Casting into the past, Cross Creek bridges two lakes, and time.

JJ talks about the memories Lochloosa holds for him. Friday night he and his granddaddy would catch catfish, then Saturday morning they would bring in the specs and bream with canepoles and minnows. They would then tote the catch back to Grandma where she would fry the fish, make hush puppies, grits and baked beans.

Mofro is starting to hit it big ( Lochloosa made the Americana top 40) but they still perform tons of shows in Florida so JJ can visit sublime places like this. He is a frequent guest at the Yearling restaurant. JJ wrote the song Lochloosa in London while longing for his home. The slow groove is one of his most requested songs no matter where he plays: Homesick but it’s all right, Lochloosa is on my mind/I swear it’s 10,000 degrees in the shade, Lord have mercy, much lovin’/Every mosquito every rattlesnake, every canebreak, everything/Every alligator every blackwater swamp every freshwater spring, every thing/Lord, I need her and she’s goin’ away.

Cracka Break

We are chased off the water by lightning. But JJ has a friend he wants to introduce us to, Mister JT Glisson, painter and author of The Creek. We spend a few hours listening to raindrops on Mister Glisson’s porch while he gives us his account of over seven decades of local residency. He was a youngster when Marjorie Rawlings lived next door, and although she was actually an outsider, he is proud of her accounts of the place where he grew up. When considering whether to write his story in The Creek, he was hesitant. In his words, “If one grows up next door to Ernest Hemingway, he should write about the sea only after prudent consideration.”

Mister Glisson’s family largely subsisted by fishing Lakes Lochloosa and Orange and he keeps things in proper perspective. Case in point: A sinkhole drained Lake Orange several years ago. Mister Glisson tells of the local concern about water levels remaining low forever. When I ask him for details about this “natural disaster,” Mister Glisson casually states that this is the fifth time he has witnessed the lake drop like this, and although the water is now up from last year’s hurricanes, it will certainly drop again. He recounts the first time he saw the lake drop when he was a young boy. Someone asked his dad if he thought the lake would ever come up again. His dad said, “I’ve put a lot of thought into that. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s rained at the end of every dry spell so far, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to worry about this one.” That, my friends, is cracker philosophy in a nutshell.

Mister Glisson said that last time the lake was low he walked across the bed of the lake and there were more dead 8-plus-pound bass than the vultures could eat. That is my excuse for our lack of any bass over three pounds, and Mister Glisson assures that they come back quickly. He occasionally fishes the lake for bass. True to cracker style, he prefers to keep things simple. He says several decades ago he only had an “injured minner for a topwater lure and a Johnson spoon for deep retrieves,” and he did just fine, thank you very much.

Fat warmouths turned on near sundown.

After lunch, the weather clears enough for us to hit the water again, and we work over a shallow area just south of Burnt Island. We take turns poling, and we catch several bream and specks, although many are on the smaller side. Most take small offset spinners, and we have success with a fly we decide to call “Black Crappie Magic.” Between dodging raindrops, swapping stories and occasionally just dropping everything to admire the pristine surroundings, we catch a fair share of fish.

Lochloosa might not crack any formal list of top-ten fishing holes, but that isn’t the point. Everybody whose toes tingle when thinking about the first big fish they dragged to shore has their own “Lochloosa”—mine is Keg Creek in western New York. I remembered riding my bike home from the creek, 5-gallon bucket filled with catfish sloshing around as I wiped out 10 or 20 times. I can still feel the wind across my cheek, smell the earth and hear the blackbirds like I was there 10 minutes ago. You don’t need to make Cross Creek or Lochloosa yours. In fact, please don’t. As JJ wrote, “All we need is one more damn developer tearing her heart out.” But if you don’t have your own Lochloosa already, I suggest you start looking before it’s too late.

FS