This Fish Needs A Bicycle

we three and pollywog hill

We grew up in a rural community that did not lock its doors at night -- crime was smashing mailboxes and stealing gum from the Texaco station. If Mom wasn’t watching, and we were feeling brave enough to shimmy up the telephone pole a few feet, we could see the tree line of the next county.

We drank water straight from the hose. We caught fireflies. The sounds that kept us up at night were crickets or coyotes, depending on the season.

On early summer mornings We Three, hair unbrushed, noses already freckled from the June sun, would drag the red wagon from beside the garage, climb in and wait. Dad would come out of the house soon after. He’d have a yellow Roman Meal bread bag, closed with a twist tie – peanut butter and honey sandwiches for us, and maybe some extra bread for the ducks, if we were headed toward Curly Slide Park. But if he came down the cement porch steps with three small green fish nets, we were going the opposite way down the gravel road, to Pollywog Hill.

Topped by a tree whose apples never quite ripened each year, and behind a thick wall of pussy willow reeds, the embankment we called Pollywog Hill rose sharply from a narrow, dusty road. When we were very small, Dad would have to give us a start, a hand under each of our backsides. The littlest would ride on his shoulders. At the top, the oldest and I would wait (We’d been scared into the idea that the irrigation canals weren’t somewhere to be without an adult) until Dad’s plaid shirt was in view among the overgrown weeds.

Some years, we were too late and our adventure would end in a picnic under the sour apple tree. But when we were on time, there’d be pools of them, darting black specs, in the shallower, shadier spots along the ditch. Some would have already started to form stubby legs, their tails shrinking to form smooth frog bottoms. We’d crouch, watching them until Dad would produce three, lidded baby food containers and the three green fish nets. Then he’d lie back on the bank, a hat shading his face from the sun and say “Have at it.”

Later, sandwiches eaten (by We Three, uninvited ants and scavenger Starlings), Dad would collect a graceful bouquet of pussy willows for Mom and we’d head home to introduce our frogs-in-progress to their new, pyrex home on the kitchen counter. Perhaps one or two would survive, growing into slippery, wriggling frogs that if hardy, would be sent to live in the back yard Irises to croak night music with the crickets that summer.

And twenty years later, when I randomly emailed my big brother to ask, "Do you remember Pollywog Hill?" he replied, "Yes, do you remember pussy willows?"

Posted by This Fish at March 16, 2004 03:40 PM