As Mollygrubs moved into his mid-teenage years amidst a seemingly never-ending series of snafus and strokes of bad luck, through dogged determination on his part and patient tutelage from his father, he nonetheless somehow managed to develop modest skills as a sportsman. His meddlesome mother, “Caring” Karen Messer could turn a minor matter into a major mess most any time. However, a father who was an easygoing guy and decent sportsman did what he could to counteract her overbearing influence.
As a result, despite his mother’s often irritating and invariably invasive actions, in certain areas of sporting endeavor young Mollygrubs managed to progress to reasonable levels of proficiency. Prominent among these was fly fishing for trout. He lived in an area of the Southern Appalachians blessed with hundreds of miles of wild trout water, a comparable amount of stocked streams, and a number of national-class tailwaters. It was on one of the latter, North Carolina’s lower Nantahala River, that he had a memorable misadventure.
For once, Mollygrubs wasn’t exactly a study in ineptitude mixed with woeful misfortune and unwelcome intrusion from his mother. Instead, he found himself in a situation where a well-meaning attempt to take on the role of a prince among adolescents and protector of the fairer sex ended with him it literal retreat from an irrationally irate woman.
As anyone familiar with the Nantahala knows, it is a nationally acclaimed destination for kayakers, a popular spot among those accomplished in whitewater canoeing, and a major attraction for rafting. Its chilly waters, a tailrace coming from a lake upstream, draw hundreds of thousands of folks enjoying these recreational watercraft every year. They are also, thanks to being home to a thriving population of rainbow and brown trout, waters of great angling appeal. When “river riding” first began, there was considerable anger on the part of local anglers, but in time they adjusted and came to realize that the constant “hatch” of rafts, kayaks, and canoes had no impact whatsoever on the fishing. As long as the fisherman stuck close to shore, and the river’s powerful flow pretty much necessitated that approach, they could cast with a will. Admittedly, the aesthetics weren’t exactly idyllic and constant comments from those floating by added to the negative side of things. On the other hand, the opportunity to catch wild trout, often with pleasing regularity, offset much of the disruption to peaceful casting and quiet contemplation, and in time fishermen learned to turn a deaf ear to comments from those drifting downstream.
Such was the background to a magic day in May. Mollygrubs was catching trout with pleasing regularity, occasionally creeling one for his father to fry (“Caring” Karen considered preparation of wild fish or game far beneath her dignity, although she would eat grilled salmon or choice cuts of steak from grocery store shelves with obvious relish). It was just that her narrow and at times petty outlook could not accept the direct transition from nature to the family table.
As young Mollygrubs worked a backwater at the lower edge of a Class III rapid, well out of the way of bobbing rafts and bouncing canoes in the mainstream, unusual screams, different from the normal ones of excited delight offered by rafters, caused him to look upstream. He immediately spotted multiple paddles and an empty raft bearing down on him. He managed to snag one of the paddles as well as the raft, and pulled it to shore, all the while keeping an eye of one of its former occupants. She had, along with two younger female companions, fallen from the raft. The latter, both teenagers of about the same age as Mollygrubs, had managed to make their way to shore and were stumbling through the streamside vegetation trying to keep up with a tumbling, yelling piece of human flotsam washing downstream in mid-current. The woman, probably the mother of the two girls, alternated piercing cries for help with blubbering whenever she paused to catch her breath. “Blubbering” was the perfect word to describe her, because not only was she loud; she was of dimensions one might associate with a human whale.
Just as the distraught woman reached the point where Mollygrubs had been fishing, she washed up on a large boulder in mid-stream and, spotting the adolescent, began hollering at him for help. Valiantly Mollygrubs started wading towards her, certain he could make it to her perch even though the rushing stream was waist deep. Then, as he was almost within reach of her, fate and maybe a spicing of sanity seized and possibly saved Mollygrubs. Realizing that the woman would likely grab him and then both would be in real trouble, he stopped, yelled encouragement, told her how he planned to bring about a rescue, and retreated to shore.
By that time the two girls who had been the raft’s other occupants were alongside Mollygrubs. Doing his best to ignore the increasingly vituperative offerings from the woman atop a midstream boulder, even as he subconsciously filed away some of the more colorful aspects of the cussing out being sent his way for future use to impress his buddies, he told the pair of girls who had joined him (they turned out to be the woman’s daughters) his rescue plan.
It was the essence of simplicity. “We’ll pull the raft back upstream a ways,” he said, “and I’ll position it so that when you get in the current will carry it straight to the big rock even though you just have this one paddle. You can then rescue your mother.” Mollygrubs didn’t go into much detail on what to do then other than to say the stream’s flow would carry them to an eddy about 100 yards away. He indicated that they could land there and he would be waiting.
Everything worked exactly as Mollygrubs had explained it, and in his newfound role of hillbilly Samaritan he made his way downstream to where, as predicted, the raft drifted into shallow water and its three occupants climbed out on the shore. But instead of thanking the lad, the massive woman went berserk, charging him with clinched fist and muttering dire imprecations about what she intended to do in terms of physical harm.
Sensibly alarmed at this unexpected turn of events, Mollygrubs realized that if the female behemoth reached him serious trouble would be in the immediate offing. Accordingly, he beat a strategic retreat. His unexpected enemy, bellowing like a lost cow and breaking brush like a rampant hippo, followed in full chase mode. She would stop occasionally to catch her breath and curse him some more, but in the end she pursued Mollygrubs all the way to his truck. There he hastily stowed his fly rod, jumped in, and sped off to safer places where there were no angry Amazons.
At day’s end, after looking back on the lot of a rescuer greeted with irrational rage, Mollygrubs could take only one meaningful tidbit from the unfortunate experience. He had a much fuller understanding of the old mountain saying suggesting “No good deed goes unpunished.”