For His First Camp Out, I Took My Son to an Old Bootlegger’s Island in the Bayou

This story, “Vacation spot: Frog Island,” appeared within the February 1975 situation of Out of doors Life.

My eight-year-old son Paul sat on the center seat as our rented 12-foot cypress boat plied a sluggish northwesterly course to Frog Island. We headed for a tall pine on the island’s southeastern tip. The pine stood some 50 toes inland and was a landmark for an outdated Prohibition whisky cache in addition to a marker for the island’s solely jap and southern boat entrance, simply broad sufficient to squeeze a ship by. Our new three-horsepower out-board, with no impartial place, seemed like a twenty-dollar lawnmower with out the muffler. Whereas the motor was operating, the one attainable solution to talk with anybody else within the boat was to break down your lungs with high-heaven screams, or achieve his consideration with a paddle faucet on the shoulder after which speak to him with hand indicators. Perspiration streaked our brows because the mid-evening June solar bore down upon us. The summer time of 1960 appeared to be throwing all the pieces it had at us. No breeze stirred, and a summertime lull appeared to envelope our environment.

Paul turned on his seat, attempting to shade his face from the blistering solar. The seat wobbled as he turned and Paul half rose to look at his perch. He didn’t know that the center seat was the boat’s live-box. I shut off the motor and defined to him that the live-box was a built-in compartment with holes bored by its backside, which was additionally the boat’s hull, to allow water to flow into inside and preserve a catch of fish alive and recent.

“Then what’s down in there now?” he yelled.

“Oh — expensive Lord!” I shot up a prayer. “Please, don’t let there be a water moccasin in right here with us!”

After a cautious however shaky method to the live-box, I used to be significantly relieved to see a strip of oily rag floating round within the field’s murky depths in a most convincing snakelike method. It was just a few moments earlier than I may muster the power to drag the starter twine — and some time earlier than my pulse returned to close regular and my coronary heart stopped pounding like a parade drum.

My eyes roamed over our gear, scattered from bow to stern. There was our shiny new $6 two-man floorless pup tent together with 4 tightly rolled quilts from residence. These can be our bedding, two for every of us — one quilt as our mattress and the opposite to crawl beneath together with an assorted number of bugs, ants, katydids, and different creatures that always crawl beneath tenting covers.

Our tacklebox was an outdated toolbox that we had found within the woods and coveted residence. A number of dents smoothed out and a few coats of inexperienced paint had made it worthy. We had cane fishing poles, a espresso can of nightcrawlers, which we’d dug behind our storage, a trotline and three-dozen shiny new hooks, and half a pound of juicy beef liver as trotline bait.

Beneath my toes was a dishpan brimming with pint jars of meal, shortening, espresso, bread, a serving-for-six can of beef stew, two cans of pork and beans, eight massive Irish potatoes, two raspy-skin white onions, a candle, dishcloths, knives, forks, spoons, plates, and two tin espresso cups. Behind Paul have been two one-gallon jugs of water for use for consuming and dishwashing.

Our small ice chest held three quart-size blocks of ice that we had frozen at residence. Newspaper lay over the ice for insulation. On high of the outdated newsprint lay a pound of bacon and half a dozen eggs rigorously wrapped in a few of the finest pages of a Sears & Roebuck catalog.

A can of gasoline for the motor, two gallon jugs of used motor oil, and a bundle of dried cattails, which we had pulled up from the sting of a bayou, lay within the bow. Tonight we’d soak the cattails within the oil, stick them in stump tops, and set them afire. With luck, fish can be attracted by the fire-seared bugs and bugs and would hit our short-lined baited hooks.

I reduce the motor as we steered the boat by the slim opening to the island. The bow made a delicate sighing sound because it slipped up on the sand. For a second we sat and listened to the silence round us, unbroken aside from the sound of a cypress gumball kerplunking into the bayou and an occasional splash of a fish. Although the solar was nonetheless two hours excessive, these have been the one sounds we heard.

About 20 toes in entrance of our boat we cleared an space for our tent, and to the left we cleared one other spot for our campfire. A number of toes from our campfire website we dug a gap for our dishwater and empty tin cans, which we’d burn after which smash flat and bury earlier than our departure the following day. I took nice pains in explaining to Paul that to benefit from the wonders and treasures of the outside we needed to do our half in conserving the bayous, lakes, rivers streams, and woodlands clear. We picked up fist-size pine cones and resinous pine knots, and gathered an ample provide of firewood from a big downed oak. Amid the hearth circle we stacked pine needles haystack vogue, then constructed round them with small twigs. Round these we positioned 4 items of oak in a diamond form after which put small limbs and branches crosswise and upward. Tonight our campfire would carry out the essence of tenting as its flames shadow-danced within the sand. We unloaded the boat and pitched the tent, guying and ditching it in case of rain. We positioned a layer of pine needles and moss inside, and our bedding was unfold over this delicate mattress.

