Finally, Grandma and I got to spend plenty of time with our first grandchild, now a 20-something, pretty gal named Hannah. She’s now married, a stepmother to two cute boys and living too many miles away in Texas.
It’s been several months since we last saw her. And we’ve missed her fiercely. So, we were overjoyed a few weeks ago to hear she was coming home to visit. Sadly, the visit is now over and she is back in the Lone Star State. It’s a bittersweet realization for us, since we miss her near-daily visits, but are also so very happy she’s found deep happiness with a guy named Alex and his two young sons.
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Hannah’s visit home kept tugging my mind back to the first thing I ever wrote about her. It was a column published on Nov. 26, 1994, in The Courier. It was entitled, “Bass caught his heart, but granddaughter stole it.” I’d like to share that with you today:
* * *
Big bass and tiny babies can cut deep ruts into a man’s soul.
This I learned three days before Thanksgiving, when I became a grandpa.
A few weeks ago, my daughter Misty and son-in-law Mike informed me that the pending big day would bring forth a girl named Hannah Michelle.
Because my daughter was overdue, she entered the hospital Monday morning when labor was induced. It was a day of nervous anticipation as I waited for the telephone to ring. The call I’d been waiting for all day didn’t come until 15 minutes before midnight.
“Hi, gramps,” said Misty, the smile on her face coming across the telephone line as clear as her words. At last, my granddaughter had arrived.
“She weighed 8 pounds, 14 ounces and was 21¾ inches long,” said the proud mother to the equally proud and obviously much less tired grandpa.
“You know something,” I replied. “That’s exactly half an inch longer than that big bass I caught this fall.”
“Gosh, dad, how can you think about that stinkin’ fish at a time like this” my daughter replied.
Ah, that fish, that monstrous large mouth bass that literally exploded into my life earlier this fall from the depths of Doc Ulrich’s pond. My daughter was correct. Since the day I caught it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that “stinkin’ fish.”
The new panfish flies had been purchased with the salesman’s promise they were “killers” on summer and fall bluegill. The flies were designed to slowly sink to the depths of the pond, where giant-size bluegill lazily waited for morsels to drift in front of them.
After nearly an hour tiring out my casting arm and coming up empty, I came to the conclusion the newly baptized panfish fly wasn’t the only thing that was sinking. So were my hopes of eating fish for supper.
I nosed around my selection of fly-fishing goodies, looking for something more enticing to tie on the end of my six-pound test leader. On a whim, I selected a large bass popper that had sat unused in the tackle box for at least three years.
On the third or fourth cast, the angler’s dream unfolded in a flash. Almost instantly after that popper had plopped down on the pond’s surface, a fat bass came flying out of the water to gulp it down. It didn’t take long to realize just how fat it was.
Within moments, this greenish lunker had pulled out almost the entire length of my fly line. It was a moment that beckons a man’s wildly beating heart to tickle his Adam’s apple. After a struggle that seemed to span forever, I gently eased the exhausted fish onto the bank and picked it up. My eyes popped! In my hands was the largest largemouth bass I had ever seen, other than those incredible fish they show on television.
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I didn’t have a camera, a set of scales or a ruler to record my prized catch. Should I take it home, weigh and measure it and then make arrangements for a wall-mount to join the measly 15-inch bass that’s already hanging on my wall?
Or, heaven forbid, should I just release it?
I had to decide fast because the fish had given its all as it pulled, dived and leaped, trying to shake the popper from its mouth. I walked to my car, sat the fish on the dusty hood and made marks at the end of its tail and its closed mouth.
I then returned the few steps back to the pond, where I nursed the big bass in the water until it had regained its wind and strength. After several minutes, it finally freed itself from my grip with a not-so-gentle wiggle that took it swimming away.
Back home, I put a yardstick between the marks in the dust on my car’s hood. The 21 and a 1/4 inches showing between the marks made my knees buckle. Almost instantly, I had second thoughts about releasing the fish. There is no doubt a bass of those proportions would have looked awfully good hanging on my wall.
So, while I waited the next few weeks to become a grandpa, regrets about letting that old bass swim away kept nagging at my soul. Those regrets must have been close to my mind’s surface this week when I had the audacity to compare the size of that fat bass to the length of my new granddaughter.
Tuesday afternoon, I finally got to meet this new girl in my life. It was a magical moment.
Folks, these are words written by someone who can turn the air blue with profanity. Someone who can swill great quantities of frothy brew. Someone who can hold court with tales of my fishing prowess in a crowd of veteran sportsmen. Yessiree, bob, I can be a real man.
But the moment I first picked up Hannah Michelle Bowersock, I melted. I gazed deeply into those tiny eyes shining from her round, powder-puff face and trembled. My heart and Adam’s apple had another meeting.
Yeah, I cried.
In bed later that night, I tried my hand at playing Freud with my feelings. Perhaps, I mused, this wonderful granddaughter had simply reminded me how precious life truly is.
During my self-analysis, that old bass once again swam through my mind. This time, there were no regrets.
I’m glad I let him go.
Dan Tackett is a retired managing editor of The Courier. He can be reached at dtackett@gmail.com.
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