Till next time ye tadpoles
Second of two parts
IN OUR LAST episode, we had become obsessed with tracking down the mighty North American tadpole, the sushi of Middle America, distant cousin of ... well, just about everyone. Didn’t all life spring from briny pockets on the edge of the sea? More on that in a moment.
“Over here, Daddy,” the little guy says.
“Slow down,” I tell him.
“Over here!” he screams, sending several squirrels into therapy.
We’re at Lake Hollywood, a big reservoir in the heart of Los Angeles, perched on a little lip overlooking the belly of the city. A lot of people don’t even know it’s here, which is good. Mostly, the only folks you see are hillbillies and the occasional development exec out smoking a little weed.
Let me set the scene: It’s a perfect day for tad-poling, clear and a little cool, sky the color of new jeans. We are both wearing old sweatshirts and tadpole sneakers. The little guy, now 4, is carrying an empty pickle jar and a smile the size of Wisconsin. It’s bonding at its very best. Without prompting, the little guy looks up at me and says:
“Why you take me away from my family?”
“Huh?”
“Why you take me away from my family?”
Fortunately, there is no one around to hear him. The world is teeming with people ready to do the right thing -- the idiots -- and I’m sure that in more crowded conditions a dozen of them would’ve pounced on me, thinking they’d nabbed another kidnapper and the lead spot on “Dateline.”
Then I’d find myself in custody and at the mercy of my wife and three older children, a predicament I’ve been trying to avoid most of my life. They are the sort of people who can’t keep a straight face in serious circumstances, and when the time came to identify me in a police lineup they’d surely smirk and giggle the entire time.
“Hmmm, let’s see, I think that one’s my daddy,” one would say.
“No, I say that one,” another would insist.
“Officer, just tell us which of these men has the most money,” their mother would say.
They’d finally bail me out by putting a lien on the house, a sort of triple mortgage, then scold me about staying out of trouble.
I’d remind them that trouble seems to find me, for I’ve always been the sort of person who attracts moochers and mental patients. They wouldn’t get the irony of that at all, which would be the most disappointing part of the whole ordeal.
Anyway, I assure the little guy that I haven’t taken him away from his family since, technically, I’m also a member of his family, me being his dad and all. You can see the resemblance in the way our pants never seem to fit.
“You’re not joking me?” he asks.
I tell him that I would never kid a kid, it’s my policy. So off we go, looking for the biggest tadpole since Moby Dick.
Now, Lake Hollywood, as you may know, is surrounded by rusty chain-link fence, which for me just adds to the serenity. Can you imagine if they didn’t fence off the big lake? It’d be filled with jet skis and pirate ships, naughty mermaids and biker gangs washing their clothes against rocks. On one side, you’d have a homeless camp and on the other, the rich and their mega-yachts. So I’m glad they’ve fenced off Lake Hollywood. Who isn’t?
Yet, off to the side, just before you enter from the north, there’s a tiny little swamp, our Walden Pond. It is probably the smallest slice of wetlands in America, but very fertile. All sorts of stuff thrives here. I think the Muppets lived here before they got their big TV break.
I used to bring the little guy’s brother here when he was a Cub Scout. We’d bend down with pickle jars and scoop out tadpoles in all stages of tadpole development -- infancy, preadolescence, those awful teen years -- then take them proudly home to show his mother.
“What,” she’d ask, “do you want me to do with these?”
“Soup?” the boy would say, then laugh till milk shot out his nose.
Today, there’ll be no soup. We find lots of rabbit droppings and a salt lick that someone put out for deer. We find cattails and one very nice snake hole. But tadpoles? Sorry, Huck, no tadpoles.
“I think it’s too early,” I tell the little guy.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“Time for lunch,” I say.
On the way home, we stop and purchase a couple of cigars -- tobacco for him, bubble gum for me. Like most fishermen, we’re very philosophical about the whole experience. I vow to bring him back when the weather warms.
“One day, we’ll catch a tadpole, I promise.”
“We will?” he says skeptically.
Call me Ishmael.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com. For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.
