Texas Surgeon: an Autobiography Page: 7
xii, 180 p. ; 21 cm.View a full description of this book.
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alone electric light. It was one of my childhood tasks to thread
the molds and pour in the tallow for our candles. With my
brothers I slept in the loft beneath the bare rafters. Never was
it pleasanter than when the rain was thrumming on the roof.
The sound not only lulled me, but gave promise that on the
morrow the weather would be too wet for haying or digging
potatoes, leaving me free to go fishing after trout.
I recall it was while fishing one morning that I had my first
experience with the guileful ways of trade. Using my birch rod
and a hook baited with garden worms, I had caught seven or
eight speckled beauties, weighing a couple of pounds apiece. So
absorbed was I in my sport that only after a time did I notice
that across the pool from me were a man and a woman, casting
flies, but with little luck. At first I had no idea what they might
be up to, so long and supple were their rods and so strange
their bait.
Presently they waded up to me. The man, looking at my fish,
in a bantering way said, "Son, what will you take for them?"
Well, that was a problem. For a neighbor I had just worked
a whole week, cleaning a field rank with weeds, and for this
task had been paid twenty-five cents. Against this laborious scale
the value of the fish seemed small indeed. Catching fish was
fun, not work at all. And so cautiously I said, "I'11 take two
cents for them."
I can still see the look of elation on the man's face and the
woman's concern. "You mean for the lot?" he blandly inquired.
Quickly I nodded, fearing that the bargain would slip through
my fingers.
"How can you be so mean," the woman whispered, "to a
country boy?" Her reproach fell on deaf ears. Off they went
together, he with my fish and I two cents the richer. My folly
was made clear to me when I got home. I have not forgotten it.
Sometimes on rainy fall days a flock of Canada geese would
come wildly honking down out of the gray sky and settle in our
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Atkinson, Donald Taylor. Texas Surgeon: an Autobiography, book, 1958; New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143566/m1/19/?rotate=90: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.