A True Fish Story

I’ve often spun a fishin’ yarn which wuzzn’t swallered down

By any uv the other chaps who loaf around the town;

They allus seem to doubt my word, when I’m known ev’rywhere,

In tellin’ uv the fish I’ve ketched, ez bein’ fair an’ square.

Now I’ll admit some takes I’ve told hev seemed a little strong,

An’ folks hev sometimes thought perhaps the weights an’ measures wrong;

But I hev got a story here that’s absolutely true,

An’ I could prove it if I had the fish to show to you.

One day I went way up the Crick to reach the other side

An’ where I stopped to get acrost warn’t more than eight feet wide;

There warn’t no bridge or boat in sight but by and by I found

A log which went from shore to shore, nigh thirty inches round.

I took my pole to balance with an’ stepped upon the thing

An’ got about half way acrost when somethin’ slipped, I jing!

The log went out from under me an’ I went in the crick

As neat as anything alive an’ forty times as quick.

An’ now the strangest part of all – that log got free, an’ say,

It jumped from out the Crick a foot an’ throwed the mud an’ spray

All over me an’ everywhere, an’ with a mighty sweep

It started like a lightning bolt down where the Crick was deep.

That log was just a pickerel who’d tried to turn around,

An’ as the crick warn’t wide enough he’d gone an’ run aground.

Now, as I said, this story’s true, an’ I could prove it too,

Ef only I had ketched that fish an’ brought it home to you.

July 20, ‘07