In the 1940s and 50s, those who stayed at Mrs. Williams' boardinghouse on the bank of the Homosassa River in Southwest Florida would wake up about 6:30 or 7 a.m. to the "putt-putt-putt" of a one-lung inboard motor pushing a rickety old boat downstream to an all-day rendezvous with the bass, the sea trout, and the redfish that inhabited those sparkling pristine waters. Giant oaks festooned with gray Spanish moss overhung the dark waters of the stream, and snow-white gulls, fish hawks, and occasional eagles soared and dipped in the blue sun-splashed air.

If you were one of the fortunate who had engaged a guide and boat (fifteen dollars for the day), you'd climb aboard at Mrs. Williams' dock, tie a Johnson spoon on your line, and let it trail behind the boat as you headed down river. Every few minutes you'd haul in a largemouth bass that had seen the glint of the spoon and attacked, charging up out of the wavering grasses in the shallow river bottom.

After trolling a few miles downstream, you'd enter the sawgrass marshes near the sea and test the lures in your tackle box. The "Shimmy Wiggler" was a favorite of ours, and of the bass, too . . which made it good.

Then, after while you'd move out of the river and into the Gulf waters called "the flats" where the bottom was shallow for a considerable distance before falling off into the depths. You'd catch trout on Mirror lures or jigs, and then move in close to the mangrove thickets to cast toward the surrounding rocks for redfish, again using a Johnson spoon. The redfish caught would weigh eight, ten, even fourteen pounds.

In the afternoon when you'd come back upriver about four o'clock, the old inboard motor wheezing and snorting along at about 4 miles per hour, you'd pass a boat quietly anchored a few hundred yards below Mrs. Williams' dock. In it would be an elderly and definitely Southern gentleman named Mr. Cole, who, in a couple of hours would have as many trout and redfish as you'd caught all day long. (He never bothered with bass!)

You'd come in, proudly display your string of fish to the admiring guests at the boardinghouse turn your catch over to the cook - then go up to your room for a bath, slip into your "nice" clothes, have a drink, and when the dinner bell rang, go down to the dining room. Dinner usually began with redfish chowder prepared by Mrs. Williams personally, followed by marvelous seafood, vegetables, and a dessert.

After that you'd either sit on the veranda and talk or move out onto the lawn with a chair, and listen to the night sounds as the dark river flowed past - the splash of the mullet jumping, the heavy swirl as a gar broke water, the calls of the night birds. The air would be sweet with the fragrance of orange blossoms on the trees in the backyard, and already you'd be half-dreaming of what you hoped to do the next day. Your sleep that night would be deep and filled with sweet dreams.

Years went over, and a new guide began to take you out. He'd been a long-time commercial fisherman until the price of fish had fallen so low that he decided to do guiding. It was a fortunate thing for us city residents who came down to the river each February to try our luck.

The name of the guide was William Hilliard Lashley. A small man, he was muscular, middle-aged, and active as a squirrel. His skin was tanned quite dark, and he had flashing white teeth, a ready wit, and a deep and imaginative wisdom. He was a survivor, the sort that no matter where you dropped him, he'd make it.

We had first seen him before he began guiding. We were on the lawn at Mrs. Williams' before breakfast one morning, when we heard an unusual sound. It was the noise of an outboard motor and it was on a long, narrow, flat bottomed boat that was going down the river to the Gulf. The man in it was really running it. He was highballing along at about twenty miles an hour, standing in the stern of the boat end, gripping the steering tiller with a bare foot that he used like a hand - and casting as he went by us, first to one side and then to the other. A little downstream from us, a fish hit his lure . . he cut the motor, reeled it in, threw the fish in the bottom of the boat, then resumed his high-speed course and casting.

As soon as we started getting Hilliard to guide us, it was immediately obvious that he was . . . well, different. He never let you still-fish . . well, almost never. On rare occasions you could do it with shrimp, for redfish. But he believed in casting. He'd take you to a spot he thought promising, and you'd cast and cast and cast, and he would cast, too. If no one caught anything in fifteen minutes he'd light out for some other place.

At lunch time he'd run the boat's nose up on the beach of an island in the river, build a fire of pitch-pine or cedar, boil water for coffee, clean fish and broil the meat on a stick over the fire. You could also eat whatever you wanted of the picnic lunch Mrs. Williams had provided in a basket.

Hilliard's squinty eyes were the sharpest ever. Out on the flats he could see at a glance where the fish were schooling. The biggest thrill was when he'd run the boat in close to a mangrove island as the tide was turning, and you'd stand up and cast with a Johnson spoon toward the rocky edge of the island for redfish until you hooked one. The boat would be lurching, bounding, and swaying in the rough water and hard blowing wind, and you'd almost fall overboard when you hooked one.

He had a number of unique expressions. One was "You can say that again!" Another was "I hear you!"

One day I developed a painful headache. I had no aspirin or anything else to take for it. We lunched on the sandy beach of Shell Isle (which was then undeveloped) and after lunch he had me lie on my stomach on the sand, and proceeded to walk barefooted up and down my spine. There was a cracking sound as he did so . . and the headache was gone!

And I'll never forget the time that Sam, one of our group, lost his rod and reel overboard as we were going down the Little Homosassa. Hilliard stopped the boat, took a quick look around to get the bearings fixed in his memory, and then we went on for a ways fishing, using an extra rod and reel that he had. The next morning as we started out we came by the same place. Hilliard anchored the boat, took of his clothes, jumped in the water and disappeared. And, when he came up he had the missing tackle in his hand!

He was always gracious and well-mannered to the ladies, garrulous and colorful to the men. He had a genius for fishing, and a genius for people. Only one other guide I've ever known came anywhere close to him. That was Nathan Strickland, a tall, Nordic type, blue-eyed and ruggedly handsome, who had served in the Rangers in Italy in World War II under General Mark Clark. Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, I called Nathan, and in the course of our conversation I asked about Hilliard.

"Hilliard's dead," he said. "Last summer he went up in North Carolina and had a heart attack and died."

"Oh!" I said, feeling like I'd been kicked in the stomach. But later I got to thinking about it, and this is what I thought:

Somewhere the sunlight glances off the water of a flowing river where great moss-festooned trees bend down their branches to the mirroring stream. White gulls wheel and dip in the blue air, and . . listen!

A boat's coming! And it's coming fast!

And now it's here, and sweeping past . . and there, standing in the stern, the wind whipping by him, and steering with one bare foot, is Hilliard!

He roars by, waving, his white teeth flashing a smile. "See ya in the morning at seven!" he calls, then he waves again . . and is gone.

Or - is he?

Jac Chambliss