We had been on the road for about an hour. Ross, with our two kayaks strapped to the top of his Volkswagen, was following me down a narrow, unpopulated country road northeast of Aliceville, Alabama.
Most of this country appears to have been logged or is in the process of being logged. Plastic signs warning of “logging trucks entering road” are posted along the roadway.
We had just passed through a sparse scattering of houses that bills itself as Benevola, though there is little to suggest much of a community. There must be a story though; benevola means benevolent in Italian.
We would leave my pickup near here at Cotton Bridge on the Sipsey River. The put-in, about 25 miles upstream, was a battered landing on the road between Buhl and Elrod, east of Gordo.
There we were greeted by a man in his 60s with a voice that sounded like coarse sandpaper. “I wouldn’t park there,” he said. “People been burning fires with boards full of nails.”
Our guardian angel, sporting several days of stubble and a blonde mustache, wore a battered red windbreaker and a chamois-colored balaclava under a battered Tilley-style hat. A white feather about 18 inches long stuck straight up from the hat.
It keeps the gnats away, the man, who introduced himself as Buddy Weeks, said about the feather.
“You better not park there unless you want your catalytic converter stolen,” he said. “Crackheads will get it.”
Editor’s note: Catalytic converters, a device that reduces emissions found on gasoline-powered vehicles manufactured after 1975, contain precious metals that have become more precious since the pandemic. According to Edmunds, an online automotive website, thieves can remove converters in about two minutes and sell to recyclers for $50 to $200, Replacement can range upwards from $1,000.
Weeks brightened when I told him we were from Columbus.
“Used to go over there to shoot pool,” he said before launching into a litany of state-line bars he had frequented.
Weeks’ truck, ladened with a small plastic pontoon-style fishing boat, sat at the edge of the swollen river.
He was undecided about fishing, he said. Maybe being here under these trees at the bend of the river on this cool, clear morning was enough.
About that time, a flatbed truck carrying a large cylindrical tank pulled up. At the wheel was Don Boyle of the Marion (Alabama) State Fish Hatchery.
Boyle, a wildlife biologist, was returning to the river six southern walleye, one female, five males, used for breeding. The female had been manually bred and spawned eggs for 11,000 fingerlings, which would be introduced to the river.
“We are returning these broods to the wild to let them live their life,” Boyle said.
We climbed onto the truck and peered at six fish, each about 20 inches long.
Boyle was in a quandary. The landing was too rough for him to get his truck close enough to the river. Weeks volunteered to help.
By now Ross had moved his car up on the road away from the danger of burnt nails and the catalytic-converter-thieving crackheads.
Boyle scooped the first fish out of the tank with a large net and handed it to Weeks on the ground. Weeks walked to the river’s edge and gently lowered the net into the water.
As Ross and I eased our kayaks out into the sunlight and the pull of the river, the man with the feather in his hat walked back to the truck for another fish.
Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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