The Fish Hook

BY BILLY SNEAD

No one can be exactly sure as to when their childhood ended. It was the summer of 1946 and although I had just turned 11, I was going on 12! I had just gotten my first pair of long pants --dark, blue, thick, denim dungarees.

Before that it was short pants in summer and knickers in winter. It was the last time I wore short pants until I was about 25 when Bermudas were fashionable and it was the last time I wore those dreaded knickers.

The dungarees were a little long on me, I being of short statue for my age. They gathered in a clump at my ankles even after folding them over two or three times which was not a problem. The problem was trying to walk in them.

They were so stiff that I could hardly bend my knees and they made loud, ruffling noises with every step I took, but I was no longer a child.

All of the other boys that I played with had gotten their dungarees the year before so when I got to Fox School playground that morning, I knew I was in for a lot of aggs.

And sure enough they were thrown at me for about 10 minutes, which was the outer limit of their collective attention spans.

The word "agg" requires some explanation as to its origin.

There was a younger kid who hung outside the playground fence and he was constantly making snide remarks about our clothes, bikes, and athletic abilities. He was mostly ignored but he persisted. One of our boys said, "That kid is simply aggravating," and so, we started calling him the "agg." To tease someone is to "agg" them. Hence, the coining of the word.

Now that my new pants were initiated, we could get on with the business of the day, which usually was either playing baseball or football in season.

There were about ten or twelve boys, all close in age, who hung around that playground and each day started and ended sitting on the west steps, which faced Stafford Avenue.

But there were no sports this morning. Doody and I needed bicycle tires and we were headed for Agee’s on Cary Street to make the purchase.

Two of the guys offered to give us a ride but we would have to pump while they rode the handlebars. The ride was uneventful and the guys with bikes abandoned us at the shop and went off in other pursuits.

We bought the tires and started walking east on Cary headed back home. About a block and a half down Cary we came to Lorraine Hardware. This was a really neat place with all the fascinating tools and equipment and smells that I had experienced before with my Daddy who shopped there all the time. I, never in his life told him, what occurred next.

There were all kinds of merchandise out on the sidewalk making it not easy to just walk by, especially for us with a bicycle tire over our shoulders. When we got to just in front of the doorway we came up on a large wooden barrel filled with odd looking things that Doody had never before seen, but I had.

They were large fishing hooks – lures – about a three-inch-long piece of wood, shaped sort of fish body-like and painted in various colors with the bottom half always white.

On the top middle was a brass eyelet where the fishing line was tied. On each end and the bottom were steel three-pronged fish hooks with barbs. I explained how they worked as I had been saltwater fishing with my Daddy for several years.

He was absolutely fascinated. You could not pick up one lure from the barrel; when you tried, five or six others came with it all clinging together by the hooks.

I picked a pretty green and white one up and carefully pulled off the others and handed it to Doody and I instantly knew that he was going to have it. His blue eyes quickly darted around as I instinctively moved around to block the view from the doorway.

My abetting was all he needed. He opened wide the lips of his tire and encased the fish hook. We then casually drifted away from the barrel and after a few paces walked briskly for a block or so and then on back to the school yard without so much as a peek inside the tire.

Back on the school yard steps the lure was the thing. Everybody had to touch and admire its beauty as it was passed carefully from hand to hand until its fascination had waned and other subjects entered the conversations.

Doody was sitting on the top step just left of me as my attention was turned to one of the guys on my right when I felt a tugging on my lower left pants leg. I turned and looked down as Doody was trying to penetrate my pants leg with one of the prongs at one end of the lure. My reflex was to jerk my leg, and I did, which set the hook in my pants leg up to the bend past the barb.

Oh, the man who designed this piece of equipment would have been proud because with the first cast of his invention, it had caught my new pants on one end and Doody’s left thumb on the other, set in the fleshly part and buried to the bend past the barb — one lure, two fish.

It seemed like a long time, but couldn’t have been before the situation was fully appreciated. Doody’s scream brought it all to reality. At first high pitched, then low and guttural, then high again but there was no mistaking the pain that triggered it.

I, on the other hand, saw my solution to the problem as simple, just pull out the hook and I’m out of the link. Alas, it was not to be, for the strong barb of the hook and the thick denim of my new pants would not part as hard as I pulled nor as others tried who were stronger.

If it would not come out of my pants, it certainly would not come out of his thumb without more pain than he could stand and he now knew it! The screams grew more stronger and now they were not only from pain but from utter despair. What was the possible solution? We needed, and readily admitted, an adult.

Doody lived upstairs in the second house from the alley behind the school. Upstairs!

We knew that his mother was at home and besides, where else would we go. As we started down the steps we soon realized that I could walk but he had to crawl on his left elbow and for him to crawl forward, I had to walk backwards and so I did. We got down the steps and started the twenty-yard trek to the street trying in vain to establish some sort of cadence or rhythm, but he would stop sometimes in mid crawl and I wouldn’t so you can see that it would jerk that hook in his thumb and his eye balls would disappear in agony.

Now he had stopped screaming and started low mournful moans and hopeless sobs.

