If You Say So Roscoe

 

Something from the tackle box:

       Some soldiers overheard David talking, so they told Saul what David had said.  Saul sent for David, and David came.  “Your Majesty,” he said, “this Philistine shouldn’t turn us into cowards.  I’ll go out and fight him myself!”

       “You don’t have a chance against him,” Saul replied.  “You’re only a boy, and he’s been a soldier all his life.”

       But David told him, “Your Majesty, I take care of my father’s sheep.  And when one of them is dragged off by a lion or a bear, I go after it and beat the wild animal until it lets the sheep go.  If the wild animal turns and attacks me, I grab it by the throat and kill it.  Sir, I have killed lions and bears that way, and I can kill this worthless Philistine.  He shouldn’t have made fun of the army of the living God!  The Lord has rescued me from the claws of lions and bears, and he will keep me safe from the hands of this Philistine.”

       “All right,” Saul answered, “go ahead and fight him.  And I hope the Lord will help you.” 

       Saul had his own military clothes and armor put on David, and he gave David a bronze helmet to wear.  David strapped on a sword and tried to walk around, but he was not used to wearing those things.

       “I can’t move with all this stuff on,” David said, “I’m just not used to it.”

       David took off the armor and picked up his shepherd’s stick.  He went out to a stream and picked up five smooth rocks and put them in his leather bag.  Then with his sling in hand, he went straight towards Goliath.  (1 Samuel 17:31-40 CEV)

      When I was eleven years old one of the biggest joys of my pre-teen life was joining up with Boy Scout troop number 177 in the town just two miles down the road from my home.  It was a small troop in a small town, so I knew all the boys in it before I had even joined.  We were all in school together, not more than a few grades apart from the youngest to the oldest in the troop. 

       There were only a dozen or so boys in the whole troop, but we were still divided into two patrols.  I was one of six boys in the Wolf patrol, which was all the younger boys aged eleven, twelve or thirteen, so I knew all of them quite well.  In fact, all but one of them where going into the same sixth grade class with me that fall.  Beside myself, there was Charlie, Roscoe, Jack, and Doug, and Doug’s younger brother Jim.  Doug was the boy one year ahead of the other five of us in school and he was our patrol leader, having already been in the scouts for a couple of years by that time. 

       Now, I liked all the boys in my patrol, even Doug who, being the oldest, thought that he could boss us around as the patrol leader, which he couldn’t, especially his younger brother Jim who gave his brother as good as he got from him. 

       Anyway, we were all pretty much normal boys from a small town who all liked to go camping and hiking, and maybe even earn an occasional merit badge now and then if it didn’t interfere with the fun parts of being a Scout.  The only one who might have been considered a little bit different than the rest of us was Roscoe, and the differences would have been measured as slight by anyone, nothing earth shattering, a variance of a few degrees at most. 

       None of our families had a whole lot of money, but Roscoe’s family had the least of us all.  The rest of us didn’t have a lot of nice stuff but we at least had some good clothes to wear to school.  Roscoe didn’t really.  None of us had a complete Scout uniform but most of us had at least a piece of a scout uniform, a shirt, a hat, a neckerchief, or something.  Roscoe didn’t have anything.  None of us had hopes of going through school at the top of our class academically, but we all figured the chances of finishing in the top half of our class were good, - except Roscoe.  Roscoe had a very hard time with schoolwork, and actually would be falling back a year from the rest of us in the near future. 

       But, like I said, that was OK.  His tennis shoes were only a little bit older and shabbier than the ones the rest of us wore to school or scout meetings and we all liked Roscoe.  In fact, everyone I knew liked Roscoe quite a lot.  Even the teacher who was going to hold him back at the end of the next school year liked Roscoe.  You see, Roscoe was one of those kids who always had a smile on his face, a friendly greeting, and a good story to tell you.  Now you might get a bit tired of his continuous stream of stories after awhile, but I never met anyone who didn’t like Roscoe. 

       I only mention that you could get tired of Roscoe’s stories because, when you listened to him, it soon became apparent to any reasonably minded person that Roscoe really liked to exaggerate.  Which was no great sin in my upbringing.  I had a grandfather who was a master storyteller.  His personal motto was, “any story worth telling is worth embellishing.”  I myself am not now, nor ever have been, above adding an inch or two to the size of a fish that I’ve almost caught, so Roscoe’s proclivity was no matter for shunning his company by any means.  But you do have to understand however, that Roscoe told genuine whoppers as far as any of us could tell. 

       Most of the tall tales Roscoe told had to do with the hunting, fishing, trapping or gathering that added food to his family’s larder.  His family depended on that kind of outdoor hunting and gathering activity for a lot of their nutrition, and there was no doubt that they all spent a lot of time at it.  But still, the stories Roscoe told were always truly amazing.  Like the pickup truck bed filled to the top with morel mushrooms in one afternoon by he and his four siblings this past spring.  Or the thirty-pound catfish he caught with a safety pin and a ball of kite string tied to a stick.  Or the pheasant he had brought down with a stone launched from his slingshot.  Or the most amazing; the twelve point buck he dropped dead with a shot to the eye from his pellet rifle at age eight.         

