Anglers lined up at Fishing Bridge, 1962. A popular pastime on
the bridge from 1902 until fishing was prohibited in 1973.
I came across this image online of Yellowstone Park’s, famous “Fishing Bridge.” This picture was taken a few years before my memory, and thus was not taken by anyone I know. However it reminded me of a childhood memory I thought I would share. My family were homesteaders back in the late 1800’s in Montana, and Yellowstone park was a place they spent many a summer exploring. My grandparents are even on record as discovering some hot springs, mud pots and small geysers tourists the world over love to visit today.
My grandfather was a carpenter by trade, and he helped refurbish and expand Old Faithful Inn back in the 1919 and again in 1927. As a carpenter he had to be gone from home for up to a Month at a time as he traveled to wherever he could get work. He was born in 1895 and passed away in 1986. As you travel around Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, you will come across many historical structures that still exist that men like my grandfather helped build.
I have said before I am the youngest of 8 children, and more time than not I was always getting someone mad at me. My mother was one of five girls Grandpa had. He had no sons, so my Mom and her sisters were all country girl tom boys who could rough it with the best of men. Well, I was raised in Duluth MN, but we would travel to Montana in the Summer at times to visit Moms family. I remember one time in the 1960s when I was 9 or 10 years old. We all went with the grandparents to Yellowstone Park.
One of the first places we went to was to fish off the famous Fishing Bridge. They made it illegal to fish off it in 1973, but back in the day everyone could fish off it. Fishing Bridge goes over a portion of the Yellowstone River as it enters Yellowstone Lake. I remember the day like it was yesterday. What I am going to tell you is probably one of the many reasons they stopped letting people fish off the bridge. Like in the picture, there was a lot of people fishing off the bridge. Poor Grandpa, if he knew what was going to happen, he never would have taken us fishing there. He especially would not have put a fishing rod in my hand. Little did he know the trouble I would cause.
After Grandpa loaded my hook with a worm, I nudged myself in between a couple of people and I got right to the railing. I looked out at the river and beyond as it meandered into the lake and flung my line with pride. I’ll tell you it was elbow to elbow people, but the way I cast that line it was if I was the only one out there. Next thing I know I felt a tug on my line. I start yelling, “I got one, I got one. Grandpa, I got one.”
Next thing I know people are yelling, cussing, and looking at me with such anger I thought I was going to be killed. I then felt a hand reaching around me from the crowd, snatching my pole right out of my hands. I yell out, “Hey, give it back that’s my fish.” Then I heard a familiar voice that was not real happy. I look up and Grandpa had this mean scowl on his face that made me feel like I wanted to slink away and just become invisible.
Grandpa was apologizing as people were yelling, and then someone grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me away from the angry crowd. I looked and it was my Mom, and all I heard was, “Clarence, what did you do?”. Now I know everyone knows me as Chuck, but my birth name is Clarence. I was named after my Grandfather Clarence Carpenter. It wasn’t until many years later I started going by Chuck. Well, that is another story I may share one day. Anyway, it seems that in my eagerness to cast my line for a fish, my cast went kind of sideways over the lines of about 15 other peoples. OH, the fish I thought I caught? Well it was actually the tension created by all those lines I got tangles up in.
I’m guessing that if you went diving under that bridge today, you will probably find mine, and everyone else’s lines all in a tangled mess down there, because the only thang Grandpa could do was have everyone cut their lines. I don’t remember much more about that Montana trip, other than the way I was accused of ruining everyone else’s fun.
Years later in 1979 when I was moving my family to California for a job, we stopped in Montana there on our way. While spending a week with my grandparents, me and Grandpa went into the Gallatin River that flows right behind his property that is on the shoreline if the Gallatin Gateway. As we walked into the water, the first thing Grandpa said to me was, “stay over there, and don’t cast my way.” I looked at him and he had this big grin on his face as he added, “You thought I forgot, didn’t you?”
It was good for my heart that while I ruined his day many years ago, that he now looked back at that time fondness. OH, the stories I could tell that he told me in his late years. Like the time when he and some friends redirected the flow of a hot spring when he was 14. Got in big trouble with the people who owned the hot springs shack. I guess he was always getting into trouble as a youngster too when he was young.
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