That summer of 1965 we packed up most of the pets, my above-mentioned cousin Dave (who was a pure city boy) and we wound our way to the place on dad’s fishing map was labeled “Wild River”, near Towanda, and a place then called Wyalusing Rocks in Bradford County.
It was late June, school out, and very balmy. The area where the river flowed was farmland. Once, Marie Antoinette had been scheduled to relocate here to avoid the issues of the French Revolution. She didn’t make it, but plenty of other French settled here, including one Charles Homet. He is important here as we asked a local farmer, an ancient Mr. Smith with a still out back where we might rent a summer cabin and maybe a rowboat. Well he happened to have a tiny yellow cabin with a big antique wooden radio and a wood-burning stove at the old Homet’s Ferry crossing.
The back road ended there at the river, but the road obviously continued along the other side. So while my mom and sister painted the mountains, round-pebbled beaches we would, my cousin, dad, and I fish the river.
The river was swift and clean with 2 islands just above the old ferry road. Downstream, the river turned sharply east, moved by an ancient Appalachian mountain I have come to call Joe’s mountain, for all the Joe’s of this tale.
My cousin Dave was a skinny, blonde boy of 12. This was his first trip to the country and he was staying close to dad, his own father driven off by his greedy and downright nasty mother. I had rowed the little aluminum boat that went with our cabin out and shoved the bow onto an island.
Moments later, in the late morning sunlight, I heard my cousin yell in a nasal, shrill voice “Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe! A muskellunge-the first I had ever seen had taken Dave’s red and white spoon and rocketed straight out of the river not 30 feet from me It dwarfed tiny Dave, shaking its head to disgorge the dangling spoon, its dark vertical bars on a greenish background. I had never seen a fish that large. One splash, silent, line broken.
From that day forward, even at that time with 5 years of fishing under my little belt, I was a fisherman. And this spot at Homet’s Ferry is a sacred place of real spirits, ghosts of dad and that fish, that summer of fresh wood-stove cooked walleyes, the smell of manure from the dairy farm, and the smell of a clean, fished filled rural paradise.
We also drove around the area in our green and white rambler wagon looking for other fishing spots. We left the ladies to drive to Terrytown on the other side of the river. The fishing map did show roads along the river course there. We found a spot with a steep bank and caught an almost incredible number and variety of fish. Mostly on the small side, bass, pike, and walleyes, a member of the perch family. We had dinner for sure. Mom would clean, roll in cornmeal and fry them up in nice smelly bacon fat. Imagine these days living thru that to tell about it.
We were getting ready to leave Terrytown to cross back to the cabin when someone drove by in an old truck and yelled. I didn’t hear it, still elated with our catch, but dad said “short pants”. Dad usually wore shorts fishing on warm summer days. Apparently this was a taboo in Appalachia, and the two farmers in the pick up had yelled, “faggot, short pants “, at dad. This was unwise of them. Very calmly, saying nothing dad took off with Dave and me in the Rambler. He reached under the seat and pulled out a metal hand axe that we used for camp wood, at least we had. Dad, driving madly in the passing lane, left hand draped on the wheel, his right chopping with the axe yelled, “you lousy bastards, I am gonna hack your f**** faces to bits”. There was abject terror on the farmer’s faces, who went off the road into the ditch. My heart was pounding. Dad put his axe away quietly and we calmly went back to the Homet Ferry cabin and ate a fish dinner.
Another odd thing occurred that trip. My mom’s parakeet “Peekie” had developed some sort of a bird “cold”. Mom sent me to the chicken farm up the hill from the river with two missions, buy a little fresh vegetable to go with our pike and see if they had any bird medicine. Peekie had been an important part of my life as long as I remembered. I would feed him bits of egg and bread at breakfast in the morning, and he would cheerily chirp. Well on approaching the farm I saw a very gaunt elderly man stiffly standing with a rusty hoe. He was wearing striped bib overalls and a cap, like a painting. He was tending yellow wax beans. I asked him how much for the beans, and he gave me a big paper sack full of fresh yellow wax beans for a quarter. Quarters were silver then. As for medicine, he gave me a small bag of red powder and said follow the instructions. He seemed overjoyed to talk with a young person on the subjects of birds and beans. Well our parakeet survived many more years along with my dog Ticky and our cats Mildred and Herman, the other pets that came with us on that trip to the little yellow cabin.
There are three surviving watercolors my mom painted on that trip. One is of the fishing spot at the ferry crossing-near the axe incident. The other is the Homet Ferry store, which still stands but is no longer a store, a short walk from the old cabin. Mom painted another watercolor of me and my sister sitting along route 6 at the Wyalusing Rocks overlook. The river and islands are seen down below in the summer-green valley mists. I go there when I am sad for my son, dad, mom, or my sister who was my first teacher of reading and math. I shall return and maybe get a cabin here again with my children, Shel has also been here, as with everyone else important in my life. How they react to the beauty of the river valley here, and the nostalgia of Yellow Breeches, speaks of their character. These are the places that define who I am.
Some years ago, I had made a fantastic deal with the Benjamin family of Towanda-a deal to buy a home in the French Azilum valley. It was a dream deal in a dream place. The timing was wrong and it didn’t work out.
I had planned on starting a new Army contracting business. These memories taint the glory of my youth. I assure you that in the future I will be more careful with whom I trust my joys as well as sorrows. But with regards to the happiness and summers along my river, they were put on hold. When I do go back, it will be with my son and daughter if she wishes.
My sister would be welcome, as we still talk of those days. My sister Aprille is 9 years older and an art and music prodigy. She has been on disability her entire life. She is brilliant and erratic. I can only hope that our memories will forge the desires and meanings my family has given me. Time is so short-so much wasted on these marital discords, useless empty dreams and greed of them Take me and mine to where the fishes leap and the osprey flies, and I can today in the summer, wear shorts along the Susquehanna.
This summer of my junior year was meant for grabbing the old fishing map and a few dollars for gas and finding a stream, lake, river, or pond that could hold fish.
The fishing map had been my fathers. The gas stations put out different theme maps. Dad found a Pennsylvania fishing map at the Chalfont Atlantic station and it became almost an item of worship. This map was used for Dad to conjure various trips for our fishing and family road trips. Not that Dad was much of a fisherman. He grew up in south Philly, and only got to fish rarely as far as I know. He had a boat in Barnegat with an Uncle where they fished the bay and drank beer, but there was an argument when I was little and it ended.
