My friend Mark Fratesi runs a country store in the Mississippi Delta. He’s a pleasant, unassuming businessman, faithful husband and loving father. He’s also a world-class practical joker.
As soon as spring escapes winter’s cold, damp dungeon, two activities become the focus of attention among patrons of Mark’s store: planting cotton and fishing.
Being a practical man, Mark capitalizes on both. He grows cotton and sells bait. Catfish catchers can buy chicken livers, gizzards and Uncle Bert’s Blood Bait; for bass anglers, there’s plastic worms and marinated pork rinds; for bream fishers, night crawlers and crickets. Everyone buys bait at Mark’s store, even Grady, his grouchiest, surliest customer.
None of us ever figured out how Grady survived. Having neither family nor friends, he hunted until it warmed up enough to fish, and fished until it cooled off enough to hunt. In spring, when bream spawn and bite their best, he stopped at Mark’s store to buy crickets, cold beer and sandwiches before heading to the lake.
Without fail, he sneeringly asked, “You make these sandwiches three days ago, or four?”
Although Mark prepared them fresh daily, he always parried the insult by answering, “Can’t remember.” We knew Mark was biding his time and would someday even the score with the cantankerous old coot.
One morning Mark and I were cleaning a mess of Chinquapins, the largest of all bream, when Grady pulled up.
“I’ll swunnee! Where’d y’all catch them monsters? Whud they hit?”
Mark winked at me … the luminous gleam in his eyes signaling revenge time had come.
“Caught ’em at Percy Blue Hole,” Mark replied. “They’re bedding around cypress knees. Woulda caught more, but run out of crickets.”
“How could you run out? You got a cage full right here at your own store,” he snorted.
Gutting a trophy, Mark continued, “We learned something about Chinquapins today … they prefer female crickets.”
Grady stared, wanting to believe Mark, but suspicious, his gaping, grizzled jaw inaudibly mouthing … female crickets….
Suddenly he shouted, “Shoot! Sell me some female crickets — I gotta git to Percy rat now!”
“Can’t. Used ’em up,” Mark sighed. “But, best I can tell, the only difference in females and males is the stripe down the female’s back. I’ve got plenty males. Just draw a stripe on their backs with a magic marker before you put them on the hook. The Chinquapins won’t know the difference.”
Three words describe Grady’s gullibility: hook, line, sinker. Mark filled Grady’s bait box with “male” crickets, and off he roared, not even buying sandwiches.
Hosing fish scales off the cleaning table, Mark asked, “You still got that zoom lens camera? We need to make a run to the blue hole.”
When you stop at Mark’s to enjoy one of his delicious, freshly-made sandwiches, take a look at his photograph of Grady trying to paint a stripe on a wiggling cricket’s back, and get him to tell you how he suckered the old reprobate into believing female crickets catch more fish.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
