The Big Catch

The Big Catch

Due to diminishing demand, we once again will present another chapter in the exciting events and adventures from the late 1950s.  We are expected to receive the newest dispatch of research from the TFI,BI sometime in the next week or so.  Until then, we have this to ruminate on.

Back in the black and white days in southwest Detroit, there were many activities that might command the attention of young kids looking for something to do.  In the warmer months, you might participate in a game of pick up baseball in the schoolyard.  Since this was in an era of many non-politically correct attractions, there could be brewing a game of “guns”.  This could be cowboys versus indians, or cowboys versus cowboys, world war two era military action, or even Korean War.  If there were at least five or six available people, you would split up into teams, the first group would hide, usually down one of the alleys, and the other team would then go in search to find them and wipe them out.  If a team was good, they would be hid in places where they could ambush or attack the searchers, before they would be found.  One of the best ever, was the time one imaginative  kid hid inside a concrete garbage dumpster and ambushed a whole team of surprised cowboys.  Everyone strove to see if they could make the best noise when they fired their guns.  There were rules of course.  If you only had a pistol, you couldn’t shoot it like a machine gun.  Also, usually there was no shooting through bushes or fences.  (As an aside, as far as I know, not one of the young lads that participated in our games, ever was convicted of killing anyone with a gun or weapon, then or later in life.)

The events of this story were not any of the activities above.  I believe this adventure took place on a sunny Saturday in May, in the later 1950s.  We all loved to go fishing whenever we could.  We would ask parents or older siblings who could drive, to take us to a river or lake so we could catch some fish.  It was not a usual city activity.  Most of the parents were too busy with work and other responsibilities to take us, so we leaned on the older brothers.  One of my older cousins did take us one time, but I think it was just a sympathy thing.  Maybe he had been to confession and the priest told them to take the little kids fishing as his penance.  So usually, we were faced with making the trek down to the Boulevard Docks at the Detroit River.  This was about twelve city blocks or more from our area.  West Grand Boulevard came to a dead end at the Detroit River, and at this place, was a small park, and had a long concrete embankment that stretched all along the Detroit River.  There were some factories further down the river and in the other direction was the Ambassador Bridge to Canada.  The place available for fishing was over a hundred yards, sometimes a little more.  There was always a pretty good collection of fishermen making use of this place.  Some of these guys had two or three, really big rods that they used to fling their lines as far out into the water as they could, and then anchor the rod in a holder, or in some other contraptions.  They would have a bell at the tip of the rod, so they could sit back and relax, waiting for the bell to ring and work on reeling in the big one.  When the fish were biting, or the perch were running, it might be hard to get a good spot amongst all these avid fishermen.  Since we were kids, and back then, kids still respected and feared most adults, we were not about to horn in or try to push our way around these guys.  So, we knew that if we wanted to get a good spot, we had to get down there early.

After this lengthy prelude, we can proceed to what happened that day.  As I mentioned above, I am pretty sure that it was a Saturday in May, because if it was in the summer, we could have gone out any weekday to go fishing.  So school was still in session, and part of what stands out about this event, is the fact it was quite early on a Saturday.  On the day before, we made our plans and found out who would be participating on the trip.  Just like in the movie The Magnificent Seven, each person in the group had something to make this a successful trip.  One kid had a radio, another one was able to bring his father’s tackle box, someone else was bringing snacks, another person was responsible for the bait, and maybe someone brought a watch and some pop.  If I remember correctly, the lineup that day was: Stevie, Robert, Eddie, Foster and myself.  The fishing five.  We all agreed to meet up a little after five in the morning so that we could be at the river by six.  This way, we could be assured of getting a good spot on the river and not have to worry about the sleepy head old guys.  We would be the early birds catching the fish.  One other aside on this.  In those ancient days, there were no cell phones or laptops or similar devices.  We rarely ever used the telephones in our house because the telephone was for important stuff, not for kids chatting on the line.  If the phone rang in your house, it was usually for something important.  The way that we normally would gather together on a summer morning to play baseball or just hang around, would work like this.  The first kid would show up either on the porch, of if not safe, on the sidewalk in front of the first kids house and call him: “Edeeeee, Edeeeee, Edeeee,” and then the kid would hear you and come out, or his mother would come to the door and tell you he would not be coming out.  As the group moved on, they would call at each house until you had the required quorum.  One other thing, it was important that the kid you were calling had a regular name.  It was fine to call, Steeeeveee, Billeeeee, Fosssssster , etc, but if the kids name was something hard, like Hector or Beauregard or Phillip, you had to practice it, or see if the kid had a nickname, or let someone else try it, or just move on to another house.  But for this trip, there would be no calling in front of the houses.  We just had to sure to meet up on time.

