My Grandparents' Fishing Cabin

In my childhood I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, and with my aunts and uncles, much more than either of my brothers did. Looking back I can see that it was probably due to the novelty of a first-born son in a new generation of children. Grandparents and aunts and uncles were eager then for the experience of having a child around, and my mother was obliging, letting me stay for up to a week at a time with different members of my extended family. The novelty soon wore off, so that when my brothers Randy and Larry came along, such extended visits were more of a rarity. But that was not the case with my grandparents. They continued to take us with them for a week or more each summer to their fishing cabin on Lake Granite Shoals, later renamed Lake LBJ in honor of the former president and celebrated Texas politician who owned a sizable piece of property that fronted on the lake.

My grandmother, Nonnie, was a true matriarch of the family, as her mother had been before her. Everyone looked to her for advice and approval, and as I grew older I realized that she deserved that respect and love. She was a very wise woman, as her mother had been, and I was fortunate to have spent a great deal of my childhood with both of them. Both seemed to enjoy the company of children. I can recall listening to my great-grandmother telling family stories and versions of fairy tales I heard from no one else, some of which included humorous obscenities that would be considered scandalous by current standards, but which I have since learned were probably more faithful to the original folk tales than the more sanitized versions that have come down to us in approved collections. It was years later before I began to understand something about the origins of the strength of character exhibited by my grandmother and great-grandmother. They shared a persistent and enduring uprightness in their view of life and in their understanding of people and the world, but stopped short of self-righteousness. They freely gave their opinions, but never seemed to judge others when they came up just a little short of the ideal. Both my great-grandmother and my grandmother were generous with their money as well as their time and affection, and it seemed that no one who asked a favor was ever denied, although for some it might have taken more persuading than for others.

My grandfather, by the time I knew him, was pretty much a law unto himself. He was a large man, not fat but heavy, and with a physical presence that owed as much to his demeanor as to his size. He was not without humor, but he did not suffer fools gladly, and spoke his mind freely. Everyone in the family deferred to his wishes. And everyone knew that he held the veto power over Nonnie, especially in matters of money and property. Property was very much a part of my grandparents' world. They were both from old Texas German families, Alsatians really, who had immigrated to Texas and the area around San Antonio in the middle years of the nineteenth century. They weren't great property owners, but it turned out that both families, my grandfather's and my grandmother's, had the good fortune to own a substantial amount of land on the near north side of San Antonio, north of Basse Road on either side of San Pedro Avenue, which was U.S. Highway 281, a major route to destinations north of the city. When my grandparents were growing up this property had all been farmland. On the west side of San Pedro, my grandfather's family kept a small herd of dairy cows and ran a small dairy. It was still in operation when I was a child, and I can remember seeing it (and smelling it) when I visited my grandfather's parents and the old family home. My great-grandfather was quite a character. When I knew him he had long white hair and a mustache and goatee that made him look just like Buffalo Bill. He knew this very well and emphasized the resemblance. He was a lively old guy who liked his whiskey, and a few drinks always seemed to loosen his tongue. My great-grandmother tolerated him with a knowing wink and a smile.

My grandmother's family owned the land on the other side of the highway, and they gave a little corner of their property to my grandparents after their marriage. There my grandfather built their house, pretty much with his own hands. It was a very neat little house, soundly built, with a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and one bath. It also had a large front porch with a swing. Behind the house there were two out buildings or sheds, one for storage and one where my grandmother did her washing, using an old ringer-type electric washer and great tubs of rinse water, and hanging the wash out to dry on clothes lines in the back yard. She continued washing in this manner nearly her entire life. There was also a small detached garage, a later addition, where my grandparents kept their car. The property was in a very desirable location, directly on one of the main crossroads of San Antonio's north side, but my family saw to it that there was only minimum development.