The fishing map was used to find Yellow Breeches Creek and the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. Both became Mecca’s to us then and still today. Islands in the river are named for my children at Homet Ferry, and the Yellow Breeches at Huntsdale have hosted my friends and family during traditional trout and bass seasons for almost 40 years.
So we headed out from Doylestown in the leaky mustang on a mission of pure exploration. My fishing pal and high school buddy Joe riding shotgun. I had installed a tape player in my pony and we had one tape. It was an early Beatles tape, and as I write these words I can still hear odes to the Norwegian woods and the familiar voices of Paul and John.
My thrill was to explore extreme northwestern Pennsylvania. The map claimed big fish in wild sounding places like Kinzua, The Allegheny River, and the Clarion River. Wide areas were delineated as native brook trout country, and home of the Pike and Muskellunge, their fierce cousins up to 4 feet long, and both bristling with teeth.
When dad was alive, the annual trek to the Yellow Breeches south of Carlisle was our big trip. That and a summer trip to Bradford County (Wyalusing) on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. All year, months before these trips, I would clean and organize tackle, study the maps, dream of trout at the Breeches or sultry summer evenings along the then wild Susquehanna with a stringer of walleyes and smallmouth, to be carefully cleaned and cooked by my mother. Either Breeches trout or Susquehanna fish were a sacred meal.
On our summer trips in high school, the few we took, or the many I took alone, I slept behind summer quiet schools on the bus loading platforms, sleeping bag on still warm summer concrete. I caught and ate fish, and begged and borrowed for gas money.
In my fishing-dream- heart I studied and memorized the special map dad brought home years before. Pennsylvania’s route 6 traverses the most Northern part of the state from the New York state line near Port Jervis, all the way to odd sounding places named Kane, Warren, Corry, Westline…or Tionesta. Images on the map showed trout and toothy pike, tiny towns were I imagined Indians still netted fish and carried babies on their backs.
My fishing friend and fellow high school junior Joe and I were now on the road. Joe was a big athletic blonde kid who the girls liked. In fact I was secretly in love with his cheerleader girl and my neighbour Leslie. I think she thought of me as a combination motor head and nerd.
I had just started to get serious with Carol Padden that summer of 1973, driving around in our 1965 mustangs later to both become collectors and restorers of the Shelby GT-350. Endless car shows and paint fumes mostly at Gusto restorations in Ottsville, with John Gustafson. Joe simply said, “I don’t want to hear about that chick on this trip, we are fishing.” I had already been ridiculed for taking Carol to a dance.
Our destination, revealed by the sacred fishing map was the Allegheny reservoir. It was to be by way of route 6, that magical path I had only dreamed about. Real rugged trout country. As the Beatles groaned, we finally made it to Renovo on route 120. A dark nearly abandoned railroad town, where people were playing baseball in the main street at 3 AM. It was an odd scene. Out of bravado we drove up over the top of our world on route 144. I hadn’t known the state was this remote, wild. Finally we arrived at route 6 and went west.
The parking area by the reservoir and Kinzua dam is a wild place. They had flooded the corn planter Indian reservation to make the lake, and it made me feel sad. The loud spillway and leaking gas from the mustang’s rusty gas tank kept us up most of the night. By sunrise, a few sleepy fishermen emerged- out of one truck a bewhiskered scrawny old man. While busy at this early hour boiling camp coffee and breakfast of fried walleyes, we asked about the fishing. We became friends with old Bill, and he told us of Kinzua fish and fisherman. He said to go back into town across the old iron river bridge and make the first right. This would take us to the deep hole on the other side of the dam. We slowly drove up the road, as it became rough, boulder strewn. I swerved to avoid a rock and the right edge gave way and there we hung precariously above the trees and the roaring Allegheny below. Joe said he noticed an old jeep parked at a shack back down the hill. We walked back and found a gray tarpaper shack with half a door, the place moonshine was made and bad things happened to out a towners. Joe knocked on the door and appeared a wizened old man, unshaven. He looked to be 100 years old and was in fact, quite toothless. We explained our plight and he yelled to someone in the shack (we thought he was alone) a filthy little boy appeared and was instructed by the old man to “go get the rope yea big around as your p***r”. In only a few moments the boy appeared and the antique jeep pulled my mustang right back onto the “road”. Joe gave “Gums”, as he has been later called, a dollar and the old man jumped for joy, -kicked up his heels. I had never seen someone kick up heels before. We felt as far from home as Mars, or even Arizona.
As a 10 year old living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whose fishing exploits then, excited trips with dad to the Delaware Canal, river or Cooks Creek in Upper Bucks County, such places were odd and exotic as the Grand Canyon, or even the Desert and Cactus, or salmon streams in Atlantic Canada or Alaska.
So armed with my car and some gas, that old rusty stove I inherited from mom reluctantly (she still used it when the power was off), I ventured next out by myself to Huntsdale, where I had fished with dad since the spring of 1966.
This obscure little town, a right beautiful place as we” Canadians” say, is situated just below South Mountain, in a valley of limestone springs. The old map claimed, “Could be in old Scotland”. I had no idea about that, but I now know, as with Cape Breton that single Scottish reference may have been enough to move dad to make the Yellow Breeches our private fishing and family place for the generations. Here was a trout hatchery where the pilgrimage is still made. I actually received a letter from the Fish Commission stating that my family had been signing the guest book at the Huntsdale fish cultural station longer than any other. This is devotion, a living tribute to a place and time past, still resurrected in real life, at a place of powerful genetic and visceral memories.
Perhaps dad loved the stream and South Mountain area for a different reason beyond a Scottish map reference. It may have been genetic. Dad would take us as kids to battlefield re-enactments at Antietam and Gettysburg. Later, this military interest would not only make me an Army contractor, but also cause my young wife fits, hating my interest in memorabilia, military Colt gun collection, uniforms, and parade re-enactments. I never knew then and neither did dad that our ancestor fought in these hills with the 17th New York Infantry, after getting here from fighting as a British officer in the Crimean War (2nd British Foreign Cavalry). It is very tough to live down the past, especially when among your ancestors, on both sides of the family are heroes, pioneers, or actual biographical historical figures. Perhaps I can use that as an excuse for my behaviours, but I doubt it.
