BY LARRY DABLEMONT | July 9, 2025

The deep dark waters of the bell rock eddy awaited us as an afternoon storm warned us away.

Squire Lee was an old country gentleman who lived on a sloping hillside above the river. His home was not far from the little cabin where my dad spent much of his childhood. In the river below his old two-story home was a deep eddy with a giant rock sticking out of it. Dad and I always had permission to drive through Mr. Lee’s land to fish there. Some 20-to-40-pound flathead catfish had been taken from the river around the big rock.

In May of 1964 I had turned 16 years old and could drive my dad’s old 1950 pickup. So, one Saturday in May of ’64 I, and brothers Tom and Roy Wayne Morton, cooked up a trotlining trip. We had a canvas tarpaulin that would cover the rack on the pickup and I found an old mattress in Grandpa McNew’s barn. We could sleep periodically in the bed of the truck while running trotlines during the night. So, we put the mattress in first, then the johnboat, and then loaded gear and groceries and headed for the river to yank out some of those flathead catfish.