Eighteen till I die

The buzz and blur of youth.  It was a  time when our fly-fishing tackle was of poor quality, but our experiences were not. We were impoverished in material things, but bailed out by parents who put wheels under us, and held back enough not to quell our thirst for adventure. They were as brave in letting us go, as I am fearful of letting my own kids go, thirty years on. I saw my son off at a bus station in the dodgy part of town this morning. My parents drove me to a campsite in a luxury vehicle, and dropped us two schoolboys there for a week with a flimsy tent, a fly rod, and no cell phone.

1984 (6 of 6)

Later our forays were in NX735. What a vehicle!

18 (4 of 9)

It must have been the sort of left over, pool vehicle from the sugar estate. It was ours to enjoy.  We were to pack it with insufficient food, and an oversupply of beer and enthusiasm.  Our lodgings were a pump house on Len Thurston’s farm dam, because we had run out of money to pay camping fees in Himeville, and this spot was for free, albeit a bit colder.

18 (1 of 9)

The club house at Hopewell was equally cheap, and the beer we were so able to afford enhanced the boat race we had from the inlet where we had been fishing, back to the jetty. The small outboards were not fast enough, so we rowed as well.

18 (2 of 9)untitled-1

Back then we killed fish, ate badly, and built a store of memories, with equal  ignorance. Our flies, and the barbs on the hooks we tied them on, were too big. Our egos may have been too. One’s tackle and gear was what you currently had, and not a carefully accumulated collection of things designed to make the trip more comfortable. I got sick on account of an East Griqualand trip on which I took just one flimsy jacket. It failed to protect me from the September snow, and I had earache for a week thereafter. Kevin and Steve used a no 8 spanner as a priest to harvest disgustingly large fish from a dam near Kokstad, because it was all they had. I missed out. I had an awful stomach bug. Medication to curb the problem didn’t even occur to us. One didn’t pack that stuff.

18 (6 of 9)

Instead we packed blissful ignorance, unbridled enthusiasm, and a blotting paper attitude to everything we heard and saw. We swaggered with an un-earned air of experience, while secretly storing and treasuring every fishing tip, scribbled road map, and passed down Trout fly.  When Jimmy Little invited us into his caravan beside the water, and spoke to us in pure Welsh, we understood very little, but it was warm in there, and he added something interesting to the coffee. We got to drool on his Orvis fly rods too.  We set out fishing at 3 am and shivered beside the dam, awaiting sunrise. We embarked on an ill timed hike down a river valley and returned to the leaky tent after nine at night in the rain. We forgot to close the gate, and had to try cover up the damage that the bull did to the fishing shack door. We got hailed on, and had lighting shake our very beings in some very exposed places. Guy and I returned home to use the phone to book the next day’s fishing, and to get a hot meal, and some sleep before we headed out again. It was all we needed. We dived in and dug fish from the weeds.

18 (9 of 9)

We all revere the fairytale memories of youth. But we lived our youth without revering it, for had we done so, it would have lost its youthfulness.  We are told to draw pictures and sing like we did when we were kids, and we try to cast off the chains of adulthood.  We try to pursue a time, but in fact it was not a time. It was a stage, and we have lost the faculties to re-create that stage.  We hanker for “care-free”, but it is no longer ours.

My colleagues kids won’t eat their porridge, and whine about going to school. They live in a discomfort imposed upon them by the things they can not yet control. I leave his home smug in the knowledge that this phase is behind me. I am no longer thrown into the pit of life. Now I climb gingerly down the ladder , prepared for whatever lies down there.  

I catch more fish now, because my nylon is fresh, and I tie on better hooks. I no longer have that awful reel from which the spool would regularly tumble.  I suspect there was a horrible Hopewell hangover * after that boat race, and I have learnt how to dodge those. It is forgotten, but the wisdom earned is still there. I pack a warm jacket now. It is a good one, and there is no need to suffer. 

Perhaps youthfulness belongs where it is, and resists our attempts to re invent it for good reason.

But if someone calls to say he is fetching me for fishing in 10 minutes, without prior warning, best I finish my porridge quickly and go to the senior school of life without whining!

Because I still have a lot to learn….

* Big H, big H, big H….a reference to the coding of a dump-site as being suitable for highly hazardous material!

Subscribe

To receive an e-mail each time a new story is posted

I don’t spam. I typically post a few times each month

6 Responses

  1. Brings back similar memories. I wasn’t nearly as fortunate to fly fish though & had to put up with an old bay rod & catch bass at Midmar. Great article, thanks for reminding me of the 60’s!

  2. I am convinced that very little can equal the memory of being young together. To quote Robert Browning; “how sad and bad and mad it was – but then, how it was sweet”. Wonderfully written.

  3. FYI, Jimmy Little was from Northern Ireland and I doubt if he aso knew Welsh. Roger.
    2016-02-01 20:20 GMT+01:00 Truttablog :
    > trutta posted: “The buzz and blur of youth. It was a time when our > fly-fishing tackle was of poor quality, but our experiences were not. We > were impoverished in material things, but bailed out by parents who put > wheels under us, and held back enough not to qu” >

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *