Poulette Pond Accord
Last May, a few of the town dads, maybe not the usual committee types, but the kind who fix things with a pocketknife and a shrug, decided the kids deserved something better than another summer of dusty bike tires and sprinkler runs in the Feed Store parking lot.
So they went out to Poulette Pond, knee-deep in duckweed and stubborn reeds, and cleared a swimming hole.
They ran a buoy rope across, pulled glass shards and soda tabs from the mud, and declared:
“The kids can swim here. It's safe now.”
And then came Hooks.
Hooks, who’s been fishing Poulette Pond since the Reagan administration, and claims to know the temperament of every bass by name. He didn’t take kindly to the sound of shrieking joy scaring off his precious catch.
So he took it to the next town meeting, where Miss Lettie was still mid-scone and in no mood.
HOOKS:
“They’re running off the fish, Lettie. It’s not natural.”
MISS LETTIE:
(adjusting her reader glasses)
“To where, Hooks? Did they fly away? Because if they did I shore would have liked to seen it.”
The dads laughed, and Hooks did too, eventually. And the compromise?
The kids squat by the bank, still as stone, eyes on the water, until the sun crests over the magnolia tree.
At exactly 9:45 a.m., when the light hits the water just right, someone yells:
“There it is! Let’s get in!”
And like a pack of joyful frogs, they leap, splash, and claim the pond as their own, every day of summer.
Hooks shakes his head, always a little too loud about how “he doesn’t believe in scheduled swimming,” but he reels in anyway and brings his fish to town, because tradition is tradition, and those kids?
They’re the ones keeping it alive.
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