Mr. Alderson

     As drunk as Mama was, she did a good job making sure I became a well-rounded person. She put me with people who exposed me to things she had no interest in, like fishing.

     Mr. Alderson was a WWII Veteran, a master gardener, an inventor and our back door neighbor. He loved to fish, owned a rusty tractor with a metal seat, smoked Winston’s, drank Scotch on the rocks, and made Purple Martin bird houses from gourds he grew and hung at the top of the flagpole in his backyard. He and Mama had a love/hate relationship. They loved to garden and argue. 

     Each gardening season began in the alley, cigarette and drink in hand. He talked about fertilizers. She talked about square foot gardening. By dusk, they were stumbling around kicking dirt clods at each other over asparagus. 

He said they don’t do well in our climate, she said they did. When they didn’t, she blamed Mr. Alderson for bad advice.

     My relationship with him was different. I ran over whenever I saw he was coming home from fishing. Something I wanted to do all the time but Mama had no interest in. He said it wasn’t appropriate for him to take me.    

     He taught me everything I know about fishing and we never left his backyard. 

     The Fisherman’s Knot, how to put new line on a rod and reel, how to gut brim and blow their scales off with a water hose. He even let me borrow his Jon Boat when I got my Driver’s License. 

     Excerpt from Care & Feeding by Chela Gutierrez