I “loved” to fish already when I was a little boy— caught my first catfish when I was six years old and Grandpa Schroeder took my Dad, my Cousin (Doug), and me to some relative’s pond in Okarche, Oklahoma, after buying bait shrimp at Eischen’s grocery store (yes, the same folks, who are famous for their bar and especially the chicken) and “digging” up some earthworms out in Grandpa’s garden. We caught 22 catfish in one hour, and I was “hooked” (pun intended), especially since Grandpa spent most of his time baiting my hook and “unhooking” the fish I caught that day!
My love of fishing carried over into Forney, where Dad had permission to fish in Lonzo Yandell’s ponds (Lover’s Lane dirt road area then), except folks in Forney called the bodies of water by the name of “TANKS.” One day, however, for some reason Dad, on his Thursday afternoon early departure from Southland Athletic in Terrell, had asked Mr. Bill Costello if we could go out and fish in his tank out down a “country road” to the right off Farm Road 741 just before the “County Barn.” Mr. Costello farmed, was a mail carrier, and worked for H. W. Campbell Ford in downtown Forney, all 1200 citizens in the 1950s!
We had a good day, with Dad reading his newspaper in-between helping me with my “getting more experienced” with a new “cane pole,” bought at the Hardware Store or maybe Western Auto, and also catching a few “eating-sized” (as large as Dad’s hand) perch or sunfish or bream or whatever the “pan fish” were. They called them “perch” in Okarche, but in Forney most guys called them bream.
As time passed, Dad took David Costello with us a few times, and more or less, fished a little and mostly “kept his eyes on us” to be sure we were safe and able to handle the “baiting, catching, and unhooking” chores. I was probably eight or nine years old, and David was one year younger and my main playmate in our neighborhood in those days. Dad insisted that I help clean any fish brought home for Mom to fry! I was slow at first, about one for every five by Dad!
As more time passed, David and I became closer friends and visited in each other’s houses. David Thomas had an older brother, Billy Owen, and a younger sister, Jane Elizabeth, and Donald Paul had a younger sister, Ann Marie. (I think I have all those “middle” names correct!)
David and I became “best friends,” at least as far as “in the neighborhood,” and spent much time “crawfishing” in a series of “gulley” little ponds at the end of Weaver Street and at the “Third Tree,” which was located about where the “visitor” football stands at Warren Middle School now are. Near the tree (now gone) was a small “gulley pond” that usually had crawdads and small fish and mud puppies. It was about a half-mile or more hike from our houses, and there were often “horny toads” there in those days!
We also shot B. B. guns, hunting in the neighborhood, especially in the yard of Bessie and Joe Compton, and played “army” in Mr. McKellar’s cotton field along Shands Street (dirt road then). Melvin (Tookie) Tucker sometimes joined us, and sometimes we could see Kathy Townsend over at Hayden Eudy’s house….. David “liked” her for a girlfriend! She was tall and blonde and had a “pony tail” hairdo. As years passed, Tookie became really popular with us guys, because he had a pool table in his garage!
We also became old enough to be taken to the pond at the Costello Farm and left to fish and explore until a parent came back out to pick us up a few hours later. I remember one time we were out there, as was a man we did not know. We were catching quite a few “keeping size” perch and putting them onto “stringers” and into a bucket. Some fish we caught were smaller than my Dad allowed us to bring home to clean, and we were just throwing them back into the pond. Then….oh, no….the man began walking towards us and looked mean!
When he got to where we were fishing and quivering a little, he asked, “What are you boys doing, throwing back those fish?” We explained that we were told to only bring home fish longer than my Dad’s hand. The man frowned, and slowly said, “How about letting me take the fish you don’t want?”
We agreed and filled his bucket. When he finally left, David and I decided that he must have been “poor” and needed food, or he was going to “plant the fish” with his crops as the Pilgrims had been taught to do. We never saw him again out at the pond, and we did not mention him to our parents!
Then, the Costello farm had a farmhouse, a barn, a shed, and a corral! For a while, the Dickerson family (Forney Missionary Baptist mainstays) rented the place and lived there. They were nice and let us drink out of the well and pick peaches from the orchard, and three children I most remember are James, Imogene, and Martha. They also let us “ride their pigs,” but I am not sure they knew we did that. (David assured me it was O. K. and would not hurt the hogs, but I never told my parents about it until years later. Dad assured me that probably there was much more chance David and I would have been hurt than would the pigs, which were not small!)
I liked looking at the house. It reminded me of a “haunted manor” and had “neat” lightning rods at the tops of each peak! There was a “real water well” just outside the front door, and the water was clear and cold! Mom, a Registered Nurse, was not happy that I had drunk the water, which she was afraid had not been tested for contaminants and germs (typhoid). Neither David nor I ever got sick after being at the farm, except once when we had eaten too many “somewhat green” peaches!
Later, Pete Parker lived in the house, and he was quite a character—looked like Jed Clampett and had a ‘big ol’ double-barrel 12 gauge shot gun that “broke” to load! He refused to let us even hold that gun, much less shoot it! He told us it was not loaded as we “walked” the pasture one day while he had the gun rested upon his shoulder, barrel pointing straight up.
