As those who have read previous episodes of the ongoing misadventures of Mollygrubs Messer will recall, his nosy, busybody, and termagant-in-training mother, who in rather grandiose fashion styled herself “Caring Karen,” was, to use a description common in the mountain community of Stoney Lonesome where the family lived, “a piece of work.” Although no one dared directly confront this endlessly ambitious social climber when it came to possible personality flaws, it was universally recognized that she could, all too often, be a royal pain in the patootie. She browbeat her beleaguered husband with regularity and her intentions to see that their offspring, universally known as Mollygrubs to everyone but her (she insisted on calling him by his real, ill-chosen name, W. McGillacuddy Messer) was “raised right.” Never mind the desires of her teenage son or wishes of her brow-beaten spouse, she devoted endless hours of scheming and dreaming to see that Mollygrubs “enjoyed” all the social privileges of a proper small town upbringing.
Given her background and machinations, it was therefore a source of sheer amazement when, during a stretch of balmy weather in mid-May, she expressed a desire to go bream fishing with her long-suffering husband and beleaguered son. Although she gave no indication regarding the background of this highly unusual request, subsequent information suggested it likely came from the fact that two affluent members of her bridge club had recently indicated plans to join their husbands for a weekend of fly fishing for trout at their exclusive club along a carefully managed trout stream. The Messers had neither the money nor the connections for high-dollar fly fishing on exclusive water, but it did so happen that the male Messers had received an invitation to fish to their heart’s delight at a sprawling, bream-filled pond owned by a neighbor. “Caring Karen,” ever the schemer, thought that participation might enable her to recount her piscatorial pursuits when her fellow bridge club members broached the subject at the groups next gathering.
This pond the male Messers had been invited to fish was well known for holding a plentitude of what menfolks called “titty bream.” In other words, when you caught one of these princes of the panfish world, it was likely to be so large it was necessary to hold it against one’s chest in order to remove the hook and slip it on a stringer. Of course “Caring Karen” knew nothing of this bit of crude “tell the story” language, much less the fact that a dandy day after bream could be rather messy. Certainly anyone who dared use the expression “titty bream” in her presence would have risked a harridan’s wrath worthy of a division of demons. What she did know was that going fishing seemed at the moment to be the “in” thing to do in what she considered the ranks of high society. Accordingly, she forthwith informed her husband and son of her intentions to join them come Saturday.
They were predictably dismayed, but in the Messer family there was no doubt who ruled the roost. “Caring Karen” stating that she wanted to go bream fishing translated to the fact that, never mind their plans to escape feminine wiles and nosy intrusion into what they thought one of the few remaining bastions of male refuge, she was going to spoil a trip Mollygrubs and his sire had been anticipating ever since they first secured the invitation to deal with bedding bream. There was nothing to do but let “Caring Karen” join the fishing party and silently curse whatever minions of Beelzebub had seen fit to visit this female plague on such a promising outing.
Thus it was when the Messer trio arrived at the friend’s pond and prepared to board an ancient but serviceable jon boat. Mr. Messer had even been thoughtful enough to bring along one of those fold-up stadium seat supports that could be fitted to the worn planks of their fishing boat. It had been specially retrofitted so that “Caring Karen” could park her more than ample posterior in the seat (more than once Mollygrubs had been teased that his mother measured two axe handles wide in that portion of her anatomy). It provided some measure of balance, and meant she could enjoy a modicum of comfort without literally rocking the boat. Although there was a touch-and-go moment of boarding when her heft tilted the sturdy little craft dangerously to one side, some quick counterbalancing by her son averted potential disaster.
The trio, now settle in their craft, which was equipped with a small but perfectly serviceable trolling motor, then eased off towards an area among some buck bushes lining a nearby shoreline. There muddied water and regular disturbances of the pond’s surface indicated an active bream bed. Moreover, a tell-tale aroma drifting on the humid May air suggested that this was but one of numerous beds where hefty bream were busy with the annual business of procreation.
