An unusual artifact of my family’s past has come into my possession. It's an elaborate decorative belt buckle engraved with the name of my grandfather.
Also engraved on it is a detailed scene with a huge trout leaping in the foreground, and on the far shore a fisherman whose line is looping through the air into the mouth of the fish. Across the top are the words “Idaho Trout Champion” and above my grandfather’s name the year 1948.
This trout was part of the lore of my family. It was very much the champion trout, a 29-inch, 11-pound rainbow that he caught on a fly he had tied and that stores later sold. This belt buckle got me thinking about how customs and traditions are transformed through the generations.
For my grandfather, fishing was part of being a rural 19th century person. He was born in 1884, grew up on a farm in Maryland, and later worked for the Forest Service in the wilderness of Idaho. Hunting and fishing were part of living, as my father learned when he was growing up.
My father, in turn, passed these traditions on to us. I remember the first bamboo rod they got for me from a drug store in Boise. I also learned to tie my own flies with fingers that were all too clumsy for it.
My father was not quite the fisherman that his father was, but my brother made sure I knew that our father was a more accurate caster. My father was not a country person like my grandfather. He loved the outdoors and took us into the mountains, but he was a business man whose work life happened in the city.
Fishing was a big deal for me as a kid, but I lived half an hour from San Francisco, and there were other things to think about, too. This is how the imperatives of the country ways change as the generations pass.
My sons, having grown up in Vermont, fish more often than I do, and are better fishermen than I. Some of their friends have knowledge of the rivers that probably comes close to that of my grandfather. But the world changes. Those old photos showing my grandfather out there in the Sawtooth Mountains, holding a mess of fish with one hand and the reins of his horse with the other reveal another place and time. We practice the old traditions as they fit into our new ways of life.
Last year my son called and said, “Hey, Dad, wanna go fishing?” Of course, I said yes. We didn’t catch anything, but it was a beautiful morning, and I knew my grandfather, and my father, would approve.
