Mr. Pearl Rush and Mrs. Hortense Chrisco Rush after a day of fishing, late 1970’s.

Growing up in Asheboro, NC, I recall how fishing was one of my parents’ favorite pastimes. The burden of fishing as a hobby comes with the fact that there is preparatory work that must be done prior to the luxury of the event. First and foremost, fish have to be attracted to one’s line. As genuine and authentic folks, my parents wanted quality bait to attract fish, so they were keen for the need to gather healthy, vibrant earthworms. The good thing about all of this was that the worms were free, but it took some know-how and effort to collect them. For this, they assigned me to do the task.  I remember being sent to the homes of several neighbors, who had household water running out into drainage ditches. The moist, black earth produced from the water was the preferred habitat.

I was sent to the Ridleys who lived four doors down from us, to dig outside of their back door. The Ridleys were senior citizens then, probably in their late 70’s or early 80’s and still used one of those really old washing machines that had two small wheels shooting and ejecting clothes out between the two rollers like an old printing press. Their washing machine was one of just a handful like that that I remember from my youth. The water from the washer was discarded into a ditch just a few feet out from their back door, and that was an ideal place to find what I was looking for. I was also directed to an open field behind us, near Mrs. Elsie Coble’s house, a house sitting adjacent to our back yard. The water from Mrs. Coble’s kitchen sink and washing machine led to the edge of our property. My mind’s eye can still capture the deep black color of the rich soil in both locations, along with its aromatic, earthy smell. There was something carnal, invigorating and oddly inviting about the muskiness, like a primordial, fragrance that is inherently attached to the very essence of Life. Long, healthy worms were the fruit of my search. I dug with a garden hoe, mindful to hold it with a firm grip, since that particular grasp was quite effective. It was not uncommon to find bait three to four inches long, solid in circumference, probably about the thickness of a pencil. I was good at locating worms and my parents always seemed pleased with what I gathered.

My parents had a knack for discovering prime fishing holes covering several counties, putting the bait I supplied to good use. If there was a good place to fish in Randolph County, NC, or any county adjacent to it, it seemed Pearl and Hortense Rush could find it. I remember going to lakes and ponds of various sizes, and even a river or two, tromping through long grass, always with the warning to watch out for snakes. Except for one memorable encounter with a black snake slithering through my legs once while fishing, I don’t remember any other unwanted encounters.

Having survived the actual trip to the edge of the water, there were times when I did fish with Momma and Daddy, but I never really became absorbed. I recall the wriggling of the worms as they were pressed securely onto the hooks at the end of the line, then casting the line out with the sweep of my arms, the rainbow-like arc that went along with the line as the cork traveled in slow motion to hit the water. I have literally thousands of pictures in my head of my parents performing that motion. I felt entranced as I’d stare at the cork on the surface of the water, just waiting for it to dip, the sure sign that there was a fish on the line. I always felt that it was prudent to be careful not to blink, since timing was everything once that cork retreated below water, a good fisherman jerking on the rod as soon as that cork dipped, to get a good hook into the catch.

I had all of the mechanics of it down, but I was impatient and was easily bored at the thought of just staring out over water. My young mind could not grasp the mature, concentrated patience it took to fish. In that long-ago-World of the early 1970’s, to my youthful brain, it seemed like it took the patience of Job to get it done. I was quick to lose interest, ennui weighing me down like a heavy load. Besides, I was never a fan of grasping a writhing, wriggling fish, and removing the hook from its mouth, once it had been hauled in. For various reasons, I just never really liked my parents’ hobby.

Pearl and Hortense were the complete opposite of me, since they both seemed to be obsessed with fishing as an activity. I have spent a lifetime analyzing why. They could fish all day, with darkness the only thing making them stop for the day. I marveled at their patience, their quiet, concentrated focus and meditation as they performed. I intuitively felt, and still feel, there was something deeply spiritual and therapeutic about fishing for them, a unique kind of food for their soul that they got from participating. They seemed to be lost in hypnotic, mystical trances the whole time they stared at their corks. If they were ever asked to explain it, I am confident they would never find the words, since it was so profound that words cannot capture it.

They may not have been able to express it in words, and I am not sure that I can, but, by the very existence of the anecdote that you are currently reading, I am making the attempt. I still haven’t quite figured out all that went into fishing for them, but the very act of analyzing them, in some sense, helps to give me a telescopic glimpse, and hopefully you too, at the spiritual location of where I think they were when they were involved with it. The paradox comes from the fact that I was physically present with my parents while they fished, but even with me being there, they were simultaneously on a higher spiritual plane, a plane a trillion miles away. They never got bored and were always in tune with fishing. It was almost as if in waiting for a nibble from a fish, they were dialoguing with God; The actual “catch” was God’s physical reward to them for their confidence. In many ways, Momma and Daddy’s penchant for fishing is just a symbol for them as people. They didn’t just have faith in God—the very essence of how they lived their lives was them living as a small piece of God, and there is no better example of this than this fishing story.

Since all of the collective memories of my parents travel with me wherever I go, and despite Momma’s death in 1986, those images of them fishing were with me during my 6 year residence in Chicago. One of my favorite activities while in the Windy City was long-distance running, and I’d often run the 6.2 miles from downtown to my apartment in Hyde Park. I was in love with the picturesque view of Lake Michigan as I made my way over the running trail right next to it, absorbing the experience into my being. One can see the water of Lake Michigan extending out over the horizon as far as the naked eye can see, and I am sure, in some kind of subliminal way, The Lake was a reminder of my parent’s favorite hobby.

One Spring morning as I was out practicing my favorite hobby of long-distance running, my pager went off. Still striding along, I removed the device from my sweat pants, staring down at the number. A smile came over my face, and as fate would have it, a pay phone was just 50 yards ahead. There were long stretches of distance, sometimes as much as 2 to 3 miles of ground, between pay phones. Knowing this simple fact, it makes one secure that only Providence could have timed the page to arrive when I was only 50 yards away from the nearest one.

At the timing of the page in 1994, it dawned upon me that I have a very unique male experience. I was 32 years old, and it occurred to me that my father had either been in my physical presence, or was just a phone call away, for every single one of my 11,000 days on Earth. Even when I was stationed in Germany, I had Daddy’s number and could make contact with him, at any nanosecond of any day. There was never one second of my life when I did not know how to get in touch with him. Even more important, there was never a moment when I doubted whether Mr. Pearl Rush would welcome the call, or be accessible to me.

My personal access to my father is unique because it is in contrast to a large portion of the male population in the United States. Our whole society, but especially our prison system, is full of men who would literally give their right arms to have had the type of relationship, and access, that I had with my father. That stability is totally foreign to a lot of American men.

So, as I approached that public telephone to respond to the page, I was smiling, reminiscing about all of the times I had been with my parents during their favorite pastime. I imagined a correlation between the thousands of times I had seen the sweep of Daddy’s arms casting that fishing line out over water in slow motion, with what had just occurred. There was a connection between the arc of the fishing line and what my father had just done 742 miles away by pressing a telephone key pad. He had dialed my pager number, sending out an electronic pulse traveling in a slow, St. Louis-arch-like motion, out over the distance and space from Asheboro, NC to Chicago, IL and landing upon the internal electronic pieces within my pager, causing it to beep. It was as if he had reached out with an invisible arm to grasp me from my exact physical spot on planet Earth, 742 miles away. As I dialed to answer my father, by calling collect, I could not help smiling, thinking that once again, Daddy had gone fishin’. This time his “catch” was his son. No earthworms needed.