The Legend Of Beauregard ...

One hot, muggy afternoon Grandpa DooLittle was making his way down the dusty road out of DooLittle Hollar to meet up with Uncle Virgil Hunnicutt for their usual relaxing, albeit fierce game of checkers at the General Store ... a shiny, new pickup truck came up the road from the opposite direction, eased alongside Grandpa and ground to a halt ... in the bed of that truck was all sorts of shiny, new fishing gear: rods, reels, tackle boxes, lures, fishing vests, hip waders, lawn chairs, ice chests and other stuff ... in the cab of that truck sat what had to be a shiny, new city feller, a fishing license pinned to his shirt pocket and wearing a Panama Jack hat stuck full of fancy flys and fishing hooks ... "excuse me sir, does this road take one to the local fishing area?" he asked ... "it sure does, I reckon it'll take as many as wants to go!" quipped Grandpa, who then enquired "what kind of fish are you fishin' fer?" ... the angler proudly replied "catfish, it has been widely and commonly reported in many circles that the catfish in this general area are of legendary proportions and plenteous in number" ... to which Grandpa declared "I don't know about none of that, but we do have lots of big catfish around these parts, but only one of them big catfish is legendary ... that would be ol' Beauregard" ... only mildly interested the man said "well just because you happen to have a particularly large fish existing in these local waters is unremarkable in the overall scheme of things, I'm certain there are much larger catfish in other parts of the country!" ... Grandpa countered "oh Beauregard ain't legendary just because he's nearly big as a grown man ... Beauregard is legendary because he can talk! ... upon hearing that it dawned on the fisherman that the old man must assuredly be senile, crazy or both, and after attempting to demean Grandpa DooLittle with a sarcastic belly laugh, he waved then drove off in the direction of the fishing hole ... now just to clear things up a bit, we all know that catfish can't talk, well most of us know they can't, however, as a defense mechanism catfish often make a stridulatory sound either by forcing air through their float bladder or by rubbing the base of the pectoral spine against the pectoral girdle, kind of like what a cricket does when it chirps ... and Beauregard was known to rise to the surface of the water and "talk" to folks as they fished from the banks of the river.

The anxious fisherman finally came upon the infamous fishing hole and quickly unloaded his gear from the truck ... before he had time to even bait his hook he noticed something moving beneath the swirling water right next to the river bank causing bubbles and debris to rise to the surface ... right beneath the "NO FISHING NEAR THE RIVER BANK" sign ... must be one of them big catfish he thought! ... so he grabbed his best rod and reel, retrieved a chunk of raw chicken liver and jammed it onto a huge treble hook, let out some line and dropped all that mess right down directly into the water where all that commotion was ... no sooner had that bait sunk to the bottom than he had something hooked ... he gave the rod a jerk, set the treble hook and the fight was on ... man it was a big one! ... that feller tugged and pulled and yanked on that rod for what seemed to be an hour or more until finally the beast on the other end began to wear down and ease toward land ... all of a sudden the line went slack and up out of the water that thing came "can't you read mister? ... 'no fishing near the riverbank'! ... I know you saw me swimmin' around down there!!" ... that city feller was so scared he left all his fancy fishing equipment lying right there on the ground, jumped in his truck and left out of there like a scalded rooster on a Sunday afternoon ... thinking that a giant snapping turtle had snatched hold of him minutes earlier, Lester DooLittle stood there in the river in a state of total befuddlement as he carefully removed a freshwater Eagle Claw treble hook from the back side of his wet suit ... he had swapped two sacks of seed potatoes for that wet suit, a pair of flippers and snorkel which he had been using to dive and search for coins lying on the river bottom tossed there by passersby wishing for good luck ... Lester figured that he might have been a bit overly-harsh with that feller what hooked his wet suit considering his hasty exit ... but the legend of Beauregard lives on!


--sja