ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512040073
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEVE KARK
Dispatches from Rye Hollow
Every once in a while, I drive the steel-truss bridge over the New River at Pembroke, mostly, I suppose, to keep an eye on the progress of the new bridge being built beside the old one, but also because I'm curious about how they do such a thing.
How, for instance, do you place concrete pylons when they rest on the bottom of the river? For one thing, concrete won't set up under water. Moreover, the finished pylons are too big and heavy to build somewhere else and carry to the site.
The solution, I've learned, is that they assemble a water-tight steel wall around the place where they'll pour the pylons.
Then they suck out the water from inside the wall. Presto! A dry place in the middle of the river.
Anyway, most of the locals are curious too, so it's not unusual to find several standing around watching the construction crews. It turns out that the old bridge makes an excellent observation post.
Nonetheless, on a recent Sunday morning, I was surprised to find four people fishing amidst all the trucks and unassembled girders.
It was a chilly, wet day, but that and all the paraphernalia of bridge building didn't seem to bother them. They must've figured that because the bridge crew doesn't work on Sundays, why let themselves be bothered by all that heavy equipment. After all, people have fished that spot for years.
On this day, they'd set up a fishing spot on one of the construction crew's pontoons to get away from the bank and cast the deeper water. As I drove across the old bridge, I was able to look down and see that they appeared contented enough.
Three wore waterproof ponchos and one a plastic tarp to keep out the rain. They were smiling and quietly spoke back and forth, apparently oblivious to everything but the water and the fishing lines that disappeared beneath them. These, I thought, are real fishermen.
They reminded me of someone from my own past. (Memories, you see, are like that: You can never tell what will shake one loose.) My grandmother on my father's side was just such a fisher. She'd fish rain or shine; it didn't matter.
I spent a lot of time in various rowboats with my grandma, but I never acquired her knack for fishing. She was one of a kind.
She'd get up before the crack of dawn and be out fishing several hours before I'd wander down to the pier and find her rowing back to shore with a couple of "lunkers" hanging from her stringer.
On really wet days, I'd hole up in the cottage, but she'd be out anyway. Sometimes I could see her from the porch, sitting in the boat out in the middle of the lake, happy as a lark with the rain beating down around her. She didn't mind it one bit, and she always came back with fish.
In the evenings after supper, she'd go out again, and I sometimes went with her if it wasn't raining. With the impatience of youth, I'd lose interest before long. She wouldn't go in, though, so I'd curl up on the life cushions at the front of the boat.
I remember the way sounds from the shore carried across the lake and the way the Coleman lantern glowed against the darkness. And too, for me there'll always be the sound the water made as it gently lapped against the sides of the boat.
All this because I crossed a bridge years later and happened to notice four fishermen beneath it.
I'm not sure where I'm going here or what I want you to see. I could offer the bridge as a metaphor and suggest that our memories bridge our present and our past, but that seems so contrived.
Similarly, I'm not sure how I should stop, except to recall grandma's advice from when I was a boy. It made sense then, and I see no reason it shouldn't now.
"Hush," she'd say, raising her forefinger to her lips, "you'll scare off all the fish."
LENGTH: Medium: 74 linesby CNB