Family photo
Pop and Sarah
When I was little, my grandfather—Pop—used to take me fishing at a pond not too far from his house in Taylorsville, N.C. Since I was only about age six or seven, I didn’t have much of a cast and always worried desperately that instead of flinging my hook into the water, I would lose my grip and sling the entire pole. Luckily that never happened.
However, I did wander off once when my pole was held in the crook of a small Y-shaped stick we’d driven into the ground—a traditional makeshift resting place. The line was in the water, the hook baited with yellow corn, and it didn’t take much of a fish to give the line a tug and pull the entire unattended pole into the pond. My face flushed red with mortification and my eyes bugged out in fear. Losing a hook was one thing. Losing a pole, well, that just wasn’t done.
My mistake taunted me, as for whatever miraculous reason, the pole floated—smack in the center of the pond. Pop, a much better fisherman than I, gave a few casts out toward the pole in the hopes of hooking it and reeling it back to shore. We had no such luck. Finally, the owners of the pond had to shove a canoe into the water, paddle out, and retrieve my dignity.
If he was mad, Pop never showed it, but I wasn’t much for fishing the rest of the day, so Pop headed out into the vegetable garden by the pond, picked a watermelon, and busted it open with an unceremonious drop on the ground. I sat on the steps of the little cabin that overlooked the pond and relished the sweet flesh made warm by the summer sun. We spit seeds, and Pop cut out some of the best chunks for me using his trusty pocketknife—the same one we used to cut fishing lines and bait.
This memory came flooding back to me while out on the edge of Tellico Lake in Tennessee. Standing there watching the sunset, I happened to look down at my feet and noticed a small Y-shaped stick lying on the ground next to two tree stumps. Someone clearly had been fishing.
Often we think intimate spaces are those in close-quarters among four walls, but some of my most personal and meaningful memories have been created outside. This edition of Smoky Mountain Living is dedicated to the outside—and we have explored that theme in a variety of ways from being in the great outdoors to, more abstractly, feeling like an outsider. We hope you enjoy it from the outside cover all the way through.