During the war years, when we didn’t own a car, our fishing sites were necessarily within walking distance. Most of our humble fishing endeavors took place at a pond that once existed half a mile from home, set behind a small manufactory of Bakelite auto parts, which gave its name for those enchanted waters.
The pond was deepest at the west end, bordered by scrub willows at water’s edge and by tall oaks and spindly sassafras on higher ground. Fine catfish water.
From there, broad shallows bounded by cattails and sumac extended far eastward. These shallows were the province of banded water snakes and bullfrogs and for sculling about on a large wooden plank buoyant and long enough to support two small boys poling an imaginary pirogue past crocodiles and anacondas on the Amazon or Limpopo, through eerie jungle depths where kingfishers, herons, owls and iridescent dragonflies swooped upon prey. A virtual museum of bugs buzzed and skittered about.
Altogether, White Plastics Pond was a compact naturalist’s paradise, real or fanciful.
Perhaps the most memorable day with my father during those war years took place when I was 9 years old and my sister was 12. Pop was not scheduled to work at the munitions plant that weekday and, stepping totally out of character and with Mom having already gone to work, he persuaded us to skip school that day to go fishing. I set about digging worms while Pop gathered the fishing gear and my sister packed a lunch.
In high spirits we walked to White Plastics Pond, where bullfrogs grunted deeply and redwing blackbirds sang their spring ballads from perches atop last year’s cattails. It was a grand day of fishing and exploring, all the more terrific because of our self-sanctioned truancy from school and work.
Pop caught four catfish, my sister caught two and I caught just one. But I caught two water snakes and found an ebony-eyed deer mouse. That the catfish measured no more than 10 inches didn’t matter; we were proud of our catch and felt smug to have spent the day in larcenous pursuit.
Just after the war, the long-vacated White Plastics building was demolished and that entire area, including pond and woods, was bulldozed level in preparation for a shopping center and a vast asphalt parking lot.
I arrived at the devastated scene the following day with buckets and net to gather up fish that survived in scattered ruts and furrows sliced into the otherwise level moonscape. I made several mile-long trips, each time toting two buckets of water bearing small catfish and bluegills — hundreds altogether — to the forested stretches of Pecker Deep Creek, where the day before I had built a fieldstone and log dam to deepen a cutbank pool.
Months later, heavy autumn rains carried away my dam and sent the refugees downstream to bigger waters, perhaps redeeming a few lives. Still, there would be no return to the pond that was.
At age 77, retired geologist and professor Don L. Kissling still manages to hike and fish all seasons of the year.