As the Messers adjusted to a broadside position ideal for wielding their long cane poles equipped with slip bobbers, Mollygrubs baited his mother’s rig with a cricket. She turned her head at the moment of the cricket’s impaling, muttering something about it being cruel and unseemly, but then bravely took the cane in hand. Her son and spouse then turned their attention to their own outfits and got busy with the serious matter of boating bream. Within a few minutes, however, their unwelcome companion was expressing vocal frustration at the fact both of her boat companions had caught multiple bream–likely averaged a pound in weight and 10 inches in length–while she had caught nothing.
In truth bream had attacked her cricket with a vengeance time and again, and Mollygrubs had rebaited her hook on multiple occasions. But when Mollygrubs said “Jerk” after the third or fourth time her bobber disappeared with her only reaction being “Oh, oh,” she unleashed a harridan’s hissy fit. In the loud, assertive voice that was one of her many unpleasant characteristics, she let the long-suffering lad know in no uncertain terms that he was never, ever again do so much as hint that his mother was a jerk.
Mollygrubs wisely went mute, and after a few more fish being caught by him and his father, continuing verbal fusillades from their fishing companion convinced both they were going to have to devote all their attention to seeing that she managed to bring a bream to the boat. Meanwhile, “Caring Karen” went through crickets like Sherman had once gone through the neighboring state of Georgia, but thanks to persistent unwillingness to set the hook, nary a bream came to hand. Finally though, a comparative minnow among its brethren behemoths of the bream clan, obviously a fish begging to be removed from the gene pool, managed to hook itself.
In great excitement the distaff side of the Messer family hoisted the miniscule bream, not more than double the size of a single sizeable butterbean, into the air. In one of those accidents of nature that seem, in retrospect and as the senior Messer male would later put it, “just bound to happen,” the wee panfish wiggled loose while directly overhead. It then somehow managed to land squarely atop the loose blouse “Caring Karen” had decided was proper feminine angling attire. She screamed and twisted, and that movement was just enough for the hapless bream somehow to nestle squarely between her ample breasts. All hell forthwith broke loose. Forgetting all about the unstable nature of the craft on which she was a passenger, Mrs. Messer jumped to her feet and did the fat woman’s equivalent of a “hoochey-coochey dance” in an effort to rid herself of the hapless wiggling prisoner whose spiny little back fin was doing a painful dance atop her bosom. That action forthwith dumped everyone into the water. The three humans found themselves in a muddy bottom mess while the diminutive bream, back in its element, made its escape.
The pond beneath the Messers was only 3 or 4 feet deep, but from the nature of “Caring Karen’s” screams one would have thought that either drowning was imminent or else a great white shark had somehow made its way to a hill country pond. Eventually, somewhat after the fashion of a beached whale, she wallowed her way to the shoreline, wiping out a large bream bed along the way, and proceeded to berate her long-suffering spouse in a most dreadful fashion. She suggested it was a father-son conspiracy and that they had intentionally upended the jon boat, muttered all sorts of dire imprecations about what the immediate future held for her male fishing companions, used multiple four-letter words that would have brought the wrath of the gods down on her offspring had he dared utter them in her presence, and declared to the heavens that was the last time she’d ever go on such a fool’s adventure.
Accustomed to such verbal abuse, although this was on a scale he had never previously experienced, the bemused senior Messer turned to his son and muttered, with a sly grin in an unguarded moment, “Now that was a sho’ nuff titty bream.”
Unfortunately “Caring Karen” overheard, but she was so nonplussed all she could offer by way of a retort was “Well, I never!” After things finally approached a state of normalcy after return to the Messer household, with the domicile’s matron having showered, changed clothes, and calmed her nerves a bit with two stiff gin-and-tonics, she amplified on her previous pond-side statement. “I’m never going fishing again,” she asserted, totally missed the knowing glances between father and son indicative of a state of blessed relief. That declaration had just been given them a key to the gates of piscatorial paradise.
By early evening matters once more approached something vaguely resembling equanimity in the Messer household. Needless to say though, there were no bream fillets with slaw and hushpuppies for supper, and “Caring Karen,” after knocking down a third three-finger gin-and-tonic, didn’t even see the irony in the delivery of an anchovy-loaded pizza for the family’s dining pleasure.