In high school, after dad’s death, we, that is my high school crowd, and later the entourage I engendered as a businessman, ritualistically put our tent here, and fished the long fish, in hopes of touching the prior, the infinite.
This field of tradition just south of the hatchery my son has called since being very small the “thorn spot”. The connotation is obvious. But in this field, it was where my dad and I first drowned bait in the mid-1960’s
Arriving back alone, years later, always puts a fist in my chest. Those days so long past, but not really. The sights, scents. Feelings-even trees now bigger but still where they belong belie the time past but still frozen. Waiting for that first cast, the first fish, the drive home to a familiar place, but still less important than the stream, the friends, and the father.
The point of this is fishing. Now we will drive along the route to the Allegheny Reservoir. But first we need to camp. We are going to camp in Westline.
Off route US 6 if you happen to have an old Atlantic Fishing map is a place called Westline. There is the Westline Inn, a rustic motel and bar with a pretty good restaurant. Many years ago it was the office of a chemical company that made things like turpentine and medicines from Pine tar. The stream there, Kinzua creek was hopelessly polluted by the Pennsylvania oil industry, by salt brine and grease. Over the decades, the stream has been saved and the trout returned.
This is a place of my odd and extreme past, as long ago; I had attended a small car show here after a huge drive around with Carol in1975. Long after, in 1981, I took the job with the state as an environmental geologist. The only business trip we took in 1981, as part of the program I was in, involved a long trip to Bradford, PA and a dinner at Westline Inn. A meeting with oil industry officials who wanted to kill our program. -Bradford was where my boss and fellow fisherman Carlyle Westland had worked in the oil patch, as we geologists say.
Years later, and by surprise, Kinzua Creek and fishing was good again here. Maybe we environmentalists had done some good after all. My son and I call a small tributary stream, behind the actual town of Westline, Thundershower Run, a tributary of Kinzua Creek or the “camping spot,” a special place. In Bradford I met those oil officials in 1981. Long ago I was here, this place is now home of my son’s fishing spot, or the camping spot. I am amazed that both Carol with Cars, Rhonda, Shel, and my kids know this spot. It was at the pay phone here Rhonda told me she didn’t want my help to save the business. That was in 1994 when Rhonda and her minions finally killed my company.
“She said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea” at Westline, Pennsylvania, right off the route 6 of my youth, in the front of the Westline Inn where I had dinner with oil company brass in 1981. So foreign to all but me, drawing them there. One of my favourite, but sad places. It is sometimes called a convergence, that this out of the way place has been an unlikely center for so many disparate, good and bad, grand and sad events. A friend once told me that I created a “cone of coincidence” that everyone in my world got caught in. So my early years seemed. Now, sitting quietly on the sea here, I wish to start a new whirlwind.
My Alaska out of state fishing license was very expensive, and I was anxious about my first real life encounter with a salmon. I had grown up with a coffee table book called “The Treasury of Angling”. It was a book club item, filled with pictures of exotic things to a 10 year old. I memorized this book. Things about King salmon and Arctic Grayling. Well thanks to God, and a good education and friends, here I was. The best fishing on the planet.
I took a drive up the dirt road about half a mile to a better pullout and stream access. The stream looked just like any eastern trout stream, but with one difference. There were huge fish lined up taking turns, it seemed, at swimming up the riffle there. A few ladies, obviously native American, were doing their always-excellent job of snagging salmon. So too were the Black bears ponderously loping along, just like us, but picking at dead fish. I also the learned Eagles, such a big deal back home, were just the crows here. Flocked together at fish carcasses like and as numerous as crows, our national symbol is just another simple scavenger here. Intentionally snagging a fish would have been illegal for me as a non-native fisherperson. (Most of the natives fishing here were women and girls) But since the Pinks, which were now the run in the stream, I had to try and convince a strike with a big nasty spinner.
Well, a 5 poundish fish, a big hook-jawed male seemed to attack my lure, at least it was in his mouth and I with great difficulty netted the salmon that almost broke my light spinning rod. I know Alaskans and other experienced fisherman now balk at Pink salmon, sometimes called erroneously “Dog salmon”’ as it is and was sled dog food. The same is true of the Grayling, which my Alaskan friends have considered the Carp of the north.
Well it was my first trip and I cooked that salmon with oil and a cornmeal coating and ate about 3 pound s of it. It was great.
Of course, then, I hadn’t had fresh King or even better Red or Sockeye, nor Grayling.
I didn’t return to Alaska after that two-week trip until 1985. My wife to be, who was not an “outdoorsy” woman, came with me to fish and camp, her first time doing those things. Wow-what a great place to start in those pursuits. Unfortunately, she was terrified to sleep in our tent, as there were bear warning signs all around. She did manage to catch her first, and close to only ever fish. I met a guy named Jeff King who was a Kenai River guide. My lady caught and released a nice 45-pound female King salmon that July. We finished our visit with some touring and stays at Anchorage’s nicer hotels. She would return with me a few more times, but usually stayed at the hotel while I was out fishing or camping alone.
She did take a beautiful long hike with me into the Kenai Mountains. We went about 10 miles off the road in the rainforest and found a small lake. It was brimming with Grayling and I caught my first of many Grayling there. We made a small campfire and shared the cooked fish. It is one of my fondest memories of that relationship with the mother of my two beautiful children.
By the way, the Grayling isn’t so bad. Its scientific name, Thymallus, refers to the thyme-like scent of its flesh, which is soft, white, and sweet. Its better that any stocked eastern trout, I assure you, a beautiful and exotic creature. Later, I would find them again at the highest elevations, oddly stocked on Arizona’s eastern rim.
Later I would bring my father in law, friends, and a wife on a trip that I had down like a tour guide. We would fly into Anchorage and rent a car. Then we drive North to Denali park. Inside the park I had found a mining camp that had rooms near Denali and Wonder Lake. Wonder Lake is a jewel-like place often seen on postcards. The Snow capped mountain reflected into the mirror of this pristine lake is one of the most beautiful experiences and witnesses of my life. The entire road back into Kantishna, along the park access road is almost 100 miles of incredible scenery.
One shrinks and seems to fall away into nothing while viewing distant braided rivers at polychrome pass. There is a visitor center at Eielson, the last civilization, at least back then, until Kantishna.