Saturday dawned, and it looked to be a beautiful day in May, sunny and not too cool at that time of the day.  A perfect day for fishing.  The group eventually gathered on the corner in front of Ed’s candy store, and after assuring that all the requirements were in order, the expedition set out up Mckinstry to Vernor Highway and beyond.  At that time of the morning we had the streets to ourselves and we traveled in a happy pace toward our goal.  When crossing the streets, there was little traffic out to impede us, and we were making pretty good time.  We crossed over and walked through Clark Park, to save a little time and eventually hit Fort Street.  We knew that only after another four or five blocks, we would be turning the corner at the Boulevard and be making our way, across the train tracks and down to the docks.  We talked excitedly about all the fish that we might be catching and how we would be getting the first shot at all those fish.  We knew that there would be few fishermen out that early on a Saturday and this would be our day.  We were probably only about a block from making the turn, when we became aware of a car that turned in front of us onto the side street as we were crossing.  We kept on  walking, but came to a halt when we heard someone call out to us from behind.  “Hey! Where are you kids going?  What are you doing out here so early in the morning?”  When we turned around, we were confronted by……..a couple of cop ladies!  What?  Obviously they were not from the Sherlock Holmes branch of the force, when they asked us where we were going.  Five kids, carrying fishing rods, and a tackle box, and other fishing accoutrements, did not look like some perps out on a caper.  Plus, the oldest of us might have been ten or eleven.  So we just answered, respectfully, that we were going fishing down to the Boulevard Docks.  We were almost there.  But these Bulldog Drumondettes, were not to be deprived of their big catch.  “Don’t you boys know that there is a curfew?  It isn’t even six o’clock yet, and you are out roaming the streets. “  We might not have known the exact time, but we had planned this all to arrive at our destination at six.  We tried to plead our case, but our complaints fell on unhearing ears.  These two fine ladies had moved on from the bloom of youth some time ago, and if they had participated in motherhood, pity those poor children.   They did not look like  they had a trace of humor or sympathy in their bones.  More than likely, they had previously served as jailers down at the Detroit House of Corrections, or as we knew it, DEHOCO.  They were not happy or go lucky.  We began to realize that we would have to turn around and end our dreams of fishing, as we were burning daylight and these ladies were not changing their mind.  So we gathered up our gear and made to set out for home.  But we were not even to be allowed to do this.  There would be further humiliation inflicted on us.   These curfew enforcers were not going to take any chances with unreliable criminals like us.  They pointed to their car and told us to “Get In!”  It was a big, black car.  It looked like it had probably been used by the Big Four (Detroit Cops who traveled with four big guys in the car, loaded with shotguns etc and looking for trouble) previously, and when they were given a new vehicle by the Department, allowed the police ladies to use their leftovers.  It was quite roomy in the back seat, and we were all able to fit in, even with our equipment.  

As we pulled away from the curb, one of them turned her grim visage to us and asked us where we lived.  It was here that we began to feel even a little more unsettled.  They wanted to know all of our names and the exact address of where each of us lived.  Now why would they do that?  They could just as easily dropped us off at the corner of our street and let us go home from there.  No, these Dragnettes, Sergeant Saturdays, were going to make their point.  If they couldn’t book us down at the station, they would be sure to perpetrate something even more effective.  It began to dawn on me what they were up to.  This was a Saturday morning.  In our neighborhood, especially if you were a church going family, Saturday was the ONE day in the week during the school year, where everyone could sleep in.  Most of our fathers did not have to work on Saturday and since no school, our mothers didn’t have to arise at the break of day to fix breakfast and lunches for us.  It was a day of sleeping in, at least a little.  What these ladies planned to do was, well it was criminal.  They were going to take each of us little miscreants up to our door, wake up the house and and berate whomever came to the door.  Since this little fishing trip wasn’t exactly something that was planned out with the parents, it would come as a shock and surprise to them when they answered the door.  In more ways than one.  So we were resigned to our fate.  As I was the first on the block, they went to our house first as the others looked on.  Luckily for me, it was my mother who was a perennial light sleeper, who answered the door, looked at me and the cop lady.  The kind lady,  filled in my mother about the nature of our perfidy and extracted a promise form her never to allow me to leave the house before curfew again, or at least till I was of the age of consent, or something like that.  It was over quickly and I slunk into the house.  I could only imagine what was going to happen as they proceeded down the block.  I know that Eddie had a very excitable father, so I prayed that he would not be the door answerer.  As there might have been another crime perpetrated in front of the cop ladies.  I envisioned gloom and doom for Robert and Stevie as well.  This fine fishing expedition had turned out to be a disaster of unknowable future results.  

We did not speak of this day again amongst ourselves.  It was a failure that we would never forget.  As for the ladies of the Forces, I can imagine the scene back at Fort and Green police station.  As they finished their shift, they could brag about how they broke up a ring of curfew breakers intent on crimes of an unspeakable nature.  Since they had arrived before the actual crime could be witnessed, they had to settle themselves with returning the hoodlums to their families with a warning that next time, it would be much worse.  I hope they got promoted to night work at Jackson Prison.

This was a true event and none of the names were changed in this story, because they were innocent.  

copyright 2019