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I was about 16 years old the summer I arrived in Carlisle county, Kentucky to vacation with my Uncle Ike, Aunt Bert and Cousin Guy. The day I arrived my Uncle said, Chuck, I heard you have learned to swim, so you can use my fl at bottomed wooden row boat tied up there on the river bank.” Well, the fi rst thing I did was head to the barn to make some special fi shing gear. My friends at home had been telling me about how big Mississippi fi sh were and they tasted like chicken. I wanted to catch one or two. My Uncle had some blacksmith equipment. I fi red up the forge and made a fi shing hook from two old iron horse shoes. It was a big hook like if I curled my wrist and hand up toward my arm. In the barn I also found an old busted up piano. I pulled out a big thick piece of piano wire. I would estimate today that the wire would be about a 2,000-pound test line. After all I was after a big fi sh and in the old days you went fi shing to catch fi sh. We had never heard about sport fi shing. For a fi shing pole I borrowed my Uncle’s small fl ag pole. In the forties, we did not have aluminum fl ag poles like the whimpy ones today. In the old days, our fl ag poles were made of U.S. steel. Next, I fi xed some dough ball bait. For those of you who were raised culturally- deprived, dough ball bait is made out of course ground yellow corn with bacon fat mixed in to hold it together. The dough ball bait I made was about the size of a soccer ball. I put it around my hook and baked it in the oven awhile until the dough hardened up some. The next morning, I dropped my baited hook into the water from the front of the boat. Wham bam a fi sh grabbed that bait and the next thing I knew I was being towed down the Mississippi at incredible speed. That surprised me, because I knew I had tethered the boat to a small 100 foot Oak tree. I looked back and that tree was bobbing in the water behind me. The roots of the Oak tree were still snagged in a tiny fi ve acre island it had torn loose. The island was fl uttering along behind the Oak tree. It looked like a giant cow fl op. We went skimming over the water at such amazing speed that the friction of the water passing under that wooden hull was too much. The boat’s bottom started to heat up. The next thing I knew, the bottom of the boat was on fi re! The boat sank and left me barefoot water skiing down the Mississippi river holding on to that steel fi shing pole. Now, I know that some of you do not believe me. Well, I’m known to be open, forthright, candid and truthful. If you check the Guinness book of records, you will fi nd my name listed as the father of barefoot water skiing. I was clocked that day at 96 miles per hour. That was 1947. I held the speed record until 1951 when Evenrude fi nely built a motor large enough to take the record away from me. Suddenly the line went slack and I sank. I swam up to the surface. Let me tell you something. If you fi nd yourself in the water in the middle of the Mississippi, that river looks about as wide as it is long. And the Mississippi river runs from D-11 to L-14. I started to shout for help. But I had swallowed too much Mississippi river water. I was all choked up. All I could do was whisper the word help. I reached into my bib overalls and pulled out my reading glasses. When I was a child my eyes were so bad I had to wear big thick lens glasses to read. I have gotten older my eyes have gotten better, so now I just pick up some thin magnifying glasses in a drug store for reading. I put the big thick lens up to my mouth and whispered, “help, help, help.” Those glasses magnifi ed my voice so, people as far away as Vicksburg thought it was Gabriel’s horn and Judgment day was here. Boats came from everywhere. I was picked up by a stern wheeler river boat. Let me digress from telling about my experience that day. Back in 1985, in Louisville, Kentucky, I was telling stories on the Belle of Louisville during the Corn Island Storytelling Festival. The boat appeared familiar. I looked on the bulkhead by the Captain’s cabin and found the wall plaque that had been put up in 1947 to commemorate what happened that day. My name is on it, you can check it out and see for yourself! I’d eat fried chicken before I’d tell a lie. I was on the boat that pulled me from the water that day. I was wet, irritated and still holding the fi shing pole. I gave the pole a great heave to set the hook. That is when I discovered that the fi sh that had taken my bate had never moved. It was my bate moving from his mouth to his stomach that had drugged me so fast in the reverse direction down the Mississippi river. That was one humongous fi sh. Do you know that Jack Cousteau put 185 underwater photographers into the Mississippi river? They took one sequential lengthy picture of that leviathan fi sh, and the picture itself weighed three tons! That is one big fi sh. When I popped that fi shing pole, up out of the water came nine Guernsey cows, fi ve hogs, a fl ock of 27 Mallard ducks and four acres of corn. Apparently they had been feeding on the corn inside that fi sh. Next came a baby 432 pound catfi sh with my fi shing hook caught in his tail. It was a lucky catch after all. Now here is the part some people do not believe. In the side of the baby 432-pound catfi sh was a fi shing spear with a 54 foot long line. On the other end of the line we found a skeleton of a man. He was sitting in a small row boat with the end of the line tethered around his wrist. Between the feet of the skeleton was a small leather bag fi lled with 720, mint new, gold coins, date stamped 1872. I thought this was my lucky day. That is, until we returned to Carlisle County where old Judge Vandegrift recognized his Guernsey cows and hogs. He thanked me profusely, without fi nancial reward I might add, for rescuing his cows and hogs. They had been swallowed a year earlier during the drought when they were all skin and bones and as thin as fence rails, but after feeding on the corn they had fattened up well. Of course the corn was gone and only the fodder was left. Would you believe? The FBI impounded the gold pieces. They had been stolen in a bank robbery in Memphis, Tennessee in 1881. The robber had been ingested by that fi sh during his getaway. That is when I learned that sometimes crime does not pay. And I’ve been ruined for fi shing every since. I do not know about you but I do not ever want to hook on to another fi sh the size of the one that got away that day. Anything smaller then a 432-pound catfi sh is just too small for me to bother with. Now I know some of you doubt the validity of this experience, but I have proof. I still have my baby jack knife, Santa Clause gave me when I was just three years old. You see, I was born during the great depression. When a child got to the walking talking stage, they got their own pocket knife. We used that pocket knife to cut that skeleton free and give him a fitting burial. The next time you see me, ask me and I will show my baby pocket knife to you. I do not lie. AND THAT’S A TRUE STORY
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