Singing on the Bayou

When we first stopped by our friends’ new place, Mike was showing me around on the big back deck that overlooked the river when he mentioned that sometimes in the evening someone across the river would sing old blues songs in a deep baritone, as the person, presumably a man, walked down to his favorite fishing hole.

The other side of the river was dense thickets of Chinese privet and native plants fighting it out on the shoreline. There was a trail over there somewhere, but you couldn’t see it from the house. Still, people used it, we’d seem them on the bank with their dogs, occasionally some would be fishing upstream.

Still, I honestly wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not about the blues singer. It sounded so outlandishly anachronistic that I had trouble believing such a thing really happened. This same river in 1955? Sure I’d buy that? But today? Are there still men who sing, alone, walking through the woods every evening to their favorite fishing hole? And in the middle of Athens no less? While Mike and Cassidy’s house has a secluded feel to it, it’s only about a five minutes drive from downtown Athens.

Later that evening I went outside to watch the birds while dinner was cooking and sure enough, the sound of a deep southern voice came booming through the woods and across the water, just barely louder than the sound of the river itself singing. It came and went, perhaps as its owner scrambled over rocks along the shore, or perhaps between bites, between casts maybe. I cupped my ears but I could never make out any words, just melodies floating up and down the river, mixing with the gurgle of water and fluttering notes of birds.