Kantishna then or was a gold mining camp. I befriended Roberta, the owner, shortly after she broke up with her gold miner husband to start a tourist accommodation, the Kantishna roadhouse. I would return every summer here as the camp grew and Roberta prospered. Eventually it seemed that only Japanese were visiting, so I stopped going there. Not because of the foreign tourists-it had just become too commercial, and very expensive.
A new dining hall and motel were built, the bears and moose, caribous, marmots, eagles (of course), foxes were all there.
When I took that very first trip to Kantishna, it required a special travel permit to leave the main park road. It got you away from the ubiquitous buses of summer photo seekers, often approaching and getting mauled by angry grizzly bears. It was a wild ride then, and I miss that Kantishna.
The next stop was Homer. This incredible place is perhaps the most beautiful town on earth. At least if you drive up the hill behind Homer, and view its fishhook like peninsula over the Cook Inlet. Here we would always charter a trip for Halibut. This was a great opportunity to get seasick and catch a truly giant flounder. My biggest was only 108 pounds. But it along with the rest of the catch butchered, packed, and Fedexed back home was fish for an extended family for a year. I don’t eat halibut anymore. I haven’t since I gave away the freezer I especially bought to hold Alaska fish at my home in Mechanicsburg, PA, the chimney house. I gave away the freezer, my well-used collection of Halibut cookbooks and remaining fish before I moved to Arizona in 1994.
The breath-taking ferry ride from Whittier to Valdez is better than the over priced cruises. The 10 hours or so as I recall then was a start at a warm, nice little port with cars loaded on. The food was fist class then at first, but that changed over time.
I was always amused later as the ship progressed that the be-shorted and be-tee-shirted neophytes would soon be scrambling inside as we approached the glaciers and icebergs. I always brought my parka so I could stay out on deck and watch for whales and seals aplenty.
As great as that ferry ride is, the drive out and UP from Valdez (pronounced VAL-DEEZ) and the oil terminal is truly awesome. Writing about this, one truly runs out of dramatic adjectives. None really do it-language fails, go there and see it for yourself.
I remember taking this drive out of Valdez with my wife for the first time. In the cool morning fog, she shrieked at seeing the absolute wall of snowy rock we were driving towards away from the pipeline terminal. It had no top in the fog, and we crossed across beautiful pond-pocked tundra and down on my next traditional accommodation at Copper Center, after passing an endless array of towering waterfalls.
This rustic little motel, the Copper Center Inn, was always my stop over place. It was quiet and comfortable and great to stop after a sleepless night on the ferry and the drive over the huge mountains.
The Denali highway goes east to west from the area just north of Copper Center back to Denali Park. This completes the round trip back to the park and back to our starting point, Anchorage. Along this dirt road, the Denali highway traverses amazingly interesting glacial terrain. Geology buffs, like me, get to ride on eskers, on top of kames, and see all kinds of moraines. Also, along her are a plethora of “ditches” containing vast quantities of Grayling and Dolly Varden trout. “Dollies” as they are called, are held in the same “esteem” as Grayling are by Alaskans. But for those of us from “outside”, as they say, Dollies may be another new species to catch.
The mid-point for me along the Denali highway was a place called “Denali”. Then, it was a support camp for the adjacent gold mine. They had small rooms and a restaurant in a small metal Quonset hut. The food was ample and hearty-the miners were good company for a geologist. It would have been better on those trips to leave the wives home. In the “Sluice Box” café, there are dollar bills everywhere with names of visitors, as well as any other paper currency you can think of. Telling the assembled miners I was an Alaska licensed geologist, the miners offered me 5 ounces of gold to fly up in the chopper with them for a day and look at their placer mining and make suggestions. I couldn’t go along, not wanting to leave my wife alone nor be late for our return flight to Baltimore.
On my last trip to the Kenai River, at Kenai, my wife and I both caught 50-pound class July Kenai Kings. I had an old friend along who hadn’t fished too much. He asked me, “Joe, how will I know when I have a fish?” Back trolling on the wild rushing river is a heavy feeling to the rod. I said, “You’ll know”. It was about then he hooked a rocket of a 45-pound doe, tail walking and I think almost scaring my urbanite friend out of our boat. Jeff, our guide, started to call me Jonah Joe.
This is one of my favourite biblical tales, but that is not why he called me that. There were many years I spent good money to combat fish in the Kenai without catching anything. The fish my young wife caught was obtained while I was sleeping, fished-out and being out too long the night before with friends at Charlie’s place in Kenai. Charlie’s was a lot like the Pine Tree Tavern was in my youth in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. Except the owner honoured the entertainment needs of the salmon fishing season and had a uniquely entertaining place. Maybe it’s burned down too in the years I have been away, like the Pine Tree Tavern did near the Yellow Breeches. On one trip just after I started to work for the Pennsylvania DER I traveled with a friend who worked for the federal government. We asked a couple of Charlie’s girls out. It was on that trip I almost died on the Copper River Delta when my parka’s hood got caught in the pulley of a handcar across a raging glacial torrent, not far from the glacier surrounding copper mining camp at Kennicott.
I almost died horsebacking when my bridle got caught precariously above a raging river and the horse bucked. We also did the whitewater thing on the Nenana River.
A freshly cut steak from just behind the head of such a catch as a big Kenai King is divine, Mesquite grilled with a good bottle of wine, moose in view among the pines by a little cabin on the river, on Beaver Loop, is where I want to be-right now. Alaskans and serious combat Kenai-King fisherman will know exactly where I mean.
Oh, I like the Jona or Jonas story because for me it meant there is no way to hide from God or to avoid a divinely mandated journey. And when your done, you might just be angry, and get into an argument with God and destiny. This is an argument you shall lose.
I had promised my son a trip there to the Kenai for his graduation from high school. We will have to wait and see. As time has passed, and my priorities have changed, the trips are less frequent. But we will go again. I still have one of my earliest credentials in Geology-A state of Alaska geology license. I only ever did one project there, in Juneau around 1993. It was an underground tank removal. Juneau was a neat town, but a bit touristy. There were salmon in abundance there and a nice glacier. An amazing (funny) thing happened in (on my to) Juneau. An old friend of mine, the ship the Pacific Princess was in port. I heard someone call my name. It was the purser from the ship. He remembered me from the cruise I had taken from Tahiti to Hawaii years before. I surely felt traveled then, the world a smaller place. I guess people remember me. It is a unique capital, as you can’t drive there- its on an island. Kind of like here, on PEI. But we have that unsightly bridge.
