DAD TOOK US FISHING BY JOHN BERRY

I wasn’t able to write my column last week because my father, Woody Berry, passed away last week and I had to go to Memphis, Tennessee to help my sister, Ernestine with the arrangements. He had a stroke and fell, severely injuring his head on Easter Sunday. After a long stay in the VA hospital in Memphis, he ended his days in the West Tennessee Veterans Home in Humbolt, Tennessee. He was a World War Two veteran who served as an aircraft mechanic in the Eighth Air Force and was stationed in England for three years. Dad was ninety four. One of the fondest memories I have of him were the fishing trips he took us on, when we were children. Dad didn’t fish. Neither did his parents or six brothers and sisters. My sisters, Carol and Ernestine, my brother, Dan, and I wanted to go fishing. Though dad often worked two jobs to keep the family afloat, he still made time to take us fishing. We would go to Fisherville now known as Herb Parson’s Lake near Memphis. He would load all of us and a cooler full of soft drinks and sandwiches into a green 1958 Ford station wagon. We would rent a boat and since we couldn’t afford a motor dad would paddle us around the lake looking for a good spot to fish. We would fish for bream and crappie with cane poles. I am not writing about split bamboo fly rods but cut cane poles. We used live crickets and bobbers and we never caught a lot of fish but always had a good time. All of us kids had fair complexions (everyone but me was a red head) and we ended up getting sunburned. This was before sunscreen. One of the items we always took with us was a cricket cage that dad had made. He used wood salvaged from an apple crate, some screen wire and a coffee can to make it. A handle from an old paint bucket completed it. He was a patient and precise craftsman and the cage was a work of art. He also made me a toy chest out of the same salvaged apple crate wood. I don’t know what happened to them but I wish I had both now. When I was twelve I wanted a twenty two for Christmas. My mother was dead set against it but dad prevailed and got me a nice second hand rifle that I still have. He got his brother, Ted, to teach me how to shoot it. Ted had been a Marine in the South Pacific during World War Two and was an expert marksman. Being familiar with a weapon and his instruction helped me shoot at the expert level, when I was in the army eight years later. Fifteen years ago, when I was fifty three years old, I quit a successful career as a Certified Public Accountant to become a fly fishing guide. Dad had a lot of trouble understanding it. He had worked at an oil refinery for over forty years. After he retired, he returned to the refinery to run the credit union. The idea of me quitting professional career to become a fishing guide was incomprehensible to him. Finally, he figured that if I got into financial trouble, I could do taxes. He was then OK with that. Throughout my life my father supported and accepted my love of fishing and an outdoor lifestyle despite having no interest in it himself. I loved and respect him for that and many other things. His ashes will join those of my mother, sister and brother in a small rose garden overlooking the White River.  John Berry is a fly fishing guide in Cotter Arkansas and has fished our local streams for over thirty years.