Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Sisters (6 page)

We stuck more bologna on the hook, dropped the line back in the pond, and then bombarded the water with gravel, hoping to stone the thieving thing as it tried again. After a minute we stopped throwing rocks and, panting and sweaty, scanned the banks to see if the slimy critter had washed up anywhere. While we were thus engaged, the pole jerked in my hand. I lifted the pin out of the water. Empty! We walked home bickering about whose fault all this was and that night could barely bring ourselves to touch our meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Like all serious pioneers, we didn't let our setbacks dampen our spirits. The next day we were ready to get at it again. We were determined to catch a fish because our mother had told us that this would be our last piece of bologna—we were apparently feeding all our dad's luncheon meat to the frog. We prudently quartered the bologna, and after checking out the shoreline and lobbing a few rocks for good measure, we dropped the pin into the water and waited.

Ten minutes into it, we regretfully decided that the fish must not be hungry and that we should save our dwindling supply of bait for another day. I drew up the line and, to our amazement, the hook was clean as a whistle. This meant war! We knew we were going to have to catch the frog or we'd get nary a minnow out of that pond. So we dangled our second piece of meat just under the surface where we could snatch it up the second that greedy frog got his mouth around our bait. We stared at that pin so intently, we saw the exact moment the frog floated up like some ugly Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon and ripped the meat right off the hook. As he sank back down, he seemed to waggle the bologna at us.

A few weeks after this, we were driving into town with our mom. As we passed our old stomping grounds, we looked over nostalgically and, lo and behold, sitting nice as you please on the side of the road was Mr. Big Stupid Frog himself. On our turf! We screamed at our mom to stop the car, which she did, skidding on the gravel. We eased out of the car, thinking that if we could take the old croaker prisoner, we'd finally be the queens of the pond. We circled the frog gingerly, step-by-step, effectively cutting him off from a watery escape. Still he sat there. Inching up, we nervously squatted over him. The two of us posed in frozen uncertainty for a minute, then my adoring little sister looked up at me expectantly. I looked at the creepy monster. Terror must have rooted him to the spot because he hadn't moved a muscle. Holding my breath, I was stretching one finger forward to give the frog a good poke when the totally unexpected happened. He attacked, lunging straight for my face and leaving us with no other option than to scream and run away.

We dove into the backseat, slammed the door shut and sat glumly, contemplating our failure during the ride into town. Once there, we went straight to the library and checked out a book on how to become space cadets. Living off the land was for the birds anyway, and dangerous to boot. No wonder all the pioneers were dead.

Tanith Nicole Tyler

CONTRIBUTORS

Faith Adiele
teaches nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and travel writing at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Her books include a memoir,
Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist
Nun in Thailand
(Norton, 2004), and a mystery thriller,
The Student Body
(
www.thestudentbody.com
).
Contact her at:
www.pitt.edu/~adiele
.

Krista Allison
is the daughter of the late Davey Allison, who competed in the NASCAR Winston Cup series. Davey lost his life tragically in 1993, when Krista was just three years old. Krista lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her family. She is a cheerleader at her school and loves to sew.

Renée Brouillette
is an attorney who lives in Roseville, California. She writes to celebrate family and history. Her nonfiction has appeared in
Dog Fancy, Doll Reader
and
The Antique Trader.
She is working on her first novel.

Vivian Eisenecher
holds a degree in business administration (magna cum laude), and a certificate in gerontology. Her published works include stories in
Chicken Soup for the Single's Soul, Woman's
World, Viewpoint
and
Writer's News.
She has also completed a 250-page suspense novel in which such topics as addiction, incest and recovery are an integral part. She is currently employed in the marketing department at Palomar Pomerado Health and is a copywriter in her spare time. Mother to one daughter, Kim, and one son, Todd, she makes her home in San Diego, California, with her husband and two cats. She loves to read, write, travel and take long walks.

Betsy Banks Epstein
writes social commentary and travel articles. Her work has appeared in the
Boston
Sunday Globe,
the
Burlington Free Press, Booming
magazine,
Pandemonium,
an anthology of parental humor, and
The Walker Within,
a collection of inspirational stories. She is a regular
Cambridge
Chronicle
columnist and lives in Cambridge.

Nancy Harless
is a nurse practitioner now exercising her menopausal zest through travel, volunteering in various health-care projects and writing about those experiences. Most of her writing is done in a towering maple tree, in the treehouse built specifically for that purpose by her husband, Norm. She is currently writing a book about some of the strong and beautiful women she has met along her journey. E-mail:
[email protected].

Linda L. S. Knouse
was born and raised in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania, She currently resides in eastern Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. She is the youngest of nine children. Her sister, Marcella, is the topic of her story in this book. Linda writes about her family, family issues and nature. She can be reached at
[email protected].

Charlotte Lanham
lives in Duncanville, Texas, with her husband, Ray. She is a freelance writer, former columnist and a contributor to
Chicken Soup for the Mother & Daughter Soul
. She is also the co-founder of Abbi's Room, a non-profit organization that provides bed and bedding for children of Habitat for Humanity families. E-mail:
[email protected].

René Manley
is a writer and child development specialist in Salem, Oregon. She holds a master's degree in counseling and writes for and about children and families. The author of a weekly newspaper column,
Friend of the Family,
you may reach her at
[email protected].

Beverly McLaggan
recently retired from teaching and counseling in San Jose, California. She enjoys reading, traveling, discussing books and playing piano. Currently, she is working on a novel and in the future plans to write a children's book illustrated by her husband. Please reach her at:
[email protected].

Christine Pisera Naman
is a writer and stay-at-home mom. She lives in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three children. Her first book,
Faces of Hope,
a book featuring babies born on September 11, 2001, was published in 2002.

Carol D. O'Dell
has been published in magazines and anthologies including
Atlanta Magazine
and
Jacksonville Magazine.
She lives with her husband and three daughters in Jacksonville, Florida. “Only the Two of Us in Sight” is an excerpt from her completed memoir,
Said Child.
Contact her at
[email protected]
for her Web address.

Diane Payne
is waiting for Red Hen Press to publish her memoir
Burning Tulips.
Her agent, Erin Reel, is looking for a publisher for her short story collection “Maps and Detours.” Every summer, she and her daughter get together with her sister and her two children, and once again, they sleep beneath the stars.

Jodi Severson
earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. She resides in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, with her husband and three beautiful children. Her stories have been published in
Chicken Soup for the Working Woman's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Sister's Soul, US Legacies
Magazine
and Honoring Our Ancestors. Reach her at:
[email protected].

Tanith Nicole Tyler
is an aspiring writer who lives in Richmond, California, with her husband, Donnell Gordon, their three dogs and Oliver the cockatoo. When not writing, Tanith enjoys delivering Meals on Wheels, remodeling, reading and hiking with her pets. Please reach her at:
[email protected].

PERMISSIONS

First Pick.
Reprinted by permission of René Manley. ©2002 René Manley.