Summers of Field and Stream
Short Non-Fiction by Jim Landwehr
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Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the early ‘70s, our summer days were long and languorous. My mother worked full time as a single parent after my dad was killed in a racially charged bar fight several summers before, in June 1967, perhaps a story for a different time. Mom’s absence during the daytime hours meant me and my five siblings were essentially latchkey kids during the school year, then left alone, run feral, and fend for ourselves during summers off from school.
Though I didn’t fully realize it, this was a freedom that came with an assumptive level of personal responsibility. We were to mind the orders of our older siblings, get the house in good order by the time Mom got home, and call her at work only in case of an emergency. All of us took great liberty with these rules, but especially the phone thing. To this day, Mom still recalls instances where she would get a call with one of us on the line and another on the extension, arguing over something we did not agree on. Our brother Rob had a 75% hearing loss, which made calls from him and whichever sibling he was fighting with even more frustrating for her. I think when she passes, there may be a formal ceremony indoctrinating her into sainthood.
These long, warm summer days were often filled with pickup games of baseball and football with the neighborhood kids. The school playground across Lexington Avenue had a baseball diamond painted on the asphalt parking lot that served as a meeting place for me, my brothers, and our friends. Baseball gloves were shared, the right field was often closed, and ghost runners were used for lack of enough players. Four fouls were an out, bunts were prohibited, and pitcher’s hand was our way of covering for the lack of a first baseperson.
These games were long, often heavily contested affairs. The honor system only stretched so far, especially with close calls. Often, definitive calls were dictated by the eldest player or by the allegedly neutral “all-time pitcher.” I remember fielding grounders that seemed to pick up speed as they skipped across the blacktop, often hitting in the palm of my garage sale glove. These cowhide missiles stung and often required dropping my mitt and shaking my hand like a maniac until the feeling came back. Of course, this meant the runner would reach first base, but it seemed inconsequential from a pain relief perspective. And the drama was not bad either.
Whenever we were tired of the neighborhood, we had our bikes to take us to faraway places in the City of St. Paul. Our destinations varied, but a favorite of my brothers and I was a trip down Summit Avenue to the Mississippi River. A lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, apples and a canteen of Kool-Aid was packed, our fishing rods were strapped to our bikes, and three or four of us took off helmetless and carefree down Summit. We were going carp fishing!
We pedaled with backpacks on our backs and tackle boxes dangling from our handlebars past the mansions and largesse of the beautiful tree-lined avenue. It was a five-mile trip one way, weaving in and out as we navigated parked cars along the route. Half of the adventure was the trip itself.
When we arrived, we rode down the long sloping road into Hidden Falls Regional Park. At the bottom, we parked our bikes near the boat launch and set up our fishing rods. Carp fishing may well be the bottom of the barrel from a sportfishing standpoint. For us, it was as simple as baiting a hook with several pieces of whole kernel corn, adding a few heavy lead sinkers to help move the bait to the river bottom where the fish were, and heaving the line into the swift Mississippi current.
From there, we found either a forked stick or enough rocks to prop up our rods. This tactic freed us up to eat our lunches at nearby picnic tables, skip rocks or look for fossils along the riverbanks. When our fishing rods fell over and started dragging toward the river, it was a sign that we had a fish and we dropped everything and ran to keep the fish from pulling it entirely into the river. It was lazy fishing but effective.
When one of us caught a carp, we were in for a valiant fight. We not only were fighting the fish, but the river current as well. It always helped to have the rousing support of those in our party to cheer us on. After hauling the fat fish to shore, the catcher had bragging rights for the entire ride home, and perhaps for the entire summer. In the sportfishing world, carp are viewed as a sort of despicable, rough fish that destroys habitat and food sources for the more desirable freshwater species. For us kids of that age, though, they often made up the biggest fish we’d ever caught. We set our pride aside, hoping to haul in an ugly five-pounder.
We spent the rest of our summer days in countless different ways. Chasing down the ice cream truck for a Bomb Pop, hosting a backyard Muscular Dystrophy Carnival, running Kool-Aid stands, jumping our Sting Rays off bicycle ramps on neighborhood streets, playing games like Ditch, Red Light/Green Light, and Statue Maker in the yard, mowing lawns for cash, making regular trips to Bober’s Drug Store for penny candy, blowing off caps and other more powerful, ill-gotten fireworks, taking the bus downtown and wandering around retail shops and record stores, and so much more.
Looking back, had our mother known much of what we were doing on those long summer days, she would have either suffered a stroke or grounded us for life. It was better she was at work, happily oblivious to all of it. Personally, I think Mom granted us a healthy level of autonomy during those years. There was an unspoken trust agreement between us and her after Dad’s death. Stay out of trouble, don’t bother her unnecessarily at work, and keep the house cleaned up were simple rules of summer. The rest we were allowed to make up as we stretched our wings and geographic boundaries in search of all that summer lay before us.
Jim has four memoirs, At the Lake, Cretin Boy, Dirty Shirt and The Portland House. He also has six poetry collections, Tea in the Pacific Northwest, Thoughts from a Line at the DMV, Genetically Speaking, On a Road, Written Life and Reciting from Memory. He lives in Waukesha, WI with his wife, Donna.
I loved the fishing part of this story!