Fishing with Camille
by Lee S. Wilbur
“Camille Beaulieu was the mailman for the Daaquam/Clayton Lake section of the St. John River watershed. She drove a variety of Jeep station wagons or pickup trucks.
Vehicles took a terrific pounding over the old gravel logging roads. It was necessary to keep up a speed of 35-50 mph because driving slow would kill a person with the jolts.
Vehicle life could be measured by the number of tire changes. He had to drive in all kinds of weather from the breathless, dust-driven, days of July/August through snowdrifted winters. Camille hailed from St. Pamphile on the Quebec side of the border where he kept his wife and three children. His wife was quite large, a necessity for the north country where women faced the long winter months.
Competent guy, Camille. In addition to the mail, he’d fish and hunt and do some trapping. Handy with tools, he could build a decent log cabin. First time I met Camille, the plan called for Dad and I to meet him in St. Pamphile, then cross the border onto paper company woodland. At that time, we had to have a permit or guide. We would then stay the first night at his trapping cabin.
We pulled into the cabin just after dark, unloaded minimal gear, built a cookfire in the old Clarion, and the two elders settled in for drinks, stories, and some catching up. Cabin was classic log, big enough for over and under bunks and a single against the far wall. A recycled table and four old chairs dominated the single room. The cabin had one window near the stove, the logs were chinked with some “chinken missin.” A few pots and frypans hung over and around the stove and all was perfumed by a pervasive odor of woodsmoke, body odor, and grease.
I hustled some more firewood as the temperature inside on that June night grew commensurate with that of the oven. Camille announced we’d have fresh biscuits with the steak and onions. Relieved, I’d begun to think we’d dine on the swarm of baked mosquitoes and blackflies. Many inside as out.
Finally, with steaks and onions fried well-done and the elders discussion of the nuances of tomorrow’s significant dry flies on hold, Camille opened the oven door and set the biscuits on the table. Somehow they just didn’t look like mother’s or Phil Carroll’s. No one said a word as we filled plates and sat down to “grub up.”
Camille breaks his biscuit, goes to put butter on it, hesitates, butters and takes a bite. Quizzical look comes over his face. “What in the begoddam hell did I do” as he ups from the table and grabs the bag of “flour” pancake mix (he’d put baking soda, salt and lard into pancake flour). Talk about his being embarrassed in front of “the sports.” Dad and I got to laughing. Couldn’t stop. Only made it worse. Camille’s face was bright red.
Dad kidded him down and with enough molasses, pan drippings and butter, we managed to make a fair dent in the pan. Course Camille had to take a bit of downeast ribbing over the years and we got a good laugh each time Dad would ask “What kind of flour’d you buy this year?” or “Are we dining with Aunt Jemima again?”
Next day we parted ways. Camille to deliver the mail and we to set up camp at Red Pine Campground where we’d spend the week. Camille would guide us every other day by canoe. On the odd days the Doctor and I would fish the area by car with the jonboat now strapped to the roof, this being the years when the great St. John watershed yielded some beautiful trout.
Dad never felt particularly comfortable in fast water so we’d run the jonboat down boulder strewn Ross Stream (Chemquasabamticook Lake) from the pull-off area into the main lake. I recall one spring when we’d made it back to the stream just as a violent wind and rainstorm came through. I tilted motor up, jumped into waist high water and with Dad about out of sight and bailing, slowly towed him upstream around rock to rock. He allowed me a full beer that evening.
From the campground we loaded fish, gear, and lunch in Camille’s canoe and slipped downriver to an abandoned farm at seven islands, seeing fishing holes and rapids along the way. By noon we’d boated a fair string of trout for lunch. With the fire started, baked beans warming in a tin pot and slices of salt pork simmering in the big cast iron skillet ready for trout, we sat back in the lazy talk of the morning’s triumphs and “got aways.” After some frustration and few bites, Camille had cut the dorsal fin from a trout, then hooked and tied it to my line. I immediately started catching fish. Have tried this many times since with great results.
With an elegant lunch of fried trout, bean sandwiches and oreo cookies a memory, Camille took me downstream a short way to a sheltered “bogan” (French for lagoon) where with a virtual first cast, a fighter grabbed the fin and fish danced over that still water until all 16 inches was simply worn out. Great start on dinner that night and a photo-op for mother who was tending the home front.
Not an hour later occurred an incident that even 50-plus years ago I can remember as if it were yesterday. We hit a submerged rock and the motor, a green ’53, 5 hp Johnson kicked up then stalled. Camille couldn’t get it to start again so he grabbed the pick pole and pushed the canoe ashore where we rigged a semblance of anchor while he tried to sort out the problem. Headgasket was blown. Camille unhooked the motor, set it ashore and headed into the woods.
Returning with a large piece of birch bark in his hand, he carefully peeled back a few layers to have clean pages on both sides then carefully traces the old gasket, and with his jackknife, cuts the new from the bark. Ten minutes later, new head gasket in place, slathered with gasket cement, engine mounted, Camille pulls the starter cord and we were headed back upriver to the campground. I often wondered if he changed the “barkgasket” or left it till he needed another.
One day melds into another on a trip like that. One thinks “can’t face another trout breakfast, lunch, or dinner” then enjoys them again with great appetite when served. Memories of one or more exciting landings survive, special scenery or events stand out, introductions to new people, streams or lakes all tumble together and before long those cherished days, like numbered beads on a string, have disappeared. Time to leave. Time to roll up duffles and tent, time to burn leftovers and garbage. Time to cross back over the border and endure the four-and-a-half hour drive over dusty gravel roads to St. George, pavement, and an ice cream cone. A week of fiddlehead greens, beans, bacon, potatoes and trout is just about perfect.
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With strawberry season just a few months away, save this one from up in “The County.”
• R E C I P E •
Frozen Strawberry Cream Brittle Dessert
Nut Brittle:
1 cup white sugar
1⁄2 cup brown sugar
1-1⁄2 cups chopped pecans
1 stick butter
Cream together. Spread on cookie sheet and bake 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool and crumble. Grease 13 x 9 inch pan. Spread brittle on the bottom.
Strawberry Cream:
Whip 2 egg whites. Add 10 ozs. sliced fresh strawberries, 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice. Whip 10 minutes, fold in 1 cup cream which has been whipped. Sprinkle brittle on top and freeze.
Grandchildren and Gramp will love it.
Fair Winds and Good Roads
– Lee Wilbur
From the Lee Wilbur Archives.
