Hole in the Clouds

Two Chucks and a Bob

Jul 17, 2012

The boy at left, with his eyes closed, is my cousin, Charles Horowitz; the boy at right, with the big grin, is my brother, Charles Horowitz, who will turn 56 in a couple of weeks. In the middle is my father, Bob Horowitz; his brother Lee, the father of my cousin Charles, must have been behind the camera.

The four Horowitzes were camping and fishing that weekend in approximately 1966 at Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland. The two Charleses were both named after their grandfather, whom they never knew; he died shortly before they were born. Both boys were called Charley when they were young but go by Chuck as adults.

Cousin Chuck is a psychologist in San Francisco. Brother Chuck is a physicist in Indiana. I've not heard that either of them is much interested in fishing these days.

Old-School Fishing

Jan 5, 2015

A fisherman goes out at night with his cormorants on the River Li, amidst the karst spires of south China. The photo does not make clear how he monetizes his fishing in these postmodern times: by selling fish, or by entertaining tourists?

Beggar

Feb 21, 2016

One of the hangers-on at a marina near Everett, Washington, pokes his head up from the waters of Puget Sound in hopes that the incoming salmon-fishing charter boats had a good day.

Checking His Fish

May 31, 2016

When Joe got back to Tuscaloosa this month after his semester in Cuba, he had fish to check up on.

He's a fisherman and also sort of a fish collector; for the past year or so, he'd been raising baby fish from the Black Warrior River, the little bream and other small fry that would normally be thrown back into the river. Joe kept dozens of them in a large aquarium in his living room, and dozens more in a pool in a tiny creek that runs into the Black Warrior near downtown Tuscaloosa. He named them and fed them and got kind of attached to them.

But when he left for Cuba in January, he moved all his fish to the little creek and wished them well. They were on their own.

Happily, they survived the winter, though heavy rains apparently washed them downstream into a different pool. In this picture, Joe was walking along a drainpipe that criss-crossed his creek, trying to see how his babies were doing. They were growing and swimming actively and doing all the right fishy sorts of things.

Joe now is living in Philadelphia, where he has a bowl of goldfish. He's completed all his coursework and will graduate in August from the University of Alabama.