Uncle Ernest’s Ride —a Catfish Tale

Uncle Ernest’s Ride —a Catfish Tale

The Harriott Hotel (Bayard House), site of Chesapeake City’s famous Hole in the Wall Bar

View from atop the Chesapeake City Lift Bridge, looking south. Note: George Street and Rio Theater building at bottom left, circa 1941

         I had the surprise of my 8-year-old life when I heard that my Uncle Ernest was swallowed by a catfish. The bugger gulped him down just below our lift bridge, right in our own canal. He told me about it one July afternoon that would have been so boring had he not been there swinging with me on our front porch. He was from Wilmington, Delaware, a true city boy, and studied the Delaware Park racing forms with the intensity of a PhD candidate.       He was “between jobs” and stayed with us till fall, occupying the couch next to the south window. The couch, however, got little use because Uncle Ernest almost always got back at dawn and chose to recline upon the wooden lawn chair beneath our huge shade tree, languishing there until noon, when the cattle flies chased him inside.  He was supposed to have been helping with the farming that summer in 1941. He talked about it but somehow was too busy scouting out the Chesapeake City area beer gardens and becoming buddies with the regular customers and proprietors of those numerous establishments.

          On that afternoon he was in high spirits and rattled and swirled the ice cubes in his glass as he told me what happened when that fish took him prisoner. His favorite hangout was Bill Harriott’s Hole-in-the-Wall bar (now the Bayard House), where he told Birdie the Bartender that he decided to jump off yon lift bridge just for the fun of it. And, sure enough, five minutes after he left Birdie saw him at the top of the span, ready to leap. Busy with customers, Birdie didn’t see him jump, and when he looked back Uncle Ernest was not in sight. What happened next only Uncle Ernest knew and, as we glided softly back and forth on that humid July afternoon so many years ago, he let me in on it.

          “That’s right, Moose-the-Goose,” he began, “I’d always had an urge to jump off that bridge, so I did. I’ll admit that I was scared up there, but I took off all my clothes except my fatigue shorts, tip-toed to the edge, held my nose, and jumped. I hit the water straight and went down deep. Then an amazing thing happened. I saw a hideous creature about two feet from my head. I had never seen anything that ugly, not even in Cecil County. It was the wide-open mouth of a Chesapeake Bay catfish. My guess is that it was about 12 feet long. I just picked up the sight of its whiskers and the large dorsal fin before it gulped me down. That was all I saw because I blacked out and when I woke up I was inside his belly, where it was slimy and black as a coal bin. What a feeling! I listened in horror to the deep gurgling of his digestive system. Then his tail started undulating forcefully so I knew he was swimming somewhere fast.

          “Enjoying the ride, I cooled my heels for a while and then started puffing several cigars that I had stored in a plastic bag in my pocket. When I flicked on my lighter I saw some sardines sloshing around at my feet. I hesitate to tell you this but I ate a couple; I was so hungry. After that I smoked the cigars down to a 1-inch butt and ground each red-hot tip into the monster’s tonsils. Well, with the last one he began coughing and then sneezed me out to the surface. My boy, I was treading water in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, next to the USS Constellation. Do you believe that that catty took me about 50 miles under water? In no time I climbed out of that polluted water and swaggered down Pratt Street, where I befriended Ed, a little guy who bragged that he was a poet and planned to write a great poem entitled ‘The Crow.’ He said it would be about a big black bird that flew into his house at midnight. Sure, I knew he was goofy but I liked him anyway. We took a walk through the city and eventually came upon a baseball field next to a beer garden.

          “As we strolled past a kid yelled, ‘Hey, youse guys! Come the hail over here, will ya?’ When we looked over we saw a guy standing by a wire backstop with a baseball in his right hand and a bat in his left. When we walked onto the diamond we saw a husky boy wearing a funny-looking cap and knickers. He was young, about 14 or 15, with a broad, flat nose and thick lips. As we walked up to him I could see that he had a determined look in his eyes. Playfully bouncing the ball off his bicep, he said, ‘Do you wanna have some fun?’ When Ed and I nodded he grinned and said, ‘All right then, you pitch to me Bud, and you Shorty,’ patting Ed on the shoulder, ‘run out into right field and shag the flies.’ Well, goofy Ed scampered out about 300 feet and I climbed the mound with a bucket of balls. Luckily, I had a good arm then, sometimes firing that apple over 90 miles an hour.

          “But do you know, that kid busted those balls way beyond right field into the bushes, causing Ed all kinds of trouble trying to find them. I’ve never seen anybody hit a ball that far! When we finished I shook the kid’s hand and told him to get on an organized team somewhere. He grinned and bragged that some scout from Boston was supposed to talk to his dad, who owned the bar next door, about signing him to a contract. He said his name was George and I told him that with a bat like that he should be able to make a little money with a pro team. But, I suspect,” Uncle Ernest said, finishing his story, “that he just stayed and took over his father’s liquor business.”

          “After that though,” he continued, “the big city lost its charm, especially since my cash flow had stagnated, so I went on down to the Light Street dock and slipped into the cargo hold of the Lord Baltimore steamer. I knew from the posted schedule that she was headed for points east, which meant good old Chesapeake City. And when she sailed under the bridge and pulled in at Rees’ Wharf, I snuck off, got astride shank’s mare and lumbered on back here to my kinfolks.” With that, Uncle Ernest slid off the swing and went inside to prepare for a night of partying. And I remember thinking at the time that maybe he was stretching the truth a bit with that fish story, but I thought, “nahh, he’d never want to trick his little nephew about a thing like that.”

          And so, as time passed, Uncle Ernest continued to have pressing matters to attend to besides helping on the farm, and it hurts me to tell you that later that summer an incredibly sad thing happened: Uncle Ernest fantasized that he was a hyena. That’s right, and we were all worried about him because he would run around the farm on all fours, barking and howling. He would come to the window at night when we were all listening to the radio, and look in with his tongue hanging out with a big, idiotic grin on his face, and jump up and down over and over again. In the daytime he'd chase the settin' hens all around the farm, and sometimes he'd climb into the pig pen and howl at the startled hogs. And, sympathetic reader, you must know that those were extremely difficult times—depression times, in fact. Nobody had any money so we couldn't afford to send him to a doctor. And besides . . . we needed the laughs.