2010 Fishin With Bobby Whitehead
- last year
Written by Mark Fielding Darden July 4, 2010 while at Morehead City NC with Milton Gore.
This song was written for the two best fishing pals a kid could ever have. Robert Vernon Whitehead and Steven Wayne Nellis. We all grew up in the Panama Canal Zone and fished along the banks of the canal, and later in the ocean when we got old enough... like around twelve.
Bobby and I went out about a mile one windy January afternoon in my little tiny 12-foot aluminum boat with a 6 horsepower Johnson and caught mackerels that were schooling in the bay until we ran out of lures. So we ripped our underwear into strips and hung them on the hooks we had left and kept on catching fish.
Bobby and Steve are gone now, but the memories of fishing the La Boca shoreline in Panama will never leave me. All you needed was a fishing pole and a buck. You could buy a whole bag of large shrimp for bait for only 25 cents at the Balboa Yacht Club. Then get a cheese burger and fries with the 75 cents still jingling in your pocket. And we always took fish home to our mothers...
While walking the rocks from La Boca to the yacht club, we'd pull black iguanas out of the boulders and throw them down to the beach, then chase them around with our machetes. They always got away and we'd chase them again going back home.
Life was good in those days. Life was very good in those days. Here's to you, Bobby and Steve !!! I think I'll have a Ron Cortez and coke with a lime from the yard and think of you. You were loved... and still are.
And even more notes:
Somehow, I missed the usual school functions, dances and events. I was too busy fishing and hunting and jeeping and boating and skin diving. Panama was an adventure unto itself. Besides, I was very shy back then and fishing with my pals was easier. Girls would come later.
There is no way to express the depth of this song other than to listen to it. Both Bobby and Steve were intuitive fishermen. They knew just what to use for bait and how to wiggle it. They never wore shoes except to school and while riding motorcycles. It was all I could do just to keep up with them. Of course, if they were alive today, they would probably say the same about me. We were something, but I wore shoes...
Mfd: guitar, vocals, song, video (2020)
Bill McDonald recorded my guitar at his studio in Ashville NC
Finished at Blue Creek Valley Farm studio in 2010, Oxford NC
This song was written for the two best fishing pals a kid could ever have. Robert Vernon Whitehead and Steven Wayne Nellis. We all grew up in the Panama Canal Zone and fished along the banks of the canal, and later in the ocean when we got old enough... like around twelve.
Bobby and I went out about a mile one windy January afternoon in my little tiny 12-foot aluminum boat with a 6 horsepower Johnson and caught mackerels that were schooling in the bay until we ran out of lures. So we ripped our underwear into strips and hung them on the hooks we had left and kept on catching fish.
Bobby and Steve are gone now, but the memories of fishing the La Boca shoreline in Panama will never leave me. All you needed was a fishing pole and a buck. You could buy a whole bag of large shrimp for bait for only 25 cents at the Balboa Yacht Club. Then get a cheese burger and fries with the 75 cents still jingling in your pocket. And we always took fish home to our mothers...
While walking the rocks from La Boca to the yacht club, we'd pull black iguanas out of the boulders and throw them down to the beach, then chase them around with our machetes. They always got away and we'd chase them again going back home.
Life was good in those days. Life was very good in those days. Here's to you, Bobby and Steve !!! I think I'll have a Ron Cortez and coke with a lime from the yard and think of you. You were loved... and still are.
And even more notes:
Somehow, I missed the usual school functions, dances and events. I was too busy fishing and hunting and jeeping and boating and skin diving. Panama was an adventure unto itself. Besides, I was very shy back then and fishing with my pals was easier. Girls would come later.
There is no way to express the depth of this song other than to listen to it. Both Bobby and Steve were intuitive fishermen. They knew just what to use for bait and how to wiggle it. They never wore shoes except to school and while riding motorcycles. It was all I could do just to keep up with them. Of course, if they were alive today, they would probably say the same about me. We were something, but I wore shoes...
Mfd: guitar, vocals, song, video (2020)
Bill McDonald recorded my guitar at his studio in Ashville NC
Finished at Blue Creek Valley Farm studio in 2010, Oxford NC