In Chaucerian rhythms and sometimes more than comic mock-seriousness Richard Hague presents Mr. EaIy Fishback, an Appalachian yarnspinner from Fly, Ohio. MR. EALY FISHBECK KNITS SOME YARNS ON HIS PORCH IN FLY, OHIO Now I think I told you boys about the Hoopsnake and the Head Fly—them's common things, to make the people from the city wince and quiver when they come down here from Akron in their flivver. But today I think I'll tell about the rarer beasts, that you have to live here fifty years, at least, to even hear of, let alone lay eyes on. Of course, it's true that most of them is gonemuseum people used to come here by the trainloads and put everything in jars—by God, even minnows, toads. Got all their learning out of some big book they read in college for the courses that they took, and never used their own eyes or their common sense. 32 Most of them I seen couldn't cross a bob-wire fence without nearly snagging both their seeds, and they lost their fancy tackle in the weeds. No sir, I never steered them up the Fishing Bottom Creek nor told them what I'd heard about that week the big blue thing mauled every hog along the banks, then disappeared one morning, like the fog. I never sent them down to hear the tale about that giant tadpole Hobie Becker carried in a pail all the way to Morgantown aboard the train, or how he watched them experts dig a socket in its brain and sent electric through it till it whistled higher than a steamboat. No sir, they'd of called me liar. So I let them pickle everything they seen and thought was rare, but really wasn't worth a bean, and when they left, they'd cleared most common creatures out, so that the good ones left, the ones I'll tell about, had room to grow in, like the big bass in the run that all the small bass have been caught from. Now this first is quite a thing: a snail that's neither female, nor a male. It's kind of in between, and it'll wander into houses in the dark. It kind of makes you ponder, how it rattles like a pounded heap of unjust a little thing, of shell, and snot, and skin. Or how about your Ham-Hock Sparrow, heavy as a ballpeen hammer's head, but hollow-winged and quicker than an arrow? Why, if it hits your shack, you're dead. And then the Buzzsaw Fly, that runs its wings on chain with noisy ratchets. Feeds on farmer's forearms and the sweaty handles of old hatchets. Or how about the Fence-Post Toad, that hoots just like a barn owl in the dark? Once I parked and watched one, down the road. It hides in high grass, and it eats them owls, you see, and while I watched it, wolfed down three. 33 à ? m. \ 1 * i. À à M y I 4 f Ä f W i t ? Lífy?f Si« That's why I keep that fence-line mowed. Now let me finish with a list of others of some interest: there's the Murder Worm, or Thunder-In-The-Cellar; there's the Pig-Leg Warbler, and the Snake-In-Vest; there's the Night Hog, or Haunt-Sow, and the Three-Fanged Meddler, and then the big night bird called Killrest. Finally, down Moss Run, I once heard Walter Short tell the story of the mermaid that he killed a week before he'd got his first beans hilled. This is, to my knowledge, boys, most the earliest report of mermaids in these parts, though later, men of sport will net them in great numbers, from the Big Muskingum. Yessir, by the dozens, so help me God and Kingdom Come. —Richard Hague 34 ...
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Apr 1, 2000
N Giordano + 1
Open Access