Memories: Dad and the Orange Fish-Shaped Fishing Pole

Many years ago, before there were shopping malls, the big stores were downtown. Woolworth's and The Boston Store and Halle's and more that few remember, and others you wouldn't know because they never left Erie, unless you're from Erie, and even then you may not remember. I went in Woolworth's a lot while waiting for my bus home from school. There wasn't much there by that time, it was essentially a large Rite Aid as I recall, but it still had a soda fountain.

On the west side of upper Sate Street[1] as you descend to the dock (now called Dobbins Landing[2]), in the window of small hardware or sporting goods store, were a couple plastic orange fishing poles. The handles were shaped like fish and the poles were very short, perhaps 18 inches. During a very rare family outing together downtown, brother Tom and I spied them and immediately asked for them. We were very little, perhaps only 5 or 6 years old.

Mom and Dad didn't buy them for us right then, but Dad did go back later and got them for us. Now, in those days, Mom and Dad didn't have two pennies to rub together that weren't accounted for. They had no vices, we ate frugally, and they both worked like dogs to support us. But they found some money for those fishing poles.

Not long after, my Grandpa Grandy (LaVerne E Grandy, Mom's dad) offered to take me and Tom fishing. I immediately went and got my new plastic fish-shaped fishing pole and proudly said I was ready. Grandpa Grandy said that was very nice, but I'd probably want to use a bigger pole, and he had one for me.

I never did fish with that plastic fish-shaped fishing pole. Mom and Dad may have wondered why they spent their money on them, but that money bought more than fishing poles, it bought one of my most vivid memories of earliest childhood, and also an adult's humbling realization that two people spent what little they had on a couple toys and a few smiles.

It wasn't about using them. It was about receiving them.

This is my dad in 1948, 9 years old. He made this for his mother for Christmas. It's a 1949 calendar.

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This is Dobbins Landing, formerly known as the Erie Dock, in Erie, PA.

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This is view down (or up) State Street that I took from the top of the tower at Dobbins Landing.

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[1]
I was always confused about what "upper State" and "lower State" meant. I still am. I think "upper" means toward Presque Isle Bay, as street numbers get smaller, and lower means away from the bay, as street numbers get higher. However, State Street slopes down to the bay, so "lower" in my mind has always meant "toward the bottom," ie, as you approach the bay. I'll assume that I have always been wrong about this and that "upper" means toward the bay, north, small street numbers, etc. However, if I'm walking "up" State Street, I'm definitely walking uphill, away from the bay, I think.

It also took years for me to understand what "mild" meant in regard to the weather. It was always used to describe a cold day, so as a child I associated it with cold, but in reality, it meant that the cold day was unusually warm for the time of year. So even though my little brain was thinking "this is a cold day," the adults were saying "this isn't as cold as you might expect for this time of year." It was mild.

[2]
The dock at that time, and still to some extent today, was popular with fishermen. As nice as Dobbins Landing is, it was built after I left Erie for college, so to me it will always just be "the dock," a place my parents and grandparents took us, the berth of Little Toot and a couple tug boats, a concrete runway dotted with hunched fishermen who were probably out of work and catching their dinner, and a little shop under the stairs that sold hot dogs and stuffed animals and cotton candy. It turned into a teen hangout eventually that had to be patrolled by police on weekends, but by that time I was a teenager and the dock was no longer held the same fascination. Eventually it fell out of fashion with teenagers and was returned to parents and fishermen.