Men Taught Me

Men from my daddy on down took me fishing, but I was 45 when I got my first fishing rod and a man taught me terminal tackle, and a year older when I first baited a hook with a live worm not feeling sorry for it. Thrusting the hook through minnows' eyes took another year. I enjoyed fishing on my own, but always feared hooking one because I couldn't face grabbing it and prying the hook out to set it loose; but no problem there, because I didn't land a fish until I was 51, and coached by a man. (The old folks sitting on the park bench behind us cheered as I reeled in the six-inch catfish, so rainbow-beautiful I cried "Let it go!") After that, fishing alone, I caught-and-released and hoped not to catch a keeper because there was no way I could behead it and rip out its guts.

Thrilled to pisces!

Proudly I report that this year I have conquered my girly squeamishness on all counts and am a good angler, man-dependent no more. I can cast. I know which hook and line is best for catching which fish, and can wait until it tugs on the line not once but twice, and catch more than one fish per day. Live fish get unhooked and thrown in the cooler without a single tear running down my face. Yes, I did have a friend with me to (the final frontier) clean and fillet my first mess o' panfish, the bluegills and one small ??? in the photo. But now I think I could cut off their heads by myself. If I had to. If I were hungry.

Thanks, Daddy, Demetrius, Qiu, David, Ken and Jim for helping me unlearn my crippling girlyness and start up a new skill set. (I have no brothers; that might have changed things.) I love fishing. But I don't think I could ever go hunting.

People Under 30 Don't Know What This Is

Back before Wal-Mart, kids, if you wanted cheaps**t clothes you had to make them yourself. This is a sewing box. (A what box?) In this plastic box I bought at a Tupperware party in college I keep my sewing tools and notions: spools, bobbins, presser feet, pinking shears, seam rippers, tailor's chalk,stray buttons (in the metal Curad bandage can -- band-aids used to come in metal cans, y'all) and even a couple of patterns for simple skirts and pants.

Home Ec class taught me so well how to sew that today it's all muscle memory. On my mom's machine I sewed short-shorts, miniskirts, hip-huggers, halter tops and prom dresses--all the stylish things she wouldn't buy me. Because cheaps**t imported clothing was invented soon after I got my own machine [pictured below] it has been used mostly to make curtains and pillowcases and for mending.

This solid-state cast-iron finely-engineered Kenmore with a 25-year guarantee which ran out in 2002, with me oiling it now and then, is good as new. At college graduation--I didn't have a job lined up yet; them was hard times--I thanked my parents for this college-graduation gift, saying, "I might go hungry. But I'll never go naked." Along with this ultramodern zig-zag-capable machine that made its own buttonholes -- a marvel that women gathered round to see, they really did! -- came lessons in how to use it, at the Sears store in midtown Milwaukee on 35th Street. I walked there from 13th Street. Thought nothing of it. Not only did we SEW back then. We walked. An' it was uphill both ways.