My parents belonged to a club on the Chickahominy River when I was born, and continued this membership until they were the only ones left. I was about htirty years old then and just married. Actually, the arrangement was, most of my life, just an informal family agreement to share the expenses of the place, but since it was vacant most of the time it was the same as if it had been completely private. There were not many members of my family and they could all use the place at will.

The Chickahominy River is a beautiful river which has its source north of Richmond and evantually flows into the James River near Williamsburg. The river is unique in many ways. Because of the terrain it is tidal for much of its length yet is fresh water. Actually, before 1942 even more of it was tidayl, but that year the government built a dam at Walkers leaving us about five miles above it. The river changed in many ways then but also stayed the same in others. It looked about the same except it appeared to have a permanent high tide that was somewhat higher than average. The fishing also changed, especially for the commercial fishermen. Our place was on a long stretch of sandy beach with an ideal slope for commerce. In fact in years gone by the area was quite active. In the late Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries sailing vessels came into that area to pick up logs from the then virgin forests. Right by our wharf, in fact, were many huge logs on the bottom that remained for some reason from those days. The stretch of beach where we were located was Bradby's Landing, named after the Bradby family who were Native Americans. 

Many of them still lived there while I was growing up, and my family was quite friendly with them. There were several boys my age that I used to explore the river and woods with in those days. The Bradby's were commercial fishermen and boat builders. They fished for shad and herring, which together provided about htree months of action in the spring. The shad were first, and they were fishe dwith a haul-seine. One end of the seine, which must have been about 100 yards long, was held firmly on the beach and the other end was tied to a boat which was then rowed in such a way as to describe a large circle. It is hard to say from memory but the net must have been about six or seven feet deep. When the circul was complete, the net was hauled onto the beach loaded with shad.

The dam ended the shad fishing since the fish could not come upstream to spawn, so my memories of those days are faded at best. This kind of fishing was done at night, and i can remember the trucks there to take the fish to market, the busy cleaning tables processing the fish for roe and salting some down. I remember the lights, there was no electricity at all on that peninsula so all lights were kerosene. I remember well the lanterns in the boats getting further away only to return eventually to the breah to unload. I remember all the hustle and bustle, but I remember best the fresh shad roe the next morning for breakfast. Mr. Bradby gave us all the fish and roe we wanted, but the shad is a big fish, so one fish and two or three sets of roe were usually enough. But, as I said, all this ended with the dam. the amazing thing, however, is that when they started leaving the locks open the herring kept right on ocming. Shad would not come throught the dam but herring would. My father and his brother-in-law bought gill nets together and some of my most vivid and pleasant memories of the Chickahominy are of those long spring nights working the nets for herring. 

Indeed, those yars on the Chickahominy were idyllic. I would spend days exploring the river, creeks and coves in a boat made by Mr. Bradby, always faithfully pushed by our old LT-10 Johnson which was five horsepower. I want to say more abou that motor later since, and I am sure there are many taht would find this impossible to believe, but it played an important part in my life. The boat and motor combination that I used was capable of maybe 10 mpg with only myslef aboard, so it took time to get places, but I had plenty of that. As soon as I became old enough, until inot my twwenties, I also hunted. We had for our use about three thousand acres of land to hunt, and I do not recall ever seeing another hunter. In fact, there were times when I was exploring on th eriver that I would go for miles and miles and never see another boat. Since I had no brothers or sisters and had a friend down only rarely, I suppose many would find this life for a child, teenager and young man to be terribly lonely. If someone should believe that then they are off on the wrong foot as far as understanding my life is concerned. This is one the aspects, in fact, that made my childhood different, as I mentioned earlier. Roaming the woods, fields and river was anything but lonely to me, and exploring the river always included my trusty LT-10 shich was doing other things to me that I did not understand at the time, but I did know that I enjoyed them. Not many people would understand the way some people relate to machines. 

Until my teens the hunting and fishing occupied most of my efforts and thoughts. I was an expert paddler and spent many, many hours paddling to spots to fish that I did not want to use th emotors. I did a lot of fly casting and that required paddling near the shore line and parallel to it while I casted. this required, many times, that I paddle with one hand and cast twith the other. The game fish were what we called redthroats and yellow bellies which were small and were caught on worms or fly casting. There were pike which went up to about hree or four pounds and they were cuaght either with artificial bait such as a Daredevil or live minnows. Silver perch supplied probably more fun thatn all the rest togehter. The