Snake - a memoir by Joe Catalano - Vistas & Byways Review

NONFICTION

One afternoon this bucolic setting was shattered - - - -
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Snake!
A Memoir
by Joe Catalano

The earliest memory of any kind that I can conjure included my family’s cabin on a lake, my father and my uncles who were newly returned from service in WW II, and one large (to my three-year old’s eyes) dead snake. The cabin sat on the shore of a mile long, half mile wide lake in the southwest corner of Connecticut. My father named the place “Idle Hours.”

One afternoon this bucolic setting was shattered by a chorus shouting, Snake! Looking to the commotion, I saw “the men” holding shovels and pitch forks. They’re running to the lake, holding shovels aloft, at least two of which held portions of The Snake. Now they’re launching the bloody cargo out over the lake, which until that very instant, was calm.

What the fuck is that, spluttered the lake beneath the looming parts of the snake. The lake wished it could suddenly freeze or turn its ripples into armor to repel this mess. Of course, the lake could not resist this object falling to its surface, so in a short series of splashes, the snake parts made their entry into the lake’s waters.

Remarkably, even before the ripples from these landings reached the shore thirty feet away, the lake welcomed its newest member. Largemouth bass and snapping turtles visited the remnants as they drifted to the bottom. The snake became the newest contributing member of the lake’s ecosystem.

Unlike the lake’s, my experience of this snake never improved. At dinner that evening, my father and uncles recounted their conquest of the limbless intruder. They were sure it would have killed every one of us were it not for their bravery and skill. They spoke of their weapons, their tactics, and their success. My dread of snakes grew deeper with every utterance and gesture.

Many years later I realized my relationship to all snakes was a product of how little these New York City guys knew about snakes, and how they saw themselves as protectors of the homestead.

A few years later I brought my dread to first grade at St. Sebastian’s School in Queens, where the nuns taught me to fear the devil, and that the snake was its emissary. The symbolism of the snake in the Garden of Eden escaped me, so at six years of age, I learned the story literally, and viewed all snakes as embodiments of evil. The religious underpinnings of the relationship between humans and snakes left no doubt. Snakes were the carriers of evil from the dimension below.

Each of the following years of Catholic grammar school added depth and detail to my sense of the evil that possessed every serpent. These lessons always portrayed the snake as the most terrifying of all creatures.

Until I was 12, my summers were spent at the cabin on the lake. I loved fishing, and on most summer days, soon after sunrise, I would row our small boat to one of my favorite fishing spots on the lake. Unfortunately, to get to the boat, I had to run a gauntlet past what I imagined was a favorite sunning spot for snakes. I would throw rocks over the wall to warn any snakes that might be there of my imminent arrival, wait a moment or two for them to hide, and then stride onto the dock, and into the rowboat, never looking where I thought a snake might have been.

Even though during these early years I added some information about reptile behavior to my paralyzing fear, it didn’t help. I am certain that my first experience with snakes was so profound that it must be wrapped tightly around my DNA. In my head, I knew that snakes did not want to deal with me any more than I wanted to deal with them. But my head was not running my relationship to snakes. That was driven by the primal fear burned into my subconscious and validated by years of religious condemnation of serpents.

Notably, I cannot recall another encounter with an uncaged snake until my early twenties. Walking across a cornfield in Iowa to get to the showers at a campground, my next step would have landed on the back of a large black snake. Nope, no shower for me that day.

I realize how crippling my fear of snakes has been. I have avoided walks in the forest, in the desert, and in the mountains. I will not swim in waters that might hold sea snakes.

I have successfully managed other demons in my life, and I knew my ophidiophobia was severely restricting my life experiences, so I enrolled in a program at Stanford designed to help people overcome this phobia.

On the first day each of us in turn described our relationship to snakes. After describing my experience when I was three, and as a student in Catholic grammar school, I shared my analysis. Snakes are ambush predators, masters of camouflage, unseen until they’re within striking distance. I know whence the adage, “If it was a snake, it would’ve bit you,” Poisonous snakes look like their nonpoisonous relatives. If forced by circumstance to confront a hungry alligator, bear or lion, you might wind up dead, but at least you’d know where their arms, legs and mouths were. The coils of a snake on the ground move in opposite directions, so you can’t tell if a snake is coming or going. A loop with no beginning and no end.

The program “guide” told the 10 of us that behind a closed door on the other side of a large classroom, there was a garter snake in a glass cage. In the program, we were invited to get as close to the snake as our phobia permitted. Maybe we’d get to the door being opened, or walk to the open doorway, or to touch the cage, touch the snake, or hold the snake. The premise of the course was that if we knew no harm would befall us, we could overcome our fear.

In another exercise, we were asked to think of someone we knew who we thought would “protect” us from a snake if we encountered one together. My brother-in-law was born in the deep south, and I imagined he would be a good “protector.” Years later, I mentioned my choice to him, and he laughed, saying he Hated snakes, and wanted nothing to do with them.

We were also asked to think of someone by our side who would look to us for protection from a real or imagined threat from a snake. I have four grandchildren and I thought they would look to me for “protection” from a snake we encountered. I haven’t tested that reliance by taking any of them for a walk in the woods.

I have been reluctant to broadcast my fear. A future captor could use my dread to compel my surrender of the whereabouts of a Mickey Mantle rookie card; and I don’t want to give God any ideas for my perfect hell; me lying on a bed of snakes listening to the Kars for Kids commercial in a perpetual loop.

Joe Catalano practiced law for more than 30 years before he retired in 2018. He has since pursued his interests in photography, high performance driving, travel, and writing. He has enjoyed his first OLLI as SF State courses in the spring semester 2019 and thanks the members of the OLLI at SF State Poetry Writing interest group for their input and support. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

Other pieces in this Issue:
Photo Essay :
Evolution of Our Species

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NONFICTION