It was late June, school out, and very balmy. The area where the river flowed was farmland. Once, Marie Antoinette had been scheduled to relocate here to avoid the issues of the French Revolution. She didn’t make it, but plenty of other French settled here, including one Charles Homet. He is important here as we asked a local farmer, an ancient Mr. Smith with a still out back where we might rent a summer cabin and maybe a rowboat. Well he happened to have a tiny yellow cabin with a big antique wooden radio and a wood-burning stove at the old Homet’s Ferry crossing.
The back road ended there at the river, but the road obviously continued along the other side. So while my mom and sister painted the mountains, round-pebbled beaches we would, my cousin, dad, and I fish the river.
The river was swift and clean with 2 islands just above the old ferry road. Downstream, the river turned sharply east, moved by an ancient Appalachian mountain I have come to call Joe’s mountain, for all the Joe’s of this tale.
My cousin Dave was a skinny, blonde boy of 12. This was his first trip to the country and he was staying close to dad, his own father driven off by his greedy and downright nasty mother. I had rowed the little aluminum boat that went with our cabin out and shoved the bow onto an island.
Moments later, in the late morning sunlight, I heard my cousin yell in a nasal, shrill voice “Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe! A muskellunge-the first I had ever seen had taken Dave’s red and white spoon and rocketed straight out of the river not 30 feet from me It dwarfed tiny Dave, shaking its head to disgorge the dangling spoon, its dark vertical bars on a greenish background. I had never seen a fish that large. One splash, silent, line broken.
From that day forward, even at that time with 5 years of fishing under my little belt, I was a fisherman. And this spot at Homet’s Ferry is a sacred place of real spirits, ghosts of dad and that fish, that summer of fresh wood-stove cooked walleyes, the smell of manure from the dairy farm, and the smell of a clean, fished filled rural paradise.
We also drove around the area in our green and white rambler wagon looking for other fishing spots. We left the ladies to drive to Terrytown on the other side of the river. The fishing map did show roads along the river course there. We found a spot with a steep bank and caught an almost incredible number and variety of fish. Mostly on the small side, bass, pike, and walleyes, a member of the perch family. We had dinner for sure. Mom would clean, roll in cornmeal and fry them up in nice smelly bacon fat. Imagine these days living thru that to tell about it.
We were getting ready to leave Terrytown to cross back to the cabin when someone drove by in an old truck and yelled. I didn’t hear it, still elated with our catch, but dad said “short pants”. Dad usually wore shorts fishing on warm summer days. Apparently this was a taboo in Appalachia, and the two farmers in the pick up had yelled, “faggot, short pants “, at dad. This was unwise of them. Very calmly, saying nothing dad took off with Dave and me in the Rambler. He reached under the seat and pulled out a metal hand axe that we used for camp wood, at least we had. Dad, driving madly in the passing lane, left hand draped on the wheel, his right chopping with the axe yelled, “you lousy bastards, I am gonna hack your f**** faces to bits”. There was abject terror on the farmer’s faces, who went off the road into the ditch. My heart was pounding. Dad put his axe away quietly and we calmly went back to the Homet Ferry cabin and ate a fish dinner.
Another odd thing occurred that trip. My mom’s parakeet “Peekie” had developed some sort of a bird “cold”. Mom sent me to the chicken farm up the hill from the river with two missions, buy a little fresh vegetable to go with our pike and see if they had any bird medicine. Peekie had been an important part of my life as long as I remembered. I would feed him bits of egg and bread at breakfast in the morning, and he would cheerily chirp. Well on approaching the farm I saw a very gaunt elderly man stiffly standing with a rusty hoe. He was wearing striped bib overalls and a cap, like a painting. He was tending yellow wax beans. I asked him how much for the beans, and he gave me a big paper sack full of fresh yellow wax beans for a quarter. Quarters were silver then. As for medicine, he gave me a small bag of red powder and said follow the instructions. He seemed overjoyed to talk with a young person on the subjects of birds and beans. Well our parakeet survived many more years along with my dog Ticky and our cats Mildred and Herman, the other pets that came with us on that trip to the little yellow cabin.
There are three surviving watercolors my mom painted on that trip. One is of the fishing spot at the ferry crossing-near the axe incident. The other is the Homet Ferry store, which still stands but is no longer a store, a short walk from the old cabin. Mom painted another watercolor of me and my sister sitting along route 6 at the Wyalusing Rocks overlook. The river and islands are seen down below in the summer-green valley mists. I go there when I am sad for my son, dad, mom, or my sister who was my first teacher of reading and math. I shall return and maybe get a cabin here again with my children, Shel has also been here, as with everyone else important in my life. How they react to the beauty of the river valley here, and the nostalgia of Yellow Breeches, speaks of their character. These are the places that define who I am.
Some years ago, I had made a fantastic deal with the Benjamin family of Towanda-a deal to buy a home in the French Azilum valley. It was a dream deal in a dream place. The timing was wrong and it didn’t work out.
I had planned on starting a new Army contracting business. These memories taint the glory of my youth. I assure you that in the future I will be more careful with whom I trust my joys as well as sorrows. But with regards to the happiness and summers along my river, they were put on hold. When I do go back, it will be with my son and daughter if she wishes.
My sister would be welcome, as we still talk of those days. My sister Aprille is 9 years older and an art and music prodigy. She has been on disability her entire life. She is brilliant and erratic. I can only hope that our memories will forge the desires and meanings my family has given me. Time is so short-so much wasted on these marital discords, useless empty dreams and greed of them Take me and mine to where the fishes leap and the osprey flies, and I can today in the summer, wear shorts along the Susquehanna.
This summer of my junior year was meant for grabbing the old fishing map and a few dollars for gas and finding a stream, lake, river, or pond that could hold fish.
The fishing map had been my fathers. The gas stations put out different theme maps. Dad found a Pennsylvania fishing map at the Chalfont Atlantic station and it became almost an item of worship. This map was used for Dad to conjure various trips for our fishing and family road trips. Not that Dad was much of a fisherman. He grew up in south Philly, and only got to fish rarely as far as I know. He had a boat in Barnegat with an Uncle where they fished the bay and drank beer, but there was an argument when I was little and it ended.