With one exception, all the while my grandparents owned that corner, it always seemed a little behind the times. That exception was just before and after I was born. During those years my grandfather owned and operated a garage and gas station that sold Texaco gasoline and related products. Next to the station there was a small café, and a couple of other little stores. When I was no more than a toddler, I would hang out at the gas station, watching the customers come and go and the mechanics working on cars in the garage. Out front was a big rectangular cooler filled with ice and soft drinks, and next to it were cabinets of Tom's peanuts and an assortment of candy and cookies and other snacks. I was so taken with the place that my grandmother made me a little dark green shirt and sewed a Texaco patch above the pocket, just like the men who worked in the station. I must have been quite an attraction. I know that my grandmother would have preferred that I not spend so much time at the garage, primarily because I always seemed to come home dirty, often tracking grease into her house.

Before too long, my grandfather sold the station to a couple of local guys everyone knew as J.B. and W.L. who turned it into an auto parts shop, which it remained the rest of the time my grandparents were alive. My grandfather then diverted his attention to fishing and real estate. He had his real estate office behind the café and across an alley from the back of the auto parts shop, which had been the old Texaco station. There were also assorted machine shops and other small shops and businesses on the property. Over time he sold off some of the land in bits and pieces, leasing the rest and making enough money for him and my grandmother to live comfortably. He had worked earlier in life at the Studebaker dealership in San Antonio, but by the time I had arrived on the scene, he had just about given up on full time employment and was more or less retired. I say more or less, because my Grandfather was always involved in something. He had projects around the house or his fishing cabin, or he was off helping at one of the shops somewhere on his corner. I remember he would go off about his business every morning after breakfast, then show up for lunch, right at noon, then take a nap, then go out again and return for supper. In the early days he always had a cigar in his mouth, his preferred brand was King Edward. He bought them by the box, and empty cigar boxes seemed to be stacked everywhere, used to store bits of hardware or fishing tackle or sometimes our smaller toys and keepsakes. When he had to have a serious skin cancer removed from his lip, he gave up cigars for a long time, but returned to them much later, when I suppose he decided what the hell did it matter.

My grandfather's fishing camp was the closest thing to heaven I had ever experienced, and to this day I recall it fondly amidst images of endless summers spent swimming and fishing and playing around. But the first time we went there it wasn't so impressive. The lake had not yet filled up, and my grandfather's lot was not much more than an expanse of weeds and a few scrubby trees. Along the back of the property was a dirt road that ran parallel to the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. On one side was a lot that belonged to two of my grandfather's fishing buddies, Mutt and Tink he called them. On the other side was a lot that belonged to some other folks from San Antonio, and beyond them were lots owned by a guy named Scotty, a family called the Nusoms, and other property owners. Most of these lots, like my grandfather's were long and narrow, with about fifty feet of lakefront, but several hundred feet from the lake to the road. The property owners were an odd assortment, mostly working class people from San Antonio, whose primary interest was in fishing. All but Scotty, that is, whose primary interest seemed to be bringing different women up to his place every weekend and drinking large quantities of beer.

In the early days, before the lake filled, my grandfather would stay in a battered old Airstream trailer. But in time he began work on a fishing cabin, basically one room with a rudimentary kitchen area on one side and a bed on the other and a few camp chairs. Like the home in San Antonio, he built it himself, with some help from family and friends. He finished the interior walls with nice grade of marine plywood, and the exterior with asphalt shingles made to look like bricks. My grandfather knew the cabin was essential if my grandmother was going to consent to spend any time with him at the lake. And no sooner did my grandfather get the cabin built, than Nonnie began requesting improvements. First he dug a well, then he added a pump so that he could bring running water to the kitchen, which consisted of a few cabinets, a sink, and an electric grill. When the well proved unreliable, he began pumping water from the lake. Once the kitchen was improved, Nonnie talked Grandpa into adding on a bathroom, with a tub and toilet, just behind the kitchen. He also extended that addition across the back of the cabin to create another bedroom. On one side of the cabin my grandfather built a screened in sleeping porch, and on the other he built a carport. The sleeping porch was never used much for that purpose, but it became a handy storeroom for fishing and boating gear and also served as a playroom for the grandchildren, especially on rainy days or when it was too hot to play out in the sun. The screened porch was also where my grandfather kept his worm farm. He raised his own fishing worms, and we used to enjoy digging for worms almost as much as fishing.