Having no desk, we scouted to the north and located what seemed to be an outdated whisky-cache lid, about three toes square-just proper to serve our function. 4 cuts from a sapling served as desk legs, and as soon as they have been pushed into the soil with the lid on high, our desk was full. We positioned our utensils on the desk, then slipped our groceries right into a sack and tied it to a limb.

The hoot of an owl pierced the night silence, echoing backwards and forwards throughout the bayou. A second later the lonesome notes of a whippoorwill reminded us that purple shadows have been now stalking the island and evening was not distant.

“Will the owls hoot all evening?” Paul requested.

“Generally they do,” I answered. We checked out our campsite with satisfaction and a sense that we have been now part of all this and never simply
two in a single day guests.

“Boy! It seems to be good, doesn’t it?” Paul requested with a contact of enthusiasm. I agreed that it did and knew that tonight can be lengthy remembered by each of us. For this was Paul’s first tenting journey.

Many nights, after a tough day’s work promoting insurance coverage, I might sit on the kitchen desk with Paul, a map of Caddo Lake unfold out earlier than us. We might plan and speak and dream. We have been, I felt, prisoners even within the confines of our new residence in Shreveport, Louisiana, 23 miles south of Jeems Bayou and Frog Island.

Paul already knew easy methods to deal with a .22 rifle and had a gradual intention. He had his personal pocket knife, which he would laboriously sharpen on a really· worn stone. He had accompanied me on woodland jaunts many instances, and I continuously piggy-backed him (when he was a lot youthful) by briers and brush. He was fast to study, and inquisitive about and amazed at leaping fish, bellowing frogs, and hooting owls. I needed our first tenting journey to be one thing particular, so we determined to camp on an island.

Frog Island was so named due to its form and abundance of bullfrogs. The island is a few quarter-mile lengthy, much less in width, and positioned within the Jeems (James) Bayou part or northern portion of Caddo Lake. The sprawling physique of water was as soon as the stamping grounds of the Caddo Indians.

Caddo Lake’s extra southern and deeper waters typically whitecap with the slightest breeze, whereas Jeems Bayou, shallower and with plentiful cypress stands, normally has a extra serene floor. The lake nonetheless holds a grip on part of yesterday. Throughout the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, oil was found beneath the lake’s waters and its surrounding woodlands and plateaus.

Indicators of the outdated oil growth — rotting oil-well foundations, pilings, and different clues — can nonetheless be seen. Beneath the floor lie deserted steam boilers, bull wheels, and different objects, lots of them close to sufficient to the floor to stay hazardous to as we speak’s boatmen. But these sunken and rotting relics of the black-gold days present havens for largemouth bass, white perch, bream, catfish, buffalo, eels, and an occasional alligator.

I grew up in Caddo, a mile north of Oil Metropolis or “city” because it was known as. My free hours and weekends have been spent both on Jeems Bayou with pals or roaming the adjoin-ing woodlands constructing lean-tos and log cabins.

So Jeems Bayou, with its cypress stands, coves and sloughs, islands and ponds, was a bit little bit of heaven to me. Frog Island was a spot to get misplaced, to roam, to discover, or simply to lie down within the shade of a tree on a summer time day and benefit from the solitude. Frog Island was typically (and nonetheless is) a subject for argument. Throughout the wet fall and spring seasons the protruding northern tip of the mainland was inundated, and thus the island was really an island. In summer time’s decrease water the tail of the “frog” grew to become a skinny strip of land connecting the island with the northern shore.

Frog Island was a haven for boot-leggers throughout Prohibition, a spot to cover and a spot to bury whisky. Our campsite on this journey with Paul was on high of 1 such whisky cache. The caches have been holes some three toes sq. and deep, lined with moss and leaves atop which the bottled booze was positioned. A trapdoor-type lid coated the outlet, and an ideal camouflage job of logs, brush, and particles coated the cache.

Pine, oak, gum, hickory, and cypress forested the island. Massive grape-vines snaked throughout the bottom and climbed eerily up the bushes. Mosquitoes, snakes, lizards, owls, hawks, quail, rabbits, squirrels, and a wide range of birds both inhabited or visited the island.

The island’s bushes fringed the shore in such hedgerow vogue {that a} stranger may fish from a ship 15 toes offshore with out being conscious that an island was there. So thick was this curtain of timber that there existed, to my data, solely two locations of entry massive sufficient for a ship — one on the southeast facet and the second on the northwest.