HE LIED, for when some quail “flushed” and “scared the ‘wee’ out” of us two boys, he brought down three of them with two consecutive shots! Yes, he put them into his “bag” and said he would have them for supper! Pete looked a little “rough,” but Mrs. D. D. McGee said that “Mr. Parker always stopped to help her if she was needing help when he went by the “Flying D-D Ranch” and that he wouldn’t “hurt a flea” unless it needed hurting!
The pond provided great joys for several years, and sometimes Billy Owen would drive us out there in Mr. Costello’s “mail route” jeep. Man, that was rugged; it was not a Jeep Cherokee and was mainly just steel— and bumpy! And, I believe that Billy Owen hit every hump and hole intentionally, since David and I were basically sitting upon the floor in the cargo area where the mail usually sat! I remember that once, Billy took a “whole bunch” of us out to the farm—Billy, David, and I—and (I think) George Hughes, Gary Shaw, Pat Adams, and some boy I did not know—one of his cousins named “Goodnight” I think!
The usual “early days” set-up for a fishing outing for David and me was that either my Mom or his would take us out to the pond, and the other Mom would come back to pick us up. I had a “Davy Crockett” watch, and we were supposed to be all packed up by the time we were slated to be picked up. Mrs. Maxine Costello (my Forney Grammar School 3rd Grade Teacher) was not quite as punctual as was Mrs. Marian Themer, but she also was not quite as strict about wanting us to be ready to hurry to the car! Once or twice, she took us by the Talty Store to get an R. C. Cola or a Mr. Cola. I always picked the 2nd one, because it had two more ounces in it!
One day, David had not caught any fish and was not ready to leave when Mrs. Costello drove up and honked the car’s horn. He persisted with his stubbornness until his Mom shrugged her shoulders and said she would just leave him at the pond and take me to the Themer abode. I knew she ultimately would not do that, but “little” daughter Jane did not—and I felt so sorry for her as she “cried and cried” in fear that brother David would be forever lost out in the country with the wolves and bears! Mrs. Costello relented, and Jane smiled again!
But then the day came when Mr. Costello had what he said was “bad news.” The pond was going to be drained and not re-filled. I could have cried, but did not because I was a “big boy” by then.
However, it all turned out well, because he had negotiated to get a “conservation lake” where the pond had been. We went out to see the pond after it had been drained, and there was a “lot of junk” in it, plus one really big bass that had died as all the water drained out! The racoons had a wonderful time with all the little fish that were left in the inches of water before the pond dried completely!
Bull dozers came out and made a grand lake, and State Fishery workers stocked it with black bass and channel catfish and sunfish (perch and bream), and before too many years passed, fishing was great. I remember the day I was fishing with a cane pole and a grasshopper for bait and all of a sudden, I almost lost the pole. I pulled out a fish and was amazed at the beauty of that bass—about three pounds—and almost did not want to eat it. (I cleaned it; Mom fried it for breakfast; Dad and I devoured it!)
One “Fair Day,” when I did not want to do much after early morning football practice had just about worn me out, I drove our old 1961 “big ol’ green Ford” out to the lake, turned on my transistor radio, baited my lines, and proceeded to have a wonderful, relaxing day out there all by myself, until the “Woodrings” drove up and began to fish from the “dam.”
THEY WERE PULLING IN BIG ONES, and they were casting “lures.” I had been using minnows and shrimp, but I had some “spoons” and moved over by them to talk and try out my new “plugs,” as they recommended. I caught three nice bass, and saw the “couple” out there a few more times that summer—and we also saw Judd Lewis (the boy, not the Dad) out there shooting his new .22 rifle at water foul way across the lake. I can not remember if he hit any or not, but it was really a nice gun!
One winter, David and I set out “trot lines” down pretty deep into the water near the dam right before it was time to go home. Mr. or Mrs. Costello picked us up near dark and gave us the bad news—They would not be home to take us back in the morning to “check the lines.” I called David with the bad news that night as I found out my parents had plans for the next morning, too, but the next morning, he called me early to come on over, because “we had a ride!”
I said “good-bye” to my folks and walked across the alley way to the Costello back yard—and saw our ride. There sat a tractor and a plow, which we unhooked. I said, “How are we going to work this with just one seat?”
His answer was, “Don’t worry; you are going to stand on the axle cover and hold onto the back of my seat. I will drive slowly. It’s only about six or seven miles, and ‘who will know?’”
I will admit I was scared— not so much of falling or wrecking but of having my folks or his find out how we made it to the farm! It always seemed to me that God talked to Dad directly whenever I had something to hide!
We made it to the pond (David did not drive slowly!), which had ice on the surface, did so safely, had six “big ol’ catfish,” put the tractor into the “shed,” and caught a ride back to town with Mr. Parker, as I remember it. I am glad Dad is not alive today to read this story, or he would probably still give me a “whuppin” for being “so foolish.”
I will close with the biggest mistake (well maybe not the biggest) I ever made! Mr. Costello once told me when I was still a boy that he would sell me any “acres” of his farm for $500-$600 per acre, depending upon how much land I wanted. I to this day regret not buying the “old lake area” or the “little pond” area! I should have talked Dad into “financing” my venture!
The COSTELLO FARM— I wonder if any member of the “Green” family (daughter, Tana) still owns some or all of that land, and I wonder what became of that “old well” and “Pete Parker.”
*And, I still have fond memories of the two times this nice, older lady (Ruby Taylor) invited David and me to go fishing at the lake with her and picked us up in her car and provided shrimp and minnows as bait for us all.*
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