But fishing was the main purpose of the camp, and everything was ostensibly arranged to facilitate that pastime, one of my grandfather's favorites. He had an old 14 foot aluminum Lone Star fishing boat, with a couple of Evinrude outboard motors, one for cruising and one for trolling. And everyone had his or her own fishing tackle, everyone but my mother, who had no interest in fishing or hunting of any kind. Nonnie had her rods and reels, Grandpa had his, my father had his, and each of us three boys had ours, complete with our own tackle boxes stocked with lures and hooks and weights and assorted fishing paraphernalia. For a time, as we grew older, my brothers and I were allowed greater and greater participation in what we thought of as real fishing. That meant we could go along with my father and my grandfather on long expeditions that required the use of the boat. Somehow fishing from the boat was more legitimate than simply dropping a line off the end of my grandfather's pier, even though we were probably more likely to catch something off the pier or from some of the other favored fishing spots reached by walking.

Some of our fishing expeditions were truly memorable, although not necessarily for the fish we caught. I'm sure my grandfather saw these occasions as something to be endured with grandfatherly patience, while my father often showed the strain more openly. When we were still quite young, we would usually go out with my dad and grandfather usually after great pleading on our behalf by my mother and Nonnie, who were no doubt hoping for a little peace and quiet for themselves. Then with some reluctance but not without attempts to disguise it, my grandfather would agree to take the boys along in the boat. That meant gathering up all of our individual tackle and lines, cinching us tightly into slightly oversized life preservers, and (if it was a daytime expedition) finding suitable hats and slathering us with vast amounts of suntan lotion (no sunblock in those days).

Once we reached the boat my grandfather would get in first and hold the boat steady against the pier or the bank while first my father and then each of us boys got in, carefully distributing our weight and stowing our tackle. My dad and my grandfather were both large men, so they usually separated themselves in the boat fore and aft and to either side and then positioned the three of us on the middle seat in between them. Both my father and grandfather preferred to drive the boat, which meant sitting in the back and steering the outboard motor. But my father usually deferred to my grandfather, at least in the early days. Once we were all safely seated, my grandfather would pull the starting rope on the kicker, as he called it, and fiddle with the fuel mixture a bit, until the old Evinrude would sputter to life. The larger of the two outboards my grandfather had attached to the transom was about twelve horsepower, not enough to pull skies, but enough to get us where we were going a little more quickly than the smaller motor, which was only about seven horsepower. When we were still very young, just the boat ride itself was a great treat for my brothers and me. The actual fishing, on the other hand, could be a serious exercise in patience.

Once we reached a favorite fishing site, my grandfather or father would tie the boat off, sometimes under the shade of an old tree, or near on old railroad bridge, and as the boat drifted around a bit we dropped our lines overboard. Sometimes my grandfather would let us bait our hooks with minnows, depending on whether he'd had to buy them or had been able to catch a sufficient supply using a seine or dip net. Otherwise we would be allowed only some fishing worms, which we generally brought along in an old coffee can or cigar box filled with dirt and secured with a rubber band around it. By the time we were all baited and ready to go, had our lines in the water at intervals around the small boat, one of my brothers or I would inevitably have gotten our lines snagged on something or tangled up with one another. We spent many hours on these trips untangling fishing lines. One reason my grandfather was reluctant to let us use minnows was that it seemed both cruel and pointless. For example, my brother Larry often had his out of the water checking on its health, which prompted Randy and myself to do likewise. Larry would say, "I think mine's dead." Then one or the other of us would ask for an opinion from my dad or my grandfather, after which they would tell us for the umpteenth time to just put it back in the water. Or my grandfather would sometimes ask with mock confusion, "What are you boys trying to catch, a flying fish?"