Paul was anxious to do no matter we must always do subsequent, and as one other owl hooted, a lot nearer now, he requested, “Hadn’t we higher set out the trotline?”

“Sure,” I answered, mopping my forehead. “First, although, we must put our torches out in these stumps. It’ll be getting darkish a lot sooner on this facet of the island. Then we are able to put out our trotline. Then there’s one different factor we have to do earlier than coming again to camp to have our supper.”

“What’s that?” my son requested. “You’ll see. Let’s get began.”

Paul stepped into the boat and made his solution to the strict to lift and lock the outboard since we’d now paddle.

“I wager that is an outdated boat, isn’t it?” he requested, eyeing the chipped and cut up gunwales.

“I wager it’s,” I agreed. Age, climate, and far use had taken their toll on the outdated do-it-yourself cypress craft. Its bow stem was a bit of carved cypress that protruded a few foot above the bow gunwales after which curved outward, giving it the looks of one thing the Vikings left behind.

Paul paddled from his live-box seat whereas I Indian-paddled from the pointed bow. I tossed the package deal of beef liver to Paul, the sign for him to stop paddling and start slicing the meat into thumb-size chunks. He baited the trotline hooks and hung them over the sting of a can inside my attain. We set the north finish of the trotline with the primary 18 hooks to drop about 5 toes; the remaining 18 would dangle about eight toes beneath the floor, which might put them from two to 4 toes off the underside.

“The torches are out, the trotline is prepared, and now …” Paul paused, ready for me to talk of “the opposite factor we needed to do.”

“Over there,” I mentioned, pointing with the paddle. “These large lily pads — that’s the place the most important frogs will likely be tonight. However we have to see if the doorway is blocked by a log.” The large pads have been inside a circle of stumps and snags, and there was just one entrance. A log was there however off to the facet and never blocking the opening.

The shadows had grown into darkness, and though a moon would shine tonight, it could be two hours earlier than it rose. We turned and headed for camp, guided by glimpses of our flickering kerosene lantern hanging from a limb at our campsite’s small entrance. By the point we paddled the final 100 yards we’d counted eight owls hooting, one in all which, we determined, should be the grandaddy of all of them.

As soon as ashore we lighted the hearth, lowered our groceries from the limb cache, and commenced getting ready supper — peeling spuds, slicing onions, and laughing at our “KP.” At residence my spouse would have needed to sue me for divorce to get me into the kitchen. And Paul? His expensive life must be threatened earlier than he would peel potatoes in entrance of his sister. Now it was a special story.

Paul then found a disaster: our dented coffeepot had been left behind. And no surprise. What with such invectives from household and neighbors as “Don’t you drown that boy!” — “Don’t you let an alligator get him” — “Don’t let him reduce himself with that knife,” I questioned how we obtained away with as a lot gear as we did.

My tenting associate got here up with an answer.

“Make the espresso within the baitcan,” Paul exclaimed.

I swallowed a tough “Ugghhh!”

We unexpectedly dumped the nightcrawlers right into a moist towel, coated them with moss, and rolled the bundle up. Utilizing mud, water, sand, and moss we scrubbed the baitcan till I used to be satisfied it was clear sufficient in order that we wouldn’t get up with leprosy, Brown’s warts, or one thing else that, with my luck, couldn’t be cured. I put the bait-bucket coffeepot on the hearth.

Black mosquitoes started to swarm forth from the island’s nooks and crannies, sending us to our bug dope, which we rubbed on our faces, necks, arms, and palms.

We sat down close to the hearth, our pie-tin plates brimming with steaming onioned pork and beans, french fries, toasted bread, and boiling “nightcrawler” espresso. The espresso’s aroma appeared to have a relatively quieting impact on the owls, for it was properly after supper earlier than they hooted once more.

(In our haste to make espresso, we determined to “simply dump a bit” into the pot relatively than waste time utilizing a spoon to measure. The subsequent morning after we reached the mainland the place we’d rented our boat, the camp operator remarked, “Man, oh man! What sort of espresso did y’all make over there final evening?” “Worm-bucket espresso,” I answered slyly.)

With the supper dishes washed and put away, we relaxed on the matted pine straw and watched the celebrities twinkle by the thick cover overhead. Already the massive frogs had begun to “Barummppphh” throughout the island, and we may inform from the sounds that there have been many massive frogs within the refrain.

In the meanwhile I used to be as a lot boy as my son was. I considered the peace and quiet right here away from the bumper-to-bumper metropolis site visitors and the pressures of on a regular basis life. I advised my son that being within the outdoor and studying its secrets and techniques — loving it and its inhabitants — is the type of life that retains you out of hassle.

