I loved her, lost her, and found her again.
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
I fished many a farm pond as a boy. When I left my red-varnished cane pole for Miss Zebco, I fell in love. I filled my Johnson & Johnson first aid kit turned tackle box with plastic worms, shysters, cork, and hooks. We went wherever Miss Zebco went. That was long ago.
Growing up ruined things. Time the silent thief stole my life and I lost the whereabouts of my Zebco 202. It took me 56 years to find her. After my parents died, I found her in their attic, that dependable museum of childhood lost. Still attached to an American Made fiberglass rod—Recommended For But Not Limited To Bass, Pickerel—that reel filled my boyhood with a love for fishing … with bass and bream joy.
A shocking thing though. I had no idea of my reel’s violent past and her presidential connection. Miss Zebco started life as a time bomb. Zebco is an acronym for Zero Hour Bomb Company, a Tulsa, Texas, manufacturer of electric time bombs for oil drilling. Those electric timers operated on Tulsa Time but hard times were coming. The rise of foreign oil and a 1948 patent expiration put the Zero Hour Bomb Company in dire straits. R.D. Hull, inventor, to the rescue. A watchmaker by trade, a coffee can lid gave him the idea for a tangle-free reel. No more bird nests. Hull hooked fishermen and a Georgia boy named Tommy and a president. Well, maybe not a president.
By request, Zebco sent “Ike” Eisenhower a reel. They didn’t get a presidential plug though. When the “Zero Hour Bomb Co.” package arrived, Security drowned it in water. Next thing you know the bomb squad arrives. What exploded? Sales, and in 1956 Zebco bid adieu to oilfields to make fishing reels, and a lot of boys got one. (Tune in your Paul Harvey voice here …) Now you know … the rest of the story.
I open my time capsule. 1961. As Munson would say, “Get the picture now.” Bream dimple sky-blue water. Bullfrogs boom. Rushes green. Algae greens too. Snakes serpentine. That damp mossy fragrance scents. Crickets crick. Blue darters dart. My black worm hints of licorice. I bump it along the bottom. I reel it in draped in blinding green filaments of algae. Clean the lure and cast again. The worm sinks. Reeling … reeling. The line jerks. Patience … the line runs. Now. I crank in a largemouth, mossy green-silver with lateral stripes. Musky. Sunlit watery scales, how the bass glimmers. I ease it back into the pond. Perhaps we’ll meet again someday.
Other Miss Zebco memories. I caught my first bass in a pond alongside a dirt road. Dusty contrails no more. Long been paved. I caught my biggest bass, 3.5 pounds, in the old Bradford Pond. I felt like George W. Perry. I hopped on my Silver Pigeon motor scooter and—bass dangling from handlebars—rushed home to show my folks my prize.
Three of us were staging a cast-the-farthest tournament at the old Mine Hole. I let out a foot of line, reared back, and cast with all my might. The line snapped as my Little Cleo gouged into the back of my cousin’s left ear. Unaware, “Who’s throwing rocks,” he yelled. Silver Pigeon to the rescue. We rode to town where the legendary Dr. Pennington clipped the barbs away, removed the plug, and gave him a tetanus shot.
As for Johnson & Johnson, Miss Zebco and I needed it. I wrote my name, town, and phone number in it should I lose it. (We kids wrote in cursive back then.) El. (Elgin) 9-4840? That was my parents’ phone number. I know it’s hard to grasp, Generation Alpha, but back then cables attached phones to the wall. You couldn’t roam around yacking.
Time crept along. Miss Zebco aged. A patina of dust covers her. I’ve aged and Johnson & Johnson bears stains and scratches. The rod still has its spring. But those blue ponds of youth? A change in weather dried them up. No worries, I’ll gussy up Miss Zebco and tidy up Johnson & Johnson, get some fried chicken, potato salad, and tea, and go down to the RIVER before Boot Hill claims me. I’ll cast those lures into water and for a while the world will be fine. No adulthood. No worries. No drought makers. Just me, Miss Zebco, and Johnson & Johnson.