Of course, in time we learned to sit quietly with our lines untangled and our bait in the water. Then every once in a while one of us would actually catch a fish. Now sometimes you knew you had something, but often all you felt was a quick tug, after which you would reel in your line and discover that your minnow (or worm) was gone. This my grandfather referred to as "feeding the fishes." So we would have to re-bait our hooks and drop the line back in the water. And, for the most part, that was fishing. On a good day we would go through a dozen or more minnows, while my father and my grandfather would sit there without a single bite. After a while my grandfather would say something like, "What the hell are you boys doing? You're feeding them fish so damn many minnows they won't even come near mine." The frustration would sometimes cause him to reach into the cooler and get another beer, which would be just the moment something would hit his line, and he didn't know whether to go ahead and open the beer or grab his rod and try to set the hook. By the time he made up his mind, it was usually too late. At this point Randy or Larry or I would reel in our lines to see if we had anything or if our minnows were still alive, and there unaccountably would be a white bass dangling from the hook. My grandfather would shake his head and laugh and say something like "John, we must not be checking our minnows often enough. I'll be damned if he hasn't caught another one."

My grandfather was also a great fan of night fishing. He liked to go out in the evening, after supper, and fish for a few hours. Night fishing had several attractions, not the least of which was that it was a lot cooler at night than during the day in central Texas. Of course, another attraction, as with day fishing, was the cooler stocked with Lone Star longnecks. Our technique was very similar to what I have already described. We tied up to a tree or bridge and dropped our lines in the water. We also used a Coleman lantern, which was rigged in this device that held it out over the water where the light was supposed to attract insects which were supposed to attract the fish. We had about as much success at night as we had during the day, with Dad and my grandfather doing their best to catch fish amidst the distractions of three young boys who were not very good at sitting in one place for long periods of time. In addition, at night there were far fewer distractions. All you could do was watch the insects flying around the lantern and listen to my father and grandfather tell fishing stories while they drank their beer. Not much time would go by before one of us would have to go to the bathroom and my grandfather and father would try to decide what should be done. My grandfather said we'd kill the fish if we went over the side. He preferred we would pee into an old coffee can. My father was concerned we'd end up peeing all over ourselves and the boat, not without reason. It was quite a dilemma, and often ended with our reeling in the lines and heading for home.

Other preferred methods of fishing on the central Texas lakes were casting, trolling, and trotlines. I saw many fishermen spend many hours casting for bass, but a saw few strikes and even fewer fish caught in that way. I know that's the way real professionals are supposed to do it, but casting requires a great amount of skill and a lake pretty well stocked with bass. It just isn't as easy as it looks on the fishing shows. Nevertheless my brothers and I spent many hours casting and trying to learn to cast, upgrading our rods and reels over the years, and trying out different lures. We also spent quite a few hours trolling in the old Lone Star fishing boat. In fact, that was the only time my grandfather would consent to letting one of us drive the boat, since it freed him to concentrate on fishing. In the early years we were pretty successful with trolling, and sometimes hooked some fairly large black bass that way. But it seemed the most reliable way to catch fish in quantity was to set out a trotline. My grandfather did this fairly often, and was pretty successful, especially at catching catfish. One of my grandparents' neighbors was a dedicated trotline fisherman, and he had some enormous catfish heads hanging from an old willow tree to show for it. He sometimes brought in catfish that weighed well over twenty pounds. I always found running a trotline more a chore than anything else, and I think my grandfather did as well, since he often tried to get my father to do it for him. Dad would offer us either the prospect of a boat ride or a little fishing if we would accompany him when he went out to run the trotline.

Some of the most successful fishing we ever did was right off the end of my grandfather's pier. He had one of the longest on that part of the lake. It went out quite a way from the shore, and at the end he'd built a little covered area to provide shade from the sun. My brothers and I would go out there early in the mornings or sometimes even at noon, and fish for perch and crappie and the occasional carp. Sometimes all we used was an old cane pole with a bit of line, a cork, and some earth worms. When we saw the cork bob in the water, we pulled on the pole and frequently had a perch on the end of our line. The other thing we sometimes did off the end of the pier was dip for minnows. My grandmother was very skilled at this, and showed us how to drop the dipping net in the water and watch for the schools of minnows to be attracted to the bait, usually some meal or dried bread. Then we would pull it up quickly and trap a few minnows, sometimes almost a dozen or so. These were usually not as big as the ones from the bait shop, but they had the advantage of being free.