The fishing map was used to find Yellow Breeches Creek and the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. Both became Mecca’s to us then and still today. Islands in the river are named for my children at Homet Ferry, and the Yellow Breeches at Huntsdale have hosted my friends and family during traditional trout and bass seasons for almost 40 years.
So we headed out from Doylestown in the leaky mustang on a mission of pure exploration. My fishing pal and high school buddy Joe riding shotgun. I had installed a tape player in my pony and we had one tape. It was an early Beatles tape, and as I write these words I can still hear odes to the Norwegian woods and the familiar voices of Paul and John.
My thrill was to explore extreme northwestern Pennsylvania. The map claimed big fish in wild sounding places like Kinzua, The Allegheny River, and the Clarion River. Wide areas were delineated as native brook trout country, and home of the Pike and Muskellunge, their fierce cousins up to 4 feet long, and both bristling with teeth.
When dad was alive, the annual trek to the Yellow Breeches south of Carlisle was our big trip. That and a summer trip to Bradford County (Wyalusing) on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. All year, months before these trips, I would clean and organize tackle, study the maps, dream of trout at the Breeches or sultry summer evenings along the then wild Susquehanna with a stringer of walleyes and smallmouth, to be carefully cleaned and cooked by my mother. Either Breeches trout or Susquehanna fish were a sacred meal.
On our summer trips in high school, the few we took, or the many I took alone, I slept behind summer quiet schools on the bus loading platforms, sleeping bag on still warm summer concrete. I caught and ate fish, and begged and borrowed for gas money.
In my fishing-dream- heart I studied and memorized the special map dad brought home years before. Pennsylvania’s route 6 traverses the most Northern part of the state from the New York state line near Port Jervis, all the way to odd sounding places named Kane, Warren, Corry, Westline…or Tionesta. Images on the map showed trout and toothy pike, tiny towns were I imagined Indians still netted fish and carried babies on their backs.
My fishing friend and fellow high school junior Joe and I were now on the road. Joe was a big athletic blonde kid who the girls liked. In fact I was secretly in love with his cheerleader girl and my neighbour Leslie. I think she thought of me as a combination motor head and nerd.
I had just started to get serious with Carol Padden that summer of 1973, driving around in our 1965 mustangs later to both become collectors and restorers of the Shelby GT-350. Endless car shows and paint fumes mostly at Gusto restorations in Ottsville, with John Gustafson. Joe simply said, “I don’t want to hear about that chick on this trip, we are fishing.” I had already been ridiculed for taking Carol to a dance.
Our destination, revealed by the sacred fishing map was the Allegheny reservoir. It was to be by way of route 6, that magical path I had only dreamed about. Real rugged trout country. As the Beatles groaned, we finally made it to Renovo on route 120. A dark nearly abandoned railroad town, where people were playing baseball in the main street at 3 AM. It was an odd scene. Out of bravado we drove up over the top of our world on route 144. I hadn’t known the state was this remote, wild. Finally we arrived at route 6 and went west.
The parking area by the reservoir and Kinzua dam is a wild place. They had flooded the corn planter Indian reservation to make the lake, and it made me feel sad. The loud spillway and leaking gas from the mustang’s rusty gas tank kept us up most of the night. By sunrise, a few sleepy fishermen emerged- out of one truck a bewhiskered scrawny old man. While busy at this early hour boiling camp coffee and breakfast of fried walleyes, we asked about the fishing. We became friends with old Bill, and he told us of Kinzua fish and fisherman. He said to go back into town across the old iron river bridge and make the first right. This would take us to the deep hole on the other side of the dam. We slowly drove up the road, as it became rough, boulder strewn. I swerved to avoid a rock and the right edge gave way and there we hung precariously above the trees and the roaring Allegheny below. Joe said he noticed an old jeep parked at a shack back down the hill. We walked back and found a gray tarpaper shack with half a door, the place moonshine was made and bad things happened to out a towners. Joe knocked on the door and appeared a wizened old man, unshaven. He looked to be 100 years old and was in fact, quite toothless. We explained our plight and he yelled to someone in the shack (we thought he was alone) a filthy little boy appeared and was instructed by the old man to “go get the rope yea big around as your p***r”. In only a few moments the boy appeared and the antique jeep pulled my mustang right back onto the “road”. Joe gave “Gums”, as he has been later called, a dollar and the old man jumped for joy, -kicked up his heels. I had never seen someone kick up heels before. We felt as far from home as Mars, or even Arizona.
As a 10 year old living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whose fishing exploits then, excited trips with dad to the Delaware Canal, river or Cooks Creek in Upper Bucks County, such places were odd and exotic as the Grand Canyon, or even the Desert and Cactus, or salmon streams in Atlantic Canada or Alaska.
So armed with my car and some gas, that old rusty stove I inherited from mom reluctantly (she still used it when the power was off), I ventured next out by myself to Huntsdale, where I had fished with dad since the spring of 1966.
This obscure little town, a right beautiful place as we” Canadians” say, is situated just below South Mountain, in a valley of limestone springs. The old map claimed, “Could be in old Scotland”. I had no idea about that, but I now know, as with Cape Breton that single Scottish reference may have been enough to move dad to make the Yellow Breeches our private fishing and family place for the generations. Here was a trout hatchery where the pilgrimage is still made. I actually received a letter from the Fish Commission stating that my family had been signing the guest book at the Huntsdale fish cultural station longer than any other. This is devotion, a living tribute to a place and time past, still resurrected in real life, at a place of powerful genetic and visceral memories.
Perhaps dad loved the stream and South Mountain area for a different reason beyond a Scottish map reference. It may have been genetic. Dad would take us as kids to battlefield re-enactments at Antietam and Gettysburg. Later, this military interest would not only make me an Army contractor, but also cause my young wife fits, hating my interest in memorabilia, military Colt gun collection, uniforms, and parade re-enactments. I never knew then and neither did dad that our ancestor fought in these hills with the 17th New York Infantry, after getting here from fighting as a British officer in the Crimean War (2nd British Foreign Cavalry). It is very tough to live down the past, especially when among your ancestors, on both sides of the family are heroes, pioneers, or actual biographical historical figures. Perhaps I can use that as an excuse for my behaviours, but I doubt it.
In high school, after dad’s death, we, that is my high school crowd, and later the entourage I engendered as a businessman, ritualistically put our tent here, and fished the long fish, in hopes of touching the prior, the infinite.
