Fishing at the Horseshoe

By DAVID KITTREDGE
Renaissance Redneck
When I was a little shaver of about 8 years old, I would stay in Newport with my grandmother during the day while my parents worked in a shoe factory in town. My time was spent mostly outside in total freedom, devising various adventures, usually with my cousin. We had virtually no oversight from worrying adults. Back then you were not allowed to be underfoot, and you would be shooed from the house and told to go outdoors to get fresh air and exercise. Also, the traffic in town in those days was virtually nil on weekdays, which meant you could play in the streets safely. 

We, at times, would dress up like the Apaches my cousin and I saw at the movie matinees, and we would roam the neighborhoods and forests on the north side of town. Many would have said my cousin was part Injun anyway, as he spent a lot of time in the woods and was a bit on the wild side. I usually chose the part of Indian versus cowboy because it seemed to me that the Indians had much more fun as they did not really need to work as the cowboys did herding or branding cattle. Indians, in our minds fished and hunted all day with their bows and arrows when they were not terrorizing settlers or warring with the cavalry, which was far more interesting than following a group of cattle around.

Other days were spent building projects such as lean-to-type shacks in the woods or coasters to ride down the hill on Green Street in front of the house my grandmother lived in. We would scour the neighborhoods for the parts and pieces we need for our projects. We spent a lot of time straightening old nails for reuse. Now there is a finger-pinching job for a youngster, but we endured despite the pain. I eventually became very good at it, I am proud to say. 

Our biggest drawback in building a coaster was obtaining wheels. Once we went into Silver’s Junkyard to find the wheels we needed and unknowingly walked right out the front gate without paying for them. My grandfather later heard about our antics and told me that we were stealing. I was dumbfounded when he explained this to me. I could not understand how it could be considered stealing because I took the wheels from a junkyard. How could you possibly steal junk? Isn’t junk the same thing as rubbish? My reasoning was for naught, and I had to cough up couple of bucks for the wheels. After that was settled we secured the wheels to two-by-four wooden axles by driving six or seven 16-penny nails through the hole in each wheel. When the contraption was finished we would careen down over the hill a half a dozen times or so until our rough design failed or we crashed into the 12-inch-high sidewalk adjacent to the street. 

We also spent time at the Horseshoe, a pond behind Stetson’s Blacksmith Shop, where we would fish for hornpout and yellow perch or would spend the day catching frogs and painted turtles. To get there you walked down the railroad tracks, which had a granite post off to the side that was engraved with the letters CJ. I was sure that the letters stood for Casey Jones, the legendary railroad engineer who died when his locomotive rear-ended a stalled freight train. But actually the letters CJ stood for Claremont Junction, as I later found out much to my chagrin and embarrassment because I had made some type of wager on it and had lost.

One day, while walking down the tracks on the way to the Horseshoe, we discovered some old railroad ties laying off to one side of the bed. We decided that we should build a raft with them and dragged four of the ties down to the waters edge. We came back the next day with a couple of two by fours and some restraightened nails and proceeded to make our raft. The nailing was done with great difficulty as our old nails had lost some of their temper or hardness from our re-straightening efforts, and as the railroad timbers were hardwood, probably oak. But we persevered, completed the raft and found a couple of saplings to propel and maneuver our craft. We perceived ourselves to be much like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but had a bit of an argument as to who was going to be whom.

The raft was pushed into the water, and we climbed aboard. We made a couple of strokes with our poles, and suddenly the raft went under the water, and we were swimming. At least I was swimming, but my cousin went under. He finally bobbed back up and was screaming that he could not swim. I told him to try and dog-paddle, which he did and he flailed back to shore. My cousin was wearing an olive green cable knit sweater because it was a chilly day and as he stood on the shore his sopping wet sweater was stretched down to his ankles and it looked like he was wearing a dress. We had a good laugh at this as he danced around on the shore with his sweater dangling. Suddenly his countenance changed abruptly when he realized that the sweater he wearing was one our grandmother had hand knitted for him for his birthday. When he got home his mother was not pleased and gave him what for.

Apparently railroad ties are not very buoyant.