'I Can't Fish Like This'

"Daddy was good to us. We loved our daddy. We minded our daddy. He was a good man. He was a man who loved the Lord. He watched after us boys. He wouldn't tell us boys to do nothing that he wouldn't do himself. And a lot of times he'd do things he wouldn't let us do, because he'd do it himself.
"I remember one time, we wanted to go fishing so bad. But we were working the field. We come to the house when it come a little shower of rain, about 10:30 or 11 o'clock. Around dinnertime. So it didn't rain much. After dinner he told us, 'Well now, you know how it is. If it rains y'all can go fishing.' That's the way he always done. If it were raining or anything we'd get to go fishing.
"But he went back out after dinner. While we went and dug our fish bait and everything, me and my stepbrother Clarence and my brother Nathan, Daddy had gone out there to the barn and got his mattocks. He went to the back field to do some sprouting. He didn't say a word about us going off.
"So we looked at him. And I says, 'I can't fish like this.'
"Clarence says, 'I can't, either. Let's go help Daddy.'
"'That suits me,' I said.
"So we went out there and got the hoe and we went over there and helped Daddy in the field. That's the way we loved our daddy.
"We loved our daddy because what Daddy said was right. He'd always tell us the right way to go, what to do, how to do."
-- Carl Bishop