This field of tradition just south of the hatchery my son has called since being very small the “thorn spot”. The connotation is obvious. But in this field, it was where my dad and I first drowned bait in the mid-1960’s
Arriving back alone, years later, always puts a fist in my chest. Those days so long past, but not really. The sights, scents. Feelings-even trees now bigger but still where they belong belie the time past but still frozen. Waiting for that first cast, the first fish, the drive home to a familiar place, but still less important than the stream, the friends, and the father.
The point of this is fishing. Now we will drive along the route to the Allegheny Reservoir. But first we need to camp. We are going to camp in Westline.
Off route US 6 if you happen to have an old Atlantic Fishing map is a place called Westline. There is the Westline Inn, a rustic motel and bar with a pretty good restaurant. Many years ago it was the office of a chemical company that made things like turpentine and medicines from Pine tar. The stream there, Kinzua creek was hopelessly polluted by the Pennsylvania oil industry, by salt brine and grease. Over the decades, the stream has been saved and the trout returned.
This is a place of my odd and extreme past, as long ago; I had attended a small car show here after a huge drive around with Carol in1975. Long after, in 1981, I took the job with the state as an environmental geologist. The only business trip we took in 1981, as part of the program I was in, involved a long trip to Bradford, PA and a dinner at Westline Inn. A meeting with oil industry officials who wanted to kill our program. -Bradford was where my boss and fellow fisherman Carlyle Westland had worked in the oil patch, as we geologists say.
Years later, and by surprise, Kinzua Creek and fishing was good again here. Maybe we environmentalists had done some good after all. My son and I call a small tributary stream, behind the actual town of Westline, Thundershower Run, a tributary of Kinzua Creek or the “camping spot,” a special place. In Bradford I met those oil officials in 1981. Long ago I was here, this place is now home of my son’s fishing spot, or the camping spot. I am amazed that both Carol with Cars, Rhonda, Shel, and my kids know this spot. It was at the pay phone here Rhonda told me she didn’t want my help to save the business. That was in 1994 when Rhonda and her minions finally killed my company.
“She said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea” at Westline, Pennsylvania, right off the route 6 of my youth, in the front of the Westline Inn where I had dinner with oil company brass in 1981. So foreign to all but me, drawing them there. One of my favourite, but sad places. It is sometimes called a convergence, that this out of the way place has been an unlikely center for so many disparate, good and bad, grand and sad events. A friend once told me that I created a “cone of coincidence” that everyone in my world got caught in. So my early years seemed. Now, sitting quietly on the sea here, I wish to start a new whirlwind.
My Alaska out of state fishing license was very expensive, and I was anxious about my first real life encounter with a salmon. I had grown up with a coffee table book called “The Treasury of Angling”. It was a book club item, filled with pictures of exotic things to a 10 year old. I memorized this book. Things about King salmon and Arctic Grayling. Well thanks to God, and a good education and friends, here I was. The best fishing on the planet.
I took a drive up the dirt road about half a mile to a better pullout and stream access. The stream looked just like any eastern trout stream, but with one difference. There were huge fish lined up taking turns, it seemed, at swimming up the riffle there. A few ladies, obviously native American, were doing their always-excellent job of snagging salmon. So too were the Black bears ponderously loping along, just like us, but picking at dead fish. I also the learned Eagles, such a big deal back home, were just the crows here. Flocked together at fish carcasses like and as numerous as crows, our national symbol is just another simple scavenger here. Intentionally snagging a fish would have been illegal for me as a non-native fisherperson. (Most of the natives fishing here were women and girls) But since the Pinks, which were now the run in the stream, I had to try and convince a strike with a big nasty spinner.
Well, a 5 poundish fish, a big hook-jawed male seemed to attack my lure, at least it was in his mouth and I with great difficulty netted the salmon that almost broke my light spinning rod. I know Alaskans and other experienced fisherman now balk at Pink salmon, sometimes called erroneously “Dog salmon”’ as it is and was sled dog food. The same is true of the Grayling, which my Alaskan friends have considered the Carp of the north.
Well it was my first trip and I cooked that salmon with oil and a cornmeal coating and ate about 3 pound s of it. It was great.
Of course, then, I hadn’t had fresh King or even better Red or Sockeye, nor Grayling.
I didn’t return to Alaska after that two-week trip until 1985. My wife to be, who was not an “outdoorsy” woman, came with me to fish and camp, her first time doing those things. Wow-what a great place to start in those pursuits. Unfortunately, she was terrified to sleep in our tent, as there were bear warning signs all around. She did manage to catch her first, and close to only ever fish. I met a guy named Jeff King who was a Kenai River guide. My lady caught and released a nice 45-pound female King salmon that July. We finished our visit with some touring and stays at Anchorage’s nicer hotels. She would return with me a few more times, but usually stayed at the hotel while I was out fishing or camping alone.
She did take a beautiful long hike with me into the Kenai Mountains. We went about 10 miles off the road in the rainforest and found a small lake. It was brimming with Grayling and I caught my first of many Grayling there. We made a small campfire and shared the cooked fish. It is one of my fondest memories of that relationship with the mother of my two beautiful children.
By the way, the Grayling isn’t so bad. Its scientific name, Thymallus, refers to the thyme-like scent of its flesh, which is soft, white, and sweet. Its better that any stocked eastern trout, I assure you, a beautiful and exotic creature. Later, I would find them again at the highest elevations, oddly stocked on Arizona’s eastern rim.
Later I would bring my father in law, friends, and a wife on a trip that I had down like a tour guide. We would fly into Anchorage and rent a car. Then we drive North to Denali park. Inside the park I had found a mining camp that had rooms near Denali and Wonder Lake. Wonder Lake is a jewel-like place often seen on postcards. The Snow capped mountain reflected into the mirror of this pristine lake is one of the most beautiful experiences and witnesses of my life. The entire road back into Kantishna, along the park access road is almost 100 miles of incredible scenery.
One shrinks and seems to fall away into nothing while viewing distant braided rivers at polychrome pass. There is a visitor center at Eielson, the last civilization, at least back then, until Kantishna.
Kantishna then or was a gold mining camp. I befriended Roberta, the owner, shortly after she broke up with her gold miner husband to start a tourist accommodation, the Kantishna roadhouse. I would return every summer here as the camp grew and Roberta prospered. Eventually it seemed that only Japanese were visiting, so I stopped going there. Not because of the foreign tourists-it had just become too commercial, and very expensive.
