Llewellyn Berry
Fishing at Haines Point
Posted on February 7, 2011by Llewellyn Berry
In one of the many shoeboxes of family photographs that traveled from closet to closet to crate to crate and now sit quietly stored at my grandmother’s house where my cousin tends to the estate, lies a small black and white photograph of me. I am wearing a Washington Senator’s baseball cap, a YMCA Summer Day Camp tee shirt, khaki shorts, high top Keds and I’m holding a fishing rod. On the end of the fishing line is a fish that seems to flapping, wriggling and such. I think I might have been eight or nine. I am with my mom and dad, cousin, uncle and aunt. We are at Haines Point and we are fishing. I am learning to fish and I am digging it. I mean I am really into it. I can bait my own hook with a fat, juicy bloodworm from the little white cup we got from the bait shop. I know how to cast my line. I can take the fish off the hook after I catch it and yes, I can reel that “sucka” in with the best of ‘em.
Later in life, when I was a little older, my dad and I would go fishing in the ocean off the shore in New Jersey. Much later in life, one of my fondest things to do was to sit on the rocks in the Shenandoah River fishing for Bass. All of that started way back when I was a kid with my folks at Haines Point fishing with my little rod from the dime store…yet another “kit”.
Fishing at Haines Point was a summer ritual for my family. Mom would make sandwiches and a family-size thermos of ice tea (with a dash of grape juice), deviled eggs, and potato salad. That was great and we did it several times during the summer months.
Driving along Haines Point years later looking for photographs to make, I got out and walked. I came upon men and youngsters doing just what my family did. They were fishing at Haines Point. Of all the scenes I saw, this one I liked best of a single older man having caught a fish, he removed the hook and set the fish free. He had enough for the day and although you don’t see that in the picture, for me it is the silhouette makes the photograph.
I made this photograph which is backlit, about 11:00 in the morning (you can see where the sun is) and for me it freezes a moment in time…in my time when life was just about a sandwich, a deviled egg a cup of ice tea and a fish flapping on the end of a hook…on a Sunday with my family.
Fishing at Haines Point
Washington, DC
1975