       They were all good stories and Roscoe told them all very well, but at eleven years old I already knew that this kind of stuff didn’t really happen.  And even when it did occasionally happen, it didn’t happen more than once for any one person in a lifetime.  But to hear Roscoe tell it, he could hardly go out of his back door without setting a state fish and game record of some kind.  That was Roscoe.  Anyway, back to Scout troop 177 and the activities of the Wolf patrol. 

the old scout hall, now boarded up

       One day our patrol leader Doug decided that we were going to help him earn his fishing merit badge by participating in a fishing expedition that he would organize.  It didn’t take much to talk the rest of us into that.  Even Doug’s younger brother Jim was agreeable.  It sounded like fun.  Just the kind of activity we liked to do as boy scouts.  And it would be easy to organize as well, as our scout hall was located right on the south bank of the town’s rather large mill pond created by the dam at the gristmill just a couple of hundred yards down the Thornapple River from our meeting place.  In fact, the Scout Hall driveway was also the access to the public boat launch site. 

       The plan was that we would all gather at the scout hall two hours before our next monthly scout meeting with our fishing rods in hand.  Doug would then pass out different fishing lures or baits to each of us so that he could take a survey of which types of lures or baits worked best for these particular waters and report those findings back to his fishing merit badge councilor, per the fishing merit badge requirements.         

       To the last man we were all game for the expedition, - with one caveat.  Roscoe informed us that, while Doug could pass out all the bait and lures for trial use that he wanted to, he would be fishing with his own bait, because he already knew how to catch the biggest fish that old mill pond held in its murky depths, huge fish as long as your arm, and he saw no good reason to fool around doing otherwise. 

       Well, OK Roscoe, if you say so. 

On the afternoon the great Wolf Patrol fishing expedition rolled around all of us showed up at the appointed hour with tackle in tow.  I actually had one of the nicer rigs there, a five foot long Zebco fiberglass rod and spin-casting reel loaded up with factory installed ten pound test monofilament fishing line.  It was the rod and reel my dad had set me up with the first time he took me walleye and pike fishing in Canada with him two years earlier.  It would do the job nicely. 

       While mine was probably the newest and cleanest rig there, the other boys were pretty much similarly set up with a fiberglass or older steel bait-casting rod, a working reel of some sort that held plenty of line, along with bobbers, sinkers, swivel snaps and Eagle Claw snelled fishing hooks.  All of us except for Roscoe that is.  Roscoe showed up carrying an old twelve foot long cane pole over one shoulder and a coffee can with the lid tightly sealed down tucked under his other arm. 

       Once we got organized about which section of the millpond bank each of us would fish from Doug passed out the bait.  We each got one artificial lure and one sample of live bait, each different from all the others.  We were to fish with one for an hour then switch to the other for the second hour before our troop meeting started.  We were to keep track of the species and size of any fish caught with each lure or bait for Doug’s report.  Well and good, except of course, Roscoe had brought his own bait, which he wasn’t sharing with or even showing to anybody else. 

      I got an old rooster tail spinner and a dozen crickets in a little cardboard box.  I wasn’t very optimistic.  That spinner was basically a trout lure and I knew as well as anybody that there weren’t any trout in the millpond.  It might catch something though.  I had a little more hope for the crickets but, to be honest, I had never fished with crickets before and I wasn’t too sure just how you were supposed to rig them up on a hook.  Anyway, I reckoned that I could get that figured out and catch one or two of the bluegills or bass that I knew did live in the millpond with those crickets. 

       As we spread out along the bank I took the section right directly in front of the scout hall while the rest of the boys lined up to my left, close enough to one another to have conversation, except for Roscoe, who went off to my right about a couple dozen paces or so and set up shop by himself with his long cane pole and can of secret bait. 

       We were soon all having a lot of fun, but not a whole lot of fish were being caught.  Whoever had gotten the night crawlers had managed to catch a couple of smallish bluegills but the rest of us were pretty much fishing for the exercise.  I was surprised to see that the tiny fish would actually follow my flashing spinner bait through the water as I reeled it in each time, but nothing even came close to attacking it.  I could hardly wait for the first hour to finish so I could switch to the crickets. 

       As I chanced a glance over in Roscoe’s direction I could see him reclined on the grass with his fingers locked behind his head, one knee up and his other leg crossed over that knee, the butt of his long cane pole wedged in the ground under an armpit and the length stretching out over the mill pond propped up by his crossed legs.  No bobber, just black line going down deep into the water.  He seemed to be very relaxed about this whole experiment.

       I finally got around to fishing with the crickets Doug had allotted me.  I was disappointed to find out that the little bluegills in the millpond mostly just ripped them apart and ate them, one section at a time, without ever swallowing a big enough piece to get the hook in their mouth.  Oh well, at least I had the fun of watching my bobber dance around on top of the water while they feasted. 

