I spent many summers with Uncle Oscar and Aunt Mary. One afternoon we went fishing on Portage Lake. This was in the era of cane poles and bobbers! Uncle Oscar and I had dug a can of worms before we left the garden and loaded the pickup.

We went out of Deerwood to a friend of Auk and Mary’s, Myrtle Sloan. She had a nice old home on the lake. We had lunch and a nice visit and then we went down to the lake and fished off Myrtle’s dock. 

Aunt Mary had a very nice cane pole. It was fiberglass and extendable. I always wanted to play with it at their house, but Auk said “No! This is Aunt Mary’s only.”

Aunt Mary was deathly afraid of water. She had almost drowned when she was little and had never learned to swim! Auk put a worm on her line, and she went on the dock, just a little way, and started fishing. Auk was sitting in a folding chair on the shoreline. He was using an old bait casting reel with a metal rod.

Myself, I was just on the end of the dock giving Aunt Mary a heart attack, her thinking I would fall in and drown, so Auk made me come stand by him. Auk was spending half his time untangling his line as it would ball up every time he would cast!

It wasn’t long before Aunt Mary’s bobber went down, and she had something big on? It bent that cane pole almost in half and she was getting excited! Even Auk got out of his chair and grabbed a net. Aunt Mary was hanging on to that pole for dear life with both hands and there was excitement in her voice. Auk was trying to get her to let him have the pole, but she was having none of that! Finally, Aunt Mary got off the dock and walked backwards up from the lake sort of dragging the fish? Uncle Oscar netted the fish, and it was a 5 or 6 pound bass!!! Aunt Mary was so excited I thought she was going to have an accident?

There was a lot of admiring of this fish, I don’t think Aunt Mary could even hear us talking to her!!! She was as proud as could be. This was the biggest fish she had ever caught in her life! Then she started talking about eating it and how good it would taste.

Auk looked at her and told her, “You have to put it back!”

If you could have seen the look on her face? I thought something bad was going to happen to him! It was a scary look! Uncle Oscar started laughing and tried not to laugh but he couldn’t resist!  

Now you didn’t have to ask if I was smiling. I had never seen this before with these two!

Auk tried to tell her bass fishing was out of season and you must put them back! 

All I heard in reply was, “No! I caught it and I’m going to keep it!!!!”

Auk slid the bass back into the water and Aunt Mary almost whacked him with that pole! She accused him of being jealous of not catching one as big as hers! She thought Auk was lying about the out of season thing!! There were no foolish laws like this when she was young! 

Well, I might add this was the end of our fishing. Aunt Mary dropped her cane pole and went to the pickup parked on the road.

I helped Auk load the fishing equipment and he said, “She’s not going to get over this one for a long time!”

We got in the truck with me in the middle and it was a quiet, tense ride home! 

Aunt Mary never said a bad word in her life, she didn’t have too. Auk and I both got the message loud and clear for a couple of days after this! 

I still get uneasy when I think of it!!!! 

This was the only time I saw a disagreement between them! 

But I must tell you I can still see Auk holding that fish and chuckling!