Jimmy Carter’s Boyhood Fishing Memories (Jimmy Carter, December 29, 2024, Garden & Gun)
About once a year my daddy took me on a fishing trip to a more distant place, usually farther south in Georgia. We made a couple of such visits to the Okefenokee Swamp in the southeastern corner of our state, near the Florida line and not far from the Atlantic Ocean but cut off from the east coast by sand hills. The swamp is a shallow dish of six hundred square miles of water and thousands of islands, mostly of floating peat, on which thick stands of cypress and other trees grow. These peat islands are the “trembling earth” from which the area got its Indian name. Stained with tannin, the water has a reddish-brown color, but was considered by all the fishermen to be pure enough to drink.
We stayed at the only fish camp around the western edge of the swamp, owned by a man named Lem Griffis. His simple pineboard bunkhouses, with screens instead of windowpanes, could accommodate about twenty guests. As we sat around an open fire at night, Lem was always eager to regale us with wild tales about the biggest bear, the prettiest woman, or a catch of so many fish they had to haul in water to fill up the hole left in the lake. His stories were honed by repetition so that the buildup and punch line equaled those of any professional entertainer. We listened and laughed for hours even when we were hearing the same yarn for the second or third time. His regular guests would urge, “Tell us about the city lady who thought her son might drown.”
Lem would wait awhile until enough others joined in the request, and then describe in vivid and heart-rending tones the anguish of a mother who was afraid to let her only child near the swamp. “I finally said, ‘Ma’am, I can guarantee you the boy won’t drown. I’ve been here all my life and never heerd of anybody drowning in this here swamp.’ The lady was quite relieved. There was always a long pause, until Lem finally added, “The gators always get them first.”