Memories remain over 65 years since my younger brother, Tom, and I stood by a lovely trout pond on a misty Michigan morning. He, then a skinny 9-year old towheaded kid. Me, a hefty lad a year older with long brown hair wet from walking through the fog and heavy forest to get to the pond. Dawn was coming slowly that day in the misty gloom. As we stood in the tall grasses on the bank we saw tails we were told to expect from brown and brook trout feeding in the shallows not ten feet from our spot.

A crusty old angler told us about the pond, its resident fish, and what brought the fish close to the bank to feed during early morning hours. We first ran into him filling his woody 1949 Buick Estate station wagon at the local Texaco gas station. He was standing in hip boots talking with the attendant explaining how he’d fished a “little trout pond down the road” and “taken a limit of 10 brook and brown trout,” as he pulled the fish from his creel stowed in the back of his car. My brother and I happened to be passing by at the time on our bicycles. We braked to a stop, both staring wide-eyed, having never laid eyes on a real trout. The angler chomped on an unlit cigar as he talked, and could see our eyes wide-open. “You kids wanna catch a couple of these”, he asked. “Yes”, in unison came from Tom and I.

The day I met Hoppy Patterson, my right leg was buried to my onions in a murky mix of sand, silt, clay, and river water. I’d been sucked down about forty minutes before that, and in the meantime, had removed my vest, tossed my rod to dry ground, found a stick, and started to write Babe a goodbye note in the sand.