A new dining hall and motel were built, the bears and moose, caribous, marmots, eagles (of course), foxes were all there.
When I took that very first trip to Kantishna, it required a special travel permit to leave the main park road. It got you away from the ubiquitous buses of summer photo seekers, often approaching and getting mauled by angry grizzly bears. It was a wild ride then, and I miss that Kantishna.
The next stop was Homer. This incredible place is perhaps the most beautiful town on earth. At least if you drive up the hill behind Homer, and view its fishhook like peninsula over the Cook Inlet. Here we would always charter a trip for Halibut. This was a great opportunity to get seasick and catch a truly giant flounder. My biggest was only 108 pounds. But it along with the rest of the catch butchered, packed, and Fedexed back home was fish for an extended family for a year. I don’t eat halibut anymore. I haven’t since I gave away the freezer I especially bought to hold Alaska fish at my home in Mechanicsburg, PA, the chimney house. I gave away the freezer, my well-used collection of Halibut cookbooks and remaining fish before I moved to Arizona in 1994.
The breath-taking ferry ride from Whittier to Valdez is better than the over priced cruises. The 10 hours or so as I recall then was a start at a warm, nice little port with cars loaded on. The food was fist class then at first, but that changed over time.
I was always amused later as the ship progressed that the be-shorted and be-tee-shirted neophytes would soon be scrambling inside as we approached the glaciers and icebergs. I always brought my parka so I could stay out on deck and watch for whales and seals aplenty.
As great as that ferry ride is, the drive out and UP from Valdez (pronounced VAL-DEEZ) and the oil terminal is truly awesome. Writing about this, one truly runs out of dramatic adjectives. None really do it-language fails, go there and see it for yourself.
I remember taking this drive out of Valdez with my wife for the first time. In the cool morning fog, she shrieked at seeing the absolute wall of snowy rock we were driving towards away from the pipeline terminal. It had no top in the fog, and we crossed across beautiful pond-pocked tundra and down on my next traditional accommodation at Copper Center, after passing an endless array of towering waterfalls.
This rustic little motel, the Copper Center Inn, was always my stop over place. It was quiet and comfortable and great to stop after a sleepless night on the ferry and the drive over the huge mountains.
The Denali highway goes east to west from the area just north of Copper Center back to Denali Park. This completes the round trip back to the park and back to our starting point, Anchorage. Along this dirt road, the Denali highway traverses amazingly interesting glacial terrain. Geology buffs, like me, get to ride on eskers, on top of kames, and see all kinds of moraines. Also, along her are a plethora of “ditches” containing vast quantities of Grayling and Dolly Varden trout. “Dollies” as they are called, are held in the same “esteem” as Grayling are by Alaskans. But for those of us from “outside”, as they say, Dollies may be another new species to catch.
The mid-point for me along the Denali highway was a place called “Denali”. Then, it was a support camp for the adjacent gold mine. They had small rooms and a restaurant in a small metal Quonset hut. The food was ample and hearty-the miners were good company for a geologist. It would have been better on those trips to leave the wives home. In the “Sluice Box” café, there are dollar bills everywhere with names of visitors, as well as any other paper currency you can think of. Telling the assembled miners I was an Alaska licensed geologist, the miners offered me 5 ounces of gold to fly up in the chopper with them for a day and look at their placer mining and make suggestions. I couldn’t go along, not wanting to leave my wife alone nor be late for our return flight to Baltimore.
On my last trip to the Kenai River, at Kenai, my wife and I both caught 50-pound class July Kenai Kings. I had an old friend along who hadn’t fished too much. He asked me, “Joe, how will I know when I have a fish?” Back trolling on the wild rushing river is a heavy feeling to the rod. I said, “You’ll know”. It was about then he hooked a rocket of a 45-pound doe, tail walking and I think almost scaring my urbanite friend out of our boat. Jeff, our guide, started to call me Jonah Joe.
This is one of my favourite biblical tales, but that is not why he called me that. There were many years I spent good money to combat fish in the Kenai without catching anything. The fish my young wife caught was obtained while I was sleeping, fished-out and being out too long the night before with friends at Charlie’s place in Kenai. Charlie’s was a lot like the Pine Tree Tavern was in my youth in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. Except the owner honoured the entertainment needs of the salmon fishing season and had a uniquely entertaining place. Maybe it’s burned down too in the years I have been away, like the Pine Tree Tavern did near the Yellow Breeches. On one trip just after I started to work for the Pennsylvania DER I traveled with a friend who worked for the federal government. We asked a couple of Charlie’s girls out. It was on that trip I almost died on the Copper River Delta when my parka’s hood got caught in the pulley of a handcar across a raging glacial torrent, not far from the glacier surrounding copper mining camp at Kennicott.
I almost died horsebacking when my bridle got caught precariously above a raging river and the horse bucked. We also did the whitewater thing on the Nenana River.
A freshly cut steak from just behind the head of such a catch as a big Kenai King is divine, Mesquite grilled with a good bottle of wine, moose in view among the pines by a little cabin on the river, on Beaver Loop, is where I want to be-right now. Alaskans and serious combat Kenai-King fisherman will know exactly where I mean.
Oh, I like the Jona or Jonas story because for me it meant there is no way to hide from God or to avoid a divinely mandated journey. And when your done, you might just be angry, and get into an argument with God and destiny. This is an argument you shall lose.
I had promised my son a trip there to the Kenai for his graduation from high school. We will have to wait and see. As time has passed, and my priorities have changed, the trips are less frequent. But we will go again. I still have one of my earliest credentials in Geology-A state of Alaska geology license. I only ever did one project there, in Juneau around 1993. It was an underground tank removal. Juneau was a neat town, but a bit touristy. There were salmon in abundance there and a nice glacier. An amazing (funny) thing happened in (on my to) Juneau. An old friend of mine, the ship the Pacific Princess was in port. I heard someone call my name. It was the purser from the ship. He remembered me from the cruise I had taken from Tahiti to Hawaii years before. I surely felt traveled then, the world a smaller place. I guess people remember me. It is a unique capital, as you can’t drive there- its on an island. Kind of like here, on PEI. But we have that unsightly bridge.
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