Catfish at a Fire Hall Out Past Chapel Hill

Friday evening I took the Heritage south on 31A, down through Nolensville and past Triune where the new houses finally give out, and kept on toward Chapel Hill with the sun getting low on my right. No plan to it past the road itself.

About the time the fence lines got honest again I smelled grease, and then I saw the sign. Hand painted on plywood, leaned on a sawhorse at a crossroads: FISH FRY TONITE, with an arrow. I followed it to a cinderblock fire hall with both bay doors rolled up and the trucks parked out in the grass to make room. Three big cast iron kettles going out back on propane, and a line of folks that ran out past the flagpole.

Plate was catfish, hushpuppies, white beans and slaw, twelve dollars, and the money went in a coffee can marked for new turnout gear. Nobody made change in anything but ones. I carried mine to a folding table where an older couple was already sitting, and he asked about the Heritage before I had my napkin open. Turned out he rode a Panhead in the sixties and sold it to pay for the wedding. His wife said that was the best trade he ever made. He did not answer that one, just ate his hushpuppy.

The fella frying was the chief, I was told, and had been since before most of his volunteers were born. He did not talk while the fish was in, and nobody talked to him. When a basket came up the whole line went quiet for a second, like church.

I stayed till the light went. Kids climbing on the old brush truck, somebody's pickup radio playing the high school game low, the evening going blue over the pasture across the road. Rode home in the dark with the cool coming up out of the hollows, and that grease stayed in my jacket all the way to Nashville. I believe I will go looking for that sawhorse again.