THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 27, 1994 TAG: 9406240479
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940627 LENGTH: Long
The Watson boys.
{REST} Kim, Robin, Christopher and Chipper spent most of the summer visiting their grandparents, who lived next door. Because Kim was my age, and Chris my brother's, we exercised proprietary rights over these soft-spoken creatures from ``down South.''
To Yankees, these four towheaded Virginians cut romantic figures. They spoke slowly with perfect Virginia drawls. They traveled each way in their family station wagon for what was then a two-day trip from a place we had read about only in history books. They inevitably arrived late at night, their car crunching into the gravel driveway, momentarily drowning out the chirping crickets.
In the days and weeks before their arrival, I would eagerly knock on their grandmother's door with what must have been annoying frequency.
``When are the Watson boys coming?'' I would ask.
``Two more weeks,'' their grandmother would patiently reply. Then one. Then five days. Then they were here.
The sound of their car would always waken me, and I would breathe the cool night air, listening as their whispering parents carried the sleeping boys from the car. The screen door would bang as the grownups ran back and forth. Then the car door would slam with a final thud and all would be quiet.
In the morning, anticipation was choked with shyness. It had been 10 months since their last visit.
But soon we were under the Watson boys' spell. We loved to hear them talk. Not only were their accents hypnotic but they also would tell us - who never traveled farther south than Delaware - of a land as intoxicating as any we could imagine.
The Watson boys had friends we would never meet, teachers who'd never teach us and a house we'd never see but that we imagined to be grand and plantation-like. The only things apparently missing from their remarkable hometown were Tastycakes - a deprivation that made us feel vaguely sorry for the quartet. As the Watsons drove away each August, their car was laden with cartons of Tastycakes bought in bulk at the local corner store. Tandytakes, krimpets and fruit pies - all destined for Petersburg public school lunchboxes.
The Watson boys dazzled our parents with their ``yes, ma'ams'' and ``no, ma'ams,'' their ``yes, sirs'' and ``no, sirs.'' But to us, these Southern boys were just different. And nothing is more intriguing than different when you're 10 years old.
It's been more than 30 years since I last saw the Watson boys. Time goes by and they are rarely in my thoughts. But when I think of them, I always remember the Summer of the Fish Fry.
Make that Fish Frah, for that is how we pronounced it in deference to our Southern friends.
A lake cut our New Jersey town in two. In the wintertime, it froze hard and provided a slippery shortcut to our school on the far bank. In the summertime, it was choked with lily pads and algae and overhung with giant oak and willow trees. Children summered on its banks, racing through the encircling woods, flying over the water on tire swings and fishing in its stagnant waters.
Those lucky enough to own a rowboat caught large bass from the swift channel that cut through the middle of the lake. The only fish to swim to the shoreline were small, roundish sunfish. We fished for those shimmering prizes regularly with our bamboo poles.
The Watson boys had barely stretched their legs from their long automobile ride in the summer of 1962 when enterprising Kim - the oldest - suggested we fish all summer and hold a ``fish frah'' at the end of August. We could sell tickets and make some money.
During the first few days after their arrival, the banks of the lake were lined with fishing children and assorted kids just wanting to look at the fishing Virginians.
But one by one, the children lost interest in the fishing.
Only Kim and I continued to dream of the fish fry. When we weren't fishing, we were talking about fishing or pounding for night crawlers, which we stored in old Maxwell House coffee cans.
Each day, we would clean the tiny, translucent fish and wrap the filets in wax paper to store in his grandmother's deep-freezer.
Weeks went by, and we did little else. We left each morning after breakfast, carrying our lunches in paper sacks and our fishing rods.
We perched on the bank of the lake all day. What we talked about I don't precisely remember. I recall the heat, the ants, the worms and the sunnies. And Kim's stories about Virginia.
He made the Old Dominion sound so exotic that I vowed then and there to move to Virginia as soon as I was old enough.
The freezer filled, and the days got shorter. Migrating birds passed overhead and sweaters were needed when we went on moonlit crawls to gather worms. It was unspoken, but we knew it was coming - the Watson boys would be going soon.
But first there was the fish fry.
On the day of the feast, we borrowed picnic tables from cooperative neighbors. My mother made a giant bowl of soupy cole slaw. The Watsons' grandmother made a vat of gelatinous vanilla pudding.
Grills were set up in the grandparents' back yard, and the skimpy fish fillets were ceremoniously brought from the freezer.
At 25 cents a ticket, dozens of neighborhood children came. The three chubby Pullen children marched over, each carrying a raw hot dog and bun. (They were not fish eaters, but they were not about to miss the only fish fry our town had ever known.)
Even the slightly soiled Shane kids came, their hands surprisingly clean for the event.
I can still smell the fish as they hissed on the grill, and hear the happy voices of New Jersey children speaking with the slight Southern twang we all acquired after weeks of continuous contact with the Watsons.
All too soon, fireflies emerged, street lights winked on and tired children straggled home, sensing there would never be anything quite like this again.
The next day, the boys were loading the station wagon with their knapsacks and Tastykakes and waving goodbye.
I never saw the Watson boys again.
Their grandparents retired to Florida the next winter, and I guess the boys went south after that.
By the summer of 1963, when I was 11, fishing in the lake seemed pointless. The weather seemed hotter, my brother bothersome and the neighborhood kids seemed so, well, ordinary.
Sometimes I see signs advertising a fish fry and my thoughts fly back to that almost forgotten summer in a small lakeside town in New Jersey. A magical summer of plastic bobbers, squirming worms and the Watson boys.
These days, it is I who drive north with children in tow for a summer vacation with their grandparents. My Virginia-born children speak with soft Virginia drawls - or so my mother says. They do say ``yes, sir'' and ``no, sir'' . . . sometimes. And I am amused to see the New Jersey children eyeing my kids curiously, asking them to repeat an indecipherable word (like parrot for pirate).
Oh yes, my eldest child now is the self-appointed temporary ringleader in my parents' neighborhood. No sooner does our car with Virginia tags pull up in front of my parents' house than the local children surround her.
Then the kids - Northerners and Southerners - disappear together, whispering, laughing . . . and scheming.
I hope.
by CNB