost run to the concession stand and bring back two opened, cold bottles of Pepsi.

Man! I’d take a swig of my Pepsi and feel  it froth up in my mouth. I’d feel like a man in a desert who received a life-giving drink of liquid. I’d swill that Pepsi, and it was good to the last drop.  
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I am pictured here at five years of age with a string of catfish.