When I was a child — after the Jurassic period but not by much — we spent some summer days at my aunt and uncle’s lake cabin.
We fished, swam and skied when we weren’t sitting around playing Canasta and telling family stories.
One story I cherish is about the time Uncle Ben arrived at the cabin to find people fishing on his boathouse.
I don’t know if they were friends, family or strangers. Either the story wasn’t clear then, or my memory isn’t clear now.
I don’t recall Uncle Ben or Aunt Pearl being angry about trespassing. Rather, Aunt Pearl took on a mischievous grin because, I think, she really enjoyed telling the story.
So Uncle Ben was down at the boathouse with the fishermen, and he said something like, “How’s it going?”
“Not great,” they responded.
“Ain’t catching anything?” Uncle Ben said.
“Not a nibble.”
“You’re probably not holding your mouth right,” Uncle Ben said.
He preceded to cast out his line and, moments later, caught a whopper of a fish.
“That’s how you do it,” he said or words to that effect.
Now, was it a whopper? It doesn’t matter. The bigger the fish, the better the story, but I keep imagining Aunt Pearl wearing her grin and holding her arms a respectable distance apart. So let’s trust her in this. What could it hurt?
Being a kid at the time, I was impressed and had no doubts about the veracity of the story. But I had a question.
“How did you hold your mouth, Uncle Ben?” I said or words to that effect.
He mimed picking up a rod, throwing some line out and then reeling it in. The whole time, his mouth was open as though he were trying to figure out if something was funny or not. Maybe he was trying not to laugh.
It didn’t seem like a magical way to hold one’s mouth. You can bet I tried it during my stay at the lake house, but I didn’t have much luck except for a few small bream I enticed onto my line. I caught nothing worthy of the length Aunt Pearl had held her hands apart, I can tell you that for sure.
I think about that summer because I tend to get nostalgic for day’s gone by. The skiing was glorious so was paddling around the lake in a blow-up boat.
There also was the time I went with Aunt Pearl and Uncle Ben to bait the trotline, and we discovered a massive catfish had hooked itself without the need for any bait.
Uncle Ben didn’t have a net to scoop up the fish, so he wrestled it into the boat barehanded. That’s also a nostalgia story, a look back at the past because it’s good to remember good people.
But I’ve been continuously fascinated with the idea of “holding your mouth right.” What impact could it have on everyday life?
I used the phrase with some friends, and they said it was distinctly Southern. Maybe they’re right, but it feels like something everybody should know.
I don’t think reeling in that whopper of a fish at the boathouse was a magical event. It’s pure and simple: Uncle Ben got lucky.
But he was willing to play around with the universe that day, and because he held his mouth right, he and the rest of us were rewarded with a magical story. May we all be so lucky now and again.
M. Scott Morris is a former editor of The South Alabamian. He’s a writer and editor living in Tupelo, Mississippi.