While for my father and grandfather the main attraction of camp, as we called it, was fishing, it offered different attractions to my mother and Nonnie and to all of us kids. For Nonnie it was a chance to be together with the family -- sometimes just a few at a time, and on other occasions, larger groups. The fishing cabin wasn't really big enough to hold the whole extended family at one time, but on a couple of occasions my mother and father and my aunt and uncle, that is my mother's sister Helen Gay and her husband Jimmy, would both come at the same time and bring along all their kids, ranging in age from me down to my cousin Stevie, a span of about ten years. It was hard for the women to find ways to amuse six children, five boys and one girl, and still find some time for themselves. Inevitably they were forced to spend a good deal of time and energy keeping the children occupied and from getting on each others nerves. The old fishing ploy wasn't practical with six kids and three grown men in a 14 foot aluminum boat. So they would sometimes put is to work in the garden or set us to playing with our toys in the old screened porch, which had a sand floor. Grandpa was more creative, when we weren't busy cleaning fish or doing other odd jobs around the place, he would often get us to digging massive holes. In the early days these were supposed to be part of his plans for creating channels for his boat or moorings for his boat house. But as time went by they were just massive holes, which we would dig and then fill in. A great deal of time and energy can be spent digging with small shovels and spades and assorted hand tools.

My grandfather always seemed to be amused by us kids, despite the constant warnings we received from Nonnie not to bother him, especially when he was taking one of his afternoon siestas. Every day after lunch he retired to take a nap in the back bedroom, where he had an enormous old water cooler that blew moist cool air directly on his favorite bed. Of course, he may have complained mightily when we weren't around about all the trouble we caused. But in our presence he seemed always to be amused by our antics, especially my brother Randy, who was always showing up with some strange specimen of insect or animal he'd either found dead or somehow had managed to capture. And lacking other amusement, Randy was also known to sneak a few quick drinks from my grandfather's or my father's beer bottles, then go tearing around the yard waving his arms about and screaming at the top of his lungs. My grandfather always got a huge kick out of this. He would laugh and say, "Look at that little reprobate." That was one of his favorite words. He always pronounced it "reperbate," and to my ears it sounded like reperbait. I had assumed it had something to do with fishing bait, until many years later when I realized its larger significance. I don't think my grandfather meant anything more than something akin to rascal. At these times Nonnie would shake her head and click her tongue, but I always suspected that she also found it amusing, as we all did.

My grandfather was also the source of amusement for the rest of us. My brothers and I were fascinated by his habits and activities. He liked his meals at regular intervals, and if you weren't ready to eat when Grandpa was, then you had to fend for yourself. We all rose early and ate a fairly large breakfast prepared by Nonnie and my mother: eggs and bacon or pancakes and sausages, buttered toast, sometimes French toast, juice and coffee, lots of coffee. Then at noon, exactly, we ate lunch, or dinner as we called it. Generally this was sandwiches, although sometimes it was the main meal, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, squash, corn, and other things from the garden. One of my grandfather's favorites was something we called a Grandpa sandwich, made without bread, just a slice or two of meat folded around a piece of cheese.

It seemed that every meal ended with Grandpa, or someone, starting one of his favorite routines. Nonnie or my mother might ask him if he wanted more of something, and he would say, "No, I've had sufficient." That was our que to respond, "You say you went fishin'?" To which he would reply, "No, I've had plenty." And we would then chime in, "You say you caught twenty?" Then he would shake his head and say, "Poor old soul." To which we would respond, "You broke your pole?" He would then mutter, "Damned old fool." And we would scream, "You fell in the pool?" And everyone would laugh, no one more than Grandpa, who had taught us this routine at such an early point in our experience of the lake and the fishing camp, that no one could remember a time when we didn't know it. And long past the time when it was merely amusing, when it had become too tedious for Grandpa to initiative himself, someone else would start it off at the close of nearly every meal. And just when we had all grown somewhat bored with it, we began bringing friends and girlfriends up to the lake with us and kept the custom alive by initiating them in the ritual.

