Tackle Box

At first appearance, the tackle box was just one of thousands that rolled off the assembly line in Plano, Illinois in 1983. Just a green and tan tackle box with a brass-bailed latch and a no frills interior. Three cantilever trays to sort out the hooks from the lures, the bobbers from the sinkers, and a deep storage hold in the bottom for pliers, a Zebco fishing scale, and extra line. The tackle box was a gift from my pawpaw for my tenth birthday. This standard, fresh from the shelf, tackle box would prove to be anything but ordinary.

I thanked Pawpaw for the tackle box and upon inspecting the insides discovered that he had stocked it up. Amongst the brand new bobbers and plastic worms, I found out some of the contents came from his own tackle box. What made these particular items special were they were made by Pawpaw. Lead that he had melted down and molded to form sinkers, spoons, spinners, and jigs that he crafted, and a fishing stringer with a whittled base and metal hand bent to make the clips. The contents were just the beginning of what was moving this tackle box from its ordinary guise to something more.

The best feature of this tackle box, what maybe moved it over the top, wasn’t what was in it, but where it would take me. While I enjoyed fishing and pulling in a catch to weigh it, I never came close to the twenty eight pound maximum the scale would show, going fishing was just a boyhood routine. The real treasure, it would turn out, came in the form of the passport that the tackle box turned my life into. The relationship that grew with my pawpaw, and later in life with my dad, would be opened up by the experiences that revolved around that ordinary Plano tackle box.

Pawpaw lived in a house with Granny on the family farm. He was retired from farming but was always on hand to help his son, my dad, when help was needed with the cattle. Pawpaw’s retirement wasn’t really an end to his working days, with my dad taking over running the farm, he just moved his day of work into gardening in the spring and summer and woodworking in the fall and winter. The one thing that would remain constant with him was fishing. Pawpaw was serious about fishing and made sure he got plenty of time on the banks of the half dozen ponds that were on the farm or the land we owned surrounding it.

Until I was gifted that tackle box from Pawpaw, I had never been fishing with him. The theory I developed was that until the age of ten, grandkids were probably more trouble than not when it came to fishing. At the ripe old age of ten I could tie my own lines and bait my own hooks. The morning after my birthday Pawpaw came by as the June sun was just cresting the hills behind the farm. I saw him talking to my dad on the front porch for a few minutes and then he came into our house. He told me to grab my fishing pole and new tackle box and that he had sprung me from a morning of work to accompany him to the “big” pond, as it was aptly named.

We detoured by his house for him to grab his fishing gear and to pick up a couple of Granny’s sausage biscuits she had wrapped up for us. We walked around behind his shop where there was a ten gallon bucket half filled with dirt waiting for us. Bait, he said when he saw me looking. He had already dug up what we needed for the day. He hooked a thumb into his overalls and motioned for me to grab the bucket. He chuckled as he said it’s not just the early bird that gets the worm.

The pond was in the southernmost pasture from the house and it was a brisk fifteen minute walk to get there. Pawpaw was ready to fish and wasted no time getting his line wet. Somewhere in my ten year old brain I caught on to the idea that I was about to learn a whole lot about fishing by not asking questions, but by watching the art of fishing by a true master. It wouldn’t be long before I had refined everything from my overhead casting technique to mastering setting the hook to pull in more consistent results. Some of the fishing skills transferred themselves to life itself, I gained more patience, the quality of learning from others, and the grit of sticking to a task.

I enjoyed watching Pawpaw happily pass the time on a pond bank and honing my skills as a budding professional fisherman, but the real thing that made the time around that tackle box special was how we ended each trip to a pond. Pawpaw would pat on a log or a rock and I would sit down beside him.

The stories he told me about his life held me in thrall. I learned about the hard scrambled times of surviving The Great Depression, how he lost his younger brother Johnny at Omaha Beach and never really got over the loss, and the excitement of hearing on the radio about Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. My eyes were open to his eyewitness account of history. Pawpaw told the stories with such lively descriptions that I pulled into the events he lived through. I also learned how to tell a good joke, how there would never be a better movie than a western, and how the Saint Louis Cardinals were as good as any baseball team to follow. Pawpaw passed away the summer before my senior year of high school. I kept fishing with that Plano tackle box but some of the spark of fishing was gone.

After graduation, I left for my enlistment in the military and chased a life of adventure around the world. Fishing didn’t have a place in this new phase of my life and the tackle box was relegated to the past. Life hit my family with a devastating blow a few years later when my mom passed away from her battle with cancer. My commander granted me two weeks of leave to go home and be with my father. I flew home immediately to help with arrangements.

Dad was struggling with the loss of the woman who he dad spent thirty-six years devoted to. The loss of the heart of our family weighed heavy on all of us. Two days after the funeral I helped my dad go through the house collecting up things he knew mom wanted some of us to have. He emerged from his bedroom with the old green and tan tackle box and handed it to me. Dad told me that mom had known it meant so much to me growing up that she tucked it into the back of her closet after I left home.

I sat there on the couch and opened up the tackle box and a flood of memories washed over me. I had a good relationship with my father, but for the entire time I knew him he was a occupied man and a private one at that. He worked from well before the sun came up until well after the sun went down everyday of the week except Sunday, that day was for the Lord. He was all the provider a family could need, but that didn’t leave a lot of time for recreational activities with his kids. My dad was the epitome of hard work.

An idea struck me, Dad I asked, how about we head down to the pond. I gave the tackle box a little shake to emphasize my point. A small smile crept on his face. I haven’t been fishing since I was a teenager, he replied, there was always work I thought needed to be done. It seemed his all work and no play attitude had been his default for longer than I realized.

He went on a search and rustled up two fishing poles that were in working order and with the Plano tackle box in hand we headed out to the closest pond. That day’s routine grew into one that happened everyday until I had to return to my base. During those trips I grew closer to my dad than I had ever been. We talked about Mom and shared stories. There were many tears shared throughout those trips. Near the end of my visit home on one of our fishing trips my dad confided in me a lesson that I would carry from that day forward.

He was looking through the tackle box for a sinker to put on his line and he stopped and looked up at me, eyes brimming with a different kind of tear, guilt for not seeing all the goodness in his life that was right there. Dad said he was so focused on providing for the family that he overlooked providing the most important thing, time. Once again, that tackle box seemed to be the linchpin to something bigger than just a molded green and tan box filled with shiny things and fishing line. I told him I was so thankful for the life that he worked so hard to provide us and that I was happy we had each other now.

At the end of my time, Dad tried to send me off with the tackle box. I told him it belonged here with him to be used any time he wanted, but most importantly, to be standing ready for us to use every time I was able to come home to visit.

That ordinary tackle box was not so ordinary after all. I learned life skills, I learned about my family. I learned how to figure out what was important in life before it was too late. I grew closer to two important men in my life thanks to that green and tan tackle box. Ordinary tackle box, no, that green and tan Plano tackle box was quite extraordinary.