Many Cooper Hill Road residents nurtured my interest in fishing

By W.Gauvin Barber

Last week I was having a flashback of growing up in Mapleville, RI on Cooper Hill. I have loved freshwater and all forms of fishing from a very early age by the influence of three very special mentors in my life.  I have always loved the outdoors, especially fishing. It's genetic. The interest was fueled by grandfather on my dad's side who would let me read his sporting magazines rather than fairy tales when I visited the old homestead at the top of Cooper Hill.
  I also kept a sharp eye out for slightly read copies of others at the landfill at Nelsons Landfill in Pascoag, RI. while shooting rats with a borrowed 22 caliber. Some were free samples still in the wrapper and every quarter counted in my piggy bank to sneak a pack of Parliament Cigarettes at Carriere's variety store with a split of the cigarettes with the much older person who made the purchase.
 When my father would pick us up at the local mud hole or frog pond to go to our weekly shopping trip to the big city of Woonsocket, RI I would spend my paper route money or from selling wild blueberries donations door to door in the Nyanza Mills sports department.
 A little farther down Cooper Hill was the Ice House manmade pond with a dam and in a growing mill village, a valuable source for our ice boxes. Our neighbor next to the ice house pond was a total sportsmen with the name of George Medbury who was quite a character in my childhood. George was born in Riverside, RI on Oct.11,1908 and lived a very full interesting life which ended on Oct.21, 1986 at 78 years old. George did not drive and went on his fishing and hunting trips with old school lifelong friends. He was quite a athlete in his day and could swim across Pascoag Reservoir on a wager. George was also a very fast runner and on one occasion he spanked the great Narragansett RI. Indian runner " Tarzan Brown"who one the Boston Marathon two times and in one instance without shoes. Brown also made the 1936 Berlin Olympic track team which featured Jesse Owens.
 Mr. Medbury was like my granddad Emery "Ted" Barber with a great assortment of hounds and setters for different hunts. 11 beagles, 13 inch beagles, bird setters and harvested everything for the kitchen table including whitetail deer, fish, waterfowl and gamebirds and snapping turtles.
 Mr. Medbury had a tough exterior and a very humble warm heart for the Barber boys and on many occasions brought back many lunkers for the ice house pond stocking which he knew we would always sneak in to catch the whopper of our sheltered life. One day I built up the courage to ask him about a Plastic Worm with a flying spinner in the front that he had on the end of his line after a very successful stringer of largemouth bass which exceeded twenty pounds.
 He told me it was his secret lure and very expensive at 5 worms for a whole $1.00 plus Mr. Pepler's mail charge at the local post office. He said to read about the new secret bass slayer in one of your granddad's magazine's or see if fellow neighbor Gene Gaucher had one in his creel basket.
 Went I started watching for our Woonsocket Call paper route Christmas tips envelopes in 1959 and their tip envelope was really fat and I thought he had paid me back for catching his private stocked pond with some black coal.
  It turned out to be a packet of 5 Crème Wiggle Rubber Worms from Akron, Ohio that were invented in a basement by Nick and Cosma Crème in Akron Ohio in the 1940's and introduced at the Cleveland Sportsmen Show to the world in 1949.

I opened the package and said to my favorite cousin Sidney Barber, how can a dead piece of stinky plastic with a helicopter spinning blade catch a fish instead of spooking it. I had to wait for ice out in early April 1960 and we decided to try the new fishing lure at Tarklin Pond. Second cast next to lily pads we saw the wake of some kind of submarine chasing the lure and Bang went two feet straight up was a three pound bass with the hooks in his lower jaw. That Kodak moment is etched in my mind for ever and then Sidney who was always a bully snagged my rod and secret lure and duplicated the feat by catching the longest Pickerel to this day in 2017 that I have ever seen.

Decades later I have caught a lot of fish and won my share of fishing tournaments, operated a bait and tackle shop for twelve years to pass on some knowledge to future generations.
 Looking back I would like to Thank in print to all the social media to see on the internet the great gratitude I have for those 3 very special mentors that I had the privilege to have known in my childhood. Grampa" Ted"Barber, Mr. George Medbury who gave me my favorite Christmas present and Life lesson of all time and to a dear former handicapped friend Gene Gaucher.