By CLAY MERCER
I think God put rivers and lakes on the planet so that intelligent men could while away the hours thinking philosophical thoughts while turning a bucket full of bait into a seafood buffet.
The natural extension of which is that, since you’re saving so much money on groceries, it doesn’t hurt to spring for a cooler full of beer and some ice.
Fishponds, on the other hand, have all been made by men. Forward thinking, intelligent, industrious, and entrepreneurial men, but men just the same. An entrepreneur is someone who initiates a new commercial enterprise.
Certainly, in the Deep South, a lot of fishponds began their life-cycle as millponds. Here in the Deep South, we don’t have that many rushing rivers, so millponds have to be built in order for the falling water to produce enough kinetic energy to turn the mill wheel.
Which explains the presence of all the Southern reservoirs and hydroelectric dams. The difference is that the pioneer who built a mill pond didn’t expect any revenue other than the money he made running his mill.
Governments, on the other hand, build a reservoir and anticipate income from the sale of electricity, income from taxes on property whose value has increased, building permits for the new homes which will be built, income from the sale of fishing licenses and boat registrations, income from business licenses for businesses selling everything from night-crawlers to bass boats, income through sales tax on items sold by those businesses, and so on.
Farmers who build ponds these days usually have irrigation in mind. That does not stop them from stocking the ponds with catfish, bass, and bream so that intelligent and frugal people will be able to convert fish bait into seafood.
All local fishermen can tell you where the good ponds are located. They also know the ponds where they are welcome to fish and which ponds they have to drive by and wonder about.
In 2008, I ran for county commissioner for Dooly County’s second district. My opponent in the primary was Mr. James Ray Irwin from Unadilla, who owns a fish pond. A surprising number of my constituents turned out to be fishermen and I lost by a landslide.
There’s my proof that fishponds have as many advantages to the men who own them as power reservoirs do to the governments who build them. The difference is that governments seldom, if ever, plan on a pond draining.
A pond draining cannot be described. It’s like going to the hootchie-coo. You’ve either been to one, or you haven’t. If you haven’t, I doubt that you will ever get to go to a pond draining, because, like the hootchie-coo, pond drainings are a thing of the past.
Reading about a pond draining today would be about as exciting as hearing grandpa talk about listening to the radio, or spending all day at the movies for a quarter, or that old faithful recitation about how far we had to walk to get to school everyday.
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a pond of my own. It’s not that big, and it will never have a lot of fish in it, and I doubt very many people will want to fish in it. But I’ve been building it for a very important reason.
I want to go to at least one more pond draining before I die.
