My Father’s Tackle Box

My father never owned a tackle box. Or, if he did, I never saw it. He was not an outdoorsman; he preferred reading, writing a little poetry, and drinking, not necessarily in that order. In fact, most decidedly not in that order. He and my mother instilled in me a deep love of books and writing that has carried me through my life, a love which in my early years served as a magical vehicle with invisible earplugs. When I stepped aboard the story train, I could instantly be in another, better place, a place where the ugly and strident sounds of an angry, alcohol-doused marriage could be muffled, if not completely drowned out, for a precious little while.

My father might have never owned a tackle box, but I do remember that he took our family on a fishing trip once. It was an unlikely curiosity for my parents and my sister and me to spend the night on the banks of a narrow and forgotten backwoods East Texas tributary, yet there we were. In my somewhat-mangled-by-age memory, I see weeds growing along the water’s edge and surrounding a clapboard shack through which my mother trudged room by room when we arrived, sniffing at the moldy disarray, distaste evident in both her facial and verbal expressions.

I knew so much more than I should have ever known as a 7 or 8-year-old, but much of what I knew didn’t make sense back then. I knew my mother was unhappy to be in this rundown, isolated place, but I didn’t know why. I knew my father had obtained the cabin for a couple of days of improbable family bonding time, but I didn’t know how. What I realize now is that the spot was likely offered by a drinking buddy, an overture made in a bar over a couple of bottles of rye, an opportunity which my father, in that hour and in that state of mind, thought would provide a great, literary-worthy adventure for his family. Maybe it was also a gesture to my mother, a ludicrous apology for other nights spent in too many bars with too many bottles. And I know now that my mother was on high-alert, too uneasy not to be unhappy, and that she was cautiously prowling the confined spaces of the shack, checking doors and windows, planning our quick escape if it became necessary. His apology might have laid a rough, worn blanket over the past, but it couldn’t cover up what lay ahead.

No great adventure nor hurried escape transpired that weekend. No fish were caught, and, although I may have been discouraged, more than likely I didn’t really care. A cane pole, a hook, a worm, and one or two feeble attempts on my part to toss a line into the muddy water are most of the memories that I carry with me from that day. My father, being no fisherman, didn’t know how to instruct me, and I, who was always and forever uncomfortable in the presence of the man who could smile with fatherly charm at me one minute and backhand my mother the next, was a reluctant student at best.

We made it home, fishless but safe, disappointed but relieved. I don’t recall another great adventure in my life until the climactic one orchestrated by my mother on that frightening day, a year or two later, when we finally left my father. But that’s another story.

My father’s tackle box? If one ever existed, there is no doubt in my mind that it was hidden deep in a cabinet or high on a closet shelf that only he could reach. What it held inside wouldn’t have been tackle of the great fishing adventure variety. Contained within surely would have been a bottle, the one lure he couldn’t resist, the hook that caught him every time, the tangled line that bound him tightly, from which he and our family could never quite cut free.