We started to doze, however not for lengthy. Above our heads a whistling shriek ripped the evening. Immediately we got here to our toes, with an unexplainable weak point within the knees. An owl had dropped in on us, perching himself like a lord within the pine behind us. Paul and I had nearly had a great strive at strolling on water.
his bug-eyed nocturnal creature couldn’t have picked a greater time to scare the wits out of us. We moved the boat slowly by the small passageway into the sphere of lily pads, and it sounded as if each frog in creation was out and bellowing. Paul sat quietly with a flashlight whereas I guided the boat, a carbide lantern strapped to my head. Frog eyes glared and glistened from lily pads, snags, and stumps.

“I by no means heard such a racket!” Paul exclaimed, a bit shaky. “Daddy look! Take a look at that large ol’ frog!”

“He’s all yours,” I mentioned. The monstrous frog sat perched on a big lily pad close to Paul’s finish of the boat. Paul had been frogging with me earlier than, however solely alongside streams, and by no means by boat. I had, nonetheless, briefed him repeatedly on the outdated kitchen desk on easy methods to paddle-slap a frog on a lily pad or delicate mud alongside a shoreline. I’m not a lot on frog grabs, since to make use of them it’s a must to be practically on high of the frog and he should be perched on one thing at the very least partly stable. If not, the moment the seize touches him both it pushes him down by the lily pad or mud or he’s gone in a flash. So the paddle it was.

I moved the boat nearer as Paul turned and shined his gentle into the massive luminous eyes.

“Simple,” I mentioned. “Maintain it … hoolllldd it … now!”

Paul’s paddle, beforehand raised above his proper shoulder, got here down on the frog with a rifle-shot crack, splashing water in all instructions, together with ours, and exploding the lily pad to smithereens. Shortly he tossed the paddle into the boat and shot his arm elbow-deep beneath the floor and grabbed the sinking frog. “Boy, he’s an enormous one,” Paul mentioned as he tossed the frog into the boat. We gloated over this monster, which our later measurements confirmed to be 21 inches from nostril to hind toes. Inside 20 minutes our pillow-case frog sack held a dozen frogs, and we headed again to camp.

We cleaned all of them, iced eight of them in our chest, and floured the 4 others and dropped them right into a ready skillet of scorching grease. As soon as once more the bait-bucket espresso got here into play. We ate the meaty backs in addition to the legs. Half an hour later we took to the boat and went out to our torch cattails, lighting them one after the other. Then we paddled the boat again a distance and sat watching the sky gentle up from the lengthy, smoky tongues of flame. It will take some time for fish to start to floor across the torches to feed on seared bugs. We paddled to the trotline and retrieved three catfish, a few pound every, one from the shallow finish and two from the deeper hooks. The subsequent morning we’d take two extra from the trotline.

A couple of minutes later the fish started to floor across the burning cattails, and we slowly glided the boat as much as the periphery of sunshine. We had already baited our traces and set the cork bobbers about six inches above the hook.

Fins sliced the water as fish boiled to the floor, scooping up the bugs hitting the water, their wings scorched by the flames. Half an hour later we returned to camp with one nice-size perch, half a dozen bream, and a 1 1/2-pound largemouth. We cleaned the fish and put them on ice for the journey residence.

We turned the lantern down, banked the hearth, and crawled exhausted however blissful into our tent. We flopped down — soot-faced and smelling of smoke — on our delicate bedding. Quickly the bellowing frogs, hooting owls, and a refrain of crickets died away as we dropped off right into a deep sleep.

Cawing crows and screaming blue jays woke up us. A brilliant June solar was crawling up the cypress stands to the east, and a whiff of breeze stirred the skinny blanket of fog across the island. We washed our faces and toes within the bayou’s cool water and commenced cooking a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and occasional.

After cleanup chores we struck camp and loaded our gear into the boat. We determined to discover a few of the island to the north earlier than going residence.

Learn Subsequent: The Unmaking of an Ozark Stream, and One Last, Giant Bass with My Grandpa

We hadn’t gone far after we reached a gradual slope that led to the west. We climbed up and located the stays of an outdated oil properly. Under the slope on the west was a small cove of gorgeous clear water, all silt and sediment strained out by the moss alongside the inland shore. Alongside the cove’s banks grew a fringe of tall inexperienced cattails.

We stood trying and taking in the great thing about the cove and the encompassing woods when abruptly a small and delicate doe stepped from the cattails and made her solution to the water. We stood immobile and watched her as she drank, completed, lifted her head, then turned and disappeared into the comb. She was the primary deer I had ever seen in Louisiana.

Midway throughout the bayou on our solution to the mainland, we turned and seemed again on the island. The tall pine, our landmark, stood silent and serene within the morning solar and appeared to whisper and beckon to us to return again — come again quickly.