       As the appointed time for our troop meeting got close the older boys from the eagle patrol started showing up, along with the scoutmaster and a couple other adult volunteers.  With the audience of older scouts making jests about our meager catch, and the adults chuckling as well, Doug was a little bit chagrined that his fishing expedition hadn’t produced greater fruits.  I actually managed to hook and land a four-inch long bluegill while everyone was there watching, which I thought might help as it brought the grand tally for the patrol outing up to six fish.  Sure, none of them were over five inches long, but six fish is six fish.  - It did not help.

       Then we heard Roscoe yell, “I’ve got a bite!” 

       We turned and looked.  Sure enough, Roscoe was not taking it easy napping on the grass any more.  He was up with feet spread out, the butt of his pole in one hand and the other hand three feet further up doing its best to keep the whole rig from pulling him into the muddy bottom of the millpond.  We all knew this was no bluegill.  That old cane pole was bent over, and it was bent over good. 

       Our much happier patrol leader yelled over, “Do you want me to try and net him for you?” 

      “Stay back!” yelled Roscoe, “I know what I’m doing!”

       And he did!  Roscoe let that fish tire out for quite a while, and then worked his way back up the hill next to the scout hall until that huge catfish slid out of the water and lay on the grass right where Roscoe had so recently been relaxing with his arms behind his head. 

       “Stay back!” Roscoe barked again, as he put his pole down and ran to pick that catfish up so that we could all admire his catch from a vertical point of view.

       “Way to go!  That’s a great fish, Roscoe.  What did you catch him on?” asked Doug.

       “If I told you that, my Dad would blister by behind!” said Roscoe with a smile.

      “But I need to fill in that information for my report!”

       “Nope!” came the firm reply, as Roscoe’s smile grew into a huge grin.  “Sorry I’m going to have to miss the meeting, guys.  But if we’re going to eat this fish tonight I’ve got to go home and get him cleaned before Mom starts to cook something else for dinner.  See you all later.”  And with that, Roscoe picked up his can of secret bait, and his cane pole, and his catfish, and left, while we all just stood there plumb amazed.

      Now, I’m not saying that Roscoe’s catfish was the biggest freshwater fish I’ve ever watched being caught.  In years to come I would see bigger fish come out of the water many times, occasionally on the end of my own fishing line, but that catfish was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen hauled out of the old millpond in my hometown.     

       And, yes - it was - every bit as long - as Roscoe’s arm. 

Something to take home in your creel:

      I like to listen to the stories that people tell about the things they have done in life.  And I love a good story, be it fact or fancy. 

       Now, I’m not gullible.  I take everything that anybody tells me, about any adventure they’ve had, with a grain of salt.  We all like to sound interesting when we tell a story, and so we are almost all prone to exaggerate a bit, if for no other reason than to make it all worth listening to.  Sometimes we do it without even realizing that we’re doing it. 

      Unless someone else who is not present is being disparaged or hurt by the way a story is unfolding, I do my best keep out of it and let the story stand as the teller sees fit to relate it.  Even when I know for a fact that a story is being stretched far beyond more than just a little bit, I try to smile, keep my opinion to myself, and let it be told the way it’s being told.

       I’m not sure what old King Saul thought when he first heard young David talking about killing lions and bears as a boy, choking them to death with his bare hands.  He probably thought it was a bunch of horse hockey.  I know that I would have thought that, if I’d been the one listening to it.  But then, regardless of whether or not he had ever even killed a chipmunk before, David went out and showed everyone that he did know how to kill a very big, well armed and trained warrior using the working tools of a shepherd as weapons. 

       So, there you have it.  Some people, like Saul, ended up hating David for making good on his bragging, but the wise ended up loving him for it, and they have re-told the story over and over again.   

       After I graduated from high school I did not see or hear from Roscoe Blake again for the next forty years.  But I did run into him just this last summer.  The church that I serve as pastor hired a asphalt company from my old home town to pave its new parking lot and I learned through the grapevine that Roscoe might well be on the crew that did the job as he was a long time employee of that firm.  I was hoping so.

       Sure enough, when the trucks and rollers arrived I spotted Roscoe in the gang doing what asphalt layers do.  We had both changed a lot but I still recognized him right off.  I waited until he took his lunch break and went over to re-introduce myself to him.  He seemed to be as happy to see me as I was to see him. 

       We talked for a little while about family and old friends and I finally got around to asking him, “Do you still like to hunt and fish as much as you did when we were kids?”

       Roscoe’s smile lit up very brightly and he said, “Let me show you something.”  He got out his cell phone and brought up a picture of himself kneeling behind the head of a monster whitetail holding on to a rack of antlers that was truly, truly impressive.  More tines than I cared to start counting.

       “That’s the one I got just last fall!  It made the top ten for the northeast region of the United States measured on the Boone and Crockett scale!”

       I handed the phone back to him and said, “That is one very nice buck, Roscoe.  But please don’t tell me that you shot him through the eye with your air rifle.”

       Roscoe threw his head back in a huge laugh.  And then he looked me strait in the eye and said, “No. – The only time I ever did something like that, - I was just eight years old.”