Fishing vs. Tennis

My father never took me fishing. That's not a diss on my dad. He wasn't interested in fishing. His sport was tennis. And he played that until well into his 80s. My dad was great at one-man tennis.

The school (pictured) across the street from us, in the mid-50s, put down asphalt on the playground. Prior to that it was dirt. Well, skinned knees went up when they did that, and so did good tennis playing. This is the view from Central and Third Aves. We lived on Second Ave. side of the school and that's where the playground and the BLANK WALL was.

Dad and I would go over there and hit the ball back and forth, and he always beat me until I started practicing one-man tennis. It improved my skills remarkably. I actually won a trophy at Summer Tennis/Triton Regional Highschool -- beating all the other ladies who played that summer. But back to one-man tennis and then fishing.

The BLANK WALL was the teacher and the one-man tennis tournament location. Dad would go over and hit the ball back and forth to him self, practicing spinning the ball so it would bounce away from him when it came toward him. He drew a box on the wall with chalk (the school board didn't seem to mind) and that was what he would aim for when he practiced his served. Ditto for me. That's how I learned to beat my father. I, of course, being younger could run faster without getting as winded as dad did, but for a man of his "old" age of late 40s, early 50s, he had remkarkable stamina. My father was 38 when I was born, thus the advanced age when I, as a teenager, began playing tennis. It was my summer sport.

However, back to fishing. As I mentioned dad didn't fish, but that didn't mean he cared whether I went fishing. Well, we lived not too far from Timber Creek, where according to the book, A History of Runnemede, NJ the fishing was supposedly the best in the area. I got into fishing mode after reading Tom Sawyer when I was 8, and I wanted to go fishing. Of course, with no money available for fishing pole, I made my own, just as Tom and Huck would have done. I found a great long stick, not too thick, not too thin, and on the end I got a pen-knife and notched it, wrapping a string around that end -- the notch holding the string in place -- and then was able to get a few hooks, as they were only a penny a piece, and off I went, down to the Creek. Not too small a stretch for 8-year-old legs, either. It was about a mile from our house.

I didn't know I needed a fishing license to fish there. But after I found that out, I snuck in on several occasions and fished. I never caught a thing. And I went fishing almost everyday for a whole summer. I guess my worms were the kind the fish liked. Or maybe the fish knew I wasn't supposed to be there and were giving me a break so I wouldn't get arrested for catching a fish without a license.

Needless to say, after my "Tom and Huck Summer" I didn't go fishing again. I grew up enough to know that girls and worms didn't mix, and besides, I really didn't want to get arrested for catching fish.