CityView Magazine

10 | April 2017 I M C F A D Y E N ' S M U S I N G S My Favorite Spot BY BILL MCFADYEN I AM BOTH TOO LONG IN YEARS AND TOO short on testosterone to li weights for my health. Because of that (and because my wife gave me a significant discount off of the retail hourly rate for instruction), I took up yoga last spring. When my wife took a recent sabbatical from teaching, I branched out into new places for the sake of my dexterity and longevity. My new instructor began our first hour together by suggesting that I mask the daily pressures by mentally traveling to my favorite place in the world. It was a short jaunt. Augusta Knight was a famed Fayetteville gardener. She lived in one of the first houses in Devonwood. Across the pond on Timberlake Drive is where my aunt and uncle resided. As a boy, I remember all my surrogate mothers raving over the beauty of Augusta's back yard. It was a rainbow of fauna and Augusta kept it immaculately. Of all the people that visited her to absorb the beauty of her yard, though, I always felt like I had the best view from my favorite spot. On not-so-uncommon but wonderfully special aernoons, Uncle Reg would have me out to fish in the pond. He kept a green wooden boat by the pier made for two people. He always sat in the front. ere were two paddles under the house, but we only took one. Reggie could paddle with one hand and fish with a cane pole in the other. He never changed sides with the paddle either. He swept it right and le as much back and forth, and we went toward where he swished. We always fished on the Timberlake side first, moving away from Augusta's yard. at was the westerly side, so the shade was there first. Cane pole fishing is best done in the shade. As the sun made its way west, the shadows stretched across the water. We would loop at the spillway, fishing up the eastern bank. I remember the time some older boys gathered at the spillway to smoke and talk dirty. eir profanity echoed over the placid surface and into our boat. In one of the rare times that I witnessed him paddle with two hands, he pulled briskly toward the cussing teens and told them to watch their mouths and harshly invited them to leave. Most days on the pond, though, it was only noisy when a bull bluegill ingested my cricket and stormed away toward wherever brim go the moment aer they eat. e line made an audible zinging as it sliced the water, and I hollered out to the back of Reggie's head that it was surely a big one.

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