Another of Grandpa's fishing camp rituals involved his drinking of beer. My brothers and I observed this particular ritual on our many trips to the lake with our grandparents. Grandpa always brought along with him at least a couple of cases of Lone Star in the old long neck bottles in addition to a few he had on ice with him in the car. In those days he didn't drink much at home during the week, but on his weekend trips to the fishing camp, which usually began on Thursday or Friday mornings, he opened his first bottle on the drive up from San Antonio and generally kept up a steady pace of drinking until Saturday evening. On Sundays we returned home. To accommodate this drinking pattern, Nonnie drove up to the lake and Grandpa drove home. On the drive up he was jovial and full of fun. On the drive home he was sober in every sense of the word. As eager as he had been to get to the lake the previous Thursday or Friday, he was equally eager to return home and resume his weekday routine.

But while he was at the fishing camp, Grandpa enjoyed his beer, and he was willing to share it, up to a point, with his sons in law, but he was also known to complain if they drank too much of his stock or didn't bother to replenish at least some of what they drank. One of the things my brothers and I used to do for Nonnie was gather up the empty bottles, which Grandpa had a habit of leaving wherever he finished them. Some were left in the boat, some sitting on the pier, but most were scattered around at various points in the yard. Generally we were able to find all the empties and refill the cases for the trip home. Despite his steady consumption of Lone Star, Grandpa never seemed to us to be adversely affected by his fondness for beer. As I said, he was more jovial when drinking, and saw much humor in the antics of his grandsons and his neighbors. But there were some famous instances when the beer did seem to have its expected effect. One afternoon when he ran his boat through a patch of floating seaweed and stalled the kicker, he pulled it up out of the water and leaned over to clean off the prop. And as he leaned over, he tumbled head first over the transom and into the lake. In a few seconds he re-emerged with his hat still on his head, still wearing his glasses, and clutching his cigar in his teeth. Some say he was still holding a bottle of beer in one of his hands, but I think that was a later embellishment. My Grandmother thought this story was enormously amusing, but my Grandfather, while never actually denying its truth, was not over fond of hearing it repeated.

As we grew a little older, the attractions of the lake and the fishing camp began to alter. While my brothers and I eventually became fairly accomplished fishermen, in time we discovered that we had interests in common with some of the other kids who were also spending part of their summer vacations with their families at their lakeside homes. Some of our neighbors were boys and some were girls, and while boys could be amused by fishing, the girls were definitely looking for other ways to relieve their boredom. The family that owned the place next to my grandparents had a son just a little younger than me, and to keep him interested in coming out to the lake, they bought a nice sixteen-foot ski boat so that he could learn to water ski. We spent many hours together, with him skiing and me driving the boat, or sometimes with me trying to learn to ski and him taking a turn at driving. Other times we just went on long boat rides up and down the lake, having discovered that the boat was an excellent way to attract the interest of the local girls, one of whom was my neighbor Skeeter.

The last time I remember visiting the lake, I brought along my girlfriend, who would later become my wife. We had a great time, but somehow it wasn't the same place it had been when I was a boy learning the subtleties of fishing from my Grandpa. And not long after that my grandparents sold the place, and the new owners tore down the old fishing cabin and built a nice house and added other improvements. The fishing camp lives on only in memory. Eventually my mother and father bought a lake home of their own on Lake Buchanan. It was the fulfillment of my mother's dream, an attempt to recapture for us and her grandchildren some of the good times we had all known at my grandparents' fishing camp. And to some extent she succeeded. I had even entertained the notion that one day my wife and I might want to live there. But after my father died and my mother remarried, she and her new husband, who also lived near Lake Buchanan, sold their homes and bought a condominium. They are still near one of the central Texas lakes, but also much nearer Marble Falls and some of the conveniences and amenities of a city. With time I have realized that much as I enjoy visiting those lakes, where my mother and my aunt and uncle still live, it isn't quite the same as it was when I was a boy visiting my grandfather's fishing camp. And once more I understand what has become a familiar lesson of growing older. It isn't so much the place I long for as the time.

© 2005 by Michael L. Hall