I think he really wanted to just die and me and the boys thought surely that he would.

When we finally reached the sidewalk, the hook had churned up enough flesh in his thumb for it to start for the first time, bleeding. Not much, but at the first sight, he collapsed in hopelessness and at the wrong time, for I was not quick enough to stop in mid step giving his thumb a strong yank, to add to his misery.

Now we turned right, down Stafford, we had to go past the playground, across the alley, two row houses and up the steps to the second floor.

That was one of the longest walks I have ever taken. Across the street was a small grocery store, James Market, and next to that to the right was an alley and several row houses.

By this time, besides the playground boys, we were starting to draw a small crowd. The neighborhood girls arrived from the playground on the other side of the school. Shoppers in James Market came out of the store including Mr. James and Bruce, the bicycle delivery boy.

As we moved down the street, the people in the houses came out. Some of them crossed the street for a better view. Now the whole neighborhood, it seemed, was there trying to see through the crowd as the low moans now became long wails almost animalistic in nature.

The crowd, all watching in total disbelief, had expressions on their faces as if they had many questions to ask but could not muster a single one that made any sense, given what they were witnessing.

It was like a comic strip with a whole crowd giving blank stares with those big question marks over their furrowed brows.

I had plenty of time to think on this slow voyage and although my friend crawling and crying below on his now raw and bloody left elbow was in it for the worst, I too was feeling his pain and not just a little bit selfishly.

I simply saw no solution! What would happen? The phrase "crime does not pay" kept coming to me, but this was worse.

This was none other than God himself in an out of control rage. Only He could have devised such a just punishment and He was bound to be up there laughing at his cleverness. Probably even told Mr. James about it when he died a few years later.

Well, we were getting close and when I could not see how things could get any worse, they got much worse.

The boy started puking but still we kept moving. Some of it splattered on my shoes and new pants and he had to crawl through it as we proceeded. The only good part here was at least the screams had stopped, if only briefly.

One of the boys had the foresight to run ahead and warn Doody’s mother of the caravan headed her way, and right in the middle of her "soaps".

Of course, no twelve-year-old could possibly have properly described to her what she beheld as she came running down the front steps. Who knows what went through her mind when she was told what had happened. Now she was running towards us and must have surmised from the size of the throng around us that this was not going to be good because she started screaming and poor Doody, hearing her screaming, screamed even louder in answer.

Her eyes were wide and her mouth was wide open and once she stopped in mid scream, and stared hard at our feet to make sure that she was really seeing what she was really seeing. Then she just collapsed up against the chain link fence surrounding the school yard.

Now we were inside the house and trying to negotiate that narrow stairway. It was terrible. The jerking had his thumb bleeding hard and his screaming sounded as if he were in an echo chamber.

Behind us and pushing were the other boys, the girls, and several neighbors and shoppers. They saw no solution either. I was now lying on the floor and Doody who by now was voiceless with cold sweat pouring from his head, was lying in the opposite direction. We were very still as his mother called the family doctor on the telephone.

Although the good doctor had been in practice for a long time, I’m guessing this was the first time he was called for this particular situation.

What in the world could he have been thinking on his ride over and what kind of expression was on his face as the mother was screaming the predicament to him over the phone. Anyway, he got there quickly and took control. But not before the mother had jumped all over me for hurting her son. The son said nothing.

Now, the doctor was a genius. What had seemed so hopeless a few minutes before was solved in a matter of seconds.

First, he cleared the crowd out except for two of the boys whom he instructed one to sit on my leg and the other to sit on Doody’s arm, which they did. All the while Doody’s Mom was asking what was he going to do. I looked down at Doody and he did not look like he wanted to know, and he didn’t.

Thus, with both of us stabilized, he reached in his black bag and pulled out a gleaming pair of chrome-plated scissors. All five of us gasped. Was he going to cut off his thumb, but wait he was looking at my leg! And that’s when the horror hit me. He was going to cut off my new dungarees! He then grabbed the denim and cut a three-inch circle around the hook and I was free at last, except for that gaping hole in my new pants.

I knew that I was going to be in trouble when I got home, but I was now all attentive as to the next step. It was Doody’s turn. His eyes widened and I have never seen a more pitiful look. The Mom was still asking the doctor what he was going to do when, in a flash, he did it. Suddenly a pair of snip nose pliers appeared in his hand as he grabbed the end of the hook with his other hand, pushed on the hook until the barb popped out of the other side of Doody’s thumb. He then cut the barb off with the pliers and reversed the push on the hook and the now pointless end popped free from its point of entry. Doody fainted!

That’s the last fish hook I ever helped steal. My parents did not notice the hole in my pants until about a month later which was the first washing. (I stayed on their left side) When my Momma asked what happened, in front of my Daddy, I could not tell the truth and I was not smart enough to make up a believable lie.

I really don’t think they wanted to know but my Daddy did tell me I was not going to get any more dungarees that summer. I did not go back to short pants and after a while people just stopped asking about the hole.

It was not completely over for Doody that day. He got a tetanus shot after I left and broke out with a horrible

case of hives. He was bedridden for three days that summer.